everyday use

[symbols]QUILTS

"Everyday Use" focuses on the bonds between women of different generations and their enduring legacy, as symbolized in the quilts they fashion together. This connection between generations is strong, yet Dee's arrival and lack of understanding of her history shows that those bonds are vulnerable as well. The relationship between Aunt Dicie and Mama, the experienced seamstresses who made the quilts, is very different from the relationship between Maggie and Dee, sisters who share barely a word and have almost nothing in common. Just as Dee cannot understand the legacy of her name, passed along through four generations, she does not understand the significance of the quilts, which contain swatches of clothes once worn or owned by at least a century's worth of ancestors. The quilts are pieces of living history, documents in fabric that chronicle the lives of the various generations and the trials, such as war and poverty, that they faced. The quilts serve as a testament to a family's history of pride and struggle. With the limitations that poverty and lack of education placed on her life, Mama considers her personal history one of her few treasures. Her house contains the handicrafts of her extended family. Instead of receiving a financial inheritance from her ancestors, Mama has been given the quilts. For her, these objects have a value that Dee, despite professing her desire to care for and preserve the quilts, is unable to fathom.

{THEME}THE DIVISIVE POWER OF EDUCATION

Although Mama struggled to send Dee to a good school, education proves to be more divisive than beneficial to Dee's relationship with her family. Mama herself was denied an education. When she was a child, her school was closed, and no one attempted to try to reopen it. Racism, passive acceptance, and forces beyond her control set Mama on the road that led to her life of toil. Dee was fortunate that Mama gave her the opportunity for advantages and refinements, but they have served only to create a wedge between Dee and the rest of the family. Dee uses her intellect to intimidate others, greeting her mother with "Wa-su-zo Tean-o," a greeting in an obscure African language Mama most likely doesn't speak. Dee, with her knowledge and worldliness, is a threat to the simple world Mama and Maggie inhabit, and Dee seems determined to lord her knowledge over them. Even as a child, Dee read to her mother and sister "without pity," "forcing" strange ideas on them and unsettling their simple domestic contentment. Education has separated Dee from her family, but it has also separated Dee from a true sense of self. With lofty ideals and educational opportunity came a loss of a sense of heritage, background, and identity, which only family can provide. Dee arrives at the family home as a strange, threatening ambassador of a new world, a world that has left Maggie and Mama behind. Civil rights, greater visibility, and zero tolerance for inequality are characteristics of Dee's world. These things are not, in and of themselves, problematic. What's problematic is that Dee has no respect for anything but her world, leading her to alienate herself from her roots. Maggie, on the other hand, knows no world but the one she came from. Uneducated, she can read only haltingly. By doing what she is told and accepting the conditions of her sheltered life without question, Maggie has hampered her own self-fulfillment. Walker sets up this contrast to reveal an ironic contradiction: Dee's voracious quest for knowledge has led to her alienation from her family, while the lack of education has harmed and stifled Maggie. Both education and the lack of it have proven to be dangerous for the sisters.

{THEME}THE MEANING OF HERITAGE

Angered by what she views as a history of oppression in her family, Dee has constructed a new heritage for herself and rejected her real heritage. She fails to see the family legacy of her given name and takes on a new name, Wangero, which she believes more accurately represents her African heritage. However, the new name, like the "African" clothes and jewelry she wears to make a statement, is meaningless. She has little true understanding of Africa, so what she considers her true heritage is actually empty and false. Furthermore, Dee views her real heritage as dead, something of the past, rather than as a living, ongoing creation. She desires the carved dasher and family quilts, but she sees them as artifacts of a lost time, suitable for display but not for actual, practical use. She has set herself outside her own history, rejecting her real heritage in favor of a constructed one. Mama and Dee have very different ideas about what "heritage" is, and for Mama, the family objects are infused with the presence of the people who made and used them. The family heirlooms are the true tokens of Dee's identity and origins, but Dee knows little about the past. She misstates the essential facts about how the quilts were made and what fabrics were used to make them, even though she pretends to be deeply connected to this folk tradition. Her desire to hang the quilts, in a museumlike exhibit, suggests that she feels reverence for them but that to her they are essentially foreign, impersonal objects. Mama understands that Maggie, not Dee, should have the quilts, because Maggie will respect them by using them in the way they were intended to be used. When Dee contends at the end of the story that Mama and Maggie do not understand their heritage, Walker intends the remark to be ironic: clearly, it is Dee herself who does not understand her heritage.

Voice, Diction, and Humor

Colorful language, specialized diction, and Mama's unique phrases and observations give "Everyday Use" a sense of realism. Giving voice to a member of a group that had typically been silenced, Walker gives Mama the power to narrate and control and use language to convey her story and thoughts in her own way. Walker has Mama use the specialized language of butter churning and cheese making (Dee wants to take her mother's "dasher" and the "churn top"), which adds realism to the story. These objects evoke the self-supporting life of a rural farm family and endless cycles of labor its members face. The story focuses on the disappointment Mama feels in both her daughters and the tension that arises when Dee forces her to make a difficult choice about who gets the quilts, but the tragedy is undercut by Mama's lively cadences and distinctive narrative style. Mama makes the language her own. For example, she refers to her husband carving benches when the family couldn't "effort" (instead of "afford") to buy chairs, and she describes the milk in the churn as "crabber" (soured). Walker uses humor as a way of lightening the story's grim observations, such as in the subtle comedy provoked by Mama's reaction to Dee's and Hakim's difficult-to-pronounce names. Mama eventually gives up on Hakim-a-barber's name and secretly addresses him as what she thinks he sounds like: a barber.

Dee

Dee is the object of jealousy, awe, and agitation among her family members, while as an individual she searches for personal meaning and a stronger sense of self. Dee's judgmental nature has affected Mama and Maggie, and desire for Dee's approval runs deep in both of them—it even appears in Mama's daydreams about a televised reunion. However, Dee does not make much of an effort to win the approval of Mama and Maggie. Unflappable, not easily intimidated, and brimming with confidence, Dee comes across as arrogant and insensitive, and Mama sees even her admirable qualities as extreme and annoying. Mama sees Dee's thirst for knowledge as a provocation, a haughty act through which she asserts her superiority over her mother and sister. Dee is also portrayed as condescending, professing her commitment to visit Mama and Maggie no matter what ramshackle shelter they decide to inhabit. Far from signaling a brand-new Dee or truly being an act of resistance, the new persona, Wangero, comes across as an attention-seeking ploy in keeping with Dee's usual selfishness. Dee says she is reclaiming her heritage, but she has actually rejected it more violently than ever before. Through Dee, Walker challenges individuals—including activists, separatists, or otherwise—who ignore or reject their heritage. These people prefer to connect themselves to an idealized Africa instead of to the lessons and harsh realities that characterized the black experience in America. Dee and Hakim-a-barber are aligned with the abstract realm of ideology, which contrasts starkly with the earthy, physical, labor-intensive lifestyle of Mama and Maggie. Dee is intrigued by their rustic realism, snapping photographs as though they are subjects of a documentary, and in doing so effectively cuts herself off from her family. Instead of honoring and embracing her roots, Dee looks down on her surroundings, believing herself to be above them.

[sample essay] Characterization and Symbolism in Alice Walker's "Everyday Use"

In her short story "Everyday Use," Alice Walker takes up what is a recurrent theme in her work: the representation of the harmony as well as the conflicts and struggles within African-American culture. "Everyday Use" focuses on an encounter between members of the rural Johnson family. This encounter--which takes place when Dee (the only member of the family to receive a formal education) and her male companion return to visit Dee's mother and younger sister Maggie--is essentially an encounter between two different interpretations of, or approaches to, African-American culture. Walker employs characterization and symbolism to highlight the difference between these interpretations and ultimately to uphold one of them, showing that culture and heritage are parts of daily life. The opening of the story is largely involved in characterizing Mrs. Johnson, Dee's mother and the story's narrator. More specifically, Mrs. Johnson's language points to a certain relationship between herself and her physical surroundings: she waits for Dee "in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy" (88). The emphasis on the physical characteristics of the yard, the pleasure in it manifested by the word "so," points to the attachment that she and Maggie have to their home and to the everyday practice of their lives. The yard, in fact, is "not just a yard. It is like an extended living room" (71), confirming that it exists for her not only as an object of property, but also as the place of her life, as a sort of expression of herself. Her description of herself likewise shows a familiarity and comfort with her surroundings and with herself: she is "a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands" (72)—in other words, she knows the reality of her body and accepts it, even finding comfort (both physical and psychological) in the way that her "fat keeps [her] hot in zero weather" (72). Mrs. Johnson is fundamentally at home with herself; she accepts who she is, and thus, Walker implies, where she stands in relation to her culture. Mrs. Johnson's daughter Maggie is described as rather unattractive and shy: the scars she bears on her body have likewise scarred her soul, and, as a result, she is retiring, even frightened. Mrs. Johnson admits, in a loving manner, that "like good looks and money, quickness passed her by" (73). She "stumbles" as she reads, but clearly Mrs. Johnson thinks of her as a sweet person, a daughter with whom she can sing songs at church. Most importantly, however, Maggie is, like her mother, at home in her traditions, and she honors the memory of her ancestors; for example, she is the daughter in the family who has learned how to quilt from her grandmother. Dee, however, is virtually Maggie's opposite. She is characterized by good looks, ambition, and education (Mrs. Johnson, we are told, collects money at her church so that Dee can attend school). Dee's education has been extremely important in forging her character, but at the same time it has split her off from her family. Mamma says, "She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks' habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice" (73). Dee, in other words, has moved towards other traditions that go against the traditions and heritage of her own family: she is on a quest to link herself to her African roots and has changed her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo. In doing so, in attempting to recover her "ancient" roots, she has at the same time denied, or at least refused to accept, her more immediate heritage, the heritage that her mother and sister share. The actions Walker's characters take, as well as their physical attributes, are symbolic of their relation to their culture. Dee's male companion, for example, has taken a Muslim name and now refuses to eat pork and collard greens, thus refusing to take part in the traditional African-American culture. Mrs. Johnson, meanwhile, has "man-working hands" and can "kill a hog as mercilessly as a man" (72); clearly this detail is meant to indicate a rough life, with great exposure to work. Symbolic meaning can also be found in Maggie's skin: her scars are literally the inscriptions upon her body of the ruthless journey of life. Most obviously—and most importantly—the quilts that Mrs. Johnson has promised to give Maggie when she marries are highly symbolic, representing the Johnsons' traditions and cultural heritage. These quilts were "pieced by Grandma Dee and then Big Dee "(76), both figures in family history who, unlike the present Dee, took charge in teaching their culture and heritage to their offspring. The quilts themselves are made up of fragments of history, of scraps of dresses, shirts, and uniforms, each of which represents those people who forged the family's culture, its heritage, and its values. Most importantly, however, these fragments of the past are not simply representations in the sense of art objects; they are not removed from daily life. What is most crucial about these quilts—and what Dee does not understand—is that they are made up of daily life, from materials that were lived in. This, in essence, is the central point of "Everyday Use": that the cultivation and maintenance of its heritage are necessary to each social group's self-identification, but that also this process, in order to succeed, to be real, must be part of people's use every day. After all, what is culture but what is home to us, just as Mrs. Johnson's yard is home to her.

'Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him? This is the way my Maggie walks. . . . She knows she is not bright. Like good looks and money, quickness passes her by. '

Mama narrates these words as Maggie joins her in the yard to wait for Dee. In this brief quotation she bluntly characterizes Maggie as a pathetic figure who shows the effects of her sheltered life and disfigurement. Maggie's crushed spirit and withering, withdrawn nature disappoint Mama, but she ultimately chooses Maggie's simplicity and faithfulness over Dee's shallow selfishness. Mama feels she is the protector of one daughter and the victim of the other. She dreams of the impending marriage that will relieve her of the burden of Maggie and leave her to a quiet life. On one hand, Mama's brutal honesty and lack of illusions seem closely connected to her strength. At the same time, Mama's honesty is also harsh. It dramatizes the subtle yet deep gulf that exists between Mama and her daughters. Whereas Dee represents a world of extreme change, Maggie relentlessly stays the same, an all-too-present reminder of the inequities of the past and present.

'She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks' habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. She washed us in a river of make-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn't necessarily need to know. '

Mama speaks these words in reference to Dee's formative years, when she would return home from boarding school in Augusta, full of newly acquired knowledge that she would lord over Mama and Maggie. Rather than her daughter's intelligence and accomplishments triggering pride in Mama, Dee's schooling prompts fear and intimidation in her instead. Like the fire that destroyed the family's first house, knowledge is portrayed as a volatile and unwelcome presence that threatens the home's safety, simplicity, and stability. Education is the means through which Dee rejects and belittles her family, thus leading to division and alienation. At the same time, knowledge is a provocation, reminding Mama of the exposure and opportunities she was never given. Mama gives voice to her resentment at her own stalled schooling and finds comfort in her physical strength and endurance. Infused with negative connotations, education is suggested as a destructive force that harms individuals by exposing them to worlds to which they will never really belong. Some are harmed or excluded by the struggle to acquire learning and are destined to be like Maggie, hanging meekly in the doorway of a room that she will never be able to enter, shut out from the ability to change. For Mama, this threat is as real and unwanted as a fire racing through the rafters.

[symbols]THE YARD

Mama's yard represents a private space free of the regrets and shortcomings that have infiltrated Mama's life. The yard appears in the first and last sentences of the story, connecting the events and bookending the action. The yard has been meticulously prepared for Dee's arrival. Mama is sensitive to every detail of the yard's appearance, referring to the wavy designs she and Maggie have made in the dirt as they tidied it. Mama extols the comforts of the yard, comparing it to an extended living room. In many ways, Mama prefers the yard to the confining house, where the muggy air fails to circulate freely. The outdoors is a place of freedom, whereas the interior of the house offers restraint and discomfort. The tense discussion about who gets the quilts takes place inside, where the various objects provoke Dee's desire to reconnect with her past. In contrast, the yard is a blissful escape, a place where Mama's regrets can be sidestepped. For her and Maggie, the yard evokes safety, a place where they can exert what little control they have over their environment.

mama

Mama,the narrator of the story,is a strong,loving mother who is sometimes threatened and burdened by her daughters,Dee and Maggie,Gentle and stern,her inner monologue offers us a glimpse of the limits of a mother's unconditional love. Mama is brutally honest and often critical in her assessment of both Dee and Maggie. She harshly describes shy,withering Maggie's limitations,and Dee provokes an even more pointed evaluation. Mama resents the education,sophistication,and air of superiority that Dee has acquired over the years. Mama fantasizes about reuniting with Dee on a television talk show and about Dee expressing gratitude to Mama for all Mama has done for her. This brief fantasy reveals the distance between the two-and how underappreciated Mama feels. Despite this brief daydream,Mama remains a practical woman with few illusions about how things are. Just as Dee embraces an alternative persona when she renames herself"wangero,"Mama rejected a traditional gender role when she worked to raise and provide for her daughters and took on an alternative,masculine persona. She is proud of her hardy nature and ability to butcher hogs and milk cows. In the story,she literally turns her back on the house,the traditionally female space. She feels that it confines her too much. Despite her willingness to operate outside of conventions,Mama lacks a broad view of the world a nd is,to some extent, intimidated by Dee. She doesn't understand Dee's life, and this failure to understand leads her to distrust Dee. Dee sees her new persona as liberating,whereas Mama sees it as a rejection of her family and her origins. It is not surprising that she names familiar Maggie as the caretaker of the family's heritage.

Maggie

Nervous and maladjusted, Maggie is a figure of purity, uncorrupted by selfishness or complex emotional needs. Severely burned in a house fire when she was a child, her scarred, ugly appearance hides her sympathetic, generous nature. She lives at home and is protected by Mama, remaining virtually untouched by the outside world. As much as her homebound isolation protects her, she is also a victim of this seclusion: she suffers from a crippling shyness and lack of education. Maggie moves with a meek, shuffling gait and hovers awkwardly in doorways rather than getting involved in life around her. Although Mama mentions that Maggie is going to marry John Thomas, it is doubtful that even a marriage will help Maggie become a strong and clearly defined individual. Mama, protective as she is of Maggie, is frank about her shortcomings and problems. Maggie's relationship with Dee is rife with jealousy and awe. Mama recalls how Maggie had always thought Dee had been gifted with an easy life in which her hopes and desires were rarely, if ever, frustrated. Maggie seems to have taken both sisters' difficulties onto her own shoulders, and although she never says explicitly that she finds it unfair, she clearly thinks so. The only time Maggie reveals the extent of her innermost desires is when Dee attempts to take the quilts that Mama had promised to Maggie. Maggie drops plates in the kitchen and then slams the door, outraged. Later, although she tries to win Dee's favor by giving up the quilts, her reluctance to do so stirs pity and anger in Mama. Maggie does have a will, and although it is buried deep inside her, it comes through when what she desires most in the world is about to be taken away.

[Motifs] NAMING AND RENAMING

The act of naming—or, in Dee's case, renaming—is a way of connecting to the past and an indication of the fluid nature of identity. Walker doesn't tell us the origins of Maggie's name, and Mama's name is never given, but we know that these two characters are unchanging and have strong ties to their heritage. It therefore makes sense that their names and identities are stable and unremarkable. Dee, on the other hand, attempts to transform herself and embrace what she considers her true heritage by adopting an African name. Her boyfriend, Hakim-a-barber, may have taken on his name for similar reasons, as he grew to embrace Muslim ideas. Renaming is a sign of these two characters' attempts to leave behind their true selves by taking on a new identity. Dee believes that the name Wangero holds more power and significance than Dee, the name passed down through four generations. Dee's belief that she was named after her oppressors shows a critical lack of understanding. Quick to judgment, she sees her given name as an emblem of a racist, abusive world, as opposed to a tribute to a long line of strong women. Dee's decision to take on a new name highlights the confused views she has of her own heritage.

Irony

The significance of the title "Everyday Use" and the effect of the story's portrayal of a daughter's brief visit hinge on the irony that comes from the sisters' differing intended use for the quilts. The quilts are most valuable to Mama and Maggie, not as objects to be hung on the wall and respected as folk art, but as the practical household items they are. Mama risks Maggie's harming or destroying the quilts, valuable and irreplaceable documents of family history, in exchange for the peace of mind that comes from knowing that they have been passed on to the right daughter. Mama contends that Maggie, supposedly mentally inferior to her sister, has an ability that Dee does not: she can quilt. While Maggie may subject the quilts to the wear and tear of everyday use, she can replace them and contribute a scrap of family history to the next generation. Dee wants to preserve the quilts and protect them from the harm her sister might inflict, but she shows no true understanding of their inherent worth as a family totem. She relegates the objects to mere display items. Although claiming that the preservation of the quilts is of paramount concern, Dee has no real understanding of or respect for her mother's ancestors, viewing them much as she views her mother: a country clod she is glad to have left behind. While Dee claims to have reverence for the past, at the end of the story, she criticizes Mama and Maggie for remaining mired in the old ways of living and thinking. Creating a life altogether different from the past is Dee's primary objective. This attitude is yet another way in which she expresses her disconnection to and lack of appreciation for her heritage. To Dee, life in the country is something to escape, deny, and condemn. Her sudden turn to embrace the objects of the past is thus all the more empty and unbelievable. While she believes she is earnest, it is Mama, despite her poor education and lack of worldliness, who sees the shallowness of Dee's motives. For Mama, the best way to protect the spirit of the quilts is to risk destroying them while in Maggie's permanent "care." The irony of this is not bitter but touching: preserving the objects and taking them out of everyday use is disrespectful because it disregards the objects' intended, original uses. Keeping them in circulation in daily life keeps the family history alive.

[Motifs]EYE CONTACT AND EYESIGHT

Throughout the story, the presence or absence of eye contact and strong eyesight reveals the difficulty that Mama, Dee, and Maggie have in relating to one another and, in Maggie and Mama's case, to the outside world. Mama is unable to look a white person in the eye, suggesting that she has never managed to embrace the idea of equality, whereas Dee can do so easily. Maggie can't look anyone in the eye at all, hanging her head as she walks, portraying herself as a silent victim. In describing Maggie's ability to read, Mama says that Maggie does the best she can despite not being able to see well. This qualified vision is associated with a lack of intelligence or mental acuity. Walker describes Dee as wide-eyed, always taking in the world around her. During the house fire that happened when she was a child, she was transfixed by the flames consuming the home that, to her, represented ignorance and poverty. Mama claims Dee's attention was often so rapt that she would not blink for long stretches of time. Dee's easy eye contact and intense gazes reveal her critical, condescending nature. Soon after arriving at the family home, Dee and Hakim send "eye signals" to each other, silently registering their disdain for Mama and Maggie's simple, rustic world.