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Everyday Use
Two sisters, Dee and Maggie, are the focal characters in the short story "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker. The two daughters are quite different in appearance and personality. Despite growing up in...
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Literature
Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" examines a changing time in African-American history. Set in the 1960s, the story contrasts rural, tradition-based African-American heritage with the...
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Everyday Use
Right now, race and race relations are common topics in the news. But, it is not as dramatic and turbulent as it was during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. That being said, there are some...
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Everyday Use
Dee has formed a new identity. She has embraced her African heritage and has relinquished her African-American identity and the life she knew with her mother and sister, Maggie. Named for her...
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Everyday Use
In this story, Mama's parenting is effective because the right daughter ends up finally receiving the recognition she deserves. It seems as though Mama has spent a lot of time getting Dee the...
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Everyday Use
Dee's terrible selfishness and the ownership that she has asserted over the quilts that she once rejected, over the heritage represented by those quilts (that she's also never cared about before...
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Everyday Use
Maggie and her mother use family heirlooms for their practical purposes as well as the for the connection they feel to their ancestors. Dee (Wangero), on the other hand, wants some of these items...
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Everyday Use
Names are also symbols of heritage in the story "Everyday Use." Mama, the narrator of the story, names her older daughter Dee. However, when Dee, who is better educated than her mother and younger...
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Everyday Use
The story begins in the present, with Mama Johnson narrating events as they occur. In the beginning of the story, she reflects on Dee's childhood: what she was like, what Mama tried to do for her...
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Everyday Use
Alice Walker and her family suffered a great many hardships. Her work often mirrors these difficulties. This is true in her short story "Everyday Use," in which the characters' lives share many...
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Everyday Use
The quilts hold different meanings for Maggie and Dee because heritage means different things to Maggie and Dee. For Maggie, heritage is something living, something that exists in the present:...
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Everyday Use
Maggie and the mother react awkwardly towards Dee because of the inherent differences between their identities and culture. In addition, Maggie and the mother expected to see a modern woman because...
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Everyday Use
First, when Dee arrives home to visit her mother and sister, almost the first thing she does is take a bunch of pictures of her family, their home, and even their livestock. Next, Dee says that...
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Everyday Use
It can be argued that Dee (Wangero) reacts to the objects and foods in her mother's house with seeming wonder and admiration. On the surface, Dee's bubbly demeanor is infectious; she is extravagant...
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Everyday Use
Mama seems to want peace in her home and within her family. She fantasizes about a talk-show reunion with her estranged daughter, Dee, wishing that she could be lighter-skinned, thinner, more...
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Everyday Use
The use of the first-person narrative by the story's Mrs. Johnson is especially important to the plot's development because her voice represents the past, and the respect and dignity that it should...
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Everyday Use
In the story, both Maggie and Dee desired two family heirloom quilts for themselves, but they have very different reasons for wanting them. The quilts contained pieces of clothing worn by relatives...
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Everyday Use
It seems as though Walker does not want us to agree with Dee or Dee's ideas about heritage because she presents Dee as a relatively unsympathetic character. She's described in ways that make her...
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Everyday Use
When Dee returns home, she actually seems to be pleased by much of what she finds: a cow, a house quite similar to the old one (that she, apparently, hated passionately), old hand-made family...
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Everyday Use
To the mother, who is the narrator of Walker's story, the butter churn and the dasher are useful items made by her relatives that are part of their everyday use. They are symbolic reminders of the...
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Everyday Use
Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" examines the lives of black women in rural America in the 1960s. The story addresses the pivotal moment the African-American community was facing as it...
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Everyday Use
Maggie's scars cause her to turn inward in life. After having been so badly burnt that she "stands hopelessly in corners," it becomes apparent that Maggie feels inferior to her sister and looks at...
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Everyday Use
Yes, but it's not a very specific example. Furtive behavior, by definition, is stealthy or secretive; it's done in the hope that no one will notice. Sneaking around is being furtive, but it's not a...
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Everyday Use
On the positive side, Dee is beginning to show an appreciation for family artifacts, items that have been hand-made by relatives and items that have served her family for generations. Dee has also...
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Everyday Use
Mama's perspective certainly influences the reader, both in general and in particular, to view her daughters in a particular way. Maggie is the victim, the shy one; she "will be nervous until...
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Everyday Use
The narrator of this story is Mama Johnson, mother of Dee (Wangero) and Maggie. We never learn Mama's first name, as she only goes by Mama to her daughters. At one point, early in the story, Mama...
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Everyday Use
It seems that Dee and Maggie have never been close; they really have very little in common. Maggie feels that Dee has always gotten whatever she wants, and Dee really has no respect for Maggie and...
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Everyday Use
In this story, the mother's daydream about appearing on television with Dee is more focused on a talk show rather than a game show. You can tell because she describes how the show's host would be...
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Everyday Use
Dee has forgotten her heritage because she has embraced some of the philosophy of the Black Power Movement, a movement which wished to establish an identity for African-Americans completely apart...
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Everyday Use
One major theme of this story is that one's heritage is meant to be used and made a part of daily life, not preserved and put on a shelf or a wall. Although mama and Maggie still regularly use...
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Everyday Use
The quilts are valuable to Dee because she is eager to take proofs of her heritage back home with her. She has suddenly become interested in having items that were hand-made by family members;...
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Everyday Use
At the beginning of the story, mama dreams about having some dramatic reunion with Dee where Dee credits her mother with helping her to achieve her life's goals. While mama is not oblivious to...
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A Raisin in the Sun
Both Dee from Walker's "Everyday Use" and Beneatha from Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun learn from their education that their cultural heritage is rooted in African traditions. Dee is the only...
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Everyday Use
Dee is a self-centered person who is used to getting what she wants. Maggie "thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that 'no' is a word the world never learned to say to...
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Everyday Use
Dee has assumed an African-style dress and name as well as natural hair because she has become concerned with her heritage. Of her new name, she tells Mama, "'I couldn’t bear it any longer,...
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Everyday Use
Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" and Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" make for an interesting pairing. We notice a few surface similarities right away: there's a conflict between the mother and daughter, with...
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Everyday Use
Maggie has a real smile at the end of this story because Mama has finally told Dee, Maggie's sister, no. Dee has come from out of town, sweeps into Mama and Maggie's house, demanding items that...
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Everyday Use
When Dee/Wangero tells her mother, "You just don't understand...your heritage," she implies that hand-made artistic items in their family should be put on display instead of being used. Even before...
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Everyday Use
Dee has "made it" in the sense that she got out and found a way to prosper despite her humble beginnings. Her mother noticed how bright and quick Dee was as a child and so saved up to send her...
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Everyday Use
If this story were narrated from Dee's perspective, I think we'd have a dramatically different story. Mama loves both her daughters, though she is not oblivious to their flaws; however, she has no...
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Everyday Use
Dee (Wangero) is the character who most fits the notion of the antagonist. Dee doesn't hate her mother and Maggie. On the contrary, she has some good intentions. She wants them to have better...
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Everyday Use
In "Everyday Use," because the narrator alludes a few times to the house that had burned down, as well as the scars left on Maggie's skin, it's worth taking a look at that event--even though it...
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Everyday Use
In "Everyday Use," the point of view is first person. Mrs. Johnson, mother of Dee and Maggie, appears as a character in the story and is our narrator. From Mrs. Johnson's first person narration, we...
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Everyday Use
The answer to this question will have to be strictly inferred. It can't be gathered directly from the story. Why? Walker isn't a character in the story, so we can't tell exactly how she feels about...
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Everyday Use
The title of the story "Everyday Use" draws its significance from the ethical dilemma and theme of the story. The overarching question that the story asks readers to consider (and answers at the...
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Everyday Use
The struggle of African American women with racism and prejudice was the theme of many of Alice Walker’s writing. “Everyday Use” was published in a time when these problems were at their...
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Everyday Use
For Maggie, Mama's house is home. Is it a place of safety, where she doesn't have to hide or feel badly about herself (until Dee comes). Mama describes the way she and Maggie cleaned up their home...
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Everyday Use
Perhaps the key element of the short story, characterization is employed by authors in order to move the action of the plot forward with conflicts and actions that develop the story's theme....
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Everyday Use
Mama Johnson is the protagonist in Alice Walker's short story, "Everyday Use." We can identify her as the main character because the story is told from her point of view, it follows her actions...
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Everyday Use
Without question, Mama is the character who undergoes the most personal growth in the story. She begins the story with a dream of being reunited with her daughter, Dee, on a television show, where...