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Everyday Use
Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" features a character named Dee who prefers to be referred to as Wangero when she comes to visit her mother after a long absence from home. Dee has become...
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Everyday Use
Before Dee left home, she did not relate to her family well at all. The fact that her mother dreams of a television-style reunion with Dee where the daughter might lean in "to tell how she would...
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Everyday Use
Literary elements are a category of literary devices (one of two categories) that are not optional. This means that literary elements appear in all literary narratives, whether novels or short...
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Everyday Use
Really, apart from the fact that they are sisters, the text establishes little similarity between Maggie and Dee. Consider how Maggie is introduced in the first paragraph: Maggie will be nervous...
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Everyday Use
This depends a lot on what you feel you want to say about the story -- what about it touched you most or made you most interested. To me, the most interesting thing (since I'm a history teacher) is...
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Everyday Use
The quilts are one example of symbolism in "Everyday Use." Dee sees the quilts as art and intends to display them as such. However, in Mama's opinion, the importance of the quilts lies in their...
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Everyday Use
The post contains multiple questions. In accordance with eNotes Homework Help policy, each post should have just one question. This answer primarily addresses the first question, with additional...
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Everyday Use
This story is told by Mama Johnson in a first-person objective point of view: this means that she is a participant in the story's events and that she is narrating them, for the most part, after...
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Everyday Use
The main concern of Walker's "Everyday Use" is the understanding that the three women of the family have about their traditions and culture. For the narrator this understanding involves matriarchal...
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Everyday Use
To write a thesis for the story "Everday Use," you want to think about the main ideas and concepts explored in the story. So let's discuss some of the themes and concepts that the story reveals. In...
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Everyday Use
According to Mama, Dee was almost joyful when their first house burned to the ground. She describes having seen Maggie looking terrified as the tragedy came upon the family, with her dress falling...
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Everyday Use
Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" is about a rural African American family involved in a struggle over interpersonal roles. The narrator is the mother of the family. The two daughters are...
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Everyday Use
The story Everyday Use shows some aspects of Alice Walker’s real life. Traits of the characters and their upbringing can be seen in her own personality. Alice Walker was able to develop the plot...
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Everyday Use
The way the narrator describes their yard in this story is significant not only in her description of the physical place, but also in the way the narrator describes and relates to the house that...
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Everyday Use
The primary theme explored throughout Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" concerns the different ways in which individuals choose to value their heritage and traditional culture. In the...
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Everyday Use
My own interpretation of the story is that Walker disapproves of making icons of the everyday objects that are our heritage. She approves of using everyday objects for the use for which they are...
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Everyday Use
In the short story "EVeryday Use," the quilts symbolize Mama's heritage. The quilts have been passed down from generation to generation. The quilts have been sewn by loving hands of Mama's...
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Everyday Use
At this point in the story, the narrator, Mama, is speaking about her interactions with white men. As an African American woman raised during times of racial turmoil and violence, Mama would...
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Everyday Use
In "Everyday Use," Maggie has two conflicts: one external and the other internal. Maggie's external conflict revolves around her sister Dee getting everything that she wants while Maggie remains...
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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
The text does not actually tell us who caused the fire. We cannot conclude that Dee was the one responsible for the fire. However, the text does tell us that Dee watched the house burn from afar....
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Everyday Use
In Alice Walker's "Everyday Use," the family dynamic is tense between Dee and the rest of the family, Mama and Maggie. Dee has gone away to college and has also gotten in touch with her African...
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Everyday Use
Verbal irony occurs when a character says one thing but means another. Dramatic irony occurs when the reader knows something that a character doesn't know. Irony of circumstance, or situational...
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Everyday Use
When Dee arrives at her mother's humble country home with her boyfriend, Hakim-a-barber, Mrs. Johnson addresses her daughter by her name. Dee responds by correcting her mother and saying that she...
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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
"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker was written in the 1970s when the black people were just beginning to look for their roots in Africa. The book Roots and the mini series by Alex Hailey had...
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Everyday Use
The mood of this story is somewhat tense, as it revolves around a family conflict, between Dee and her mother and sister. Mrs Johnson, the mother and narrator of the story, makes quite clear her...
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Everyday Use
In the story, the phrase “everyday use” originates from Dee, who criticized her sister because in her opinion, the sister did not perceive the true value of the quilts and would instead destroy...
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Everyday Use
At the end of "Everyday Use," Mama realizes that Maggie is deserving of appreciation and attention and that Dee is hardly an authority on family matters. Throughout the story, Mama admits that she...
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Everyday Use
Both girls come from the same background, and they are both beautiful in their own ways...Dee more ostentatious and outgoing, Maggie in a spiritual and loyal way due to her scars and low...
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Everyday Use
For Alice Walker, the motif of quilting is central to the connection of a family's heritage and the past. Therefore, the question of who should own the quilts in "Everyday Use" comes down to the...
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Everyday Use
Dee's having changed her name is symbolic of the conflict between two definitions of the family's heritage in Alice Walker's story. For, as part of the new movement of Black Nationalism, Dee has...
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Everyday Use
Dee revels in her status as a modern, educated, emancipated African American woman. She has had opportunities to go out in the world and be educated, and she is eager for more. In fact she wants to...
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Everyday Use
I think the best way to answer this question is to consider the historical context and identity of each author. Langston Hughes was one of the first poets of the Harlem Renaissance, the artistic...
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Everyday Use
The three female characters in “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker constitute a small black family. The story belongs to the first person narrator, Mrs. Johnson, the mother of two girls: Maggie and...
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Everyday Use
Dee, as expected, is angry. Her mom plans to give her sister a quilt which was made with several family heirlooms such as civil war uniforms, clothes belonging to the family, and other left over...
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Everyday Use
This is a very interesting question. At first consideration, it might seem that both girls were victimized in various ways by different forces, but upon closer examination, I don't think they were...
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Everyday Use
Dee, at least in the story proper, is a static character: she doesn't change. Her goals are to take the Johnson family artifacts (quilt, butter churn) as museum pieces for which to brag about her...
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Everyday Use
“I did something I never had done before: hugged Maggie to me…” Mama, the narrator of Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” sees her daughter Maggie in a different light for the first...
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Everyday Use
Dee left home so that she could venture out and find her true "identity." She felt so helpless growing up in such an impoverished home. She was popular, outgoing and also pushy. She disliked her...
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Everyday Use
In "Everyday Use," Dee asks to have two quilts that were made by relatives. However, Mama explains that she plans to give the quilts to Maggie. Dee becomes upset and claims that Maggie will not...
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Everyday Use
When the narrator, Mama, learns that her daughter, who she named Dee, now wants to be called Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, she does not seem to pass judgment on her daughter's decision. Despite Mama's...
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Everyday Use
In Alice Walker's short story, "Everyday Use," Dee and Maggie are very different people, which becomes evident as they disagree over two old quilts that both young women want. Dee has left her...
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Everyday Use
It means that even though she is disabled mentally, she is aware of the situation enough to know that she finally got something that Dee/Wangero wanted. She has been ignored and invisible her whole...
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Everyday Use
The quilts in the story symbolize Maggie and Dee's family heritage. Made by their mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, each quilt was made from scraps of clothing once worn by the girls'...
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Everyday Use
Empathy is one strong emotion evoked in Walker's story. We feel for the mother, Mrs. Johnson, as she battles her strong willed and patronizing daughter, Dee. We also feel empathy for Maggie, who...
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Everyday Use
Dee, we are told, completed her high-school education away from home. We don't know what further education she may have had, but she has become filled with notions about political and social...
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Everyday Use
Dee is the narrator's daughter in "Everyday Use." She has grown up and moved off to the city to live a new kind of life. She has turned her back on her family heritage and taken on an...
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Everyday Use
For Dee, the churn and its parts are primitive objets d'art. She wants to make a nice centerpiece with the top. For Mama, the churn is more than just an everyday utensil. It is a part of her...
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Everyday Use
Knowing the text in "Everyday Use" allows the reader to see the conflict and message in Walker's short story. When we become intimately familiar with the text, the reader pays close attention to...
