Another feeling that Alice walker evoked in reading the story is sentimentality. It is felt by visualizing the items being discussed in the story as part of the past. The quilts, the bench, and the churn were all things made with time, love, devotion and sometimes hardship. Appreciation is another feeling the story conveyed to me. It made me have a greater appreciation for things from my past. I have alot of embroidered pictures, tablecloths and napkins that my grandmother made and I haven't used them because I've been afraid I would ruin them, but after reading this story I have begun to use them and reminesce about my own past and moments that I had with my Grandmother. The power of words is amazing! They can make your life take on a whole new meaning.
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 though burned on the outside is beautiful within.
We also feel a sense of outrage at Dee for her devaluing the role of her family heirloom, wanting to put the beloved family quilt in a museum. Again, her patronizing ways are what is evident as she chastised Dee: "Maggie wouldn't appreciate these quilts," she said. "She'd probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use."
And she would. For in the quilts, Maggie has a connection to her family that Dee does not, or will not, share. Walker makes the reader feel a real connection to the past as she describes the "scraps of dresses Grandma Dee jad worn fifty and more years ago" and the small shard "that was from Great Grandpa Ezra's uniform that he wore in the Civil War."
Walker's Mrs. Johnson and Dee reject the false African identity that Dee (who has renamed heself Wangero) in favor of the flawed, but real, past of black Americans. It is an opinion the author clearly wants to communicate.
In her short story "Everyday Use," how does Alice Walker draw on her own life experiences?
Alice Walker draws on her own life experiences in "Everyday Use"by pulling experiences from her childhood as a daughter of a sharecropper in 1940s Georgia. Like Maggie and Dee's mother, Alice's mother was a practical, loving, and hardworking woman. Also like Maggie and Dee's mother, Alice's mother was an encouraging and intelligent woman who was incredibly loyal to her children. Like Maggie, Alice, in her childhood, understood and respected the value of items for their practical uses. Maggie and her mother appreciate cultural connection and rootedness, which Alice Walker certainly displays throughout her writings in many novels. However, she also can be compared to Dee, as Alice wrote poetry all throughout her childhood. In this sense, she is similar to Dee who can be described as more expressive and creative.
In her short story "Everyday Use," how does Alice Walker draw on her own life experiences?
Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use” involves many parallels with Walker’s own life, including the following:
- Walker was born and grew up in the countryside in Georgia;...
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- “Everyday Use” is set in the rural south.
- Walker’s own official biography declares that Walker was “particularly close to her mother,” a mother who displayed qualities of “fearlessness” (see link below). The mother in “Everyday Use” displays fearlessness near the end of the story and is especially close to her daughter Maggie.
- When Walker was a young girl, she was accidentally shot in her right eye by a BB gun and lost her vision from the disfigurement in that eye. The accident also damaged Walker’s psyche, making her feel sad and alienated. Similarly, in the story, Maggie suffers a scarring burn in a fire. She is described as feeling
homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eying her [attractive] sister with a mixture of envy and awe . . . .
- Walker describes herself as having had an ambivalent relationship with her brothers, in much the same way that Maggie has an ambivalent relationship with her sister Dee.
- Walker’s mother was intelligent enough to help organize a local school, and the mother in “Everyday Use” also reveals solid intelligence, even though she is not highly educated in any formal sense.
- Walker attended college and became well-educated. During her time away from home, she was exposed to broader cultural experiences than she had enjoyed in the rural south. The same is true of Dee in “Everyday Use.”
- Walker’s first marriage was to a man (a white Jewish person) whose background was significantly different from her own. Likewise, when Dee visits her childhood home, she is accompanied by a man whom Dee’s mother comically describes as follows:
The short stocky fellow with the hair to his navel is all grinning and he follows up with "Asalamalakim, my mother and sister!"
- In general, Walker resembles both Maggie and Dee. She resembles Maggie because of her strong connection to her “roots” in the black rural south, and she resembles Dee because she has lived much of her life in places other than the south and in financially comfortable and even “elite” environments. Walker’s clear sympathy for Maggie, as well as her clear disdain for Dee, may imply that she wants to maintain her close affiliation with her nurturing cultural roots.