yesterday afternoon. A yard like this is more comfortable than most people know. It is not just a yard. It is like an extended living room. When the hard clay is swept clean as a floor and the fine sand around the edges lined with tiny, irregular grooves, anyone can come and sit and look up into the elm tree and wait for the breezes that never come inside the house.

Simple and humble, the yard is welcoming and neat like a living room but less glamorous and formal; it is more comfortable and connected with nature. Maggie and Mama are like the yard and the uppity older sister Dee is like a stuffy living room.

Walker uses animal metaphors or zoomorphism to describe Mama and Maggie. Mama’s strength and toughness are evident in repeated references to a hog:

I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog.

Initially, Walker seems to compare Mama to a man. The power and grit of a hog, however, describe Mama more accurately. She is a large, forceful woman whose seeming gracelessness is more than compensated for by her capable strength.

Later Walker introduces Maggie through a zoomorphic extended metaphor:

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? That is the way my Maggie walks. She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground.

Shy and damaged, Maggie is the less flashy younger sister; she is the helpless stray considered unworthy and left behind by “careless” Dee. With low-to-no self-esteem, Maggie withers physically.

Walker sprinkles similes throughout the story to demonstrate, quickly and bitingly, characters’ attitudes. Mama knows that Dee wishes for her mother’s skin to be lighter, “like an uncooked barley pancake.” Mama describes Dee’s burning, hurtful wit as “scalding humor that erupted like bubbles in lye.” Maggie tries to avoid shaking hands with Dee’s boyfriend by offering a hand that is “as limp as a fish, and probably as cold.” Dee (aka Wangero) mocks Maggie’s memory with the comment, “Maggie’s brain is like an elephant’s.” When Mama declares that she will give Maggie their family’s heirloom quilts, the shocked and horrified Dee “gasped like a bee had stung her.”

Walker uses synecdoche to introduce Dee; each physical feature reveals Dee’s forceful personality. When Dee arrives for a visit, Mama first glimpses her little by little:

The first glimpse of leg out of the car tells me it is Dee. Her feet were always neat looking, as if God himself had shaped them with a certain style. …[then] A dress down to the ground, in this hot weather. A dress so loud it hurts my eyes. There are yellows and oranges enough to throw back the light of the sun. I feel my whole face warming from the heat waves it throws out. Earrings gold, too, and hanging down to her shoulders. Bracelets dangling and making noises when she moves her arm up to shake the folds of the dress out of her armpits.

Having escaped from what she considers her backwards home, Dee considers herself more enlightened and sophisticated. Her neat, perfect feet appear manicured and untouched by manual labor. She wears a bright, “loud” dress that announces her presence; she overwhelms others with her words and opinions just as the sun blinds everyone. The gold earrings, jangling bracelets, and large flowing gown are too much for Mama’s eyes and ears. These features all contrast Mama and Maggie’s simpler clothes, plain appearances, and humble attitudes.

Walker employs hyperbole to emphasize Mama’s reaction to Maggie’s acquiescence to Dee’s demand for the quilts:

When I looked at her like that something hit me in the top of my head and ran down to the soles of my feet. Just like when I’m in church and the spirit of God touches me and I get happy and shout. I did something I never done before: hugged Maggie to me, then dragged her on into the room, snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangero’s hands and dumped them into Maggie’s lap. Maggie just sat there on my bed with her mouth open.

“Take one or two of the others,” I said to Dee.

A lightning bolt seems to strike Mama; she becomes infused with a surge of electricity or the power of God and decisively protects Maggie from her older sister’s self-centered greed. Mama may not have protected Maggie from their burning house years earlier, but she shields her from further injustice.

Instances of simile, metaphor, and implied metaphor appear in "Everyday Use."

Figurative language has many effects. One is to make a complex and idea (by nature abstract) spring to life in a more visual manner; another is to render a more concrete image in our heards (sensory description with imaginative resonance).

In the first paragraph, the narrator (the mother) talks about the yard "is not just a yard. It is like an extended living room." An outdoor space is being compared to an indoor. Already an abstract concept is clarified for us: that the narrator feels at home outside, that she lives outside quite comfortably. Later she reinforces this idea with sensory detail, how she is comfortable outside in zero weather due to her fat, can kill a hog easily, and so forth: she is a competent farm woman. How does this idea of outside being "good enough" for the mother and Maggie contrast with Dee's attitude toward indoors/outdoors? To the theme implied by the title, "Everyday Use"? This initial simile taps into the theme of functional, commonplace items being colonized by those who feel they have superior intellect and need to put them in a museum. No one would put this yard in a museum, but that's only because a well-combed yard doesn't have a market value for intellectuals such as Dee.

In paragraph 5, we get another simile: "my skin like an uncooked barley pancake." Why is it important that the mother picture her skin tone in this manner? Later in the story, as issues of race are explored in more depth (plus the fact that the mother works outdoors), we can assume that the mother's skin is definitely darker than an uncooked pancake. We have a strong sensory details here, sight and taste with this simile -- a light tan food item, not ready for eating, decidedly a nonfunctional image (who wants to eat something uncooked?) But to get on a TV show, one ought to be lighter skinned, this woman is saying. She's also saying that with this color, she is "the way Dee would want me to be." So we have a concrete image with resonance: daughter wants mother to be a color of something that is useless, something "uncooked." To lighten one's skin is about as smart as eating something uncooked.

Implied metaphor -- that Dee has a temper and an effect on people that's hot and dangerous as fire -- appears in implied comparisons:

• "(Dee) burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn't necessarily need to know"; and
• "the scalding humor that erupted like bubbles in lye."

Take these images and balance that with the image of Dee watching the house burn. What do we learn about Dee as a person, where she fits in this family and the effect she has on things and people who are best for "everyday use"?

There's lots more to examine; these instances are just a start. If you're not sure how to find resonance in figurative language, start by reading the themes analysis (see below) and then examine the figurative language to see where such themes crop up.

Good luck!

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.

Characterization can be direct or indirect:

Direct or explicit characterization...uses another character, narrator or the protagonist to tell the readers or audience about the subject. 
[http://literarydevices.net/characterization]

With indirect or implicit characterization, a character is revealed through one of the following methods:

1. By the thoughts, words, or actions of the character
2. By what other characters say about the character
3. By the ways in which other characters react to the character

• Direct Characterization

In Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use," one character of the story, the mother, acts as a narrator who directly addresses the reader. With direct characterization, she describes herself as "a large big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands" whose "fat keeps me hot" in the frigid weather of winter. She tells how strong she is. The mother then describes her daughter Dee as lighter-skinned than her other daughter, Maggie, who has a way of sidling up to people. With more description, the mother tells the reader,

[When Maggie reads] she stumbles along good-naturedly but can't see well. She knows she is not bright. Like good looks and money, quickness passed her by.

When Dee, now calling herself Wangero, arrives with her boyfriend, Mama describes how Dee appears in a "dress so loud it hurts my eyes," and she wears gold earrings that hang to her shoulders. The mother also describes how Dee's "short and stocky" boyfriend looks with "hair...all over his head a foot long."

The mother states that Dee has hated her home and has had no interest in her ancestors. As a young girl,

[S]he washed us in a river of make believe [as a child], burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn't necessarily need to know.... Dee wanted nice things.... She was determined to stare down any disaster in her efforts.... At sixteen she had a style of her own, and knew what style was. 

• Indirect Characterization (dialogue, description, and action)

The mother/narrator reports much of what the other characters say and do. For example, when the boyfriend of Dee, Hakim-a-barber, sits down to eat, he informs the mother that 

...he didn't eat collards and pork was unclean....

Dee, now calling herself Wangero, 

...talked a blue streak over the sweet potatoes. Everything delighted her. Even the fact that we still used the benches her daddy made for the table when we couldn't afford to buy chairs.

The mother also reports the actual words of the other characters, such as Dee's reactions to the old belongings:

"I can use the churn top as a centerpiece for the alcove table...and I'll think of something artistic to do with the dasher."

"Mama.... Can I have these old quilts?"

When Mama tells Wangero that she has promised the two quilts to Maggie, she reacts with anger: "Maggie can't appreciate these quilts! ... Maggie would put them on the bed and in five years they'd be in rags. Less than that!"
Now, surprisingly, it seems that Dee is interested in her family's history and her heritage, but from a different perspective.

The mother describes at length how the sisters react to each other as well as how she herself feels. For example, when Dee asks for the quilts that were made by hand by the women of the family, Mama looks at Maggie and "something hit me in the top of my head" as Maggie "looked at her sister with something like fear but she wasn't mad at her." Then, the mother feels overcome, much as she does in church when "the spirit of God touches me and I get happy and shout." She hugs Maggie and pulls her into the bedroom, grabs the quilts, and "dumped them into Maggie's lap." She tells Dee, "Take one or two of the others." An angered Dee departs after saying, "You just don't understand." (Dee's idea of "heritage" is displaying old family items.) 

Character is significant in "Everyday Use" because Alice Walker embodies two different attitudes toward family, heritage, and culture through the distinction between Dee/Wangero and Maggie (spoken for through her mother, the narrator).

The conflict between these characters is foregrounded early on, as we learn that the sisters' lives have gone in two vastly different directions. Dee has returned home from college, and her advanced education and relationship with Asalamalakim have led her to change her philosophy on Black identity. She wants to go by the name Wangero and criticizes her family members for "being named after the people who oppress [them]." While Dee/Wangero wants to disown the part of her heritage associated with slavery, she has come to a greater appreciation of the cultural work of her forebears. This leads her to praise her grandmother's quilts and demand that she be given them so she can display them in her home. Wangero sees her potential use for the quilts as an act of respect and admiration for the craft.

Her sister, Maggie, on the other hand, has learned to quilt, and their mother has promised the quilts to Maggie as a wedding present. Maggie has stayed home with her mother after being maimed in a house fire when she was younger. She is exceedingly reserved and meek, and the women's mother speaks on Maggie's behalf and feels the need to defend and protect her. When Dee hears that Maggie will inherit the quilts, she is mortified, exclaiming,

Maggie can't appreciate these quilts! ... She'd probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use.

The irony of this remark is that the quilts are intended for "everyday use," and Maggie appreciates them in her own, authentic way. Maggie is also the true keeper of the family history because she is the one who has learned the craft of quilting and who continues the tradition.

The characters, due to their disparate personalities and experiences, will never see the quilts the same way, so the characterization of each sister drives the conflict of the story and ultimately suggests that Walker, too, approves of the "everyday use" of the grandmother's beautiful handmade quilts.

In "Everyday Use," Alice Walker seems to want to show the difference between someone who has a real, genuine appreciation for their heritage and someone who has a more performative and consumable version of appreciation.

Maggie Johnson, for instance, knows her family's stories: which family member made which objects and when, as well as what that person's name and nickname were. Dee, or Wangero, on the other hand, does not remember, or evidently care to remember, these kinds of details. Maggie seems to love the home that she shares with her mother, and she has no desire to go far away but will marry a local boy when it's time. Dee could not wait to leave home, and her mother raised money to send her away to school. Dee was so embarrassed, at one point, by her home that she wrote to her mother, saying, "no matter where [they] 'choose' to live, she will manage to come see [them]. But she will never bring her friends."

Now, though, Dee arrives with a friend, demanding the family's artifacts and heirlooms, many of which are still put to "everyday use" by her mother and sister. Dee doesn't care about her heritage so much as she cares about having evidence of it; she plans to do "something artistic" with the dasher she requests and will hang the family quilts on the wall rather than use them. Walker shows readers how much more genuine and real Maggie's appreciation for her heritage is compared to Dee's. For Maggie, heritage is something that is still a part of her everyday life, but for Dee, heritage is something from the past, something from which to gather souvenirs so that she can prove to others just how "authentic" she is.

A good thesis statement will make some kind of arguable claim that can be defended with evidence from the text (i.e. quotations) as well as offer some idea of how that claim will be argued. You might choose to draw some conclusion from the fact that the only dynamic character, one who changes fundamentally in the text, affects the story's meaning. Dee does not change during the course of events presented by the text; when she arrives home, her idea of heritage is that it is something to be preserved and not something to be honored by continuing to live it, and she leaves with this same idea.

When we meet Maggie, she is quiet and reserved, and she finishes the story that way as well. Her mother, however, has learned to see Maggie in a new light, to value her and her care and concern for their family's heritage in contrast to Dee's failure to learn the stories about the artifacts she so covets. Mrs. Johnson's change, from trying to please the demanding and destructive Dee to learning to value the loyal and humble Maggie, seems to show that Maggie's idea of heritage is more correct than Dee's, especially because Mrs. Johnson's realization seems to be a sort of divine revelation: she says that "something hit [her] in the top of [her] head and ran down to the soles of [her] feet. Just like when [she's] in church and the spirit of God touches [her] and [she] get[s] happy and shout[s]."

Thus, you could argue that Mrs. Johnson's dynamic character, and the most significant way in which she changes, provides evidence that Walker champions Maggie's understanding of heritage rather than Dee's.

One effective way to approach a theme is to consider how the choices of the author drive the tone or theme of the overall work.

In "Everyday Use," one of the key characteristics that establishes conflict is the striking differences in characterization between Dee and Maggie. Although sisters, they have grown into quite different women. Their mother realizes the way Dee tosses away certain parts of her heritage in favor of others and the way Maggie seems to live in her sister's shadow.

When she has to decide which daughter will inherit the quilts, she chooses Maggie, the daughter whom Dee fears will put the quilts to everyday use instead of hanging them for display.

A great thesis could examine how this choice impacts the overall theme of the work. It might look something like this:

Mama's choice to save her family's quilts for Maggie shows that appreciating one's heritage means embracing it in everyday life, not merely showcasing the distant past for display.

The paper could then examine Mama's choice in light of the characterization of each of her daughters.

I tend to be partial to how "Wangero" suddenly wants to over-do her heritage and merely focus on the aesthetic and fashionable, rather than on what really matters about it. It reminds me about every person who claims Irish heritage in St. Patrick's day and literally want to be more Irish than a shamrock. However chances are that they do not even know how to locate Ireland on a map. I feel that a good thesis would then be "cultural heritage versus aesthetic heritage: the case of Wangero". This would give you ample room to point out how silly her entire argument is on wanting the quilt in the first place.

Perhaps, you may wish to define "cultural heritage" as it pertains to Walker's story "Everyday Use."  Obviously, Maggie and her mother have conflicting ideas of the meaning of "heritage" with Dee in this narrative.  What, then, is Alice Walker's defintion and how does she illustrate and define this meaning?

Another thesis you might consider is that our cultures can impede us as least as much as they nurture us, a slightly broader take on the suggestion of the second response.  The values of the sister who stays home are important ones, certainly, a cherishing of tradition by continuing to live it, but if everyone were like this, would we ever grow?

Like the above poster suggested, one topic that usually makes for an interesting thesis with any well-critiqued text is to refute popular commentary and show how you believe differently.

Another typical, but not too difficult approach to a thesis statement is to come up with a theme in the story, and write about that theme by analyzing the author's use of literary devices to portray the theme.

It might help for you to start by brainstorming some open ended questions that are broad enough to require an entire essay to answer.  Some examples include:

1. What is the author's purpose/message in "Everyday Use" and how does she portray this message?
2. Who is the [strongest, weakest, most content, least content, etc.] character and why?
3. What is one theme presented in "Everyday Use" that is still applicable to today?  How?

One possibility might be to try to go against the grain and argue that Dee is not as unattractive a character as we usually assume.  You might try something like this:

In her short story "Everyday Use," Alice Walker seems to present Dee as a wholly unappealing character.  In some ways, however, Dee is not as unappealing as she seems -- partly because she resembles, in some respects, Walker herself.

I like pohnpei397's reply. The daughter who returns home in Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use," and the man she brings with her, indeed respresent a newly forged cultural identity for African Americans that is very much at odd with the conventional identities, as reflected in both the mother and the stay-at-home daughter.

A second (and related) possible thesis for this story focuses on the idea of "reader response": every reader will read the story in a slightly different way because of that reader's individual background, values, political commitments, and so on. The story does prompt us, of course, to identify more closely with some of the characters than with the others; for example, the mother is the narrator in the story, which makes most readers initially identify more closely with her than with any of the other characters. Some readers will follow these prompts while other readers -- who are sometimes called "resistant readers" -- will not.

"Everyday Use," then, can be seen as a story that will probably be read very differently by different readers. While I teach in Mississippi, for example, I am not from that state, and I have great respect for the artists and thinkers of the Black Arts Era, including Alice Walker, who sought to make breaks with the past and to challenge, among other things, white standards of beauty and ideas of history. I also believe in the value of leaving home for extended periods, growing to be a highly independent person, and returning home a changed person who is then able to sift through the past and choose what to keep and what not to keep. Thus, while my Southern, very family-centered, and very place-bound students almost invariably identify with the position of Maggie and her mother (and often share, for example, in the mother's mockery of the Africa- and Islam-inspired names that the two visitors have adopted), I find the two visitors much more interesting and inspiring. I would even go so far as to say that the author Alice Walker is much more like Dee than she is like Maggie.

In the end, for me, the point is not that one reader is right and the other is wrong. Rather, the point is that we, as different readers, can react differently to the same prompts in the story and end up with very different readings of the same text. The particular readings that we end up with, in fact, often say as much about who we are as readers as they say about the text that we have been reading.

The narrator doesn't directly say anything bad about the other two characters, Dee and Maggie, because they are her daughters and she undoubtedly feels a certain loyalty to them. However, the narrator does convey disappointment with how they've turned out. There is one moment at the beginning of the story when she imagines herself on TV with Dee, and Johnny Carson is telling her what a fine, intelligent girl she has raised. However, one gets the feeling that her dream represents Dee fulfilling her own desire to become an acceptable part of mainstream society. As an older black woman, the narrator could never and would never want to become that kind of person.

As she states proudly at the beginning:

I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall.

In this respect, neither of her daughters are anything like her. Dee is slim, beautiful, and intelligent, and Maggie is shy, timid, and physically deformed. All three of them have virtually nothing in common, and you can feel the hurt it causes the mother.

At one point she states:

Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe. She 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 her

In this respect, she only tolerates Dee because she's her daughter. She says that when their house burned down, Dee looked so happy about it that she wanted to ask her, "Why don't you do a dance around the ashes." Nothing seems good enough for her, and that must be difficult for someone who grew up without an education.

Though in comparison she feels very protective towards Maggie, it is combined with a feeling of shame. Every time she appears in the story, the narrator uses language that always conveys Maggie as timid and embarrassed.

For example

Maggie hung back in the kitchen over the dishpan.

and

Maggie by now was standing in the door. I could almost hear the sound her feet made as they scraped over each other.

At the same time, it is Maggie that she feels she can relate to more. Like her, Maggie does not strive for anything more than what she already has. She shows her respect for this mentality at the end of the story by giving the quilts to Maggie instead of Dee.

The basic conflict in this story is Maggie's knowledge of every day things and her intention to use them for their purposes, and her sister (Dee), who considers herself more worldly and educated and who thinks these every day things should be hung up and admired as antiques.

Maggie is not stupid, but she is scarred from a housefire, and her confidence is lacking.  She is a humble, loving, and simple person who adores her mother and just wants to live.  She knows how to sew, quilt, and make butter like her mother and grandmother.

Her sister is lovely, has gone off to school, treats both Maggie and her mother as beneath her...almost embarrassing because of their simple and backward ways.  She is arrogant, not used to being told "no," and suddenly aware of her African roots as she indicates in her dress and her boyfriend who has adopted an African name than no one can pronounce.

Maggie is quiet and is used to giving in to her sister.  When her sister insists on the quilts that her mother has already promised to give Maggie as a wedding gift, Maggie slams the kitchen door to show her anger.  She does finally come back into the house resigned to give her sister her wedding quilts.  However, Mother finally stands up to Dee and tells her she can not take Maggie's quilts.

It is clear that the author admires Maggie and Momma and what they stand for more than Dee and her haughty ways.

In addressing themes of heritage and culture, a conclusion could be made by showing how certain characters interpret those themes. Maggie and Mrs. Johnson appreciate their culture and heritage in a personal, intimate, and practical way. They appreciate the quilts because the family made them and because they were/are practical and useful. (Thus, Mrs. Johnson and Maggie appreciate their cultural/familial objects for the memory and their usefulness, for the personal/sentimental value and for the everyday use.) 

Dee/Wangero does note that she wants the quilts because they come from things Grandma stitched herself. So, she does have some sense of personal remembrance attributed to the quilts. However, she wants them to display in her home, to showcase her African heritage. She thinks their value is in this symbolic cultural significance whereas she thinks Maggie will just destroy them by using them every day. 

"But they're priceless!" she was saying now, furiously; for she has a temper. "Maggie would put them on the bed and in five years they'd be in rags. Less than that!" 

It is not a bad thing that Dee/Wangero wants to get in touch with her African heritage. But in doing so, she is ignoring her more immediate family heritage. She also is a bit superficial in thinking that cultural heirlooms (heritage of Africa and/or her personal family history) are to be used for show/display rather than for the purpose they were intended: everyday use. For Dee, cultural is symbolic; again not necessarily a bad thing. But for Maggie and Mrs. Johnson, culture is symbolic while also being real lived experience. 

Maggie is the quiet, introverted younger sister to Dee. The narrator, who is the mother, and Maggie are expecting a visit form Dee, the older sister. Maggie has burn scars on her arms and legs. She survived a house fire ten or twelve years back.

Maggie is slow in her walk; she sort of shuffles of her feet. She has been this way since she was burned in the house fire.

Dee is the older sister who is beginning to appreciate her African heritage. She used to take so much for granted.

Dee is sophisticated as she comes back home for a visit. Her clothing is bright and her jewelry dangles. She has large sunshades which cover her face. She has beautiful feet. Dee has "nicer hair and fuller figure" than Maggie, according to the narrator.

Dee has changed her name to a name of her African background. She desires the homemade quilts that the narrator has preserved for Maggie. She sees the beauty in them that she once took for granted. Dee is with a man who also has an African name.

The narrator used to think Dee hated Maggie, but that was before they raised money to send her to school in Augusta. Dee is the educated one who can read well.

The narrator is a tougher than any man around. She can kill a hog and milk a cow better than any man she knows. She is "a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands." She admits that she is fat but declares it keeps her warm in cold weather. She can eat "pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog." She is a Southern country girl no doubt and proud to be so.

The narrator imagines herself as 100 pounds lighter if she were to appear on television show like Johnny Carson. She imagines her skin is "like an uncooked barley pancake..." with "hair that glistens..." She adds that this is the way Dee would want her to appear.

This statement causes the reader to think the Dee is not proud of her mother the way she really looks.

Dee seems high-minded and affluent when in reality she is her mother's daughter, a Southern country girl, raised on a farm.

These three women have similarities in that they are all Southern country girls. Although Maggie is withdrawn, it is due to being burned in the house fire.

Dee, on the other hand, is now sophisticated...she appears interested in her African heritage. She visits her mother for one purpose--to gather heirlooms for her home's decoration.

When the narrator will not give Dee the quilts she has promised Maggie, Dee is frustrated, exclaiming that Maggie will use them for everyday use, thus explaining the story's title.

Maggie is the winner for the first time in her life, and after her sister leaves, she smiles "a real smile, not scared."

An apparent theme in "Everyday Use" can be seen in the title of the short story. Mama sees value and beauty in the usefulness and practicality of people and objects. For example, Mama describes her own physical appearance and qualities as being useful to her life. She has strong bones and "man" hands that allow her to survive and perform her duties. She wears clothing not for show but for practical purposes as seen in her flannel nightgown that keeps her warm.

Dee, in contrast, sees beauty and value in more superficial qualities. Mama knows that Dee would rather see her "a hundred pounds lighter" and with lighter skin. When Dee arrives at Mama's house, Mama notices that Dee wears a long, brightly colored dress and is adorned in earrings and bracelets in spite of the hot weather.

Dee wishes to take two of Mama's quilts. The quilts contain scraps of material taken from clothing worn by relatives and are hand-stitched around the edges. Mama explains that she plans to give the quilts to Maggie. Dee becomes upset because she feels Maggie will not appreciate the quilts and will put them to "everyday use." While that seems shameful to Dee, Mama sees "everyday use" as beautiful. Mama stands by her decision to give the quilts to Maggie because Maggie will use the quilts as they are intended to be used. The theme of the usefulness of objects and people becomes evident in the end of the story as well when Mama states that "Maggie knows how to quilt." Mama sees beauty in Maggie where Dee does not.

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 their butter churn, Dee wants to take the dasher and the churn top as souvenirs of her heritage.  She doesn't intend to use them, as she says, "'I can use the churn top as a centerpiece for the alcove table, [...] and I’ll think of something artistic to do with the dasher.'"  Dee happily takes the items that her family uses to prepare their food on a daily basis because they have been handmade by other family members, and she seems to want to have something to show off.  It's the same for the quilts.  Dee says that she wants to hang them on the wall when they've been promised to Maggie, and she says that Maggie would be "backward enough" to use them every day, as if that were the wrong thing to do with them.  Mama realizes how wrong, how selfish, Dee is, and it seems that we, the readers, are meant to as well.  Dee's idea of heritage is wrong, but mama and Maggie have it right.

This topic involves one of my favorite passages in the short story.  One contrast is between the narrator's fantasy of herself--the mother that Dee would respect and love; the other as the narrator sees herself.  The first image involves the mother on the Johnny Carson show being introduced to an adoring audience and embraced by an equally adoring Dee: "a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake.  My hair glistens in the hot bright lights." The other image is that of the narrator in real life:

large, big boned woman with rough, man-working hands . . .I can kill a hog as mercilessly as a man.  My fat keeps me hot in zero weather . . .I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog.  One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall.

There's much to admire in a woman like that!

In addition to the contrasting details regarding character descriptions of Maggie and Dee, the ridiculousness of the name that Dee has chosen to be called and her attire now in contrast to what she used to prefer helps the reader to assess false sense of value that Dee now possesses.

For instance, the mother narrates that Dee used to want nice things such as a yellow organdy dress, black pumps to go with a green suit she had made.  Now, as Wasuzo Teano she wears a long dress that is so loud that it hurts her mother's eyes.  She also wears huge hoop earrings and "Bracelets dangling and making noises when she moves her arm up to shake the folds of the dress out of her armpits."

You would do well to develop your analysis of how the characters of Maggie and Dee are described. They act as foils in the short story, which means Walker deliberately places them together to heighten the contrast between them. Consider how Mama describes both of her daughters - Maggie is described as a lame animal whereas Dee is described as incredibly confident. There are certainly lots of references at the beginning of the story that you can use to answer this question. Once you have identified these references you can expand on them by seeing how their actions in the later part of the story reflect their character as has already been established.

Concrete details are also general descriptive details that help create a strong sense of setting, place, and time -- colors, temperatures, descriptions of rooms, the quilt's looks, etc. When we ask students to use "concrete" detail, we're asking them to step back from abstract narration ("telling") and to set the scene ("show") for the reader.

Concrete details are those that are stated openly which we don't have to read between the lines to get.  We know Maggie is quiet because both Dee and Momma say so.  We know she is scarred from the fire.  We know Dee is beautiful--both Maggie and Momma make statements to the effect.  We know Dee is confident--her bright clothing, her posture.  The description of her slender and well-formed leg coming out of the car helps develop this.

Keep looking for directly stated comments and observations that help you "picture" the character and get to know him/her better.

In any writing, there might be some specific aspects that your instructor has required as included in your paper.  This would be the first step in determining the specific points that should be highlighted. You will need to figure out what has to be included.  Perhaps, you will need to focus on the story's themes or to compare it with another work of literature.  You might have to delve into the characterizations offered.  Examining the potential requirements of any writing assignment and making sure that your paper addresses these points are critical first steps in determining what points should be highlighted.

Within this, there are some specific aspects  that probably will be addressed in any analysis of Walker's story.  I think that one particular point would be to analyze the role of heritage or legacy in the story.  In the two sisters, Walker suggests that understanding one's heritage is vitally important to one's identity.  Both Dee and Maggie recognize the value of their heritage.  Their divergence lies in the rationale for such appreciation.  Dee sees her past, evident in the desire for the quilts, as an example of how her cultural heritage can be appreciated in the external sense.  Dee values her cultural heritage from a sensory based perspective.  For example, she likes the quilts because she would "hang them" and that they were stitched by hand, appreciating them for their aesthetic and external value.  This is in stark contrast to Maggie's appreciation for the quilts:  "She can have them, Mama,' she said like someone used to never winning anything, or having anything reserved for her.  'I can 'member Grandma Dee without the quilts."  This exchange highlights one of the most specific points that Walker makes about the relationship one has towards their past.  There is a difference between recognizing one's past for external value and for its internal appreciation.  Dee's desire for "nice things" such as her graduation dress and her embrace of Afrocentric identity as a means for external appreciation is different than Maggie's internal embrace of her past, something she can "remember" in her own mind.  Walker's treatment of how one's past or sense of identity is understood is a critical point in the story.  It would also represent a point that would almost have to be woven into any analysis of it.

I think that another critical point to be made emerges from the story's analysis of one's past.  The mother acts embraces the narrative role both in her story and in her life.  She ruminates and as she does so her in literary capacity, it becomes clear that this reflective notion is evident in her own life, as well.  For the mother, the paradigm between Dee and Maggie is one between the individual who "has it all" and the one who lacks it.  Given how Dee has always been the object of others' affection because of the extreme importance she gives to looks and image, qualities and levels upon which Maggie cannot compete, the dichotomy between both is clear.  It is for this reason that Dee assumes, quite naturally, that she will receive the quilts, akin to how she has received everything that she has wanted in her life.  Yet, when the mother advocates for Maggie, it is a critical moment.  The instant when Dee says that she wants the quilts, the mother notes Maggie's reaction:  "I heard something fall in the kitchen [where Maggie was] and a minute later, the kitchen door slammed."  When the mother indicates that Maggie is going to receive the quilts, Dee is aghast, a reaction conveyed with the mother's noting that she has been "stung" by a bee.  The mother no longer can remain detached from the paradigm in which one sister is socially deemed as a success and the other one looks "like someone used to never winning anything, or having anything reserved for her."  The mother must take action, making right that which is wrong.  She advocates for the sister who does not have anyone advocating for her.  The mother's need to take action to maintain an order of righteousness and ethical conduct is a meaningful point in the story.  The mother sees what is and acts in the name of what should be, a transformative quality that shows that our future can be something that we can control, even if our past lies beyond it.  This is an important point in the story and something that might find its way in an analysis of the story's features.

Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” presents a conflict between generations. Sometimes, changes are made for the wrong reasons. In the 1970s, the black youth were trying to find their way in a changing but still prejudicial world.  Many African Americans used violence to express their dissatisfaction with status quo. Others latched on to their African heritage pursuing their dreams in a non-violent way.

Mama understands the past and the importance of a family legacy.  Her heritage includes her memories of her mother and grandmother making the quilts together by hand.  One quilt even has material that dates back to the Civil War.  Mama does not have a lot of valuable items, but the quilts and the churn and things that came from her ancestors are invaluable to her. 

Dee has been the apple of her mother’s eye.  Everything that she wanted Mama tried to provide for her.  Never happy in her home, Dee was glad to take the money from Mama’s church and go off to college.

Now, Dee is coming for a visit. Both Mama and her other daughter Maggie are waiting on the front lawn.  When Dee steps out of the car, Dee has become Wangero, a new age Muslim African.

Dee’s purpose in the visit is to take things from home to decorate and show off her black heritage.  She does not understand family legacy.  It is black heritage that she wants to show.

When Mama refuses to give Dee the quilts because she has already promised them to Maggie, Dee is incensed.  For the first time, Mama said “no.” 

Maggie can't appreciate these quilts!" she said. "She'd probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use."

"I reckon she would," I said. "God knows I been saving 'em for long enough with nobody using 'em. I hope she will!"

"But they're priceless!" she was saying now, furiously; for she has a temper. "Maggie would put them on the bed and in five years they'd be in rags."

The quilts represent what Dee does not understand.  That family heritage is more important than just being black.  Her desire to hang the quilts, in a museum-like exhibit, suggests that she feels no reverence for them but that to her they are essentially foreign, impersonal objects.

At the end of the story, Dee contends that Mama and Maggie do not understand what their heritage means.  Clearly, this is an ironic statement; it is Dee herself that does not understand. The best example of her lack of understanding is her name.  The quilts that she so desperately wants were made by her namesake Dee, her grandmother.  To shake off her past, she dropped her name changing it to a meaningless African name.

Something that is new and different does not make it better than the past and its traditions.

Characterization is an especially important feature of Alice Walker’s short story titled “Everyday Use.” After all, the story does not have an especially dramatic plot, nor is its setting particularly remarkable. By the same token, the language of the story does not call any great attention to itself (through, for example, vivid metaphors, striking similes, or unforgettable imagery). The dialogue, for the most part, is not particularly memorable. Instead, the story is, largely, a story about three distinct characters, and our interest in the work derives mainly from our interest in these characters and their interactions.

Particular examples of Walker’s emphasis on characterization include the following:

• The very first words of the very opening sentence already introduce the story’s focus on the three main characters: “Iwill wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean” (emphasis added). Relations among these characters will be crucial to the story, and so Walker mentions all three of them immediately.
• The opening words of the opening sentence of the second paragraph also emphasize relations between characters; “Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes.” Now we know the exact relationship between Maggie and the unnamed “her” mentioned in the very first sentence (they are sisters), and we also know something about the nature of their relations: Maggie is nervous around her sibling. Once again, then, Walker highlights the importance of characters, and now she begins to characterize, in particular ways, the main figures of the text. This focus of characters and characterization continues when the narrator comments that Maggie

will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eying her sister with a mixture of envy and awe. She 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 her.

These comments by the narrator help remind us that the narrator is a character, too.  Everything that the narrator says about the other characters will necessarily and inevitably characterize her as well.  Thus, when we read the sentences just quoted, we immediately wonder about the narrator’s attitudes toward her two daughters. Does she sympathize with one more than the other? Does she accept Maggie’s assessment of the unnamed “her,” or does she just report it?  Similarly, the quoted sentences raise additional questions about Maggie and her sister. Is Maggie correct in her assessment of her sister, or is Maggie overly sensitive and insecure? With which of the two sisters (if either) will we, as readers, finally sympathize more?

• A particularly interesting moment in the story occurs when the mother/narrator turns directly to the readers of the story and addresses us as “You”: “You've no doubt seen those TV shows . . . .” This habit of directly addressing readers – as if readers themselves were also characters in the story – continues intermittently throughout the work. This technique draws us closer to the mother and helps prepare us, ultimately, to share the mother’s perspective on her two daughters. The mother/narrator speaks to us as if she knows us, thus enhancing our sense that we know her.

In all these ways, then, Walker implies and/or demonstrates the importance of characterization as a crucial feature of “Everyday Use.”

Through the use of a quilt, symbolic of the connecting pieces of one's roots and one's past, Alice Walker writes a story that provides the reader with the conflicting ideas about identity and ancestry that a family has.

In "Everyday Use," while the modern daughter has previously wanted nothing to do with the homemade furniture and the quilt as she has risen above her environment, she now sees the quilt as quaint, something to take back to the city and hang as "folk art"; the other sister has been promised this blanket that contains the history of the family in squares from Civil War uniforms, old shirts, etc.  And, when the scarred, uneducated sister Maggie tells her sister Dee that she may have the quilt, the mother realizes who truly deserves this coverlet.  It is Maggie who will truly appreciate the stitches made, the cloth from her father's clothes, scraps from old dresses.  So, the mother awards the family quilt to Maggie, who will use the quilt, not merely display it.  Maggie will continue the life of the quilt.  After Dee departs, the melancholic Maggie smiles a "real smile," a gesture symbolic of the authenticity of her feelings and use of the quilt.

The narrator of Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" is the African American mother of two daughters, Dee and Maggie. Dee has left the family home, and Maggie, who had been badly burned when their former home burned, is still at home with her mother. There has been long standing tension in the family because Dee, in the mother's view, has always been rejecting of her family and upbringing. Her mother and her church had raised money to send Dee away to school. It is established that Dee thinks of herself as better than her family and community and has aspirations that reject their traditions and values.

As the story opens, Maggie and her mother are waiting for Dee to arrive for a visit. When she arrives, Dee makes a point of photographing her mother, sister, the house, and a cow before informing her mother that she is not longer Dee; she is "Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo!" Dee's rationale for changing her name is that her given name originates from her "oppressors" while her chosen name reflects her true heritage and identity. She has arrived with a male Muslim companion who may or may not be her husband. Their mother is hospitable and goes along with Dee's new name and identity without comment, while Dee rather gluttonously and unashamedly helps herself to the traditional food her mother has prepared.

After they share a meal, Dee begins to help herself to practical items that had been made by hand by family members, notably the hand-carved top and dasher of a butter churn. She announces her intention to use them as decorative items at her home and then asks her mother for two heirloom quilts that have been promised to Maggie when she marries. Maggie says that she does not object, but their mother will not allow it. Dee becomes angry and argues that Maggie will put the quilts to "everyday use" while she would hang them on the wall. As she leaves empty-handed, she makes a dismissive statement about her mother and sister not understanding their heritage.

The irony that Walker intends here is that it is actually Dee/Wangero who does not understand truly her heritage. She treats her mother and sister and the family heirlooms as artifacts of cultural anthropology, as if they are primitives to be studied instead of recognizing and taking pride in them as pragmatic survivors with their own American story to tell. Dee's radicalism is as foreign to them as they are to her, but the difference is that Dee comes off as inauthentic, rapacious and cruel while her mother and sister are content to be themselves. The story is often read as a challenge to the Black Power movement that Walker may have felt that some joined rather thoughtlessly.