Discussion Topic
Figures of speech in "Everyday Use."
Summary:
In "Everyday Use," Alice Walker employs various figures of speech, including metaphors and similes, to enrich the narrative. For example, Mama's physical strength is compared to a man's, and Dee's name change symbolizes her attempt to reconnect with her heritage. These literary devices enhance the themes of identity, heritage, and the contrasting perspectives of the characters.
What is an example of personification in "Everyday Use"?
As a tool that writers employ as a form of figurative language, personification assigns human emotions, thoughts, actions or feelings to inanimate or nonhuman entities. Though "Everyday Use" uses more metaphors and similes than personification, there are at least three examples.
When Mama has her fantasy about Dee and herself reuniting on a television show like Johnny Carson's, she imagines that she would be articulate, and that she would suddenly possess a "quick and witty tongue." A tongue is an organ incapable of the human quality of wit or keen intelligence.
Mama also recalls Dee reading to herself and Maggie, but instead of it being a pleasurable experience she remembers feeling "trapped and ignorant underneath her voice." A voice does not possess the ability to trap anyone; it is a figure of speech that personifies Dee's voice to express its power over her mother and her sister. It...
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also serves to flesh out Dee's character as a powerful personality for which her mother seems to feel both pride and exasperation.
And lastly, Dee arrives wearing a very colorful and vibrantly patterned dress. Her mother admires it, using personifying language such as "yellows and oranges ... to throw back the light of the sun ... warming from the heat waves it throws out." Since colors cannot literally throw light or heat, the description is figurative, employing the motion of hurling as a human being could do.
The most obvious example of personification in the story is the quilt over which Dee—or "Wangero"— Maggie, and their mother contend. Personification is a literary device in which human qualities are given to objects or beings that are not human. In the story, Dee perceives the quilt as symbolic of Black American culture and representative of her family's heritage. She does not want Maggie to have the quilts, which are made from her grandmother's old clothes and were stitched together by hand, because Maggie will "put them to everyday use." Dee perceives the quilts as sacred and holds them "securely in her arms, stroking them," as though the cloth were her actual grandmother. Mama recalls how she had offered a quilt to Dee when she went away to college, but then Dee told her mother that the quilts were "old-fashioned, out of style." For Dee, the quilts only have significance in the context of her newly found interest in Afro-centrism. Given Dee's greater attachment to style than to her family, which is made evident through her cold treatment of her sister, it is difficult to know how much Dee wants to be connected to the quilt, as a personification of her ancestors, and how much of her interest is simply related to contemporary trends in culture.
Personification is attributing qualities of a human being to something that is not human. In this story, personification is very closely tied to the basic theme of the story which is the contrast between Magge and Dee. One woman is seeking bits and pieces of her heritage after she has adopted a new one. The other is still living the live of a traditional southern black woman. For Dee, life has presented her with a degree of education and wealth. For Maggie, acceptance of her simple lot in life is evident in her lack of confidence.
Personfication occurs in the following line: "Like good looks and money, quickness passes her by." The use of personification is evident in the way that implies an active intent on the part of good looks and money to avoid Maggie. In a way, this seems to imply that Maggie's life is one dictated to her by fate, something she cannot change.
What are some figures of speech in "Everyday Use"?
Figures of speech allow speakers to say things more vividly and forcefully than if they were to simply say something directly. Besides having the freshness to their ideas that using figures of speech affords them, speakers can really say more with figurative language than they can with the mere literal. That is, figures of speech afford speakers the means of adding extra dimensions to their words.
In Alice Walker's "Everyday Use," the mother who acts as narrator embellishes many of her words with such figures of speech that reveal her astute observations on life. Here are some examples to get you started in your search:
- In the introductory paragraph, she describes the yard with a simile (a comparison using like or as):
- Further, there is a description of her dream, which is a figurative way of expressing her hope that her daughter Dee will demonstrate love and appreciation someday for the sacrifices that she has made for her.
- In the tenth paragraph, the mother describes the fire that has disfigured her daughter Maggie, employing sound imagery and metaphor [an unstated comparison]:
Sometimes I can still hear the flames and feel Maggie's arm sticking to me, her hair smoking and her dress falling off her in little black papery flakes.
- In her description of Dee's youth when she read to Maggie and her, the mother states uses a couple more metaphors:
She of makewashed us in a river of make-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn't necessarily need to know. Pressed us to her with the serious way she read, to shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits, we seemed about to understand. (the bold words are metaphoric, except the last simile)
In this paragraph, the mother vividly describes the attitude of young Dee as she reads, as well as connoting how her act of reading was a show of superiority, not love.
In addition to these examples of figurative language, Walker's story contains the vibrant symbol of the quilts, which represent the connection of family and history. And, the theme is itself about symbolism as Maggie has been "burned" by life, her life, as well as her dress falling in "papery flakes." The mother's "man-working hands" symbolize her having to play the roles of both father and mother.
Then, there is, of course, the irony of Dee's wish to appreciate her heritage by taking her grandmother's quilts. But, she looks to the African heritage of her race rather than her true origin of family and the people who raised her, an origin Maggie truly understands; thus, her mother gives the quilts to her.
(Please see the link on style below for more explanation of symbolism)