What imagery is used in "Everyday Use"?

Imagery is description that uses any of the five senses. In this story, Mama, the narrator, uses much visual imagery to set the scene and emphasize the contrast between her life and the life of Dee, her eldest daughter.

By using imagery to describe, for example, her modest home, Mama is able to communicate that she and Maggie are poor, rural people:

It is three rooms, just like the one that burned, except the roof is tin; they don't make shingle roofs any more. There are no real windows, just some holes cut in the sides, like the portholes in a ship, but not round and not square, with rawhide holding the shutters up on the outside. This house is in a pasture, too, like the other one.

By using imagery, Mama doesn't need to tell readers she is poor: she shows them. Mama's imagery also demonstrates that Maggie has had a disadvantaged life and reveals too that Maggie was caught and scarred in the fire that burned down the old house:

Sometimes I can still hear the flames and feel Maggie's arms sticking to me, her hair smoking and her dress falling off her in little black papery flakes. Her eyes seemed stretched open, blazed open by the flames reflected in them.

This imagery, though primarily visual, also mentions the sound of the flames and the feel of Maggie's arms, helping to convey the fullness of what happened to Maggie.

Walker also has Mama use similes to convey images. Similes are comparisons that use the words like or as. For example, Mama says the pale color she dreams her skin to be in a fantasy is "like an uncooked barley pancake." This visual image of her preferred skin tone helps characterize her by showing the everyday context of her life. She also uses a simile to describe Dee's boyfriend's hair:

Hair is all over his head a foot long and hanging from his chin like a kinky mule tail.

This not only gives readers a visual, but also characterizes Mama as a person who lives a simple, practical life.

Finally, Mama uses two contrasting images to highlight the difference between her life and Dee's. Dee puts on "sunglasses" as drives off while Mama and Maggie sit in the yard with a "dip of snuff."

What does the title "Everyday Use" signify?

The title of Alice Walker's short story, "Everyday Use," is pulled from the text and pertains to functional handiwork as opposed to static artifacts. In her story, Alice Walker writes about the "creative legacy of ordinary black women" which is a valuable part of real African American heritage.

The central conflict of this story revolves around the mother's refusal to give her daughter Dee (now calling herself Wangero) two quilts that the women of the family pieced together from scraps of family members' clothing. These quilts, which three generations of women of the family have fashioned from scraps of old clothes, are thus composed of memories stitched together lovingly. There is a faded blue piece of a Civil War uniform worn by Great Grandpa Ezra, pieces of Grandpa Jarrell's old paisley shirts, and other pieces of old dresses worn by Grandma Dee. Whereas Mama and Maggie perceive these quilts as objects that have both function and sentimental beauty, Wangero perceives them only as static objects meant for a framed display of African American artifacts.

Mama believes that the family's heritage should be allowed "everyday use" and be part of daily life, not viewed as an artifact. Her daughter Maggie agrees but Dee does not. Having rejected her mother's offer of the quilts before she left for college, calling them "old-fashioned" and "out of style," Wangero (the new persona of Dee) now perceives them as priceless objects that should be framed and put on display as part of African American heritage.

Feeling "something hit [her] in the top of [her] head," the mother reacts to this hypocrisy and does something she has not done before. She hugs Maggie and pulls her into the room where Wangero stands with the quilts in her arms. Then, the mother grabs the quilts away from "Miss Wangero" and drops them into Maggie's lap. "Take two or three of the others," she says to Dee. Angered, Dee goes outside to where her boyfriend waits by their car.

"You just don't understand," she said, as Maggie and I [the mother] came out to the car.
"What don't I understand?" I wanted to know.
"Your heritage," she said.

After Dee/Wangero and her friend Hakim-a-barber depart, the mother and Maggie sit outside "just enjoying" the moment. Contrary to what Wangero believes, Mama and Maggie do, indeed, understand heritage because they know that the creative legacy of their family should not be framed or put on a shelf. Instead, such items should be handled with love and sentiment and be put to "everyday use."

What does the title "Everyday Use" signify?

The title refers to the quilts but more metaphorically, to the basic conflict in the story.

Literally, the phrase "everyday use" refers to the way in which the mother wants the quilts to be used.  She sees the quilts as useful objects, rather than as heirlooms to be hung up and looked at.

The title also refers to the general conflict that is going on in the story.  It refers to the conflict between the old-fashioned "everyday" type of people like the mother and people like Wangero who has all these new ideas.  The everyday people are down to earth and practical, the others are more interested in ideas and philosophical statements.

What is the main idea of "Everyday Use" and its reflecting symbols?

As an extension of the main idea that heritage exists in everyday experiences and everyday objects, I would also like to stress Walker's usage of the adverb "everyday" to indicate that heritage is timeless and with us all the time. It is our choice to appreciate it or to neglect it in favor of being popular. Dee's sudden embrace of her heritage is the result of the trend of Afro-centricity that became popular among many black people in the 1960s and 1970s.

Like the previous educator mentioned, the quilt is merely another object—like her long, loose yellow and orange dress and her bracelets—that she uses to exhibit how culturally conscious she is. Her mother knows that this particular expression of Dee's style probably will not last. Her mother recalls how she had tried to give Dee the quilts "when she went away to college," but Dee had told her "they were old-fashioned, out of style."

Furthermore, Dee is an inconstant presence in her mother's life—a different person nearly every time they see each other. On the other hand, Maggie is with her every day, a constant presence, who helps her maintain the farm and whose life will take a path her mother understands after Maggie marries John Thomas.

What is the main idea of "Everyday Use" and its reflecting symbols?

The main idea of "Everyday Use" is that culture is best celebrated and appreciated by living it rather than by holding it at a distance. Dee, one of the narrator's daughters, has long been embarrassed by her African American mother's country ways. After the narrator sends Dee to school, she thinks:

"She [Dee] used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks' habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. She washed us in a river of make believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn't necessarily need to know."

Dee, an educated person, is embarrassed by what she considers to be the rough ways of her mother, who is a strong woman who used to milk cows, and her sister, Maggie, a humble girl who was badly burned in a fire. Dee is everything her mother and Maggie are not—educated, worldly, attractive, and ironic about her culture. She uses her education to put her mother and sister at a distance.

When Dee returns to visit her mother, Dee is now interested in African culture and has named herself Wangero. Dee begs her mother for the quilts her grandmother made. The quilts are symbolic of Dee's culture and illustrate the way in which Dee has long rejected her background, as she refused to take them to college with her. Now, she wants them as objects to hang on her wall and to regard with an aesthetic rather than emotional appreciation. (The butter churn that was whittled by her uncle and that Dee asks for is also symbolic of Dee's culture, and her plan to use it as a table centerpiece illustrates her approach to that culture.) When her mother tells Dee that she can't have the quilts, as they are intended for Maggie when she marries, Dee says, "Maggie can't appreciate these quilts! . . . She'd probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use." It is in fact through "everyday use," and through living a culture and using its traditions every day, that one truly loves and appreciates that culture. Dee's desire to hang the quilts on her wall shows that she doesn't really appreciate her own culture but thinks of it only as an intellectual idea, or perhaps something to show off to her cosmopolitan friends.

What is the main idea of "Everyday Use" and its reflecting symbols?

The main idea is that you honor your heritage not through hanging representations of it on the wall, but through living with it, and through giving it "Everyday Use," as the title indicates.
The seats in the home represent this, as does the butter churn, but the biggest symbol is the quilt, which Wanjiro wants to hang on the wall but which her mother gives to Maggie to use.

What is the symbolism in Walker's "Everyday Use"?

"Everyday Use" is so replete with symbolism it seems difficult to cover all of it.  I would like to add two details that are important but have not yet been mentioned, and both pertain to Dee.

First, her clothing when she arrives. The narrator says "It's 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." Through this description, we see Dee associated with fire, the same thing that burnt and scarred her sister, Maggie.

Second, when Dee leaves, "She put on some sunglasses that hid everything above the tip of her nose and her chin." The dark glasses, in other words, hide her identity as well as darken her vision of the world, preventing her from seeing the truth of all she has experienced that day in regard to family and heritage. Immediately before she puts them on, in fact, she tells Maggie:  "You ought to try to make of yourself, too, Maggie.  It's really a new day fro us.  But from the way you and Mama still live you'd never know it."  With her dark glasses on, unfortunately, Dee will never see that "new day" that her sister and Mother understand and live everyday of their lives.

What is the symbolism in Walker's "Everyday Use"?

• The quilt is a symbol of the family heritage that can only be appreciated by certain people. It symbolizes a long line of relatives. As you pick up a quilt and look at it, it has several pieces of cloth that are sowed together. The Grandmother made the quilt by hand, which makes it very special.

• Hakim-a barber is important to the story as a symbol of the new life that Dee has chosen.  He may or may not be her husband, which hints at both his and Dee’s transitional nature. 

• Maggie’s physical description is also symbolic of her personality.  She has been marked by her surroundings. 

What is the symbolism in Walker's "Everyday Use"?

I would like to add a bit more about the symbolism of the quilts.  Maggie notes their family significance, but there is more to the history than just nostaliga.

Quilting for African-Americans was more than just creating pretty decorations or family heirlooms.  There were symbolism created by the patterns that helped tribes identify one another in Africa; in America, certain patterns helped identify "safe homes" for runaways slaves (the quilt displayed in a window, for example.)

Moreover, it was believed by many that "a break in a pattern also helped keep evil spirits away. Evil is believed to travel in straight lines and a break in a pattern or line confuses the spirits and slows them down."  This may be one of the reasons for the "double ring" pattern so often given to newlyweds. 

Dee (Wangero) wants to take the quilts because she knows such items are valuable to her "African" heritage, but since she does not value their sentimentality and does not care to learn about what the patterns meant to her family, she is trying to create that "straight line" that will not help her understand her real hertiage very much.  Lives, like quilts, are pieced together by many experiences, creating patterns of meaning.   

What is the symbolism in Walker's "Everyday Use"?

The main symbol is how history and the different generations of a family are connected.

Maggie's burned skin represents how she's been "burned" by the events of her life. She's fragile and worn down from the hard life she's lived. Mrs. Johnson's hands symbolize her tough life in trying to survive on the land where they live. She's had to work hard all of her life, doing whatever is necessary to survive.

Names are also important symbols. Dee chooses an African name that has no connection to her family and the generations that have come before her. Hakim-a-barber's difficult African name shows how he has rejected his heritage, especially since he's unable to eat the collard greens and pork that are traditional foods of African Americans. It's ironic that he's shed everything about his heritage in order to "find" his identity as a Muslim.

The clothes the characters wear also say something about the characters themselves. Mrs. Johnson wears clothing that is practical for the kind of life she lives. Her overalls and flannel nightgowns depict her no-nonsense, harsh life that she leads on a daily basis. Maggie's dress that "[falls] off her in little black papery flakes" symbolizes the hurt she's suffered and her vulnerability. Dee's wild, colorful clothing show that she is a colorful, vibrant woman, but is also shows she's unwilling to be characterized as her mother and sister are.

What is the symbolism in Walker's "Everyday Use"?

The family artifacts owned by Mama Johnson are used, symbolically, to show the characters' differing views of heritage. Dee is newly interested in these artifacts, for which she's never before shown such longing. She says,

"I never knew how lovely these benches are. You can feel the rump prints [...]." Then she gave a sigh and her hand closed over Grandma Dee's butter dish. "That's it!" she said. "I knew there was something I wanted to ask you if I could have." She jumped up from the table and went over in the corner where the churn stood [....]. "This churn top is what I need [....]. And I want the dasher, too."

Dee wants these objects, but it is Maggie who knows not only their stories but also who made them, what their nickname was, when they made them, and so forth. And despite the fact that her family is still using these items daily, Dee wants to take them to do "something artistic" with them. It's a similar story with the family's quilts. Dee is terrified that Mama will give them to Maggie, because Maggie would be "backward" enough to use them every day, and they would fall apart. Dee wants to hang them on the wall, attempting to preserve them. For Maggie and Mama, these objects are symbolic of their heritage, but they seem to feel that heritage is something that is best kept in the present by keeping the objects in use, which reminds everyone of those people to whom they're connected. Maggie knows how to quilt and can make more; it's as though she honors her heritage by remembering the stories, by learning the traditions. Dee, on the other hand, thinks of these objects as symbolic, and she thinks of heritage as something that is past, that ought to be preserved rather than used; she thinks of the quilts as artistic rather than objects meant to serve a purpose. It's a much colder, more distant kind of remembrance.

Color is also used symbolically in the story to help characterize Maggie and Dee. When Dee arrives, for example, she is wearing a bright dress. Mama says, "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." Dee wears colors associated with fire. Maggie, on the other hand, wears a "pink skirt and red blouse," the colors of skin that's been burned. Maggie has "burn scars down her arms and legs" as a result of the fire that consumed the family's house years ago. As a child, Dee "burned [her mother and sister] with a lot of knowledge [they] didn't necessarily need to know," treating them like "dimwits." It even seems possible, given Mama's description of events, that Dee might have set the fire to the house that she "hated" so much. Figuratively, certainly, Dee damages and burns others, making them feel small and slow and stupid. Maggie is burned by Dee, by her condescension and derision. The colors associated with each daughter help to illuminate their character.

What is the symbolism in Walker's "Everyday Use"?

Clearly the major symbol of this great story is to be found in the quilts that Dee so desperately wants. Consider how they are presented in the story:

Out came Wangero with two quilts. They had been pieces by Grandma Dee, and then Big Dee and me had hung them on the quilt frames on the front porch and quilted them. One was in the Lone Star pattern. The other was Walk Around the Mountain. In both of them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more years ago. Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jarrell's paisley shirts. And one teeny faded blue piece, about the size of a penny matchbox, that was from Great Grandpa Ezra's uniform that he wore in the Civil War.

Clearly this description shows both how valuable they are to the narrator but also what a history the include and show of the family. It is clear that the quilts and who they belong to symbolise a far bigger issue regarding the characters of Dee and Maggie, giving the story its title. Note what Dee says when her mother declares she had promised them to Maggie:

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

The final decision to give Maggie the quilts is an act of love and of upbuilding of Maggie, for the narrator rejects Dee's rather pushy claim on the quilts and gives them to Maggie instead.

Thus the quilts can be said to symbolise the heritage of the family, but also the love and human spirit of Ma for Maggie as she tries to build her daughter up and show her that she is affirmed and deeply cared for.

What are examples of a symbol, allusion, and verbal irony in "Everyday Use"?

In "Everyday Use" the greatest symbol is the quilts, which represent intergenerational heritage and connection. there are many other symbols Alice Walker uses, such as names, which for Dee represent freedom versus oppression, and clothes, which symbolically represent the inner qualities of the characters.

One example of allusion in "Everyday Use" is an entertainment allusion to the Johnny Carson show. Allusions draw on common knowledge to make complex statements in an abbreviated manner. Therefore only someone familiar with Johnny Carson's talk show could understand the allusion to "keep up with my quick and witty tongue"; Walker assumes an almost universal acquaintance with Johnny Carson by using this allusion.

One instance of verbal irony is Mrs. Johnson's comment, as the first-person narrator, that while reading aloud Dee "burned" she and Maggie with "a lot of knowledge we didn't necessarily need to know." By this she ironically indicates that Dee, college educated, values knowledge of a higher order and for its own sake (or its own impressive sake), whereas she and Maggie value knowledge that pertains to what they need. It's also ironic to say essentially that (at least some) knowledge isn't worth knowing.

What are some important symbols in "Everyday Use"?

Symbols are often objects, settings, or characters that are reflective of something else and carry meaning in a story: they have both literal and figurative meaning. Perhaps the most significant symbol in "Everyday Use" is the collection of family quilts that Dee wants so much at the end of the story and that Mama refuses to give her.

To Dee, these quilts represent her heritage, and she wants to preserve them by hanging them up on her walls at home. She thinks Maggie shouldn't be allowed to have them, because Maggie would be "backward enough" to put them to "everyday use" and they will fall apart as a result. This is less of a concern to Mama and Maggie, because they know that this is what the quilts were made for: to be used everyday to keep people warm. They also know how to quilt, having learned the skill from their older family members, so they can make more quilts when these fall apart.

To them, "heritage" is not in the quilts; rather, it's in the memories of the family members who have come before and in learning the family stories and traditions. The quilts symbolize the heritage and culture of the Johnson family, and they also serve to contrast the ways in which Dee and Maggie and Mama understand and value heritage.

What is the significance of the title "Everyday Use" in the context of the story's events?

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 them by using them for their intended purpose. Dee’s plan for the quilts was to preserve them as cultural symbols, by only displaying the quilts instead of destroying them by putting the items to use. In this regard the closest answer is D using things every single day wears them out. The answer captures the context of Dee’s criticism of her sister’s “backward lifestyle.” Dee suggested that by using the quilts their true value would be lost because they would be destroyed.

“Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts!” she says, “She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use.”

Dee arrived back home a changed woman, she was dressed in an African attire and changed her name to fit her African roots. She intended to take a quilt woven by her grandmother but bequeathed to her sister, Maggie. Her Mother, Mrs. Johnson, declined her request, to which Dee responded that her sister would put the quilts to “Everyday use” insinuating that her sister did not know the value of the quilts and so would end up destroying them.

What is the setting of "Everyday Use" and does it carry any symbolism or irony?

This story is set at the mother's house, on the occasion of a daughter's(Dee) visit.Dee was the apparent favorite-beautiful, wordly. Dee is also incredibly selfish, assuming, and condescending. She sifts through the house searching for the few possessions of beauty that her mother owns.Dee does not care for the nostalgic, emotional attachment to the quilts, but for the collectiblew status. In this way, it is ironic that Dee is seen as the attractive sister of the two girls, while her personality is full of ugliness.

What is the setting of "Everyday Use" and does it carry any symbolism or irony?

The setting of the story is in the mother's house. Her mother states that the new house (the first house was destroyed in a fire), is a three-room shack with no "real" windows and a tin roof. The house helps better reflect the contrast between Dee's materialism and Maggie and her mother's pride in their home and their contentedness with life. I would say it could be both symbolic and ironic.

What symbol does the title "Everyday Use" introduce and gain meaning throughout the work?

The title of Alice Walker's story leads to the central symbol of the quilts about which the returning sister, Dee, and her mother have differing perspectives. Whereas Dee, now calling herself the African name Wangero, views the quilts made by her grandmother as an ethnic work for display, the mother feels that the quilts should be used on a daily basis; that is, they should be used for a practical purpose.

As she reflects upon Dee's visit, the mother ponders the physical and psychological difference between her two girls. She recalls how Dee would read to her and Maggie "without pity."  

She washed us in a river of make-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn't necessarily need to know.

But, Maggie, who cannot see well, "stumbles along good-naturedly," whereas Dee has always found fault in everything. This personality difference becomes vividly clear to the mother when Dee asks for the quilts so she can put them on display. For, Dee will not turn these guilts down as she gets into bed, she will not look upon the square of cloth from the Northern uniform of her grandfather, she will not recognize the scraps of dresses that Grandma Dee wore fifty years ago, and she will not recognize the Paisley scraps from Grandpa Jarrell's shirts.  In effect, Dee will not understand her heritage and the tradition of quilting, the piecing together of the lives of family members.  But, Maggie, who will use the quilts everyday, will surround herself with her family and the history of this family. As the mother so well comprehends, this heritage will warm and comfort Maggie and provide meaning in her life. Therefore, the mother takes the quilts and gives them to Maggie, who truly deserves to keep them because she will always remember the weaving of her family members' lives with hers.

How does the symbolism and setting in "Everyday Use" develop a specific theme?

To approach this writing assignment from the symbolism angle, there are several symbols from which to choose. The quilts that have been made by Grandma Dee, Big Dee, and Dee's mother are probably the most prominent symbol. They are family heirlooms that have been promised to Maggie, Dee's younger sister. The fabric and work that have gone into them has become part of the legacy of the women who created them. Quilts have traditionally been made to keep people warm, and so they have an everyday, practical use. Ironically, instead of bringing this family closer, the quilts are a divisive item because of the differences in meaning attached to them. Dee sees them purely as artifacts of a culture that she has, by and large, rejected. Mama and Maggie recognize them as quilts made by family members and are more pragmatic in their appreciation of them. Symbolically, the quilts serve the theme that one cannot choose what to accept and what to reject from one's culture. Dee has sought to physically distance herself by moving away and to culturally distance herself by changing her name and manner of thinking, speaking and dressing, yet at the same time wants to plunder her family's culture to serve her new identity in the way that she wants to create it.

To approach the assignment from the angle of setting, the 1960s were a time when the Black Power movement gained momentum in the United States. It was a period when some African Americans chose to drop their surnames because they were the product of their ancestors' enslavement. In adopting the name Wangero, Dee is making a statement about self-determination, a major philosophical tenet of the Black Power movement of the period. She has also taken up with a Muslim man, likely a follower of Elijah Muhammad, who founded the Nation of Islam (NOI) in 1964. The theme that the time setting could suggest is that rural Southern African Americans like Dee were, in increasing numbers, seeking to separate themselves from definition as the descendants of slaves.