Alice Walker’s short story, Everyday Use, is written from a central first-person point of view. A reader can tell this because the story is told from the “I” point of view, from Mama’s view. She is central in all that happens in the story. She is a participant and not just an observer.
The story is a good example of subjective narration, because the narrator, Mama, has a definite opinion about what she describes, the people involved, and is not attempting to be objective about her thoughts or the events that happen. She shares her inner thoughts and fantasies, like when she says, “Sometimes I dream a dream in which Dee and I are suddenly together on a TV program of this sort,” the kind where children are reunited with their older parents (717). She knows well that she is not the kind of mother Dee would like to have, that their whole family is not the ideal that Dee wishes she had.
The narrator is mostly reliable. Even though Mama obviously has very specific opinions, she is also well aware of herself and the people around her. About herself, she says, “Who ever knew a Johnson with a quick tongue?” although she sees Dee as an example of an exception to this (718). She sees Dee as a difficult child and says, “Often I fought off the temptation to shake her. At sixteen she had a style of her own: and knew what style was” (718). When Dee and her husband arrive for a visit, Mama expects that they will hate the house but Dee has changed her name to “Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo” (720). She tries very hard to be accepting of her daughter’s choices and new ways, but the one thing she will not accept is giving the quilts away to Dee.
Artistically, Alice Walker has a lot to gain by telling the story from Mama’s point of view. Mama knows the family history and has seen the change in Dee and the way her other daughter, Maggie, has not changed. In order to have the biggest emotional effect on the reader, the story needs to be told from Mama’s point of view because the decision about the quilts is the most important point of the story, and it is her decision to make. If it were told from a third person point of view, without the background of Mama’s dreams and knowledge of the reality of her and her daughter’s lives, it would not seem like such a big decision.
Works Cited
Walker, Alice. Everyday Use. 1944. 717-723.
