The story “Everyday Use” as written by Alice Walker displays a picture that is compelling on the differences that exist between two daughters and their mother. The story is narrated by Mama who is endearing and down-to-earth and provides a glimpse to the reader of members of the same family who do not appreciate similar traditional values or heritage. Combine with humor and wisdom, traditional values are imparted to the daughters by Mama. These traditional values are the ones that account for the strong diversity that is seen in this family (Walker).
Mama, who comes from the old south and is a strong woman of African American origin, is wealthy in knowledge but has little book knowledge. The two daughters, Maggie and Dee, were raised in the southern rural home where their mother lived, but they do not share much in terms of the bonds of sisterhood. The family is described as poor although Mama was able to get some help from the church with which she took Dee to school and college. Dee is described as being strong willed, intelligent, aggressive, and rude, and she is not in a flattering way often. Dee is shown being cruel in the attitude that she had towards her sister as well as her mother where her mother says Dee “used to read to us without pity: forcing words, lies, other folks’ habits, whole lives upon us sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice.” The way Dee behaved was irritating to her mother who would feel angry with her actions and admits “I fought off the temptation to shake her.” Dee possesses intelligence although she does not possess compassion towards her mother and sister and takes a different view of life unlike the simple view that is taken by Mama and Maggie (Walker).
The main misunderstanding that is witnesses in the reunion between a mother and her daughter revolve around the relation that Dee had to her familial past. Dee rejected this past and is clear that she left the past when she Africanized her name and called herself Wangero. After, Dee wants to reclaim the name referring it a fashionable heritage. Dee wants to break away from his past, which she describes as an oppressive past full of poverty, backwardness and very disadvantageous. It is after leaving for college that Dee feels embarrassed of the traditional values and heritage held by her family. Dee refers a quilt that was made by her family members as being “old fashioned, out of style” (Walker). Dee does not consider the contemporary heritage and tradition that her family holds as being stylish or modern and is thus nothing to be proud. This is an indication that Dee minds how people recognize her from her community.
The act of Dee changing her to Wangero was meant to give her the perceived power over the fact that she was “named after the people who oppress” her. In addition, Dee adopted all things that were African, and this is seen as a way of recreating a legacy that she had never had or even appreciated. Dee is seen embracing the African tradition after it has become stylish and she thus claiming to have fallen in love with the African heritage (Baker and Charlotte). Suddenly, Dee starts to admire the traditional butter churn, the wooden benches, as well as the old quilts, which she had refused earlier referring them as backward. She is seen looking for these things in order to use them for “interior decoration”. These acts are seen as a show off, and she is thus misusing the heritage concept (Christian). Dee is thus using the items since they are fashionable and not because they need to be passed from one generation to the next and she thus misses the whole concept of tradition.
Unlike Dee, Maggie is a completely different. She is reserved and shy, caring, and she and Mama are very close. Although Maggie is slow in learning, she has learned the art of making quilt and possesses tradition and real heritage that was passed down by her mother, grandmother and aunt. Maggie got the encouragement after she was “promised the quilts made by her grandmother and aunt out of pieces of old clothing the past is a living reality in which she participates both by planning to use the quilts on her bed” (Walker). It is very hard for Dee to understand the fact that heritage preservation is not only in the old quilts, but heritage is also alive in people who have been given the skills of making the quilts. Dee continuously pleads to have the quilts owned by Maggie claiming that Maggie would “probably be backward enough to put them to every day use.” This result in Maggie being compromised and she allowed Dee have the quilts.
The story does not show that Dee was interested in owning the black heritage. This is because she never looked for the heritage beyond her family where she could have seen it also. Dee only clings on the radical trends that are made popular by her peers. Maggie, on the other hand, has inherited the heritage that her family owned, and this was exactly as her mother and grandmother would have wanted.
This story describes, in a vivid manner, how varied one family’s opinion of heritage, as well as values can be. Dee, Maggie and Mama’s relationship is beyond doubt a family triangle, which has been under the influence of the traditions of African Americans from the radical, as well as past thoughts of the future. It is clear that Dee does not understand that her inheritance cannot be exposed. It is Maggie and Mama who recognize their factual heritage source, the spirit passing down as well as legacy of the people who have been there prior to them. The quilts are beyond the objects that were at one time used by their relatives. They stand for an existing part of their Black history and ought to be esteemed through being put to work, and significantly, the art of making them affectionately passed on. This is a tradition that Dee shows that it is hard to part away from and that is why it keeps on hurting her.
Being angry with what she considers as an oppression history in her family, Dee has built a new heritage for herself and refused her real heritage. She does not see the family heritage of her first name and assumes a new one, Wangero, a name she considers to show her African heritage, accurately. Nevertheless, the new name, just as the African jewelry as well as the clothes she puts on to make a statement, has no worth meaning. She has slight factual African understanding, so the thing she regards as her true legacy is, in fact, false as well as empty. Moreover, Dee considers her actual heritage as a thing of the past, instead of a living, creation that is ongoing. She desires the family quilts as well as carved dasher, although she views them as lost time artifacts, appropriate for exhibit other than for actual, practical utilization. She has put herself out of her own past, refusing her factual heritage in favor of a built one. These traditions seem to be part of Dee and thus need to be embarrassed than being ignored. This is shown, by the way, Maggie has it all in order just by the fact that she embarrassed the heritage and traditions passed down to her.
Dee and Mama have many differences in opinions concerning what heritage is. For Mama and Maggie, the objects of the family are infused with the being there of the people who completed and make use of them. The heirlooms of the family are the factual tokens of identity and origin of Dee, although Dee recognizes less concerning the past. She incorrectly stated the necessary facts concerning the way the quilts were created as well as what fabrics were employed to create them, although she shams to be deeply linked to this folk custom. These differences may result in the three having different definitions of the terms tradition and heritage.
Work Cited
Baker, Houston A. and Pierce-Baker Charlotte. Patches: Quilts and Community in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use.” Everyday Use, Women Writers Series. Ed. Christian Barbara. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Print.
Christian, Barbara. The Black Woman Artist as Wayward.” Modern Critical Views: Alice Walker. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989. Print.
Walker, Alice. Every day Use. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Print.
