These quilts consisted of her family’s heritage through pieces of civil war uniform and some her grandmothers dresses. Little did Dee know that these quilts were promised to her little sister Maggie after she got married. Dee is appalled that her mother would allow such a thing! “Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts… She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use” (Walker
Then she asked for her grandmother’s handmade quilt. Since Maggie was getting married soon, Ms. Johnson said no to Dee because the quilts were Maggie’s wedding gift. Dee got angry because she thinks Maggie will just ruin them putting them into everyday use. Instead she wanted to take them to hang them on a wall. Ms. Johnson looks at Maggie and takes the quilts from Dee’s hands.
Another instance is when she asks her mother for the quilts her grandmother had made, her mother said they were for Maggie; Dee's reply was, “Maggie wouldn't appreciate the quilts” and Maggie says, “Dee can have them” (Walker 2441). Furthermore, all of the things Dee ask for she wants to use them for decoration and not for everyday use. Dee also was not educated about her heritage. For instance, her mother called her “Dee” and in return she replied saying her new name was Wangero, followed by the statement, “Dee is dead and I can no longer bear the name of the people that oppress me” (Walker 2440). I believe there was no time during the story that she was oppressed or even mentioned
B. Rembert Professor Owens English 1101 1 September 2012 In Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” the story symbolizes the different perspectives of what heritage truly represents and the value of significant items. Sisters, Dee and Maggie, both strive for their Mama’s acceptance and love. Maggie, who is timid yet caring, envies her older sister. However, Dee feels quite different towards her sister. She shows resentment towards Maggie and insults her intelligence.
Growing up in the same environment does not always mean that siblings will grow to be the same person with the same values and beliefs. Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" is about the conflict that multi-generational families have with understanding the importance of identity and ancestry. The story focuses on the relationship between a mother and her two daughters, Dee and Maggie, over their grandmothers quilts. Unlike Mama, Dee is educated and is envied, Maggie, who was scarred in a house fire when she was little. Dee has returned from a long trip away from home and now determines her culture by the things she gathers from the house like the quilts and butter churn but in the end Maggie is the one with the right idea about her heritage.
English Homework Everyday Use by Alice Walker 1. Maggie and Dee, the two sisters in this story, are very different. By contrasting characters, or keeping track of the ways they are different, you can understand this story better. Write two things that you learn about Maggie and two about Dee that keeps them at odds with each other. After Maggie’s accident, in which she got burned by a fire that happened in her old house, she laced of confidence because of the way her skin ended looked, this made her not going to school.
Karen Robinson Mrs. Barbara Allen English 100 22 September 2013 Everyday Use In “Everyday Use”, Alice Walker creates a graphic setting that draws the reader into the feelings of two sisters Maggie and Dee who have different values for the family quilts. Dee states “Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts!” (181). One would say that Dee meant that Maggie wasn’t as smart as she was to see the true meaning of the quilts and the heritage that was behind them, but in reality Maggie appreciation for the quilts stemmed deeper than Dee could ever imagine. Maggie appreciated the quilts, because it was part of their mother Mrs. Johnson, Grandma Dee, and Big Dee. The quilts for Maggie represented all the hard work, labor, fabrics that was used,
In paragraph four, Esperanza used a synecdoche to show that even though she inherited her great grandmother name, she did not want to follow the same path as her. Esperanza stated, “I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window “ (110). Her great grandmother was trapped in a compulsory marriage and longed for an escape. Esperanza was also teased at school she said, “At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth” (110). Meaning the kids at school had a difficult time pronouncing her
In Walker’s story Dee is so far removed from her family and her sister that the story ends with no hope of resolution. While Dee is trying to forget her past and assume a new identity “Not Dee; Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo”, Maggie is happy with her heritage, in spite of her sister judgments and insults “You should try and make something of yourself Maggie… (Walker 1337) It’s a new day for us but you would never know that from the way you and mama live. The story ends with Dee leaving with her new clothes, new name, nose turned up, and a broken relationship with her family. In Baldwin’s story the narrator (Sonny's brother) initially sees little value in his Sonny however as the story progress he realizes that although Sonny may not have the education and material things that he has, he has a god giving valuable gift (Music) “freedom lurked around us ad I understood that he could help us be free if we listened (Baldwin 80).” And in spite of all the negative things that have occurred in Sonny’s life, through music he is able to rise above it all. This realization creates a newfound bond between the brothers and the stories ends with a promise of a new unbreakable
When these traits did not surface, Jing-Mei began to realize she did not have these traits and started to feel internally inferior. She slowly started to resent her mother’s continual control over her decisions and went in a different direction than her mother wanted her too. In Amy Tan’s short story, “Two Kinds”, the dialogue Tan includes within Jing-Mei’s flashback demonstrates that conflict and resentment can occur when not allowing your child to take his/her own path. In the beginning of the flashback, Jing-Mei’s mother is shown to be trying to control and dominate her daughter’s life. When she moved away from China, Jing-Mei’s mother had a vision that in America, you could be anything that you wanted to be.