The quilts were an important part of the family tradition of quilt making. It was so important to Mama that when Dee asked for it she snatched it from her hands. When Mama gave the quilts to Maggie, she hoped Maggie would put it to everyday use. Maggie valued the quilts for what they mean as an individual. Maggie says she can’t remember Grandma Dee without the quilts.
After all, she had promised those quilts to Maggie. It is sufficently motivated. Dee wanted the quilts for their monetary value, while Maggie wanted them for sentimental value. The change is given sufficient timing. The incident with the quilts was the catalyst, however from the mother's tone (when she spoke of Dee) one could see the change
Mama, which is also the narrator, takes pride in sweeping the dirt in the yard which is referred to as an “extended living room only with a breeze and an ability to look up into the elm tree.” Mama states that she has “deliberately turned her back on her house” and describes it as “not having windows and a tin roof “and seems to be perfectly satisfied with these living conditions. Walker refers to the previous house that had burned several years before while “Dee watched as the last dingy gray board of the house fall toward the red-hot brick chimney.” Dee stares with heavy concentration perhaps imagining out with the old; in with the new. Mama even states that she
They wake her up early and help her stretch her legs in hope that they will one day be straight/normal. They showed the compassion that her birth mother would never give to her child. Linda later recalls, “I must have been held so much that the sensation became a part of me”(65). Fifty years later when Linda and her mother Nancy finally meet for dinner, they don’t hug or even shake hands. The mother may be the birth mother and be related by blood but she sure doesn’t show any love toward her handicapped daughter that she abandoned.
Walker uses symbolism to stress the differences between these understandings and eventually to support one to show that culture and heritage are part of day to day life. The beginning of the story is mainly about Mrs. Johnson, Dee’s and Maggie’s mother, who is also the narrator of the story. The characterization of Mrs. Johnson and her surrounding symbolizes the way Mrs. Johnson and Maggie choose to live (more like only way they knew how to live). “…yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy” (Walker) Mrs. Johnson awaiting for Dee speaks about the cleanliness of the yard, importance on the yard being so clean points to how she and Maggie have an attachment to the yard and their house. Narrator goes on to say “not just a yard.
Since the husband’s role is to go out and provide a living for his family, the wives job is to look after the home. It may not be considered a public work, but her position within the home is still very vital and important. Her role is a non income producing activity, but ensures the success of the family. Another role for a Christian wife is the raising of her children. Titus 2: 3-5 states that, "Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored," (The Christian Woman", 2004).
At the beginning of the plot of “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, the narrator, who we later find out is “Mama” or Mrs. Johnson, begins to tell the reader using first-person narration that she is waiting in the yard, which is “like an extended living room.” She moves away from her description of her yard to say that “Maggie will be nervous until her sister goes” because of her burn scars. She obviously feels inferior to this sister the reader has yet to meet who seems to have had many opportunities in life that Maggie did not. The narrator describes this unseen other daughter in terms of a TV show guest, implying that there is something stunning or glamorous about her. She says that she has had a dream in which she is on a TV show with her daughter and the host is congratulating her on raising such a fine girl as her daughter pins an orchid on her dress, a flower that the daughter has said she does not like because it is tacky. The narrator of “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker moves from her description of her dream to bring reality to light, saying in one of the important quotes from “Everyday Use” by Walker, “In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough man-working hands” and discusses how hard she works around her property, often comparing herself to a man or masculine things such as killing and cleaning hogs, wearing flannel pajamas, and killing a bull calf with a sledge hammer.
Show the cat a litter box and she or he is trained its that easy. When they are outside cats, someone should let them in and out when they want to go in or out of house. When they are inside cats, clean their litter boxes at least every other day, freshwater and food daily. If you do not clean the litter box, often it gets very smelly and gross and if anyone has a weak stomach this job is not for you. Cats do not eat very much.
The yard is a place which everyone can come and sit and look up into the elm tree and wait for the breezes that never come to inside the house. They wait Dee in the yard. Her another daughter which called Maggie will be jealous of Dee’s much easier life and nervous until after her sister goes. Because she does not study, just stays at home. She will stand hopelessly in the corners, plain and sheepish, ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs.
Maggie selflessly insists that her sister can have the quilts (128). Maggie is also not a very strong character; instead she stays in the background most every situation that she can. For example, Dee and her friend rapidly approached the house in their car. “Maggie attempts to make a dash for the house…” but her mother quickly takes hold of her, making sure that she does not escape. Maggie was very uneasy around her sister; her mother tells her anxiousness in regard to Dee’s visitation: “Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe” (119).