Everyday Use essays

Many things can bring trouble to the family household. But a disregard in where you came from is the perfect brew for family trouble. In Everyday Use, Alice Walker uses Dee and other imagery throughout the story to show the difference of ideology, cultural roots, and rejection of her culture. After leaving a letter on her return after years of leaving, Dee returns to her family after taking in a new identity. Her new identity brings conflicts with her mother and her younger sister Maggie. Dee wants to take and parade family heirlooms in her own home. This leads to her Mother telling Dee that she wants these items for the wrong reasons, causing Dee to go storming out.

Alice Walker shows the importance of heritage through the conflict of irony with Dee and the importance of knowing and respecting your heritage. When Dee first arrives to greet her mother and sister, she shows her first conflict over her name being changed. This interaction symbols her self-conflict. Her character is confused by her wanting to run from her roots and embrace a new her. After coming home and introducing herself, Dee and her Mother have this exchange. ‘Well,’ I say. ‘Dee.’ ‘No, Mama,’ she says. ‘Not ‘Dee,’ Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo!’ ‘What happened to ‘Dee’?’ I wanted to know. ‘She’s dead,’ Wangero said. ‘I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me.'(105) She claims that she couldn’t bear having the name of the oppressors. This is where the first conflict is introduced, outside of the character descriptions given early on within the story. Her name Dee comes from her Aunt Dicie, her Grandmother, and her mother. But Dee doesn’t recognize it as the family’s name, only a thing that represents a stain on her heritage. Dee’s quick obsession with quilts symbolizes Duality.

She wants the quilts to display as part of her heritage in her home. She doesn’t feel like they deserve to stay at the home, let alone with maggie because she worries that they will be put into everyday use. Maggie remembers how to make the quilts and wants to use them for there purpose, just like how her grandmother taught her. While Dee wants to display the quilts so that may last and act as a reminder to her family. This can come across in many ways as self-centered, but this is the way she wants to honor her heritage by having something that will last to have a tie to her grandmother. This, of course, contrasts Maggie and their mother’s thoughts of using the quilts to do their job and using the way their grandmother taught them to make more.Alice walker pulls uses different items, such as sunglasses, that Dee interacts with to show where and how she stands with her family relations. The sunglasses symbolize her contentment with her decisions. Towards the end of the story, she puts on dark black shades after having an altercation with Maggie and her mother. “She put on some sunglasses that hid everything above the tip of her nose and chin. Maggie smiled; maybe at the sunglasses. But a real smile, not scared.

After we watched the car dust settle, I asked Maggie to bring me a dip of snuff. And then the two of us sat there just enjoying until it was time to go into the house and go to bed” (Alice Walker, 154). The sunglasses represent her hiding away and blocking out her identity. As described in the book, the sunglasses hid most of her face, which can also be the identity that she is trying to hide. This point is reinforced by the previous altercation between Dee and her Mother over quilts that were for Maggie. This can also show her blocking out her family after the altercation over the quilts, possibly wanting to block off the part of herself that she claims that died furthermore.Dee wants to parade her heritage; this is clear through her actions in the story. This leads to her duality in wanting a new identity. The theme of Everyday Use is one to take to heart; To always remember where you came from. Alice Walker crafted a story that shows how important it is to remember these themes and to illustrate what happens if you stray too far from yourself.