Contrasting Ideas Of Heritage In Everyday Use By Alice Walker

Family history and heritage are things that are seen differently through each person’s eyes’ and they can even affect the way families live. “Everyday Use” is a short story that tells about a mother, her two daughters, and the differences in their values and how they live their lives. In Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” she uses characterization, imagery, and setting to clearly demonstrate the theme of her story. Throughout the story she continuously uses these literary elements to show her theme of contrasting ideas of heritage. With the use of characterization Walker gradually reveals the personality and traits of her main characters thus revealing the theme of her story. In “Everyday Use” the main conflicting opinions about heritage are between Mama and Dee. Mama is described as a “large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands”.
When Dee and Hakim.a.barber join Mama and Maggie for dinner Dee immediately remembers something that she wanted to ask Mama for. Dee leaves the table and goes to Mama and Maggie’s milk churn and the author purposely adds “the milk in it crabber by now” to make it know to the readers that the churn is used frequently by Mama and Maggie. Instead of asking, Dee tells Mama that the churn top is what she needs and she wants the dasher too. She plans to use them merely as decoration in her home and she probably never even thought about the fact that she would be leaving Mama and Maggie without something that they constantly use(Walker). White points out that “she flippantly decides to take the churn dasher, even though she has no knowledge of its history. During this event in the story it should become obvious to the reader how each character feels about their heritage through their own uses for the churn. Dee disregards the fact that the churn is being used and probably used very