Everyday Use By Alice Walker Essay

Have you ever not seen eye to eye with your mother? In Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use”, we are shown how many of the choices we make and the things we value create our identity. This story focuses on two characters, mama and her daughter Dee (Wangero), who struggle to see the same way about their heritage. Dee wants the things made by her grandmother, to not admire it as an artifact, but rather to remake it. She wants to take them, and change them to match her lifestyle as it is today. She loves them for the way they look. Mama, on the other hand, views the things from her mother as artifacts. She loves the items more than how they look. She admires the quilts because of their everyday use. Transformations take place between these characters. Dee’s transformation is more external than it is internal. She shows her transformation in the way she speaks, the clothes she wears, and her judgement. Mama’s transformation is more internal. She begins to see Dee’s real thoughts, and she stands up against her. When she takes the quilts away from Dee, she doesn’t only stand up for herself, but Maggie, as
Then we are on the stage and Dee is embracing me with tears in her eyes.” Her dream shows how the mother dreams of a better relationship with her daughter than the one she has. Dee seems to be embarrassed by her mother and where she comes from. The author shows this when she talks about the burning of their house. She seemed happy to see her house burn down, “Why don’t you do a dance around the ashes? I’d wanted to ask her. She had hated the house that much.” This shows that Dee didn’t care much for her heritage, because she seemed so thrilled that the house had burned down. The way she reacted to the house burning shows that she didn’t care for her mother or