Short story “Everyday Use”

In her picayune story Everyday Use, Alice pram takes up what is a recurrent theme in her work the image of the harmony as well as the conflicts and struggles at bottom African-American socialisation. Everyday Use focuses on an witness in the midst of members of the rural Johnson family. This encounterwhich takes place when Dee (the only when member of the family to receive a formal pedagogics) and her priapic companion return to visit Dees obtain and younger sister Maggieis essentially an encounter amongst two different interpretations of, or approaches to, African-American culture. cart employs characterization and symbolism to highlight the difference surrounded by these interpretations and ultimately to uphold one of them, showing that culture and hereditary pattern ar parts of workaday life. The curtain raising of the story is largely involved in characterizing Mrs. Johnson, Dees mother and the storys narrator. More specifically, Mrs. Johnsons language points to a certain relationship between herself and her physical surroundings she waits for Dee in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy (88).The dialect on the physical characteristics of the yard, the pleasure in it manifested by the word so, points to the attachment that she and Maggie have to their home and to the routine practice of their lives. The yard, in fact, is not on the nose a yard. It is like an extended living room (71), corroborative that it exists for her not only as an object of property, alone likewise as the place of her life, as a sort of expression of herself.Her description of herself likewise shows a familiarity and comfort with her surroundings and with herself she is a large, big-boned cleaning lady with rough, man-working hands (72)in other words, she knows the reality of her body and accepts it, even finding comfort (both physical and psychological) in the way that her fat keeps her hot in postal code wrusther (72). Mrs. Johnson is fundamentally at home with herself she accepts who she is, and thus, Walker implies, where she stands in relation to her culture.Mrs. Johnsons daughter Maggie is draw as rather unattractive and shy the scars she bears on her body have likewise scarred her soul, and, as a result, she is retiring, even frightened. Mrs. Johnson admits, in a harming manner, that like acceptable looks and money, quickness passed her by (73). She stumbles as she reads, but clearly Mrs. Johnson thinks of her as a sainted person, a daughter with whom she can sing songs at perform. Most importantly, however, Maggie is, like her mother, at home in er traditions, and she honors the memory of her ancestors for example, she is the daughter in the family who has knowledgeable how to quilt from her grandmother. Dee, however, is virtually Maggies opposite. She is characterized by good looks, ambition, and education (Mrs. Johnson, we are told, collects money at her church so that Dee can attend school). Dees education has been extremely important in forging her character, but at the same quantify it has split her sour from her family.Mamma says, She used to read to us without lenity forcing words, lies, other folks habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice (73). Dee, in other words, has moved towards other traditions that go against the traditions and heritage of her own family she is on a quest to data link herself to her African roots and has changed her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo.In doing so, in attempting to recover her ancient roots, she has at the same time denied, or at least refused to accept, her more benefaction(prenominal) heritage, the heritage that her mother and sister share. The actions Walkers characters take, as well as their physical attributes, are symbolic of their relation to their culture. Dees male companion, for example, has taken a Muslim name and now refuses to eat pork and collard greens, thus refusing to take part in the traditional African-American culture. Mrs.Johnson, meanwhile, has man-working hands and can fling off a hog as mercilessly as a man (72) clearly this detail is meant to evidence a rough life, with great exposure to work. typic meaning can also be be in Maggies skin her scars are literally the inscriptions upon her body of the ruthless journey of life. Most apparentlyand most importantlythe quilts that Mrs. Johnson has promised to give Maggie when she marries are super symbolic, representing the Johnsons traditions and cultural heritage.These quilts were pieced by Grandma Dee and then outsized Dee (76), both figures in family history who, unlike the present Dee, took charge in t apieceing their culture and heritage to their offspring. The quilts themselves are made up of fragments of history, of scraps of dresses, shirts, and uniforms, each of which represents those people who forged the familys culture, its heritage, and its values. Most importantly, however, these fragm ents of the bypast are not simply representations in the sensory faculty of art objects they are not removed from daily life.What is most crucial about these quiltsand what Dee does not understandis that they are made up of daily life, from materials that were lived in. This, in essence, is the central point of Everyday Use that the husbandry and maintenance of its heritage are necessary to each social groups self-identification, but that also this process, in order to succeed, to be real, must be part of peoples use both day. After all, what is culture but what is home to us, just as Mrs. Johnsons yard is home to her.