Alice Walker's Everyday Use

In Alice Walker's Everyday Use, the narrator is the African American mother of two girls, Dee and Maggie. Maggie lives at home with her mother in impoverished circumstances. Dee returns home for a visit, having been educated in Augusta. The conflict in the story revolves around a quilt made by Dee and Maggie's mother from pieces put together by the narrator's mother and Big Dee. The mother intends to give the quilt to Maggie and eventually does, but Dee demands she be given the quilt. The real conflict is between Dee and Maggie's way of life. Maggie and her mother see the quilt as a continuation and symbol of their heritage. Dee, who has rejected her heritage and background, sees the quilt only as a "prized" possession.

The narrator in the story helps us understand the difference between her two daughters. Maggie is dark-skinned but "Dee is lighter" than Maggie with "nicer hair and a fuller figure" (Walker, 1973, p. 1174). As the mother tells us, Maggie "knows she is not bright. Like good looks and money, quickness passed her by," (Walker, 1973, p. 1175). Ever since she was a young girl, Dee "wanted nice things" (Walker, 1973, 1175). Dee is embarrassed by her poverty and African American heritage. Even when she was little, her mother tells us she hated their home and poverty. When their house burns down and Maggie clings to her mother, the mother thinks of Dee's reaction, "Why don't you do a dance around the ashes? I'd wanted t

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aste" (Dickinson, 1863, p. 529). In I Heard A Buzz Fly, the speaker is in the process of making the journey between two worlds. The room is still because the eyes have been wrung dry of the storms of life and breaths are getting labored for the last onset "when the King / Be witnessed" (Dickinson, 1862, p. 524). The speaker makes plans for the dissolution of her material possessions and is ready to accept the fate of a good Christian, an afterlife in the Kingdom of Heaven with God. Robinson's (1896) Richard Cory describes a man who has all the charms, skills, and social graces that "make us wish that we were in his place," (p. 1049). Everyone in town envies Richard Cory as he walks about town, going about his daily affairs. However, in the last stanza of the poem, as everyone else is going about their own daily business, "Richard Cory� / Went home and put a bullet through his head" (Robinson, 1896, p. 1049). The speaker's intention is to show us that surface appearances are far from adequate in providing us with the state of mind of an individual. As we go about our daily business and busy lives, we seldom take the time to know someone on a deeper level, like Richard Cory, whose suicide illustrates he might have benefited f

Category: Literature - A