Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • Free Essays • My Term Papers • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Physics Everyday Use Everyday Use In “Everyday Use,” Alice Walker stresses the importance of heritage. She employs various ways to reveal many aspects of heritage that are otherwise hard to be noticed. In the story, she introduces two sisters with almost opposite personalities and different views on heritage: Maggie and Dee. She uses the contrast between the two sisters to show how one should accept and preserve one’s heritage. Beyond the contrast between two sisters there exist the judge figure mom, the narrator and the Dee’s irony. The irony on Dee’s opinion is the key to understand the story and why the mother let Maggie keep the quilts, which symbolize the heritage. The two sisters in the contrast of Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” have different personalities and looks that are as opposite as right and wrong. It’s seems like Walker is trying to say one of the sister is right and the other is wrong from the beginning. Maggie has poor, miserable image as Walker describes the way Maggie walks “…a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless people rich enough to own a car…”. Maggie has burn scars down her arms and legs, which she got from the fire that burned the house they had earlier. Perhaps, because of her bad appearance, she is very shy and it is described where Walker says, “She (Maggie) has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle…”. Dee, on the other hand, is a very self-confident girl with beautiful look. Her body is described as “…lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and fuller figure. She’s a woman now…” (Walker 1172). She is highly motivated and does everything it takes to get what she wants, as it is described in the story of her graduation from high school. She finished college education while her mom’s education was stopped after second grade. As the two sisters have different appearance and personalities, they have different perspectives on heritage that contrast each other. Walker uses quilts to symbolize the heritage and describes the two girls’ view on quilts to show their perspectives on heritage. Maggie thinks of heritage as an attachment to her ancestors. She believes the everyday use of the inherited materials, how much ever value they may retain, will keep her connected to her ancestors. She values the attachment to the ancestors more than the inherited material itself. When she gives up the quilts to Dee, she states, “I can ‘member Grandma Dee with the quilts.” Dee, on the other hand, thinks of heritage as something that has an extrinsic value, for example its aesthetic value as an antique. She believes that the proper way to accept and preserve her heritage is to not put it into her everyday use but to cherish it only as an accessory. Such an idea is revealed when Dee says, “Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts! She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use.” When the mother asks Dee what she would do with the quilts, she says, “Hang them” (1177), which shows that Dee thinks of the quilts only as tangible antiques. While the two sisters perspectives on heritage contrast each other, Walker employs a case of dramatic irony to prove that Dee’s perspective is wrong, which automatically proves that Maggie is right, considering their opposite characteristics. Dee is ashamed of her family and everything that’s related to it, even their house. Dee’s hatred to her family is described before she tells her sincerity to her heritage. Dee wrote to her mother once, “…no matter where we ‘choose’ to live, she will manage to come see us (her mother and Maggie).” The fact that she would “never bring her friends” (1733) to her house also reveals her hatred to her family. She is ashamed of her family so much that she even changes her name, Dee, which was named after her grandma. Despite the fact, Dee ironically values the quilts that her grandma used to have, saying, “These are all pieces of dresses of Grandma used to wear. She did all this stitching by hand. Imagine” (1176). She talks as if she really cares about her family and her memories about it. However, considering Dee’s ironic actions, Dee almost seems as if she is pretending to care about her heritage to only acquire the extrinsic value of her heritage. Thus, the irony here is that although Dee stresses the importance of heritage herself and criticizes her mother and Maggie for lacking very the knowledge of their heritage, it was her who was not able to accept her name, her heritage. That is why her mother didn’t allow Dee to have the quilt. Throughout the story really stresses the importance of heritage and suggests different ways to view one’s heritage. Anyone could have his/her own way to view his/her heritage as Dee and Maggie did. One might value the attachment to one’s ancestors via the heritage more than the heritage itself, and one might think the other way. Walker seems to be recommending her preferred way to view the heritage, which was Maggie’s view on heritage. Walker tells the reader that they can pursue the connections to their ancestors by accepting and preserving their heritage in proper way, and it is more important to keep being connected to the ancestors than to keep the heritage in better shape. Bibliography: Literature and ourselves 3rd ed. Word Count: 894
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