Preview

Cultural Differences In 'Everyday Use' By Alice Walker

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
606 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Cultural Differences In 'Everyday Use' By Alice Walker
Everyone has a different culture. Whether it involves a different heritage than another person or a different upbringing their culture will never be the same. Two people can both be Italian and French, but one may grow up in America and the other in England, two separate places in which they live different ways of life. Culture is more than what a person is or where they come from. Culture is who they are including their traditions and customs, their art, their language, and their family. This is portrayed in the short story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker through the characterization of sisters Maggie and Dee. Dee spent most of her life hating her home. She hated where she lived and possibly even who she lived with. She grew up wanting everything

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Over the course of your life, how ever long it has been so far, have you been heavily influenced by your heritage and culture? Or have you been able to develop your own ideas and views on the world? If you have or you haven’t been influenced by your culture that’s up to you, but I ultimately think that it should be completely up to the individual whether or not they completely follow every rule of their religion, ethnic background, or whatever.…

    • 193 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Alice Malsenior Walker is an African American author and activist who write of various personal experiences, including the black woman’s struggle. Walker describes herself as a “womanist: a woman who loves other women… Appreciates and prefers woman culture, woman’s emotional flexibility… and woman’s strength… Loves the spirit… Loves herself, regardless”. Walker writes through her feelings and the morals that she has grown with. One of her famous quotes, "It is important to remember yourself," quoted from her appearance at a Miami Book Fair in 1989, where she discussed her 1988’s essay collection, including The Temple of My Familiar, relates to her short story Everyday Use. By not remembering who you are you can grow to be disconnected from yourself. Alice Walker’s short story Everyday Use successfully shows readers how it is possible for one to lose sight of what is important. This essay describes how Walker designed the story to reveal to readers the values of serving heritage and culture. Through the perspective of the protagonist “Mama,’ Walker shows the differences between the two sisters,…

    • 813 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    a. Attention Getter: Most people that are the first in their family to get an education always will try to make their family members feel inferior and want to take advantage of them in every way possible.…

    • 734 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” Mama, the narrator of the story, is rather distant with her daughter Dee and dreams about reconciling with her on a television show. Specifically, she imagines Dee expressing gratitude for all that she has done for her, while embracing her (Mama) “with tears in her eyes (Walker 315).” It is obvious that Mama doesn’t understand her daughter’s life choice to adopt an African lifestyle and feels that Dee is rejecting her origins and family. Furthermore, the reader can see that Mama has a troublesome relationship with Dee by the amount of tension between them. This strained relationship becomes clear when Dee “went to the trunk at the foot of (Mama’s) bed and started rifling through it (Walker 320).” The narrator…

    • 578 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    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…

    • 809 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the short story "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker, the author chooses to place emphasizes the aspects of individuality. The story centers around the lives of two sisters, Maggie and Dee. Even though both sisters have grown up together under the same conditions, they clearly have become two very distinct individuals with contrasting views regarding their past, present, and future.…

    • 1375 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Culture is a part of a person that shapes them and gives them a point of view on how they see other people and the world.In the short story Everyday Use it is a good example of culture being a big part in how they view others and the world.in the short story it says “...I reckon she would” I said. “ god knows i been saving’em for long enough with nobody using them. I hope she will!” I didn't want…

    • 584 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The preservation of one’s cultural history is something that everyone must decide how to handle. In the short story Everyday Use by Alice Walker, two characters have different ways of preserving their history and culture. Dee and Maggie, sisters, have different personalities, motivations, and views on society. This may seem unusual considering they grew up in the same house, and they were raised by the same person; one might compare these girls to two different sides of the same coin. Their different views on life alter the way each of them act.…

    • 579 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Alice Walker and James Baldwin both use their literature characters to bring social problems to light. A few of the social concerns that can be seen in their work consists of race, class, gender and society; the outside forces. Although both of these authors use characters to describe social issues, their attempts vary in their work. The following will compare and contrast how Baldwin’s and Walker’s characters use this connection as a means to sort through their “despair”.…

    • 905 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    How can two young women from the same rich inheritance of family, history and community be so different? Although the women are by no means rich according to the standard of the world, there is no hints of want in the circumstances that shape their lives. The source of conflict arises from within Dee. Whatever her family has to offer her is never enough. Dee, the eldest daughter, has ventured from the rural world she grew up in but never felt a part of. The story is set in the context of her returning home for the first time since she left for college. Maggie the younger daughter has never left home.…

    • 1616 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Culture is the arts and other creations of individual’s intellectual accomplishment regarding a lot of feelings, customs, and exercises. They say “never judge a book by its cover”, but your average person does it on a daily. People look at your appearance and try to say which culture you come from. On a daily basis, I have people come up to me and ask me am I Jamaican; and am shocked when I say no. The two cultures, I have chosen to compare and contrast are African Americans and Jamaicans. Both cultures are very unique and may have some similarities, but they are very different from one another.…

    • 693 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Culture is an important and vital component that defines who and what we are as a person. We interface with cultural difference on a daily basis. So what exactly is culture? Good Question! I will attempt to identify my own cultural and explain what cultural means to me. So, lets start by defining the term culture. “Culture is a particular society that has its own beliefs, ways of life, art, etc.”. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2015) My cultural identity consists of several parts. I am most foremost a female that has a variety of racial genetic makeup of African-American, Native American, and European descent. I was raised in a Christian religious household and in a primarily single parent home. I have a sister and a half brother on my father’s…

    • 1909 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Everyday we are bombarded by culture as we walk down the streets of our city and even through the corridors of our home from our parents to our siblings. Therefore culture is the belief, laws, traditions, and many more that make a way of life unique from one another. Culture is the first stepping stone to begin creating your self identity, but it does not fully encompass our being. Therefore a balance is created between the too, we will always be influenced culture but always express our own individuality.…

    • 696 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” is a short story that describes a mother and her two daughters that have different personalities. Mrs. Johnson’s daughters, Dee and Maggie, grew up in the same house around the same time but have experienced different lives. Throughout the story, the mother depicts the different personalities and physical features of her two daughters. The traits that each daughter possess are displayed when Dee returns home for a visit.…

    • 559 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Different cultures promote different relationships and can either hinder or encourage certain activities among its people.…

    • 344 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays