Dee And Maggie's Decisions In Everyday Use By Alice Walker

2. In “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, Maggie and her mother’s relationship is depicted as tight-knit. This can be interpreted throughout the story because Mama describes how they spend the majority of their time together. An example of this is when Mama says, “Maggie will marry John Thomas… then I'll be free to sit here and I guess just sing church songs by myself”, implying that they normally sing together. Mama also predicts Maggie's actions. She predicts how Maggie will “be nervous until her sister goes” and how Maggie will act while Dee is there. Another reason their bond is so strong is because they experienced a traumatic experience together. Mama can still “hear the flames and feel Maggie's arms sticking to” her. For these reasons, they are inseparable.

3.Dee from the story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker makes many decisions that reflect a growing interest in preserving her heritage. For one, when her mother calls her by her original name “Dee”, she says “No, Mama. Not Dee, ‘Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo!”. Dee believes her name was given to her by slave owners but her mother
Hakim-a-barber’s purpose in the story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, is to represent how different Dee and Maggie's lives are. For example, when Hakim-a-barber introduced himself saying “asalamalakim my mother and sister!”, Maggie thought it was his name. Mama also assumed he “belonged to those beer cattle peoples down the road” because of how he looked. Those two quotes depict how unfamiliar Mama and Maggie are to the world outside of Georgia. Whereas, Maggie's sister, Dee, has been introduced to these other cultures and life around the world because she went to a good school. Maggie does not have much of an education and is marrying John Thomas. The two sisters husbands are very different. For one, hakim-a barber was described very positively by Mama but, John Thomas was described harshly. He has “mossy teeth and an earnest face”. This implies to favor Dee's husband over