Everyday Use By Alice Walker Analysis
“Everyday Use” by Alice Walker is an ethical story that shows the value of traditional identities and heritage during the African American movements in the 1960s. Walker use “Mama” a colored women as the narrator of the story to illustrate how she and her younger daughter “Maggie” live according to their traditional values is distinct than her older daughter dee who is highly educated and lives a modernized life. The conflict raises as traditional vs. modernized life since the older daughter dee has a different assumptions about their values in culture than mama and Maggie who tend to believe in an old fashion life style. The main conflict lies under the mother’s love for the different characterized daughters. Either for the daughter who is
outgoing, highly educated, believes that they should change their life style as their society advances and live a modernized life or the daughter who is shy and quite but highly value traditional ideas , heritage as much her mother and, lives a simple but old fashion traditional life style. Dee is a matured women who changes her believes and heritage according to her generation’s mind set but Mama is a person from the past generation who finds difficulty understanding Dee’s view point. But Maggie on the other hand does not know anything about how she should view her traditional believes since she has never experienced the outer world. According to her impression it seems like she is brainwashed by Mama’s customs. Even though walker does not specifically express the internal/external conflicts with in the characters, Mama gains knowledge about general difference between her daughters. Their behaviors and actions in certain situation symbolizes how much they value their traditional views and heritage, despite their outer appearance and knowledge—After all the priceless ritual is given in the hands of a superior, who is able to take the traditions and heritage to the next generation .
outgoing, highly educated, believes that they should change their life style as their society advances and live a modernized life or the daughter who is shy and quite but highly value traditional ideas , heritage as much her mother and, lives a simple but old fashion traditional life style. Dee is a matured women who changes her believes and heritage according to her generation’s mind set but Mama is a person from the past generation who finds difficulty understanding Dee’s view point. But Maggie on the other hand does not know anything about how she should view her traditional believes since she has never experienced the outer world. According to her impression it seems like she is brainwashed by Mama’s customs. Even though walker does not specifically express the internal/external conflicts with in the characters, Mama gains knowledge about general difference between her daughters. Their behaviors and actions in certain situation symbolizes how much they value their traditional views and heritage, despite their outer appearance and knowledge—After all the priceless ritual is given in the hands of a superior, who is able to take the traditions and heritage to the next generation .