Everyday Use Family Heritage Analysis

The Importance of a Family’s Heritage Many parents want their children to take their heritage into consideration and respect it. African-Americans deal with their culture very strongly due to their traditional backgrounds. The short story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker includes a mother and her daughters Dee and Maggie who share their own thoughts about the meaning of heritage. The mother is referred as Mama and she waits outside in the yard with her younger daughter Maggie for Dee’s arrival. Mama struggles to get Dee to understand the importance of their family’s legacy. On the other hand, Maggie lives with Mama and is described with personality traits such as a shy young girl. When Dee arrives back home to her family Mama notices that everything
Mama will then continue to provide evidence throughout the story describing why her heritage is considered as a big deal. We can identify the theme of a family heritage in “Everyday Use” by using symbolism, analysis characteristics, foreshadowing, and point of view. While symbolizing the quilts it provides information about a family heritage and how they were handmade by generations of family members. The quilts were made with pride from ancestors wardrobes and creative ideas for the purpose of using them for an everyday use. For instance, in both of them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more years ago. Bits and pieces of Grandma Jarrell’s Paisley shirts. And one teeny faded blue piece, about the size of a penny matchbox, that was from Great Grandpa Ezras uniform that he wore in the Civil War” (847). We can include that women in the African-American culture had unique thoughts of collecting old pieces from family members and turning them into quilts in order to
Walker introduced the quilts to represent the significance of an African-American culture. The mother wanted her children to understand that keeping a family’s heritage is important in an African-American society. A family’s heritage is a main key in life because it is a going on tradition from past ancestors. The theme is represented by Mama and her daughters to get a strong point of view of what some families go through to understand the reputation of growing up with a strong culture. The author shows a family’s close bond and the quilts they share with one another. Walker shares the meaning of an African-American heritage and hopes to get the reader’s attention in understanding the importance of an individual’s background. Heritage is an important concept in today’s society, because it allows us to communicate with our backgrounds. Heritage allows us to understand previous generations and history of where we come