Everyday Use Heritage Analysis
In Alice Walker’s short story Everyday Use, she bring up many issue such as comparing relationship between heritage and tradition past. The story also question whether or heritage is something one use or something one possess.
To understand heritage, one must have a personal connection of that history, in everyday use Dee do not really have a connection to her heritage so blind by anger of what she does not understand she view her heritage in history as an oppression. In the process she constructed a heritage for herself and reject her real heritage, Dee change her name cause she feel as if her name is not of legacy but the name of her family oppressors so she take on the name of “Wangero Leewamika Kemanjo” (page. 426 25), believes it has …show more content…
more an accurate representation of her African heritage. Her personal views of her real heritage is dead, more of something in the past, rather than as a living ongoing creation.
She desires for the dasher “Aunt Dee’s first husband whittled the dash” (page 427 50), butter churn “She jumped up from the table and went over in the corner where the churn stood, the milk in it clabber by now” (page 427 26) and the family quilts “ after dinner Dee went to the trunk at the foot of the bed and started rifling through it ” ( page 428 55) “sweet as a bird can I have these old quilt?”, Dee don’t see the history in the churn ,dasher, and the family quilt she sees them as artifacts of a lost time, suitable for display but not for everyday use, she set herself outside her own history or heritage.
The family heirlooms are the true tokens of Dee’s (Wangero Leewamika Kemanjo) identity and origins, knows little about the past and the essential facts about how the quilts were made and what fabrics were used to make them, she pretends to be deeply connected to this folk tradition. Her desire to hang the quilts, in a museum like exhibit, suggests that she feels reverence for them but that to her they are essentially foreign, impersonal objects. Mama believe that Maggie should have these quilt not Dee because Maggie will have better use for them. At the end of the story Dee stated that Mama and Maggie do not understand their heritage (page 429, 75), the turn of event it’s actually Dee herself who does not understand her heritage. In Alice Walker’s short story Everyday Use, she bring up many issue such as comparing relationship between heritage and tradition past. The
story also question whether or heritage is something one use or something one possess.
To understand heritage, one must have a personal connection of that history, in everyday use Dee do not really have a connection to her heritage so blind by anger of what she does not understand she view her heritage in history as an oppression. In the process she constructed a heritage for herself and reject her real heritage, Dee change her name cause she feel as if her name is not of legacy but the name of her family oppressors so she take on the name of “Wangero Leewamika Kemanjo” (page. 426 25), believes it has …show more content…
more an accurate representation of her African heritage. Her personal views of her real heritage is dead, more of something in the past, rather than as a living ongoing creation.
She desires for the dasher “Aunt Dee’s first husband whittled the dash” (page 427 50), butter churn “She jumped up from the table and went over in the corner where the churn stood, the milk in it clabber by now” (page 427 26) and the family quilts “ after dinner Dee went to the trunk at the foot of the bed and started rifling through it ” ( page 428 55) “sweet as a bird can I have these old quilt?”, Dee don’t see the history in the churn ,dasher, and the family quilt she sees them as artifacts of a lost time, suitable for display but not for everyday use, she set herself outside her own history or heritage.
The family heirlooms are the true tokens of Dee’s (Wangero Leewamika Kemanjo) identity and origins, knows little about the past and the essential facts about how the quilts were made and what fabrics were used to make them, she pretends to be deeply connected to this folk tradition. Her desire to hang the quilts, in a museum like exhibit, suggests that she feels reverence for them but that to her they are essentially foreign, impersonal objects. Mama believe that Maggie should have these quilt not Dee because Maggie will have better use for them. At the end of the story Dee stated that Mama and Maggie do not understand their heritage (page 429, 75), the turn of event it’s actually Dee herself who does not understand her heritage. In Alice Walker’s short story Everyday Use, she bring up many issue such as comparing relationship between heritage and tradition past. The
story also question whether or heritage is something one use or something one possess.