Everyday Use Symbolism

The culture of African American quilting is approximately as old as the United States of America. Alice Walker, the author of Everyday Use, contributes quilting to the story, and adds important symbolism and meaning to the story and the plot. In the literary selection, Everyday Use, Alice Walker highlights the story by the use of embellished style and a sense of realism, and the theme of heritage. The story, Everyday Use, is told by the perspective of Mama. She tells the story through the differences between her two daughters, Maggie who is a shy, awkward girl, and her eldest daughter, Wangero (Dee) who is a vibrant, educated young woman. Conflict arises when both daughters wants the traditional African-American their grandmother made.
Walker uses descriptive diction to give a realistic, detailed vision of the characters. “In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man working hands. In the winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day. I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall.” (Walker 50). But, she also includes “But of course all this does not show on television. I am the way my daughter would want me to be: a hundred pounds lighter, my skins like an uncooked barley pancake. My hair glistens in the hot bright lights.” (Walker 52). These statement made by the narrator is significant because it reinforces the authors constant sense of realism throughout the story. Walker also includes, “How long ago was it that the other house burned? Ten, twelve years? Sometimes I can still hear the flames and feel Maggie's arms sticking to me, her hair smoking and her dress falling off her in little black papery flakes. Her eyes seemed stretched open, blazed open by the flames reflected in them” (Walker 53). This adds to the characterization of Maggie, explaining what happened to her that made her into the timid way she is. Walker also relied upon literary techniques in the story. Robert Matunda states that Walker employs phonological processes, patterns of word formation; the syntactical features that Walker uses to negotiate with her readers including, negation, verb-deletion, tense-variation. Walker’s use of these elements give the story a more technical and logical taste for the audience, though still implying a