Everyday Use Theme
I will explore the theme of the fictional story by Alice Walker called “Everyday Use” and how the three main characters add to the theme. I see the theme as being about hierarchy and interpersonal relationships between multigenerational women within a family. How mothers, daughters, and sisters interact. The complexities of emotions, also how different generations and cultural changes affect them. Then I will dissect the individual characters and their impact on the theme. First, I look at the character called Mama. She is the first to enter the story, and I believe her to be the protagonist. She is a Black woman with a limited education born in the early 1900’s. As she explains, “I never had an education myself. After second grade the school
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Maggie is a helpful, kind, generous woman who is fearful and hiding from life and sure that people think her scars are hideous. In her childhood she was badly burned when the family home burnt down. Mama Remembers, “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” (Walker 487). This left many scars, inside and out, though she survived inside she died a little. She feels all she has is her family and she loves them, but Dee has an effect on her state of mind. Mama comments about Maggie’s state of mind because of Dee’s pending visit, “Maggie will be a nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe” (Walker 486). She lives in the shadow of her charmed and attractive sister. A sister she would give everything to if she asked. Which she does for the quilts promised to Maggie, as Mama recalls Dee saying, “Can I have these old quilts” (Walker 490), then Mama replied, ”I promised to give them quilts to Maggie, for when she marries John Thomas” (Walker 490), to which Maggie cries, “She can have them, Mama” (Walker 490). That is just like Maggie to sacrifice everything for everyone
Maggie is a helpful, kind, generous woman who is fearful and hiding from life and sure that people think her scars are hideous. In her childhood she was badly burned when the family home burnt down. Mama Remembers, “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” (Walker 487). This left many scars, inside and out, though she survived inside she died a little. She feels all she has is her family and she loves them, but Dee has an effect on her state of mind. Mama comments about Maggie’s state of mind because of Dee’s pending visit, “Maggie will be a nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe” (Walker 486). She lives in the shadow of her charmed and attractive sister. A sister she would give everything to if she asked. Which she does for the quilts promised to Maggie, as Mama recalls Dee saying, “Can I have these old quilts” (Walker 490), then Mama replied, ”I promised to give them quilts to Maggie, for when she marries John Thomas” (Walker 490), to which Maggie cries, “She can have them, Mama” (Walker 490). That is just like Maggie to sacrifice everything for everyone