Everyday Use by Alice Walker

"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker

A Short Story Criticism

Alice Walker is a prominent African-American author who uses her art to depict the struggles of members of her race, especially those of the females. In her short story "Everyday Use" Walker weaves together a story about African heritage and its role in one family's life. The reader is introduced to the women in the family, Mama, whose eyes the story is told through, and her two dramatically different daughters, Maggie and Dee. Walker uses detailed character and setting description to colorfully show how each member of the family relates to and portrays their heritage. Walker is able to vividly accomplish this by drawing upon her own upbringing and trials and tribulations as an African American female in the mid to late twentieth century. It is clear that Walker uses her own experiences and feelings on African heritage to develop the characters and setting in "Everyday Use".

This story takes place in a small, rural southern area. Through Mama's eyes the reader is shown the family's house and yard, as well as all of the family heirlooms covering the grounds. All of these things are factors of the story's setting and relate directly to the family's heritage. Through this setting a feeling of tradition and home is created that seems particular to this family, especially to Mama. Mama and her daughters are a poor family who never had much and do not expect much from life. Their family house consists of "three rooms...the roof is tin....there are no real windows, just some hole cut in the side with rawhide holding the shutters up on the outside" (Walker, 90).

Walker also highlights the fact that all of the household items that are used for everyday chores have been in the family for generations. While some of the items may seem trivial and unimpressive to an outsider, these items signify all that this family's heritage is about. They have always worked hard for what they have and value everything for its worth, no matter how big or small that worth may be. It is easily seen how Walker's own childhood "in small rural town of Eatonton, Georgia, where she was the youngest of eight children of impoverished sharecroppers plays a role in shaping the way she depicts this underprivileged family (LaBlare 231). Walker has a special, personal interest in the social conditions that affect family relationships (LaBlare 232). She pulls from her own individual knowledge of growing up part of a poor family in the south to paint a picture of this specific family that is very clear to the audience, one that pulls you in and feels as though everything is unfolding right before you eyes.

The single most important aspect of setting as it applies to heritage in "Everyday Use" is the description and placement of items found about the house and yard. The quilts that are in question at the end of the story are in Mama's house and both daughters expect to receive them. They are simple quilts made out of "scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more years ago. Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jarell's paisley shirts. And one teeny faded blue piece....that was from Great Grandpa's uniform that he wore in the Civil War" (Walker, 93). To most they would seem like ratty old quilts, but they are a walking family tree to Mama. There is a little bit of everyone she loves in these quilts. After reading the way Walker describes the quilts and the flood of feelings they arise in the characters it is realized that these are more than just quilts; but rather they symbolize the strength and endurance that the women of this African American family have confronted and dealt with throughout the generations.

Alice Walker believes that heritage is not merely "the grand sweep of history or artifacts created as it is the relations of people to each other, young to old, parent to child" (LeBlare 230). In "Everyday Use" Walker demonstrates her ideals by creating interactions between the characters that are unique to their own personalities. Walker sets up the story by giving a brief character description of each woman, with both a physical and emotional perspective. Walker especially takes time and care to create and show the major differences found between Dee and Maggie. By creating these differences between the sisters Walker is able to set up two differing points of view on heritage. Dee is the older sister, the one who has the body, looks and brains. She seems very confident not only in herself, but in her opinions of everyone who surrounds her. She has left the small town she was raised in and feels she is worldly, as though she has seen and done it all. Maggie is her exact opposite. While Walker describes Dee beautifully, Maggie is portrayed as "a lame animal...chin on chest, eyes on ground...homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs" (Walker 88-89).

On a physical stand point one would tend to lean towards Dee as being the fortunate sister. Yet as the characters are developed further and a better sense of their personalities is made