Police Discretion

In every family there is sibling rivalry derived from differences of personality. In the story Everyday Use, Maggie and Dee are the prime examples of differences within siblings. Maggie and Dee differ greatly in the characteristics of self-esteem, intelligence, and self confidence.

With each personality there is self-esteem and it carries a person to their success or failure. Maggie, the sister who stays behind to help her mother, inherits low self-esteem from years of not being the pretty sister, always being told no, and giving up her future for her sister to attend college. Dee, on the other hand, becomes the sister with over the top self-esteem. She's the pretty one who always gets her way and is never told the word no by anyone. Both sisters of course have self-esteem but it depicts to be in the categories of really bad or dangerously good. No matter what type of self-esteem each of them has, it gives them their personality.

Secondly, each sister has enormous differences of intelligence. Maggie seems to be the sister who has more of a homemaker mentality. She knows how to cook, how to plant a garden, and how to be a wife. Dee is the sister who has more book sense. She would be the person to speak with perfect English and have a better understanding of the world at large. This separates the sisters by one having a college education and the other completing high school- something that causes issues not only in the story but in the real world also.

Maggie and Dee each have self confidence like every other person in the world but there are differences. Maggie, the quiet sister, has a stepping stool personality. She has no backbone and seems to let anyone trot over her. Dee was totally the opposite. She had her own opinion about everything, very outspoken, and even changed her own name because she didn't want to be called a so called "slave name". Two sisters with these types of self confidence- one is destined to be more successful than the other.

From every sentence and detail out of the story I learned each sister like if they were my own. With all the differences that they possessed, it could divide two people like the Euphrates and the Tigris.