Everyday Use

Everyday Use by Alice Walker

In Everyday Use by Alice Walker, readers are introduced to Maggie, Dee and their mother. The mother is uneducated and works for the simple lifestyle she has managed for her two daughter. Maggie and Dee could not be more different though. Dee is lovely, educated and fashionable, whereas Maggie is more dull and less attractive like her mother. The whole story is centered around an occasion in which Dee came home to visit. Dee scuffed at the house and insulted her mothers way of living, but then wanted to take family quilts home with her. First off, if someone was so disgusted with her families lifestyle and heritage, why by any means would she be so interested in receiving passed down quilts? Dee is the exact opposite of her family, therefore I don't understand her sudden desire to be apart of family heirlooms. She even is disgusted with her own name, a name in which came from her multiple realities such as her grandmother and aunt.  Dee declares,"I couldn't bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me," (Walker, 177). So her family oppresses her, yet she wants items personally passed down from those oppressors? There is no wonder why her mother stepped in and announced that the quilts belong to Maggie. Maggie has been a loyal child and a respectful child, therefore it would make no sense for the resentful Dee to be granted with such gifts over Maggie. I suspect that the point of this short story is that there is no picking and choosing when it comes to family, one either choosing to appreciate all a family has to give, or disconnects themselves from them entirely.