Alice Walker’s early story “Everyday Use” is clustered around a central image: quilting and quilts. Her use of this metaphor is important to critics because she went on to develop the theme more fully in her later work, especially the novel The Color Purple. Simply put, the quilt is a metaphor for the ways in…
Tag: Everyday Use
Everyday Use by Alice Walker: Symbolism and other Literary Devices
Alice Walker uses several literary devices to examine the themes in the story and to give a voice to the poor and the uneducated. Point of View “Everyday Use” is told in first-person point of view. Mrs. Johnson, an uneducated woman, tells the story herself. The reader learns what she thinks about her two daughters,…
Everyday Use by Alice Walker: Themes
In “Everyday Use,” the contrast between Dee’s beliefs and those of her mother and sister is emphasized by the different values the characters place on some old quilts and other objects in the home. Heritage The main theme in the story concerns the characters’ connections to their ancestral roots. Dee Johnson believes that she is…
Everyday Use by Alice Walker: Characters
Asalamalakim See Hakim-a-barber Grandma Dee Although Grandma Dee, as the Johnson women call her, does not appear in the story, she is a significant presence. Maggie is attached to the quilts because they make her think of Grandma Dee. Thus, although the woman is dead, she represents the cherished family presence that lives on in…
Everyday Use by Alice Walker: Summary
Alice Walker’s modern classic “Everyday Use” tells the story of a mother and her two daughters’ conflicting ideas about their identities and ancestry. The mother narrates the story of the day one daughter, Dee, visits from college and clashes with the other daughter, Maggie, over the possession of some heirloom quilts. The story begins with…