Rhetorical Analysis of Everyday Use by Alice Walker
In “Everyday Use,” Alice Walker tells the story of a mother’s conflicted relationship with her two daughters. On its surface, “Everyday Use” may seem like a tale of a family falling out due to differences between one another. On a deeper level, Alice Walker is exploring the concept of heritage. “Everyday Use” is set in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s. She uses the principal characters of Mama, Dee, and Maggie to clarify the cultural theme. Mama being the narrator of the story, describes herself as “a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands” who was denied an education due to the social-political dynamics which were imposed on the African American culture during her youth. 'I never had an education myself” After second grade the school closed. Don’t ask me why, in 1927 colored asked fewer questions than they do now.' This implies to the reader that the world her daughters are growing up in now as the story unfolds is different from the one, she was raised during.
Mama takes pride in the practical aspects of her nature; however, her lack of education does not prevent her from having an inherent understanding of heritage based on her love and respect for those who came before her. This is clear from her ability to associate pieces of fabric in two quilts with the people whose clothes they had been cut from. “In both of them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more years ago. Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jarrell’s Paisley shirts. And one teen faded blue piece, about the size of a penny matchbox, that was from Great Grandpa Ezra’s uniform that he wore in the Civil War. Some of the pieces, like those lavender, come from old clothes [Grandma Dee’s] mother handed down to her,” [Mama] said, moving up to touch the quilts. The quilts have a special meaning to Mama. When she moves up to touch the quilts, she is reaching out to touch the people whom the quilts represent. The quilts are not, however, the only device Walker employs to show Mama’s inherent understanding of heritage. Walker also uses the butter churn to show Mama’s connection with her family, for a moment in my hands. You didn’t even have to look close to see where the hands pushing the dasher up and down to make butter had left a kind of sink in the wood. In fact, there were a lot of small sinks; you could see where thumbs and fingers had sunk into the wood. 'It was a beautiful light-yellow wood, from a tree that grew in the yard where Big Dee and Stash had lived.' When Mama takes the dasher handle in her hands, she is symbolically reflecting upon those who came before her and how they used the dasher in everyday use. Her appreciation for the dasher and the quilts is based on the love for the people who made and used them.
Mama’s daughter Dee has a much more superficial idea of heritage. She is portrayed as bright, beautiful, and self-centered. Walker uses Dee to symbolize a movement, which was characterized by bright and beautiful people who were vocal and aggressive in their demands during the time in which the story takes place. Many of them spoke disparagingly about their ancestors and adopted certain aspects of culture in their speech and dress. Mama’s descriptions of Dee portray her as this type of person to the reader. 'Dee wanted nice things. A yellow organdy dress to wear to her graduation from high school; black pumps to match a green suit she’d made from an old suit somebody gave me. She was determined to stare down any disaster in her efforts. Her eyelids would not flicker for minutes at a time. “Often I fought off the temptation to shake her. At sixteen she had a style all her own: and knew what style was.” Mama seems to admire her daughter’s determination, but because it is motivated by selfishness, she wants to snap her to her senses to see that there is more to the world than just these nice things that she has envisioned for herself. Mama’s feelings toward Dee are also expressed through her attitude toward Dee’s new name. When Dee tells Mama that she has changed her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, Mama is clearly disappointed, but immediately starts referring to her as “Wangero” in her narration. Mama does not immediately understand the serious implications of Dee’s name change and is able to make light of it.
Mama’s use of the name “Wangero” does not, however, imply respect for Dee’s choice. There is a definite tone of sarcasm in Mama’s voice, reinforced by her comment “I’ll get used to it”. As Mama continues the narrative, she gradually changes Wangero to “Dee (Wangero),” and in her final reference simply refers to her as Dee. These transitions are indicative of Mama’s change in attitude toward Dee. But as Dee’s selfish and disrespectful actions are displayed throughout the later parts of the story, Mama loses her sense of humor and finally drops “Wangero” altogether. These personality traits, along with her style of dress, establish that dee is very different from mama and Maggie in not only her ideologies but also in the way she displays herself.
Alice Walker solidifies this when mama the narrator reveals in the past about Dee. 'She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks’ habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. She washed us in a river of make-believe and burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn’t necessarily need to know. Pressed us to her with the serious way she read, to shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits, we seemed about to understand.' Here Mama is pointing out that Dee sees herself as belonging to a higher intellectual and social class than Mama and Maggie. In her eyes, they should feel honored by her presence. The audience is then presented with more of how the ideologies of mama, Maggie, and Dee are different from one another when after dinner Dee takes the churn top and dasher and, after “rifling” through the trunk, attempts to take the quilts. It is in this point of the story where Alice walker has her overall message of heritage on full display by elaborating on Dee's ideology regarding heritage. 'After dinner, she blatantly decides to take the churn dasher, even though she has no knowledge of its history'. Dee wants to make the lid of the butter churn into a centerpiece for her table, and She wants to hang the quilts on the wall. She wants, in short, to do what white people do with the cunning and quaint implements and products of the past. Wangero fails to see the mote in her own eye when she reproaches her mother and sister for a failure to value their heritage. 'She, who wants only to preserve that heritage as the negative index to her own sophistication'. Earlier, Dee had expressed her fear that Maggie would “probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use”.
It is clear from Maggie’s statement that her “everyday use” of the quilts would be as a reminder of her Grandma Dee. While Mama is proud of her daughter’s success and envies her ability to “look anyone in the eye,” she is uncomfortable with Dee’s selfish, egotistical nature. Just as Wangero had rejected “Dee,” Mama now rejects Wangero. Alice walker's overall message to the audience is to not only define heritage, but she also wants the reader to understand that an African-American is both African and American, and to deny one's heritage is disrespectful of one's ancestors and, consequently, harmful to one's self-identity.
Works Cited
- Walker, Alice, and Barbara Christian. Everyday Use. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Print
