Everyday Life

Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” relates the story of an accomplished, young African-American woman named Dee returning to her humble roots. The story, told by Dee’s mother (known simply as “Mama”) provides little room for sympathy for Dee, with an emphasis on the plight of Mama and Dee’s disfigured sister, Maggie. Only when one reads some of Walker’s biographical information can one determine the reason for this slanted perspective and truly understand the sentiment behind this short story. In my opinion, this story says more about Walker’s feelings towards her own choices in life than about anything else.
Alice Walker was born into a poor family, daughter of a sharecropper and a maid. As a child, she was struck in the eye by a pellet, blinding her permanently. When she grew older, Walker attended college, eventually marrying a lawyer and becoming a poet. In the story, there are many parallels between Walker’s life and several of the characters’ situations. For example, Maggie, much like Walker herself, was disabled by no fault of her own. Walker describes Maggie with the empathetic knowledge of somebody who has felt the same pain:
“Have you ever seen a lame animal …sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him? That is the way my Maggie walks. She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground”(¶ 9)
In the story, however, there is also a sinister insinuation that Dee herself started the fire because of her own hate for the house. Perhaps Walker is letting out some of the anger she feels toward the brother who shot her with the pellet gun? We will never know.
The most interesting facet of Walker’s story, however, is the representation of Dee. Dee is the accomplished college graduate who returns home, carrying pretensions of her own culture and what it means to her. For example, Dee has changed her name to “Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo” and wants to have some of her grandmother’s old quilts for mere decoration. Dee is also portrayed as an outsider, as being not part of the “real” family. The reader can see this aloofness in Dee’s dialogue: “You ought to try to make something of yourself, too, Maggie. It’s really a new day for us. But from the way you and Mama still live you’d never know it” (81). Dee’s “cultural awareness” is another source of curiosity. Her comment that Maggie would “put the quilts to everyday use” (66) makes us laugh at her supposed intellectual superiority. This blatant mockery makes me appreciate Walker’s self-deprecating humor; she is poking fun at herself 30 years ago, full of arrogance and disdain.
To me, the narration by Mama plays a very significant role in the story as a part of Walker’s life. It is almost as if Walker is trying to imagine her mother’s own reaction to Walker’s return home after making something of herself. Through Mama’s eyes, we see flaws in Dee such as her superficiality, selfishness, and feeling of self-superiority. Talk about some awful alliteration. Because of Mama’s perspective, the reader is offered a rather biased viewpoint on Maggie and Dee; invariably, the reader sides with Maggie. In my opinion, this prejudice reflects Walker’s own regret at leaving behind her family and friends and the guilty belief that her mother felt betrayed by her success. In order to highlight this alienation from the family, Mama even refers to Dee by her “new” name: “I did something I never had done before: hugged Maggie to me, then dragged her on into the room, snatched quilts out of Miss Wangero’s hands and dumped them into Maggie’s lap”(76).
In “Everyday Use”, Alice Walker paints a literal portrait of her own life, shrouded in character names and descriptions. While Maggie represents her simple, scarred childhood, Dee represents her evolution into a social creature, someone who has “made something of themselves”. At the same time, the reader realizes something else: that Walker is not totally content with her change, with her becoming the “Dee” in her own life. Part of her wants to become Maggie again: simple, innocent, and truly loved by her mother. (707)