After all, what is culture but what is home to us, just as Mrs. Walker, Alice. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Longman, Work Cited Walker, Alice. Make LSC part of your story. Mama reveals that she had promised Maggie the quilts. But Mama hopes that Maggie does, indeed, designate the quilts for everyday use. Dee says that the priceless quilts will be destroyed. Mama says that Maggie knows how to quilt and can make more. Maggie shuffles in and, trying to make peace, offers Dee the quilts.
When Mama looks at Maggie, she is struck by a strange feeling, similar to the spirit she feels sometimes in church. She tells Dee to take one or two of the other quilts. Mama and Maggie watch the car drive off, then sit in the quiet of the yard until bedtime.
SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. Character List Mama Maggie Dee. Themes Motifs Symbols. Important Quotes Explained. Alice Walker and Everyday Use Background. Raised by her mother in a traditional and simple manner, her personality and habits were shaped correlatively from an early age on. In the story, her character serves the purpose of elucidating the intensely distinct standpoints towards culture between her and her sister. Clues about the role distributions are found in Walker's physical descriptions of the characters.
None of these things are particularly glamorous, but it is Walker's intention to show that through her heritage the mother possesses skills of her predecessors.
These abilities make her tough and independent. Maggie, the daughter at home, is shy and scared and remains by her mother's side as an obedient shadow. As well as her mother, she is not physically attractive or stylish. However, by helping her mother in their daily life, she becomes accustomed to using old hand- made tools from her ancestors and therewith learns their history. His name was Henry, but they called him Stash. Maggie and her mother are the ones who truly appreciate the treasures that carry the memories and traditions of earlier family members.
They symbolize the connection betwe en generations and the heritage that passed between them in their frugal but contented life. Dee, on the other hand, is described as being light skinned, with nice hair and a full figure.
Being the only person in the family who ever attended college she still is narrow-minded and materialistic. Her conception of culture lies in tangible things that depict her heritage, i. The day she finally returns home to visit her family, her first thing to do is taking Polaroid pictures of her family and their house.
On every shot she makes sure the house is visible in the background 11 , which confirms the assumption that Dee fails to understand that material things do not carry the real cultural heritage. It represented both a conclusion to the decade's civil rights movement and a reaction against the racism that persisted despite the efforts of black activists.
Black Americans started to seek their cultural roots in Africa, without knowing too much about the continent and its history. Alice Walker, on the other hand, had lived in Africa long enough to see the difference between the reality there and the Africa praised by the black population. In the story, Dee is portrayed as the perfect example of the black student seeking for an African backround.
Once she discovers the trend of glorifying African culture roots, she quickly adapts to it and attempts to milk her own heritage for all its artistic and monetary worth. This stands in conflict with her former disposition for she had despised her black roots when she was still living together with her family as she blamed her heritage for their poor lifestyle and living conditions Evidently, she has chosen her new name to express solidarity with her African ancestors and to reject the oppression implied by the taking on of American names by black slaves This again clarifies her attitude towards culture and heritage, as she wants to deny her history by taking on a different name.
She continually criticized the tendency among African Americans of trading in their names for African names that do neither embody any personal history nor relate to persons they know. The first name Wangero, for example, could resemble a Kik uyu name, a small people in Kenya.
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