Everyday Use Alice Walker Essay Example For Students

Everyday Use Alice Walker Essay Art is used, expressed and described in many different ways. With her story Everyday Use Alice Walker uses quilts to symbolize art and discovers that art should be a living, breathing part of culture it arose from, rather than a frozen timepiece to be observed from a distance. Although the story focuses on a symbolic piece of art it also involves the way in which an individual understands his present life in relation to the traditions of his people and culture. From the beginning of the story we see that Mrs. Johnson, who describes herself as a large, big boned woman with rough, man-working hands (678). She enjoys a rugged farming life in the country and after her first house burned down moved to a small, tin-roofed house surrounded by a clay yard in the middle of a cow pasture. She has two daughter Maggie who is much like herself living at home and uneducated, and Dee who was destined to go out into the world to see change and to be changed. Although Mrs. Johnson had two daughters, she places Dee her oldest daughter on a pedestal. She dreams about being reunited with Dee on a television talk show. She is the protagonist and is in conflict with her older daughter Dee. Mrs. Johnson also knows and loves each one of her daughters equally. Dee is lighter than Maggie is, with nicer hair and fuller figure (Walker 90). She changes her name from Dee to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, thinking it makes her more intelligible about her heritage. But to her mother, the name Dee is symbolic of family unity. Maggie is opposite of Dee. According to Mrs. Johnson, she is not an attractive girl: Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, 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 ground. (Walker 90) Dee and Maggie have two different ways of viewing their heritage. Dee believes they should preserve family heirlooms, the quilts, by placing them on display. To Dee, artifacts such as the benches or the quilts are strictly art objects. It never occurs to her that her family made these things because they could not afford to buy them. Dee believes she has more sophisticated perception of her culture than Maggie. Maggie represents the old and traditional African-American heritage. She knows more about her heritage than Dee. She also appreciates the hard work and triumphs her family has gone through. True heritage lies within the hearts of everyday love and respect for the past. Because selfishness and superficiality motivate Dees determination about heritage, Mrs. Johnson believes Maggie deserves the quilts and will respect them more.