Every Useage

The review of Everyday use

The story “Everyday use” is a about a family and their relationship and conflicts with each other, written by Alice Walker. The story begins with narrator, awaiting the becoming of her daughter, an educated woman who now lives in the city. The story humorously illustrates the differences between Mrs. Johnson and her daughter Maggie, who still live traditionally in the rural South, and her educated, successful daughter Dee.
The first and foremost feature of this article is symbolism. In particular, the contested old quilts are clearly a symbol of the cultural heritage of the black people. And the author use the different attitudes of Dee and Maggie , to reveal their different attitudes towards their heritage as blacks. Secondly, the author also uses lots of short and elliptical sentences.
According to the article, we can see that ‘mama’ is a symbol of the majority of black working women, who is strong but spiritually weak and cherish the tradition. And Maggie, who is docile , timid, and genuine love the black tradition. And for Dee, we can see her superficial love of black tradition, and she is the symbol of the modern black women.
All in all, the story inspires people to look deeper than a simple blanket and find its full meaning. Basically the theme of the story is that heritage is in the feelings and meanings of the people left behind in the objects . This is inherent in the fact that the mother chose to give the quilts, which held the most meaning and value to their family, to Maggie because she actually cared and would use them for their intended purpose instead of squandering them like Dee would have done.