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Maggie has the knowledge of a promised and very scant dowry. Mama has promised her the quilts that have been handed down in the family and those which they had themselves made. The promise was genuine and meaningful as quilts are important to a new bride as they can protect and keep one warm. Yet, Dee assumes that whatever she asks for will be granted, so she requests the quilts from Mama, who refuses her, request and reasserts her promise to Maggie. The whole argument is directed by the stoicism of the mother, the surrender of the Maggie and the brutish manner in which Dee assumes the right to have the quilts, as she is enlightened and Maggie is not, and she will give them their proper place, while Maggie will likely simply use them as quilts.
The quilts mean a great deal to Maggie, as to her they mean home, comfort and the love and companionship of her mother. Dee on the other hand assumes that to Maggie they are simply utilitarian...
Mama gives the quilts to Maggie, because Maggie has never had anything, she has never been given a gift and she deserves to have what she was promised. Dee is entirely wrong in her assertion that Maggie cannot appreciate her heritage. For Maggie, heritage is close at hand, it is not something that must be displayed and shown to the world, as a point of pride, it simply is. Maggie's memories of loss and hardship are even more real than Dee's as Maggie has no pretense for setting herself apart from the world by displaying the cruelty that the world has offered her. While Dee on the other hand through her dramatic display of African dress and words, and her desire to possess and control, items that give the world proof of her historical hardships is entirely separated from her heritage and her history.
Works Cited
Walker, Alice Everyday Use
Works Cited
Walker, Alice Everyday Use
"(1991) Anything We Love Can be Saved: A Writer's Activism, (Walker 1997) is a collection of 33 speeches, letters and previously published pieces with the consistent theme of the political merging into the personal in her life. Michael Anderson, reviewing this book and mentioning a piece that Walker said "remains unwritten," states that "Ms. Walker's admirers can rejoice that her silence did not extend to book length." Pettis remarks that the
'" (Walker, 236) The making of the quilts is another symbol for the way in which the daughter and the mother differ in their views of tradition. The quilt is also strongly associated with the African-American tradition and therefore all the more significant. While the mother and Maggie are capable of actually making the quilts, Dee or Wangero is obsessed with having them and possessing them as a symbol of her
..] I suffered and raged inside because of this." With her beauty destroyed, the now six-year-old Walker gave up hope that the world would still prove as open and bountiful as it had for her life up to that point, and her inner sense of worth and beauty crumbled away just as her exterior beauty was eroded away by the sudden entrance of the BB and the slow buildup of
By simply concentrating on connecting with their African heritage many failed to understand that their parents and their ancestors who lived on the American continent in general created a culture of their own that entailed elements belonging both to the African continent and to the American one. Most of the short story is about how Dee struggles to find her personal identity by turning to cultural values. While Dee is
Mama and Maggie's values are simple, their goals mundane yet uplifting at the same time. Dee, on the other hand, is full of spunk and ambition. She views the quilts as if they were anthropological artifacts, remnants not of her grandmother but from some lost civilization. Dee, renamed Wangero, wanted to hang the quilts on the wall like art. Her desire parallels her creative streak and her wacky way
Alice Walker The Image of the Quilt: Alice Walker's the Color Purple and "Everyday Use" What makes us who we are? A large part of our current lives are derived from the lives of those who came before us. Our family traditions and heritages are an important part of ourselves. In Alice Walker's The Color Purple and "Everyday Use," cloth, quilts, and the act of sewing are highlighted as a way