Form and Function in Alice Walker's "Everyday Use"
This essay examines how Alice Walker constructs "Everyday Use" so that its narrative form directly serves its emotional and thematic function. By analyzing the story's non-linear structure, the essay argues that Walker deliberately introduces backstory and character detail before the central quilt episode in order to build reader empathy. Through close readings of key passages—including descriptions of Maggie's injury, the mother's self-portrait, and Dee's estrangement from her roots—the essay demonstrates how the contrast between the two sisters illuminates themes of identity, acceptance, and cultural belonging. The essay concludes that form and function are inseparable in the story's design.
- Introduction: Form Follows Function: Thesis: narrative form serves emotional function
- Building Empathy Through Non-Linear Storytelling: Backstory builds empathy before central conflict
- Character Contrast: Maggie, Dee, and the Mother: Dee's worldliness versus Maggie's provincial hardship
- The Metaphor of Maggie and the Question of Structure: Lame-animal simile and defense of non-linear form
- Acceptance as Theme and Structural Principle: Dee's rejection of upbringing mirrors structural theme
- Conclusion: Form Melded to Function: Form and function are inseparable in the story
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- The essay opens with an extended analogy—Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater—that frames the argument memorably and grounds an abstract claim about narrative form in a concrete architectural example.
- Close reading of specific textual passages (Maggie's lame-animal simile, Dee's projection of values) ties the argument directly to the story's language rather than relying on plot summary alone.
- The thematic and structural analysis are kept tightly linked: observations about narrative technique always circle back to their emotional effect on the reader, keeping the thesis coherent throughout.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The essay demonstrates form-function analysis—the practice of showing how an author's structural choices (here, non-linear narration) are not arbitrary but exist in service of a specific affective or thematic purpose. By asking what would be lost if the story were told linearly, the writer tests the argument against a counterfactual, which strengthens the analytical claim.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with a thesis-anchoring analogy, then traces the story's pre-action backstory as an empathy-building device. It moves through character contrast, evaluates the non-linear structure, connects structural choice to the story's theme of acceptance, and closes with a synthesis. Each paragraph advances from the previous, producing a mostly linear argumentative arc despite discussing a non-linear text.
Introduction: Form Follows Function
"Form follows function" is a tried and true aphorism in architecture as well as in literature. Just as Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater is built to showcase the natural beauty of water — it is literally constructed over a waterfall — a successful short story must be wrought in a way that emphasizes the soul of the story. Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" is a story about many things: family, identity, race, and culture. But at the end of the day, the story's purpose is to have an effect on the reader.
To maximize this effect, Walker's story is told non-linearly, revealing plaintive details of the characters' lives and experiences that appeal to the reader's empathetic sensibilities before the main action takes place. That is to say, if the story had started on page 51 and simply recounted the quilt episode without the details in the backstory, the reader would not be affected in the same way — the episode would feel flat and uninvolving.
Create your account
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.