Character Analysis of the Protagonist in “Everyday Use” Like an onion, the protagonist (mom) in Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use” has many layers to her character. As a single parent the mom has to solely provide the necessities of life for her kids, being the only emotional support and dealing with daughters whom are both needing their mother’s wisdom. Her daughter Dee/Wangero, an exceptionally beautiful young woman blessed with “her feet …always neat-looking, as if God himself had shaped them with a certain style” (111), is having an identity crisis as well as being used to getting what she wants. These character traits of Dee/Wangero ultimately creates a conflict within the family dynamic. Maggie is the complete opposite of her sister, while Dee/Wangero is beautiful and smart, Maggie is disfigured and simple-minded. Being a single mother, she crosses gender boundaries and works hard in order to provide for her family. Although a man's job is harder, she has physically built for it and describes herself as a " large, big-bone woman with rough, man-working hands" (109). As a single mother, she acquired skills that are usually reserved for a man and takes pride in being able to "kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. work outside all day, [and] [break] ice to get water for washing. One winter she [knocks] a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and hang the meat to chill by nightfall" (109). Although she considers herself to be manly, she still appreciates …show more content…
The layers of details crafted into the characters are so detailed that the readers are easily immersed into the story. The anxiety and hardship of raising two kids while being a single parent are all too real and relatable these days. Not only that, but mix it up with a daughter who is having an identity crisis and another that needs emotional support and you’ve got a mother that has her hands
It’s almost as if through her immersive writing and imagery you can relate to what she’s saying even though you have never experienced it for yourself. The alcoholic freakouts, deteriorating living conditions, brushes with fire at a young age, Setting change, and more. All through the eyes of one author. It really is an
The authors, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, demonstrates how two women growing up together can lead to different point of views. In both stories, there is a woman – Sula in “Sula” and Dee in “Everyday Use” – returning home to find things the way they left them. Sula and Dee’s lives are considered very unconventional in comparison to their towns and families. In the case of Dee, she changed her name because, “I [She] couldn't bear it any longer, being named after people who oppress me." (Walker 1191)
Maggie is also oppressed by society and Dee, and, though to a further degree than her mother, her view of herself attacks her equality compared to the rest of the world. The subject is immediately introduced. The story begins with Maggie and her mother waiting for Dee. They waste their time in order to be available to Dee as soon as Dee
Characterization in “Everyday use” In “Everyday Use” Alice Walker creates the characters of Mom, Maggie, and Dee in order to explore the appreciation and values of African American culture and what it stands for. The story grows around one daughter Dee coming back home to visit her family. As one is introduced to the characters in “Everyday Use”, it becomes noticeable that the two sisters, Maggie and Dee, are very different. Maggie is portrayed as a homely and ignorant girl, while Dee is portrayed as a beautiful and educated woman.
Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo [Dee] is a fascinating character in “Everyday Use” written by Alice Walker. The story is over an African American mother and her two daughters. The story focuses on one daughter, Dee that is coming home to visit her family. She grew up wanting to become a different a person, and she hated how she lived when she was with her mom and sister. Dee is spoiled, tenacious, and ignorant in this short story.
The comparison of characters is something an author allows us to do while reading a story, by telling us about the characters’ looks, their personalities, their lifestyles, and also the traits that may describe a character. “Everyday Use” written by Alice Walker, two characters named Maggie and Dee had a few things in common and many differences from each other. The characters Maggie and Dee, also known as “Wanergo,” are sisters who compete on who inherits the family heirlooms. The story is told from the mother’s (Mama’s) point of view.
In conclusion,Alice Walker used two characters to carry out a deeper meaning of a short story. It showed similarities and differences to my family, and the family in “Everyday use”. Also it show how maggie and Dee are two very different characters. Maggie and Dee didn 't share a bond with each other throughout their,but I am glad my brothers and I
Have you ever not seen eye to eye with your mother? In Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use”, we are shown how many of the choices we make and the things we value create our identity. This story focuses on two characters, mama and her daughter Dee (Wangero), who struggle to see the same way about their heritage. Dee wants the things made by her grandmother, to not admire it as an artifact, but rather to remake it. She wants to take them, and change them to match her lifestyle as it is today.
The short story, Everyday Use, is written by Alice Walker. This short story tells about the narrator, mama, and her daughter Maggie wait for a visit from Dee, mama’s older daughter. Throughout this short story, the reader can see the distraught relationship between mama and Dee. The reader can see how Dee is different than mama and Maggie; she thinks that she knows way more about her heritage than mama and Maggie, when she really does not. In the short story, Everyday Use, Walker uses imagery, symbolism, and point of view to show that heritage can only be understood when one is true to their roots.
Alice Walker wrote what Mama said about Dee or Wangero, “Dee wanted nice things.” Mama describes Dee as a lavish person who is only interested in herself and her fulfilling’s. Dee had changed her name to show that she is not accepting that a “white person” named her ancestors in way, so it can be passed down. Walker describes Mama as someone who is satisfied with what they have. “I will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy yesterday afternoon,” Walker demonstrates how Mama is pleased with nature where her life takes place in.
Maggie in Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use” plays the role of being the nervous and ugly sister of the story, however she is the child with the good heart. Maggie was nervous ashamed of her scars “Maggie was nervous… she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs”. Living in a house with a pretty sister and being the ugly sister with scars could be the reason why she picked up on a timid personality, being ‘ashamed’ of her own skin shaping her in a way that she degraded herself from everybody else. Maggie was not this way before the fire, her mother stated, as it is quoted that she had adopted to a certain walk ever since the fire.
Alice Walker’s Everyday Use (rpt. in Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson, Perrine’s Literature Sound and Structure 11th ed [Boston: Wadsworth, 2012] 166-173) is a short story told by the mother of two daughters, Mama. The story tells the tale of the return of Mama’s oldest daughter, Dee, and the problems that Dee’s return causes for Mama and her youngest daughter, Maggie. This short story includes humor and irony, displays detailed characterization, and portrays a very effective point of view. These three literary elements contribute to this story by giving insight into the past and the true personalities of the characters, and the way the characters have changed over time.
Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” illustrates Dee’s struggle for identity by placing her quest for a new identity against her family’s desire for maintaining culture and heritage. In the beginning, the narrator, who is the mother of Dee, mentions some details about Dee; how she “...wanted nice things… She was determined to stare down any disaster in her efforts… At sixteen, she had a style of her own: and (she) knew what style was.” Providing evidence to the thesis, she was obviously trying exceptionally hard to find for herself a sense of identity. She wanted items her family couldn’t afford, so she worked hard to gain these, and she found a sense of identity from them, but it also pushed her farther away from her family.
Alice Walker was a social activist, born in 1944. She is very popular for her novel “The Color Purple” that was published in 1982. Before that, she wrote “Everyday Use” in 1973. It is a short story about a family that branches out in their own way throughout the years. She shows us that the daughters were being directed into two different pathways.
The story is told from the point of view of their mother, Ms. Johnson, and it is from her that we learn about the difference in the sister’s characters. Dee, who changes her name to Wangero, is outspoken and is the educated sister. Maggie is shy and appears to be ashamed of the burns on her skin. “[Maggie] thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that ‘no’ is a word the world would never learn to say to her” (Walker 6). This is important because, in the end, Dee does not get her way.