- How do Dee and the narrator differ in their feelings about being black? What may have contributed to these feelings?
- How does Walker use symbolism to develop conflicts within a black community and family?
- Write the story from either Maggie or Dee's point of view.
Friday, December 9, 2016
"Everyday Use"
Choose one writing prompt and analyzle textual evidence to support.
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The narrator is the mother of Dee in this story so there is definitely some bias. When compared to Maggie, Dee is the beautiful sister. Maggie is burned and considered ugly. The mother has some handmade quilts that she was going to give to Maggie, however, Dee requests that she gets them because Maggie will destroy them. The mother, I think does not realize that the black heritage is disappearing. She doesn't protect the handmade quilts that are rare nowadays like Dee wishes to. The mother I think doesn't believe that black heritage will survive in America and that it will slowly die so she is giving up. Dee is very involved with her culture. She is proud to be black and takes much pride in her heritage. I think that the Mother still takes pride in her heritage, she just doesn't show it due to her believe that black culture will die anyways.
ReplyDeleteInteresting perspective to interpret Dee as wanting to protect the heritage and the mother as believing the heritage as dying. This could be Dee's view. Is the heritage disappearing or is it evolving? Also, think about word choice of destroy. It is a violent, finalizing verb. Is that Maggie's intent? Perhaps distinguish their definitions of heritage.
DeleteHow do Dee and the narrator differ in their feelings about being black? What may have contributed to these feelings?
ReplyDeleteDee and her mother(The narrator) differ vastly in their feelings about being black. Dee looks at her race's past status as slaves with disdain. This is shown by her changing her name to Wangero because she did not want to be named after, "the people who oppress me." The narrator, on the other hand, puts a different spin on things. Rather than looking at her heritage from a race perspective she looks at it from a familial viewpoint. She is not concerned with the plights of her race, but of the history of the family she loves. The difference in these feelings can likely be attributed to the age gap. Dee's generation is from the era of the black power movement where many her age looked at their race's former status with disdain, and often rejected American culture in favor of their racial heritage. In contrast, the narrator is from a generation that grew up in the shadow of slavery as they still had living family members that had experienced it. Their main concern was carving out a place for their families into the world.
What do you mean by the last sentence?
DeleteDee and the narrator’s views on being black differ due to amount of higher education, age, and personal values. It is established early in the story that Dee has a college education, unlike her mother. Dee learned what their heritage meant from an institution and society amidst the Civil Rights Movement, meanwhile her mother learned from living and experiencing it. Dee knows what it means to be black only in the context of the Civil Rights Movement and institutional education and therefore is very uppity towards her mother because she lives in a rural area and from Dee’s point of view, is unaware of the revolution taking place. Dee did not experience the meaning of their heritage (the quilt), because she was not old enough to have the personal experiences with her ancestors who actually lived through the things she presumably learned at college, unlike her mother. Because the narrator had stronger relationships with her ancestors due to her age than Dee, she is able to appreciate the quilt and the heritage of their family from what they truly experienced on a personal level. Dee has a perspective that is detached from personal experience, and gathers her views of heritage from college, and the angst that surrounded the Civil Rights Movement. This is especially exemplified when she changes her name from one that is hereditary, to one that is African, but has no meaning relative to her personal heritage.
ReplyDelete
DeleteIf Dee was not old enough to experience the heritage, then how do we explain Maggie?
Everyday Use, by Alice Walker, portrayed the division in the black community as a result of the rise of Black Nationalism during the Civil Rights Movement. The narrator of the story is a mom of two daughters. She is afraid of her black skin color. Her daughter, Dee, is wildly different. She is proud of her black skin color.
ReplyDeleteIn the beginning of the story the narrator paints a picture of her daughter Dee, who is coming to visit. The narrator loves the daughter even though her daughter never seems to have the courtesy to visit her. The narrator says she dreams of reuniting with her daughter on some TV show with Johnny Carson. She imagines her daughter embracing her. She imagines being the "way [her] daughter would want [her] to be: a hundred pounds lighter, [her] skin like an uncooked barley pancake." An uncooked barley pancake is a light color. It is interesting that the narrator would think her daughter would want her to have a lighter skin color - to be white. I think it is important to note that the this is what the narrator thinks her daughter wants her to be: we as an audience don't know how the daughter actually feels. I think the narrator is the one who is ashamed to be black, even though she essentially blames it on the daughter.
When she imagines being on the TV show she imagines being quick and witty, and that is when she comes back to the real world. Then she regretfully says,
"But that is a mistake. I know even before I wake up. Who ever knew a Johnson with a quick tongue? Who can even imagine me looking a strange white man in the eye? It seems to me I have talked to them always with one foot raised in flight, with my head turned in whichever way is farthest from them. Dee though. She would always look anyone in the eye. Hesitation was no part of her nature(2)."
I think this is a key paragraph, because it illustrates the difference that the daughter and mother have about being black. The mother doesn't think she can be witty because she is black. This is probably because black people during this time in history did not always receive an education. It says that she had to sacrifice a lot in order for her daughter, Dee, to receive an education. She did not think she could be witty because she did not have a very eloquent vocabulary. I think she is looking down on herself. I have met witty people that do not have a very eloquent vocabulary, so I do not think it is a necessity to have an eloquent vocabulary to be witty. Black culture around that time had many of their own words, and many of them probably thought they were witty. I think she is looking down on the language that has come with her black heritage. She also can't see herself looking in the eyes of a white man. I think this showed her fear of white people because of her skin color. I think it also shows that she is ashamed of her skin color. Between her feelings regarding her wittiness and her fear of white people I think it is obvious she is ashamed of her black skin. In contrast, her daughter Dee is not afraid to look at white people. She is not afraid of her skin color, and that is why I think it is the narrator who wishes she was white.
Dee is proud of being black and that is why she changed her name and appearance. She was tired of white people looking down on her, because of her skin color. White people made her feel like she wasn't part of American culture, so she became part of a culture that would accept her- the black nationalist movement.
http://aplitmd.blogspot.com/2016/12/everyday-use.html
How or why is the mother afraid? How/why is Dee proud?
DeleteThe narrator portrays Dee as being proud of being black. I think the narrator however takes more pride in being black Dee almost seems as if she’s trying to appear better than the rest of her family. She doesn’t come and visit very often. When she does come and visit her mom, she is dressed luxuriously; almost as if she’s too good for them. When she wants to take the quilts her grandma stitched together with memories, she wants to preserve them. “‘Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts!’ she said. ‘She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use,’” (Walker.) Dee/Wangero thinks it would be ridiculous if her mother gave the quilts to her sister, Maggie because they’d eventually turn into rags rather than be put on display. Her mother ends up giving the quilts back to Maggie because Maggie doesn’t ‘win’ a lot of things. It made the narrator upset to see Maggie like that and although she usually preferred Dee, at this moment she saw Maggie’s pain. I think this portrays that the narrator takes pride in being black a little more. Black has been connotative with deserving less, receiving bad treatment like slavery, and being unprivileged. Before the quilts, Dee tells her mom that she changed her name to Wangero because she couldn’t stand any longer “being named after the people who oppress me.” Although she was confident in her heritage with her bright yellow dress and her confidence, to me she seemed to want to bury away her heritage. Her mother seemed to cherish it more just by the way they lived. She may not have had as much self-confidence, but being black was more a part of her life. Dee/Wangero goes to Augusta for school and can read. She is exposed to the rest of the world and seems to want that more for herself rather than her black heritage including her name, “Dee”. Her mother, the narrator, most likely ends up giving the quilts to Maggie to further show that she wasn’t letting go of her black heritage, and that Dee/Wangero wasn’t better than her. She showed Dee that she too could be confident and stand up for herself. Although she barely had any schooling herself, she had just as much pride in her.
ReplyDeleteIn the short story Everyday Use by Alice Walker, the most substantial difference between the narrators and Dee’s feelings about their race stems from their family values. Dee has been away at college for a while; during her time at college she became very empowered by information about her “heritage.” It is also made quite apparent that Dee does not have the best relationship with her family back home: Maggie and her mother. However, the mother (narrator) knows their real heritage because she is a key character in their family. She is aware of the origins of Dee’s name because she knew the people that it was passed down unto, personally (well at least the more recent relatives). Dee never had to face the same harsh realities of being black that her mother has. Dee was able to go to college, while her mother never even made it out of grade school. Dee has not had to work as hard as her laborious mother who sees herself more as a “man” because of it. Instead of embracing the culture of her family, Dee adopts an idealized African heritage of bright colors and empowerment. But, she doesn’t truly know Africa, which makes the “heritage” she embraces, empty and false. So, overall, Dee believes her being black gives her empowerment, while her mother embraces heritage through heirlooms and remembering the people who made them. These differences have most likely stemmed from Dee separating herself from her true family by acting superior, while the mother stays at home and works to make a life.
ReplyDeleteHow do Dee and the narrator differ in their feelings about being black?
ReplyDeleteThe narrator is almost embarrassed about being black, which is shown when she talks about wishing she was lighter skinned on the made-up TV show. The narrator doesn't seem to like much of anything about herself, from her man-hands to her size. A lot of the self-hate bases from her daughter, when she thinks about how her daughter would like her to be: thinner, lighter skinned, quick witted, and more social. At the same time, she seems to accept how she is, and how she lives her life.
At first, Dee was also embarrassed about her black background. Maybe not so much the fact that she is black, but her family that she comes from. That is, until it became a fad to embrace her black heritage. She never liked the things that came from her family until it was cool to have old things as decoration. She clearly has the ability to buy these artistic things somewhere, but instead feels the need to take away from her family, which already doesn't have very much to begin with. She ends up wanting to take these quilts made with her grandma's clothes, the same ones she wouldn't take before because they were "out of style". I think that the fact that she changed her name from the generational name to something more from her "heritage" just shows that she is only doing all of this because it is the popular thing to do. If she was really about preserving the black culture, she should have kept her given name, it's been passed from generation to generation, which is way more cultural than some random long name that she recently chose for herself.
1. The narrator acknowledges that she's black, but is not bodacious about it. She lives her life as she wishes, without focusing much on her skin color. "I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands. In the winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day. I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall. But of course all this does not show on television. I am the way my daughter would want me to be: a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake. My hair glistens in the hot bright lights." However, Dee seems extremely focused on her color. She starts to adopt traditional African customs and the culture as a whole, even asking to be called 'Wangero' in this manner.
ReplyDelete"'No, Mama,' she says. 'Not 'Dee,' Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo!'
'What happened to 'Dee'?' I wanted to know.
'She's dead,' Wangero said. 'I couldn't bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me.'"
This is probably because Dee would be perceived as much more attractive than the narrator. We already learned that the narrator is a big black woman who is no stranger to hard labor. In contrast, Dee is much younger and seems fairly pretty. "Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure. She's a woman now, though sometimes I forget." Therefore, it is logical that the narrator, being less attractive and black, would not focus so much on it and just live her life like normal. For Dee though, she is attractive and black, so she is seeking to respect her heritage more and live like a 'traditional' African.