"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker

“Everyday Use” by Alice Walker offers a very interesting perspective of the concept of identity which no other piece in this unit was able to reveal to me to the same level of clarity. After reading the short story, I believe that Walker’s purpose in writing the piece was to convey the idea that heritage and background are permanent aspects of a person’s identity which an individual must embrace rather than reject. However, I quickly learned through Walker’s use of indirect characterization and irony that Dee, or Wangero, never truly loved or embraced her identity or her family, which is ultimately the central conflict within this short story. The fact that Dee never exhibited any pride or love for her family or background is made obvious through the speaker’s comments as to how Dee treated her and Maggie in the past. Dee excluded herself from family events, resented the humble home in which she was raised, carried a constant air of superiority over her mother and Maggie, and was very condescending to her family after they sacrificed a great deal simply to pay for her education. These instances of indirect characterization prove that Dee was never enthusiastic about embracing her humble African American upbringing, and this is particularly symbolic in her rejection of the homemade quilt which the speaker offered her before departing for college in Augusta and fact that Dee chose to change her name to Wangero. Throughout her uprbringing and young adulthood, Dee was absorbed with fashion, but her heritage from a modest African American family was far from fashionable; therefore, Dee was never willing to accept her identity and instead fled from it.

When Dee returns to visit her mother and Maggie for the first time in years, the fact that she is now choosing to embrace her heritage is fairly obvious; however, the reader soon discovers that Dee has not suddenly allowed this passion for her identity to surface due to genuine feelings of pride, but rather because her acceptance of this heritage has now become the popular trend among the members of the community she lives in. Consequently, after years or coldly estranging herself from her family and shunning her true background, Dee now decides to renege on her abandonment of her family and plead for ownership of the family’s most prized heirlooms. Through this central conflict of the story, Walker presents a new perspective of heritage and identity: the idea that heritage is an inherent aspect of one’s identity which is a constant component of one’s being and cannot be abandoned or embraced at random. To clarify this concept, Walker employs irony when, enraged by the fact that the speaker promised to give Maggie the family’s prized quilts that she so desperately wants, Dee argues that, “Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts” (Walker)! Clearly, Dee has never appreciated the quilts for their symbolic importance of the love and background of their family, and yet she has the boldness to claim that Maggie, who has always embraced her heritage, would not appreciate the quilts simply because she would actually use the quilts practically rather than hang them on the wall for decoration. The fact that the speaker and Maggie have always loved their heritage is also revealed in the fact that these two characters have always loved and accepted their home regardless of its condition, whereas Dee did not (this is in response to question 5 on page 182). One who truly respects and embraces their identity will accept the components of their identity regardless of how much popularity or grandeur they carry with them; superficial people like Dee, on the other hand, will only associate themselves with their heritage when doing so is beneficial for their public image. This reality is reflected in the title of the story, “Everyday Use.” Only respectable people like Maggie will acknowledge their heritage and identity every day, (just as Maggie planned to get everyday use out of the quilt”) whereas arrogant individuals like Dee only view their identity as something to be displayed and respected superficially.