Everyday Use by Alice Walker - Analysis

Themes and remarks

·       Efficiency, resourcefulness and self-reliance

“In real life I am a large, big.boned woman with rough, man.working hands. In the winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls dur.ing 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.”

·       Mother ashamed in the context of her daughter

“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. Johnny Carson has much to do to keep up with my quick and witty tongue.”

·       Admiration of her daughter in the face of whites

“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 fumed in whichever way is farthest from them. Dee, though. She would always look anyone in the eye. Hesitation was no part of her nature.”

·       Maggie is pathetic

Quote above

·       Centrality of skin color – Dee’s is lighter-skinned than Maggie’s, with nicer hair and a fuller figure

·       Inferiority-superiority relationship between sisters

·       Different kinds of self-reliance; that of the mother, a survival one, and Maggie's, creative flair.

·       Almost divine admiration of Dee

“But even the first glimpse of leg out of the car tells me it is Dee. Her feet were always neat.looking, as if God himself had shaped them with a certain style.”

·       Dee is ashamed of her past

“She stoops down quickly and lines up picture after picture of me sitting there in front of the house with Maggie cowering behind me. She never takes a shot without mak' ing sure the house is included. When a cow comes nibbling around the edge of the yard she snaps it and me and Maggie and the house.”

·       Dee is selfish and thoughtless

“Then she gave a sigh and her hand closed over Grandma Dee's butter dish. "That's it!" she said. "I knew there was something I wanted to ask you if I could have." She jumped up from the table and went over in the corner where the churn stood, the milk in it crabber by now. She looked at the churn and looked at it.”

Style and devices

·       Analogies

“Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him? That is the way my Maggie walks.”

·       Figurative language

“A dress so loud it hurts my eyes.”