“Everyday Use”

Dee, the prettier daughter with the nice hair, a full figure and cute feet, was coming home for a visit.  At age 16, her Mama remembers, Dee had “a style of her own: and she knew what style was” (71).  Dee read aloud to her family, her mama and her sister Maggie, and to her few friends, whether they wanted to hear it or not, and had a “faultfinding power” that she readily exercised along with a “scalding humor that erupted like bubbles in lye” (72).  It was not a secret that she hated the three room house with no real windows where she grew up, and maybe even hated her sister and mother, but Dee went away to college on money her mother and the church raised, and now after having “made it” she was coming home for a visit.

As a child Dee wanted nice things.  Now with a new name, Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, she snapped lots of pictures of the house with her Polaroid and she wanted the nice things, the handmade folk art items that Mama and Maggie had.  She wanted the hand-carved butter churn top and wooden dasher, even though she didn’t remember which uncles had carved them, and even though someone would need to carve new ones before the butter could be churned again.  And she wanted the hand-stitched quilts with the old fabric pieces, including the quilt stitched with a small piece of Great Grandpa’s civil war uniform. 

However, the quilts had been promised to her sister, Maggie.  “But they’re priceless!  Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts!  She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use,” said Dee (Wangero).  Mama replied, “I reckon she would, God knows I been saving ‘em for long enough with nobody using ‘em.  I hope she will!” (75). Maggie was standing in the doorway. “She can have them, Mama,” she said, like somebody used to never winning anything, or having anything reserved for her…” (76).  This was a pivotal moment for Mama, and she felt like “something hit me in the top of my head and ran down to the soles of my feet. Just like when I’m in church and the spirit of God touches me and I get happy and shout. I did something I never had done before: hugged Maggie to me, then dragged her into the room, snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangero’s hands and dumped them into Maggie’s lap” (76).

Although Dee claims that Mama and Maggie don’t understand their heritage, it is really Dee who doesn’t understand. Dee only wants the quilts and carved items because of their value and because she wants beautiful things.  Maggie and Mama understand about the time and care that family members put into making the useful, everyday items of beauty and the love that was in every stitch and scrap.  Love does no good stored away; it is best enjoyed for everyday use.

In this story, Mama is the central character because she is “the one who must deal with the plot complications and the central crisis of the story” (90).  Dee is the “round” (55) character because we know the most about her personality, from both her actions and from what Mama conveys to us. Maggie is a “flat” character, with “only one outstanding trait or feature, or at most a few distinguishing marks” (55).  Maggie is not pretty or bright and ever since the house fire that left her arms and hands badly scared she walks “chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle” (71). The other flat character is Dee’s short, stocky companion, with “hair all over his head a foot long and hanging from his chin like a kinky mule tail” (72).

Works cited

Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing (4^th).  Eds. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. Boston: Pearson, 2012. 69-76. Print.