Alice Walker’s Short Story Everyday Use Essay -- essays research paper

Alice Walker’s Short Story â€Å"Everyday Use† In Alice Walker’s short story â€Å"Everyday Use,† tells us a story of two daughters’, Dee and Maggie Johnson, with different ideas about their identities and values. Dee a young woman who, in the course of a visit to the rural home she thinks she has outgrown, attempts unsuccessfully to divert some fine old quilts ,earmarked for the dowry of a sister, into her own hands. Dee is Mrs. Johnson’s oldest daughter, the one who has always been determined, popular, and successful. Maggie is her young sister who was severely burned in the house fire as a child. She is still lives with her mother in poverty, putting â€Å"priceless† objects to â€Å"everyday use.† A similar view is expressed by Houston Baker and Charlotte Pierce-Baker, who writes, â€Å"A scarred and dull Maggie, who has been kept at home and confined to everyday offices, has but one reaction to the fiery and vivacious arrival of her sister.† Dee despises her sister, her mother and the church that helped to educate her. She is selfish, and walker focuses the reader’s growing dislike for the heroine in her indifference to Maggie, the pathetic sister she seems prepared to ignore in a kind of moral triage. Maggie represents the multitude of black women who must suffer while the occasional lucky â€Å"sister† escapes the ghetto. Mama conjectures that: Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, e...