Everyday Use人物分析

Character Analysis of the Everyday Use

王鹤澎

英语1201

20120290

2014/10/25

Character Analysis of the Everyday Use

Tony Wang 20120290 Alice Walker, the splendid writer who main focused at American Women literature and black literature, wrote the Everyday Use at the beginning of the twentieth century. As one of the most famous short story of Alice Walker, Everyday Use represent the conflicts of three black women. And this story became classic work in American literature because of its profound ideological level and perfect artistic quality.

There are three main character in the story. The Mama, a laborious woman; Dee, eldest daughter of Mama, who is beautiful, smart and well-educated; Maggie, in contrast with her sister, who is ugly, cowardice and self-abased. The writer used symbolize, metaphor and others rhetorical devices express the different attitudes of Negros when their culture was impact by a stronger one.

Dee is the symbol of Black Culture Nationalism Activity. In the 1960s, some African-American started the Black Culture Nationalism Activity, which aimed at deny the unfair culture position and find Negro’s native culture. In the colonialist cultur e blacks become inferior nation, so Dee want to change this situation. She thought she love the everyday use of her family, changed her name which she thought was white imposed to her, worn the native clothes (in her mind) of black. However, she still cannot find her position in her mind. In fact, Dee was the woman who wandered between the first world and the third world. She want to enter the main world with her dignity and honor of Negros, but fell into the marsh of confuse. Faced with westerners, she cannot say a word or in accordance with her native culture. In the other hand, faced with her family, she had superiority complex strangely. Because she abandoned one important part of her native culture stage –Negros’ humiliating history. She was not grieved when the house, which was full of her fam ily’s suffering, burned into ash; she ignore the feeling of her younger sister Maggie, the symbol of African-American’s suffering; she even want to rap the qui lts which is the only thing Mama gave to Maggie. She thought she was finding the root of African culture, but what she did was deviate from her original intention. At all, Dee is only a perplexed woman infected by crowd mentality. She didn’t know that the right attitude to culture heritage is use it as everyday use and renew it continually.

Poor Maggie is the youngest daughter of this complicated family. It seemed that all the pains were concentrated into her body. She endured three different kind of pain. The first is the pain caused by slavery system. The Mama used this kind of sentence to describe Maggie - “Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind of him?”. The rich man is the representation of white. Mama‘s meaning is that the scars o f Maggie were given by white, in other word, slavery system. The second pain is the ignorance and deny of Black Culture Nationalism Activity. The reader of Everyday Use can easily attracted by the big difference between Dee and Maggie. This difference can make readers realized the conflict of blacks’ nowadays wander and the heavy history. Some radical black nationalists feel shame because of the exist of “Maggies”, they want hide this history stage totally. This irresponsible action is no other than the murder of African-Americans’ native culture. The third pain was caused by Mama’s intentional dodge. Mama is one of the most classic Negro women, also the representation of common black people. This kind of dodge can be realized as the dodge of

common black people to their suffering history. But at the end of story Mama still insisted to give the quit to Maggie. This can indicate that the common blacks still stand at the right position when they facing their culture. This is the choice of Mama, also Alice Walker.

Mama is the most complex character in this short story. To Dee, she was pound of her ability and appearance. Mama wandered Dee can give herself and her family a better life. But she was disappointed by Dee’s performances. This also means that the common were disappointed by Black Culture Nationalism Activity. Mama did a lot effort to know De e’s new life. But when Dee wanted to rap the everyday use of her family to find so-called native culture, Mama was totally despair. To Maggie, Mama’s inchoative attit ude was dodge and ignore intent deliberately. When Maggie said that “How I look, Mama?” Mama just said “Come out into the yard. ”and diverge the talk. Because Mama was helpless when she faced Maggie, just as black common were helpless when talking about th e suffering history. At last, one sentence of Maggie disenchant Mama. “I can member Grandma Dee without the quilts.” This words shocked Mama deeply, let her knew who was the best heir of the quilts and the whole family. And this behavior also means that the black common found their sense of culture belonging at last – only the people who can afford the whole history of blacks can be the heirs of the black culture.

Alice Walker gave different symbol to these character. Just as one old saying in China, true gold will find its price. Alice Walker leaded black public face up to their true culture, criticized the error occurred when black nationalists looking forward to their native culture root. She gave this activity a new beginning.