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Running head: THEMATIC ESSAY 1

THEMATIC ESSAY 2

Alice Walker's Theme on Culture and Heritage in Everyday Use

The value and preservation of culture and heritage of African American serve as the cornerstone theme expressed by Alice Walker in her short story, “Everyday Use.” The story seeks to show the importance of having an identity and sense of belonging in a particular society. As a result, Alice uses the story of a woman and her two children. The value of culture and heritage plus its significance in the society is demonstrated by the mother, Mama, and the daughter's Maggie and Dee. The story’s events took place in the 1960s. It is the period where some black nationalists’ movements started to take shape. The story is narrated from the mama’s standpoint since she looks at how DEE joins the black nationalist and Maggie’s perception of their cultural origin. A clear line of difference is seen between these two girls outlook on their heritage and culture. 

According to Dee, heritage is a thing of the past. It is through aestheticization and nostalgia that distance the past from the present (it implies changing the form of something to another thing like maybe a piece of art and thus removing some of its significance). We see Dee neglecting some of the family’s heritage and culture, especially those from the immediate past but are still exercised in their present family. As a result, while on the farm with her mother and her sister, she disdains their continued use of family heirlooms, as well as their ancestral house. In her bliss when their home ravaged, Dee expresses her displeasure towards this immediate past, and after joining college, she started abandoning her home, as well as lack of interest in learning the family skill of sewing. Funny thing, she started admiring an African heritage which she shallowly knows about, one that came before her family ancestry in the United States plus the history enslavement. By referring herself “Wangero” an African name, she started living to their heritage and culture where she started changing her mode of dressing and hairstyle. When she became an adult and returned home, she started behaving like Africans who distance themselves from the immediate past. She started taking everything of their family’s past as imaginary where she started keeping photographs of the house and family, changing them into artistic images and goes on to take family heirloom – she well used butter, and her hand sewed grandmother’s quilt to use them as house artefacts and decorations. She did not want to live with her family who glorifies past while she sees them as memorabilia with no true meaning to her present real life. 

Generally, this distanced and imagined Walker criticizes view of heritage. She delineates Dee's curious, aestheticized vision of her family their as yet living traditions as chilly, elitist, and terrible. Mom dislikes Dee for her attempts to get their way of life immovably before, and Dee's ugliness in this respect can be found in the manner in which she snickers at and looks down on Maggie for her appreciation of the family ancestry. In addition, Walker recommends that Dee's perspective on heritage is misinformed and ignorant. For example, Dee accepts that she is named after white "oppressors," when in reality, she is named after her beloved Aunt Dicie.

Mother and Maggie, then again, epitomize the elective perspective on a heritage that Walker proposes—one in which culture is a part of regular day to day existence, fluid and continually being added to and changed. Mother and Maggie have no advanced education or information on Africa, yet they do value their progressively immediate roots: their home, their family treasures, their customs. Maggie would put the quilts Dee perceives as a show of artistry as “ordinary use” objects where she uses them as bed covers according to their original destined purpose. Since Dee abandoned their family sewing skills, Maggie learned from her grandmother intending to maintain and preserve their family heritage and customs. 

Mama dismisses Dee’s idealized perspective on heritage by declining to give the blankets to Dee and as opposed to handling them to Maggie and opted to connect with the family history that is alive and that which will continue to develop. However, one might think that having Dee exposed to education and knowledge about African roots, makes it quite difficult for Mama and Maggie to drop and separate with their family history making their connection with immediate past more natural and critical than Dee. Therefore, Dee's allegation that Mama doesn't "comprehend" their heritage rings as harshly ironic since Walker has clarified that Dee is the one distant from her family's lifestyle.

To summarize, Walker utilizes imagery, character change and improvement to pass on her feelings concerning culture and heritage. Her viewpoints about these two ideas point towards the importance of maintaining and respecting the rich worth of family and customs. The symbols of runs, butter churns, quilts and the benches are a portrayal of the history of African Americans. Likewise, they are things that happen in the everyday existences of these individuals, which further fortify the significance of protecting individuals' history.

References 

Christian, B. T. (1994). Alice Walker:" Everyday Use. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP.