Family Heritage In Everyday Use Essay -- Everyday Use Alice Walker Ess

Family Heritage In prevalent UseIn Alice Walkers Everyday Use, the message slightly the preservation of hereditary pattern, specifically African-American heritage, is very legislate. It is limpid that Walker believes that a persons heritage should be a living, dynamic get off the world of the culture from which it arose and not a frozen timepiece plainly to be observed from a distance. There atomic number 18 two main approaches to heritage preservation depicted by the characters in this story. The narrator, a middle-aged African-American woman, and her youngest daughter Maggie, ar in agreement with Walker. To them, their family heritage is everything around them that is elusive in their everyday lives and everything that was involved in the lives of their ancestors. To Dee, the narrators oldest daughter, heritage is the past - something to butt on or hang on the argue, a mere artistic, aesthetic monitor lizard of her family history. Walker depicts Dees view of family he ritage as being one of disorderliness and lack of understanding. The differences in attitude that Dee and Maggie portray about their heritage are seen early in the story. When the familys house burned down ten or twelve years ago, Maggie was deeply affected by the tragedy of losing her phratry where she grew up. As her mother describes, She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground (409). Dee, on the other hand, had hated the house. Her mother had wanted to ask her, why dont you dance around the ashes? (409). Dee did not make prisoner any significance in the home where she had grown up. In her confusion about her heritage, it was just a house to her. Another example of Dees confusion about her own African-American heritage is expressed when she announces to her mother and sister that she has changed her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo. When her mother questions her about the change, Dee says , I couldnt bear it any longer being named after the sight who oppress me (411). According to her mother, the name has been in the family since before the Civil warfare and most likely represents family unity to her. However, Dee does not realize that. Apparently, she believes that by ever-changing her name she is expressing solidarity with her African ancestors and rejecting the oppression implied by the taking on of American names by black slaves.Commenting ... ...tage (413). That comment is somewhat ironic since it appears to be Dee who does not understand what family heritage is all about. Walkers view is very clear at the end of the story. By Dee wanting to hang the family heirloom on the wall to look at from a distance, she is alienating herself from her family heritage. That is exactly what Walker thinks is the premature thing to do. Walker would prefer the quilts to be used and integrated into workaday life, like Maggie and her mother prefer. The same idea applies to all of the other rest home items that Dee has her eye on the churn top, the dasher, and the benches for the table that her daddy made. They all are a part of life for Maggie and her mother. Walker believes that the only value that they hold for Dee is that they would be good trinkets to show off in her house. By development the quilts in this symbolic way, Walker is making the point that family heirlooms can only have meaning if they remain connected to the culture they sprang from - in essence, to be put to Everyday Use. Works CitedWalker, Alice. Everyday Use. Robert DiYanni, ed. Literature Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. sixth ed. Boston McGraw-Hill, 2007.