Everyday Use: Lost Heritage
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Zebedee Martin
English 134
Mr. Guida
November 23, 2005
Everyday Use: Lost Heritage
By contrasting the family characters in “Everyday Use,” Walker illustrates the mistake by some of placing the significance of heritage solely in material objects. Walker presents Mama and Maggie, the younger daughter, as an example that heritage in both knowledge and form passes from one generation to another through a learning and experience connection. However, by a broken connection, Dee, the older daughter, represents a misconception of heritage as material.
During Dees visit to Mama and Maggie, the contrast of the characters becomes a conflict because Dee misplaces the significance of heritage in her desire for racial heritage. Mama and Maggie symbolize the connection between generations and the heritage that passed between them. Mama and Maggie continue to live together in their humble home. Mama is a robust
woman who does the needed upkeep of the land, “I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands. In the winter, I wear overalls during the day. I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. I can work outside all day, One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall. (Walker 599)
And Maggie is the daughter, “homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs,” (Walker 599) who helps Mama by making “the yard so clean and wavy” (Walker 599) and washes dishes “in the kitchen over the dishpan” (Walker 603). Neither Mama nor Maggie are modernly educated persons; “I [Mama] never had an education myself. Sometimes Maggie reads to me. She stumbles along good-naturedly She knows she is not bright” (Walker 600).
However, by helping Mama, Maggie uses the hand-made items in her life, experiences the life of her ancestors, and learns the history of both, exemplified by Maggies knowledge of the hand-
made items and the people who made them–a knowledge which Dee does not possess.
Contrasting with Mama and Maggie, Dee seeks her heritage without understanding the heritage itself. Unlike Mama who is rough and man-like, and Maggie who is shy and scared, Dee is confident, where “Hesitation is no part of her nature,” (Walker 600) and beautiful: ” first glimpse of leg out of the car tells me it is Dee. Her feet were always neat-looking, as if God had
shaped them Dee next. A dress down to the ground Earrings gold, too (Walker 601) Also, Dee has a modern education, having been sent “to a school in Augusta” (Walker 600). Dee attempts to connect with her racial heritage by taking “picture after picture of me sitting there in front of
the house with Maggie She never takes a shot without making sure the house is included” (Walker 602).
Dee takes an another name without understanding her original name; neither does Dee try to learn. Also, Dee takes some of the hand-made items of her mothers such as the churn top which she will use “as a centerpiece for the alcove table” (Walker 293). Dee associates the items with her heritage now, but thought nothing of them in her youth as when the first house burnt down.
Dees quest of her heritage is external, wishing to have these