A Valuable Treasure We Can Use Every Day

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Recommended: What is the central message of Alice Walker’s ‘Everyday Use’

Acceptance is one of the most basic yet elusive human rights. Surfacing as a recurring theme in many forms of media, from movies to literature, there is an echoing outcry of the desire to attain this fundamental need. Carefully constructed into a beautiful literary quilt, Alice Walker's, "Everyday Use" is an excellent example of the search for acceptance. Walker uses a definitive tone, deeply focused first-person point of view, and powerful imagery, to stitch together this family-heirloom-quality short story, highlighting the incomparable need for acceptance within the family circle and by extension, from the world as a whole.

As the story unfolds, the narrating mother is challenged to disdainfully tolerate her daughter Dee, who rebelliously renames herself Wangero. This is a daunting task because of Dee’s seemingly unreasonable and elitist attitude. Her other daughter, Maggie has endured surviving a heinous childhood experience, and yet still manages to exude a practical, loving selflessness, that at times causes her to acquiesce to her sibling’s will and wishes. With the mother’s reactions to the girls’ conflicting personalities, Walker makes the clear-cut tone easy to distinguish throughout the account.

Though she wishes things were different between Dee and herself, illustrated by her daydreams of having a happy reconciliation with her daughter in a “This Is Your Life” style reunion in which “Dee embrac[es] [her] with tears in her eyes”, and pins a beautiful orchid to her mother's dress; the eye-opening, true nature of their relationship quickly becomes exposed. The reader is rudely awakened by the fact that, despite her mother's apparent fondness for orchids, in real life, Dee is sure to let her mother know that “she th...

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...s for whom we are in the best way they know how; or perhaps to see how badly they may need our acceptance. Finally, we must allow Walker’s sense-awakening imagery to bring to life all the instances we are exposed to that may require the giving or needing of acceptance. As we choose to look beneath the surface of this short, simple tale, we will inevitably find the well-hidden treasures of a definitive tone, the strategic use of first-person point of view and rich imagery; keys which can open up to us the author’s bounty of knowledge, experience and wisdom. These precious gems can accompany and enrich us on our quest to find, give, and receive true acceptance.

Works Cited

Walker, Alice. "Everyday Use." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama and Writing. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Ed. Dana Gioia. 11th ed. New York: Longman, 2010.

455-461. Print.

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