Everyday Use By Alice Walker Identity Essay

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Throughout life, one has many idea’s about self identity, culture, and heritage. People are always discovering new things about themselves and how their culture and heritage helps to cultivate their identity. In “Everyday Use”, Alice Walkers shows the development of Dee’s idea of her own culture, heritage, and identity by examining Dee’s teenage years, young adulthood, and Dee’s journey to a more mature, developed and certain sense of self. In the beginning of “Everyday Use”, Alice Walker shows the hatred and animosity that Dee feels in her teenage years through her hostility to her family’s abode, yearning need for nice things. One of the first things we learn about Dee is her resentment towards her first house that she lived in. Her mother, …show more content…

“She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use.” “I reckon she would,” I said. “god knows I been saving ’em for long enough with nobody using ’em. I hope she will!” I did not want to bring up who I had offered Dee (Wangero) a quilt when she went away to college. Then she had told me they were old-fashioned, out of style. (67)
We see that Dee thinks that the quilts are a quaint, primitive art form. To Mama and Maggie, they represent more than that. They are family memories, personal and special mementos of loved ones who are gone. If Dee had them they would only be wall hanging but if Maggie had them then they would be put into everyday use. Furthermore, we also start to witness that her perspective on her family has changed. Dee has started to see her culture in a new light when she was at college. She now sees that these hand-stitched quilts are important to her family. As Alice Walker shows Dee’s idea of her own culture, heritage, and identity and how it changes though the progression of her life.With every new experience, Dee discover more about her identity. This is important because identity helps to shape and cultivate a person’s personality and actions in their life time. When growing older one discovers more about one’s self. Dee wants to start cultivating her personality by patching her past together to make a new

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