İNGİLİZ/AMERİKAN EDEBİYATI I

The mother tells that she has promised the quilts to Maggie when she gets married. Dee does not want machine-sawn quilts and insists on the ones she has chosen. She believes that Maggie will not understand the value of the quilts and she will probably put them to everyday use. On the other hand, Dee wants to hang the quilts on the walls to preserve their historical value. The mother does not accept the idea of Dee’s taking the quilts and says that Maggie knows how to use the quilts. She remembers she offered Dee a quilt years ago when she went to college, but Dee did not want to take the quilt and found it too old-fashioned. The mother hugs Maggie and gives her the quilts.

The setting of the story is mainly the yard of the house the mother and Maggie lives in. The house is depicted as having three rooms with a roof made of tin. The house is located in a rural landscape and has a poor outlook. Instead of real windows, there are holes on the sides.

The exact time of the story is not overtly stated, but this story is published in Walker’s story collection book In Love and Trouble (1973).

She raised two girls on her own and she is proud of it. She had to take on a masculine persona to do all these. However, she thinks Dee does not value her enough and Dee’s lack of appreciation puts a distance between her and the mother. The mother dreams of uniting with Dee on a television show and Dee is appreciating her mother in front of an audience. This shows that the mother thinks her daughter does not give her the value she deserves. The mother gives hints that Dee does not like the way her mother looks. On the imaginary television show the mother thinks she looks like how Dee would like to see her: hundred pounds lighter with a skin like a barley pancake and tasking with the show presenter in a direct way. However, in reality the mother cannot look the men in the eye and she hesitates when she has to talk to them. Dee is in stark contrast to the mother and Maggie that she is self-confident and makes eye contact while talking to others. The mother could not get proper education most probably due to her skin color in the 20s. It seems that Dee looks down upon her and Maggie because they could not receive proper education like her and they could not understand the real value of the family heritage. However, at the end of the story the mother understands the real intention of Dee and gives the quilts to Maggie.

She is the mother’s older daughter. She went to city to receive education and now turns to her house for dinner. She is an attractive and sophisticated woman with a superficial understanding of her inheritance. She now has changed her name into Wangero. She is rather selfish. In the past, she did not like her house and the quilts, but now she shoots the picture of the house and wants to take the old quilts. Her mother calls her Dee/Wangero throughout the story. According to the mother, Dee hated their old house and what it represented: the poverty, loneliness and isolation. She always wanted good things such as good-looking clothes, a good education and a nice stylish look.

She asks to have the old churn made up of wood and the quilts left to the family over generations. She does not want these things in order to remember her family or background, but to use them as ornaments in her house, most probably to show them as signs of the oppression on black people.

The story Everyday Use is told though a first person point of view. The mother is the narrator of the story and the story is told only from her point of view. We are introduced to the characters and the events through the mother’s eyes and we see the other characters in the way the mother describes them to the reader. Hence, there is a rather subjective point of view in the story.

The Black Power Movement grew out of the Civil Rights Movement, which accelerated in the 1950s and 1960s. The movement aimed to help the blacks gain their social, political and economic rights in the society and achieve equality in all aspects of social life.

If we think about the relevance of this movement with the story, it is clear that this movement is reflected especially in the characters of Dee and Hakim-a-barber. Dee changes her name into an African one, puts on African clothes, denies her American background and claims that she can value her heritage more than Maggie

A Room of One's Own was written by Virginia Woolf, not Alice Walker.

The exact time of the story is not overtly stated, but this story is published in Walker’s story collection book In Love and Trouble (1973). Most probably the time in the short story is when the Black Movement is in rise and the equality of black people, their search for their origins and place in society are discussed.

Alice Walker received a Pulitzer price in 1983 with her famous book The Color Purple. During her writing career she has won many awards and prizes from many organizations. Some of her novels are: The Temple of My Familiar (1989), By the Light of My Father’s Simile (1998) and Now is the Time to Open Your Heart. Everyday Use is a story by her.

The story is told from the point of view of a mother. She and her daughter Maggie are at their yard waiting for the arrival of mother’s other daughter, Dee.

Maggie has burn scars all over her arms and legs. Some time ago, their house was on fire and Maggie was hurt. She tries to hide the scars and she envies Dee believing that Dee has always had life go her way.

Dee pulls out quilts from her mother’s trunk. She wants to take two of them for herself. The mother tells that she has promised the quilts to Maggie when she gets married, and she wants Dee to take machine-sawn quilts. Dee does not want machine-sawn quilts and insists on the ones she has chosen. She believes that Maggie will not understand the value of the quilts and she will probably put them to everyday use.

The story is closely associated to Alice Walker’s life like Maggie’s scars, she lost the sight of one eye. Apart form that physical association, Walker also went to city for education like Dee does.

Mother is proud of her life and she is strong and independent despite her poverty. She describes herself as strong as a man, which indicates that she rejects the traditional gender role as a woman. She turns her back to the house which means that she is rejecting the role given to women represented by the house, a female space.

As a character, Maggie undergoes a change. Her shyness, lack of self-confidence due to her scars seem to have gone at the end of the story when she let Dee have the quilts.

Hakim-a-barber says that he accepts some of their doctrines, but farming and raising cattle is not his style. It is quite ironic that although his name means ruler and he is a Muslim, he is far from ruling his religious society and discards other Muslims who do not have practices like him.

Grandma Dee does not appear in the story but the characters refer to her. Her presence in the story is significant. Maggie gives value to the quilts because they are made by her grandmother while Dee values the quilts just because they represent African people. Grandmother Dee also represents Maggie’s and the mother’s connection to the past.

The exact time of the story is not overtly stated, but this story is published in Walker’s story collection book In Love and Trouble (1973). Most probably the time in the short story is when the Black Movement is in rise and the equality of black people, their search for their origins and place in society are discussed.