İNGİLİZ/AMERİKAN EDEBİYATI I

The short story Everyday Use was written by Alice Walker.

The story is told from the point of view of the mother.

One day, Dee arrives with a man and tells that her name is now Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo.

Maggie tells that Dee can take the quilts since she can remember her grandmother without them.

The family has been living in America for a long time and even the elder members of the family joined in the American Civil War. Dee only wants the old quilts in order to display them whereas the mother thinks these quilts are made for everyday use.

The setting of the story is mainly the yard of the house the mother and Maggie lives in. Later on, the characters go inside the house for a meal and the discussion about the quilts mainly takes place inside the house.

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).

The grandma does not appear in the story but the characters refer to her.

Dee is an educated, sophisticated young woman and she seems to know everything. Despite her education at college, it is ironic that she does not know much about her family’s inheritance. She is only superficially interested in the quilts and wants to hang them on the walls.

The quilts were originally made by her mother, her aunt and her grandmother using her grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s old dresses.

Dee received education and she now lives in the city. Dee has a pretty face, light skin and she has style of her own. She preferred having nice things around and with the help of her mother she was able to receive education. The right answer is D.

Alice Walker was active in Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. She defines herself as a ‘womanist’ which means a black feminist. She has spoken for the women’s movement, the anti-apartheid movement and against female genital mutilation. She is against all kinds of oppression against women. The correct answer is A.

Dee tells that her name is now Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo. She says she cannot bear to be named after her oppressors. The mother tells that Dee is the name of her aunt and the name traces back to generations. Dee does not accept it and insists on her new name. The answer is A.

The story is closely associated to Alice Walker’s life like Maggie’s scars, she lost the sight of one eye and like Dee she went to city for education. The answer is C.

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 answer is B.

She is proud of her manly appearance she says: “I can kill and clean a hog as merciless as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall. (p.280).” The answer is D.

His actual relationship to Dee is not acknowledged. The narrator of the story, the mother does not even want to learn whether he and Dee are married or not. Thus, she does not ask what the actual relation between him and Dee is. Therefore; the answer is D.

In its simplest definition point of view is the perspective from which the story is told. 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. The answer is A.

Irony is an expression of meaning which is used to indicate the opposite of its literary meaning. We can see some examples of irony in the characters of the story. Dee is an educated, sophisticated young woman and she seems to know everything. Despite her education at college, it is ironic that she does not know much about her family’s inheritance. She is only superficially interested in the quilts and wants to hang them on the walls. The answer is C.

The Black Power Movement grew out of the Civil Rights Movement, which accelerated in the 1950s and 1960s. It is a turning point for the black-white relations. It was not easy for blacks to gain equal rights with whites even after they won the right to vote and slavery was abolished. 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. However, it is often associated with violence and militant actions. Although on the surface the blacks and whites seemed equal, in reality the blacks received low wages and were exposed to racial discrimination. The Black Power Movement grew out of the oppression the black people felt. It was not a legal or formal association and did not have a central leadership. The answer is E.