Example research essay topic: Everyday Use By Alice Walker - 1,423 words

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"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker The famous African-American writer Alice Walker was born in 1944. All Alice Walker's career was dedicated to the problems of African-American people in the contemporary society. The short story "Everyday Use" that was published in 1973 in the volume "In Love and Trouble" stands out among the other stories of the writer. The short story "Everyday Use" represents the author's attitude to the contemporary cultural trends in the African-American society.

The mother (the narrator of the story), who finished second grade at school in 1927 and at the time when the story is set had two adult daughters, was in her fifties. This sets the events of the story in the late 1960 s, when the African-American cultural revolution occured. The main idea of the cultural revolution was the return to the roots of the African-American nation, its customs, traditions and way of life. The masterminds of the trend set fashion for everything native and ethnic.

The author describes how this cultural resurrection influenced people and turned long difficult African-American history and ancient traditions into simple fashion. The story is narrated by one of the central characters of the story, the mother, and she introduces all other three characters to us. All characters add to the main conflict of the story and serve as a framework for the main idea of the narration. Mother described her daughters, Maggie and Dee, as two physically and emotionally different persons. This physical and emotional opposition sets the pattern for deeper conflict. When mother describes Maggie, she portrays her daughter in such words: "She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground." For herself she also finds the same description: "It seems to me I have talked to them (men) always with one foot raised in flight, with my head fumed in whichever way is farthest from them." Here we can trace the likeness between two characters, mother and her daughter Maggie in their behaviour among people.

This likeness puts them on one side, apart from Dee, who has much stronger character: "She would always look anyone in the eye." But later we learn, that these differences lie much deeper that in behaviour or attitude. First indirect conflict of the story lies between the mother and Dee, when Dee took pictures of her mother with the house behind. We remember from mother's words that Dee has always hated the house. "Why don't you do a dance around the ashes? I'd wanted to ask her. She had hated the house that much." That was said about the old burnt house, but the mother describes the new house as: "It is three rooms, just like the one that burned, except the roof is tin." If a person hated an old ugly house, she wouldn't like the same one and she wouldn't want to have pictures of it, especially more that one. But when Dee takes pictures of her mother and the house "She never takes a shot without mak' ing sure the house is included." The author again applies opposition to make the reader doubt the sincerity of Dee's actions.

If the reader doesn know that Dee hated the house, he might think that she felt nostalgia and wanted to take a peace of home with her. But this knowledge adds new meaning to the scene the. Dee's ethnic dress and accessories together with her new appreciation of the house confirm that Dee supported the ideas of the cultural revolution. But here arises question of how much she believed in the ideas that were brought by the rapid turn to African-American traditions.

This question is answered by Dee's following actions. Dee insisted that her name was not Dee but Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo. She explained that she did not want to be called after those who oppressed her. Mother replied, that Dee was called after her aunt, who, in turn, was named after her grandmother and she could trace the name Dee in the family "back beyond the Civil War." It is obvious, that even if the name had european origin, the ancestors had no abjection to it and it even became sacred and traditional in the family.

Dee's grandmother, who's parents were enslaved, Dee's mother, who felt the terrors on segregation and racism and finished only second grade at school, had no prejudices to the name. In turn, Dee, who studied at school and attended college, who court the least of horrors of segregation, doubtfully had reason to reject her own name. Dee flows in the current trend of African-American fashion and she proclaimed her link with African-American history, but she overlooks or neglects her link with her own family roots. Here becomes obvious the fact, that Dee's addiction to everything ethnic is mostly artificial. The central conflict of the story lies between Maggie and Dee as they decide who would own the quilts and this conflict finally reveals to the reader the real nature of Dee's behaviour. Here we notice, that even though the main conflict lies between Maggie and Dee, Maggie doesn't participate here as the active part.

Instead, her mother took upon herself the role of a speaker, which again puts mother on the same side with Maggie. In the scene with churn top and dasher and the following scene with quilts we can trace not only the overall difference between two sisters, Maggie and Dee, but the difference in their perception of qu things and their value. When Dee talked about churn top and dasher, she mentioned that they were witted out of a tree. For Maggie they were witted by "Aunt Dee's first husband", " His name was Henry, but they called him Stash. " It is obvious, that for Dee things are important when for Maggie mattered family and people behind the things. Here Maggie is the one who is close with her ethnic background and ancestors. The quilts were made of peaces from old clothes that Dee's grandmother and great grandmother used to wear.

For Dee the quilts were "priceless"She (grandmother) did all this stitching by hand" and Dee refused to take another quilts, because they were "stitched around the borders by machine." For Dee the age of quilts and the way the quilts were sewn mattered the most, because so-called hand made things are always valuable. Dee stated that Maggie didn't understand the value of quilts and she didn't know how to use them. Dee thought that Maggie could put quilts for the everyday use and they would be spoiled in several years, while Dee could "hang them." When mother and Maggie talk about quilts, they don't speak of them as expensive things, but they percept them as the memory about the grandmother and the aunt. And when Maggie said: "I can 'member Grandma Dee without the quilts", we see her true feelings. The key moment in the scene is the moment where the mother recollected Dee's reaction when she was offered to take those same quilts to college: "when she went away to college...

then she had told they were old-fashioned, out of style." The story revels, that for Dee the celebrated African-American history is only the fashionable trend that can be were as clothes. The things she didn't like about herself and even was ashamed of. Such as ethnic background, poor house and old quilts became "priceless" as soon as they became commonly fashionable. "You don't understand... your heritage" kept repeating Dee to her mother. But she herself didn't appreciate and even remember her heritage, when it concerned her family. And the author shows us that the person, who doesn't truly appreciate his own roots and background, such person will never truly appreciate his nation as a whole and will only remember it while it is fashionable.

For preserving the bigger you should present the little and only if we remember our ancestors and their traditions we will preserve the past for the future generations. The Alice Walker's story "Everyday Use" is the plea for the leaders and followers of the African-American cultural revolution to stop percept their background as fashion and try to apply it in everyday use, to always remember who they are and who were their ancestors. Bibliography 1. Walker, Alice.

Every In Love And Trouble: Storied of Black Woman. Trade paperback, 1974 (reprint). 2. "Alice Walker Page." Contemporary Woman Writers. Joined, Anniina. Online posting. 25 For. 1996. 5 Apr. 2004. < web >

Research essay sample on Everyday Use By Alice Walker