Everyday Use by Alice Walker

Everyday Use by Alice Walker

This poem completely juxtaposes the separate lifestyles of glamour, beauty, and pop culture with simplicity, sturdiness, and honest living. Dee is a character who represents the superficial side of our culture. She is the wild child, who always has felt disconnected from her traditional family and strives to be dressed nice and to keep up her appearances, both physically and culturally. Her mom, the narrator, is the one who represents the simpler side of life and, although is not as intelligent or in touch with current world affairs or fashions, she is much wiser and virtuous than Dee. Dee has the aura that she is above her family and the dirty, window-less shack that she comes from; Walker writes, "Press us to her with the serious way she read, to shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits, we seemed about to understand. Drawing from the fact that this short story is taking place during the 60's, it appears that Dee represents the common rebellious youth from that age, hungry to experience freedom in her lifestyle and escape her maker's old-fashioned ways. I like to think that a part of Dee's character is supposed to symbolize the up and coming young ladies of this time period. There were dramatic, radical changes through this decade and one was more political and cultural freedom for blacks, women, and other classifications that had been previously oppressed. Dee has grown up and been let out into the world during the forefront of this age and now is becoming defined by it. She looks down upon her simple mom and sister, whom she believes lack the intelligence and ambition that women of the changing era should adopt. Although Dee is right in this subject, her treatment of her mother and sister is still unacceptable, and his reminded of that when her mother refuses to give to her the quilts that her grandmother sewed.