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Analysis on Everyday Use for Your Grandmama

Analysis on Everyday Use for Your Grandmama

Abstract

Alice Walker is one of the prominent American writers in American black woman literature. She expended the theory of womanism, which gave great attention to the self-consciousness of black woman. In her best short story Everyday Use, she gave the three different images to explore the awakening of their heritage and self-consciousness.

Key words: background, structure, characters

Analysis on Everyday Use for Your Grandmama

Introduction

The short story “Everyday Use For Your Grandmama”, from the collection In Love and Trouble published in 1973, was written during the heyday of the Black Power movement, when African Americans were trying to gain racial equality and called for self-determination and racial dignity. African American short stories of this period often dealt with problematic issues like separation, integration and redefinition of the African American past. Blacks were seeking their cultural roots in Africa, the slogan Black is beautiful and the Afro hair style arose. Everyday Use is Alice Walker s answer to the social discourse of that time, especially concerning the African American concept of heritage and identity.

1. Background

“Everyday Use”, set around the year 1970, is about a poor, black mother (Mrs. Johnson) and her two daughters Dee and Maggie. Dee, going to a college in the north, visits her old home for a day and brings a friend, apparently her boyfriend, whom Mrs. Johnson calls Hakim-a-barber. The other daughter, Maggie, still lives with her mother. When Dee arrives, it becomes obvious that the differences have deepened. She has changed her name, adopted the ideas of the Black Power movement and criticises her family for the way they “still live” (Walker 2373). The culminating point of the story is the moment when Mrs. Johnson refuses to give Dee some old quilts because they were already meant to be a wedding present for Maggie. These quilts are the central image of the story and represent the concept of heritage. By withholding the quilts from Dee, Mrs. Johnson decides that Maggie s practical approach to heritage is better than Dee s superficial, impersonal concept of heritage.

Analysis on Everyday Use for Your Grandmama

The structure of the story can be divided into two big parts: the first part is set before Dee s arrival. It provides an inside view of the family s past and introduces the characters and their relationships towards each other. The second part begins when Dee arrives and lasts till the end of the story.

The subdivision of the first part is complicated. The easiest and most convincing way seems to be a differentiation of four kinds of text that are mixed up and do not form paragraphs of their own. These four kinds would be 1) the description of Mrs. Johnson s dream and 2-4) the description of each of the three women. There is only one problem: the very first paragraph could be seen as a paragraph of its own, but it can also be understood as closely connected to Mrs. Johnson s dream: the narrator s thoughts seem to lead to the question “For what reason does Dee come home after this long time?” – Mrs. Johnson s first idea is the simplicity with which she and Maggie lead their lives or the way they are still able to take pleasure in something trivial like a “clean and wavy” yard (Walker 2367). But as Mrs. Johnson knows Dee very well, she also knows this is wrong as it simply does not correspond to Dee s character. Now this train of thought is the common pattern which unites the first paragraph and the dream: Mrs. Johnson naturally sees the differences between Dee s and her life and their moral concepts but she still longs for a reunion, unable to accept that the gap between them is already too big.

The second big part, beginning with Dee s arrival, has a linear structure. It consists of four smaller parts. The first part ends with the first occurrence of Dee s new name “Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo”. The reader notices the change of the time of narration: up to that point the narrator uses the simple present, but after Dee has changed her name it suddenly changes to simple past. This passage can be seen as the first turning point of the story.

The second part is mainly about names. It deals with Dee s new name and introduces Hakim-a-barber. It ends when the four of them sit down to eat. The next part includes the meal and Dee s over-excitement about nearly everything, especially the dasher. The last part, finally, is about the quilts and Dee s rejection.

Analysis on Everyday Use for Your Grandmama

There are three primary characters in the passage: mom, Maggie and Dee and their different characters form the conflicts in the story. The most incompatible conflict is their different views on the African culture. Mom and Maggie living a traditional way of the black clashed with Dee who praised the opinion of the white. Mom was a typical black woman, “large, big-boned, with rough, man-working hands” and little education. Doing very hard work like “knocking a bull calf straight in the brain with a sledge hammer” and “breaking ice to get water for washing”, she sustained the whole family laboriously. From her, we see the glittery virtue of hard working of the black women and the great love of a mother as well. Her little daughter Maggie was a shy and conservative girl inheriting the culture from her mom. While without the beauty and braveness, she knew the exact way of their life. However, Dee was very different from them. Accepting the education and culture of the white people, she knew little about her culture, despised the black and even hated her identity. She hated their house very much and she did not want to bring her friends to her mom and sister. Her mother tolerated her, raised the money to send her to school and felt proud of her. But she returned this love by detesting and leaving the family. The great virtue and the bitter experience of the black could not evoke her respect and understanding, but the anger and shame instead. The infection of the white's culture made her ignoring the love and beauty of her family and her race.

Dee and Maggie are extremely contrastive characters, Dee being the successful, beautiful but arrogant type of woman, Maggie being simple-minded, disfigured and slow. They both are loved by Mrs. Johnson, but it is obvious that Dee has always played a special, independent role in the family because she is so different.

Dee had a big change later. Influenced by the Black Power Movement, she got interested in her own culture. The house, the bench, the churn and the quilt, all these things that were used to make her disgusted delighted her then. Following the

Analysis on Everyday Use for Your Grandmama

“fashion” of the movement, she intangibly and surprisingly found the “value” of her family. But it is a pity that Dee only formed a shallow view on her culture. She said the language of the East Africa “a-su-so-tean-o” to her mother, knowing little that they came to America from West Africa. Neglecting the history and the love of the everyday use, she just wanted to keep them as ornaments to make a parade. Maggie, to the opposite, had a different view on the culture. Though did not realize the “value” of the everyday use, she knew everything's history------who made it, how to use it and how to make it. The typical representative of their culture is the quilt made from pieces of dresses. Through the skillful hands and united work, the old pieces turned into beautiful quilts, with lone star pattern and the picture of walk around the mountain. These quilts are not only the reflection of the wisdom and diligence of the black women, but also impregnated with the love of the family members. Different from Dee s opinion of “hanging them”, Maggie considered them to be a souvenir of the grandma Dee and she knew how to quilt herself. She would use them as quilts, as the way the black should do. In her hand, the quilts could hold that family-love and pass down from generation to generation, with the traditional living way of black people. Comparing with Dee, the real value of quilts could show only in Maggie s hands. And that was why mom gave the quilts to Maggie at last.

Through the conflicts between the characters, the story reflects the conflict of the society to us. Dee is a black girl trying to enter the mainstream of America, namely the white world, well-educated but knowing little about her culture. Maggie is capable to pass down the precious culture, but she pays the price of living in a less-open environment and giving up high education. And that is the problem. Living in America, being educated in America and attempting to succeed in America inevitably force black people accept the opinions and living way of the white world, possibly make them forgetting or despising or abounding their culture. The disdaining and banishing to the black culture from the white world is the main reason of that. That is Dee who is typical of the conflict between the black and the white world. Through the

Analysis on Everyday Use for Your Grandmama

conflict, we see clearly the plight of furious collision between the two cultures and also the writer s hope of preserving the blacks culture.

4. Conclusion

“Everyday use for Your Grandmama” is a story about an Africa-American family s daily life and their spiritual world, reflecting their embarrassed condition and cultural plight. The theme center on Mama s awakening to one daughter s superficiality and to the other s deep-seated understanding of heritage. Walker uses several literary devices to examine the themes and to give a voice to the poor and the uneducated. It is en excellent work about womanism.

5. Bibliography

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［2］刘世生，朱瑞青.文体学概论［M］.北京：北京大学出版社，2006.

［3］陈士法，宋燕.《外婆的日用家当》一文的及物性分析［J］.高师英语教学与研究，2006，

（1）：41-44.

［4］东野圣时，陈士法.高级英语教学的文体学途径［J］.云南农业大学学报：社会科学版，2008，2（1）：97-104.

［5］张汉熙.高级英语（一、二册）［M］.北京：外语教学与研究出版社，2003. ［6］秦秀白.文体学概论［M］.长沙：湖南教育出版社，1996.

［7］秦秀白.英语语体和文体要略［M］.上海：上海外语教育出版社，2002.

Analysis on Everyday Use for Your Grandmama

分析《外婆家当》

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