Everyday Use is a short but succinct story by Alice Walker, an African American writer, and social activist. The setting takes place in the 1960s, when Mrs. Johnson and her daughters, Maggie and Dee, meet at their house. The story is saturated with the symbolism of family values and relationships, and African-American rich heritage as opposed to the vague and indefinite future. Alice Walker uses illusion or appearance as the principal theme of the story to highlight the role of the past in the characters’ current life, their willingness for a better life, cultural identification, and intention to be someone else or to change their nature. These inner conflicts of the characters are dictated by the epoch when racism was commonplace in the White dominant society. This essay intends to discover the theme of illusion manifested in minor symbolic details, representing the bewilderment of the African-American ethnic minority in the course of establishing their cultural identity in society.
The first illusion manifests itself in Mrs. Johnson’s dreams about her meeting with Dee at a TV show. It should be noted that Maggie treated her sister “with a mixture of envy and awe,” but her mother seems to have the same vision of Dee, which becomes explicit in this dream (Walker 23). Mrs. Johnson understands that she is not the person her daughter would like her to be. Moreover, Dee does not identify with her mother; she received a college education, while Mrs. Johnson had to leave school in the second grade. Now, the daughter does her best to overcome poverty and racial discrimination. She does what her mother does not dare to, for instance, looking straight into the eyes of a white man. That is why Mrs. Johnson dreams to be involved in Dee’s worldly success. Thus, the dream appears to show the image of a mother’s best wishes for her daughter, but it also reveals her envy and helplessness.
Dee’s reading to her family is another illusion created by the author. Dee reads to impress, not to inform or entertain her relatives, and they seem to be listening, not understanding why they need to do so. Dee read about “other folk’s habits” and “washed us in a river of make believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn’t necessarily need to know” (Walker 26). As Mitra points out, her motherhood is not only about Dee’s individuation; it is also about the fear that the African-American woman would become an Object for the outside world (484). Dee’s reading to her mother and sister shows her education and desire to work and improve herself, but for the latter, it is an unwanted intrusion of the outside world, hostile and remote.
The story’s setting is in the new house built after the fire, which destroyed their first house and left Maggie scarred on her legs and arms. The new house does not have real windows, “just some holes cut in the sides, like the portholes in a ship,” that are not round or square (Walker 28). Their new dwelling is the incarnation of poverty and an illusion of their previous house. The story has another new house, the one where Dee lives now with her Muslim man. These houses appear to be simple places of residence, but they represent the milestones of the development of the African-American culture: from traditional past to poor and limiting present, and from there, to a bright but frightening future.
The dasher, churn top, and quilts represent the African-American heritage. Although all the protagonists consider them as valuable pieces of history, Dee perceives them as interesting antiques or folk art to be put in her new house, and Mrs. Johnson and Maggie appreciate not their artistic value, but the memories of the loved ones they bear (A Study Guide 26). The narrator underlines that the dasher used to be a tree in the yard where her old relative lived, and now it has dents of fingers on it, where the same people touched it. The quilts made of many clothes of ancestors represent the significant African-American past, its value, and connection with the present. Moreover, as Christian points out, the quilt is the most important metaphor of African American culture and literature in the works of Alice Walker (3). For the mother and Maggie, these objects create an illusion that their grandparents are still alive and present in their lives.
Dee takes Polaroid snaps to have something to recall about her childhood. It would be wrong to conclude that she is indifferent to her heritage or has a consumer’s attitude. These photos are an illusion of memories that will fade with the last people who remember Big Dee and Stash. Nothing can be saved forever: Mrs. Johnson understands it, too, saying that Maggie will make new quilts when the old ones fall apart. On the contrary, Dee attempts to perpetuate her memories in Polaroid snaps and objects used by her ancestors. She is not going to use them according to their purpose; she will just look at them once in a while. Dee perceives these objects as museum showpieces, which shows how far she has gone from her roots.
The general style of the story and its composition should be mentioned as contributing to the illusion theme. The author opts for unreliable narration in the form of a stream of consciousness using vernacular language, creating the illusion of a spoken story and immersing the reader into Mrs. Johnson’s thoughts. The story is full of flashbacks and memories of the narrator, suggesting us to walk in the shoes of an African-American woman of those days, live through her emotions, and feel her concerns.
As demonstrated by the above analysis, objects that appear simple and ordinary represent the depth of inner conflict within the protagonists. The struggle for the liberation of the African-American ethnic group was not finished. Some people felt uncomfortable even thinking about improving their situation, as shown in the images of Mrs. Johnson and Maggie. Arrogant and selfish Dee, in her turn, decides to step aside from their history and blend into the new world full of opportunities. The mother and her daughter “became each other’s mirrors, reflecting the curious mix of the Self and the Other,” maintaining a semblance of a family, but in fact, being strangers (Mitra 487). The habitual state of things for the mother is falling apart, but she tries to create an appearance of its strength and persistence. Thus, the theme of illusion penetrates every character and object of the story by Alice Walker, symbolizing the attempt to stop time and leave everything unchanged. However, this intention contradicts reality and proves to be impossible.
Works Cited
A Study Guide to Alice Walker’s Everyday Use. Gale Research, 2012.
Christian, Barbara T. Introduction “Everyday Use.” Edited by Barbara T. Christian, Rutgers University Press, 1994.
Mitra, Udita. “Glimpses of Disappointed Mothers: Alice Walker’s Everyday Use and Mahasweta Devi’s Mother of 1084.” Literary Herald, vol. 2, no. 3, 2016, pp. 482–487. Web.
Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” Edited by Barbara T. Christian, Rutgers University Press, 1994.