Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" the Term Paper

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'" (Walker, 236)

The making of the quilts is another symbol for the way in which the daughter and the mother differ in their views of tradition. The quilt is also strongly associated with the African-American tradition and therefore all the more significant. While the mother and Maggie are capable of actually making the quilts, Dee or Wangero is obsessed with having them and possessing them as a symbol of her identity. Her obsession with everything African is obviously harmful. She believes that emphasizing the past and storing up traditions is what the present is actually made of: "It's really a new day for us. But from the way you and Mama still live you'd never know it."(Walker, 239) the mother and Maggie however understand that the quilts should be used, just like the past should be used as a means to learn and develop in the present.

Heritage is thus something that needs to be put to use and understood in the present and not maintained at all costs as a tradition.

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Significantly, Maggie, in spite of her awkward manner, finally gets the deserved attention from her mother. She also gets to keep the quilts, and put them to use as it would be normal. The quilts, as pieces that used to be employed for the African traditional dress are symbolic because they represent a way of displaying one's identity. Dee is obviously affected by the past and tries to save it by engrossing the African identity which had been so suppressed in the past.

Thus, Walker criticizes in her story the obsessive clinging to tradition that can be observed sometimes in the African-Americans. The people of color had been robbed of their identity in the past through the violent racial discrimination. However, Walker emphasizes that an obsession and an engrossing into the past and into tradition are harmful for the present. Identity thus presupposes remembrance of the past but also progression and 'everyday use' of the past.

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