Culture And Tradition In Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use'

It is important to follow culture and traditions. A culture and traditions gives a unique identity to an individual. Culture is something that everyone follows on that group or society. Such as beliefs. Tradition is something that pasted over generation to generation where people follow culture and its custom. “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker is about an African American family and how the two daughters of that family follow and values their culture and traditions in different ways. The story discusses the mother-daughter bond related to their heritage. The mother is the narrator of the story and she is very hard-working woman who spends her entire day working on a farm. Dee is the elder sister and she goes to the school and becomes more knowledgeable;

Dee is smart and confident. Dee goes to the college. Her Mama and other town people helps her financially to get an admission. Dee is pretty looking. “Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and fuller figure” (Walker 394). Dee is more like a show off person. She likes to take credit for mostly everything; even though, she does not deserve it. Dee is critical and self-possessed. She always wants a pretty clothes and expensive stuff. Dee does not value her culture and traditions. For Dee culture and traditions is for no use. Dee wanted to show at her college that she values and follows her culture and traditions so, she can get praises from everyone. Dee comes to home with her boyfriend Hakim-a-barber. She is in the African dress which is too bright. “A dress so loud it hurts my eyes. There are yellows and oranges enough to throw back the light of the sun” (Walker 396). Dee was trying to show her boyfriend that she likes traditional clothes, but she is not a big fan of that type of clothes. Dee even changed her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo and she thinks that name is more like an African name and by that name she can show how important is her culture to her. Her mother asked, “what happened to ‘Dee’?” (walker 397). Dee says she does not want to live on other people terms, how will always judge her. Dee was named after her aunt Dicie and Dee wanted a name that was more from like the civil war era. She wanted an old African

Dee does not respect her culture or traditions. For Dee culture and traditions are just a word rather than a heritage. Dee always want to be a center of attention at her college. Dee grabs a wooden churn, ask her mother whether she can take it. Because she wants it, she can display it as an art work in her own house. In addition, she also argues that she wants the grandma’s quilts. Dee said to her Mama, “You just will not understand. The point is these quilts, these quilts!” (Walker 400). Dee does not even know how to quilt. Dee thinks of the quilts as a display to hang in the living room. Traditional things were just some artifacts for her to show off others about her heritage. She never respects or understand the true meaning behind the quilts, this just shows ignorance in her attitude towards the ancestral things in the