Everyday Use By Any Other Name Literary Analysis

Culture is like film, blinding you of things you are uninformed about leaving you able to only see things that are familiar to you. A person’s culture is formed not only because of parent and peer influence, but also by knowledge they acquire. Knowledge is an important part of every person’s life because it widens their horizons and opens their eyes to other cultures and opinions. But knowledge can also have negative impacts, such as a closed mind toward their own culture. Exposure to other cultures as well as the knowledge gained shapes a person’s perception and feelings towards the world and others and in turn grows you as a person.

In a normal family, the siblings are usually polar opposites, this is the case in the short story Everyday Use by Alice Walker. In this story, there are two sisters, Maggie and Dee, along with their mother. Maggie and her mother share a similar culture in that they value their things and use things as everyday use (hence the name Everyday Use). On the other hand, there is Dee, who left her mother and Maggie in order to get a better education, who is the complete opposite and uses necessities as decoration or in ways they are not meant to be used as. The differences in their culture displays how knowledge take a person in a different direction than where their roots are.

In this story the two sisters, formally known as Santha and Premila get their names changed to Cynthia and Pamela, which their headmaster backs up with saying those are easier to pronounce. Premila and Santha experience unfair treatment because of their culture and this leads them to tell their mother that they don’t want to go back to school. These sisters’ value their Indian culture, but because of their school and the way the other students have changed to the liking of their teachers, Santha and Premila feel the need to change as