The Meaning Of Traditions In Everyday Use By Alice Walker

In the short story, “Everyday Use” Alice Walker tells the story of a young woman, Dee’s, journey to find her identity that would include the traditions within her culture, heritage, and her present-day status. The meaning of traditions for Dee’s sister, Maggie and her mother are that traditions were built on the groundwork of inherited items and ways of thinking while Dee believes, traditions are not of everyday use and are depraved by their history. Towards the end of the story, Dee has returned home from school asking for old quilts that were to be Maggie’s later on in life. In the effort to make things right, the mother snatches the quilts away from Dee, giving them to Maggie who will appreciate them in other ways than Dee. At the surface of the story, “Everyday Use” reveals how the mother progressively rejects the one-dimensional values of Dee, favoring the reasonable values of Maggie, but on a deeper level Alice Walker is examining the ideas of heritage through their contrasting African-American women characters.
From the beginning of the story, it is clear the tension that has risen between Dee and her family is because of her education outside of the home. Dee is no longer tied to the idea of everyday usefulness, working the land and house, but is more well rounded in the education world and since of sublime usefulness. On the other hand, her mother believes that knowledge is only useful when grounded throughout ones everyday tasks. Dee’s knowledge of the modern world is foreign and dangerous to her mother, including “other folks’ habits” and “lies,” making Maggie and her mother feel “ignorant and trapped” because they have a different tradition of learning.
Traditions established in learning reach far beyond ways of...

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...t Maggie looks at her heritage as memories of those ancestors in her past and their influence on her life (Norton 1536). She did not stand up against Dee because she knew that without the quilts she could remember the memories she had about the quilts. Maggie’s childhood was one filled with wounds; by seeing her home be burned to the ground, she is able to hold onto the good memories better than Dee can.
In “Everyday Use” Alice Walker is attempting to express two conflicting beliefs heritage and their struggle of one being better than the other. It seems to the reader that ones traditions and heritage are rooted inside them at a young age and as maturity happens they are to decide whether to hold on or let go of these traditions. By the end of the story, the title accepts more of significance in the way we look at traditions that are rooted and how they change.