literary analysis essay example everyday use

A Summary and Analysis of Alice Walker’s ‘Everyday Use’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Everyday Use’ is one of the most popular and widely studied short stories by Alice Walker. It was first published in Harper’s Magazine in 1973 before being collected in Walker’s short-story collection In Love and Trouble .

Walker uses ‘Everyday Use’ to explore different attitudes towards Black American culture and heritage.

‘Everyday Use’: plot summary

The story is narrated in the first person by Mrs Johnson, a largeAfrican-American woman who has two daughters, Dee (the older of the two) and Maggie (the younger). Whereas Maggie, who is somewhat weak and lacking in confidence, shares many of her mother’s views, Dee is rather different.

Mrs Johnson tells us how she and the local church put together the funds to send Dee away to school to get an education. When Dee returned, she would read stories to her mother and sister. Mrs Johnson tells us she never had much of an education as her school was shut down, and although Maggie can read, her eyesight is poor and, according to her mother, is not especially clever.

Mrs Johnson also tells us how their previous house recently burned down: a house, she tells us, which Dee had never liked. Dee hasn’t yet visited her mother and sister in the new house, but she has said that when she does come she will not bring her friends with her, implying she is ashamed of where her family lives.

However, Mrs Johnson then describes Dee’s first visit to the new house. She turns up with her new partner, a short and stocky Muslim man, whom Mrs Johnson refers to as ‘Asalamalakim’, after the Muslim greeting the man speaks when he arrives (a corruption of ‘salaam aleikum’ or ‘ As-salamu alaykum ’). He later tells Mrs Johnson to call him Hakim-a-barber.

Dee then tells her mother that she is no longer known as Dee, but prefers to be called Wangero Lee-wanika Kemanjo, because she no longer wishes to bear a name derived from the white people who oppressed her and other African Americans. Her mother points out that Dee was named after her aunt, Dicie, but Dee is convinced that the name originally came from their white oppressors.

Dee/Wangero now starts to examine the objects in the house which belonged to her grandmother (who was also known as Dee), saying which ones she intends to take for herself. When Mrs Johnson tells her she is keeping the quilts for when Maggie marries John Thomas, Dee responds that her sister is so ‘backward’ she’d probably put the special quilts to ‘everyday use’, thus wearing them out to ‘rags’ in a few years.

Although Maggie resignedly lets her older sister have the quilts, when Dee moves to take them for herself, Mrs Johnson is suddenly inspired to snatch them back from her and hold Maggie close to herself, refusing to give them up to Dee and telling her to take one of the other quilts instead.

Dee leaves with Hakim-a-barber, telling her mother and Maggie that they don’t understand their own heritage. She also tells Maggie to try to make something of herself rather than remaining home with their mother. After they’ve left, Maggie and her mother sit outside until it’s time to go indoors and retire to bed.

‘Everyday Use’: analysis

The central crux of Alice Walker’s story is the difference between Dee and her mother in their perspectives and attitudes. Where Mrs Johnson, the mother of the family, sees everything in terms of the immediate family and home, Dee (or Wangero, as she renames herself) is more interested in escaping this immediate environment.

She does this first by leaving the family home and becoming romantically involved with a man of African Muslim descent. She also looks deeper into her African roots in order to understand ‘where she comes from’, as the phrase has it: not just in terms of the family’s direct lineage of daughter, mother, grandmother, and so on (Mrs Johnson’s way of looking at it, as exemplified by their discussion over the origins of Dee’s name), but in a wider, and deeper sense of African-American history and belonging.

This departure from her mother’s set of values is most neatly embodied by her change of name, rejecting the family name Dee in favour of the African name Wangero Lee-wanika Kemanjo. Names, in fact, are very important in this story: Maggie is obviously known by a European name, and ‘Johnson’, the family name borne by ‘Mama’, and thus by her daughters, doubly reinforces (John and son) the stamp of male European power on their lives and history.

Dee, too, is very much a family name: not just because it is the name the family use for the elder daughter, but because it is a name borne by numerous female members of the family going back for generations. But Dee/Wangero suspects it is ultimately, or originally, of European extraction, and wants to distance herself from this. Dee’s rejection of the immediate family’s small and somewhat parochial attitude is also embodied by the fact that she reportedly hated their old house which had recently burned down.

‘Everyday Use’ was published in 1973, and Dee’s (or Wangero’s) search for her ancestral identity through African culture and language is something which was becoming more popular among African Americans in the wake of the US civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Indeed, a productive dialogue could be had between Dee’s outlook in ‘Everyday Use’ and the arguments put forward by prominent Black American writers and activists of the 1970s such as Audre Lorde, who often wrote – in her poem ‘ A Woman Speaks ’, for example – about the ancestral African power that Black American women carry, a link to their deeper roots which should be acknowledged and cultivated.

However, Walker does some interesting things in ‘Everyday Use’ which prevent the story from being wholly celebratory off Dee’s (Wangero’s) new-found sense of self. First, she had Mrs Johnson or ‘Mama’ narrate the story, so we only see Dee from her mother’s very different perspective: we only view Dee, or Wangero, from the outside, as it were.

Second, Dee/Wangero does not conduct herself in ways which are altogether commendable: she snatches the best quilts, determined to wrest them from her mother and sister and disregarding Maggie’s strong filial links to her aunt and grandmother who taught her how to quilt. The quilt thus becomes a symbol for Maggie’s link with the previous matriarchs of the family, which Dee is attempting to sever her from.

But she is not doing this out of kindness for Maggie, despite her speech to her younger sister at the end of the story. Instead, she seems to be motivated by more selfish reasons, and asserts her naturally dominant personality and ability to control her sister in order to get her way. The very title of Walker’s story, ‘Everyday Use’, can be analysed as a sign of Dee’s dismissive and patronising attitude towards her sister and mother: to her, they don’t even know how to use a good quilt properly and her sister would just put it out for everyday use.

We can also analyse Walker’s story in terms of its use of the epiphany : a literary whereby a character in a story has a sudden moment of consciousness, or a realisation. In ‘Everyday Use’, this occurs when Mrs Johnson, seeing Maggie prepared to give up her special bridal present to her sister, gathers the courage to stand her ground and to say no to Dee. She is clearly in awe of what Dee/Wangero has become, so this moment of self-assertion – though it is also done for Maggie, too – is even more significant.

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literature › Analysis of Alice Walker’s Everyday Use

Analysis of Alice Walker’s Everyday Use

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 24, 2021

Probably Alice Walker ’s most frequently anthologized story, “Everyday Use” first appeared in Walker’s collection In Love and Trouble: Stories by Black Women. Walker explores in this story a divisive issue for African Americans, one that has concerned a number of writers, Lorraine Hansberry, for instance, in her play Raisin in the Sun (1959). The issue is generational as well as cultural: In leaving home and embracing their African heritage, must adults turn their backs on their African-American background and their more traditional family members? The issue, while specifically African-American, can also be viewed as a universal one in terms of modern youth who fail to understand the values of their ancestry and of their immediate family. Walker also raises the question of naming, a complicated one for African Americans, whose ancestors were named by slaveholders.

The first-person narrator of the story is Mrs. Johnson, mother of two daughters, Maggie and Dicie, nicknamed Dee. Addressing the readers as “you,” she draws us directly into the story while she and Maggie await a visit from Dee. With deft strokes, Walker has Mrs. Johnson reveal essential information about herself and her daughters. She realistically describes herself as a big-boned, slow-tongued woman with no education and a talent for hard work and outdoor chores. When their house burned down some 12 years previous, Maggie was severely burned. Comparing Maggie to a wounded animal, her mother explains that she thinks of herself as unattractive and slow-witted, yet she is good-natured too, and preparing to marry John Thomas, an honest local man. Dee, on the other hand, attractive, educated, and self-confident, has left her home (of which she was ashamed) to forge a new and successful life.

Alice Walker/Thoughtco

When she appears, garbed in African attire, along with her long-haired friend, Asalamalakim, Dee informs her family that her new name is Wangero Leewanika Kemanio . When she explains that she can no longer bear to use the name given to her by the whites who oppressed her, her mother tries to explain that she was named for her aunt, and that the name Dicie harkens back to pre–CIVIL WAR days. Dee’s failure to honor her own family history continues in her gentrified appropriation of her mother’s butter dish and churn, both of which have a history, but both of which Dee views as quaint artifacts that she can display in her home. When Dee asks for her grandmother’s quilts, however, Mrs. Johnson speaks up: Although Maggie is willing to let Dee have them because, with her goodness and fine memory, she needs no quilts to help her remember Grandma Dee, her mother announces firmly that she intends them as a wedding gift for Maggie. Mrs. Johnson approvingly tells Dee that Maggie will put them to “everyday use” rather than hanging them on a wall.

Dee leaves in a huff, telling Maggie she ought to make something of herself. With her departure, peace returns to the house, and Mrs. Johnson and Maggie sit comfortably together, enjoying each other’s company. Although readers can sympathize with Dee’s desire to improve her own situation and to feel pride in her African heritage, Walker also makes clear that in rejecting the African-American part of that heritage, she loses a great deal. Her mother and sister, despite the lack of the success that Dee enjoys, understand the significance of family. One hopes that the next child will not feel the need to choose one side or the other but will confidently embrace both.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” In Major Writers of Short Fiction: Stories and Commentary, edited by Ann Charters. Boston: St. Martin’s, 1993, 1,282–1,299.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Everyday Use — Literary Analysis: The Importance of Heritage in “Everyday Use”

Literary Analysis: The Importance of Heritage in "Everyday Use"

• Categories: Everyday Use Heritage

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Words: 678 |

Published: Jan 25, 2024

Words: 678 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Symbols of heritage, character conflict, works cited.

• Walker, A., & Christian, (1994). Everyday use. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press.
• ZHANG, Y. (2008). Analysis of the Characters in Alice Walker's" Everyday Use"[J]. Journal of Hubei University of Education, 9.

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An Analysis of 'Everyday Use' by Alice Walker

Appreciation, Heritage, and the Generosity of Effort

• Short Stories
• Best Sellers
• Classic Literature
• Plays & Drama
• Shakespeare
• Children's Books
• Ph.D., English, State University of New York at Albany
• B.A., English, Brown University

American writer and activist Alice Walker is best known for her novel " The Color Purple ," which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. But she has written numerous other novels, stories, poems, and essays.

Her short story "Everyday Use" originally appeared in her 1973 collection, "In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women," and it has been widely anthologized since.

The Plot of 'Everyday Use'

The story is narrated in the first-person point of view by a mother who lives with her shy and unattractive daughter Maggie, who was scarred in a house fire as a child. They are nervously waiting for a visit from Maggie's sister Dee, to whom life has always come easy.

Dee and her companion boyfriend arrive with bold, unfamiliar clothing and hairstyles, greeting Maggie and the narrator with Muslim and African phrases. Dee announces that she has changed her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, saying that she couldn't stand to use a name from oppressors. This decision hurts her mother, who named her after a lineage of family members.

Claims Family Heirlooms

During the visit, Dee lays claim to certain family heirlooms, such as the top and dasher of a butter churn, whittled by relatives. But unlike Maggie, who uses the butter churn to make butter, Dee wants to treat them like antiques or artwork.

Dee also tries to claim some handmade quilts, and she fully assumes she'll be able to have them because she's the only one who can "appreciate" them. The mother informs Dee that she has already promised the quilts to Maggie, and also intends for the quilts to be used, not simply admired. Maggie says Dee can have them, but the mother takes the quilts out of Dee's hands and gives them to Maggie.

Chides Mother

Dee then leaves, chiding the mother for not understanding her own heritage and encouraging Maggie to "make something of yourself." After Dee is gone, Maggie and the narrator relax contentedly in the backyard.

The Heritage of Lived Experience

Dee insists that Maggie is incapable of appreciating the quilts. She exclaims, horrified, "She'd probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use." For Dee, heritage is a curiosity to be looked at—something to put on display for others to observe, as well: She plans to use the churn top and dasher as decorative items in her home, and she intends to hang the quilts on the wall "[a]s if that was the only thing you could do with quilts."

Treats Family Members Oddly

She even treats her own family members as curiosities, taking numerous photos of them. The narrator also tells us, "She never takes a shot without making sure the house is included. When a cow comes nibbling around the edge of the yard she snaps it and me and Maggie and the house."

What Dee fails to understand is that the heritage of the items she covets comes precisely from their "everyday use"—their relation to the lived experience of the people who've used them.

The narrator describes the dasher as follows:

"You didn't even have to look close to see where hands pushing the dasher up and down to make butter had left a kind of sink in the wood. In fact, there were a lot of small sinks; you could see where thumbs and fingers had sunk into the wood."

Communal Family History

Part of the beauty of the object is that it has been so frequently used, and by so many hands in the family, suggesting a communal family history that Dee seems unaware of.

The quilts, made from scraps of clothing and sewn by multiple hands, epitomize this "lived experience." They even include a small scrap from "Great Grandpa Ezra's uniform that he wore in the Civil War ," which reveals that members of Dee's family were working against "the people who oppress[ed]" them long before Dee decided to change her name.

Knows When to Quit

Unlike Dee, Maggie actually knows how to quilt. She was taught by Dee's namesakes—Grandma Dee and Big Dee—so she is a living part of the heritage that is nothing more than decoration to Dee.

For Maggie, the quilts are reminders of specific people, not of some abstract notion of heritage. "I can 'member Grandma Dee without the quilts," Maggie says to her mother when she moves to give them up. It is this statement that prompts her mother to take the quilts away from Dee and hand them to Maggie because Maggie understands their history and value so much more deeply than Dee does.

Lack of Reciprocity

Dee's real offense lies in her arrogance and condescension toward her family, not in her attempted embrace of African culture .

Her mother is initially very open-minded about the changes Dee has made. For instance, though the narrator confesses that Dee has shown up in a "dress so loud it hurts my eyes," she watches Dee walk toward her and concedes, "The dress is loose and flows, and as she walks closer, I like it."

Uses the Name 'Wangero'

The mother also shows a willingness to use the name Wangero, telling Dee, "If that's what you want us to call you, we'll call you."

But Dee doesn't really seem to want her mother's acceptance, and she definitely doesn't want to return the favor by accepting and respecting her mother's cultural traditions . She almost seems disappointed that her mother is willing to call her Wangero.

Shows Possessiveness

Dee shows possessiveness and entitlement as "her hand close[s] over Grandma Dee's butter dish" and she begins to think of objects she'd like to take. Additionally, she's convinced of her superiority over her mother and sister. For example, the mother observes Dee's companion and notices, "Every once in a while he and Wangero sent eye signals over my head."

When it turns out that Maggie knows much more about the history of the family heirlooms than Dee does, Dee belittles her by saying that her "brain is like an elephant's." The entire family considers Dee to be the educated, intelligent, quick-witted one, and so she equates Maggie's intellect with the instincts of an animal, not giving her any real credit.

Appeases Dee

Still, as the mother narrates the story, she does her best to appease Dee and refer to her as Wangero. Occasionally she calls her as "Wangero (Dee)," which emphasizes the confusion of having a new name and the effort it takes to use it (and also pokes a little fun at the grandness of Dee's gesture).

But as Dee becomes more and more selfish and difficult, the narrator starts to withdraw her generosity in accepting the new name. Instead of "Wangero (Dee)," she starts to refer to her as "Dee (Wangero)," privileging her original given name. When the mother describes snatching the quilts away from Dee, she refers to her as "Miss Wangero," suggesting that she's run out of patience with Dee's haughtiness. After that, she simply calls her Dee, fully withdrawing her gesture of support.

Needs to Feel Superior

Dee seems unable to separate her new-found cultural identity from her own long-standing need to feel superior to her mother and sister. Ironically, Dee's lack of respect for her living family members—as well as her lack of respect for the real human beings who constitute what Dee thinks of only as an abstract "heritage"—provides the clarity that allows Maggie and the mother to "appreciate" each other and their own shared heritage.

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Everyday Use

Alice walker, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Alice Walker's Everyday Use . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Everyday Use: Introduction

Everyday use: plot summary, everyday use: detailed summary & analysis, everyday use: themes, everyday use: quotes, everyday use: characters, everyday use: symbols, everyday use: theme wheel, brief biography of alice walker.

Historical Context of Everyday Use

Other books related to everyday use.

• Full Title: Everyday Use
• When Published: 1973, as a part of the collection In Love and Trouble
• Literary Period: Contemporary African American Literature
• Genre: Short story
• Setting: the Deep South
• Climax: The argument over family quilts
• Antagonist: Dee, partly
• Point of View: First person narrative from Mama’s perspective

Extra Credit for Everyday Use

Zora Neale Hurston . Alice Walker is credited with renewing literary interest in Zora Neale Hurston, one of her major influences. Walker was responsible for placing a headstone on Hurston’s previously unmarked grave. It reads: “A Genius of the South.”

Color Purple on the Silver Screen. Alice Walker’s epistolary novel The Color Purple was made into a 1985 film directed by Steven Spielberg, as well as a Broadway musical.

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The Novel "Everyday Use" By Alice Walker: A Literary Analysis

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Everyday Use Literary Analysis

This essay about Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” examines the intricate dynamics of familial relationships and cultural heritage. Through Mama, Dee (Wangero), and Maggie, Walker skillfully navigates the complexities of identity and authenticity. The narrative into the symbolism of quilts as tangible representations of shared history and the clash between superficial appropriation and genuine connection. It culminates in a poignant exploration of the true essence of heritage, emphasizing the importance of lived experience and familial bonds over academic understanding. Walker’s work prompts readers to reflect on their own relationship with heritage and the enduring significance of personal connections.

How it works

In Alice Walker’s compelling narrative “Everyday Use,” the tapestry of familial bonds, cultural lineage, and the quest for authenticity intertwine to unveil profound insights into human relationships and identity. Through the characters of Mama, Dee (Wangero), and Maggie, Walker masterfully orchestrates a symphony of symbolism and character dynamics, inviting readers into a realm where heritage is not merely a matter of artifacts but a tapestry of lived experiences and personal connections.

Within the narrative, the tension between Mama’s daughters serves as a microcosm of broader societal struggles over the interpretation and preservation of cultural heritage.

Dee, now Wangero, emerges as the embodiment of a modern, cosmopolitan worldview, infused with a desire to reclaim her African roots. Her return home is marked by a palpable eagerness to lay claim to family artifacts, like quilts and churns, as symbols of her newfound cultural identity. However, her approach is tinged with a superficiality that belies a deeper yearning for connection, as she seeks to possess these artifacts more as trophies of heritage than as conduits of familial memory.

Conversely, Maggie embodies a quieter, more understated reverence for her familial heritage. Scarred by the remnants of a childhood house fire, Maggie’s physical scars serve as a poignant metaphor for the deeper wounds inflicted by the passage of time and the erosion of cultural traditions. Yet, her connection to the family’s history runs deep, woven into the fabric of her being through the everyday rituals and traditions passed down through generations. While lacking Dee’s outward confidence and academic prowess, Maggie’s authenticity shines through in her unassuming demeanor and her steadfast commitment to preserving the familial legacy, not as a relic of the past but as a living testament to resilience and continuity.

Central to the narrative’s exploration of heritage is the symbolism imbued within the quilts themselves. These patchwork masterpieces, painstakingly stitched together by generations of women in the family, serve as tangible manifestations of shared history and collective memory. Each swatch of fabric carries with it a fragment of the past, woven into a larger narrative of survival, creativity, and familial bonds. While Dee sees the quilts as objects of artistic merit, to be preserved and displayed as tokens of cultural heritage, Mama recognizes their true value lies not in their aesthetic appeal but in their utility and the stories they encapsulate.

The climax of the story unfolds as Mama is faced with the pivotal decision of to whom she will entrust the quilts: Dee, with her academic understanding of heritage, or Maggie, whose connection runs deeper than words can convey. In choosing to bestow the quilts upon Maggie, Mama not only affirms her daughter’s intrinsic worth but also challenges Dee’s superficial interpretation of heritage. It is a moment of profound significance, wherein the true essence of heritage—rooted in lived experience and familial bonds—is reaffirmed, transcending the confines of academic discourse and cultural commodification.

Through “Everyday Use,” Alice Walker invites readers on a journey of self-discovery and introspection, urging us to confront our own relationship with heritage and identity. In the tapestry of Mama, Dee, and Maggie’s story, we find echoes of our own struggles, aspirations, and yearnings for connection—a reminder that, ultimately, the most enduring legacies are those woven not from thread and fabric but from the intangible threads of love, memory, and shared experience.

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“Everyday Use” by Alice Walker Essay

Introduction, works cited.

“Everyday use” by Alice Walker is a fictional story analyzed years over, in academic and professional circles from an initial collection of In live and trouble (Donnelly 124). The story is narrated from a first person point of view (by a single mother, Mrs. Johnson) and dwells on the perception of two sisters regarding cultural artifacts (Wangero). Maggie has a shy personality but Dee is a representation of a pretentious native African identity.

Throughout the story, Walker develops a deep criticism of postmodern ideals through symbolism, with the story’s meaning going deeper than the surface analysis, because even the title “Everyday Use” is a representation of whether cultural heritage should be preserved and used on an everyday basis or not.

The quilt is especially mentioned as a representation of culture and heritage, especially when Dee wants to hang the quilts: she has essentially removed the artifacts from their everyday contextual meaning and creates some form of symbolic representation of the quilts.

This study therefore identifies there points; in that, Walker seeks to convey the principle that art is a living and breathing part of its origin, a significant cultural possession, and a critique of the postmodern treatment of cultural art.

The story asserts that art should be valued in the context of its cultural and heritage origin. The quilt is strategically used in the story as a representation of cultural art and its existence has a rich cultural significance. The quilt is later depicted as inseparable from its culture because the historical trace of the quilt essentially represents the history of the Johnson family. Walker specifically says “In both of them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more years ago.

Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jarrell’s Paisley shirts and one teeny faded blue piece, that was from Great Grandpa Ezra’s uniform that he wore in the Civil War” (563). This shows that not only do the quilts represent the heirloom of the family, but they are a core factor in the family’s identity. The gist of this symbolism is that, not only is the quilt a representation of the Johnson culture but also an inseparable element from the culture itself.

How Mrs. Johnson treats the quilts shows that cultural artifacts should be treated as a significant cultural possession. Dee on the other hand views the quilts as financially and aesthetically valuable. When Dee realizes her mother intended to give them to Maggie; she exclaims that they were priceless.

Dee further adds that Maggie has the capability of wearing them everyday, something that she did not think was right for the quilts; implying that she viewed the quilts as an object instead of an item that should be used on a daily basis. Some sense of individualism is also noted from Maggie’s perception of the quilt, RO because in her opinion, the quilts bore some form of personal and emotional significance, which became clear when she said, “I can member Grandma Dee without the quilts” (Walker 564).

Maggie therefore implies that she perceives the quilt from its deep family connection. Moreover, she understood the fact that the quilts ought to “stay alive”, generations on end, through continuous renewal. Walker even points out that “Maggie knows how to quilt” (Walker 564), implying that she had the cultural significance of the quilts at heart.

The representation of the two sisters’ attitudes and perceptions of the quilts is a critique of the postmodern treatment of ancient artifacts and the way cultural art is treated in today’s society. Essentially, Dee’s perception of art for its monetary value represents the postmodern view of art while Maggie’s perception of the quilt for its personal significance is a representation of the contemporary view of art.

The author however does not leave us a in a huge dilemma of which perception is right because Mrs. Johnson snatches the quilts from Dee and gives them to Maggie thereby depicting the contemporary view of art as the right perception.

Walker’s literary piece is a good example of an educational piece that reflects the current perception of art, especially thriving in today’s commercially, oriented world. Basically art in its right form should be kept alive through generations on end in everyday use. This literally, “can be perceived”, through the short story, but should be perceived in a symbolic manner as a facet of conventional art (Factstaff 3).

Walker therefore shows that the true significance and meaning of art that can only be traced back to the culture or the root it came from. This is contrary to postmodern use of ancient artifacts as an object to be observed, by future generations, as Dee tries to express. Walker therefore shows that cultural artifacts should be used as a significant cultural possession, and be kept alive through generations.

Moreover, she didn’t write the piece with the intention of being microscopically analyzed, or to be quantified monetarily; her literary piece, despite being written in past decades, was meant to be explored, investigated, questioned and even debated by today’s commercially driven society where culture is slowly fading away and postmodern values are quickly catching up (Factstaff 4). In summary, the author says that cultural artifacts with a special reference to the quilt should be put into everyday use.

Donnelly, Mary. Alice Walker: The Color Purple and Other Works . New York: Marshall Cavendish, 2009. Print.

Factstaff. Quilts and Art in “Everyday Use” . 23 February. 2010. Web.

Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Print.

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IvyPanda. (2018, July 2). "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker. https://ivypanda.com/essays/everyday-use-by-alice-walker/

""Everyday Use" by Alice Walker." IvyPanda , 2 July 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/everyday-use-by-alice-walker/.

IvyPanda . (2018) '"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker'. 2 July.

IvyPanda . 2018. ""Everyday Use" by Alice Walker." July 2, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/everyday-use-by-alice-walker/.

1. IvyPanda . ""Everyday Use" by Alice Walker." July 2, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/everyday-use-by-alice-walker/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . ""Everyday Use" by Alice Walker." July 2, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/everyday-use-by-alice-walker/.

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12.14: Sample Student Literary Analysis Essays

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• Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap
• City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

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The following examples are essays where student writers focused on close-reading a literary work.

While reading these examples, ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the essay's thesis statement, and how do you know it is the thesis statement?
• What is the main idea or topic sentence of each body paragraph, and how does it relate back to the thesis statement?
• Where and how does each essay use evidence (quotes or paraphrase from the literature)?
• What are some of the literary devices or structures the essays analyze or discuss?
• How does each author structure their conclusion, and how does their conclusion differ from their introduction?

Example 1: Poetry

Victoria Morillo

Instructor Heather Ringo

3 August 2022

How Nguyen’s Structure Solidifies the Impact of Sexual Violence in “The Study”

Stripped of innocence, your body taken from you. No matter how much you try to block out the instance in which these two things occurred, memories surface and come back to haunt you. How does a person, a young boy , cope with an event that forever changes his life? Hieu Minh Nguyen deconstructs this very way in which an act of sexual violence affects a survivor. In his poem, “The Study,” the poem's speaker recounts the year in which his molestation took place, describing how his memory filters in and out. Throughout the poem, Nguyen writes in free verse, permitting a structural liberation to become the foundation for his message to shine through. While he moves the readers with this poignant narrative, Nguyen effectively conveys the resulting internal struggles of feeling alone and unseen.

The speaker recalls his experience with such painful memory through the use of specific punctuation choices. Just by looking at the poem, we see that the first period doesn’t appear until line 14. It finally comes after the speaker reveals to his readers the possible, central purpose for writing this poem: the speaker's molestation. In the first half, the poem makes use of commas, em dashes, and colons, which lends itself to the idea of the speaker stringing along all of these details to make sense of this time in his life. If reading the poem following the conventions of punctuation, a sense of urgency is present here, as well. This is exemplified by the lack of periods to finalize a thought; and instead, Nguyen uses other punctuation marks to connect them. Serving as another connector of thoughts, the two em dashes give emphasis to the role memory plays when the speaker discusses how “no one [had] a face” during that time (Nguyen 9-11). He speaks in this urgent manner until the 14th line, and when he finally gets it off his chest, the pace of the poem changes, as does the more frequent use of the period. This stream-of-consciousness-like section when juxtaposed with the latter half of the poem, causes readers to slow down and pay attention to the details. It also splits the poem in two: a section that talks of the fogginess of memory then transitions into one that remembers it all.

In tandem with the fluctuating nature of memory, the utilization of line breaks and word choice help reflect the damage the molestation has had. Within the first couple of lines of the poem, the poem demands the readers’ attention when the line breaks from “floating” to “dead” as the speaker describes his memory of Little Billy (Nguyen 1-4). This line break averts the readers’ expectation of the direction of the narrative and immediately shifts the tone of the poem. The break also speaks to the effect his trauma has ingrained in him and how “[f]or the longest time,” his only memory of that year revolves around an image of a boy’s death. In a way, the speaker sees himself in Little Billy; or perhaps, he’s representative of the tragic death of his boyhood, how the speaker felt so “dead” after enduring such a traumatic experience, even referring to himself as a “ghost” that he tries to evict from his conscience (Nguyen 24). The feeling that a part of him has died is solidified at the very end of the poem when the speaker describes himself as a nine-year-old boy who’s been “fossilized,” forever changed by this act (Nguyen 29). By choosing words associated with permanence and death, the speaker tries to recreate the atmosphere (for which he felt trapped in) in order for readers to understand the loneliness that came as a result of his trauma. With the assistance of line breaks, more attention is drawn to the speaker's words, intensifying their importance, and demanding to be felt by the readers.

Most importantly, the speaker expresses eloquently, and so heartbreakingly, about the effect sexual violence has on a person. Perhaps what seems to be the most frustrating are the people who fail to believe survivors of these types of crimes. This is evident when he describes “how angry” the tenants were when they filled the pool with cement (Nguyen 4). They seem to represent how people in the speaker's life were dismissive of his assault and who viewed his tragedy as a nuisance of some sorts. This sentiment is bookended when he says, “They say, give us details , so I give them my body. / They say, give us proof , so I give them my body,” (Nguyen 25-26). The repetition of these two lines reinforces the feeling many feel in these scenarios, as they’re often left to deal with trying to make people believe them, or to even see them.

It’s important to recognize how the structure of this poem gives the speaker space to express the pain he’s had to carry for so long. As a characteristic of free verse, the poem doesn’t follow any structured rhyme scheme or meter; which in turn, allows him to not have any constraints in telling his story the way he wants to. The speaker has the freedom to display his experience in a way that evades predictability and engenders authenticity of a story very personal to him. As readers, we abandon anticipating the next rhyme, and instead focus our attention to the other ways, like his punctuation or word choice, in which he effectively tells his story. The speaker recognizes that some part of him no longer belongs to himself, but by writing “The Study,” he shows other survivors that they’re not alone and encourages hope that eventually, they will be freed from the shackles of sexual violence.

Works Cited

Nguyen, Hieu Minh. “The Study” Poets.Org. Academy of American Poets, Coffee House Press, 2018, https://poets.org/poem/study-0 .

Example 2: Fiction

Todd Goodwin

Professor Stan Matyshak

Advanced Expository Writing

Sept. 17, 20—

Poe’s “Usher”: A Mirror of the Fall of the House of Humanity

Right from the outset of the grim story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe enmeshes us in a dark, gloomy, hopeless world, alienating his characters and the reader from any sort of physical or psychological norm where such values as hope and happiness could possibly exist. He fatalistically tells the story of how a man (the narrator) comes from the outside world of hope, religion, and everyday society and tries to bring some kind of redeeming happiness to his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher, who not only has physically and psychologically wasted away but is entrapped in a dilapidated house of ever-looming terror with an emaciated and deranged twin sister. Roderick Usher embodies the wasting away of what once was vibrant and alive, and his house of “insufferable gloom” (273), which contains his morbid sister, seems to mirror or reflect this fear of death and annihilation that he most horribly endures. A close reading of the story reveals that Poe uses mirror images, or reflections, to contribute to the fatalistic theme of “Usher”: each reflection serves to intensify an already prevalent tone of hopelessness, darkness, and fatalism.

It could be argued that the house of Roderick Usher is a “house of mirrors,” whose unpleasant and grim reflections create a dark and hopeless setting. For example, the narrator first approaches “the melancholy house of Usher on a dark and soundless day,” and finds a building which causes him a “sense of insufferable gloom,” which “pervades his spirit and causes an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an undiscerned dreariness of thought” (273). The narrator then optimistically states: “I reflected that a mere different arrangement of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression” (274). But the narrator then sees the reflection of the house in the tarn and experiences a “shudder even more thrilling than before” (274). Thus the reader begins to realize that the narrator cannot change or stop the impending doom that will befall the house of Usher, and maybe humanity. The story cleverly plays with the word reflection : the narrator sees a physical reflection that leads him to a mental reflection about Usher’s surroundings.

The narrator’s disillusionment by such grim reflection continues in the story. For example, he describes Roderick Usher’s face as distinct with signs of old strength but lost vigor: the remains of what used to be. He describes the house as a once happy and vibrant place, which, like Roderick, lost its vitality. Also, the narrator describes Usher’s hair as growing wild on his rather obtrusive head, which directly mirrors the eerie moss and straw covering the outside of the house. The narrator continually longs to see these bleak reflections as a dream, for he states: “Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building” (276). He does not want to face the reality that Usher and his home are doomed to fall, regardless of what he does.

Although there are almost countless examples of these mirror images, two others stand out as important. First, Roderick and his sister, Madeline, are twins. The narrator aptly states just as he and Roderick are entombing Madeline that there is “a striking similitude between brother and sister” (288). Indeed, they are mirror images of each other. Madeline is fading away psychologically and physically, and Roderick is not too far behind! The reflection of “doom” that these two share helps intensify and symbolize the hopelessness of the entire situation; thus, they further develop the fatalistic theme. Second, in the climactic scene where Madeline has been mistakenly entombed alive, there is a pairing of images and sounds as the narrator tries to calm Roderick by reading him a romance story. Events in the story simultaneously unfold with events of the sister escaping her tomb. In the story, the hero breaks out of the coffin. Then, in the story, the dragon’s shriek as he is slain parallels Madeline’s shriek. Finally, the story tells of the clangor of a shield, matched by the sister’s clanging along a metal passageway. As the suspense reaches its climax, Roderick shrieks his last words to his “friend,” the narrator: “Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door” (296).

Roderick, who slowly falls into insanity, ironically calls the narrator the “Madman.” We are left to reflect on what Poe means by this ironic twist. Poe’s bleak and dark imagery, and his use of mirror reflections, seem only to intensify the hopelessness of “Usher.” We can plausibly conclude that, indeed, the narrator is the “Madman,” for he comes from everyday society, which is a place where hope and faith exist. Poe would probably argue that such a place is opposite to the world of Usher because a world where death is inevitable could not possibly hold such positive values. Therefore, just as Roderick mirrors his sister, the reflection in the tarn mirrors the dilapidation of the house, and the story mirrors the final actions before the death of Usher. “The Fall of the House of Usher” reflects Poe’s view that humanity is hopelessly doomed.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” 1839. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library . 1995. Web. 1 July 2012. < http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/PoeFall.html >.

Example 3: Poetry

Amy Chisnell

Professor Laura Neary

Writing and Literature

April 17, 20—

Don’t Listen to the Egg!: A Close Reading of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”

“You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,” said Alice. “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called ‘Jabberwocky’?”

“Let’s hear it,” said Humpty Dumpty. “I can explain all the poems that ever were invented—and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.” (Carroll 164)

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass , Humpty Dumpty confidently translates (to a not so confident Alice) the complicated language of the poem “Jabberwocky.” The words of the poem, though nonsense, aptly tell the story of the slaying of the Jabberwock. Upon finding “Jabberwocky” on a table in the looking-glass room, Alice is confused by the strange words. She is quite certain that “ somebody killed something ,” but she does not understand much more than that. When later she encounters Humpty Dumpty, she seizes the opportunity at having the knowledgeable egg interpret—or translate—the poem. Since Humpty Dumpty professes to be able to “make a word work” for him, he is quick to agree. Thus he acts like a New Critic who interprets the poem by performing a close reading of it. Through Humpty’s interpretation of the first stanza, however, we see the poem’s deeper comment concerning the practice of interpreting poetry and literature in general—that strict analytical translation destroys the beauty of a poem. In fact, Humpty Dumpty commits the “heresy of paraphrase,” for he fails to understand that meaning cannot be separated from the form or structure of the literary work.

Of the 71 words found in “Jabberwocky,” 43 have no known meaning. They are simply nonsense. Yet through this nonsensical language, the poem manages not only to tell a story but also gives the reader a sense of setting and characterization. One feels, rather than concretely knows, that the setting is dark, wooded, and frightening. The characters, such as the Jubjub bird, the Bandersnatch, and the doomed Jabberwock, also appear in the reader’s head, even though they will not be found in the local zoo. Even though most of the words are not real, the reader is able to understand what goes on because he or she is given free license to imagine what the words denote and connote. Simply, the poem’s nonsense words are the meaning.

Therefore, when Humpty interprets “Jabberwocky” for Alice, he is not doing her any favors, for he actually misreads the poem. Although the poem in its original is constructed from nonsense words, by the time Humpty is done interpreting it, it truly does not make any sense. The first stanza of the original poem is as follows:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogroves,

An the mome raths outgrabe. (Carroll 164)

If we replace, however, the nonsense words of “Jabberwocky” with Humpty’s translated words, the effect would be something like this:

’Twas four o’clock in the afternoon, and the lithe and slimy badger-lizard-corkscrew creatures

Did go round and round and make holes in the grass-plot round the sun-dial:

All flimsy and miserable were the shabby-looking birds

with mop feathers,

And the lost green pigs bellowed-sneezed-whistled.

By translating the poem in such a way, Humpty removes the charm or essence—and the beauty, grace, and rhythm—from the poem. The poetry is sacrificed for meaning. Humpty Dumpty commits the heresy of paraphrase. As Cleanth Brooks argues, “The structure of a poem resembles that of a ballet or musical composition. It is a pattern of resolutions and balances and harmonizations” (203). When the poem is left as nonsense, the reader can easily imagine what a “slithy tove” might be, but when Humpty tells us what it is, he takes that imaginative license away from the reader. The beauty (if that is the proper word) of “Jabberwocky” is in not knowing what the words mean, and yet understanding. By translating the poem, Humpty takes that privilege from the reader. In addition, Humpty fails to recognize that meaning cannot be separated from the structure itself: the nonsense poem reflects this literally—it means “nothing” and achieves this meaning by using “nonsense” words.

Furthermore, the nonsense words Carroll chooses to use in “Jabberwocky” have a magical effect upon the reader; the shadowy sound of the words create the atmosphere, which may be described as a trance-like mood. When Alice first reads the poem, she says it seems to fill her head “with ideas.” The strange-sounding words in the original poem do give one ideas. Why is this? Even though the reader has never heard these words before, he or she is instantly aware of the murky, mysterious mood they set. In other words, diction operates not on the denotative level (the dictionary meaning) but on the connotative level (the emotion(s) they evoke). Thus “Jabberwocky” creates a shadowy mood, and the nonsense words are instrumental in creating this mood. Carroll could not have simply used any nonsense words.

For example, let us change the “dark,” “ominous” words of the first stanza to “lighter,” more “comic” words:

’Twas mearly, and the churly pells

Did bimble and ringle in the tink;

All timpy were the brimbledimps,

And the bip plips outlink.

Shifting the sounds of the words from dark to light merely takes a shift in thought. To create a specific mood using nonsense words, one must create new words from old words that convey the desired mood. In “Jabberwocky,” Carroll mixes “slimy,” a grim idea, “lithe,” a pliable image, to get a new adjective: “slithy” (a portmanteau word). In this translation, brighter words were used to get a lighter effect. “Mearly” is a combination of “morning” and “early,” and “ringle” is a blend of “ring” and "dingle.” The point is that “Jabberwocky’s” nonsense words are created specifically to convey this shadowy or mysterious mood and are integral to the “meaning.”

Consequently, Humpty’s rendering of the poem leaves the reader with a completely different feeling than does the original poem, which provided us with a sense of ethereal mystery, of a dark and foreign land with exotic creatures and fantastic settings. The mysteriousness is destroyed by Humpty’s literal paraphrase of the creatures and the setting; by doing so, he has taken the beauty away from the poem in his attempt to understand it. He has committed the heresy of paraphrase: “If we allow ourselves to be misled by it [this heresy], we distort the relation of the poem to its ‘truth’… we split the poem between its ‘form’ and its ‘content’” (Brooks 201). Humpty Dumpty’s ultimate demise might be seen to symbolize the heretical split between form and content: as a literary creation, Humpty Dumpty is an egg, a well-wrought urn of nonsense. His fall from the wall cracks him and separates the contents from the container, and not even all the King’s men can put the scrambled egg back together again!

Through the odd characters of a little girl and a foolish egg, “Jabberwocky” suggests a bit of sage advice about reading poetry, advice that the New Critics built their theories on. The importance lies not solely within strict analytical translation or interpretation, but in the overall effect of the imagery and word choice that evokes a meaning inseparable from those literary devices. As Archibald MacLeish so aptly writes: “A poem should not mean / But be.” Sometimes it takes a little nonsense to show us the sense in something.

Brooks, Cleanth. The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry . 1942. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1956. Print.

Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking-Glass. Alice in Wonderland . 2nd ed. Ed. Donald J. Gray. New York: Norton, 1992. Print.

MacLeish, Archibald. “Ars Poetica.” The Oxford Book of American Poetry . Ed. David Lehman. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 385–86. Print.

Attribution

• Sample Essay 1 received permission from Victoria Morillo to publish, licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International ( CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 )
• Sample Essays 2 and 3 adapted from Cordell, Ryan and John Pennington. "2.5: Student Sample Papers" from Creating Literary Analysis. 2012. Licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported ( CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 )

Jotted Lines

A Collection Of Essays

Everyday Use by Alice Walker: Symbolism and other Literary Devices

Alice Walker uses several literary devices to examine the themes in the story and to give a voice to the poor and the uneducated. 

Point of View 

“Everyday Use” is told in first-person point of view. Mrs. Johnson, an uneducated woman, tells the story herself. The reader learns what she thinks about her two daughters, and her observations reveal her astute observations about life. This technique seeks to validate the experiences of an often oppressed group of people: lower-class, black women. By putting Mrs. Johnson at center stage, Walker confirms her value and importance in society. Mrs. Johnson has mixed emotions about her daughters. She likens Maggie’s demeanor to “a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car,” and says that Dee’s reading “burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn’t necessarily need to know.” These conflicting feelings show the reader the complex nature of her thoughts and her ability to size up people when necessary. Her thoughts are compounded further by her fantasy of reuniting with Dee on a television talk show where “Johnny Carson has much to do to keep up with my quick and witty tongue.” 

Symbolism 

The story is not only rich in symbolism, it is also about symbolism. The quilts are the central symbol of the story, representing the connectedness of history and the intergenerational ties of the family. Other symbols include Maggie’s burned skin, which can be interpreted as depicting how she has been “burned” by the circumstances of her life. Mrs. Johnson’s “man-working” hands symbolize the rough life she has hand to forge from the land on which they live. Names become symbolic in the story as well. Dee thinks her name represents “the people who oppress me,” and substitutes an African name that has no relation to her family roots. When Hakim-a-barber says that he does not eat collard greens and pork—traditional African-American foods—he symbolically denies his heritage despite his complicated African name. Clothing also represents the characters. Mrs. Johnson wears utilitarian clothing: overalls and flannel nightgowns, representing her no-frills approach to life. Dee wears a “yellow organdy dress” to her graduation and other wild, colorful clothing. These outfits represent her colorful, vibrant nature as well as her unwillingness to fit in to her surroundings, a harsh land more suited to farm clothing. Maggie’s character is symbolized by the dress that “[falls] off her in little black papery flakes” during the house fire: fragile and burned. 

Irony 

The central contradiction in this story emerges when readers understand Walker’s point about Dee’s efforts to appreciate her heritage. While Dee has acquired an education and understands her African past, she mistakenly looks to this history in order to affirm her heritage, forgetting her real origins and the people who raised her. She admires the quilts, particularly because her grandmother has sewed them by hand. She is more entranced by the thought of someone sewing by hand than by the person who did the sewing. 

Diction and Dialect 

In relating the story in first-person, Walker gives Mrs. Johnson a pattern of speech that helps define her character. An uneducated woman, Mrs. Johnson nonetheless is able to express herself well. She waits in a yard that has been made “clean and wavy,” meaning that she has taken pride in her house and fixed it up in anticipation of her daughter’s arrival. Walker’s subtle rendering of Mrs. Johnson’s voice reveals that this older rural woman can also speak with efficient, lyrical clarity, as in her account of having “knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and [having] had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall,” or in her description of Hakim-a-barber’s real name, which is “twice as long and three times as hard” to pronounce. Walker artfully suggests, then, that a “good” education does not necessarily result in a “better” form of speech.

Source Credits:

Short Stories for Students, Volume 2, Alice Walker, Edited by Kathleen Wilson, Published by Gale Research, New York, 1997.

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