Heritage in Everyday Use by Alice Walker Literary Analysis Essay Example

In Everyday Use by Alice Walker, she has introduced us to the main characters who are Mama, Maggie, and Dee.  Mama, the narrator of this story, is a strong loving mother who is sometimes burdened by her two daughters.  She was poor and uneducated and could not be given the opportunity to leave her rural life.  Maggie is shy and a timid young girl. She still lives with her mom and was burned in a house fire. She usually just hangs around in the background. Even though she is shy, she also has a very good and kind heart. Instead of being angry at her sister, she was genuinely down with giving the quilts to her even though they were originally promised to her. Throughout this story, there are several times where readers see the strong bond that a family can share. I believe that this story is centered around family traditions. Through this story, I will be explaining the conflicting viewpoints of Dee and Mama and why heritage is very important. 

Throughout the book, readers see the different viewpoints of heritage. Readers first see this with Dee, the older sister of Maggie. It is shown in the book that dee denies her own heritage, as she has been persuaded by the Black Power Movement. She does not value her family heritage and sees it as a relic in the past, not something worth being apart. We saw that she changed her name from Dee to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, changed her body clothing, and clashed with her own mother. She does not believe that the quilts have any special meaning and that they should be put up on a display. Meanwhile, her mother has a very different viewpoint on their heritage. She believes that their heritage is not in fact valueless but is the most important thing to family. She believes that the family treasures are the blended presence of people who created and use them. Mama tries to explain that those heirlooms are what make up Dee’s true character. We see the conflicting values of the two main characters of the story.  Dee does not fully understand the symbol of the quilts as she is young and was influenced by the outside world and their teachings. As she is upset that her mother did not give her the quilts and instead gave them to Maggie, she leaves her family and all their traditions behind in order to make her own heritage. 

Heritage is not something you can simply throw away or change. It is history that cannot be changed. To understand where you came from and what you are is exactly what heritage is. Its purpose is to make the next generation aware of their history and the teachings of old, so that they can learn, adapt, and improve in life. The very fact that Dee changed her name and tried to create her own heritage proves that she did not know the importance of it and hence was not going to value anything she would have received.