Quilt Usage
Quilt UsageThe Quilts in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” have different symbolic meaning to each one of the main characters. Dee thinks that she is in touch with her African heritage and that she would be able to take better care of the quilts. Maggie is really the one who is in touch with her African heritage. For this reason her mother wants her to have the quilts. The mother wants the quilts to be put to everyday use. Walker shows that Maggie deserves the quilts because Dee wants them for the wrong reasons, because Maggie is insecure and therefore needs to feel she deserves the special quilts, and because Maggie is more in tune with the families heritage that the quilts represent.
Mama thinks of Dee’s determination to get what she wants. She’s impressed by it, but she also understands that Dee wants the wrong things for the wrong reasons, that Dee is not aware of her true heritage. When Dee was young Mama says, “Dee wanted nice things. A yellow organdy dress to wear to her graduation from high school; black pumps to match a green suit she’d made from an old suit someone gave me. She was determined to stare down any disaster in her efforts to get what she wanted”(para. 10). The quilts, however, symbolize a heritage that she doesn’t even want to be a part of. She wants nice things, not old quilts, She wants the quilts to show her...
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