Everyday Use

Characters Face to Face

In Alice Walker's "Everyday Use," the characters are introduced to the reader on a personal level by instantly giving the reader a vivid image of their appearance, and the use of dialect directly expresses certain aspects of their life and personality. This story circles around a mother and her two distinctively different daughters in an argument over family heirlooms. By taking a step back and observing the eloquent way Walker describes the characters and their speech, the reader can see how these characters are developed so well.

From the beginning, Walker begins to unfold the characters with a description of a dream the mother has about her oldest daughter Dee, and her unrealistic expectations of her mother's appearance: "I am the way my daughter would want me to be: a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake. My hair glistens in the hot bright lights" (167). The reader automatically has a feeling of disapproval of Dee and her shallow thoughts about her mother. The mother then describes herself in such a way that the reader may feel empathetic towards her: "In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands" (167). "My fat keeps me hot in zero weather" (167). These statements imply she is taken for granted by her daughter for all the hard work she does and is far from Dee's expectations.

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Another example of feeling sadness for the characters is focused on Maggie. She is the pitiful daughter. The narrator describes her by comparing her to a run over dog: "Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him? That is the way Maggie walks" (168). Maggie is ashamed of her own appearance, making the audience feel sorry for her.

Dee, however, is the best description throughout the entire story. Her audacious personality can be seen through her clothes, hair, and the way she presents herself as superior to the other characters. Her mother describes her outfit as:

"A dress down to the ground, in this hot weather. A dress so loud it hurts my eyes. There are yellows and oranges enough to throw back the light of the sun. I feel my whole face warming from the heat waves it throws out. Earrings gold, too, and hanging down to her shoulders. Bracelets dangling and making noises when she moves her arm up to shake the folds of

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