Why Mama Gives the Quilts to Maggie rather than Dee Essay

Why Mama Gives the Quilts to Maggie rather than Dee - Essay Example Culture connects one with his/her ancestry and helps the person to relate to his/her social group, this is the message conveyed in this story. So, this paper will analyze how the person who holds on to her culture and heritage was finally rewarded. â€Å"Everyday Use† by Alice Walker involves three different characters, a mother and her two daughters and reflects their directly opposite views about African-American culture. All the three main characters of the short story, â€Å"Everyday use†, ‘Mama’, Dee and Maggie are different with different characteristics, with the two daughters particularly contrasting. Dee is portrayed as being the successful, beautiful but at the same time arrogant woman, with false pride about her heritage. While Maggie is a disfigured, slow at the same time simple girl with lot of pride in tradition and heritage. â€Å"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 my Maggie walks† (Walker, 25). ‘Mama’ introduces herself as â€Å"a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands†. So the Mama could be const ructed as women with good physical strength. ‘Mama’ always showed a lot of responsibility to both her daughters and tried hard to give both of them a better life. As both the daughters were different in every aspect, all theirs friction were handled with care by her. Dee has been like that even from her childhood and always played an independent role in the family. While, Maggie because of her lack of physical beauty and low confidence had a subdued existence. Importantly she didn’t show any rudeness and lived a calm life. So, the point to be noted is, even though both the girls are very different they had a good relationship until the object of quilts entered the picture. The elder daughter Dee, because of the influence of Black