Adopted Heritage in Alice Walkers Everyday Use Essays -- Everyday Use

Each of us is raised within a culture, a set of traditions handed down by those before us. As individuals, we encounter and experience common heritage in subtly differing ways. Within little communities and families, deeply felt traditions serve to enrich this common heritage. Alice Walkers public lend oneself explores how, in her eagerness to claim an ancient heritage, a woman may deny herself the substantive personalised experience of familial traditions. Narrated by the fuck off of two missys, the story opens with an examination of one daughters favoring of appearances over substance, and the effect this has on her relatives. The mother and her younger daughter, Maggie, live in an impoverished rural area. They bear the arrival of the elder daughter, Dee, who left home for college and is bringing her new husband with her for a visit. The mother recalls how, as a child, Dee hated the house in which she was raised. It was destroyed in a fire, and as it was burning, Dee (stood) off under the reinvigorated gum tree... a look of concentration on her face, tempting her mother to ask, why dont you do a dance around the ashes? (Walker 91) She expects Dee will hate their current house, also. The small, three-room house sits in a pasture, with no real windows, scarce some holes cut in the sides (Walker 92), and although, as Dee asserts, they choose to live in such a place, Dee keeps her promise to visit them (Walker 92). Her distaste for her origins is felt by her mother and Maggie, who, in anticipation of Dees arrival, internalize her attitudes. They feel to some purpose their own unworthiness. The mother envisions a reunion in which her educated, urbane daughter would be proud of her. In reality, she describes her... ...aking something for herself consists of putting on the garments of her heritage without authentically living in them. As Dee says goodbye, Maggie smiles a real smile, not affright (Walker 97). She sits with her mother as they shar e a pinch of snuff meet enjoying. (Walker 97) Dee leaves two people who have in significant ways tote up to terms with her judgment of them and the way they live. Our heritage threads through news report past the people who contributed to it, to affect us on a personal level. To be fully appreciated and claimed, it must reside in the heart. Dee understands the heritage of people she doesnt know. In this way, her adopted heritage can be mute intellectually, but it is not felt, not personal, and not truly her own. Work Cited Walker, Alice. Everyday Use Ed. Barbara T. Christian. New Jersey Rutgers University Press, 1994.