Gabriella Chavez
English 201
In
the story “Everyday Use” Alice Walker brings up many different personalities and
how they have gotten them. Maggie is a African-American women who only one way
of living which is too stay home and do house work. Meanwhile her sister Maggie
has seen other opportunities of the world because she has traveled a bit and
knows what she is capable of. Staying in one place can really affect the person
you become because you do not know the world outside of the environment you
have been around.
When
Maggie’s sister, Dee, comes to visit her family she appears to be very mean to
her family is very embarrassed of her family. She is mean to Maggie and tells
her she can better herself if she knew what else was out there. Since Dee has
been around to other places than her hometown and has seen how other people act
and such that she has lost her sense of self. According to Tyson, that is one
of the psychoanalytic theories and Dee has that because the way she acts is
that she is better than her family. She lost herself because she was also in
denial from where she actually came from and did not want to deal with the
reality.
Maggie
appears to everyone that she has low self esteem and is jealous of Dee but it
seems that Maggie is happy where she is because she has not seen anything but
the world she lives in so in a way she does not know what is out there and if
she can be happy. Her sister Dee tells her she can do better for herself but
Maggie doesn’t know she can. Maggie probably does not even understand what she
means by that statement being that she seems happy where she is which is doing
house work and about to get married to a man. Dee actually might be jealous of
Maggie because she is happy with the little that she has when Dee has to search
around to find happiness and to feel complete.
Maggie
and Dee’s mother seems to have dream symbolism because in the beginning of the
story she daydreams of a life with happy children and a perfect life. When her
reality is the complete opposite of that because Dee is not happy when it comes
to being back home and Maggie is just very quiet and keeps to herself most of
the time.
Staying
in one place your entire life can be both bad and good because if an induvual
is happy where they are than let them stay that way. If they are not happy than
they should see what else is out there and what the possibilities are and if it
will make them happy doing so. Maggie seems to be happy where she is and Dee
was not so she got up and left to see a whole other world.
