Paper 1

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.