Everyday use By Alice Walker

Question #1 What are your impressions of each character?

Answer #1 That they all have different impressions on life. They think that you have to choose either being African American and embracing your heritage or leaving it all behind.

Question#2 How do you feel about Dee’s wanting nice things and leaving home? Explain

Answer #2 I can respect the fact that she wants something better for herself. Although you have something good you always want better.

Question#3 Do you think that the narrator made the right choice at the end of the story? Explain

Answer #3 No, she should have been proud of her daughter for making something of herself. She should have realized it and given her the quilt.

Question #4 What dream does the narrator recall as she waits for Dee in the yard?

Answer #4 She recalls how much Dee hated her life at home and how she wanted to escape it all.

Question#5 A) What objects does Dee ask to have? B) What does she intend to do with each one?

Answer #5 A) Dee wants to have the quilts that her grandmother sowed up. She wants the one that was sowed up by the machine not by hand. B) “Hang them…, as if that was the only thing you could do with quilts.”

Question#6 What is Dee’s response when the narrator says that she has promised to give the quilts to Maggie?

Answer #6 She was shocked that she choose to give them to Maggie then give them to her.

Question#7 A) What narrator’s remarks at the beginning of the story reveal about her relationship with each of her daughters? B) How does her relationship with each one change during the course of the story?

Answer #7 a) She is closer to Maggie then she is to Dee. b) Life just seemed to go on the same for all of them.

Question#8 A) what is ironic about Dee’s taking picture after picture of her family in front of the house? B) what is ironic about her professed interest in her heritage?

Answer #8 a) It’s ironic because she never really thought liked being around her family. She never really thought of herself as one of them. b) Dee has always been ashamed of her heritage. It almost seems as if she is jealous of Maggie and she wants to take something that belongs to Maggie away from her.

Question #9 A) what do the quilts mean to Dee? B) what do they mean to Maggie?

Answer #9 a) It’s really important to Dee because her grandmother sowed it up by hand and she wants to get to know her heritage. b) It’s important to Maggie because she actually took the time to sew it up with her grandmother.

Question#10 How well do you think the narrator understands her daughters? Explain

Answer #10 She isn’t able to understand her daughter because her daughter seems to want something better and different for herself. Something that her mom doesn’t have, but her mom thinks and feels that she has seen everything that there is to see so she doesn’t understand. As for Maggie she seems to protect her more because Dee pick’s on her.

Question#11 Do you think that it would have been possible for Dee to embrace her African heritage without rejecting her American heritage?

Answer #11 That would have been possible and she was trying to embrace them both but in her mothers eye’s she had to choose.

Question#12 A) what heirlooms does your family treasure? B) What makes them important?

Answer #12 In my family we don’t have heirlooms, and what about you?