Everday Use Opinion
Everyday Use offers a valuable insight of life and how life should be lived or carried out.
Dee, the oldest sibling of a small, poor, and humble family, has an education and manners unlike her own sister and her mother. Throughout the story she demonstrates how she doesn’t appreciate the way she is living so she marries a wealthy guy. A great example is how Dee always dreamed of having her own clothes and going to school which were out of her reach from where she came from. Dee’s major conflict growing up was wanting to dominate people, if not she would become irritated as she believed she was very sophisticated with the education she gained. In my perspective not only is Dee greedy and imprudent, but she is also very inconsiderate of others that aren’t herself. In Everyday Use we see the author’s perspective of Maggie and Dee, and how incompatible they are.
The author describes Dee with a much higher in hierarchy than Maggie as nice looking, elegant, and skinnier. However, what makes the difference between the two sisters are the words like nicer, fuller, better looking. All these words have a mental impact on the reader and their judgment about certain characters. For example, when Dee shows how she teases Maggie when she says, “Maggie’s brain is like an elephant’s.” This indicates how Dee mentally abuses her sister by ridiculing her and incorporates to her comment by laughing.
Taking into consideration of all the complex situations that occur between Dee and her family their relationship could be defined as astonishing. For instance, Maggie feels anger and jealousy towards her own sister, Dee. Maggie also feels aggravated as her family is still sitting in the cages of distress while Dee doesn’t have the same struggles or complications. I personally feel as if Dee was unfair as she was determined to strive herself out of poverty she became very inconsiderate and heartless with her own family once she accomplished her proposal. Furthermore, Dee demonstrates her egotistical behavior by showing her incomprehensible intentions on how she plans on using the quilt for her own selfish purposes that were supposed to be very useful for Maggie. In addition, Dee demotes anyone who interferes with what she is trying to obtain, including her own family.
On the other hand, Dee never took the time to take into consideration how much dedication and time her mother place into the quilt. Dee was planning on using the quilt as a display of African culture, unlike Maggie’s purpose which was to provide her with warmth during the harsh weather conditions. Knowing her younger sister was in need of the quilt Dee didn’t hesitate to take from the little that Maggie has. Dee just had been offered the quilt as she was heading off to college, but had rejected it. An example of Maggie’s compassionate character is when she says, “She can have them, Mama,” she said, like somebody used to never winning anything, or having anything reserved for her.” This quote demonstrates how Maggie is thoughtful of others even though they are being impolite to her.
At first Dee had discriminated the quilt as she didn’t want anything to do with it and right after is when her mother had offered Maggie the quilt. This suddenly struck Dee and suddenly wanted it because apparently had become a “priceless piece” of African culture. Dee cannot tolerate anyone having something better than herself. This situation doesn’t only occur with the quilts. Additionally to the situation when Dee tried to take from Maggie, Dee also went to her mother’s house and tried to take as many possible things she could use for her new house. One of Dee’s major desires is her grandmothers butter dish and her butter churn, which unfortunately had passed away.
Most of the materials Dee desires are in her mother’s home, as majority of the objects that would be taken would be turn into an object of an artistic display and will not be used out to its full purpose. The major drawback Dee had to show her imprudent character is how she changes her name to Wangero. My immediate thought on her perspective is how disrespectful it was on her part to change her name that her own mother with love created for her, treating her own heritage with such low respect. With much shame Dee shows how humiliated she feels about her name when she states, “I couldn’t bear it any longer being named after the people who oppressed me.” This disrespectful comment demonstrates the true feelings that Dee has towards her name and heritage.
However, based on all these situations about Dee’s point of view, what I think Dee should do to change herself is to change everything within her character, her emotions, her actions, and her personality. What Dee can do to accomplish this is to start and change the way that she treats people including important people like Maggie and Mom. Instead of stating bad comments like making fun of them or disrespecting them, Dee could be more delightful and polite. Another example of what Dee can do is change her mind set about certain things like using the quilts for artistic display and arguing about them. When Dee wanted to take the quilts from Maggie, from my point of view that was very selfish and bold of her because of the fact that Mom claimed them for Maggie first. What Dee can do to change this is accept the fact that the quilts were supposed to be for Maggie and not her.
Instead of doing things like trying to fight and argue, she should just accept the truth that Maggie got them first. Overall, Dee is a women with a very greedy and imprudent character, but if changes were to occur she can become a very nice and well-mannered women.
