"Everyday Use" By: Alice Walker #2

While reading this story for the first times, I found Dee to be completely unsympathetic and I resented her for the way she treated her family like they were disposable trash. While re-evaluating the story, I did find some sympathy for Dee because I realized how sad and incomplete her life must be in the way she is leading it. She has no real family as she rarely sees her mother and sister. She also is trying very hard to be someone whom she is not and is trying to create a life that is not hers. In this way, I find sympathy for how sad and incomplete Dee's life is. I believe the mother's victory over Dee is a victory because it put Dee in her place and ended her control over Maggie and her mother. I believe that as shown on page 179 by Maggie's reaction to Dee asking for the old quilts, "I heard something fall in the kitchen, and a minute later the kitchen door slammed," Maggie would have been upset if the quilts had been given away. If the mother had not denied Dee, Maggie's confidence would have been smashed yet again. I saw emotional ambivalence in the final scene because although Maggie and the mother share an emotional moment, there is nothing said and it almost seems that everything goes back to normal when the narrator says "until it was time to go in the house and go to bed." It almost seems that the mother and Maggie put the whole event behind them, but I also believe that this event reshaped their relationship into one of strength and quality.