"Everyday Use," by Alice Walker (1973)
Author: Alice Walker
Walker, Alice. "Everyday Use." Literature: a Portable Anthology, edited by Janet E. Gardner et al., Bedford/St. Martin's, 2017.
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I will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy yesterday afternoon. A yard like this is more comfortable than most people know. It is not just a yard. It is like an extended living room. When the hard clay is swept clean as a floor and the fine sand around the edges lined with tiny, irregular grooves, anyone can come and sit and look up into the elm tree and wait for the breezes that never come inside the house.
The author is compare the yard with the living room using the word “like”
I’m totally agree with you. They really like to keep the yard clean.
What happen to Maggie she had an accident ? why her skin is burn ?
Emely, I think that in the middle of the story, it slightly describes that they lived in a house before, the one that they actually lived. From my inference in the story, looks like Maggie suffered some burns from that and it is why Maggie is a bit underestimated in comparison with her sister Dee. It is why the mother always describes Dee as the most beautiful. Also Maggie makes Dee remember that past and Dee does not like it. It is why they do not get that much along each other
Because of the accident, Maggie’s self-conscious are not letting to come out from her comfort zone
What a description of the yard, It seems like the yard is so important for them!!
this paragraph just describes the yard that Maggie made so clean and wavy yesterday afternoon she said people feel comfortable because of the yard “it is not just a yard” is more likely like a extended living room./ i feel like they really like that yard what is so Importand about the yard.
It’s being said that the Yard is not just as we can see, that it is like an extended living room
Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eying her sister with a mixture of envy and awe. She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that "no" is a word the world never learned to say to her.
Maggie does NOT feel satisfied about her life. She also thinks that her sister Dee has a beeter life than her and live was so lucky with her.
sister have a perfect life.
Yes, that what I also belief the Maggie feel insecure about her self after the accident.
This sentence shows how Maggie’s sister doesn’t not no how to say “no” which to her is due to the incident she had.
Maggie thinks that her sister has her whole life ahead of her and she is promist to a bright future
i think miggie dont want her sister to control her future
You've no doubt seen those TV shows where the child who has "made it" is confronted, as a surprise, by her own mother and father, tottering in weakly from backstage. (A pleasant surprise, of course: What would they do if parent and child came on the show only to curse out and insult each other?) On TV mother and child embrace and smile into each other's faces. Sometimes the mother and father weep, the child wraps them in her arms and leans across the table to tell how she would not have made it without their help. I have seen these programs.
Sometimes I dream a dream in which Dee and I are suddenly brought together on a TV program of this sort. Out of a dark and soft-seated limousine I am ushered into a bright room filled with many people. There I meet a smiling, gray, sporty man like Johnny Carson who shakes my hand and tells me what a fine girl I have. Then we are on the stage and Dee is embracing me with tears in her eyes. She pins on my dress a large orchid, even though she has told me once that she thinks orchids are tacky flowers.
Mama wishes that the relationship with her daughter Dee became better and they stay on good terms.
why they not taking classes for then can become film stars because if they love tv shows take classes and learn.
This might be what the house looked like:
In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands. In the winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls dur.ing the day. I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledgehammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall. But of course all this does not show on television. I am the way my daughter would want me to be: a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake. My hair glistens in the hot bright lights. Johnny Carson has much to do to keep up with my quick and witty tongue.
She is a tough woman and she has a hard life
…and there were not a lot of Black people seen on television yet.
And she says it without judgment; just a statement of fact.
Mama keeps comparing herself to a man because that’s how strong and tough woman she is meaning her life is not easy.
But that is a mistake. I know even before I wake up. Whoever knew a Johnson with a quick tongue? Who can even imagine me looking a strange white man in the eye? It seems to me I have talked to them always with one foot raised in flight, with my head fumed in whichever way is farthest from them. Dee, though. She would always look anyone in the eye. Hesitation was no part of her nature.
at the same time Maggie thinks that her possibilities of doing something good aren’t to good and she would never try because on her mind everything would go wrong.
I can tell Mama is insecure about to talking to someone in the eyes either because of her skin color or maybe she’s naturally shy unlike her daughter.
"How do I look, Mama?" Maggie says, showing just enough of her thin body enveloped in pink skirt and red blouse for me to know she's there, almost hidden by the door.
"Come out into the yard," I say.
Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him? That is the way my Maggie walks. She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground.
Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure. She's a woman now, though sometimes I forget. How long ago was it that the other house burned? Ten, twelve years? Sometimes I can still hear the flames and feel Maggie's arms sticking to me, her hair smoking and her dress falling off her in little black papery flakes. Her eyes seemed stretched open, blazed open by the flames reflected in them. And Dee. I see her standing off under the sweet gum tree she used to dig gum out of; a look of concentration on her face as she watched the last dingy gray board of the house fall in toward the red-hot brick chimney. Why don't you do a dance around the ashes? I'd wanted to ask her. She had hated the house that much.
How the house got burned ?
Why Dee had hated the house ? that happen before or after the tragedy.
Dee has more confidence than her sister because of her physical apperance. Mama remembered the accdiecnt that left scars on Maggie.
Dee had stronger characteristics then Dee because She like to show up, while Maggie don’t.
Dee is being describe with some source of admiration to her being that can possibly be the opposite for Maggie
maggie arm burn because of the fire in the house
Dee had always hated the old house and was happy when it burning down to aches
why did she hated her house so much
The house was a simple country house, and she wanted more than that.
Paragraph 11 changes
I used to think she hated Maggie, too.
But that was before we raised money, the church and me, to send her to Augusta to school.
She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks' habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice.
She washed us in a river of make-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn't necessarily need to know.
Pressed us to her with the serious way she read, to shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits, we seemed about to understand.
Dee manupilate and control her family because they are ignorant. She brainwashed them.
Dee is an ungrateful person treating everyone badly
why she hating her sister?
Pressed us to her with the serf' ous serious way she read, to shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits, we seemed about to understand.
Dee wanted nice things. A yellow organdy dress to wear to her grad.uation from high school; black pumps to match a green suit she'd made from an old suit somebody gave me. She was determined to stare down any disaster in her efforts. Her eyelids would not flicker for minutes at a time. Often I fought off the temptation to shake her. At sixteen she had a style of her own: and knew what style was.
Dee is passing through her puberty, she is try to dress in a fashion way calling people attention with her look, she want to be different without be grateful to her parents
I never had an education myself. After second grade the school was closed down. Don't ask me why: in 1927 colored asked fewer questions than they do now. Sometimes Maggie reads to me. She stumbles along good-naturedly but can't see well. She knows she is not bright. Like good looks and money, quickness passes her by. She will marry John Thomas (who has mossy teeth in an earnest face) and then I'll be free to sit here and I guess just sing church songs to myself. Although I never was a good singer. Never could carry a tune. I was always better at a man's job. I used to love to milk till I was hooked in the side in '49. Cows are soothing and slow and don't bother you, unless you try to milk them the wrong way.
Mama want to get better education but she couldn’t because of her color and when she was in 2nd grade her school was closed.
I have deliberately turned my back on the house. It is three rooms, just like the one that burned, except the roof is tin; they don't make shingle roofs any more. There are no real windows, just some holes cut in the sides, like the portholes in a ship, but not round and not square, with rawhide holding the shutters up on the outside. This house is in a pasture, too, like the other one. No doubt when Dee sees it she will want to tear it down. She wrote me once that no matter where we "choose" to live, she will manage to come see us. But she will never bring her friends. Maggie and I thought about this and Maggie asked me, "Mama, when did Dee ever have any friends?"
No wonder she wants to tear it apart and refuse to bring her friends over because she picked her style doesn’t match with her house
why Dee do not have any friends ?
Do Dee feel ashamed of their parents or where they live ?
Honestly, I never thought about it, yet I think that she did not want anyone to know where she lived. It also looks like she was opting for a different social Class in the story because of the boyfriend that she was dating with.
She had a few. Furtive boys in pink shirts hanging
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