Everyday Use by Alice Walker

In the short story, "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker, the setting plays a critical role around the main characters; Mamma, Maggie, and Dee. This short story took place in the late 1960s around the time the African Americans gained civil rights. The setting is a major cause and brings argument and tension between Dee and her mother. Mamma did not have the opportunity her daughter Dee had in receiving outside education as she was growing up in her times. Dee received the education away from home and this showed her a new world of education, which is something her mother and sister are not well aware of. Dee was separated from her everyday use she would receive from working around the house; she shows less value towards the meaning of tradition or from where she grew up from and believes tradition no longer have everyday use.

Dee decides to visit her family and as returned home a different person, a Dee with her tradition of education. Her family no longer suits to her life of education and finds them unattractive. Dee was no longer the sixteen year old girl that her mother knew and was proud of. Now Dee has returned home with a different style of dressing to show that her education has changed as well as her name. She has changed her name to Wangero because she finds her mother's tradition clueless of naming children after relatives. Dee does not understand her family tradition and does not give any importance to learn it. She now believes she is over everyone and thinks that anything she says should be followed by her family.

The setting of the story is what brings Dee into this character because she was given the opportunity to receive education away from home, where her mother could not receive at her youth. So Dee believes she is the most important person in her family because she received education and this leads her into pushing away her heritage. She now views heritage as an object instead as important history of her family. The quilt carries a lot of heritage and is to remember the persons who made them but for Dee they were just an object to be hung on a wall. This shows how Dee's family heritage means very little to her and how she reject being part of the past. Dee does not want to carry her heritage with her. On the other hand Maggie, Dee's sister shows importance towards the quilt and talks more about the people who made the quilt rather than the quilt itself.

In this short story the setting shows how growing up in different times can change some one. In "Everyday Use" we see how education can change the way of thinking and leading to change are point of view towards are traditions and heritage. Traditions change over time if it is not followed on an everyday use and in Dee's situation her tradition is now education because she no longer lives with her mother. Dee no longer is under the everyday use her mother relies on around the house, she now lives in a