Alice Walker's Short Story "Everyday Use" E-Book

Martin Eder

• Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 2,0, University of Passau, language: English, abstract: This term paper provides the concept of a teaching unit concerning the short story Everyday Use by Alice Walker. Apart from the different analyses there should also be given an overview of recommendations and possibilities that could be used for creating a teaching unit. Everyday Use was published in 1973 and is basically about a black mother and her two daughters. Whereas one daughter, Dee, had the possibility to go to school and visit college, Maggie, the younger daughter, still lives with her mother and did not enjoy higher education. One day, Dee, who is accompanied by her boyfriend, visits her mother and her sister at her old home. As the story continues it becomes clear that obvious differences have developed between the opinions of Dee and her mother alternatively her sister.

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Index

Introduction

1. Summarisation of the content

2. Technical analysis / literary analysis

3. Didactical analysis

4. Methodical analysis

4.1 Pre-reading phase

4.2 While-reading phase

4.3 Post-reading phase

5. Conclusion

6. Works cited:

Introduction

This term paper provides the concept of a teaching unit concerning the short story Everyday Use by Alice Walker. Apart from the different analyses there should also be given an overview of recommendations and possibilities that could be used for creating a teaching unit.

1. Summarisation of the content

Everyday Usewas published in 1973 and is basically about a black mother and her two daughters. Whereas one daughter, Dee, had the possibility to go to school and visit college, Maggie, the younger daughter, still lives with her mother and did not enjoy higher education. One day, Dee, who is accompanied by her boyfriend, visits her mother and her sister at her old home. As the story continues it becomes clear that obvious differences have developed between the opinions of Dee and her mother alternatively her sister.

2. Technical analysis / literary analysis

Superficially “Everyday Use” is only about a mother and a conflict between her two daughters who argue about the future disposition of some furniture. Having a closer look on the text and also on the social and time context it becomes obvious that Alice Walker deals in her short story actually with the cultural heritage of Afro-Americans. As already mentioned, Everyday Use was published in 1973 and this is also the time when the story issupposedto take place. Due to the success of the civil rights movement and leaders like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X the Afro-Americans “werestruggling to define their personal identities in cultural terms” at that time (White 2001). Moreover, black people started to concentrate the reclaimed self-confidence inorganisationslike Black Power or Black Pride to express their solidarity. As a part of this movement Afro-Americans also started do rediscover their former origins and mostly wanted to forget about the American heritage that seemed to be foisted on their lives. According to White, Walker claims that this separation is on the one hand not completely possible and on the other hand not advisable, because this would be a denial of the history of blacks in America and therefore detrimental to the individual, too (cf. White 2001). Another fact that supports this theory is the name “Afro-Americans” itself. Black people fought for the prohibition of disrespectful appellations like Negro or – even worse – Nigger. They chose the name “Afro-Americans” also toemphasise their origin. But the combination of America and Africa shows the fact that cannot be denied: Black people, who live in America, of course have their original roots in Africa, but they are also characterized by the time they spent in America and these features may be neglected, but finally people would not be what they are without them.

Alice Walker succeeds in dealing with this idea by creating a conflict between a mother and her two daughters. Due to the narrowed aspect of time on the one hand and the limited factor of the pupils’ knowledge on the other hand the literary analysis is shortened to the most important facts that pupils should be aware of in the 11th or 12th grade.

Mama, as an I-narrator, leads trough the story and therefore has got a limited pint of view. As she is one of the main characters, Mama acts as an I-as-protagonist and tells the reader in the first part of the story mostly about the past of the family, the childhood and the child rearing of her two daughters. Moreover she gives a characterisation of Maggie, Dee and also herself, which is an important aspect for the reader in order to interpret the second part of the short story when Mama and Maggie meet Dee and her boyfriend. Due to this characterisation by Mama the characteristics of the figures within the story are on the one hand directly revealed by the narrator and on the other hand also indirectly shown by the characters themselves when they act in the second part. As Mama talks about her characteristics herself, she, as the narrator, gives the reader direct information about her and while acting in the second part of the story, also indirect hints that can be interpreted.

The following quotation is an example how Mama describes herself: “I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands. In the winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day. I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man” (Walker 1998: 408). 

Along with several other aspects that mostly stress the practical skills of Mama, thischaracterisationshows that she is proud of her competences and the ability to do almost the same hard work as good as a man could do it. The fact that she only went to school until the second grade strengthens the fact that Mama probably had no other choice than to work hard to make her living. An important characteristic that is also shown already in the beginning is her honest and direct way to express things and she makes no secret of her lack of education and refinement