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Heritage in Everyday Use - College Essay

Heritage in Everyday Use

A quilt can be worth the lives of several generations of a family. A quilt can be a piece of art hung in the front hall of your home, suspended on the wall by an artistic frame. A quilt can also be an object used to keep someone warm through cold nights. Alice Walker understands the true meaning of heritage. She was in her early 20s through the thick of the Civil Rights movement. In the late 1960s, she began writing and publishing fictional stories and poetry. The dissonant symbols, motherly point-of-view, and southern setting create a theme of contrary understandings of connecting to heritage and traditions in Alice Walker�s story �Everyday Use.�
Symbols that have different meanings for ...

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individuals� (Ross 3). For Dee, her name is a burden, a reminder of the life her ancestors had to live but that she will not. This is brought to our attention when she replies to her mother�s reaction about her name change with, �I couldn�t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me� (Walker 611). To Mama, the name means unity of a family. To Dee, the name represents being handcuffed to a past with people she did not associate herself with.
The quilts are functional scrapbooks for the Johnson family. The have �pieces of dresses Grandma used to wear� (Walker 612). There is also a �scrap of a Civil War uniform worn by Great Grandpa Ezra� (Ross 4). Dee wants to take the quilts and put them on display, using them as a �negative index to her own sophistication� and success (Cowart 4). They are, however, designated to Maggie by Aunt Dicie, Mama�s sister. Dee is not happy about Mama�s decision to let Maggie keep them, exclaiming that she will probably �be backward ...

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Heritage in Everyday Use. (2011, March 24). Retrieved November 28, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Heritage-in-Everyday-Use/96712

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 3/24/2011 07:41:31 AM
Submitted By: rph717
Category: English
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 974
Pages: 4

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