Study Guide [2] 
Alice Walker's "Everyday Use"

Questions to be asking during your initial reading of the story

(1)  Roughly where and when are we to imagine the action of this story taking place?  What are some of the features of the story that we might find more understandable if we take this context into account?

(2)  How would you characterize the narrative point of view of this story?

(3) What do you take to be the central conflict in the story?  

Follow-up:  what seem to be the deeper issues at stake in this conflict?

(4) At which precise moment does the title concept come into play?

(5) What moment best qualifies as the story's climax?

Follow-up (5a):  How does noticing this help us decide whether the author has structured the story so as to cast the older daughter, or her mother, as the story's protagonist?

Follow-up (5b):  what are some of the deeper issues at stake in this moment?

 
 Do not read further in this study guide until you have finished your initial reading of the story.

Questions to keep in mind during your second reading of the story

(1)  On reflection, does is the narrator of this story qualify as reliable, or unreliable?

What important facts of the story should the reader take into account in arriving at a conclusion on this issue?

(2)  Dee and Maggie are not just different, but systematically different.  Walker has constructed them to function as foils to each other.  How is this so in terms of

• details of physical appearance
• important traits of character
  • The concept "character traits" embraces several logically distinct kinds of features
    • Intellectual & emotional capacities ("talents").
    • Temperaments (inclinations, dispositions)
    • Values (conscious & unconscious allegiances, priorities, commitments)
      • Here it will be useful to think through question (4) below.
  • You should be able to come up with several distinct traits for the one that stand in contrast to corresponding traits of the other.  Try to be as thorough as you can in laying hold of as many of these as you can come up with.
    • Try to get clear about their logical relationships:  are some of these more fundamental than others?  Put the other way around:  are some of these specific expressions of others?
  • Some, but not all, of these traits might stand in some relationship to what you've noted about facts of physical appearance.  
    • Might some be have been fostered by these physical differences?  
    • Might some of these physical differences by symptoms or expressions of these differences in personality?

(3) In how many ways would the story have been less rich than it is if Walker had chosen substitute blankets for quilts?

• Specifically:  what are some implications tied up in the idea of quilts that would not be in play with the more generic idea of blankets?
• Are any of these important in connection with the deeper issues the story is concerned with?

(4) What exactly do we figure Dee has in mind when she uses the concept of "everyday use"?

Follow-up (4a):  When we think about the everyday uses to which Maggie will put the quilts, when she's raising a family, are there some that don't probably come to mind under Dee's conception of "everyday use"?

Follow-up (4b):   As Dee poses the alternatives, "everyday use" is opposed to what?

1. What use ("daily use," even) do we realize Dee herself will be putting the quilts, supposing she were to get them?   
   • More specifically:  what story will she use the quilts as an occasion to tell visitors to her house?  What larger story will this story be a part of?
     • What role will her family be assigned in this suite of stories?
2. Will Maggie, too, be using the quilts "to decorate her house"?
   • Will "decorating one's house" mean something different, in the two cases?

  There is an alternative study guide to this story.  You might find it more useful, or not.

  Check out a possible writing assignment on this story.

   Contents copyright © 2003 by Lyman A. Baker.

Permission is granted for non-commercial educational use; all other rights reserved.