Essay On Quilts In Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use'

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I think the mother's refusal to let Dee have the quilts indicates a permanent change of character. Mama has never stood up to Dee before or deny her. Dee was always the confident one with the smart mouth and always the one to boss everyone around. By Mama standing up to Dee, she showed that she wasn't going to back down from what she believed in. I think that Mama didn’t talk back to Dee earlier because she was afraid of her. I think she thought that if she ever got angry at Dee or didn't let Dee have something then Dee would leave and never come back. No mother wants their daughter to ever leave their life. One thing in the story that foreshadows the refusal is when Mama thinks to herself, "I didn't want to bring up how I had offered Dee a quilt when she went away to college. Then she had told me they were old-fashioned, out of style” (Walker 172). This showed that Mama was angry at the fact that Dee had rejected her gift and now all of the sudden wanted it. Another detail that foreshadows the refusal is when Mama says, "It was Grandma Dee and Big Dee who taught her how to quilt herself” (Walker 173). This showed that Mama understood how important the quilts were to Maggie and that she didn't want to take that away from Maggie.

Pg. 179 #6 and #7
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Even though the main story deals with Sonny's life, we also get the events of the narrator's life, allowing us to learn how and why the two brothers have grown apart over the years. This is then directly connected to a theme of the story, the alienation of the two brothers and how the narrator begins to understand what Sonny, his brother, is all about. Once the narrator is willing to enter Sonny's world of music, he's able to understand what the music means to Sonny, expressing his pain and suffering. By understanding this, the two brothers can grow closer and help heal each other's
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