Everyday Use

1.  Dee and Maggie are two sisters who grew up together, but have completely different personalities.  Dee is outgoing, but insanely stuck-up; she only cares about the things that she wants.  Maggie, however, is a shy, quiet girl who doesn't want (or get) as much as her sister.  I think Dee is more demanding because her mother always tried to give her exactly what she wanted.  Also, I think Dee feels superior to the other two because she thinks that she is smarter and better.  Walker incorporates this through the fact that Dee reads to people all the time, "[Dee] pressed us to her with the serious way she read, to shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits, we seemed about to understand" (258).

2.  Dee doesn't like the place she comes from.  She mocks it and insults it all the time.  In doing this, she is "othering" her own culture.  "This house is in a pasture, too, like the other one.  No doubt when Dee sees it she will want to tear it down.  She wrote me once that no matter where we 'choose' to live, she will manage to come see us" (Walker 259).  Dee hates her old life, and tries as hard as possible to do everything she can to disown herself from her past.  She thinks her new life is better.

3.  Throughout the story, Walker appears to be on Maggie's side.  Walker puts all of the changes Dee makes in bad light, not to mention that she puts Dee in a bad light.  She describes Dee so that Dee appears demanding, greedy, and inconsiderate.  For example, Walker states, after Dee's mother has just denied Dee something Dee wanted, "She gasped like a bee had stung her" (262).  Also, Walker decides to make the plot of the story have Maggie get the quilts that Dee wanted, so that shows her preference for Maggie's quiet, natural culture.