The Issue of Entitlement in Everyday Use, a Novel by Alice Walker Essay Example
Throughout history the question of entitlement has constantly been at the forefront of wars and battles. When people feel that they are entitled to a particular item, many people will exert much effort and time into attaining that particular item over other items even when they are not the best choice. It is as if the item acquired a certain value just by being within our ownership. In Alice Walker's story "Everyday use" we find a story of two girls, the younger sister named Maggie living a fairly simple life in the south and the older Wangro formerly known as Dee, living a hipster life in the north. Throughout the story Wangro constantly looks around her old home looking for items to bring back with her. At one point in the story her eyes land upon a set o
...f quilts that were sown by the grandmother of the family.
At once Wangro fells a sense of entitlement to them and requests to take them back to the north with her, however these quilts were promised to her younger sister Maggie by her mother. The question now is who deserves them? It would seem justified to think that since the quilts were promised to Maggie, she should be the one to aquire them. As the saying goes "Mother knows best", once the mother of the house makes a statement that should be the final word for the family. However I would like to argue that in this circumstance the quilts should actually go to Wangro. The quilts are much more than silly pieces of fabric being argued upon by two daughters, they are instead pieces of history.
The
grandmother of these quilts stitched together the past and made it into a piece of visual art. When Wangro hears that Maggie will inherit these quilts her first reaction is to respond "Maggie would put them on the bed and in five years they'd be in rags. Less than that!.” This statement is seeped with truth; by giving over the quilts to Maggie the priceless history that is stitched into these quilts will be lost. maggie being so ignorant of the true value of the quilts can only see them on a superficial level, but to anyone possessing a deeper view will see in a second that there is much more than meets the eye. Having quilts so steeped in family history is rare and to trust them to such an ignoramus like Maggie will be a loss to history. In the conclusion, even though Maggie was given the quilts by her mother, one has to ask if these quilts were really the mothers to give.
Such historical items seem to merge into the very fabric of history and become the worlds to share. Entitlement ceases when seen in the grater scheme of preserving the items for future generations. Therefore I choose Wangaro to hold onto the quilts and preserve them for the next generation.
- American Literature essays
- Between The World and Me essays
- Book Report essays
- Book Review essays
- Book Summary essays
- Books essays
- Character essays
- Coming of Age essays
- Dante's Inferno essays
- Everyday Use essays
- Flowers for Algernon essays
- Genre essays
- Greek Mythology essays
- Incidents in The Life of a Slave Girl essays
- Letter essays
- Literary Criticism essays
- Literary devices essays
- Literature Review essays
- Metaphor essays
- Myth essays
- Play essays
- Plot essays
- Poem essays
- Poetry Analysis essays
- Protagonist essays
- Reader essays
- Reason essays
- Rhetoric essays
- Rhetorical Question essays
- Rhyme essays
- Simile essays
- Tragic Hero essays
- Translation essays
- Understanding essays
- Utopia essays
- Villain essays
- Writer essays
