Alice-walker-everyday-use复习过程
everyday use人物分析兼论其主题
everyday use人物分析兼论其主题《EverydayUse》是美国作家居伦米拉姆惠特曼（AliceWalker）于1973年发表的一篇小说，主要讲述了一个低收入乡村非洲裔美国家庭之间的非洲文化继承争议，也表达了作者对传统非洲文化的认可和尊重。
主要人物分析1.拉（Maggie）：米拉是小说的主人公，也是家庭中最小的孩子，由于生活条件的限制，没有接受过正规的教育，外表粗犷，性格简单，但是对家里的传统文化有着强烈的执着。
米拉有着自己良好的文化认知，理解着自家的传统文化价值，以自己家里的织物来保护和传承自家的文化遗产。
2.丽安（Mary Ann）：玛丽安是米拉的姐姐，也是家里最大的孩子，她曾经就读过大学，想要摆脱贫困，从而拥有更好的生活。
她比米拉更加注重审美，认为传统文化只是一种礼仪，应该只在特定的场合里展示，而不是用于日常生活。
3.安娜（Mama）：玛安娜是小说中的母亲，她友善善良，关心孩子们，有着较强的责任感。
作为家里最重要的人，她在米拉和玛丽安之间寻求平衡，希望两个孩子都能得到成就，又能继承家族的文化传统。
4.安娜（Dee）：戴安娜是米拉和玛丽安的姐姐，比两个孩子大了很多年的大姐，曾经就读过大学，拥有较强的文化认知，对家族的传统文化认可有限，她认为这些传统文化太过于粗俗，不够美观，最后把它们拿来当做收藏品展示在家里。
人物特征看，米拉在家庭有著最深厚的文化认知，追求著文化的承和煌；而玛丽安家族文化有度反感，希望能摆脱贫困，过上更好的生活。
玛安娜在米拉和玛丽安之，她既知道家族文化的重要性，也理解玛丽安改善生活的追求，於双方的力求公平，人都能得到尊重。
戴安娜於家族的传统文化有限的认可，而她想要把它们拿当做收藏品展示在家里，展示自家文化的象征性，也是於家族文化的致敬。
最，《Everyday Use》的主题是“文化继承”。
作者用家族中三名不同文化认知水平的主要人物来表现这个主题，讲述了家庭中个孩子在文化继承上的分歧。
Everyday-Use-for-your-grandmama复习过程
Summary
“Everyday Use” tells the story of a mother and her two daughters’ conflicting ideas about their identities and ancestry. The mother narrates the story of the day one daughter, Dee, visits from the city and clashes with the other daughter, Maggie, over the possession of heirloom
Character Analysis
• Walker’s three cycles of black woman
a. Those “who were cruelly exploited, spirits and bodies mutilated, relegated to the most narrow and confining lives, sometimes driven to madness”
Walker identifies the quilt as one of the traditional art forms of African Amercian women, showing the creativity of the black woman.
b. Name
Dee follows the example of some Amercian blacks in adopting an African name to replace her original family name. She has discarded her given name, Dee, because as she says, “I couldn’t bear it any longer being named after the people who oppress me.” However, she fails to understand that the name Dee also goes back several generations,therefore is more part of her heritage. She introduces herself as “Wangero leewanika Kemanjo”(Wanjiru is a Kikuyu clan name indicating honrary acceptance into the Leopard clan).
Everyday Use-Alice Walker(《祖母的日常用品》爱丽丝.沃克)原版辅导教学问题
Everyday UseAlice WalkerI will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy yesterday afternoon. A yard like this is more comfortable than most people know. It is not just a yard. It is like an extended living room. When the hard clay is swept clean as a floor and the fine sand around the edges lined with tiny, irregular grooves, anyone can come and sit and look up into the elm tree and wait for the breezes that never come inside the house.Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: She will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe. She thinks her sister had held life always in the palm of one hand, that “no” is a word the world never learned to say to her.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------2You’ve no doubt seen those TV shows where the child who has “made it” is confronted, as a surprise, by her own mother and father, tottering in weakly from backstage. (A pleasant surprise, of course: What would they do if parent and child came on the show only to curse out and insult each other?) On TV mother and child embrace and smile into each other’s faces. Sometimes the mother and father weep; the child wraps them in her arms and leans across the table to tell how she would not have made it without their help. I have seen these programs.Sometimes I dream a dream in which Dee and I are suddenly brought together on a TV program of this sort. Out of a dark and soft-seated limousine I am ushered into a bright room filled with many people. There I meet a smiling, gray, sporty man like Johnny Carson who shakes my hand and tells me what a fine girl I have. Then we are on the stage, and Dee is embracing me with tears in her eyes. She pins on my dress a large orchid, even though she had told me once that she thinks orchids are tacky flowers.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------3In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands. In the winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day. I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with asledgehammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall. But of course all this does not show on television. I am the way my daughter would want me to be: a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake. My hair glistens in the hot bright lights. Johnny Carson has much to do to keep up with my quick and witty tongue.But that is a mistake. I know even before I wake up. Who ever knew a Johnson with a quick tongue? Who can even imagine me looking a strange white man in the eye? It seems to me I have talked to them always with one foot raised in flight, with my head turned in whichever way is farthest from them. Dee, though. She would always look anyone in the eye. Hesitation was no part of her nature.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------4“How do I look, Mama?” Maggie says, showing just enough of her thin body enveloped in pink skirt and red blouse for me to know she’s there, almost hidden by the door.“Come out into the yard,” I say.Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him? That is the way my Maggie walks. She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground.Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure. She’s a woman now, though sometimes I forget. How long ago was it that the other house burned? Ten, twelve years? Sometimes I can still hear the flames and feel Maggie’s arms sticking to me, her hair smoking and her dress falling off her in little black papery flakes. Her eyes seemed stretched open, blazed open by the flames reflected in them. And Dee. I see her standing off under the sweet gum tree she used to dig gum out of, a look of concentration on her face as she watched the last dingy gray board of the house fall in toward the red-hot brick chimney. Why don’t you do a dance around the ashes? I’d wanted to ask her. She had hated the house that much.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------5I used to think she hated Maggie, too. But that was before we raised the money, the church and me, to send her to Augusta to school. She used to read to us without pity, forcing words, lies, otherfolks’ habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. She washed us in a river of make-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn’t necessarily need to know. Pressed us to her with the serious ways she read, to shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits, we seemed about to understand.Dee wanted nice things. A yellow organdy dress to wear to her graduation from high school; black pumps to match a green suit she’d made from an ol d suit somebody gave me. She was determined to stare down any disaster in her efforts. Her eyelids would not flicker for minutes at a time. Often I fought off the temptation to shake her. At sixteen she had a style of her own: and knew what style was.6I never had an education myself. After second grade the school closed down. Don’t ask me why: In 1927 colored asked fewer questions than they do now. Sometimes Maggie reads to me. She stumbles along good-naturedly but can’t see well. She knows she is not bright. Like good looks and money, quickness passed her by. She will marry John Thomas (who has mossy teeth in an earnest face), and then I’ll be free to sit here and I guess just sing church songs to myself. Although I never was a good singer. Never could carry a tune. I was always better at a man’s job. I used to love to milk till I was hooked in the side in ’49. Cows are soothing and slow and don’t bother you, unless you try to milk them the wrong way.I have deliberately turned my back on the house. It is three rooms, just like the one that burned, except the roof is tin; they don’t make shingle roofs anymore. There are no real windows, just some holes cut in the sides, like the port-holes in a ship, but not round and not square, with rawhide holding the shutters up on the outside. 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. But she will never bri ng her friends. Maggie and I thought about this and Maggie asked me, “Mama, when did Dee ever have any friends?”--------------------------------------------------------------------------------7She had a few. Furtive boys in pink shirts hanging about on washday after school. Nervous girls who never laughed. Impressed with her, they worshiped the well-turned phrase, the cute shape, the scalding humor that erupted like bubbles in lye. She read to them.When she was courting Jimmy T, she didn’t have much time to pay to us but turned all her faultfinding power on him. He flew to marry a cheap city girl from a family of ignorant, flashy people. She hardly had time to recompose herself.When she comes, I will meet—but there they are!Maggie attempts to make a dash for the house, in her shuffling way, but I stay her with my hand. “Come back here,” I say. And she stops and tries to dig a well in the sand with her toe.It is hard to see them clearly through the strong sun. But even the first glimpse of leg out of the car tells me it is Dee. Her feet were always neat looking, as if God himself shaped them with a certain style. From the other side of the car comes a short, stocky man. Hair is all over his head a foot long and hanging from his chin like a kinky mule tail. I hear Maggie suck in her breath. “Uhnnnh” is what it sounds like. Like when you see the wriggling end of a snake just in front of your foot on the road. “Uhnnnh.”--------------------------------------------------------------------------------8Dee next. A dress down to the ground, in this hot weather. A dress so loud it hurts my eyes. There are yellows and oranges enough to throw back the light of the sun. I feel my whole face warming from the heat waves it throws out. Earrings gold, too, and hanging down to her shoulders. Bracelets dangling and making noises when she moves her arm up to shake the folds of the dress out of her armpits. The dress is loose and flows, and as she walks closer, I like it. I hear Maggie go “Uhnnnh” again. It is her sister’s hair. It stands straight up like the wool on a sheep. It is black as night and around the edges are two long pigtails that rope about like small lizards disappearing behind her ears.“Wa-su-zo-Tean-o!” she says, coming on in that g liding way the dress makes her move. The short, stocky fellow with the hair to his navel is all grinning, and he follows up with “Asalamalakim,1 my mother and sister!” He moves to hug Maggie but she falls back, right up against the back of my chair. I feel her trembling there, and when I look up I see the perspiration falling off her chin.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------9“Don’t get up,” says Dee. Since I am stout, it takes something of a push. You can see me trying to move a second or two before I make it. She turns, showing white heels through her sandals, andgoes back to the car. Out she peeks next with a Polaroid. She stoops down quickly and lines up picture after picture of me sitting there in front of the house with Maggie cowering behind me. She never takes a shot without making sure the house is included. When a cow comes nibbling around in the edge of the yard, she snaps it and me and Maggie and the house. Then she puts the Polaroid in the back seat of the car and comes up and kisses me on the forehead.Meanwhile, Asalamalakim is going through motions with Maggie’s hand. Maggie’s hand is as limp as a fish, and probably as cold, despite the sweat, and she keeps trying to pull it back. It looks like Asalamalakim wants to shake hands but wants to do it fancy. Or maybe he don’t know how people shake hands. Anyhow, he soon gives up on Maggie.“Well,” I say. “Dee.”“No, Mama,” she says. “Not ‘Dee,’ Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo!”--------------------------------------------------------------------------------10“What happened to ‘Dee’?” I wanted to know.“She’s dead,” Wangero said. “I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me.”“You know as well as me you w as named after your aunt Dicie,” I said. Dicie is my sister. She named Dee. We called her “Big Dee” after Dee was born.“But who was she named after?” asked Wangero.“I guess after Grandma Dee,” I said.“And who was she named after?” asked Wangero.“Her mother,” I said, and saw Wangero was getting tired. “That’s about as far back as I can traceit,” I said. Though, in fact, I probably could have carried it back beyond the Civil War through the branches.“Well,” said Asalamalakim, “there you are.”“Uhnnnh,” I heard Maggie say.11“There I was not,” I said, “before ‘Dicie’ cropped up in our family, so why should I try to trace it that far back?”He just stood there grinning, looking down on me like somebody inspecting a Model A car. Every once in a while he and Wangero sent eye signals over my head.“How do you pronounce this name?” I asked.“You don’t have to call me by it if you don’t want to,” said Wangero.“Why shouldn’t I?” I asked. “If that’s what you want us to call you, we’ll call you.”“I know it might sound awkward at first,” said Wangero.“I’ll get used to it,” I said. “Ream it out again.”Well, soon we got the name out of the way. Asalamalakim had a name twice as long and three times as hard. After I tripped over it two or three times, he told me to just call him Hakim-a-barber.I wanted to ask him was he a barber, but I didn’t really think he was, so I didn’t ask.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------12“You must belong to those beef-cattle peoples down the road,” I said. They said “Asalamalakim”when they met you, too, but they didn’t shake hands. Always too busy: feeding the cattle, fixing the fences, putting up salt-lick shelters, throwing down hay. When the white folks poisoned some of the herd, the men stayed up all night with rifles in their hands. I walked a mile and a half just to see the sight.Hakim-a-barber said, “I accept some of their doctrines, but farming and raising cattle is not my style.” (They didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask, whether Wangero—Dee—had really gone and married him.)We sat down to eat and right away he said he didn’t eat collards, and pork was unclean. Wangero, though, went on through the chitlins and corn bread, the greens, and everything else. She talked a blue streak over the sweet potatoes. Everything delighted her. Even the fact that we still used the benches her daddy made for the table when we couldn’t afford to buy chairs.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------13“Oh, Mama!” she cried. Then turned to Hakim-a-barber. “I never knew how lovely these benches are. You can feel the rump prints,” she said, running her hands underneath her and along the bench. Then she gave a sigh, and her hand closed over Grandma Dee’s butter dish. “That’s it!” she said. “I knew there was something I wanted to ask you if I could have.” She jumped up from the table and went over in the corner where the churn stood, the milk in it clabber2 by now. She looked at the churn and looked at it.“This churn top is what I need,” she said. “Didn’t Uncle Buddy whittle it out of a tree you all used to have?”“Yes,” I said.“Uh huh,” she said happily. “And I want the dasher,3 too.”“Uncle Buddy whittle that, too?” asked the barber.Dee (Wangero) looked up at me.“Aunt Dee’s first husband whittled the dash,” said Maggie so low you almost couldn’t hear her.“His name was Henry, but they called him Stash.”--------------------------------------------------------------------------------14“Maggie’s brain is like an elephant’s,” Wangero said, laughing. “I can use the churn top as a centerpiece for the alcove table,” she said, sliding a plate over the churn, “and I’ll think of something artistic to do with the dasher.”When she finished wrapping the dasher, the handle stuck out. I took it for a moment in my hands. You didn’t even have to look close to see where hands pushing the dasher up and down to make butter had left a kind of sink in the wood. In fact, there were a lot of small sinks; you could see where thumbs and fingers had sunk into the wood. It was beautiful light-yellow wood, from a tree that grew in the yard where Big Dee and Stash had lived.After dinner Dee (Wangero) went to the trunk at the foot of my bed and started rifling through it. Maggie hung back in the kitchen over the dishpan. Out came Wangero with two quilts. They had been pieced by Grandma Dee, and then Big Dee and me had hung them on the quilt frames on the front porch and quilted them. One was in the Lone Star pattern. The other was Walk Around the Mountain. In both of them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more years ago. Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jarrell’s paisley shirts. And one teeny faded blue piece, about the size of a penny matchbox, that was from Great Grandpa Ezra’s uniform that he wore in the Civil War.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------15“Mama,” Wangero said sweet as a bird. “Can I have these old quilts?”I heard something fall in the kitchen, and a minute later the kitchen door slammed.“Why don’t you take one or two of the others?” I asked. “These old things was just done by me and Big Dee from some tops your grandma pieced befor e she died.”“No,” said Wangero. “I don’t want those. They are stitched around the borders by machine.”“That’ll make them last better,” I said.“That’s not the point,” said Wangero. “These are all pieces of dresses Grandma used to wear. She did a ll this stitching by hand. Imagine!” She held the quilts securely in her arms, stroking them.16“Some of the pieces, like those lavender ones, come from old clothes her mother handed down to her,” I said, moving up to touch the quilts. Dee (Wangero) mo ved back just enough so that I couldn’t reach the quilts. They already belonged to her.“Imagine!” she breathed again, clutching them closely to her bosom.“The truth is,” I said, “I promised to give them quilts to Maggie, for when she marries John T homas.”She gasped like a bee had stung her.“Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts!” she said. “She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use.”“I reckon she would,” I said. “God knows I been saving ’em for long enough with nobody using ’em. I hope she will!” I didn’t want to bring up how I had offered Dee (Wangero) a quilt when she went away to college. Then she had told me they were old-fashioned, out of style.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------17“But they’re priceless!” she was saying now, furiously; for she has a temper. “Maggie would put them on the bed and in five years they’d be in rags. Less than that!”“She can always make some more,” I said. “Maggie knows how to quilt.”D ee (Wangero) looked at me with hatred. “You just will not understand. The point is these quilts, these quilts!”“Well,” I said, stumped. “What would you do with them?”“Hang them,” she said. As if that was the only thing you could do with quilts.Maggie by now was standing in the door. I could almost hear the sound her feet made as they scraped over each other.“She can have them, Mama,” she said, like somebody used to never winning anything or having anything reserved for her. “I can ’member Grandma Dee without the quilts.”--------------------------------------------------------------------------------18I looked at her hard. She had filled her bottom lip with checkerberry snuff, and it gave her face a kind of dopey, hangdog look. It was Grandma Dee and Big Dee who taught her how to quilt herself. She stood there with her scarred hands hidden in the folds of her skirt. She looked at her sister with something like fear, but she wasn’t mad at her. This was Maggie’s portion. This was the way she knew God to work.When I looked at her like that, something hit me in the top of my head and ran down to the soles of my feet. Just like when I’m in church and the spirit of God touches me and I get happy and shout. I did something I never had done before: hugged Maggie to me, then dragged her on into the room, snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangero’s hands, and dumped them into Maggie’s lap. Maggie just sat there on my bed with her mouth open.“Take one or two of the others,” I said to Dee.But she turned without a word and went out to Hakim-a-barber.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------19“You just don’t understand,” she said, as Maggie and I came out to the car.“What don’t I understand?” I wanted to know.“Your heritage,” she said. And then she turned to Maggie, kissed her, and said, “You ought to try to make something of yourself, too, Maggie. It’s really a new day for us. But from the way you and Mama still live, you’d never know it.”She put on some sunglasses that hid everything above the tip of her nose and her chin.Maggie smiled, maybe at the sunglasses. But a real smile, not scared. After we watched the car dust settle, I asked Maggie to bring me a dip of snuff. And then the two of us sat there just enjoying, until it was time to go in the house and go to bed.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Making MeaningsEveryday UseReading Checka. According to Mama, how is Dee different from her and from Maggie?b. How would Maggie and Dee use the quilts differently?c. When she was a child, something terrible happened to Maggie. What was it?d. How did the mother choose to resolve the conflict over the quilts?e. Find the passage in the text that explains the title .First Thoughts1. Which character did you side with in the conflict over the quilts, and why?Shaping Interpretations2. What do you think is the source of the conflict in this story? Consider:3. Dee is re ferred to as the child who has “made it.” What do you think that means, and what signs tell you that she has “made it”?4. Use a diagram like the one on the right to compare and contrast Dee and Maggie. What is themost significant thing they have in common? What is their most compelling difference?5. Near the end of the story, Dee accuses Mama of not understanding their African American heritage. Do you agree or disagree with Dee, and why?6. Has any character changed by the end of the story? Go back to the text and find details to support your answer.7. Why do you think Alice Walker dedicated her story “For Your Grandmama”?Extending the Text8. What do you think each of these three women will be doing ten years after the story ends?9. This story takes place in a very particular setting and a very particular culture. Talk about whether or not the problems faced by this family could be experienced by any family, anywhere.Challenging the Text10. Do you think Alice Walker chose the right narrator for her story? How would the story differ if Dee or Maggie were telling it, instead of Mama? (What would we know that we don’t know now?)来源网址：/books/Elements_of_Lit_Cours e4/Collection%201/Everyday%20Use%20p4.htm。
艾丽丝·沃克短篇小说《外婆的日用家当》中的阐释判断
艾丽丝·沃克短篇小说《外婆的日用家当》中的阐释判断摘要艾丽丝·沃克短篇小说《外婆的日用家当》中，通过援引詹姆斯·费伦的修辞叙事理论，围绕主人公对待本族文化的态度问题、故事主题和反讽技巧的理解，解读读者做出的阐释判断。
对小说中阐释判断的解读是理解小说主题涵义和欣赏小说美学意蕴的有效方法。
关键词：艾丽丝·沃克《外婆的日用家当》阐释判断中图分类号：i106.4 文献标识码：a一引言艾丽丝·沃克（alice walker，1944-）是美国黑人小说家、诗人和短篇小说作家。
沃克的短篇小说集《爱情与困惑：黑人妇女的故事》荣获1974年国家文学艺术学院罗森塔尔奖，其中的《外婆的日用家当》（everyday use for your grandmama）是这本小说集中的精品之一。
叙事判断是修辞叙事学的一个重要命题。
美国著名叙事修辞理论家詹姆斯·费伦认为，叙事判断主要有三种类型：对于行动的本质或叙事其它因子所做出的阐释判断；对人物或行动的道德价值所做出的伦理判断；对于叙事及其组成部分之艺术质量所做出的审美判断。
由于篇幅所限，本文仅对小说《外婆的日用家当》中的阐释判断进行解读，以期更加深刻地理解其主题涵义和美学意蕴。
小说主要讲述的是深受黑人权力运动（black power movement）影响的黑人女孩迪伊回到阔别已久的家里，与母亲和妹妹麦吉就以“百衲被”为代表的黑人文化遗产的继承方式产生分歧和冲突的故事。
故事篇幅不长，但是情节可谓生动细致并跌宕起伏。
三个主人公虽为母女和姐妹关系，却个性特点鲜明并极具代表性。
对三个主人公的行为和态度进行阐释判断是理解故事主题和作者创作意图的有效途径。
小说主题意义深远，对小说主题的阐释对于任何文化背景下的人们皆具有很强的启发效应。
小说创作中运用的反讽写作技巧，是理解故事主题的又一关键因素，对反讽技巧的阐释同样不可忽视。
对小说进行阐释判断是读者阅读的主要动力，也是推动整个故事叙事进程的主要动力。
美国经典小说 Everyday Use
Everyday Useby Alice WalkerI will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy yesterday afternoon. A yard like this is more comfortable than most people know. It is not just a yard. It is like an extended living room. When the hard clay is swept clean as a floor and the fine sand around the edges lined with tiny, irregular grooves, anyone can come and sit and look up into the elm tree andwait for the breezes that never come inside the house.Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eying her sister with a mixture of envy and awe. She thinks her sister has held lifealways in the palm of one hand, that "no" is a word the world never learned tosay to her.You've no doubt seen those TV shows where the child who has "made it" is confronted, as a surprise, by her own mother and father, tottering in weaklyfrom backstage. (A pleasant surprise, of course: What would they do if parentand child came on the show only to curse out and insult each other?) On TV mother and child embrace and smile into each other's faces. Sometimes the mother and father weep, the child wraps them in her arms and leans across the table totell how she would not have made it without their help. I have seen these programs.Sometimes I dream a dream in which Dee and I are suddenly brought together on a TV program of this sort. Out of a dark and soft-seated limousine I am usheredinto a bright room filled with many people. There I meet a smiling, gray, sporty man like Johnny Carson who shakes my hand and tells me what a fine girl I have. Then we are on the stage and Dee is embracing me with tears in her eyes. She pins on my dress a large orchid, even though she has told me once that shethinks orchids are tacky flowers.In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands. In the winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls dur.ing the day. I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog.One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall. But of courseall this does not show on television. I am the way my daughter would want me to be: a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake. My hair glistens in the hot bright lights. Johnny Carson has much to do to keep up withmy quick and witty tongue.But that is a mistake. I know even before I wake up. Who ever knew a Johnson with a quick tongue? Who can even imagine me looking a strange white man in the eye? It seems to me I have talked to them always with one foot raised in flight, with my head fumed in whichever way is farthest from them. Dee, though. Shewould always look anyone in the eye. Hesitation was no part of her nature. "How do I look, Mama?" Maggie says, showing just enough of her thin body enveloped in pink skirt and red blouse for me to know she's there, almost hidden by the door."Come out into the yard," I say.Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him? That is the way my Maggie walks. She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other houseto the ground.Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure. She's a woman now, though sometimes I forget. How long ago was it that the other house burned? Ten, twelve years? Sometimes I can still hear the flames and feel Maggie's arms sticking to me, her hair smoking and her dress falling off her in little black papery flakes. Her eyes seemed stretched open, blazed open by the flames reflected in them. And Dee. I see her standing off under the sweet gum tree she used to dig gum out of; a look of concentration on her face as she watched thelast dingy gray board of the house fall in toward the red-hot brick chimney. Why don't you do a dance around the ashes? I'd wanted to ask her. She had hated the house that much.I used to think she hated Maggie, too. But that was before we raised money, the church and me, to send her to Augusta to school. She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks' habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. She washed us in a river ofmake-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn't necessarily need to know. 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.Dee wanted nice things. A yellow organdy dress to wear to her graduation from high school; black pumps to match a green suit she'd made from an old suit somebody gave me. She was determined to stare down any disaster in her efforts. Her eyelids would not flicker for minutes at a time. Often I fought off the temptation to shake her. At sixteen she had a style of her own: and knew what style was.I never had an education myself. After second grade the school was closed down. Don't ask my why: in 1927 colored asked fewer questions than they do now. Sometimes Maggie reads to me. She stumbles along good-naturedly but can't see well. She knows she is not bright. Like good looks and money, quickness passes her by. She will marry John Thomas (who has mossy teeth in an earnest face) and then I'll be free to sit here and I guess just sing church songs to myself.Although I never was a good singer. Never could carry a tune. I was always better at a man's job. I used to love to milk till I was hooked in the side in'49. Cows are soothing and slow and don't bother you, unless you try to milk them the wrong way.I have deliberately turned my back on the house. It is three rooms, just likethe one that burned, except the roof is tin; they don't make shingle roofs any more. There are no real windows, just some holes cut in the sides, like the portholes in a ship, but not round and not square, with rawhide holding theshutters up on the outside. 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 thatno matter where we "choose" to live, she will manage to come see us. But shewill never bring her friends. Maggie and I thought about this and Maggie asked me, "Mama, when did Dee ever have any friends?"She had a few. Furtive boys in pink shirts hanging about on washday after school. Nervous girls who never laughed. Impressed with her they worshiped the well-turned phrase, the cute shape, the scalding humor that erupted like bubblesin lye. She read to them.When she was courting Jimmy T she didn't have much time to pay to us, but turned all her faultfinding power on him. He flew to marry a cheap city girl from afamily of ignorant flashy people. She hardly had time to recompose herself.When she comes I will meet—but there they are!Maggie attempts to make a dash for the house, in her shuffling way, but I stayher with my hand. "Come back here, " I say. And she stops and tries to dig awell in the sand with her toe.It is hard to see them clearly through the strong sun. But even the firstglimpse of leg out of the car tells me it is Dee. Her feet were alwaysneat-looking, as if God himself had shaped them with a certain style. From theother side of the car comes a short, stocky man. Hair is all over his head afoot long and hanging from his chin like a kinky mule tail. I hear Maggie suckin her breath. "Uhnnnh, " is what it sounds like. Like when you see thewriggling end of a snake just in front of your foot on the road. "Uhnnnh."Dee next. A dress down to the ground, in this hot weather. A dress so loud ithurts my eyes. There are yellows and oranges enough to throw back the light ofthe sun. I feel my whole face warming from the heat waves it throws out.Earrings gold, too, and hanging down to her shoulders. Bracelets dangling and making noises when she moves her arm up to shake the folds of the dress out ofher armpits. The dress is loose and flows, and as she walks closer, I like it. Ihear Maggie go "Uhnnnh" again. It is her sister's hair. It stands straight uplike the wool on a sheep. It is black as night and around the edges are two long pigtails that rope about like small lizards disappearing behind her ears."Wa-su-zo-Tean-o!" she says, coming on in that gliding way the dress makes her move. The short stocky fellow with the hair to his navel is all grinning and he follows up with "Asalamalakim, my mother and sister!" He moves to hug Maggie but she falls back, right up against the back of my chair. I feel her tremblingthere and when I look up I see the perspiration falling off her chin."Don't get up," says Dee. Since I am stout it takes something of a push. You cansee me trying to move a second or two before I make it. She turns, showing white heels through her sandals, and goes back to the car. Out she peeks next with a Polaroid. She stoops down quickly and lines up picture after picture of mesitting there in front of the house with Maggie cowering behind me. She never takes a shot without mak' ing sure the house is included. When a cow comes nibbling around the edge of the yard she snaps it and me and Maggie and the house. Then she puts the Polaroid in the back seat of the car, and comes up and kisses me on the forehead.Meanwhile Asalamalakim is going through motions with Maggie's hand. Maggie's hand is as limp as a fish, and probably as cold, despite the sweat, and shekeeps trying to pull it back. It looks like Asalamalakim wants to shake handsbut wants to do it fancy. Or maybe he don't know how people shake hands. Anyhow, he soon gives up on Maggie."Well," I say. "Dee.""No, Mama," she says. "Not 'Dee,' Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo!""What happened to 'Dee'?" I wanted to know."She's dead," Wangero said. "I couldn't bear it any longer, being named afterthe people who oppress me.""You know as well as me you was named after your aunt Dicie," I said. Dicie ismy sister. She named Dee. We called her "Big Dee" after Dee was born."But who was she named after?" asked Wangero."I guess after Grandma Dee," I said."And who was she named after?" asked Wangero."Her mother," I said, and saw Wangero was getting tired. "That's about as farback as I can trace it," I said. Though, in fact, I probably could have carriedit back beyond the Civil War through the branches."Well," said Asalamalakim, "there you are.""Uhnnnh," I heard Maggie say."There I was not," I said, "before 'Dicie' cropped up in our family, so whyshould I try to trace it that far back?"He just stood there grinning, looking down on me like somebody inspecting a Model A car. Every once in a while he and Wangero sent eye signals over my head. "How do you pronounce this name?" I asked."You don't have to call me by it if you don't want to," said Wangero."Why shouldn't 1?" I asked. "If that's what you want us to call you, we'll call you.""I know it might sound awkward at first," said Wangero."I'll get used to it," I said. "Ream it out again."Well, soon we got the name out of the way. Asalamalakim had a name twice as long and three times as hard. After I tripped over it two or three times he told meto just call him Hakim.a.barber. I wanted to ask him was he a barber, but Ididn't really think he was, so I didn't ask."You must belong to those beef-cattle peoples down the road," I said. They said "Asalamalakim" when they met you, too, but they didn't shake hands. Always too busy: feeding the cattle, fixing the fences, putting up salt.lick shelters,throwing down hay. When the white folks poisoned some of the herd the men stayed up all night with rifles in their hands. I walked a mile and a half just to seethe sight.Hakim-a-barber said, "I accept some of their doctrines, but farming and raising cattle is not my style." (They didn't tell me, and I didn't ask, whether Wangero (Dee) had really gone and married him.)We sat down to eat and right away he said he didn't eat collards and pork was unclean. Wangero, though, went on through the chitlins and com bread, the greens and everything else. She talked a blue streak over the sweet potatoes.Everything delighted her. Even the fact that we still used the benches her daddy made for the table when we couldn't effort to buy chairs."Oh, Mama!" she cried. Then turned to Hakim-a-barber. "I never knew how lovely these benches are. You can feel the rump prints," she said, running her hands underneath her and along the bench. Then she gave a sigh and her hand closed over Grandma Dee's butter dish. "That's it!" she said. "I knew there was something I wanted to ask you if I could have." She jumped up from the table and went over in the corner where the churn stood, the milk in it crabber by now.She looked at the churn and looked at it."This churn top is what I need," she said. "Didn't Uncle Buddy whittle it out ofa tree you all used to have?""Yes," I said."Un-huh," she said happily. "And I want the dasher, too.""Uncle Buddy whittle that, too?" asked the barber.Dee (Wangero) looked up at me."Aunt Dee's first husband whittled the dash," said Maggie so low you almost couldn't hear her. "His name was Henry, but they called him Stash.""Maggie's brain is like an elephant's," Wangero said, laughing. "I can use the chute top as a centerpiece for the alcove table," she said, sliding a plate overthe chute, "and I'll think of something artistic to do with the dasher."When she finished wrapping the dasher the handle stuck out. I took it for a moment in my hands. You didn't even have to look close to see where hands pushing the dasher up and down to make butter had left a kind of sink in the wood. In fact, there were a lot of small sinks; you could see where thumbs and fingers had sunk into the wood. It was beautiful light yellow wood, from a treethat grew in the yard where Big Dee and Stash had lived.After dinner Dee (Wangero) went to the trunk at the foot of my bed and started rifling through it. Maggie hung back in the kitchen over the dishpan. Out came Wangero with two quilts. They had been pieced by Grandma Dee and then Big Dee and me had hung them on the quilt ftames on the ftont porch and quilted them. One was in the Lone Stat pattern. The other was Walk Around the Mountain. In both of them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more years ago. Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jattell's Paisley shirts. And one teeny fadedblue piece, about the size of a penny matchbox, that was from Great GrandpaEzra's uniform that he wore in the Civil War." Mama," Wangro said sweet as a bird. "Can I have these old quilts?"I heard something fall in the kitchen, and a minute later the kitchen door slammed."Why don't you take one or two of the others?" I asked. "These old things wasjust done by me and Big Dee from some tops your grandma pieced before she died.""No," said Wangero. "I don't want those. They are stitched around the borders by machine.""That'll make them last better," I said."That's not the point," said Wangero. "These are all pieces of dresses Grandma used to wear. She did all this stitching by hand. Imagine!" She held the quilts securely in her arms, stroking them."Some of the pieces, like those lavender ones, come from old clothes her mother handed down to her," I said, moving up to touch the quilts. Dee (Wangero) moved back just enough so that I couldn't reach the quilts. They already belonged toher."Imagine!" she breathed again, clutching them closely to her bosom."The truth is," I said, "I promised to give them quilts to Maggie, for when she marries John Thomas."She gasped like a bee had stung her."Maggie can't appreciate these quilts!" she said. "She'd probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use.""I reckon she would," I said. "God knows I been saving 'em for long enough with nobody using 'em. I hope she will!" I didn't want to bring up how I had offered Dee (Wangero) a quilt when she went away to college. Then she had told they were old~fashioned, out of style."But they're priceless!" she was saying now, furiously; for she has a temper. "Maggie would put them on the bed and in five years they'd be in rags. Less than that!""She can always make some more," I said. "Maggie knows how to quilt."Dee (Wangero) looked at me with hatred. "You just will not under.stand. Thepoint is these quilts, these quilts!""Well," I said, stumped. "What would you do with them7""Hang them," she said. As if that was the only thing you could do with quilts. Maggie by now was standing in the door. I could almost hear the sound her feet made as they scraped over each other."She can have them, Mama," she said, like somebody used to never winning anything, or having anything reserved for her. "I can 'member Grandma Dee without the quilts."I looked at her hard. She had filled her bottom lip with checkerberry snuff and gave her face a kind of dopey, hangdog look. It was Grandma Dee and Big Dee who taught her how to quilt herself. She stood there with her scarred hands hiddenin the folds of her skirt. She looked at her sister with something like fear butshe wasn't mad at her. This was Maggie's portion. This was the way she knew God to work.When I looked at her like that something hit me in the top of my head and ran down to the soles of my feet. Just like when I'm in church and the spirit of God touches me and I get happy and shout. I did something I never done before: hugged Maggie to me, then dragged her on into the room, snatched the quilts outof Miss Wangero's hands and dumped them into Maggie's lap. Maggie just sat there on my bed with her mouth open."Take one or two of the others," I said to Dee.But she turned without a word and went out to Hakim-a-barber."You just don't understand," she said, as Maggie and I came out to the car. "What don't I understand?" I wanted to know."Your heritage," she said, And then she turned to Maggie, kissed her, and said, "You ought to try to make something of yourself, too, Maggie. It's really a new day for us. But from the way you and Mama still live you'd never know it." She put on some sunglasses that hid everything above the tip of her nose and chin.Maggie smiled; maybe at the sunglasses. But a real smile, not scared. After we watched the car dust settle I asked Maggie to bring me a dip of snuff. And then the two of us sat there just enjoying, until it was time to go in the house and go to bed.。
高级英语_everyday_use课文赏析
• Maybe we can conclude that Dee represents some black young people who failed to realize the really meaning of the feminism and feminism movement. It is easy to find that her sense of value is formed by the education of the White community. While all people celebrate and emphasize
• However, Walker wants to show us that Dee actually has no self-identity of herself. She is eager to be involved into the white society, even the simple following of the “tradition” only aims to get the “nice things”. To judge her own tradition and culture by the value of some one else is what Walker worries about.The three changes after the conflict of the three heroines show that how to form the self-identity of all women.You need to
Maggie — a flat character
• — docile, timid, shy, good-temped, kind-
艾丽斯·沃克作品《Everyday Use》赏析
In 1961, Walker went to Spelman College in Atlanta on a full scholarship and later transferred to Sarah Lawrence College near New York City, graduating in 1965. In early 1960s,Walker met Martin Luther King Jr. when she was a student at Spelman College in Atlanta. Walker credits King for her decision to return to the American South as an activist for the civil rights movement. She marched with hundreds of thousands in August in the 1963 March on Washington. As a young adult, she volunteered to register black voters in Georgia and Mississippi.
Because the family had no car, the Walkers could not take their daughter to a hospital for immediate treatment. By the time they reached a doctor a week later, she had become permanently blind in that eye.
Lesson
4
Everyday Use
高级英语第三版Everyday Use课文结构及知识要点
shingle: a thin, flat tile usually made of wood and fixed in rows to make a roof
furtive: quiet, cautious in a stealthy way to avoid being observed
At sixteen, she had a unique way of doing things, and knew what was the fashionable way of dressing, speaking, acting, etc.
stumble: a. to stop and /or make mistakes in speaking or reading aloud; b. to catch the foot on the ground while moving along and start to fall
She never hesitated by nature in anything she wanted to do.
sidle: move sideways, esp. in a shy or stealthy manner to avoid notice 侧身行走
shuffle: walk by pulling your feet slowly along the ground rather than lifting them; drag
Structure
Part 1 (1-2): General introduction
Preparation made to receive Dee hints the relationship between Mother and Dee is alienated; the relationship between the two sisters is unfriendly and tense.
外研社高级英语1 Everyday Use for Your Grandmama 的象征手法
二、名字 “No, Mama,” she says. “Not ‘Dee’, Wangero Leewanika Kiemanjo!” 黑人权利运动期间，很多人把英文名字换作传统 的非洲名字，以脱离这种曾经奴役压迫他们祖先的文 化。迪伊这个名字简单实用，其中家族渊源可以追溯 到内战时期。但是她无视其重要的意义，自认 Wangero更能反映她的民族的根基和文化传统。具有 讽刺意义的是，Wangero正确的拼写是Wanjiru,由此 在沃克看来，迪伊并不是富有学识的黑人运动积极分 子，而是想利用运动蓬勃的声势，追随运动引发的潮 流。
Everyday Use for Your Grandmama 外婆的日用家当 Alice Walker
爱丽丝•沃克
写作手法之象征手法
（Symbolize）
一、被子 外婆留下的被子成为争执的焦点，这床被子是用曾祖 父母的衣服碎布手工缝制而成的。母亲拒绝了迪伊将 其带走的要求，执意留给麦琪做陪嫁。被子在此展示 了深刻的意义，象征着黑人的文化传统和遗产，碎布 的连缀象征着种族的分裂和融合，被子的争夺则代表 了两代人对待传统的不同态度。
迪伊这个名字也如同那床手工缝制的被子， 象征黑人文化传统的简朴和实用。换用一个 “置于架上”的名字是对南方简朴生活的传统 的讽刺。
在文中，两个被子象征着遗产的全部意义。被子 是使没用或破损的东西变得有价值这想法的具体化。 这是一个统一的象征，在这种情况下，它统一了它 留下烙印的不同时代。制作被子的工艺，甚至可以 理解为一种历史制度：它不只是单都是制成被子的一块布。故事中 的被子完全是由手工制作的，使得做被子的人成为 一个统一者。因此，麦琪是一个统一者，她“知道 如何做被子”。也因为被子代表遗产本身，只有麦 琪能够产生新的遗产，而不是迪伊。因此，迪伊已 被排除在家庭遗产之外了。
高级英语Everyday Use中Dee的人物分析
On the Character of Dee in Everyday Use Alice Walker’s Everyday Use was written in her early time. The short story was written during the heyday of the Black Power Movement. When I learned Everyday Use, my teacher talked much about how to treat traditional culture. In Alice Walker’s novel, mother and Maggie represent the traditional culture of black, while Dee highly praises the culture of white. She didn’t know about the meaning of the traditional culture of black. Dee and Maggie have extremely contrastive characters: Dee being successful, beautiful but arrogant type of woman, Maggie being simple-minded, disfigured and slow. I will analyze the character of Dee as follows:I Being selfishWhen the house burned, “I see Dee standing off under the sweet gum tree she used to dig gum out of; a look of concentration on her face as she watched the last dingy gray board of the house fall in toward the red-hot brick chimney. Why don’t you do a dance around the ashes? I’d wanted to ask her. She had hated the house that much.” Dee was selfish and she hated the old house. She didn’t take her mother’s feeling in consideration. Besides, Dee asked for dasher, churn and quilts. Dee refused to take another two quilts.II Being independent and determinedDee was independent and determined. “Dee, though. She would always look anyone in the eye. Hesitation was not part of her nature.”Her mother collected money for Dee and Dee went to the college. Since she was very young, she had gotten rid of the protection of her mother. Dee had her own style, no matter which to choose or how to do, she had never asked for help.III Being arrogantDee didn’t like her mother and her house, so she never brought her friends back home. When she came back home, She changed her name “Dee”into “Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo”, a traditional African name. Besides, she changed her hair and dressing style. Dee took photos for the house, the cow and Maggie to show the oldfashion off to her friends. But now it was different, Dee not only took photos, but also took her boyfriend back home. Compared with her former attitude towards everyday use, Dee showed tremendous cherish. She walked around the house to seek anything that had long history.In the past, the mother wanted to give the quilts to her elder daughter Dee. But Dee rejected them as too old-fashioned and out of style. Therefore the mother promised the quilts to her younger daughter Maggie. Now Dee asks her mother for the quilts and some more pieces of their family heritage because she now regards them as part of her cultural heritage, which she intends to hang on the wall. She wanted to show that she knew about African culture. So she was arrogant.In the end, against the expectation of Dee, the mother refused her wish and gave the quilts to Maggie, who would have agreed to give the quilts to her sister. Dee left without a piece of her family heritage, with her mother being satisfied with their simple southern life and with her sister Maggie, who would put the quilts to everyday use.From this novel, we should learn to have a right attitude to our culture and know the real meaning.。
Everyday Use for Grandma (Alice Walker)
At the start of the novel, Celie views God as completely separate from her world. She writes to God because she has no other way to express her feelings. Celie's writing to God thrusts her into a rich symbolic life which results in her repudiation of the life she has been assigned and a desire for a more expansive daily existence.Her faith is strong, but it’s dependent on only what other people have revealed to her about God. Later she tells Shug that she sees God as a white man. She has this belief because everyone she knows has said God is white and a male. Later, Shug tells her God has no race or gender. This enables Celie to see God in a different way. She realizes that you cannot place qualities on God because God is a part of the unknown. Her faith is now based on her interpretation of God, not one she learned from someone else. Even though Shug helped her with this realization, Celie only used this knowledge to shape her faith. Shug was a huge influence on Celie’s faith, but Celie was the one that had to choose how she would express it.
Alice walker everyday use
Activism
Alice Walker met Martin Luther King Jr. when she was a student at Spelman College in Atlanta in the early 1960s. Walker credits King for her decision to return to the American South as an activist for the Civil Rights Movement. She attended the famous 1963March on Washington. As a young adult she volunteered her time registering voters in Georgia and Mississippi On March 8, 2003, International Women's Day, on the eve of the Iraq War, Alice Walker was arrested along with 24 others for crossing a police line during an anti-war protest rally outside the White House. Walker wrote about the experience in her essay "We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For.― In November 2008, Alice Walker wrote "An Open Letter to Barack Obama" that was published on The root. Com. Walker address the newly elected President as ―Brother Obama‖
everyday_use人物分析
人物分析After I have learnt the Everyday Use, the mother’s image is deeply impressed in my mind. The author is Alice Walker. She is one of the minority writers recognized and appreciated by the majority of people. As a black women writer, her background provi des the sources of her work, especially work describing colored people’s life.First of all, I want to analysis her from the family character.She is tje mother of two different quality girls.On the one hand, Dee is the healthy one. She has an appearance which admired by most people. Just as the author says" Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure. "Dee is not only excellent in her outlook, but also she has a good brain. And she is good at showing herself to others. But, Maggie is not quite healthy as her sister. Just as the author says in the beginning part of the work. She is shy and lack of confidence. Most of time, Maggie stands behind her mother. On the other hand, Dee has great curiosity about white culture and modern society, but Maggie is the traditional one. Even the two daughters are quite different, mama treats them as equal. She likes them all very sincerely. Before Dee comes back home,mama dreams one day she could appear on the TV show. It looks like mama wants her daughter Dee feels proud of her. "Sometimes I dream a dream in which Dee and I are suddenly brought together on a TV program of this sort. "But it is just a dream, in reality, she introduces herself as “a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands.”Maggie who is her little daughter always living with her. For most parents' view, the little child should pay more attention. In the last part of the author's work, when Dee and Maggie are fighting for the quilt. The mama snatches the quilts from Dee and offer her instead some of the machine-stitched ones, which Dee does not want. Maybe it is the only and first time, Maggie wins. But it doesn't mean she dislike Dee, she just is puzzled that why Dee is so curiosity about the quilts. In mama's view, Dee is reasonable. From this I know, mama's way of love for the two daughters is different, but she loves them deeply. She wants them all have a happy family.The mother is a traditional black woman. She is shy and not dare to face the unknown white man."I never had an education myself. After second grade the schoolwas closed down. Don't ask my why: in 1927 colored asked fewer questions than they do now."Mama never has an education herself. In her words, she indicates that the black people's right has been seriously invaded. " I used to love to milk till I was hooked in the side in '49. Cows are soothing and slow and don't bother you, unless you try to milk them the wrong way."Mama's rib is been hurt very harm. But she thinks it is not the cow's fault, it's because her way of milking. She is quite kind and reasonable. "When she comes I will meet—but there they are!" Mama is so surprised and delighted to see her daughter Dee comes back home. After Dee is at home, she told mama, "Not Dee,Wangero Leewani Ka Kemanjo! "At first, I think the mama must be angry for the girl changed her name by herself. But to my astonishment, mama trys her best to call the new name. She just tells to her daughter, "Why shouldn't I? " She asked."If that's what you want us to call you,we'll call you."After I read this, I know she is a brilliant mother. She could accept Dee to use her new name Wangero, which has no “bad” history. As we all know that Dee is the symbol of the new culture. All these actions show us that she is a little bit like the white culture, or somehow, she is curious about it. From all this, we can get that the Mama in the fiction is a black woman who is protecting the Black Culture and the true meaning of black art. In Maggie and Mama’s opinion, the things which they are using everyday is the black art, and the true meaning of black art is not to show, but to use everyday use everyday.。
Everyday Use
Plot
At the first, mother and Maggie are preparing of receiving Dee, the other daughter of the heroine. And from the preparation they made we can see that the relationship between Mother and Dee is alienated; the relationship between the two sisters is unfriendly and tense. Then the author made some description about the three characters, especially about mother and Dee. Then Dee and her boyfriend’s come, and she changed her name, and there is some information about her boyfriend. And at last she point out that she want the quilt that grandma left to Maggie At last Dee leaves without the quilt, and when she leave both mother and Maggie feel relieved.
Characterization
Mama is an uneducated, yet practical character. Mama loves and respects her ancestors, as is understood in her description and treatment of the quilts: "They had been pieced together by Grandma Dee and then Big Dee and me had hung them on the quilt frames on the front porch and quilted them... in both of them were Grandpa Jarrell's paisley shirts. And one teeny faded blue piece... that was from Great Grandpa Ezra's uniform that he wore in the Civil War" The quilts are important to Mama as a direct connection between herself and those before her. Walker also uses the butter churn as a source for Mama's inherent understanding of heritage: "I took it for a moment in my hands... you could see where thumbs and gingers had sunk into the wood. It was beautiful light yellow wood, from a tree that grew in the yard where Big Dee and Stash had lived" As White explains, "When Mama takes the dasher handle in her hands, she is symbolically touching the hands of all those who used it before her." Her practical nature and appreciation for heritage distinguishes her from her two daughters, and represents the complex, historical importance of the African-American culture. African-
高级英语课文Everyday Use
• The cupboard door slides open along the groove it fits into.
Detailed study of the text:
• 3. homely: simple, not grand, (of people, faces, etc.,) not goodlooking, ugly
Lesson 4
Everyday Use
for Your Grandmama
by Alice Walker
Alice Walker
Background Information
• Alice Walker wrote quite a number of novels, among them
were The Color Purple which won
Detailed study of the text
curse: If you curse, you use rude or offensive language,usu. because you are angry about sth. insult: If sb. insults you, they say sth. rude to you or offend you by doing or saying sth. which shows they have a low opinion of you.
• If a problem, task, or difficulty confronts you, or you are confronted with it, it is sth. that you cannot avoid and must deal with
高级英语第一册Unit4 Everyday Use
to do it fancy: to do in an
ornamental, elaborate manner.
Phrases and expressions
blue steak: (colloquial) anything
regarded as like a streak of lightning in speed, vividness, etc. to talk a blue streak: to talk much and rapidly.
furtive: done or acting in a stealthy manner, as if to hinder observation; surreptitious, stealthy, sneaky.
New words
washday: a day, often the same day every week, when the clothes, linens, etc. of a household are washed.
Unit4 Everyday Use
Alice Walker
Alice Walker (1944-), poet, novelist and essayist, was born Into a poor rural family in Eatonton, Georgia. Her writing career began with the publication of a volume of poetry in 1968,with was followed by a number of novels, short stories critical essays and more poetry. Her works include The Life of Grange Copeland(1970), Meridian (1976), a biography of Langston Hughes (1973), a volume of poetry Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems (1973), a collection of short stories In Love and Troubles: Stories of Black Women (1973) and a recent novel The Temple of My Familiar (1989). Her most significant novel is The Color Purple, published in 1982.
Everyday_Use--About_the_author_Alice_walker
She is, with her ex-husband, the first interracial (不 同人种的) couple to be legally married in Mississippi.
Introduction
1. main idea: Illustrating the African-American’s attitude towards their traditional cultural heritage by a reunion of two generations in a black family. 2. Character figures contrast
Everyday Use
for your grandmama
Alice Walker
Her life Her works The article
Her life
Alice Walker was born in 1944 in Georgia, the e i g h t h a n d y o u n g e s t c h i l d of a p o o r sharecropper family. When she was eight years old, she was blinded in her right eye while playing with her brothers. After graduating from high school in 1961, she studied first at Spelman college in Atlanta and then at Sarah Lawrence in New York.
高级英语第四课-Everyday-Use
About Alice Walker
She was born into a poor rural family in Georgia, as the eighth child of sharecropper 交租耕种农 parents. She grew up in the midst of violent racism and poverty which influence her later writings.
3
About Alice Walker
After her junior year at the college, she won a scholarship as an exchange student to Uganda, and Kenya. This most probably helped her to understand the African culture.
1. Alice Walker’s Early Life
Date of Birth: February 9, 1944
Birthplace: Eatonton, Georgia
Parents:
Willie Lee and Minnie Lou Grant Walker,
who were sharecroppers
4
About ቤተ መጻሕፍቲ ባይዱlice Walker
Her works: The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970); Meridian (1976); In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women
(1973); The Temple of My Familiar (1989); The Color Purple (1982)
EVERYDAY USE Alice walker
Occupation: Novelist, short story writer, poet, political activist Notable work： The Color Purple Notable awards : Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1983 National Book Award1983
T h e F ro n t P a g e A w a rd fo r B e s t M a g a z in e C ritic is m fro m th e N e w s w o m a n 's C lu b o f N e w Y o rk In d u c tio n to th e C a lifo rn ia H a ll o f F a m e in T h e C a lifo rn ia M u s e u m fo r H is to ry , W o m e n , a n d th e A rts (2006) D o m e s tic H u m a n R ig h ts A w a rd fro m G lo b a l E x c h a n g e (2007)
Detail information
P e rin g c a re e r
Alice walker
a c tiv is m
A w a rd s and
Personal life
Walker began writing, very privately, when she was eight years old. In 1952, Walker was accidentally wounded in the right eye by a shot and she had become permanently blind in that eye. After high school, Walker went to Spelman College in Atlanta on a full scholarship in 1961 and later transferred to Sarah Lawrence College near New York City, graduating in 1965.