The Theme Of Biased In Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use'

The Good, The bad, and The Biased Mama’s relationship with her daughters can be seen very clearly with her actions and inactions throughout the story “Everyday Use”. First, there is a clear bias with Mama between her two daughters Maggie and Dee. For example, this is evident when Mama describes Maggie, she portrays a lonesome, desolate woman. Mama also uses words such as hopeless and ashamed when referring to Maggie. In addition, after Maggie asks Mama how she looks in line 52, Mama says, “Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by a person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him?” This negative description shows how weak Mama’s relationship is with Maggie, she does not seem to love her, not since the fire that burned their house down to the ground, but more …show more content…
Finally, Mama describes her interactions with Maggie at the time of the fire that burned down their house. She tells us about how she can still remember “Maggie’s arms sticking to me, her hair smoking and her dress falling off her in little black flakes.” Mama says this all with a very negative connotation, she then goes on to describe how she sees Dee under a sweetgum tree with a much more positive connotation and anotation. On the contrary, Dee’s interactions with Mama(In the beginning and middle of the story) are much more positive than Maggie’s. For example, in only the third paragraph of the story, Mama describes how she wants to be suddenly brought on to a TV show with Dee and Johnny Carson. This is a key example because Mama leaves Maggie out, she only brings Dee because she had more appreciation and devotion for Maggie. Next, when Mama describes Dee, she uses a much more positive