Everyday Use by Alice Walker uses irony to portray the difference between two distinct generations and their opposing views on their heritage. The main characters in the short story are Mama, Dee, and Maggie. Mama occupies an older generation who is more in touch with their heritage following a simplistic life style, whereas Dee is part of the counterculture movement during the 1970’s, fighting for the rights of black American’s and the change she feels they deserve. Dee is a first generation college student who believes that times are changing and is very vocal about it. In the closing of Everyday Use Dee tells Maggie “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
…show more content…
Everyday Use is a novel written during the 1970’s, a time period very much influenced by the previous generation, which got its name for extreme activism and calling for change. In one article called Historians and the Black Power Movement, the author Peniel E. Joseph states “Black Power grew out of the tumult of postwar America, not just the decade of the 1960s, when the possibilities of American democracy seemed unlimited.” (Peniel 8). This quote shows the birth of the Black Power movement where America’s youth fought for civil liberty. Another strong catalyst for the Black Power movement was the anger brought about in response to the Vietnam war and the dominating segregation present since the birth of this nation. College campus’ around the nation were …show more content…
A woman’s place was seen as at home in the kitchen, cleaning, and being the backbone of the family. It was almost unheard of for women to want to work. However, with the U.S. entering into the world war, new jobs demanded so many workers and the need for laborers was too numerous, so in response, the government started calling on women to do their part. Everyone was doing their best to contribute to the exponentially growing economy. Women saw this as an opportunity work their way towards the equality they wanted. They milked this opportunity and saw it as an opportunity to strengthen women’s rights, and develop it to become more powerful than ever before. Women thought they were finally getting the rights they deserved, but once the fifties arrived, most of America wanted to cleanse the country of impurities and excitement, and thus the strive for normalcy erupted. Normalcy called for women to return to the house and erased all the progress they had previously made with Women 's rights. This unhealthy obsession with being normal led the next generation to have pent up feelings of rebellion. The generation born right after WWII had grown up and they didn’t want anything to do with the normalcy movement. So naturally, they rebelled. The sixties erupted and became one of the most liberally rebellious time periods as a result of the
Everyday Use is a novel written during the 1970’s, a time period very much influenced by the previous generation, which got its name for extreme activism and calling for change. In one article called Historians and the Black Power Movement, the author Peniel E. Joseph states “Black Power grew out of the tumult of postwar America, not just the decade of the 1960s, when the possibilities of American democracy seemed unlimited.” (Peniel 8). This quote shows the birth of the Black Power movement where America’s youth fought for civil liberty. Another strong catalyst for the Black Power movement was the anger brought about in response to the Vietnam war and the dominating segregation present since the birth of this nation. College campus’ around the nation were …show more content…
A woman’s place was seen as at home in the kitchen, cleaning, and being the backbone of the family. It was almost unheard of for women to want to work. However, with the U.S. entering into the world war, new jobs demanded so many workers and the need for laborers was too numerous, so in response, the government started calling on women to do their part. Everyone was doing their best to contribute to the exponentially growing economy. Women saw this as an opportunity work their way towards the equality they wanted. They milked this opportunity and saw it as an opportunity to strengthen women’s rights, and develop it to become more powerful than ever before. Women thought they were finally getting the rights they deserved, but once the fifties arrived, most of America wanted to cleanse the country of impurities and excitement, and thus the strive for normalcy erupted. Normalcy called for women to return to the house and erased all the progress they had previously made with Women 's rights. This unhealthy obsession with being normal led the next generation to have pent up feelings of rebellion. The generation born right after WWII had grown up and they didn’t want anything to do with the normalcy movement. So naturally, they rebelled. The sixties erupted and became one of the most liberally rebellious time periods as a result of the