1、Everyday Use for Your Grandmama,An Analysis on Mama,Figural features Main characteristics Mamas concept of heritage Conclusion,Mrs. Johnson introduces herself as “a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands.” She narrates the story from her point of view. Supposing that the story is set i
2、n 1970, she can be assumed to be about 50 years old. Although her education ends with the close-down of her school after the second grade in 1927, although she cannot read and tells the reader that she lacks “a quick tongue” , the author has given her articulate strength: she “can kill and clean a h
3、og as mercilessly as a man”, she “can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog” , she is good “at a mans job”. She is stout, big, fat, hard-working, unrefined, and she is bread-winner and protector of the family.,Figural features,Apart from physical stren
4、gth, she also shows mental toughness: she went to the people of her church and raised money to send her gifted daughter to a school in Augusta. And she can clearly distinguish between dream and reality. This contributes to the good-hearted down-to-earth image the reader gets of her. But the way she
5、presents herself to us shows that she is dissatisfied. She dreams of being “brought together” with Dee again, being given all the appreciation and thankfulness she has always been refused by her. The other reason for her to be dissatisfied is that the arrival of Dee reminds her of her weaknesses. Sh
6、e says for example that she could never look “a strange white man in the eye”, that she has “talked to them always with one foot raised in flight, with my head turned in whichever way is farthest from them.”,Main characteristics,Mamas concept of heritage: Quite reversely to Dee, Mama and Maggie are
7、deeply rooted in their familys history. They share a common understanding of heritage which comes quite naturally and does not need any artificial definition or material proof. Maggie can tell the names of her ancestors by heart and knows about their history. The same goes for Mama, as she can trace
8、 the name Dee easily back “beyond the Civil War through the branches”. But her practical approach to heritage gets even clearer when she takes the handle of the dasher in her hands:“You didnt even have to look close to see where hands pushing the dasher up and down to make butter had left a kind of
9、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”.,The quilts that Wangero covets link her generation to prior generations
10、, and thus they represent the larger African American past. The quilts contain scraps of dresses worn by the grandmother and even the great-grandmother, as well as a piece of the uniform worn by the great-grandfather who served in the Union Army in the War between the states. The visitor rightly rec
11、ognizes the quilts as part of a fragile heritage.,Mama grew up in a world where colored people were treated much differently than Maggie and Dee have experienced. When Mama was growing up, she had few civil liberties as a colored person. Mama has a deep, rich personality, and although she has not li
12、ved an easy life, the rough life she has lived has turned her into a strong woman. For Mama, heritage is nothing that lies in the past on the contrary: she lives in it and is able to connect it with things of their everyday life. Her concept of heritage is built upon personal memories and feelings w
13、hich most importantly concerns the two quilts. These quilts carry a lot of family history but Dee simply regards them as a kind of art and wants to “hang them” on the wall. Mamas practical nature and appreciation for heritage distinguishes her from her two daughters, and represents the complex, hist
14、orical importance of the African-American culture.,Conclusion,Mama grew up in a world where colored people were treated much differently than Maggie and Dee have experienced. When Mama was growing up, she had few civil liberties as a colored person. She is a very spiritual woman; she mentions that s
15、he sings church songs, and describes one of her actions in comparison to how she might act in church when the “spirit of God touches her”. Mama has a deep, rich personality, and although she has not lived an easy life, the rough life she has lived has turned her into a strong woman. Mama is happy wi
16、th the life she has been given. Although she has not accomplished much materialistically, she is proud of who she is. On the night in which the story takes place, Mama and Maggie sit on the porch, “just enjoying, until it was time to go in the house and go to bed”. It is easy to imagine that this is
17、 how the two spend many evenings, and Mama says that after Maggie marries she will be “free to sit here and just sing church songs to herself” . Her life is not very exciting, but she is happy.,Through a familys interactions, Alice Walker conveys that the purest and most sincere way to celebrate ones heritage is by treating it not as a topic of study but rather as a way of life.,
