Alice Walker Passage from Everyday Use - Admission/Application Essay Example

On Alice Walker’s Everyday Use For this particular activity, I have chosen an interesting part of Alice Walker’s Everyday Use, which constituted paragraphs 6, 7, 8 and 9. I believe that these summarize the entirety of the piece, particularly the tone and the theme. I have come to understand what the writer was talking about and also the direction that the narrative is going to take because of these passages. This is particularly important because the beginning is convoluted for me. There was a beautiful introduction by way of a person talking about it but I could not place who was talking.

There were sisters, Maggie and Dee and for a time I thought the narrator was either one of them. The passages I mentioned sort of cleared the air.The one narrating the story is the mother and she claimed to be uneducated, large, with all the emotional and psychological baggage imposed by her race during her time. I will use this context to evaluate the passages. I think that it is crucial to make her character credible, which is extremely important because she holds the story together. An inconsistency in this respect could lead to the unraveling of the narrative.

First, the words were simple and the sentences were basic, which validated the background and profile of the narrator. I also did not have any difficulty understanding words because the narrator provided analogies that capture their meaning. The way concepts were presented is also quite remarkable and moving. Take the case of the description of the daughter Maggie. I could have plunged straight to the point and say she is shy and in a brief flash of creativity could even add some words like “she is afraid of her own shadow”.

But the author – in the narrator – used a dog, a careless person, a caring individual who was labeled ignorant because of his nature in order to describe Maggie. It is heartbreaking that makes the reader picture the daughter with all the contexts of her circumstance and that of her family thrown in for good measure. For me, it was like, “I have seen Maggie and as if I have known her all her life.” This drew me to her and narrator’s tale.There is also the way the narrator’s point of view merge with the daughters.

It is like when she described her daughters and compared them, she was also throwing herself in the mix. There were the vivid descriptions of herself interspersed with those of her daughters’. Also, the way she looks at Maggie with her scars and all makes one realize that perhaps she is looking at a version of herself or at least at a deeper affinity. The narrator have expressed fear and intimidation when faced with white men. She could not look them in the eye and would take the first opportunity to run from them.

She marveled at how Dee, her other daughter, was so different but talked about the weaknesses of her other daughter with great familiarity. This, for me, is the highlight of the passages.Based on the passages I have chosen, one could not help but identify tragic tones and mingled with fear. So it was serious. They were articulated by the expressed and unexpressed concerns of a mother about the prospects of her children and also herself.