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Everyday Use by Alice Walker
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Everyday Use by Alice Walker
“Everyday Use by Alice Walker, which portrays the condition of the rural South American family, is one of the most widely studied and frequently anthologized short stories. The story is set in a pasture family home, about the African-American woman, “Mama Johnson,” and her two daughters, Maggie and Dee. Walker presents this situation in a short story about the crisis of African-American identities and the role of their history and ideals in contemporary society. The author’s narrative reveals that it is difficult to reform one’s cultural values. This is because the history and heritage of the individual were handed down from one generation to the next. It cannot be obtained or even still, it cannot be picked up all of a sudden. Walker’s argument is thus clear: a person who retains true heritage and culture is obliged to apply it every day of his or her life on earth.
The narrative is told from the point of view of “Mama” talking about her daughters. They’re two very different people and they’ve lived two very different lives. Dee, who is very worldly and self-centered, later changed her name to Wangero to fit in with her boyfriend/husband, and what she feels is the “in” crowd, to Maggie, who is the younger of the two who had been burned and had scars on her body from the house of fire living, and is depicted as not smart or wise, only plain. Mrs. Johnson was in accordance with her decision. Dee and her presumed boyfriend or husband left the house later. This reveals another key theme in the story: standing up for the right thing, no matter the consequences. This should not be only for oneself, but for others as well.
This is illustrated by Mama’s decision not to let Wanger go with the maid’s quilts. Mrs. Johnson had known how much Maggie loved the quilts. She also realized that Wanger needed family possessions to keep up with modern African styles. Mama, who grew up in the early twentieth century, has been the main character in the story since she narrated it. She’s described as failing to accept the culture of her daughter, Dee. Dee received advanced education in Augusta Georgia before going to work in an urban environment. Maggie, who is depicted as the less fortunate, remained with her mother while Dee went to school.
The author uses her writing skills to explain the difficulties faced by African-Americans, especially those of women. Today, there are marked similarities and discrepancies between families living now and those living in the past. While the setting may be different, some family problems as well as circumstances are identical. Besides, most families still cherish and keep those things sacred. Culture is an example of this. In today’s world, most households are still interested in understanding their cultural background. By using the technique of comparing characters and their viewpoints in the novel the author succeeds in illustrating the value of considering our present existence in comparison to the culture that our people have practiced in the past.
The author explains the factors that affect the values of an individual’ s heritage and culture through measured descriptions and attitudes. Walker shows that the possession of objects or basic appearances cannot symbolize them. She stresses that the individual’s lifestyle and behaviors will symbolize it. The author personifies the different facets of culture and heritage in a short tale. She does this by portraying the contrast between Dee and her mother. Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Maggie can be said to reflect the bond between generations and the community that has passed between them because their acts are based on values and on what they have learned from their past ancestors.
During the reading, it is implied that Dee may have started a house fire because she hated her home life, the fire is what left Maggie scarred for life, and it seems as though Dee doesn’t care and is very self-centered. After the fire money was collected to send Dee to school, Maggie stayed home learning the customs and values of her family. We hear from “Mama” they’re waiting for Dee’s first visit in years, as the car arrives, after being described Hakim A Barber and also Dee’s boyfriend. Dee’s and the bright dress she’s wearing, she then begins to take, portraying her self-centered way, seeming to be better than her family. The author has tried to show that whilst it is obvious that Maggie is simple and she recognizes their heritage better than Dee, and appreciate it somewhat, taking care of what they have, and she’s proud of who she is becoming, and it doesn’t feel like trying to prove to someone that they’re not.
Dee is described as “lighter than Maggie, with more beautiful hair and a fuller figure” (Missy and Merickel, 450). Mama says she’s self-assured and stunning. These qualities distinguish her from Maggie and Mrs. Johnson, who were both terrified and rough. Dee was considered to play another character, “She wanted some nice stuff. At the age of 16, she had a style of her own: and she knew what the style was” (Missy and Merickel, 450-451). She continued her education away from her homeland. This tells her that she needs to enter society to be famous. Mama was aware of her daughter’s commitment, “She was determined to watch any tragedy in her efforts. Her eyelids will never flicker ” (Missy and Merickel, 450-451).
By doing some additional research on the story and the author, Alice seems to be taking part in her personal life and bringing it into the story, coming from a simple upbringing to be educated and part of the civil rights movement, but she never forgot where she came from what she learned and how significant her family heritage is. Alice has done a good job of demonstrating how important it is to respect your family and what you have and that family as different as they may all have to be treated the same and not to reject what family you have.
Moreover, Dee was only trying to be famous. That’s why she changed her name, which wasn’t the case when she was growing up. As both visitors leave, Dee regrets that Mrs. Johnson does not appreciate her ancestry. Dee also recommends to her sister that she aspire to make more out of herself. Eventually, Mama and Maggie, happy smile at the car as it leaves. They spend time together soaking snuff and becoming mindful that they are the ones who value their lives as well as their beloved heritage.
By this assertion, Walker provides its unique claim as to whether or not culture should be safeguarded and exhibited or integrated into daily life. A reader may conclude that the term “everyday life” applies only to the quilting claim. However, deeper reading in the short story shows that it concerns people’s culture and heritage and how they intend to preserve it or not. The author has established a criticism of postmodern values. It also shows the detachable existence of the symbols. In proposing to hang the quilts, Wanger will move them away from their “everyday” use. Therefore, their built-in contextual significance will be lostADDIN CSL_CITATION {“citationItems”:[{“id”:”ITEM-1″,”itemData”:{“DOI”:”10.1215/9780822398417-005″,”abstract”:”fisico”,”author”:[{“dropping-particle”:””,”family”:”Walker”,”given”:”Alice”,”non-dropping-particle”:””,”parse-names”:false,”suffix”:””}],”container-title”:”The Intimate Critique”,”id”:”ITEM-1″,”issued”:{“date-parts”:[[“2014″]]},”page”:”67-74″,”title”:”“Everyday Use””,”type”:”chapter”},”uris”:[“http://www.mendeley.com/documents/?uuid=49ece4ab-75b9-3bd9-81b8-45a227fd6878″]}],”mendeley”:{“formattedCitation”:”(Walker)”,”plainTextFormattedCitation”:”(Walker)”,”previouslyFormattedCitation”:”(Walker)”},”properties”:{“noteIndex”:0},”schema”:”https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json”}(Walker).
Work Cited
ADDIN Mendeley Bibliography CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Walker, Alice. “‘Everyday Use.’” The Intimate Critique, 2014, pp. 67–74, doi:10.1215/9780822398417-005.
Discuss the scientific and technical concepts related to the uses of fossil fuels and renewable energy resources.
Discuss the scientific and technical concepts related to the uses of fossil fuels and renewable energy resources.
Ans. Fossil fuels like coal, petroleum, natural gas are regarded as non-renewable sources of energy. These sources of energy cannot be replenished and re-generated and hence can get over after some period of time. Wind power, water, geothermal energy is all renewable sources of energy and are also sustainable sources of energy.
Consider how fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas are utilized for production of electricity.
Ans. Fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas are utilized for production of electricity. These fossil fuels undergo combustion process and generate heat energy. A traditional electric power plant generates electricity by burning or combustion of a fossil fuel such as coal or natural gas. The heat generated by this combustion is used to boil water which leads to the production of steam. The steam then causes a turbine of coiled wire to turn in a magnetic field. When a coil of wire is rotated in a magnetic field, it leads to flow of electrons in the wires. This flow of electron leads to generation of electricity.
Consider how alternative and renewable resources such as wind turbines, hydroelectric power, wave power, and geothermal energy are utilized to either produce electrical energy or provide an alternative to electricity consumption.
Ans. Some forms of alternative energy generate electricity in the similar way. The major difference is that instead of using combustion of fossil fuels to turn the turbine, other energy sources are used. For example, wind power uses windmills to turn the turbines of coiled wire to generate electricity. Nuclear energy depends on the heat produced by the splitting of uranium atoms to convert liquid water to steam, which in turn causes rotation of a turbine of coiled wire. Sometimes wood or cornstalks or garbage or other organic matter (together known as biomass) is burned and causes the water to boil. Rays of sunlight (solar power) which are focused with mirrors can also generate adequate amount of heat required to boil the water. Fast water flowing over dams can also turn turbines; which is known as “hydroelectric power.” The ebb and flow of the tides, caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and moon on the Earth’s oceans, are utilized to turn a turbine in a few tidal power plants. Energy from the centre of the earth can be used in the form of geothermal energy and to generate large amount of heat energy.
Explain the advantages and disadvantages related to both fossil fuels and renewable energy resources such as wind power, hydroelectricity, geothermal energy, and biomass.
Ans. Fossil fuels are very important sources of energy. However, the greatest disadvantage of fossil fuels is that combustion of fuels for transportation and heating accounts for about two-thirds of emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). Even with regular increasing development in energy technologies; primary energy use and GHG and air pollutant emissions from fuel use will likely grow over the next century, because of increasing demand, especially in developing countries. Air quality remains an issue in many parts of the world. Moreover, fuel supply security is a serious concern, particularly for the transportation sector.
There are some advantages and disadvantages of renewable sources of energy as well. The greatest advantage of renewable sources of energy is that since it is renewable, it leads to sustainable development of a nation. This type of energy source requires less maintenance and thus is also cheaper than fossil fuels. It is also environment friendly. One of the greatest disadvantages of renewable sources of energy is that it cannot yield the large amount of electricity required to meet demands of the masses. Another disadvantage of renewable energy sources is the dependability of supply. Renewable energy often depends on the weather for its source of power. Hydro generators need rain to fill dams to supply flowing water. Wind turbines need wind to turn the blades, and solar collectors need clear skies and sunshine to collect heat and make electricity. When these resources are unavailable so is the capacity to make energy from them. This can be random and contradictory.
Consider issues such as availability of the resource, sustainability of the technology, and environmental impact.
Provide 2–3 examples of the uses of both types of energy resources that are utilized in your community.
Ans. Example of renewable energy used are: solar energy and Wind energy. Coal and petroleum are used as forms of non-renewable sources of energy.
Current Themes Apocalyptic Fiction
English
Kevin Morgan Institution of Affiliation
Unit Title
April 24, 2018
Current Themes: Apocalyptic Fiction
Station Eleven is an audacious, darkly glittering novel (Mandel, 2016) that is about art, ambitions, and fame that is arranged during the eerie days of civilization downfall. Emily St. John Mandel is the writer of the Station eleven novel. On one frosty night of an eminent Hollywood actor collapses and dies on the stage during the generation of the film King Lear. Progressing back and forth, during the periods from the actor’s initial days of the film actor to fifteen years later, when a theatre crew known as the Traveling Symphony, wanders about the wasteland. The incidence remains spine-tingling, spellbinding and the mourning novel maps the bizarre twists of the fate connecting the five individuals. The five people include the main actor who is Arthur Leander, the actor’s first wife, the man who tried to save him, a young actress and his oldest friend with the Traveling Symphony, captured in the midst of a deadly self-proclaimed seer. Occasionally terrifying and sometimes delicate, the novel ‘Station Eleven’ narrates a story relating to the relationships to which maintains us, the short-lived type of fame as well as the beauty of the world as we get to know it. The novel ‘Station Eleven’ is mostly dominated by five major characters to whom all are connected to one another as well as the secondary characters.
Arthur Leander, a famous actor, is the first to whom we are introduced to in the novel. The character can be described as pretentious as well as self-absorbed. Throughout the novel, he was married to three women, and he is always unfaithful to them, and this could be caused by his self-absorption character as he tends to care more about himself rather than the women to whom he is engaged to as his wives. Arthur is connected to almost all the characters in the novel.
Arthur dies of a heart attack during the Georgia flu outbreak while he was on stage and he was a successful actor who had taken over the Hollywood (Byrd, 2017). Kirsten witnessed the death of Arthur as he was her mentor during the production of the play. Mandel describes Arthur’s life during his early days struggling in Toronto accompanied by his friend Clark Thompson and his struggle to fame and celebrity. During his stay in Hollywood, Arthur married three times marrying Miranda Carrol as his wife to whom they had come from the same island. Elizabeth Colton was the second wife and the mother of Tyler, Arthurs, son and later married Lydia Marks as his third wife.
In the novel ‘Station Eleven,’ Arthur Leander is depicted as a symbol of continuity. In her critically acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel, ‘Station Eleven,’ the author Emily St. John Mandel undeniably exerts her literary prowess as if exemplified in the many parallelisms that she draws between her work and that of such contemporary pieces as those of William Shakespeare ‘King Lear’. Out of the many faculties to which Mandel uses to illustrate the similarities, the most substantial can be obtained in the characterization of Arthur Leander, to which Mandel personifies the overarching theme found in Shakespeare’s playwright which is that of the conceptualization of the great chain of being.
Greek popularization, through both Plotinus and Plato, the ideology argued that everything in the known multiverse had its place in a divinely composited hierarchical chain. The chain was preordained by God for the intended purpose of creating order and connectivity among all the things, with a strong emphasis placed on the continuity and correspondence linking all the things. In the case of King Lear, the notion was demonstrated in the way in which the foolish king connected all of her characters and events within the drama and ultimately in the way that his actions lead to the disorder amongst his kingdom. In a similar case, Mandel’s plot-driven novel follows in the Shakespeare’s footsteps in the many relationships that manifest between the character and the events through their association with the deceased Arthur Leander.
The most obvious demonstrations of this are found in the protagonist Kirsten Raymond and her fascination with collecting Arthur Leander memorabilia. In the collapsed society in which she finds herself apart of as well as in in the various contact zones that are central to the main conflict of the book, all of which bond together through some affiliation with his character. With everything being kept into consideration, Arthur Leander is one of the most important characters in Station Eleven (Mandel 2016). The fact being substantiated in the way that Mandel leverages his characters as a means to interconnect the different characters, contact zones and with them, the events in the novel and thus personifying the great chain of being.
One of the most brilliant affirmations of how Mandel intertwines all the characters within the novel through the main character Arthur Leander is found in the peculiar characteristic that is demonstrated by Kirsten Raymond. On a microscopic level, the behavior demonstrated by Kirsten serves as a means to cope with the new reality that she found herself apart. However, on a larger scale, the incident acts her with the way the society use to be at a time that Arthur Leander was alive and everyone who was associated with him when he was alive. The fact is further bolstered in the Station Eleven comic strips that are her higher prized possessions. The artifacts that were created by Miranda, Arthur’s first wife unifies Kirsten to Arthur. It is through Arthur that his wives, as well as his child Tyler and in a domino effect like manner, the various groups within the work such as the Traveling Symphony, the people at St. Deborah by the water and the group, found at the museum of civilization.
Even more profoundly, through employing the stagnant character, Jeevan Chaudhary, a journalist who followed Arthur Leander (Mandel 2016), there are very serious implications that he took the photographs in the magazines she clings so much passionately too, that of the stories central characters. There is unquestionably both a correspondence and a continuity between all characters in Mandel’s work of all that is depicted in the simple action of Arthur giving a small child a cartoon strip to which the novel obtains its name from. While Kirsten’s fixation on Arthur Leander memorabilia provides ample evidence as to how Leander’s character acts to personify the great chain of being, the amalgamation between contact zones and events through his character further strengthens the stipulation.
In her article, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Mary Louis pretty defines a contact zone as a social space where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other often in the context of highly asymmetrical relations of power (Lu, 2014). Regarding Mandel’s novel, Station Eleven, the two major contact zones within the work occur at the museum of civilization, immediately after the society’s collapse and at St. Deborah by the water. Throughout her work, Mandel beautifully encapsulated the notion as it is seen in Kirsten’s fascination with Arthur Leander memorabilia and the ways she so effortlessly interconnected the different contact zones and even inside her works. That being said upon an in-depth reading of Station Eleven one can’t help but reflect on the many ways that we all seem united with one another in the overall fabric of humanity and thus showcasing as to why it is difficult to survive alone.
The reason as to why Mandel has used so many characters is that she could achieve the continuity that evident in the whole novel. Arthur Leander, being the main actor in the novel is connected with almost all the players and thus ensuring that there is continuity within her story. The large cast of the characters in the novel Station Eleven helps the author achieve and communicate her intended message to the audience through giving each of the characters a unique but a correlated character to what is being addressed. The main issue of that Mandel brings out by introducing a character who has many wives is to indicate how people can’t be such independent on their own and need a companion to make their lives better. For the humankind to ensure their continuity, it is prompted that they get married to have kids an issue that is so much open in the novel of continuity. Also, however, the issue of divorce is present in the novel by Arthur Leander who divorces his first wife an indication of how life isn’t a smooth journey and that proper choices need to be made for a successful life. It’s also evident that no matter how one is successful, he or she is full of fouls that make their lives to get based on regrets.
Work Cited
Byrd, Merry. “Siblings and Survivors: The Post-Apocalyptic Worlds in Edan Lepucki’s California and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven.” Femspec 17.2 (2017): 71.
Lu, Min-Zhan. “Representing and negotiating differences in the contact zone.” A Language and Power Reader: Representations of Race in a” Post-Racist” Era (2014): 231.
Mandel, Emily St John. Station eleven. Éditions Rivages, 2016.