Questions
1. What is the basic conflict in Everyday Use"?
2. What is the tone of Walker's story? By what means does the author communicate it?
3. From whose point of view is “Everyday Use" told? What does the story gain from being told from this point of view- -ins
4. What does the narrator of the story feel toward Dee? What seems to be Dee's present attitude toward her mother and
sister?
5. What do you take to be the author's attitude toward each of her characters? How does she convey it?
6. What levels of meaning do you find in the story's. title?
7. Contrast Dee's attitude toward her heritage with the attitudes of her mother and sister. How much truth is there in Dee's
accusation that her mother and sister don't understand their heritage?
8. Does the knowledge that "Everyday Use" was written by a black writer in any way influence your reactions to it? Explain.
The process of characterization--which will be the topic of our second major essay later on--is a process every author who has ever written uses to create his or her characters--even when the "character" is a robot, rabbit, straw or tin man, literally every character used in any writing. Authors have only four options to create a character:
1. have the character say something
2. have the character do something
3. have someone else reveal something about the character
or, more rarely,