邯郸学院外国语学院School of Foreign Languages of Handan College 英美小说选读学期小论文论文题目：《外婆的日常用品》中主题分析Title：An Analysis Theme of Everyday Use of Your Grandma 专业：英语（师范）_An Analysis Theme of Everyday Use of Your GrandmaAbstract: Alice Walker, the first black woman winner of Pulitzer Prize for Literature, was born in 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia, best known as the author of The Color Purple. In the 1960s, Walker actively participates in the activities of humanism for the black, struggling for the equality of the race. Her works are known for their portrayals of the African American’s life. She depicts vividly the sexism, racism and poverty that make the life often a struggle. In Everyday Use, the author has successfully shaped the representatives of traditional culture. Through describes the mother and daughters as representatives of modern image to express the characters how to understand and inherit ancestral quilt begin plot, reflecting the racial issue arising from family conflicts, and expressing important themes: the significance of tradition culture of traditions inherited a deep understanding of their cultural content, rather than floating on the surface, a mere formality.Key words: tradition heritage educationIntroductionIn Everyday Use, Alice Walker argues that an African-American is both African and American, and denies the American side of one's heritage is disrespectful of one's ancestors and consequently harmful to one's self. Alice Walker is the eighth child of sharecropper parents, and grows up in the midst of violent racism and poverty, which influences her later writings. She uses the principal characters of Mama, Dee(Wangero) and Maggie to clarify the themes. Everyday setting around the year 1970 is a story about a poor black mother and her two daughters and Maggie. Dee, the elder daughter, goes to a college in the north, and visits her home one day and brings her boyfriend. The other daughter, Maggie, still lives with her mother. Maggie is slow, disfigured and simple-minded in contrast to Dee, who is clever, beautiful but arrogant type of woman. For the quilt, the mother has left for Maggie as wedding present. She refuses to give Dee the quilt to hang it in the room because she cannot fully understand the value of the heritage. By discussing the cultural and historical context of the story and through detailed reviewing of the content, the thesis tries to deeply analyze the theme of Alice Walker's Everyday Use, and it shows that the writer wants to tell readers two mistakes in Afro-Americans' cultural identification: escaping from the painful history and blind seeking for African culture. 1. The Meaning of HeritageAfrican American cultural identity has always been with special complexity. It contains the African culture that has been nearly forgotten because of distant time and space and the painful culture that came into being under the White’s racist behavior towards the black, like oppression, discrimination and segregation. To the painful history, most Afro-American wouldn’t like to face or accept bravely, while to the African culture, they would not thoroughly understand due to far distance, so they would probably become blind when they try to trace back to their original culture. In the novel, Dee, angered by what she views as a history of oppression in her family, has constructed a new heritage for herself and rejected her real heritage. She fails to see the family legacy of her given name and takes on a new name, Wangero, which she believes more accurately represents her African heritage. However, the new name, like the “African” clothes and jewelry she wears to make a statement, is meaningless. She has little true understanding ofAfrica, so what she considers her true heritage is actually empty and false. Furthermore, Dee views her real heritage as dead, something of the past, rather than as a living, ongoing creation. She desires the carved dasher and family quilts, but she sees them as artifacts of a lost time, suitable for display but not for actual, practical use. She has set herself outside her own history, rejecting her real heritage in favor of a constructed one.Mama and Dee have very different ideas about what “heritage” is, and for Mama, the family objects are infused with the presence of the people who made and used them. The family heirlooms are the true tokens of Dee’s identity and origins, but Dee knows little about the past. She misstates the essential facts about how the quilts were made and what fabrics were used to make them, even though she pretends to be deeply connected to this folk tradition. Her desire to hang the quilts in a museum suggests that she feels reverence for them but that to her they are essentially foreign, impersonal objects. Mama understands that Maggie, not Dee, should have the quilts, because Maggie will respect them by using them in the way they are intended to be used. When Dee contends at the end of the story that Mama and Maggie do not understand their heritage, Walker intends the remark to be ironic: it is Dee who does not understand her heritage.2. The Divisive Power of EducationAlthough Mama struggles to send Dee to a good school, whereas, the education proves to be more divisive than beneficial to Dee’s relationship with her family. Mama herself was denied an education. When she was a child, her school was closed, and no one attempted to try to reopen it. Racism, passive acceptance, and forces beyond her control set Mama on the road that led to her life of toil. Dee was fortunate that Mama gave her the opportunity for advantages and refinements, but they have served only to create a wedge between Dee and the rest of the family. Dee uses her intellect to intimidate others, greeting her mother with “Wa-su-zo Tean-o,” a greeting in an obscure African language Mama most likely does not speak. Dee, with her knowledge and worldliness, is a threat to the simple world Mama and Maggie inhabit, and Dee seems determined to lord her knowledge over them. Even as a child, Dee reads to her mother and sister “without pity”, “forcing” strange ideas on them and unsettling their simple domestic contentment.Education has separated Dee from her family, but it has also separated Dee from a true sense of herself. With lofty ideals and educational opportunity come a loss of a sense of heritage, background, and identity, which only family can provide. Dee arrives at the family home as a strange, threatening ambassador of a new world, a world that has left Maggie and Mama behind. Civil rights, greater visibility and zero tolerance for inequality are characteristics of Dee’s world. These things are not, in and of themselves, problematic. What is problematic is that Dee has no respect for anything but her world, leading her to alienate herself from her roots. Maggie, on the other hand, knows no world but the one she came from. Uneducated, she can read only haltingly. By doing what she is told and accepting the conditions of her sheltered life without question, Maggie has hampered her own self-fulfillment. Walker sets up this contrast to reveal an ironic contradiction: Dee’s voracious quest for knowledge has led to her alienation from her family, while the lack of education has harmed and stifled Maggie. Both education and the lack of it have proven to be dangerous for the sisters.3. The Inequality of FamilyThroughout the story, there exists a sense of inequality. Mama, Dee and Maggie cannot communicate in a equal environment. For example, the absence of eye contact and strong eyesight reveals the difficulty that Mama, Dee, and Maggie have in relating to one another. Mama is unable to look a white person in the eye, suggesting that she has never managed to embrace the idea of equality, whereas Dee can do so easily. Maggie cannot look anyone in the eye at all, hanging her head as she walks, portraying herself as a silent victim. In describing Maggie’s ability to read, Mama says that Maggie does the best she can despite not being able to see well. This qualified vision is associated with a lack of intelligence, equaliterianism or mental acuity. Walker describes Dee as wide-eyed, always taking in the world around her. During the house fire that happened when she was a child, the flames transfixed her, consuming the home represented ignorance and poverty to her. Mama claims Dee’s attention was often so rapt that she would not blink for long stretches of time. Dee’s easy eye contact and intense gazes reveal her critical, condescending nature. Soon after arriving at the family home, Dee and Hakim send “eye signals” to each other, silently registering their disdain for Mama and Maggie’s simple, rusticworld. In addition, Dee’s renaming—is a way of connecting to the past and an indication of the fluid nature of identity. Walker does not tell us the origins of Maggie’s name, and Mama’s name is never given, but we know that these two characters are unchanging and have strong ties to their heritage. It therefore makes sense that their names and identities are stable and unremarkable. Dee, on the other hand, attempts to transform herself and embrace what she considers her true heritage by adopting an African name. Her boyfriend, Hakim-a-barber, may have taken on his name for similar reasons, as he grew to embrace Muslim ideas. That is to say, Dee believes renaming is a sign that she can take on a new identity. To some degree, Dee does not think that she and her sister are equal in the family and using the name to express she has a different status to her sister. Dee believes that the name Wangero holds more power and significance than Dee, the name passed down through four generations. Dee’s belief that she is named after her oppressors shows a critical lack of understanding. Quick to judgment, she sees her given name as an emblem of a racist, abusive world, as opposed to a tribute to a long line of strong women. Dee’s decision to take on a new name highlights the confused views she has of her own heritage.All the above, they shows there is no equality between the family members.ConclusionAlice Walker expresses the struggles of blacks, particularly woman, and their lives in a racist, sexist, and violent society. Her writings also focus on the role of woman of color and history. Walker is a respected figure in the liberal political community for her support of unconventional and unpopular views as a matter of principle. In Everyday Use, the author has successfully expresses her ideas of traditional culture. The story is widely accepted as one of the best stories on the dilemma of black heritage and has a wide range of images. For most of readers, every time it gives birth to new aspects for they have understood one of the numerous levels of meaning the story includes. After discussing the themes of the story, readers can have a comprehensive understanding about the story Everyday Use for Your Grandma.BibliographyHeol, Hegla. “Personal Names and Heritage in Alice Walker’s Everyday Use”[J]. American Studies in Scandinavia, 1991(1)Walker, Alice. In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women [M]. Harcourt Brace &Company, 1973Sperber, Wilson. Relevance: Communication and Cognition[M]. 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