《外婆日用家当》中人物分析

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：《外婆日用家当》中人物分析

Title： An Analysis of Characters in Everyday Use

专业： 英语师范 ______

Abstract：Everyday Use from the collection in Love and Trouble published in 1973 was written during the heyday of the Black Power movement. Everyday use tells readers the different attitudes of three persons in a family to Africa-American heritage. The portrayal of the characters in the novel is very distinct and vivid. Through the plots, themes and style of this novel, Alice Walker reveals the different and fresh character of that era.This paper tries to analyze the characters ofMaggie, Mrs. Johnson, and Dee.

Key words:Alice Walker Everyday UseMrs. Johnson 　Dee Maggie

Introduction

Everyday Use for Your Grandmother, this is one of the most famous short stories which written by Alice Walker.This article mainly introduces the stories of mother, Maggie and Dee. Mother is a very capable woman, and she can do anything, even can do a man’s live. Maggie, she is a very inferior girl, she is very inferior of her appearance, so she envies Dee, but she can do nothing to change. Instead Dee is an open girl. She has her own thoughts and she will try her best to strive for what she wants. Walker creates three distinctive black female images --- mother and her two daughters, Dee and Maggie. They have different attitudes to treat their national culture and heritage.

Maggie

Maggie is a weak and plain black girl. After a fire in her home, the scar of burn left on her body. She is not bright just as she is neither good-looking nor rich. She is very self-abased and passive. She thinks that Dee has a firm control of her life. Dee could always have anything she wanted, and life was extremely generous to her. But Maggie dare not fight for her own things, just make a concession blindly. She is so shy that she never raises her head or eyes when looking at and talking to people, and she is always so nervous and restless that she is unable to stand still. She is afraid of the outside world, sealing up herself in the spirit of “prison”, and gives herself spiritual shackles. She is represented by the black women who are wrecked cruel fate and suffered from discrimination and restrictions. They suffered serious damage either mentally or physically.

Mrs. Johnson 　　　

The mother is a working woman without much education, but not without intelligence or perception. She has the typical features of a black working woman. And she is poor but optimistic. Although her optimistic makes her better than Maggie, she also often ready to leave as quickly as possible because of discomfort, nervousness and timidity. And in order to avoid white as much as possible, also from discomfort and shyness. In front of national cultural identity, she is smart and sober. She is clearly because she really understood the meaning of culture and heritage and finally makes the right choice for the heritage of the home and black. She is represented by the black women who are suffered in their spirit more than in their flesh. They managed to integrate into the mainstream of American society but failed.

Dee 　　　

Dee is a smart, pretty and confident girl. However, she is also a blind, selfish and conceited girl. The narrator implies that books Dee read to them were written by the white people and full of their language and ideas, falsehood and their way of life. Other folks refer to the white people. By reading those books, Dee forced them to accept the white people’s views and values. Her reading was like a trap, and we were like animals caught in the trap, unable to escape. Underneath her voice suggests a repressive and imposing quality in her voice. She imposed on us lots of falsity and so-called knowledge that is totally useless to us. The words washed and burned are used figuratively, indicating large quantities of a destructive nature. Furthermore, she was determined to face up and defeat any disaster with her efforts. She is afraid of nothing. So she would look at anybody steadily and intently for a long time. At sixteen she had a unique way of doing things. And she knew what the current, fashionable way of dressing was, speaking and acting. She even said that the girl called Dee no longer exists. With the new name she is born again. She was named Dee. The words “securely” and “stroking” shows how she cherished the quilts and how determined she was to have them. Later we will learn that the mother offered Dee a quilt when she went she went away to college. At that time she thought the quilts were old-fashioned. Note the change in Dee’s attitudes toward the quilts. The snobbish Dee says that Maggie is not as well educated or sophisticated as she and that Maggie will not be able to appreciate the value of the quilts and will use them just as quilts, not as works of art. Finally, she answered the question firmly and definitely as if that was the only right way of using quilts. She is represented by the black women who are get new ideas in the doctrine of Christ's initiative. They know how to stick to your own things, live your life better and use the concept to “shape the world”.

Conclusion

Through the conflicts between the characters, the story reflects the conflict of the society to the readers. Dee is a black girl trying to enter the mainstream of America, namely the white world, well-educated but knowing little about her culture. Maggie is capable to pass down the precious culture, but she pays the price of living in a less-open environment and giving up high education. And that is the problem. That is Dee who is typical of the conflict between the black and the white world.

The novel tells the readers that it is necessary to protect traditional cultures and heritage which are precious and invaluable. And it is unworthy to chase something fashionable and lose traditional cultures and heritage.

Bibliography

Heol, 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, 1973

Sperber, Wilson. Relevance: Communication and Cognition[M]. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986

黄炳瑜. 女性自我意识的觉醒——爱丽丝·沃克《日常使用》中的女性形象, 广西师范学院院报: 哲学社会科学版[J], 2003(1)

季静芬. 爱丽丝·沃克的感叹——试析《奶奶的日用家当》的思想内涵[J]. 常熟高专学报, 1999(3)

谢玉娥. 《女性文学研究》[M]. 河南: 河南大学出版社, 1996

张汉熙. 高级英语(修订本)[M]. 北京: 外语教育与研究出版社, 1996第二版

张德明. 多元文化杂交时代的民族文化记忆问题[J]. 外国文学评论, 2001年第3期.

本文来源：https://www.2haoxitong.net/k/doc/cc478d6051e79b896902262f.html