"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker

The short story Everyday Use by Alice Walker illustrates a variety of past memories and explains the personality of each character in order to explain a small event that occurs. In order to convey this information, Walker examines every bit of detail in order to explain how much meaning there is to the details. One way in which Walker conveys this information is through the use of simile. When explaining the narrator of the story, the narrator states that, "I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man" (Walker, 174). This offers insight that the narrator is not really observed by most people as a female. The narrator is not very attractive, and tends to accomplish, with ease, the jobs that most men would do. This simile helps to establish how different this mother is from her two daughters. Even though Maggie is also unattractive, their personalities are way different. Dee has the more outgoing and established personality like her mother. All of these personal appearances and personalities end up clashing at the end of this short story. I feel as though Maggie and Dee take their mother's personalities to the extremes.