Everyday Use

"Maggie will be nervous until her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scares down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe. She thinks her sister has held life always i the pal m of one hand, that "no" is a word the world never learned to say to her." (page 173)

Throughout the entire story I realized how different all of the characters in this short story were from each other. I feel that the differences in characters was important to the theme. Dee was the self- centered one who always cared about how she looked. Dee was also the only one in her family that was really educated. I still am confused as to how she became educated though. But, despite all of the great things that went her way, she took everything for granted. Thus, people saw her as very selfish and mean, so they didn't really like her. Maggie was my favorite one in this story. Maggie was very shy. Even though Maggie wasn't very intelligent, she really tried to do her best in all aspects of her life. Because of Maggie's lack of success, she never felt good enough. Beings sister's with Dee made her feel even worse about herself. Mama was very observant. She knew everything about Maggie and Dee and she was very loving towards them. Mama was also very old-fashioned, compared to Dee who was very worldly, and consumed solely on that premise. All of these character traits help to shape the story and the themes in the story.