Walker's "Everyday Use" Examines a Generation Clash Essay

Walker's "Everyday Use" examines a generation clash a family. What Dee (Wangero) implies mother sister " understand" "heritage"? Why suddenly important Dee? Part II: O'Brien's "Going After Cacciato" focuses experience Paul Berlin Vietnam War.

Walker's "Everyday Use"

Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" depicts the two very different life paths of the daughters of the main character. The mother's older daughter Dee is a very ambitious young woman, and the mother notes at the beginning of the story that Dee always disdained hard, manual work in high school, or any association with her African-American family. Dee goes away to college, while her younger sister Maggie remains at home and embraces the types of domestic chores Dee once disdained. However, when Dee comes back from college, she has taken on a new identity and now identifies herself as Afro-centric. All of the things she used to hate, like the hand-carved butter churn and her mother's hand-sewn quilts are now 'quaint' and part of her 'heritage.' The implication is that now that African-American culture is trendy in white society, Dee is willing to 'play along' and emphasize this aspect of her past to fit in and boost her self-image and her image at her fancy college.Dee wants to display her family's quilts as artifacts rather than to appreciate the blood, sweat, toil, and tears that it took to make them.

Part II: O'Brien's "Going After Cacciato"

The nonlinear format of "Night March" is designed to reflect the coping mechanisms used by the protagonist Paul Berlin to get through the harrowing experience of waiting guard outside at night during the Vietnam War. Berlin pretends he is a young boy, camping with his father, rather than facing death in the jungle. But his mind cannot help but jump to other, unpleasant things, like the recent death of Doc Peret of a heart attack. The story details how Paul throughout his service relies upon mental tricks like counting his steps and pretending he is earning dollar bills for every step; rehearsing conversations with his father during which he says that Vietnam is not….....