Essay on Quilts and Art in Everyday Use :: Everyday Use essays

Quilts and Art in cursory Use With her story, Everyday Use, Alice Walker is saying that fine art should be a living, breathing business office of the culture it arose from, rather than a frozen timepiece to be sight from a distance. To make this point, she uses the quilts in her story to symbolize art and what happens to these quilts represents her theory of art.(thesis) The quilts themselves, as art, are inseparable from the culture they arose from. (topic sentence) The business relationship of these quilts is a history of the family. The narrator says, In both of them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn cubic decimeter and more years ago. Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jarrells Paisley shirts. And one teeny faded muddy piece . . . that was from Great Grandpa Ezras uniform that he wore in the urbane War. So these quilts, which have become an heirloom, not only represent the family, only when are an integral part of the family. Walker is saying that true art not only represents its culture, but is an inseparable part of that culture. The manner in which the quilts are treated shows Walkers view of how art should be treated. Dee covets the quilts for their financial and aesthetic value. But theyre priceless she exclaims, when she learns that her mother has already promised them to Maggie. Dee argues that Maggie is backward enough to edit them to everyday use. Indeed, this is how Maggie views the quilts. She determine them for what them mean to her as an individual. This becomes clear when she says, I abide member Grandma Dee without the quilts, implying that her connection with the quilts is personalized and emotional rather than financial and aesthetic. She as well as knows that the quilts are an active process, kept alive through continuous renewal. As the narrator points out, Maggie knows how to quilt. The two sisters values concerning the quilt represent the two briny approaches to art appreciation in our society. Art can be determine for financial and aesthetic reasons, or it can be valued for personal and emotional reasons. When the narrator snatches the quilts from Dee and gives them to Maggie, Walker is saying that the second set of values is the correct one. Art, in order to be kept alive, must be put to Everyday Use -- literally in the case of the quilts, figuratively in the case of conventional art.