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I need some assistance with these assignment. am lit cd Thank you in advance for the help!

I need some assistance with these assignment. am lit cd Thank you in advance for the help! Everyday Use” by Alice Walker and “Half and Half” by Amy Tan No: “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker and “Half and Half” by Amy Tan

In Everyday Use, the protagonist is the mother of Maggie and Dee while in Half and Half, the protagonist is Rose, daughter of An-Mei. Both the characters go through different conflicts in their respective stories but we see here some fight between one’s culture and adoption of the other culture.

The mother in Everyday Use compares her two daughters and finds Maggie in need of her assistance and support. She faces a conflict as who to choose as a representative of her culture and she chooses Maggie, her shy daughter as Dee breaks her link to her culture and family by changing her style of living, her connections to her family as well as her name, named after her grandma to Wangero, as she says, “I couldnt bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me” (Walker, 1994). Rose, the daughter in Half and Half faces the conflict in terms of faith and loss. Her mother lost faith in religion when her son Bing was drowned as she kept “Bible wound up wedged under a too-short table leg” (Tan, 2006) while Rose thinks of losing faith in love when she thinks of separation from Ted as she says, “I know it’s hopeless” (Tan, 2006).

Maggie’s mother resolves the conflict by giving the quilt to Maggie instead of Dee as a token of her love and as a thing of everyday use. She considers Maggie as the representative of her culture and “snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangeros hands and dumped them into Maggies lap” (Walker, 1994). Rose resolves the conflict by realizing her mistake and by realizing that she is at the same place at which, her mother was when she lost Bing. Both of them, the mother and daughter, realize that loss is there and should be accepted.

Maggie’s mother snatches the quilt from Dee and hands it over to Dee as an indication of her ethnic background. To her, Maggie will use the quilt as a cover for which, it was created while Dee will only use it as a showpiece. She thinks that Maggie is more linked to her culture while Dee has tried to Americanize herself. Rose’s decision to have a separation is based on her consideration that there is no hope left. Her ethnic background played a crucial role in her decision-making as she is still connected to her culture and is unable to break away from it in spite of the fact the she says, “I am an American too” (Tan, 2006).

References

Tan, Amy. (2006). “Half and Half”. The Joy Luck Club. London: Penguin Publishers.

Walker, Alice. (1994). Everyday Use. New York: Rutgers University Press.

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