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Allusions
Foil
Explanation and Analysis—Maggie and Dee:
In “Everyday Use,” Maggie is a foil for Dee, meaning that her presence in the story illuminates important qualities about Dee’s character. In particular, the contrast between Dee and her sister help readers to understand Dee better. The following passage captures some of the ways that the two women differ:
Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eying her sister with a mixture of envy and awe. She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that “no” is a word the world never learned to say to her.
Mama—the narrator, and the two women’s mother—describes here how Maggie is “nervous,” “homely,” and physically scarred, while Dee holds life “in the palm of one hand” and has always gotten the things that she wants. Though Mama does not mention it in this particular passage, Maggie is also thinner, darker skinned, and less conventionally attractive than Dee.
Walker likely makes the differences between the two women stark so that readers understand how Dee represents the more privileged members of the Black community—who are often lighter skinned and more highly educated (and therefore more confident)—while Maggie represents the less privileged ones who carry the “scars” of poverty and anti-Black racism more directly. In this way, she is encouraging readers to question if Dee’s sense of freedom and confidence that it is “a new day” for Black Americans is really true, given the amount of suffering that her sister, and working-class Black Americans as whole, experience.
Related Themes:
