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Satire
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
“Everyday Use” is set in the American South—likely in rural Georgia—sometime in the 1960s or 1970s. Though Walker doesn’t make the time period of the story explicit, it is clear that the story takes place during the Black Power movement, a social movement largely led by educated Black people in the northern United States that centered on fighting for the rights of Black Americans as well as celebrating and embracing their African roots.
The following passage—which comes as the educated Dee (and her partner Hakim-a-barber) arrive to rural Georgia to visit Dee’s mother and sister—captures this element of the setting:
“Wa-su-zo-Tean-o!” she says, coming on in that gliding way the dress makes her move. The short stocky fellow with the hair to his navel is all grinning and he follows up with “Asalamalakim, my mother and sister!” He moves to hug Maggie but she falls back, right up against the back of my chair. I feel her trembling there and when I look up I see the perspiration falling off her chin.
Here, Dee greets her mother by saying, “Wa-su zo-Tean-o,” likely an incorrect spelling and pronunciation of a Luganda phrase meaning “good morning.” Dee’s attempt to greet her family in an African language—as well as her decision to wear her hair in an afro and don a traditional African dress—hints that she has been a part of the Black Power and/or Black nationalist movements. Likewise, her partner Hakim-a-barber’s name and decision to great Dee’s family by saying “Asalamalakim” (a traditional Arabic greeting) suggest that he is part of the Nation of Islam, a religious movement made popular by Malcolm X and deeply tied to Black nationalism and the Black Power movement.
Walker intentionally juxtaposes these two educated and Black nationalism-embracing characters with Mama and Maggie, two uneducated, working-class Black characters trying to survive racism in the South in the 1960s or 1970s. She does so in order to pose the question: are members of the Black Power movement really helping ordinary Black people, or are they just alienating them?
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