Compare And Contrast Dee And Maggie's Heritage

Words: 642
Pages: 3

“Dee and Maggie” In the story the two sisters have a different meaning of preserving heritage. In everyday use by Alice Walker, Maggie lives her heritage day by day while Dee is ashamed by her heritage. As the story shows, Mama feels differently about the girls, too. All their lives one sister has gotten anything she wanted, but the other has struggled with this. The girls are very different and treat their heritage differently, too. One thing is that Mama raised both daughters the same way in a rural part of Georgia. They weren’t raised rich and had a life of country pioneers. Along the way Dee saw a much different future than what her heritage had. Maggie is the total opposite though, not wanting nice things and not just holding on to her heritage, but living it. Dee grew up wanted an education and wanting to change how she lived. Growing up and not changing how she lived is what Maggie wanted. Dee showed up to her mother’s house when …show more content…
At the beginning it explains how their first house burned down 10-12 years before and ever since then Maggie has been scarred mentally and self conscious physically. It says on page 104, paragraph six that,” She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire burned the other house to the ground.” This means Maggie’s been like this for a while and doesn’t plan on coming out of this for a while. Dee is so completely different from Maggie, Dee is confident and Maggie is compared to a lame and coward dog by her mother. This is what also gets Dee way farther in life than Maggie because Dee is more confident and strives to succeed. It also doesn’t help that Maggie has those burn marks on her which makes her a lot more self-conscious. Maggie looks at dee with jealousy because she can’t look the way that Dee looks and it kills her everytime she looks at