Animal Images

"Everyday Use" has more creatures than Animal Planet. Well, technically we don't see any real-live animals in the story, but Walker relies on lots of animal imagery to show us important qualities about the characters.

Describing Maggie as a pathetic pooch, for instance, the narrator asks,

Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to them? That is the way my Maggie walks. (9)

Similarly, she later remarks that "Maggie's hand is as limp as a fish, and probably as cold, despite the sweat, and she keeps trying to pull it back" (23). Gee, what flattering comparisons, Mom.

While the narrator's likening of Maggie to a lame dog and a cold fish might seem like a kind of harsh way for a mother to view her child, it emphasizes that Maggie doesn't seem to regard herself as a human being worthy of much respect, at least in the earlier parts of the story. Recognizing Maggie's resemblance to these animals is especially useful for the narrator because it sets her on the path to realizing that things need to change for Maggie. This culminates in the monumental action she takes at the end of the story; notably, she remarks on Maggie's "hangdog" look right before she decides to give her the quilts.

Our narrator also draws on images from the animal kingdom to depict Dee and Hakim-a-barber. This time, though, her comparisons serve a different purpose. She observes,

[Dee's hair] stands straight up like the wool on a sheep. It is black as night and around the edges are two long pigtails that rope about like small lizards disappearing behind her ears. (20)

And in describing Hakim-a-barber, she says,

Hair is all over his head a foot long and hanging from his chin like a kinky mule tail. (19)

It's significant that the narrator uses animal images here to express how Dee and Hakim-a-barber are sporting more natural hairdos to demonstrate their rejection of mainstream and white normative standards of beauty. (For more on this, hop on over to the "Characters" section and check out our thoughts on Dee.) By comparing their hair to animals, the distance between the narrator and Dee and Hakim-a-barber is underscored.

Note that in making her comparisons, the narrator chooses animals—sheep, lizards, mules—that are a wee bit more exotic than your average dog or fish (like she uses to describe Maggie). This helps to illuminate how these characters' appearances are a bit out of the ordinary, which is, of course, exactly the look they're going for as they work to emphasize their African and Arabic identities.