In “Everyday Use”, work written by Alice Walker, there is a noticeable difference between two characters in particular, towards what tradition and progress mean to them. When I say tradition I mean those things that we do in a certain way time and time again and that usually include family; things we do or customs we follow because they mean something to us. We feel what we do and we like doing it and do not want to stop it.
Generally, a tradition has been practiced for generations and generations in a family, being this another reason why we tend to cherish it, unless, of course, we totally dislike it. A tradition is a practice that we do for a reason; in most cases, we believe in it and enjoy following it because it means a lot to us. On the other hand, progress is to advance in life with whatever means you have in order to become a better person and develop yourself the way you want it. It is to grow as an individual but not in a specific way, it could be in many ways or just one. To progress, we have to improve ourselves, and to achieve that we have to make an effort, that is the only way to make it.
The story in “Everyday Use” is told from beginning to end by Mama, one of the three main characters, all African Americans. She begins by telling that her youngest daughter Maggie and herself have been cleaning around the house for the arrival of her oldest daughter, Dee. She then stars describing her daughters and how things had been before this moment when she was expecting the arrival of Dee. According to Mama, she herself is a big, tough, man-like woman, and Maggie is the opposite to Dee: the latter is beautiful, has a nicer hair, a fuller figure and is bright, whereas Maggie is not and knows it. She even has some burn marks after a fire that took place in their old house, fire that Mama says did not seem to affect Dee very much since she hated that house.
Mama then makes a not-very-nice description of her oldest daughter, when she says that Dee used to read to her and Maggie about things they did not understand or care about, like she was doing it on purpose because she knew they would not. It is like Mama is implying that all the teaching Dee had been receiving turned her into a girl who thought to be better than her family; what she was doing to them was somehow violent.
When Dee finally arrives to this visit stated at the beginning of the story, she does so with a male partner, and both Maggie and Mama seem to be surprised by the way she looks: big gold earrings and bracelets, protuberant hair do, multicolored long dress. Before Dee even hugs her mother she tells her to stay right where she is and starts taking pictures of her, Maggie and the house together, including even a cow in one of the shots. After that, she introduces herself as Wangero, she no longer is Dee. She seems to have developed a strong African heritage feeling which she shares with her partner, whom Mama wonders whether he is her husband or not.
Once they finish having dinner, Dee starts asking for old hand-made family items that had been in the house and which she had never paid attention to before. The conflict develops when she demands to have two quilts that she then learns Mama had promised to give Maggie when she got married. Dee gets furious about this because she says that Maggie would destroy them in no time and that these quilts are much too valuable, they were made with the threads of some clothes worn by her ancestors far back. When Maggie tells Mama that Dee can have them, Mama sees her disturbed young daughter's face and her sadness and for the first time in her life she does something she had never done in her life: she says no to Dee and gives Maggie the disputable quilts. Right after this, Dee leaves. Then Mama and Maggie go back to their normal life.
The differences between Maggie and Dee, the two characters I will be comparing, when it comes to tradition and progress are noticeable. They do not seem to have the same idea towards these two terms. Let us examine Dee first: first of all, her sense of tradition was born sometime while she was away from home in school, we do not know how exactly. When she goes home to visit her mother and sister she seems to enjoy her dinner, which was apparently the same food she used to eat before she left. And for her, leaving and going to school was progress. And she only wanted to come back to take with her certain items that would make her house look nicer, not to use them. Of course, she claims that these things were meaningful because of their history, never mind how they looked. She wanted to have a part of her family tradition at home with her since now she was not at her old home with her family anymore, she had moved on somewhere else where she could keep on developing herself by studying. Plus, she did not actually do anything for tradition; she just wanted certain items that meant tradition to her all of a sudden, like we can see thanks to Mama's remark when Dee was so fiercely demanding to have the two quilts that were meant for Maggie: “I didn't want to bring up how I had offered Dee (Wangero) a quilt when she went away to college. Then she had told me they were old-fashioned, out of style.”
