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1、 外婆的日常用品中主题分析 邯郸学院外国语学院School of Foreign Languages of Handan College英美小说选读学期小论文论文题目： 外婆的日常用品中主题分析 Title： An Analysis Theme of Everyday Use of Your Grandma 专 业： 英语（师范） _ An Analysis Theme of Everyday Use of Your GrandmaAbstract: Alice Walker, the first black woman winner of Pulitzer Prize for Literat
2、ure, was born in 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia, best known as the author of The Color Purple. In the 1960s, Walker actively participates in the activities of humanism for the black, struggling for the equality of the race. Her works are known for their portrayals of the African Americans life. She depic
3、ts vividly the sexism, racism and poverty that make the life often a struggle. In Everyday Use, the author has successfully shaped the representatives of traditional culture. Through describes the mother and daughters as representatives of modern image to express the characters how to understand and
4、 inherit ancestral quilt begin plot, reflecting the racial issue arising from family conflicts, and expressing important themes: the significance of tradition culture of traditions inherited a deep understanding of their cultural content, rather than floating on the surface, a mere formality.Key wor
5、ds: tradition heritage educationIntroductionIn Everyday Use, Alice Walker argues that an African-American is both African and American, and denies the American side of ones heritage is disrespectful of ones ancestors and consequently harmful to ones self. Alice Walker is the eighth child of sharecro
6、pper parents, and grows up in the midst of violent racism and poverty, which influences her later writings. She uses the principal characters of Mama, Dee(Wangero) and Maggie to clarify the themes. Everyday setting around the year 1970 is a story about a poor black mother and her two daughters and M
7、aggie. Dee, the elder daughter, goes to a college in the north, and visits her home one day and brings her boyfriend. The other daughter, Maggie, still lives with her mother. Maggie is slow, disfigured and simple-minded in contrast to Dee, who is clever, beautiful but arrogant type of woman. For the
8、 quilt, the mother has left for Maggieas wedding present. She refuses to give Dee the quilt to hang it in the room because she cannot fully understand the value of the heritage. By discussing the cultural and historical context of the story and through detailed reviewing of the content, the thesis t
9、ries to deeply analyze the theme of Alice Walkers Everyday Use, and it shows that the writer wants to tell readers two mistakes in Afro-Americans cultural identification: escaping from the painful history and blind seeking for African culture.1. The Meaning of Heritage African American cultural iden
10、tity has always been with special complexity. It contains the African culture that has been nearly forgotten because of distant time and space and the painful culture that came into being under the Whites racist behavior towards the black, like oppression, discrimination and segregation. To the pain
11、ful history, most Afro-American wouldnt like to face or accept bravely, while to the African culture, they would not thoroughly understand due to far distance, so they would probably become blind when they try to trace back to their original culture. In the novel, Dee, angered by what she views as a
12、 history of oppression in her family, has constructed a new heritage for herself and rejected her real heritage. She fails to see the family legacy of her given name and takes on a new name, Wangero, which she believes more accurately represents her African heritage. However, the new name, like the
13、“African” clothes and jewelry she wears to make a statement, is meaningless. She has little true understanding of Africa, so what she considers her true heritage is actually empty and false. Furthermore, Dee views her real heritage as dead, something of the past, rather than as a living, ongoing cre
14、ation. She desires the carved dasher and family quilts, but she sees them as artifacts of a lost time, suitable for display but not for actual, practical use. She has set herself outside her own history, rejecting her real heritage in favor of a constructed one.Mama and Dee have very different ideas
15、 about what “heritage” is, and for Mama, the family objects are infused with the presence of the people who made and used them. The family heirlooms are the true tokens of Dees identity and origins, but Dee knows little about the past. She misstates the essential facts about how the quilts were made and what fabrics were used to make them, even though she pretends to be deeply connected to this folk tradition. Her desire to hang the quilts in a museum suggests that she feels reverence for them but that to her they are essentially foreign, impersonal objects. Mama understands that Maggie, n
