Stories in our world today are viewed by millions of different people in many different ways. To have a group of literature that is “commonly accepted” is a dangerous statement. It can be argued and debated on many different points. The canon, a word defined by A Glossary of Literary Terms as “in relation to literature, this term is half seriously applied to those works generally accepted as the great ones... Books are much more likely to be called “great” if they reflect the philosophical ideas of the critic.” Many books are being argued about because some people want them in the canon and others want them out. Everyday Use, a short story written by Alice Walker is one of those stories that is considered to be in the canon. Why is that though? Sure the message of the story is strong, the characters are ones you can relate to and also the story has much meaning and significance but so do hundreds of other books out there that are not in the canon. What is it about Everyday Use that makes it so much better than the other stories that have almost the exact same morals, writing style and so on? Or could it just be the story should not be in the canon to begin with?
The characters in the story are ones that you feel close with. Maggie the youngest girl, is dealing with issues that many children deal with in our world today. Issues like relationship and pain caused by other family members. Maggie’s older sister Dee is a character that rebels like many older children of our modern day. Dee moves out and tries to come back to her old house with all these new ideas and supposedly her found heritage. The mother in the story, Mrs. Johnson, is upset and hurt by the actions and words that her oldest daughter Dee presents. Heritage was an important thing to Mrs. Johnson and all Dee did with her unique background was use it as a social topic for her to raise her status. The topics that this story bring up are ones that are valuable and original which adds to the greatness of the story as a whole. With all that the story entails described above is why I think the story should be in the Canon. That is my opinion though, and who is to say that my classmate analyzed the story the same way and related to all the themes and characters?
The story Everyday Use could have been viewed in many other ways than the way in which I viewed it. The themes and characters could have been insignificant to other people for many reasons. When you are a student getting a decent education, the variety of books that yo
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