The Use of Heritage in Everyday Use and A Pair of Tickets :: Alice Walker Amy Tan Papers

The Use of Heritage in Everyday Use and A Pair of Tickets A key factor in Alice Walker’s â€Å"Everyday Use,† and Amy Tan’s â€Å"A Pair of Tickets,† is heritage. Throughout both stories the use of heritage can be seen easily. Walker’s avoidance of heritage in her writings and Tan’s understanding of heritage in her writing. Through this readers can see the true meaning of heritage. Understanding both sides of these two stories gives readers a chance to explore their own heritage and reflect on how they accept their past. By contrasting the family characters in â€Å"Everyday Use,† Walker illustrates lost heritage by placing the significance of heritage solely on material objects. Walker presents Mama and Maggie, the younger daughter, as an example that heritage in both knowledge and form passing from one generation to another through a learning experience connection. However, by a broken connection, Dee the older daughter, represents a misconception of heritage as material. Dee, the â€Å"heritage queen† portrays a rags to riches daughter who does not understand what heritage is all about. Her definition of heritage hangs on a wall to show off, not to be used. Dee’s avoidance of heritage becomes clear when she is talking to Mama about changing her name, she says, â€Å"I couldn’t bear it any longer being named after the people who oppress me† (Walker 75). Thus resembling that Dee just takes another name without even understanding what her original name means. She tr ies to explain to Mama that her name now has meaning, quality, and heritage; never realizing that the new name means nothing. Changing her name bothers Mama and Maggie because Dee’s name is a fourth generation name, truly giving it heritage. Dee likes to gloat to her friends about how she was raised, so she tries to show off by decorating her house with useful items from her past. Her argument with Mama about taking quilts that were hand stitched as opposed to sewn by machine gives readers a chance to see Dee’s outlook of heritage is short lived. Dee says to Mama, â€Å"But they’re priceless. . . Maggie would put them on the bed and in five years they’d be in rags. Less than that!† (Walker 77). Mama will not allow her daughter to take the quilts because she has been saving them for Dee’s sister, Maggie, and she wants the quilts to be put into everyday use. By helping

Primary School and Typical Young Kid Essay

I can remember one event in my grade school days that I did not like. You could say it being one of my worst days of my life. I was in the fifth grade, in a school in Clovis, NM. This school believed in paddling if you got in trouble. The teacher I had, acted like he love to enforce this rule. He would tell us, every time we acted out, that he was going to paddle us as he waved his paddle in the air. We were told to do homework for the weekend and to bring it back on the next Monday. I didn’t want to do this long homework assignment, I wanted to go play with my friends and play video games. I was a typical young kid; I just wanted to have fun. That whole weekend I did not touch that assignment. I don’t even think I took my homework out from my backpack. The Moring of that Monday I completely forgot about my homework. When I got to school and sat down at my desk, the teacher asked â€Å"Who did their homework†? Most of the class raised their hands; I was not one of them. The teacher told for the ones that did not do their work have to stay in for recess and finish it. That just made me mad; I wasn’t allowed to go play with my friends. When recess time came and when my friends went out to play, I just stared out the window and refused to do my work. About the time recess was over and the class was coming in, the teacher walked in and told us to bring our work to his desk in front of the class. There was only two of use that gave him a blank assignment. He didn’t take that to well, as he grabbed both papers and directed us to follow him to the office. At the office he looked up for our parent’s numbers from the school records. When he called my step mom and told her what I did he asked if it was ok to discipline me, if he couldn’t do it than she was to come and do it herself. He hanged up the phone with only the word â€Å"Ok† and then he took both of us out in the hall and paddled us both with two swings each across our bottoms. I did not like that school day, I never saw that teacher the same way after that incident. It made me be aware of my actions. From that day I made sure I did all my work. I didn’t want to get paddle again. It was a very cruel way to punish but it was a very infected to make the kids listen.

Essay on Global Warming - 1245 Words

Global Warming Our planets atmosphere traps energy just like a greenhouse. Energy from the Sun can enter the Earth’s atmosphere, but not all of it can easily find its way out again. What blocks the Sun’s energy from escaping from the Earth? Unlike a greenhouse, the Earth does not have a layer of glass over it! Instead, molecules in our atmosphere called greenhouse gasses absorb the heat. Greenhouse gasses include water vapor, methane, ozone, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide. There may not be much of some of these gasses in our atmosphere, but they can have a big impact. Each greenhouse gas molecule is made of three or more atoms that are bonded loosely together. These molecules are able to†¦show more content†¦About 30 gases produced by human activity have been identified as contributing to the greenhouse effect. These are sometimes called greenhouse gases. The main ones are carbon dioxide, methane, CFCs and nitrous oxide. Sunlight reaches the Earths surface, is reflected off it, and is prevented from escaping from the atmosphere by this layer of gases, which acts like glass in a greenhouse. Up to a point, the greenhouse effect is a natural process, and naturally occuring carbon dioxide is not dangerous. Without greenhouse gases, the average temperature of the Earth would be -19C , in other words, too cold for us to live. However, the concentration of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has changed dramatically: since the 18th century, carbon dioxide has increased by 30%. There is disagreement among scientists about the seriousness of global warming. Most scientists agree that the global temperature is rising. They do not agree on more specific elements of the issue: How much will it warm up? What will happen if it does warm up? How far are humans responsible? What should we do to stop it? Scientists believe that if we go on producing gases at the rate we do now, it is likely that the Earths average temperature will rise by about 0.3 degrees C every ten years. ThisShow MoreRelatedGlobal Warming And The Warming1544 Words   |  7 PagesGlobal warming has become a well conversed topic among scientists and peoples in the world today. There are extremists who do everything possible to stop contributing to the warming, but the average person does little to alleviate the issue and in many cases refuses to acknowledge that there is a problem at all. Dating back to millions of years ago, even before humanity was born, the world has always experienced one form or another of warming; so the warming seen today is not as bizarre as many mayRead MoreGlobal Warming And The Warming1353 Words   |  6 PagesGlobal Warming With it being the presidential election season the talk of global warming, also known as climate change has come up in conversation more. 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