The Effects of Culture in Everyday Use, A&P, and Blue Winds Dancing

Alice Walker, John Updike, and Tom Whitecloud write stories in which culture plays an important role in many aspects of the conflict. In each story, a particular ethnic, occupational, social, gender, or age group's culture may be observed through characters' actions, thoughts, and speech. The decisions the characters make to resolve these conflicts in Everyday Use, A & P, and Blue Winds Dancing are affected by the characters cultural experiences. In fact, the conflict itself may be about clashing cultures or entirely generated as a result of cultural experiences. A character's culture continues to guide him as he tries to resolve the conflict. In short, culture heavily affects the three stories' conflicts.

To begin with, in Walker's Everyday Use, the conflict is a result of clashing cultural values and of cultural point-of-view. Dee, who has adopted the Islamic culture and name the Wangero, returns to her African-American family for a reunion. While there, she asks that a pair of quilts from her deceased grandmother be given to her, not her sister, Maggie. Dee claims that her sister will ruin them through "everyday use." In fact, she charges during a discussion, "[Maggie would] probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use" (89). To these charges, her mother, the story's narrator, says, "I reckon she would [use the quilts daily] ... God knows I've been saving (the quilts) for long enough with no body using 'em. I hope she will" (89). Dee counters by saying, "You just don't understand ... your heritage" (90). She charges that her mother does not understand her heritage and therefore should give the quilts to her since she will preserve them. This conflict occurs among Dee, mother, and Maggie over culture and heritage. Mother is content with their heritage. A clash over culture ensues when Dee is not. This conflict is over whether one should live her heritage like Maggie and mother, or use her heritage, like Dee. In fact, the narrator seems to indicate that she feels Dee is just doing what is trendy when she thinks, "I didn't bring up how I had offered Dee {Wangero} a quilt when she went away to college. Then she told me they were old-fashioned, out of style" (89). Adding to the conflict are occupational, social, and age differences among the mother and Dee and Hakim-a-Barber, Dee's acquaintnace. The latter are young socialites who are attending college a ways away. The narrator, on the other hand, is an old, burley farm woman who claims to have "knocked a bull calf strait in the brain between the eyes with a sledge-hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall" (84). Hakim-a-barber sees things differently. He says, " ... farming and raising cattle is not my style" (88). These differences contribute to the conflict as the young and old do not see eye-to-eye. When these conflicts are resolved, a theme that one should live his culture, rather than using it to personal gain, rises because Maggie gets the quilts. Through the characters' actions, a message is communicated that mother wants her family to live its culture. She comments after making her decision, "[T]he two of us just sat there enjoying... " (90). They enjoyed their culture; they lived it. In this way, the culture plays a heavy role in Alice Walker's Everyday Use.

Next, while Islamic-African-American culture plays a large role in Everyday Use, Updike's A & P centers around a 1960s generation American culture. This role is in first exposing and perpetuating the conflict. Three bikini-clad young girls about the narrator's age of nineteen years enter the grocery store where he works. They were sent by one of the girls' mothers to buy $0.49 herring snacks. After being reprimanded for their near nudity by the older, married store employee, Lengel, the girls leave. American culture allows this series of events to happen. In few other cultures would three almost naked girls be let out of the house and into public. Moreover, the grocery store itself is an institution of American culture. Young American men, like Sammie, the narrator, often find employment in such stores. Some other cultures may not have what many Americans consider such a simple thing as a grocery store, such as a society dependant on subsitance agriculutre. Similarly, young men in other cultures may instead work as farmhands (e.g. any agrarian society) or soldiers, (e.g. Israel, Switzerland, and war-torn nations) or they may be sent away to work at factories (e.g. India and Pakistan or other poor nations). Most would likely not work in large grocery stores like A & P. In this way, our relatively modern American culture is vital to generate the conflict. As culture begins a conflict, it also perpetuates a conflict. The narrator is under pressure from society to have female friends and acquaintances. A man vs. self conflict comes as a result of the narrator's attempts to decide how to get the girls to notice him and, hopefully, to get their friendship. Acting on an impulse, he announces, "'I quit.' ... hoping they'll stop and watch me, their unsuspecting hero" (67). While unsuccessful, he is, nonetheless, acting out of cultural pressures. A second conflict arises as a result of culture, the conflict between Lengel and Sammie. An older, married man, Lengel sees the situation differently, from Sammie. Accordingly, he makes rules differently than Sammie would. Lengel's culture is his basis for this rule-making perspecitve. Upholding the rules he has made, Lengel admonishes the girls for their dress, much to Sammie's dismay. A man vs. man conflict occurs as Sammie successfully quits his job. Updike retells a key argument which occurred just after the girls left to support this conflict. "You didn't have to embarrass them" (67) argues Sammie from a young man's perspective. "It was they who were embarrassing us" (67) counters the elder Lengel. This an example of how the conflict occurs between the two parties over rules and culture. In short, culture affects the conflict by controlling the cultural basis of the story and by generating two conflicts based on culture in A & P.

Lastly, Native American culture plays heavily in Tom Whitecloud's Blue Winds Dancing. In Whitecloud's story, two important conflicts occur as a result of culture. First, the narrator does not know if he belongs in a Native American or white culture. He wonders if he can somehow join both. He feels the strain of the white world placed upon Native Americans and comments as he enters his reservation, "Before the lodge door, I stop, afraid, I wonder if my people will remember me. I wonder--'Am I Indian or am I white?'" (134). Prior to that, he commented, "We just don't seem to fit anywhere--certainly not among the whites, and not among the older people" (132). He even begins to doubt himself:

These civilized white men want us to be like them... Maybe I'm just not smart enough to grasp these things that make-up civilization. Maybe I'm just too lazy to think hard enough to keep up (131).

He feels a desire to join both societies, but he does not know if he belongs to either one. He is unsure where to go and doubts himself as a result. But more important than which culture he chooses to join is the second conflict: will the culture he joins accept him? He knows from personal experience that white men reject him. He comments,

But we are inferior. ... It is terrible to sit in classes and hear men tell you that your people worship sticks of wood--that your Gods are false, that the Manitou forgot your people and did not write them a book" (131).

Obviously, the whites will not accept him, but will the Indians accept him now that he has left, he asks himself? He comments, "Suddenly I am afraid, now that I am twenty miles from home. Afraid of what my father will say, afraid of being looked on as a stranger by my own people" (132). But his people did not reject him: they welcomed him back with open arms. He comments as he sits with his tribe, "All eyes are friendly... No one questions my being here" (134). While the whites reject him, the Native Americans accept him. This is an interesting juxtaposition of cultures the author gives as the conflicts are resolved. He notes how the whites are cold and rejecting, but "his people" are warm and accepting. In short, culture plays an important role in two of the conflicts in Tom Whitecloud's Blue Winds Dancing.

In conclusion, all three stories are unique in their use of culture. Each uses clashes in culture or a unique cultural setting to convey a message. In each story, this culture gives us a unique perspective into other people's lives and the conflicts they face. The way the conflict is handled is a decision left to the individual, who is guided by his cultural upbringing. Each culture handles the problem differently giving us a multitude of different points of view. Three of such perspectives are examined by Everyday Use, A & P, and Blue Winds Dancing.