Alice Walkers “Everyday Use”

In literary theory, formalism refers to critical approaches that analyze, interpret, or evaluate the inherent features of a text. These features include not only grammar and syntax but also literary devices such as meter and tropes. In relating the story in first-person, Walker gives Mrs. Johnson a pattern of speech that helps define her character. An uneducated woman, Mrs. Johnson nonetheless is able to express herself well. She waits in a yard that has been made "clean and wavy," meaning that she has taken pride in her house and fixed it up in anticipation of her daughter's arrival. Walker's subtle rendering of Mrs. Johnson's voice reveals that this older rural woman can also speak with efficient, lyrical clarity, as in her account of having "knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and [having] had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall," or in her description of Hakmi-a-bar-ber's real name, which is "twice as long and three times as hard" to pronounce. Walker artfully suggests, then, that a "good" education does not necessarily result in a "better" form of speech.