Quilts and Art in "Everyday Use"

With her story, "Everyday Use," Alice Walker is saying that art should be a living, breathing part of the culture it arose from, rather than a frozen timepiece to be observed from a distance. To make this point, she uses the quilts in her story to symbolize art; and what happens to these quilts represents her theory of art. The quilts themselves, as art, are inseparable from the culture they arose from. (topic sentence) The …

…the quilts, and the fate of those quilts, to make the point that art can only have meaning if it remains connected to the culture it sprang from. Her story itself is a good example: Walker didn't write it to be observed under a glass case, judged aesthetically, and sold to the highest bidder; she meant it to be questioned, to be explored, to be debated -- in short, to be put to "Everyday Use."