note: The paragraph below serves as a model for writing about a text. The use of bold, italics, underlining, etc. is simply a way of breaking down the process and making it visual so that you can easily see the sections that go into building a logical paragraph. This particular paragraph uses three illustrations to support its initial claim. Each essay, of course, will find its own shape, but in giving you this example, I hope to provide you with a framework, or a guide, for making claims about a text and then supporting these claims. Perhaps in the draft stage of your essay(s) you’ll find this process of breaking down your analysis into sections quite helpful.. At least that it is intention here. Also, you might take note that the paragraph below could easily be developed into a full-length essay. To do so would require that we simply use the topic sentence as the paper’s thesis and then use each sub-point as a topic sentence that we develop more than has been done in this draft.

“Everyday Use”: Taking a topic sentence and providing literary evidence to support a claim

bold=topic sentence

italics=supporting sub-points for topic sentence

underlining=literary evidence (a quote from the text) brought in to illustrate sub-points

regular font=analysis of quotation in order to explain how it proves the sub-point

In contrast to Maggie’s meekness, Walker emphasizes Dee’s arrogance. Notably, we see this arrogance in the way Dee is described in terms of clothing. For example, when Dee arrives at the beginning of the story, Walker describes Dee’s dress as being “down to the ground. A dress so loud it hurts [mama’s] eyes.” In this description, obviously Walker intends to show that Dee prides herself on her appearance even if doing so creates a stark contrast between herself and her family. In fact, her dress serves to establish her superiority in relation to her family, which she later refers to as “backward.” Also, we see this arrogance in Dee’s demanding attitude about her mother’s possessions. For example, in the middle of dinner, after Hakim-a-Barber says that he won’t eat collards and pork, Dee turns her attention to her mother’s possessions: “I can use the churn top as a centerpiece for the alcove table, and I’ll think of something artistic to do with the dasher.” In her saying this, Dee seems presumptuous, assuming that simply because she voices claim to something, then she deserves to have it, even though the items are still functional in her mother’s life. That Dee fails to notice that the churn still has milk in it, now turned to clabber, further illustrates her arrogance, because in putting her desires above the needs of her mother she fails to “see” the reality of her mother’s life. In addition, Dee’s arrogance can be seen especially in the final comments she makes to her mother and sister. As she is leaving, Dee insults the integrity of the lives her mother and sister are living by saying, “It’s really a new day for us. But from the way you and Mama still live you’d never know it.” This statement fails to recognize the inherent worth of a simple life, which Mama and Maggie represent, a life that Dee can no longer embrace, even though she purports to want to know her heritage. Her arrogance blinds her to the reality and worth of her family’s life so that she believes her mother and sister don’t understand their “heritage” when all along it is she, Dee, who cannot understand.