This study is an attempt at combing James Phelan’s rhetorical approach to narrative

particularly his theory of unreliable narrator and narrative progression

Wayne C. Booth’s implied author theory and Genette’s fixed internal focalization. The subject of study in this essay is Dee’s and Maggie’s images in Alice Walker’s Everyday Use. It delineates how the narrative progression of the novel is governed by the images of Dee and Maggie. It argues that the dynamic images of Dee and Maggie serve as the instabilities of the narrative. At the story level

Dee and Maggie are complete human beings who embody strengths and weaknesses together as a result of their different experiences

but Dee is underreported and misregarded because of the existence of unreliable narrator. At the discourse level

the internal focalization and unreliable narrator creates tensions between authorial readers and narrative readers’ different understandings about Dee’s and Maggie’s images

thus helping the readers to see the ethical message conveyed by the novel---the complementary union of the families can complete the Inheritance task of African American heritage.