ipl-logo

Dee's Education In Everyday Use By Alice Walker

531 Words3 Pages

Epictetus states "only the educated are free"(51), often times this freedom comes at a cost. In "Everyday Use," by Alice Walker the character of Dee becomes an outcast to her family home after receiving an education. Dee's education is the catalyst that led to her eventual fissure from her family. This split grants her an improvement, but comes at the cost of being alienated from her household. Education being used as the wedge between Dee and her family is what is at the heart of this story.

To begin with, Dee 's loss of familial bond comes with some benefits. The most obvious form of enrichment she gains is the general knowledge that comes from higher education. The ability to socialize and interact with many different people is a benefit afforded to her, which her sister and mother do not have. She has also gained a cause to rally behind, civil rights. A battle she seems to have always had an inkling for because according to the mother who could not imagine "looking a strange white man in the eye... [Whereas Dee] would always look anyone in the eye" (Walker 379). …show more content…

With her newfound intelligence came an air of superiority. She views her family as relics of the past who exist only to be catalogued. Walker shows this with the first action Dee takes upon arrival at her mother's home. She immediately takes a picture of the house with her family in the photo, but does not bother to ask her partner to take the photo for her to be in frame with her family; distancing them as mere

Show More
Related

Sacrifice In Everyday Use By Alice Walker

1174 Words | 5 Pages

Although Dee can sometimes come off as rude throughout the story when she tries to share her opinion, she comes from a good

Read More

Alice Walker Everyday Use Characterization

390 Words | 2 Pages

These differences cause tension to wear on family relationships, ultimately causing Dee to leave in anger. Walker uses characterization, contrast, and imagery to portray Dee and Mama’s relationship, and that mother-daughter relations are not always as the parties wish them to be. Mama and Dee are characterized by their appearances, thoughts, and actions. Mama describes herself as stout, broad boned, and man-handed. Mama is described as somewhat inferior to her daughter, whose “humor…erupted like bubbles

Read More

Summary Of A Girl By Lindsay Hunter

621 Words | 3 Pages

The narrator revealed that Dee learned her licentious behaviors from her mother by saying, “Her mama was the town skank, so you couldn’t take her all that seriously when her girl went missing.” (Hunter 2) The narrator also mentions how he hadn’t seen Dee’s father in

Read More

Character Differences In Alice Walker's Everyday Use

381 Words | 2 Pages

unemotional interactions between the two characters when they meet. When Dee arrives at the house she doesn’t run to her mother and say she misses her. Instead she walks slowly and gives her mother a

Read More

Dee's Struggle For Identity In Everyday Use By Alice Walker

271 Words | 2 Pages

Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” illustrates Dee’s struggle for identity by placing her quest for a new identity against her family’s desire for maintaining culture and heritage. In the beginning, the narrator, who is the mother of Dee, mentions some details about Dee; how she “...wanted nice things… She was determined to stare down any disaster in her efforts… At sixteen, she had a style of her own: and (she) knew what style was.” Providing evidence to the thesis, she was obviously trying exceptionally hard to find for herself a sense of identity. She wanted items her family couldn’t afford, so she worked hard to gain these, and she found a sense of identity from them, but it also pushed her farther away from her family.

Read More

Dee's Identity In Everyday Use By Alice Walker

721 Words | 3 Pages

Dee was a selfish mean greedy girl, what she all cares about is herself and how she looks. At the age of sixteen

Read More

Symbolism In Alice Walker's Everyday Use

204 Words | 1 Pages

First of all, one of the many things that reveal Dee to the audience, is the characterization of her. Dee is disobedient. “She’s dead.” Wangero said. “I couldn’t bear it any longer being named after the people who oppress me.”

Read More

Cultural Lens In Everyday Use By Alice Walker

1698 Words | 7 Pages

(Walker 318). She is then taught that her name ran in the family for generations before her and just in her name, runs great history about her culture, but as Mama and Maggie explain to her, she became inattentive and uninterested. This clearly shows that her need to be closer to her culture and heritage is simply just by her words, however the actual wanting to learn about her lineage is irrelevant to her, She views her mother and sister as inferiors, hence whatever they try to prove about her or to her, they will never convince her of anything. Dee's name change can be seen as a type of cultural appropriation or shallowness because she adopts a name that she does not completely comprehend, even if her decision depends entirely on the fact that it is a part of her language and only that. It proves that the internal conflict that exists between Dee's need to stay connected to her ethnic roots and her tendency to romanticize it in order to feel higher than the rest

Read More

Everyday Use By Alice Walker Analysis Essay

1005 Words | 5 Pages

Dee had always been the pretty one in the family, as so described in the story, nothing else really concerned her. Dee’s family remains an embarrassment for her, despite her also having to experience the hardships they all lived through before she left. During their house burning, Dee stood and watched rather than show any type of concern for her sister Maggie who was victim. Dee puts herself before anyone, or anything else. She had the opportunity to save her sister from such severe burns, but her remaining perfectly intact was the only preoccupation she had.

Read More

Literary Analysis Of Everyday Use By Alice Walker

987 Words | 4 Pages

She seems to be brutal in her assessment of her daughters, but one gets the feeling that it is out of love. For example, she says that Dee has become ungrateful and uppity since she got her new life. She however daydreams of the day they will meet on a talk show, and her daughter will thank her. She muses, "I am

Read More

Everyday Use By Alice Walker Analysis

404 Words | 2 Pages

On the other hand, Dee, "… is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure" (Walker 316). In addition, Dee was educated whereas Maggie and Mama were not. For that reason, Dee views herself as superior to her family members.

Read More

Everyday Use Literary Analysis

1244 Words | 5 Pages

Dee has an understanding that the world is changing and refuses to let the world define her future. In spite of the oppression she fears of receiving, she changes her name. She does not want to have a name given to her by the people who repressed her. It becomes apparent that Dee is not at the house to visit her family, but to come to reclaim some of the antics from the past. These are not to remind her of her past, but to show off to the people she surrounds herself with at home.

Read More

Essay On Everyday Use By Alice Walker

830 Words | 4 Pages

Dee has also changed her overall appearance and has recreated a new image for herself by wearing brightly colored clothing and changing her voice. Critic of the story, David Cowart, describes Dee changes, “She now styles and dresses herself according to the dictates of a faddish Africanism and thereby demonstrates a cultural Catch-22: an American who attempts to become an African succeeds only in becoming a phony” (Cowart). She alienates herself from her original culture and values the items from her past

Read More

Self Identity In Alice Walker's Everyday Use

629 Words | 3 Pages

Dee tells her mother “I couldn't have it any longer, been named after the people who oppress me. You know as well as me you was named after your aunt dicie.” displaying Dee’s unwillingness to be associated with her family and past. Not being able to accept these two circumstances reveals her betrayal towards her own heritage.

Read More

Cultural Heritage In Everyday Use By Alice Walker

547 Words | 3 Pages

Dee does not appreciate her true cultural heritage and she is intentionally rebelling against their background and family. “I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me” (Walker 79). Dee’s negative perspective on her heritage affects the way she views and interacts with others, by creating this tension with Mama. She views anyone who is not educated as primitive and she feels superior over then and feels oppressed by the limited conditions of her childhood. Mama tries to explain the deep family and cultural meaning of the name Dee; how it has been in the family beyond the civil war, but Dee refuses to accept her true cultural heritage which causes her to be condescending and oblivious to the arguments and desires of her family.

Read More

More about Dee's Education In Everyday Use By Alice Walker

Related Topics

Open Document