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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

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She’s even willing to do anything that happens to be in style, as evidenced by when she would pin an “orchid” on Mama in Mama’s fantasy. Even though Dee said to her that she thought orchids were tacky, she does it when it is trendy. However, Dee does not care about her family. She did not like her first house and was elated to watch it burn down (49). Also, she left for an education away from her family in Augusta (49).

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