Leaving the Past Behind in Everyday Use Essay -- Everyday Use essays

Leaving the Past Behind in Everyday accustom Everyday Use by Alice Walker is a short write up about how people get caught up in the superficial value of material things, and the jealousy this desire causes. In this short story Dee, the firstborn daughter, was al trends ashamed by the way she lived during her childhood years. As she was educate more and more, her feelings of hatred for distress and ignorance grew intensely. After she finished college her abhorrent feelings grew immensely, and she try to take advantage of those less educated than her. Dee always detest the way she lived when she was being raised by her mother. Dee was obviously overjoyed when the house that she hated so much, was finally destroyed. A look of concentration on her fount as she watched the fail dingy gray board of the house come to in toward the red-hot brick chimney. Why dont you do a dance almost the ashes? Id wanted to ask her. She hated the house that much. The destruction of this symbol of poverty gave her a spark of hope that she and her family would move up in the world, that at last snowballed into a much larger hatred. She was always ashamed of her past and did everything in her power to improve her status. Even when she was sixteen years old, her mother recalls the influence Dee had to improve everything she could. Her mother said, Dee wanted nice things. A yellow organdie dress to wear to her graduation from high school black pumps to duad a green instance shed made form an old suit somebody gave me. Even though she knew her family couldnt afford nice things she had a combustion desire for them. This desire made her take the time and effort to fake a suit her mother was given, into a nicer ... ...and her chin. She was making a last ditch effort to try to make a distinction amongst her financial class and her mothers. The fact that she hid her entire face behind a pair of dark shades, is symbolic of her trying to put a bar ricade between herself and her poor past. Works Cited Cowart, David. Heritage and Deracination in Walkers Everyday Use. Studies in Short Fiction 33 (1996) 171-84. Hoel, Helga. Personal Names and Heritage Alice Walkers Everyday Use. 2000. Trondheim duomo School, Trondheim, Norway. 30 Jan. 2000. Showalter, Elaine. Piecing and Writing. The Poetics of Gender. Nancy K. Miller, Ed. New York Columbia UP, 1986. 222-47. Walker, Alice. Everyday Use. Literature Reading Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. fourth ed. Robert DiYanni, Ed. New York McGraw Hill, 1998. 408-413.