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

Leaving the Past tush in workaday Use Everyday Use by Alice go-cart is a short story 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 eldest daughter, was al vogues ashamed by the way she lived during her childhood years. As she was meliorate more and more, her feelings of hatred for poverty and ignorance grew intensely. aft(prenominal) she finished college her abhorrent feelings grew immensely, and she tried to regard advantage of those less educated than her. Dee constantly hated the way she lived when she was being raised by her mother. Dee was patently overjoyed when the household that she hated so much, was finally destroyed. A watch of concentration on her face as she watched the last dingy colorise board of the house fall in toward the red-hot brick chimney. Why dont you do a dance around the ashes? Id wanted to ask her. She hated the house that much. The de struction of this symbol of poverty gave her a spark of hope that she and her family would get up in the world, that eventually 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 cardinal years old, her mother recalls the urge Dee had to improve everything she could. Her mother said, Dee wanted straight-laced things. A yellow organdy dress to wear to her graduation from postgraduate school black pumps to match a green suit shed do form an old suit somebody gave me. Even though she knew her family couldnt founder nice things she had a burning desire for them. This desire made her take the time and effort to alter a suit her mother was given, into a nicer ... ...and her chin. She was making a last ditch effort to try to deem a distinction between her financial class and her mothers. The fact that she hid her finished face behind a pair of dark shades, is symbolic of her exhausting to put a barrier between herself and her poor past. Works Cited Cowart, David. inheritance 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 Cathedral 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. 4th ed. Robert DiYanni, Ed. New York McGraw Hill, 1998. 408-413.