Self Identity In Alice Walker's Everyday Use

Separating from one’s true values may lead one to betray their own family and culture. In the short story Everyday Use a young woman who disregards her family inferiorly is faced with the conflict of self identity. The author reflects betrayal of family values through his exposure of heritage and education in the story. Heritage unveils the concept of who Dee is and the disconnection from her own shows her inadequacy to have one. Dee tries her best to stray away from the life she once had and went the extent of changing her name. 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. Putting herself beyond her past, Dee shows her lack of appreciation of her own family history and what her name actually means to her. Giving herself her own name reveals that her own past culture has no existence to her anymore, but nothing more than a piece history lacking importance.

With determined ambitions and education resulted in a lack of sensibility in heritage, history, and self identity, which only family can implement. Dee presents herself almost as a weird, intimidating individual foreign to what her family has ever known. The conflict that Mama and Maggie are confronted with is that Dee is does not care about anything but herself. When being rejected to have possession of the quilts Dee stated “But they’re priceless! She was saying now, furiously; for she has a temper.”. Her self absorption tie directly to the betrayal of who she is and her means of disconnecting herself from her past. to Her selfish impulses eventually lead to her downfall and her inability to understand who she actually she