Essay Database

Everyday Use "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker 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 always ashamed by the way she lived during her childhood years. As she was educated more and more, her feelings of hatred for poverty and ignorance grew intensely. After she finished college her abhorrent feelings grew …

…change it. Just before Dee is about to depart, she puts on some sunglasses that hid everything above the tip of her nose and her chin. She was making a last ditch effort to try to make a distinction between her financial class and her mother's. The fact that she hid her entire face behind a pair of dark shades, is symbolic of her trying to put a barrier between herself and her poor past.