People spend their whole lives trying to flee from something. A person's life echoes her upbringing, unless she does everything in her power to get away. In the short story "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker, her character Dee portrays the need to escape. Dee was ashamed of her family and their heritage, self-absorbed, and greedy.
Dee came from a poor, lower class family. She grew up in a small three-room shack that was in the middle of a cow pasture. The house had no windows, only holes cut into the wall. She could not bear the thought of living like this; in fact, she was ecstatic when the first shack burned to the ground.
"I see her standing off under the sweet gum tree she used to dig gum out of; a look of concentration on her face as she watched the last dingy gray board of the house fall in toward the red-hot brick chimney. Why don't you do a dance around the ashes? I"d wanted to ask her. She had hated the house that much.".
Dee moved away before her mother and sister found another house to live in. Dee felt her life was nothing but an embarrassment. "She wrote me a letter once that said no matter where we "choose" to live, she will manage to come see us. But she will never bring her friends.".
Dee was a self-absorbed and self-assured person. She was educated and was able to read even though her mother and sister could not. Her mother only had a second grade education, and her sister was thought to be rather slow. "She used to sit and read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks" habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice." She was the only one who had the opportunity to go to college and escape ignorance so she seized it.
Greed can appear in many different forms, such as money, love, or knowledge. In this short story, Alice Walker shows us how Dee was not only greedy with money but also with her heritage. It seems as if after she becomes educated, she realizes what her heritage really meant.
