Student Question
What is the role of education in the short story "Everyday Use"?
Quick answer:
In her short story "Everyday Use," Alice Walker illustrates the divisive power of education. Though normally a positive thing, education in this story causes division between Dee and her mother and sister. Education in this case leads to an inability of the characters to understand each other.
One of the most notable themes in Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" is the divisive power of education. Education is usually considered to be a positive thing, but in her short story, Walker illustrates the ways in which education can be potentially harmful in some situations.
The narrator has a second-grade education, and her daughter, Maggie, is also uneducated. She is able to raise enough money to send her other daughter, Dee, to school. After becoming educated, Dee loses the ability to relate to her mother and sister. She becomes a different person, and although her education endows her with more knowledge of the world in general, it robs her of the ability to understand her own family and heritage.
The narrator and Maggie are uncomfortable around Dee. They do not understand the words she uses, and they are unable to relate to her:
She used to read...
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to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks’ habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. She washed us in a river of make-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn’t necessarily need to know. Pressed us to her with the serious way she read, to shove us away, like dimwits, at just the moment we seemed about to understand.
The language used by the narrator emphasizes how oppressed and alienated she and Maggie feel around Dee. The narrator feels that Dee is "forcing" words upon her and that she is "trapped" and "ignorant" beneath the crushing power of Dee's words.
The narrator and Maggie lead simple lives, and Dee's ways are foreign to them. They struggle to understand Dee, and Dee, aware of their struggle, makes no effort to speak in a manner easier for her mother and sister to comprehend. It seems as if she enjoys flaunting her education and making her family feel inferior and uncomfortable.
Dee's mother struggles to give Dee the education that she was denied herself, but ironically, her daughter's education drives a wedge between them. In some ways, Dee is more aware and knowledgeable as a result of her education, but she is also ignorant about her own family. She believes herself to be worldly, but she is a stranger to her own identity and heritage.
Education is usually a positive thing, but in "Everyday Use," education causes division and alienates Dee from her family and them from her. Education creates a gap and mutual inability of the characters to relate to and understand one another.