Home Alice Walker Everyday Use - Essay Example

This paper will aim to highlight the various aspects in which Dee’s character associates to home and her identity. Right from the start of story, Dee is presented as a character that appears to be a misfit in the environment depicted in the story. Dee’s mother and sister may be regarded as exemplary characters that have very polite habits of speaking and dealing with people. It appears that this is perhaps the writer’s way of creating a sense of ‘normal’ in the minds of readers. Dee character when contrasted against this ‘normal’ becomes extremely shocking for the reader and it is clearly evident that Dee displays characteristics that are alien to the environment of the home and its people.

The sharp contrast that exists between Dee and her younger sister is a reflection of the fact that Dee has no emotional bonding to her home; a feature that is missing in her younger sister. Immediately upon arriving at her own home, she starts to behave in a manner that is unacceptable by all moral standards and the residents of home appear to be defending themselves from this new ‘trouble’. She is accompanied by her new boyfriend who has a religion and culture that is different from hers.

This is Walker’s way of reflecting upon her new plan for her future. She has no intentions to revisit her culture in the future; instead she is looking for joining new people in life and most probably to adopt their culture. With this new ‘future’ sitting beside her during the dinner, she talks about the glory of her ‘roots’ and wishes to grab hold of the possessions that are a representation of her roots; but her real intention is to use her roots to ‘decorate’ her surroundings.

Walker at this stage clearly exposes her false sense of belonging to her ‘roots’, since a person’s origins are not meant to decorate their environment, but to make them proud of