Life Lessons in "Everyday Use" and "The Essay

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Life Lessons in "Everyday Use" and "The Story of an Hour"

Man never seems to learn everything he wants because it seems with every generation, the same lessons need to be learned all over again. Experience is the best teacher, as we all know, but it is interesting to see how some things have changed over the years while others have not. Modernity allows people to have more freedom, as we see with Alice Walker's short story, "Everyday Use." Dee benefits from the advancement of society in that she can leave home and attend college. However, just as man seems to make forward strides, some things never change. One of those things is the fact that man has never harnessed the ability to see things as they really are. This inability causes many heartaches because many times, we see only what we want to see. Kate Chopin's story, "The Story of an hour" demonstrates how this happens. These stories demonstrate the frailty of our humanity.

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One element "Everyday Use" that identifies it as a contemporary story is the character of Dee. The fact that she moves away and attends college signifies that she is living in modern times. Dee is outgoing, lovely and taking advantage of the new world in which she lives. Because she is attending college, we want to think the she is the smartest of the bunch. However, she does things that make her seem more snobbish than anything. For example, she changes her name to "Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo" (1425) in protest to "being named after the people who oppress me" (1425). Here we see Dee is educated but she skews that education by doing weird things that do not actually help her in any way. She is only drawing unusual attention to herself by giving herself a new name and this does not improve her life in any way. When she is angry and decides to leave, her selfishness emerges because she wants what….....

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