ALice Walker
Can success above the typical person within your race enough to escape the negative labels attached to your race? Maybe, but when a person loses the humbleness they had before and begins to consider themselves better, it eventually becomes clear that they can not escape. In Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" and in Ralph Ellison's "Battle Royal", the main characters, both African-Americans, begin to act very righteously because of the higher roads they have taken. They allow themselves to become too caught up within their own accomplishments. They forget you are who you are when you were born; you can only change it on the outside. The theme of being unable to escape the racial connotations attached to a person assists in understanding the inescapability of your race within society as a whole.In Walker's "Everyday Use," the main character/narrator, Mrs. Johnson portrays Dee, her daughter, as a person who has "made it" (1173). Since her daughter became educated, she considers herself much more appreciative of the finer things in life than both her mother and her sister Maggie. Mrs. Johnson begins to perceive Dee as having a holier-than-thou attitude. It becomes evident when Mrs. Johnson remembers how Dee acted after attending school:
Both characters are further down the road of education than their counterparts, yet they can not escape the negro label society has fixed upon them. Johnson goes on about her daughter, it becomes crystal clear that she does think Dee has lost her humility. In fact, he also had that superior attitude when he says, "I felt superior to them in my way, and I didn't like the manner in which we were all crowded together into the servants' elevator" (272). Through their attempts to become individuals within their own race, they begin to have thoughts of their superiority to other negroes. When he went to the "occasion of a smoker" (271), the town's social gathering where he was asked to recite his speech, he was asked take part in a pre-speech event. Prior to the commencement of the Battle Royal, he "suspected that fighting a battle royal might detract from the dignity of my speech. In those pre-invisible days I visualized myself as a potential Booker T. She "couldn't bear it any longer being named after the people who oppress me" (1176). " Walker is trying to get the point across that in those times as a negro, you can not get away from the label society has placed on a race. ] Pressed us to her with the serious way she read, to shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits, we seemed to understand. They think that since they have become smarter and more individualized than other negroes that eventually they will escape the negative labels.
Common topics in this essay:
Leewanika Kemanjo,
Maggie Johnson,
Ellison's Walker,
Battle Royal,
Social Equality,
Royal Everyday,
Booker Washington,
,
Walker's Everyday,
Royal Walker,
battle royal,
main character,
negro status,
main character/narrator,
escape negro,
battle royal main,
short stories,
royal main,
placed race,
unable escape,
ellison's battle,
escape negro status,
society placed race,
negro label society,
main character escape,
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Acceptance Essays
