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:
             She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks' habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. [...] Pressed us to her with the serious way she read, to shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits, we seemed to understand. (1174)
             Dee has become very righteous since she has become much more educated than her mother and sister Maggie. As Mrs. Johnson goes on about her daughter, it becomes crystal clear that she does think Dee has lost her humility.
             Dee wrote to her mother saying that it does not matter where her mother lives, she will still visit her, but she would "never bring...