Honesty and integrity are the state of being honest, truthful, trustworthy, complete, and of sound, moral principle. Artificiality, just the opposite, is being in imitation of something or pretending. Throughout Alice Walker's "Everyday Use", these two reoccur and conflict with each other through Dee, Maggie, and the mother as they argue over who is most in touch with their heritage. One begins to see that Maggie and the mother are honest and in touch with their heritage in contrast to Dee being artificial and out of touch with her heritage.
             "Everyday Use" is about a family of three including a mother and her two daughters named Dee and Maggie. Dee has moved away and is apparently more attractive and smarter than Maggie. The story takes place when the more attractive daughter, Dee, is returning home for the first visit in a while.
             At the beginning of the story, the mother tells of how Dee would like her to be. In the paragraphs four and five she describes this and then her true self. This is the first way one begins to believe that Dee is not in touch with her heritage. If, in fact, she is most in touch with her heritage as she claims later in the story, she would be proud of her mother instead of being ashamed of how the work she has done has aged her.
             In paragraph ten, the mother tells of how she believed Dee hated Maggie. Through the story, being told of the name Dee being passed down through generations and making quilts together gives one a feel that the family is close-knit and gives one another reason to believe Dee is not in touch with her heritage.
             In the same paragraph, the mother tells of the times Dee read to herself and Maggie "without pity; forcing words, lies, other folk's habits, whole lives up on [them].(l;af;ljh)ed them to be something that they were not by trying to push lives other than their own. The reality was that the mother had
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