There
are some life scenarios where we are given a fork in the road, and are to choose
which path we will follow. In Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” she writes of a
mother who had chosen the simple life, an specifically the uneducated one. The
two daughters the mother has might represent the two paths she could have
chosen for herself, the educated life with broadened horizons, also known as
Dee’s life; or the uneducated, simple, but possibly satisfying lifestyle, also
known as Maggie’s.
After
reading Walker’s “Everyday Use” I quickly related this to the movie Into the Wild released in 2007. Into the Wild is about a young man named
Chris who graduates from a prestigious University, and has the chance to go to
graduate school, and to eventually enter the work force. This is the life that
his parents had chosen, however they are extremely unhappy people, who fight
constantly. Shortly after Chris graduates, his life is completely planned out
for him, yet he decides off a whim to donate his money in his bank account, to
shred his social security card, and to burn every last bit of identification he
owned. He then went out into the wild and really started living his life. He didn’t
want to live the same boring, usual lifestyle that the rest of his family had
chosen.
Chris
relates to the mother in “Everyday Use” because they both chose the simpler,
easy lifestyle. They both could have chosen the educated life, however, they
decided to go about their life differently, or for the mother; the exact same. Chris
and the mother decided to not further their education, and to just live their
lives the way they want. If Chris had decided to continue his education he
would have taken the path of Dee. However, he chose to take the simpler way,
the easier way out, and decided to take Maggie’s path.
I definitely see what you did there, and that movie, Into the Wild, sounds amazing! It seemed to me though that the two were almost a parody of each other. In the short story the Dee breaks the norm of being uneducated and finds herself being the odd one living her own life. Whereas, in the movie, the guy breaks the norm to follow the path his educated family had predetermined. In the story she chooses to live her life unlike her simple family, while he conversely chooses the simple life versus his family’s complicated one. This is a great similarity that you found, however the way I see it, it fits more of a parody on Dee than a resemblance to Mama.
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