Social Issues In Everyday Use 'And A Place I Ve Never Been'

“Everyday Use” and “A Place I’ve Never Been” are very unique in the sense that they deal with social issues that are very important at the time they are published. Each of the main characters from the stories deal with an issue that affects them throughout the story. While the characters face similar issues, they are also very different. “Everyday Use” takes place in the 1960s where black power is becoming very dominant. While “A Place I’ve Never Been” deals with AIDS in the 1980s. The time period in these short stories suggest that the new generation is becoming more socially acceptable to modern problems. These social issues show how each of the main characters develop into more of a dynamic character. In “Everyday Use” Alice Walker portrays Dee as being someone who stays up to date with the times. “At sixteen she had a style of her own: and knew what style was” (par. 13). Therefore when Dee shows up with a new name because she “cannot bear being named after the people who oppress me,” (par. 25) her mother tries to adapt to this. This was not new to her mother, in the spect that this is how Dee grew up. Dee always had to stay up to date with the culture of the …show more content…
Whether he does or does not the reader will never know. During the 80s if a person were to have AIDS he or she was certainly frowned upon. Therefore with Nathan possibly having this disease it causes him to go into panic mode. He ends up traveling to different places out of the blue and starts using drugs. “This was the secret fact he had to live with everyday of his life, the secret life that had brought him to Xanax and Halcion, Darvon and Valium- all crude efforts to cut the fear firing his blood, exploding like the tiny viral time bombs he believed were lying in wait, expertly planted” (par. 26). Throughout the whole story Nathan tries to find who he is as a person. Which makes him more