Essay on The Power of a Name: Connecting Identity and Meaning.

A name is a great connection to one's individuality and identity. It is an essential word that carries a lot of meaning. Additionally, it is easy to get one's attention, a mode of recognition, and a courtesy sign. An identity developed using a name is powerful enough to enable people to make quick assumptions and judgments on the holder of the name. It can range from gender, sexuality, race, and religion. It also affects the interactions of people in the world. People often receive their names after birth, and this is what they go with. However, some people change their names to bring out a different identity from the one given at birth. This is often different, and it enhances a new identity. Alice Walker, in "Everyday Use" and Chinua Achebe in "Dead Men's Path," both illustrate how names are critical to our identity and existence.

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Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" brings out the use of names to present an identity and individuality. Walker expresses the power of heritage, demonstrating the effects of education on an individual's sense of culture. Dee fails to find meaning and identity in her name after getting educated. This warrants the change in her name to "Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo," explaining how "Dee" is dead, which highlights a change in the way she identifies herself (Walker 3). According to Dee, the switch was because she disliked being named after people that oppressed her even though she had been named after her aunt, and the name had been passed for generations. This change in names was how Dee attempted to change her identity and break free from her family's history and distant past.

However, the difference in name and status does not bring entitlement but rather an embarrassment. The value of things that belong to her mother and grandmother is lost unless they promote the new identity that she aims to create for herself (Walker 4). Through this name, nothing connects her to the women and men that came before her, making the personal transition possible. She lacks regard for her mother, who had worked hard to provide her with home education. She also lacks compassion for her injured sister. The change in name came because of the shame she felt from where she came from. Dee did not want to be associated with poverty, where she started with hand-me-downs. Her aim for the change of names and appearance was to do away with any associations she had from her family descended from slaves. She takes up things that will be admirable in her home, not because of something she acknowledges or the sacrifices made by those that existed before her.

In Chinua Achebe's "Dead Men's Path," the issue of identity in the context of ethnicity and race arises when Michael Obi and his wife, Nancy, attack the cultural practices that the villagers are used to. Even though Nancy does not influence the school's management, she models her actions and herself after the British while doing away with the village's customs. On the other hand, Michael was zealous about transforming the school into a place where the students can develop a different identity from the ancestral and communal history (Achebe 41). In his attempt to create such an avenue, he closes a footpath he considered a hindrance even though it was known to be sacred. Despite the knowledge of the problems they attempt to close the path caused in the previous past, Michael moves to close the path surprised by the idea that the was used as a passage for a pagan ritual. Shortly after, a woman dies, which means that Michael has to come to terms with the effects of forcefully erasing the way of life set up by a community (Achebe 12). The essence and the villagers' way of life are linked to upholding the practices of their ancestors, and stripping this from their past is stripping a connection to the livelihoods and culture of those people. Michael and Nancy are both buoyed by the opportunity to make the vision they have for the school real. However, their unwillingness to accommodate the villagers' input and traditions alienates the community from its way of life.

According to Michael and Nancy, a school is a place of newness, and anyone can be transformed from the old and redundant way of life, and they can re-imagine themselves in a new and different identity. The message they have created of the "newness" is meant to enhance the process in which the younger generation of villagers can transform the community and lose their past connection. For this to be successful, Nancy and Michael alienate the village by setting up a garden that develops into a physical border between the previous cultural differences and the possibilities of new identities and traditions promised by the future. Nancy and Michael attempt to transform a village culture that they see as backward. The education standards they hope to use in this transformation are not clear to the village people.

Nancy had been through this concept of reinventing oneself at the expense of the cultural identity community. She embraced the transition, and she saw herself as an admired spouse to the headmaster, much like the queen (Achebe 14). Her idolization of the British monarch reveals that she sought to participate in a different cultural tradition mas opposed to that of the village, illustrating a poor understanding of how vital the ancestral culture was to the community. These details summed up illustrate how this new approach to life brought about by education needed one to break out of the community's history.

Moreover, the villagers view Michael and Nancy as outsiders attempting to bring the European culture into their Igbo community. Furthermore, they have different names than the village people, and their lifestyles and attitudes demean the village community's culture and ways. Michael laughs off the idea that the villager used the path as a sign of death. His interaction and name played a role in undermining the cultural identity of the people.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. "Dead men’s path." Retrieved July 16 (2020): 2012.

Walker, Alice. Everyday use. Rutgers University Press, 1994.