Is there a reason Erik is so paranoid? Every thud he hears really startles him. He becomes so fixated on it even though everyone else ignores it.
Erik
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Author Archives: Erin Hollenbaugh
pp. 1-70
The structure of this book is so different from any other work we’ve read so far, and I really appreciate that. The play opens in the middle of a scene and the reader is scrambling to figure out who is who. At first, I was very confused and a bit overwhelmed by the structure, but I quickly grew to love it. I enjoy seeing the family members interacting with each other and the way that the author includes descriptions of the character’s placements helped paint a vidid picture in my mind. While reading other books, I feel like a passive onlooker. However, the formatting of this book put me in the scene with the characters and it really caught my attention.
Bringing Segregation to Dickens?
When Charisma and the narrator are talking at the school, she comments on how, ever since the sign “priority seating for whites” has been displayed on Marpessa’s bus, the bus has been safe and the people have been exceptionally friendly. When they see the sign, “people grouse at first, but the racism takes them back. Makes them humble” (163). The narrator then gets the notion in his head that in order to bring back Dickens, they need segregation. When reading this, I was confused on the idea. Why would segregation make the bus a safer place? I know Charisma noted that it makes people humble, but what about it makes people humble? Isn’t it segregation that made people rise up and fight for their rights?
Dickens’s Disappearance
The narrator talks about how the town of Dickens vanished quietly. There was never a story in the newspaper or anything about the matter announced. One day, it just simply was not there anymore. No one seemed to care about the occurrence and some were relieved that they no longer needed to be identified as a “Dickensian”. The narrator describes Dickens’s disappearance as a “blatant conspiracy by the surrounding, increasingly affluent, two-car-garage communities to keep their property values up and blood pressure down” (57). The way the matter quietly slipped away made me wonder, what else is not being talked about? Media controls so much of what we learn, so when a matter is blatantly hushed, we have to consider the things we aren’t hearing.
The Unfulfilled American Dream
In Martin Luther King Jr.’s “A Testament of Hope”, he begins by talking about the American Dream. The idea of the American Dream has manifested the mind of many over the centuries. It has provided a sense of optimism when there was little hope to be found. King states, “America is essentially a dream, a dream as yet unfulfilled”. This really stuck me because people question if the American Dream actually still exists, but King recognizes that it does in fact exist but it has yet to be discovered. Through his essay, he describes the things that are preventing the dream from becoming a reality: a lack of sympathy for our neighbors, the building of military bases, and the belief of racial superiority/inferiority. He urges people to recognize the fallacy of these things and pushes for making the American Dream a reality.
Rising Obesity Crisis and the Role of Food Banks
Surveillance of the Working Class
When Ehrenreich begins her journey as a cleaning lady, she talks about the idea of distrust between the homeowners and the cleaning crew. She writes, “Ted encourages us to imagine that we are under surveillance at all time in each house… Owners set traps for us,” (93). To me this is a troubling dilemma. From the perspective of people who clean the houses, this is an insult and makes it seem like these “privileged” homeowners are out to get them. However, on the other hand, it is hard for the homeowners to grant all their trust in someone they don’t know. The harsh reality is that things do get stolen, but it is hard to stop these incidents from happening without casting distrust over everyone.
This idea also connects back to our class discussion on Monday when we talked about the managers of the restaurants monitoring the worker’s behavior for anything suspicious. In my opinion, I feel like it is hard to maintain a positive self image when everyone is doubting you.
The Minimum Wage Mentality
One thing that struck me about Ehrenreich’s account is the mentality that a minimum wage worker has. The tasks they have and the hours they work lead their bodies to exhaustion. It gets to the point that when they finally take a seat, she describes “my flesh seems to bond to the seat” (32). The people who work these jobs have no choice but to continue. In order to get by, they need to take on as much work as humanly possible. Ehrenreich experiences this first hand and talks about the ways in which she stayed sane. She discusses the idea of taking each day as it comes, rather than thinking about the next day, or the day after that. She writes, “Treat each shift as a one-time-only emergency: you’ve got fifty starving people out there, lying scattered on the battlefield, so get out there and feed them!” (33). You have to literally give it your all each and every day because, like I said before, these people don’t have a choice. Ehrenreich also talks about how the customers are a source of motivation. At the Hearthside restaurant, she knew the people were hardworking locals, just like herself. She wanted to give them the best experience possible because they deserve “the closest to a ‘fine dining’ experience that the grubby circumstances will allow” (18). It takes a certain kind of mentality to survive this overwhelming lifestyle and we get a glimpse of this through Ehrenreich’s experience.
The Lame Shall Enter First & A View of the Woods
After reading both short stories, I was struck by the similarity between the two. In “The Lame Shall Enter First” there was a father figure who idealized a boy named Johnson and ignored his son Norton. He could only see the good in Johnson and the bad in Norton. In “A View of the Woods” the grandfather adored his granddaughter Mary and went above and beyond to make sure she only had the best. In both stories, the author talks about all the things the two adult figures would give to the favorite child. Sheppard bought a telescope and a new set of shoes for Johnson so that he could walk right, but he did not want anything to do with that. Johnson was very set in his ways and refused to take “hand-outs”. Similarly, in “A View of the Woods” Mr. Fortune tried to buy Mary’s forgiveness with a new boat, but she too refused. In the eyes of both Sheppard and Mr. Fortune, expensive things were an obvious solution and could make anyone happy. As we see, that is definitely not the case. All Mary wanted was a view of the woods and her front lawn. Both stories end with the child morphing into a devil-like creature and lashing out. While reading the works, I struggled to find a connection to the American Dream. However, after some thought, I think the author is trying to convey the sense that materialism is not the key to happiness. Happiness is something that stems from things that money cannot buy.
The Significance of the Frontier
When reading Turner’s excerpts, I was reminded of the fact that people experienced the frontier differently depending on where they were and when they arrived. We touched upon this topic in class, but I think it is something that requires more attention. In my mind, I think of the frontier as one thing: a place in the middle of the country with lots of prairies and Indian tribes. However, it is important we don’t have this singular image of the frontier stuck in our minds because it takes away the significance of the individualism that exists for each region. Turner talks about how, “it is evident that the farming frontier of the Mississippi Valley presents different conditions from the mining frontier of the Rocky Mountains” (4). We have to also remember that there were many different types of Indian tribes that inhabited these regions. Each encounter could pose a new challenge depending on who was already there. When the pioneers packed up their things to move out West, each person had a very different experience and I think that this is something that we should not discount.
Marie and Frank
Throughout the novel, we begin to know more and more about Marie and Frank’s relationship. We know that Frank acts stubbornly and makes it hard for Marie to be happy, but does Marie blame herself for this sour relationship? On page 77, Marie talks about how Frank should be with a different type of wife, someone who can constantly be there to serve him. She then goes on to say “It seems as if I always make him just as bad as he can be,” (Cather 78). Does she think that because of the person she is, Frank has no other choice but to act out? Does this type of society and time period foster the idea that women are the ones to blame?