These chapters on the working class of America offer a blunt perspective on American life.
The first comes from Dolores Dante, a waitress who has worked in the same restaurant for twenty-three years. Anyone devoted to the same job at the same place for that long certainly has a quality which not many have: patience. Dolores says that the reason she became a waitress was because she "needed money fast and you don't get it in an office" (329). Immediately, Dolores qualifies her decision to become a waitress by dismissing a common misconception about waitresses. She says that many believe that waitresses have broken homes because they're waitresses, while really she was a waitress because she had a broken home. Dolores takes pride in her work, seeing herself as an actress due to her ability to improvise and think on her feet. She sees the life skills that she has adopted while working as a waitress as more important than any that could be learned elsewhere. Constantly Dolores is judging other people and is being judged by them as well. Regardless, she has a simple outlook on life, evident by the fact that her biggest fears in life are the bathroom and the grave (332). She tries to be liked by everyone because she knows the feeling of having someone talk badly about you. All of her life she has only tried to satisfy, and she bottles up all of the hurt inside of her. She hurts inside, but she remains optomistic and looks forward to the next day when she will get to perform once again. Her view of an American is always remaining optomistic, regardless of the circumstances. Sometimes, the hurt in life has to be ignored so that the happiness can come out.
The second story comes from Phil Stallings, an auto worker at the Ford assembly plant on the South Side of Chicago. Phil does the monotonous job of putting the initial welds on a car by pressing a button on a welding gun. He figures that he presses that button about 12,288 times every day. During this time, Phil lets his mind drift, thinking of past experiences and a life that wasn't so complex, the life of his childhood self. Phil admits that this is the only thing that keeps him sane during the day. He starts to wonder, and perhaps wrongfully so, what the Ford company probably thinks of him. The answer is not to his liking, as he realizes that the company could easily find another replacement were something horrible to happen to him. "The only thing they have on their mind is to keep that line running" (356). Stallings witnesses so many injustices, many to himself, all carried out by the company that employs him, yet he refuses to quit. He needs the money and this is the easiest job he can find. However, his refusal to take action doesn't stop him from thinking that something should be done. He thinks, "A job should be a job, not a death sentence" (359).
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
MissingLetters- Try it out!
Enter your text and see which letters of the alphabet are not present!
Input
Output
Division Street: Tom Kearney + Dennis Hart
Both of these stories demonstrate an interesting view on life in America during the early 1980s. These accounts come from ordinary people with extraordinary observational skills who were able to fully capture the wide range of emotions felt by common Americans at the time.
Tom Kearney, a policeman for 23 years, recalls his life as a serviceman as a rewarding one. Kearney's attitude growing up was that someone had to be a policeman, so why not him? Growing up in Chicago, Kearney had grown accustomed to the various niches that were occupied by the residents of the city. His father was a fireman, working hard everyday for very little pay. He recalls the people of the hunger marches, charged at by the police. He remembers the men in line for their newspapers, the Poles, Slavs, Irishmen, Italians, and Jews who all inhabited the streets on which he lived. One good lesson he learned was at the Church where he was instructed by nuns and was learned alongside African-Americans. He learned that some things in life will inevitably be faced, so you might as well get used to them. This lesson is often forgot later in life, as people go to great lengths to avoid inevitable discomfort. Kearney learned this lesson at a young age and thus grew up embracing life as opposed to hiding from it.
Tom Kearney, a policeman for 23 years, recalls his life as a serviceman as a rewarding one. Kearney's attitude growing up was that someone had to be a policeman, so why not him? Growing up in Chicago, Kearney had grown accustomed to the various niches that were occupied by the residents of the city. His father was a fireman, working hard everyday for very little pay. He recalls the people of the hunger marches, charged at by the police. He remembers the men in line for their newspapers, the Poles, Slavs, Irishmen, Italians, and Jews who all inhabited the streets on which he lived. One good lesson he learned was at the Church where he was instructed by nuns and was learned alongside African-Americans. He learned that some things in life will inevitably be faced, so you might as well get used to them. This lesson is often forgot later in life, as people go to great lengths to avoid inevitable discomfort. Kearney learned this lesson at a young age and thus grew up embracing life as opposed to hiding from it.
The second story comes from Dennis Hart, a cabdriver who has dedicated his life towards never living a dull moment. One immediately can tell the attitude he carries when he describes the way he would like to die. He says, “If I could die on some battlefield someplace, doing something good, I feel my life would be worthwhile. I want my death to be worth something” (237). Hart’s experiences in life really show that he was determined to live the way he felt an American should live. Being an American, he felt that he should take advantage of every right granted to him. He says, “An individual should stand for more than a handout. This is the way America is. You fight for what you get, and once you get it, you hold on to it: your pride, your bread and butter, and what not. . . . Freedom is the most important thing in your life” (238). Even as an ordinary man, with an ordinary job, Hart took advantage of every opportunity presented to him in order to live a life that he would not regret when it came time for him to pass away. Hart truly embodies what it means to be an American: living your life to the fullest because you can. Hart didn’t take his freedom as an American for granted and we can all learn by his example.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
The Good War: Peter Ota + Betty Basye Hutchinson
Both these stories serve to offer alternative views of the war; they don't depict the standard stories of heroes on the battlefront or housewives on the home front left worrying about their loved ones. The first story is offered from Peter Ota, a Nisei Japanese who first-hand experienced the battle against the Japanese that occurred on the home front. Ota recalls having to live at Santa Anita horse racing track. This truly shows the dehumanization of Japanese-Americans that the U.S. government hoped to accomplish. They felt that by treating them like animals, they would hopefully feel equivalent to them. Ota reveals other aspects of living in such a dehumanizing way, but most importantly he reveals the persevering attitude he had throughout the experience; he didn't let the poor treatment of himself and his family get to his head the way other Americans may have wanted it to. His attitude was: "You persevere. Take what's coming, don't react" (206). Ota revealed that an important Japanese value is perseverance, and this is also a value that is important to Americans. Perhaps Ota meant to show that both Japanese and American traditions have a lot in common, and that for this reason the physical separation of such similar cultures was that much more preposterous. Rather than focusing on the differences between the communities, the similarities should have been stressed, and maybe the situation could have been seen in a whole new light.
Basye also offers an alternative view of the war: one that focused on the results of war, the side that wasn't all too often seen by the public. Basye felt the need to serve her country any way she could during the war, and she found her calling as a nurse to those who had been wounded on the battlefield. At first, she was in sheer horror, disgusted by just the sight of men so harshly wounded. Eventually she would grow accustomed to the sight of such men, and it was then that she found a new sense of appreciation for what her peers were doing overseas. She found herself able to tell jokes in order to lighten the mood in the hospital where so much pain and suffering was felt. But the real shock that Betty experienced was not in the hospital, rather it was outside, where the common citizen was disgusted by the sight of the wounded men, just as Betty was when she first started working at the hospital. People wrote letters to the editor asking why wounded soldiers can't be kept on their own grounds and off the street (216). As Basye points out, these people didn't know real war. The propaganda showed to the general public only depicted the heroism and bravery of the men overseas. It didn't depict the real truth. Basye's account effectively shows the dark side of war that most people did not see, or perhaps were just too ignorant to see.
Basye also offers an alternative view of the war: one that focused on the results of war, the side that wasn't all too often seen by the public. Basye felt the need to serve her country any way she could during the war, and she found her calling as a nurse to those who had been wounded on the battlefield. At first, she was in sheer horror, disgusted by just the sight of men so harshly wounded. Eventually she would grow accustomed to the sight of such men, and it was then that she found a new sense of appreciation for what her peers were doing overseas. She found herself able to tell jokes in order to lighten the mood in the hospital where so much pain and suffering was felt. But the real shock that Betty experienced was not in the hospital, rather it was outside, where the common citizen was disgusted by the sight of the wounded men, just as Betty was when she first started working at the hospital. People wrote letters to the editor asking why wounded soldiers can't be kept on their own grounds and off the street (216). As Basye points out, these people didn't know real war. The propaganda showed to the general public only depicted the heroism and bravery of the men overseas. It didn't depict the real truth. Basye's account effectively shows the dark side of war that most people did not see, or perhaps were just too ignorant to see.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)