From the beginning, Babbitt wanted to escape from his life of middle-class monotony (early fairy girl reference). He lived his life tied to the pressures and assumptions of his peers, never forming his own opinion. Trying to rebel from the conservative businessman status, he seeks acceptance in the bohemian crowd named “the bunch”. Discovering the similarity between the two lifestyles, Babbitt returns to his old life when his wife falls ill. He then encourages his son to pursue the life he always desired but never had, a life full of excitement and unpredictability, a real life.
Initially, Babbitt dreams of a fairy child, which partially represents an escape from all the people around him (2). This fairy girl would run away with him on adventures, and he would be free of his real life. This is only a dream however, and Babbitt is locked into his life as a middle-aged husband/father of three/businessman, a boring lifestyle. Babbitt is attracted to friendship with Paul Riesling, someone who always wanted to pursue a professional violin career, and questions the happiness of life often. This friendship shows that Babbitt wants to escape.
Babbitt seeks all the modern conveniences including expensive alarm clocks (3) and cigarette lighters (47). His house is just like every other house, extravagant and impersonal (13). He is wrapped up in the middle-class lifestyle, and is tuned into the attitudes and opinions of those around him (67). He won’t take a stand for an unpopular opinion unlike Riesling in the train incident (130). He owns membership into the Booster’s club, a public symbol of mutual acceptance among members (64).Babbitt tries to improve his own life by making honorable resolutions, like eating healthier and quitting smok...
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... Myra falls ill with appendicitis, Babbitt takes the opportunity to strengthen their marriage (244). This gets him some recognition back in the community. They accept the old Babbitt back into the fold, and he becomes his old self again.
The attempt at rebellion ends in failure, and Babbitt is left with the life he bought into so long ago. The desire for social acceptance is too strong for him to truly rebel, and it is difficult to alienate all the people he cared for in some way. Left with only his boring, conforming self, Babbitt encourages Ted to live his dream and to resist conformity. He doesn’t want Ted to have to live his life among the social elite, for it’s not all that it’s advertised to be. Seeing how difficult the battle for rebellion is, Babbitt is willing to support his son in the path that he wants to choose, and doesn’t pressure him otherwise (355).
Baldwin’s story presents the heart breaking portrayal of two brothers who have become disconnected through respective life choices. The narrator is the older brother who has grown past the depravity of his childhood poverty. The narrator’s profession as an algebra teacher reflects his need for a “black” and “white,” orderly outlook on life. The narrator believes he has escaped life’s sufferings until the death of his daughter and the troubling news about his brother being taken in for drug possession broadside him to the reality of life’s inevitable suffering. In contrast, his brother, Sonny has been unable to escape his childhood hardships and has ended up on the wrong side of the law. While their lives have taken ...
More specifically speaking, Baldwin is assessing through the fictional story the difficulties in understanding and accepting those who do not comply with social norms. Throughout the entirety of the story it is clear that Sonny’s brother cannot understand his brother or his brother’s choices. This inability to identify with and comprehend his brother drives a wedge between the two, until finally, the narrator shows up to a performance put on by Sonny, opens his mind and his prejudices, and begins to finally understand his
Even as a young child alone in the forest, Beah states that the loneliness was what made the forest a difficult place to inhabit. Nature also used to be something that comforted him prior to the war, but this was due to the stories his grandparents used to tell him. Even with nature all around him, Beah is unable to focus on what used to bring him happiness, trading it in for loneliness instead, which demonstrates how much not having his family has affected him. In addition, after Beah runs into a group of boys, three of which he used to go to school with, he joins them on their journey to find safety. They find a house off the coast of the Atlantic, which turns out to be a fishing hut of a kind man who hosts the boys. The boy’s host refuses to reveal his name to them, but understands that Beah and his group mean to do no harm to him, and that they are only children, something that had been forgotten by other villagers the group had encountered. After a few days, Beah and his friend’s begin to talk more to each other in the hut as their spirits were able to be lifted for the short time
The first theory to explain some of Ted's behavior is that of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs which focuses on describing the stages of growth in humans using the terms physiological, safety, belongingness, self esteem, self actualization and self transcendence. Ted had the necessities of life and shelter, and was therefore satisfied in his physiologi...
...ating “Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be… when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am” (Miller 1842.) Biff is accepting of who he is and that he does not have to follow in family traditions. Work provides as a building block for family values and expectations, and shapes the community around it.
Charlie Babbitt, a Los Angeles car dealer, is in the middle of a big deal. However, he is being threatened by the EPA, and if Charlie cannot meet its requirements he will lose a significant amount of money. Charlie then leaves for a weekend trip to Palm Springs with his girlfriend, Susanna. However, his trip is cancelled by news that his father, Sanford Babbitt, has died. Charlie goes to Cincinnati where he learns that the three million dollars that his father left is being directed to a mental institution, where his brother who he never knew existed, Raymond Babbitt, lives. Charlie is determined to get what he believes is his share of the Babbitt estate, Charlie takes Raymond on a car trip back to Los Angeles to meet with his attorneys. Charlie intends to get Raymond's doctor, Dr. Gerald R. Bruner, to settle for half of Sanford Babbitt's estate so that the mental institution can maintain custody of Raymond. Susanna leaves Charlie, disgusted by his selfishness and his efforts at using his brother to gain the money,
James Baldwin portrays the narrator and Sonny as the significance of having a strong relationship with family and the ability to succeed the battle of your personal demons fighting with your beliefs. The narrator or ‘big brother’ is a responsible
Willy doesn’t want to accept that he is not successful anymore, he still recognize his son as handsome heroes. Biff as the football star when he was at high school and Happy an...
Showing up in a fancy new car, deciding to start a new career, throwing out an entire wardrobe and staring over or ending a marriage of over twenty years, these all seem to be connected what society calls a ‘mid-life crisis.’ Is the mid-life crisis fact or fiction? Mid-life is the life span between the ages of 35 and 65 years old and as people age, there are biological and physiological gains and losses (Tillery 2014). When people enter into the middle adulthood, they have usually settled into family and carrier life, their knowledge base has grown and they are usually particularly healthy (Tillery 2014). However, as adults progress through this life-stage, a crisis can occur; which is the result of biological and physiological changes, an
Biff never kept a steady job during his young adult life, and did not possess a healthy relationship with anyone that was in his life. As the play progresses the reader sees how much Biff becomes more self- aware. An online source states, “Unlike the other members of his family, Biff grows to recognize that he and his family members consistently deceive themselves, and he fights to escape the vicious cycles of lies.” When Biff returns home it becomes a struggle to keep a healthy relationship with his parents. Once Willy and Biff decide together that Biff will go and ask Bill Oliver for a loan is when the differences between the two characters are truly seen. Biff accepts reality for the first time in his life, and realizes how ridiculous it is to ask Bill Oliver for a loan, when he barely knows the man and worked for him about ten years ago. When Biff meets up with Willy after the ‘meeting’ Biff is talking to his Father and says, “Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am!” This quote reveals that Biff recently has just experienced an epiphany, and realizes that what he was doing was making no sense. Biff is escaping the self- deception he was caught in with the rest of his
The eldest brother who is also the narrator of the story gives the reader a glimpse into their lives and the struggles that he and his younger brother Sonny go through. Through the narrators eyes Baldwin does a wonderful job showing how the brothers grew up to lead different lives but are both still struggling from the hold that poverty in Harlem has on them. Baldwin shows how both “the narrator and Sonny are both imprisoned and also free in exactly opposites ways” (spark note). For example, Sonny has physically been imprisoned due to his addiction to drugs but was able to escape from Harlem and create his own life through music. Whereas the narrator is physically free but trapped in the housing projects of Harlem which he clearly hates. It is Baldwin’s unique style of writing that has the characters asking themselves the question, “Does one embrace the hand that they are dealt in order to live or does one bow down and allow it to consume them?” Baldwin shows how each brother at different times in their life allowed for it to do both. For instance, in the beginning Sonny seemed to be consumed by his suffering which led him down the path of drugs but by the end he had embraced it and let his suffering playout through music. The narrator on the other hand seemed to embrace everything that he was dealt and did the best he could to better his life.
When he calls up for Paul Riesling for lunch he mentions “But Babbitt strenuously believed and lengthily announced to the world of Good Fellows that Paul could have been a great violinist or painter or writer.” (Lewis, 99). Saying that even though Riesling was conforming to Zenith’s standards of living, Riesling is not happy with how his life has turned out. His true passion was to be in the arts, but ultimately turned those down to work for his father’s business. In the time, it seemed like a good idea to conform to the norm and now it is more of a burden to work for his father’s business. In addition, I think Babbitt was realizing that conforming to society was not what he wanted at all for his life. Zenith’s social conformity was taking over Babbitt’s lifestyle and it was holding him back from wanting to be who he really wanted to become. Then Babbitt tries to live his life without conforming to Zenith’s
During most father-son relationships, there are certain times where the father wants to become more of a "player" in his son’s life than his son believes is necessary. The reasons for this are numerous and can be demonstrated in different ways. Miller is able to give an example of this behavior through the actions of Willy Loman. When Biff comes home to recollect himself, Willy perceives it as failure. Since Willy desperately wants his oldest son, Biff, to succeed in every way possible, he tries to take matters into his own hands. "I’ll get him a job selling. He could be big in no time" (16). The reason that Biff came home is to find out what he wants in life. Because Willy gets in the way, matters become more complicated. Partly due to Willy’s persistence in Biff’s life, they have conflicting ideas as to what the American dream is. Willy believes that working on the road by selling is the greatest job a man could have (81). Biff, however, feels the most inspiring job a man could have is working outdoors (22).
Biff: Birnbaum refused absolutely. I begged him, Pop, but he won’t give me those points (118). These test scores were the only thing that stood between him and the college of his choice. Birnbaum, Biff’s math teacher, did not give him the needed points and this made the chain reaction of Biff flunking math, to the visit with his father in Boston, which led to the discovery of the other woman. The stress of pleasing others around us can lead to unwanted failure and can lead to our ultimate demise. “I don’t know the key to success. But the key to failure is to try to please everyone” (Bill Cosby). The placing of values in our life can either lead to failure or success.
That kind of favoritism has a profound effect on a child, in order to be acknowledged by his father, Happy believes he must become Willy’s version of success by acquiring wealth and popularity. Happy has been living his entire life in a way that he believes will bring him attention from his father, yet his father ignores him and he becomes more miserable that if he had gone his own way. When a father chooses to favor upon one son over another, the father-son relationship occurs as well as in the son’s life. Within this relationship, the responsibility of the father is to provide values, a role model and leadership for his sons. In almost every family, the sons will look to their father as role model and a hero, which in this case Biff does but Happy does not. It is in the father’s best interest to use this opportunity to give these qualities and allow his sons to become responsible