Ragged Company By Richard Wagamese: Chapter Summary

Of the four members of the Richard Wagamese’s Ragged Company (2009), Richard Richard Dumont, otherwise known as “Double Dick” underwent a traumatizing event in his life. Wagamese (2009) tells the story of Dick as he grew up on reserves, and was subsequently denied the opportunity of education for Dick. As Dick turned to alcohol to cope with his life after entering his father’s moonshine manufacturing business, his life finally led up to the moment that caused him to leave his family home, and forced him into poverty. Although Ragged Company is a narrative of four homeless people, the novel also reflects social determinants of health. Davidson (2015) defines the determinants as underlying factors of health disparities. Furthermore, the historical distal determinants, such as colonialism, inevitable affects the personable, individualistic proximal determinants such as income. Together, these two variant of determinants shape the lives of Aboriginal peoples, such as Dick. After the life-defining moment, Double Dick Dumont in Richard Wagamese’s

Although it may be alcohol that led him to that moment, Wagamese argues that the health-related negative behaviour is caused by the underlying determinant of employment, as demonstrated by Dick’s father unemployment and the subsequent “employment” that Dick obtained. The critique of the manslaughter must take into account how unemployment of Dick’s father in conjunction with the lack of schooling Dick experienced led him to the life-defining moment. Therefore, it is too narrow to blame the death of his nephew on account of Dick being intoxicated. Instead, Wagamese purposely gave Dick the history of unemployment and underemployment to argue that Dick’s trigger into poverty and the health related issues that arose from it are from the underlying disparities of