Society has developed this standard way of leaving and when one is put out of this inner circle, they are left to look at life in a whole new perspective, challenging themselves against the norms in order to survive. No group of people knows this better than the “Mole people” introduced in Jennifer Toth’s book, The Mole people, where life is a constant struggle against others, police and what lurks in the abyss of the New York City tunnel system. The sociological concepts of accommodation, alienation, and culture play a key role in how we view and understand the lives of this counterculture based off of various sociological theories. These sociological tools will provide us with the ability to understand the lives of this group of people and …show more content…
The public and the police, whom also see them as deviants, label them. They don’t live like we do in clean houses that have electricity and running water. They live a different standard that makes most uncomfortable. Toth explains how New York also has a high rate of substance abusers and mentally ill in the underground population (41). This proves that there is a broader problem here that reflects on how the structure of the U.S society. Based off of conflict theory, the reason the “mole people” are like this is because we secluded them from our society, with alienating them. They end up turning to drug use for an escape or some of them became this way because they were addicts and mentally ill and we didn’t supply the help needed to fix them. Our society is set for the individual and what we can do to improve ourselves that we often forget to help the less fortunate. In a capitalist system, the definition of alienation is defined as being unconnected to one’s work, product, fellow workers, and human nature. Reading the numerous accounts of people Toth has interviewed, we learn about the homeless that ended up there due to a poor upbringing or some who used to be somebody that sadly ended up homeless and seeking refuge in these tunnels. Some choose this life others are destined here because of the fault in the U.S …show more content…
It is a given that our culture will vary differently than of one that dwells in the tunnel. In prehistoric time, the underground was seen as a place of safety, much like it is seen today for the mole people. Throughout literature, the underground man, as Toth explains, is extreme, withdrawn and isolated. He is self exiled from human society and only maintains as much contacted as needed to survive. He believes in nothing and is often filled with rage and anguish (177). Many of the tunnel dwellers share many of the same practices and use of material objects key to their survival like eating rodents, using loose electrical wires for electricity, finding water through leaky pipes and cardboard and garbage for building a home. They all share the same knowledge and ideas of how live in the tunnels. They evolve by the changes in their environment and learn how to change to better protect themselves from predators like outsiders or from the dangers of trains. They have norms like we do but what they considered to be a norm, is what we may see as a folkway. Some may even develop their own language so others in their group can understand them. The nature of this counterculture and its formation shows that our society has the ability to create various countercultures that can either show how we excel or fail as a society. However it does show that if we were to
In their ethnography Bourgois and Schonberg are studying the culture of a community of heroin injectors from San Francisco, to which they are referred to as the Edgewater Homeless. They follow them in their everyday lives, recording burglaries, panhandling, love affairs, conflicts, alliances, hierarchies and deaths as well as trips to jail, hospitals, and treatment centers. They delve back into the lives of the Edgewater Homeless to analyze what factors lead them to heroin addiction. In class, it was said that cultures are system and the world is a product of culture exposure. However, this is a culture that has been unknowingly produced by the higher power forces of our nation and is constantly looked down on.
One of the most important elements in Richard Wright’s The Man Who Lived Underground is Wright’s careful use of sensory descriptions, imagery, and light to depict Fred Daniels’ experiences both above and below ground. Wright’s uses these depictions of Fred Daniels underground world to create incomplete pictures of the experiences he has and of the people he encounters. These half-images fuel the idea that The Man Who Lived Underground is a dark and twisted allusion to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.
In chapter 1 of Jennifer Toth’s The Mole People, the tone changes from nightmarish at the beginning of the chapter to a feeling of calm by the end. At this point in the chapter (the beginning), all we know is that the narrated had heard about these tunnels before. We know that a corpse had been found in it months earlier. The author states that “...A corpse was found in it, not far beyond the tracks, it’s face half eaten by rats, one eye scratched out and punctured with small teeth. The fleshless cheek swarmed with maggots and flies…. A fat white worm, or perhaps only a maggot, crawled in the empty eye socket, while the other eye stared in unblinking horror.” (Toth 7)This quote vividly illustrates a gory scene. The author’s use of phrases such as “face half eaten,” “fleshless cheek,” and swarmed with
Throughout There Are No Children Here, a continuous, powerful tension always lurks in the background. The gangs that are rampant in the housing projects of Chicago cause this tension. In the Henry Horner Homes, according to Kotlowitz, one person is beaten, shot, or stabbed due to gangs every three days. In one week during the author's study of the projects, police confiscated 22 guns and 330 grams of cocaine in Horner alone (Kotlowitz 32).
Did you know that wherever you go in the world, and there are groups, there are outsiders? That’s just humans’ nature. The book, The Outsiders, written by S.E Hilton in her junior year in Tulsa, Oklahoma, written because the Hilton was enraged at the way people separated themselves into socioeconomic groups (Doc A), but her rant about Greasers & Socs turned into a best-selling novel. This book showcases that Outsiders are not just the ones who assume they don’t fit into the society, but they are the ones who view life not as social divisions like Greasers and Socs.
Society often pressures individuals within it to conform to different ideals and norms. This stems from the fact that individuals in a society are expected to act in a certain way. If a person or group of people do not satisfy society’s expectations, they are looked down upon by others. This can lead to individuals isolating themselves from others, or being isolated from others, because they are considered as outcasts. The emotional turmoil that can result from this, as well as the internal conflict of whether or not to conform, can transform an individual into a completely different person. This transformation can either be beneficial or harmful to the individual as well as those around them. The individual can become an improved version of himself or herself but conversely, they can become violent, rebellious and destructive. The novels Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess both explore the negative effects experienced by individuals living within the confines of society’s narrow-mindedness. In A Clockwork Orange, protagonist Alex was the leader of a small group of teenage criminals. He did not have a healthy relationship with either one of his parents or with others around him. Instead he spent most of his time alone during the day and at night roamed the streets in search of victims he could mug or rape. In Fight Club the unnamed protagonist was an outcast in his community. He chose to distance and isolate himself from others and as a result had no friends, with the exception of Tyler Durden and Marla Singer. Due to his isolation, he often participated in nightly fights that took place in Fight Club so that he could relieve his anxiety and stress. In this way, Alex and the unnamed protagoni...
Society has always functioned on the premise that a person must adjust their behaviour in accordance with what is deemed socially acceptable at that time. If administrated to the fullest extent, the theme of conformity can be detrimental to the stability and growth of a community. Through analyzing the dystopian narrative elements of Sherri Jacksons’ works, readers are able to distinguish how the theme of conformity is still prevalent to humans today as it expresses the need for order and organization, eliminates fear of the unknown, and promotes society functioning as a whole with limited individuation. The author depicts this reoccurring normative event, to stress the notion that there is something fundamentally wrong with society.
The concept of belonging and how it’s conveyed is through the connections to people, places, groups, communities and the wider world. For someone to feel that they belong, they must feel the support of friends and family. Barriers also exist for people not to belong to a group or society and can lead to negative repercussions. This is explored both in Jane Harrison play “Rainbows End” and “The Little Refugee” by Anh Do and Suzanne Do. Both texts explore the stages of a physical connection to a place, while being alienated, from the desire of not being accepted for being different of unalike.
The sidewalk is a social structure for the people who work and live in it. They are mentors for each other. They play the same role of self-direction and psychological fulfillment of a formal job or family for example; where the society is shrunken on that one sidewalk. They form an informal social organization and social control so they can survive against the outer social system; meanwhile, this social organization organizes property rights and division of labor. Although their life seems deviant, they still practice conventional social practices and norms. Although it might seem that these men are engaged in random behavior, yet there is an organized interaction of norms and goals, and a shared collective self-consciousness from having a shared common history.
In America, society views the homeless as a crutch on the economy. Upper classes alienate the homeless population in order to excel the economy and lessen the burden on society. People who appear to be homeless are ultimately pushed aside and are treated differently. Often avoided, the general populous turns away from the problem that is effecting major cities throughout America. Ignoring a problem that is persistent, is being ignorant towa...
Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, written by Paul Schrader, both tell the same story about a man who is lonely and blames the world around him for his loneliness. The characters of Underground Man and Travis Bickle mirror each other; they both live in the underground, narrating their respective stories, experiencing aches and maladies which they leave unchecked, seeing the city they live in as a modern-day hell filled with the fake and corrupt. However, time and again both Travis and the Underground Man contradict themselves. While the underground character preaches his contempt for civilization—the ‘aboveground’—and the people within it, he constantly displays a deep-seeded longing to be a part of it. Both characters believe in a strong ideal that challenges that of the city’s, an ideal that is personified by the character of the prostitute.
..., his physical inertia thwarts his aggressive desires and he has compulsive talk of himself but has no firm discussion (Frank 50). Moreover, the underground man is full of contempt for readers but is desperate that the reader understands, he reads very widely but writes shallowly, he depicts the social thinkers as superficial and he desires to collide with reality but has no ability to do this. Therefore the underground man is completely emotional, babbly with no real form.
The underground man is the product of the social determinism due to all the personal experiences that he had throughout his life with the society. He is a person who always wanted act in a different way but he stops himself and act as how the society wants him
...nderson, 107). The novels demonstrate that humans react to alienation by choosing to alienate themselves rather than allow others to alienate them. The protagonists intentionally withdrew themselves from society before society could hurt them by denying them acceptance. They equally fear rejection which is common among human kind.
Social Contradictions in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground. Notes from the Underground, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, is a truly remarkable novel. Dostoyevsky's novels probe the cause of human action. They questioned conventional wisdom of what drove humans and offered insight into the inner workings and torments of the human soul. In Notes from Underground, Dostoyevsky relates the viewpoints and doings of a very peculiar man.