Analysis Of Lucky's Dream

Lucky’s Dream, a novel by Butch Mandatta Ponzio, begins with a prologue which, at first, cast a veil of confusion. This veil was somewhat lifted as I read further and began to piece together the foreshadowing presented in the prologue. Once I finished reading Part One: Waiting, I went back and reread the prologue, which cleared some of the confusion. It was then that I began to wonder if the “pup” from the prologue was in fact Jimmy. I question the meaning of “You shall fly between worlds. The world of the foolish People with little memory shall be your home, while the world of the Story shall be your salvation” (Ponzio, 1999). Could this possibly mean that if Jimmy is in the “pup” Coyote the Trickster refers to, then is he able to understand

Eric Landrum, we are provided with two theories for Lucky’s behavior. One possible explanation is provided by G. Stanley Hall, a contributor of the founding of functionalism. His “interests highlight the functioning of consciousness, and how it allows us to adopt and survive in our environment” (Landrum, n.d.). The second is provided by John B. Watson, who described behaviorism, a new approach to psychology. A strong believer of extreme environmentalism, Watson believed “that the situations and context that a person grows up in totally shape how the person behaves” (Landrum, n.d.). Therefore, is mimicking the behavior of a dog and referring to himself with a name commonly used for dogs, Donald Allen Hall’s way of adopting and surviving his environment? Or did his environment forge his dog-like behavior and

I can remember standing in aww as I watched the judge, prosecution, and the defense attempt to secure a facility with a vacancy to hold a defendant who was awaiting a psychological evaluation. This situation was all too familiar to the one depicted in Lucky’s Dream: Part One: Waiting. As stated in the VPR Broadcast, State Of Mind: Mental Health & Corrections: Is Incarceration an Alternative to Psychiatric Treatment by Jane Lindholm, “For people who have been charged but not yet convicted of a crime…These are people who have been court-ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation…Right now, the Brattleboro Retreat takes that population. But frequently, they 're not going to the Brattleboro Retreat because the Retreat is full. So they 're stuck in jail instead” (Lindholm, 2013, October 21). How are we supposed to treat those defendants, such as Lucky, when we don’t have an understanding of who they are, where they come from, and the path that led them to that court room? For those who are like Lucky, if we treat them like another defendant, one who does not suffer from a psychological issue, how will they fair in our correctional system? By placing them with the general population, we are leaving our correctional facilities with inmates whom they do not have the training or