Hidden Identity In Burl's By Bernard Cooper

1724 Words4 Pages

Bernard Cooper is the author of a short essay titled “Burl’s”, an autobiography story of himself when he was about 8 years old, starting to learn all the differences and fine lines in the world. The essay starts out as Bernard seeing everything as it’s portrayed to be and not what is actually there. Cooper describes everything he sees from the restaurant’s name “Burl’s” highlighted above the roof and chrome appliances inside to the waitresses brown uniforms. Bernard Cooper conveys hidden identity within everything through his use of description, imagery and symbolism. The main symbol he uses is the restaurant “Burl’s” itself. Another theme I found relevant was how this essay depicts society’s resistance to the unexplainable. The restaurant …show more content…

For instance if one was born a boy then they should act like a boy and want to do boy-oriented things for that matter. “Like most children, I once thought it possible to divide the world into male and female columns. Blue/Pink. Roosters/Hens. Trousers/Skirts” (Cooper 135). In this quote when Cooper says “like most children” is an important part because he is right, most children do not know that males can do female things and vice versa. They also do not yet know about the mysteries of the world or things that shouldn’t be but are like transvestites for instance. And it’s like that because their parents and society made it that way. Instead of parents encouraging their son to wear dresses or cheerlead those parents would encourage him to dress like a male and play a male sport like football or basketball, because most of society doesn’t agree with things not easily explainable. So when Cooper’s parent saw him acting like one of the girls from his class, they immediately took him to an athletic club with other boys. “Shortly after the Injijikian incident, my parents decided to send me to a gymnastics class at the Downtown Athletic Club” (Cooper 136). Here his parents were thinking about what society would have thought and wanted him to perform and act masculine, so therefore sent him to a boys

Open Document