Pearls Before Breakfast Analysis

Extraordinary vs Ordinary
In the article “Pearls Before Breakfast”, Gene Weingarten creates a social experiment at a busy Washington subway station to determine if people would recognize Joshua Bell, as a world famous violin player. Or would they disregard him as just another street performer? Weingarten journey’s through the events of the day with Bell and his 3.5 million dollar violin. We see throughout the article a contrast between the music and the people passing by. People effortlessly ignore Bell’s music to catch their train or purchase lottery tickets, while back a few nights ago Bell’s playing leaves the audience in silent awe. While illustrating the several different reactions of the people passing by Weingarten intrigues us in “Pearls Before Breakfast” by exposing how our busy lives and preoccupations keep us from seeing the extraordinary that can be found in the most mundane situations.
Weingarten takes us through many instances where Bell is ignored or passed by with just a passing glance. .J.T Tillman,a computer specialist for the department of housing and urban division is busy playing the lottery. Although he remembers every number he plays he could barely recognize the “generic classical

music”, as he called it, which is filling the station. Calvin Myint is makeing his way up the escalator in front of Bell and heads right out the door. Hours later Myint could not even remember a musician anywhere in sight .Bell himself stated “I’m surprised at the number of people who don’t pay attention at all, as if I’m invisible”. Society empowers us to work to achieve our goals but at what cost to our personal growth. Losing the ability to look or listen outside the box has become as viral as some of the videos we see on social media. Clearly Weingarten shows us how our habitual routines can cause us to miss the beauty that stares us straight in the face. We go through our lives focused on the prize but fail to see the rewards that can come from slowing down and catching our breath.
Weingarten exposes us, for the most part, as self –absorbed in our thinking and oblivious to the beauty around us, yet gives us hope through the innocence and uncluttered mind of a child. Sheron Parker, an IT director for a federal agency, is taking her 3 year old son to school that morning, running late as most other people are , Sharon is pulling her young son through the station without a care to recognize the violinist playing before her. What she missed surprisingly fell on the ears of Evvie at age three. Parker stated “There was a musician and my son was intrigued. He wanted to pull over and listen, but I was rushed for time.” This further goes to prove that once as children we were all intrigued by the beauty in our surrounding. The question lingers, where has that intrigue gone? Was it with our busy families or maybe our time consuming jobs? Our obsession with time and the pursuit of American dream has driven us to look away or through the experiences that could enrich our daily lives.
We need to ask ourselves if one of the nation greatest musician playing some of the most memorizing music could not grab our attention how many other things are we missing as we rush through our lives?

With our days filled with work, family, and all the other time consuming tasks it is hard to see past to all the beauty that is around us. Society has given us an example to live up too, how we react in certain situations, if we react all. We put conditions on things and how we believe they should be perceived. Anything outside of those conditions that we expect to find, becomes elusive and our appreciation or even awareness of it can be lost if we do not train our minds to take note of our

surroundings.