Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Intro, Dennis Hart & Lucy Jefferson

Intro:
Throughout the stories, the interviews do not help getting to know people; it just helps them make a conversation. There were many themes that came up during many of the stories. For example, there was the Vietnamese war and civil rights. The author says that “passion runs deep in these matters.” The author does not understand why people with a good amount of money break into a dispute about stupid things. For example, the author witnessed a fight about Buffalo wings. It happened at his mom’s hotel and the men called each other mean names. They would call each other “liars” and those abusive words started the fight. Humiliation was the worst part of the story. The author thinks that everyone is unique because of their experiences.

Dennis Hart:
Dennis Hart became a republican precinct captain and chairman for Goldwater campaign. He accomplished all of these goals because he wanted to prove to himself that he was not a coward.  His ideal way of dying would be to be on the battlefield feeling worthy of his life and have pride in himself. Hart was talking about religion and how atheists are the most afraid of bombs because they are not able to pray that they don’t die and they only believe in having one life. Hart explained that he never had a real home because he moved around all the time which was the cause of most of his fears. One of his jobs involved working as a guard for a county jail. From that experience, he had become more insensitive because he saw and heard many things that were unbearable to remember. One person that he looks up to is General MacArthur because he had a lot of pride in everything that he did. MacArthur was a famous general who played a prominent role in the pacific war. He loved his people but he never showed much emotion. He did not take into affect what the majority of the people thought was right, he always acted on what he thought was right.

Lucy Jefferson:
Lucy lived in a life with not much money and her kids were constantly worrying about how much money they had and if they paid the rent for the month. She worked at Wesley Hospital for 11 years as a physical therapist. She had the best time working there, but she did not get paid that much so she always had to by food on sale and stay on a budget. She did not get a very good education so she would self educate herself by reading different books. She thought she was breaking the stereotype that African Americans are ignorant and are not able to read. Her kids went to school and she received letters from their school saying that her child was not working to his full potential. This was not something that she wanted to here because she was working and having trouble of her own. She did not want something to go wrong on top of that. Jefferson thought that her son was being lazy in school, but she found out that he was not able to read. At school, he was put in a room with other students who were not able to read instead of trying to teach him. The school decided which students they wanted to teach and which students were too much work for them. This is horrible because in the United States, each individual child is supposed to have the same amount of chance of getting an education as another student. This shows that people are prejudice and only want to teach kids who are already smart and don’t need to learn as much. Education is very important for kids and this shows that the education system is not exceeding its values.

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