More Midterm Help!

First, thanks to everybody who provided me with some helpful comments about the first half of my revised midterm. I realize you didn't have to take time to provide your feedback, so it is greatly appreciated. 

Here is the second half of my paper. It concerns two other works. The first is a non-fiction book called Random Family, which is about the almost miserable life of growing up in the South Bronx. The second is about a short story called Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell. As before, this isn't a strict academic paper. That's why I write in the first person throughout. I was asked by my professor to be more informal and almost write the second draft as a personal essay or letter. If you are confused, read the first part of the midterm here.

Here is the second half of the paper. Let me know what you think. And if you are tired of reading this, I plan on posting a profile I did on Sports Illustrated's Stewart Mandel later this weekend. Plus I have some other things in mind. If I had a good camera (hint to Christmas shoppers) I would post more of my own photos and stuff. Here we go ....

One word, hopeless, describes how I feel when reading Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family. LeBlanc follows the lives of several individuals living in the Tremont Avenue area of the Bronx over a decade. After hearing LeBlanc describe the reporting in person, I have a new respect for the amount work she put into this great non-fiction piece. It becomes quite clear that the main characters, Coco and Jessica, lack a great amount of ambition in life. They date drug dealers, become pregnant often, and take abuse from many different people. Unlike the first two pieces I mentioned, it is difficult for me to identify with these characters. But I am sure many who have never lived in their circumstances would have difficulty seeing themselves in these characters. With a look at the characters in Random Family, LeBlanc implies that they often had hope that often escaped them.

           

In a way, every child between Jessica and Coco is like a seed in a flower pot with potential to grow. Jessica and Coco, both young women, each have five children during the decade that LeBlanc reports on the individuals. Each child is showered with love and loyalty when they enter the world. Much of this may be because each child has the potential of one day freeing themselves from the South Bronx. Even Jessica’s mother, Lourdes, hopes her daughter’s first child, Serena, would be something more than her own kids were: “For Lourdes, Little Star’s arrival was like new love, or the coming of spring. … Little Star would love her grandmother with the unquestioning loyalty Lourdes felt she deserved but didn’t get from her ungrateful kids.” However, each new child grows, and either through impatient parenting or tough situations, the hope for something better faded. Coco cannot keep her girls in school after moving upstate with her children. She stifles her children’s progress, continuing the cycle of hopelessness that I mentioned. When Coco sends her older daughters, Mercedes and Nikki, to a summer camp to provide structure, she quickly pulls them back to their more familiar culture when she picks them up from camp. I cringed while reading how she changes the girls out of their summer camp attire and does not believe they could have possibly changed in a few weeks. The children are the future, but they are not given the proper circumstances to achieve much.

The characters in Random Family often have noble intentions but cannot follow through. Jessica and her brother Cesar would love to get years taken off their prison terms, but they either have trouble completing prison programs or get into fights. Coco decided to go back to school to get her GED in hopes it would help her get a decent paying job with some initial success: “Now she was headed for a career. She would work in medical records until she could learn photography. . . . Coco scored a perfect grade on her second test. Cesar’s letters would no longer intimidate her with big words she could not pronounce” (LeBlanc 298). But as LeBlanc put it, the Bronx was not done with Coco. Her home often filled with a variety of unsavory characters. She decided she must take care of her kids, so she later has to give up school again. Even though it was difficult to like the characters in Random Family, it is hard not to feel for the circle of hopelessness they live with. If anything, reading this gave me more hope because I don’t face the difficult circumstances of poverty, a drug culture, or lack of education. My family and friends also serve as a firm base of support for anything I attempt to do in life. That is something that is rarely found in Random Family.

Some of the pieces I have read do a wonderful job of showing how everyday people often cope with events not going their way. Many characters in Joseph Mitchell’s works materialize out of the Fulton Fish Market. One such character, Louis Morino from Up in the Old Hotel, is the owner of the restaurant Sloppy Louie’s. This is an establishment Mitchell himself went to almost daily. Louis spent most of his life serving others by working in restaurants and eventually establishing his own place. There is very little for him to look forward to after owning Sloppy Louie’s for more than two decades. There is one thing that he ponders about once a year, however – what the boarded up floors above his restaurant actually contain as he has never been up there. I love how Mitchell sets up this contemplation for Louis. By making the upper reaches of the hotel a mystery for Louis, it is also a mystery for the reader. One hopes that there is something especially interesting up in the hotel floors.

It is not for certain what Louis expects to find in the upper floors of his rented building that was once a hotel. It could be fish boxes or just old hotel junk, but he wants to find out: “If I could get upstairs just once in that damned old elevator and scratch around in those hotel registers . . . it might be possible I’d find out a whole lot more.” It is as if Louis expects to find something about himself, and I found myself rooting for him. 

Louis finally gets a companion, Mitchell, to go up in the rickety elevator of the old hotel building and act on his optimism. Unfortunately, the two’s excursion into the higher reaches of the old hotel symbolize an anti-climax to Louis’ life. The only things remaining in the upper rooms are dusty mirrors and furniture. Drawers sit empty with nothing of interest. However, Louis stubbornly looks through all the desk drawers only to find rusty paper clips. The only interesting items they find are religious placards about “The Wages of Sin and Death.” Mitchell and Louis do not even attempt going to the next couple floors. Louis says, “’Sin, death, dust, old empty rooms, old empty whiskey bottles, old empty bureau drawers. Come on, pull the rope faster! Pull it faster! Let’s get out of this.’” There is mortality to Louis not finding anything at the end of this short story. At a later stage of life with little to look forward to, he at least wants something exciting to happen with his journey, but his hope is quickly squashed. To me this shows how everybody has a great obsession in life. It could be for wealth, happiness, or a journey for something new. We all hope that things will work out for the better, but many times we have to face reality that life has different plans.

The themes of hope described in Random Family, Here is New York, Up in the Old Hotel, and Goodbye to All That are just a sampling of the stories that are available in the city. I learned that I am not alone by reading these works. The ambitious quest is an ideal that has been true to New York for decades. It is not something that belongs only to me. Everyone tends to believe that New York will just hand them this grand opportunity. These stories prove that hope can be a powerful force in New York City, but I learned through them that you often have to be strong enough to deal with things if they do not work out here.