A Change In Voice

A Change in Voice

            When being forced into a situation that you aren’t completely sure of or very against, one tends to distance themselves from the problem. You take a deep breath, tell yourself that it is only temporary, and make your way through it. You don’t involve yourself fully in what is taking place.

            When Santha wraps up her memoir By Any Other Name with the statement, “But I put it happily away because it happened to a girl named Cynthia and I was never really particularly interested in her.” It is understandable to see how she was able to space herself from the problem fully. She was helped along with the displacement with the name assigned from the headmistress that gave her the option of almost playing a character as you would in a play while she was at the school.

            Although it is understandable to see the distance, when you look at the text in full, it makes it hard to be fully convinced by this statement. This is written as it would when she was little. The way she portrays herself during the time makes her come off as very naive and young. This last statement to end it is a very big realized for such a small little girl.

            While reading you get a since of a small child observing life. When she hits you with this, it is very cleaver, but makes you very questionable of if it had happened at that moment, or something that she could have very easily come to a realization to later in life. Not being able to but a direct feeling on it while she was younger. There is a sudden change in the voice in her writing. Yes, it makes her come off as someone who has just been rounded by an experience, but it makes it hard to believe her writing as it makes her sound like a totally different person. 

In Character

In Character 

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;

So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d

Retain that dear perfection which he owes

Without that title. (II.ii.47-51)

What is in a name? How are we defined as beings or products? A person can attain the title “beautiful” and “talented” as being a description of a positive characteristic. There are also negative ones such as “slow” or “stupid”. Are we given these names to live up to them or are we given them to be something we are not while straying away from our true personality?

When given a name that puts us into positive light, us as human beings greatly influenced by acceptance by society try to attain that name. At times we are complimented out of pure politeness. With a newborn self-pride by the name, we tend to stray away from our selves and try best to fit the qualifications of the name. Sometimes out of modesty we try to limit ourselves to being a lower quality of “greatness” to receive less attention, but most the time we find honor in receiving a positively guided name and carry it with satisfaction.

When given a name that puts us into a negative light, we either to one of two things; one, try to prove them wrong and that the title does not describe you at all or two, find it as a challenge to become such a foul being. You become a person that will either “show them what _____ is” or try to change. It will either bring you back to our original state and then some to try and be better then the terrible title someone has bestowed upon you or turn you completely and utter revolting.

As for a name, we are obviously blessed with the name our parents gave us to try and give us some direction. Under that title of being relatives, what defines one as a person is the name that society gives you. We are constantly judged and challenged to be, like a character in a play, something we normally wouldn’t be to either fulfill a name or completely reject the name. 

Exposition to The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, A Memoir by Bill Bryson

            In the story The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, A Memoir by Bill Bryson the exposition revolves mainly around the time period that it is set in. It is stressed mainly on the fact that it is set in the 1950s. Often times when you get a visual picture of the 1950s from a dressing perspective but from reading this you find there is much more to it. Bill Bryson put in historical events to help the reader get the picture. He puts in information about the Korean War, what his parents had just gotten out of the Great Depression, and the gadgets that were just coming out for that time period.

            From the events the author gives it paints the picture of what was happening not only in the main characters life but also in the life of everyone’s in the world. No, he wasn’t living in Korea during this time period, but everyone knew something about the war. It was a common conversational topic. Just like listening to the baseball games in groups around a radio and ditching school for an inning in during. It was a social expectation to be into it during this time period.

Bringing in the Great Depression, it describes the way his parents were raised. He briefly explains how his mother would wash the paper plates, save every piece of food for left overs which they would eat constantly until it was gone, and that everything they owned, they had a certain amount of pride in it. He describes his parents as being conservative from the hard times they had experience before hand and being truly thankful for everything that they had now.

As far as the gadgets are concerned, nothing makes you feel more like a child then having to look up half the things the author describes. Being born in the mid 1990s, my knowledge of a “mimeograph, rotisserie, stenograph, icebox, dime stores, RZ Stor-Mor refrigerators” is little to none. Bill Bryson does a great job with describing just how different the 1950s were to the present day.