I used “ Pagan Night” for blog post
2. The author uses the stereotype of drug addicted musicians to give the reader
a sense of who these people are. The
author talks about a uncared for baby, how they sell their stuff for money that
they use for drugs, and uses specific language such as “when she has a dollar
fifty” to suggest that sometimes she does not even have a dollar fifty which is
not a lot of money, and that she gets
rides places; therefore, we are to assume that they are poor, drug addicted, musicians
who don’t care for their child. From there, the reader fills in the gaps with
their experience with poor people, drug addicts, people who don’t care for
their child, and since people usually associate these things with negative
emotions, the ideal reader is intended to not like the characters: at least
right off the back.
The author begins to talk about how
Daltan can not stand the baby crying, so Sonny has to go on long walks to keep
the baby away from him; and she is afraid if she can not keep the baby quiet
than Daltan will leave her. The story also talks about the different strange
ways Sonny tries to take care of the babies rashes. Daltan getting so mad when
his baby cries further reveals his personality and exposes him as not very
intelligent and irrational. The author draws on the cultural norm of how babies
should be taken care of, I know absolutely nothing about babies, I have never
even been around one, but I know that using lipstick on a baby for its rashes
is probably not a smart thing to do. However, even though Sonny is taking care
of the baby in a way that most would deem wrong, the act of trying to do
something for the baby suggests that on some level she does care for the baby
and the author begins to manipulate the reader into caring for sonny to; the
author then simultaneously draws on the cultural perspective that men should be
the providers for their family to make us not like Daltan even more, for he is
failing to provide for his family. We then fill in the gap and assume that they
can not afford diapers because they are wasting all their money on drugs.
The story about Johnny Mohawk I
think reveals to us Sonny’s thought process and suggests what she does with the
baby at the end. Johnny Mohawk was really drunk and fell when trying to hop
onto a train which resulted in him being impaled. Daltan then explains that it
was the best thing that ever happened to him, for he would have ended up a
drunk degenerate like the rest of his family. But instead, he got government
aid for education and ended up a success.
This story could only serve 1 of two purposes; it was either a way to
further illustrate Daltan’s character by exposing what his friends are like, or
it was put there because it explains how these people think. Out of this
tragedy, Johnny Mohawks life turned around, and he is a financial success. He
has half a body, but he has money now so to them that was a happy story. I
think sonny will use this rationale to convince herself to kill her baby; out
of that tragedy, her life will turn around for the better and she will make it.
I think the Narrator in this story is
objective and bias. The narrator is telling the story as if an outsider looking
into what is happening, hence the narrator is objective; however, the narrator
also seems to have a bias in favor of Sonny.
Brandon,
ReplyDeleteI think you're right with regard to Dalton -- a stereotype of a character whom we learn all we need to know (or think we need to know) about him with the revelation of a few key details. Sunny, though, doesn't feel a stereotype to me. She reads as the proverbial fence-sitter -- she's got one leg in her old world (though this world has probably always been Dalton's, and Sunny only a tagalong) and one in the new land of motherhood. But then, this is simply a personal reading.