Big Lights, Bright City

            McInerney’s hit Bright Lights, Big City successfully uses 2nd person and the problems that city residents in 1980s America encountered in order criticize urban society and pull a lens of skepticism over the benefits of industrialization and consumerism. Furthermore, since the 1980s was an era of consumerism and uniformity in American history, much of Bright Lights, Big City is devoted to creating an authentic 1980s culture by integrating tabloid stories, urban decay, and drugs into crucial aspects of the narrative. McInerney uses 2nd person to reinforce this culture and to speak directly to the reader, using “you” to establish parallels between the situation of the readers and the narrator. For instance, McInerney’s narrator observes that, “You are the stuff of which consumer profiles—American Dream: Educated Middle-Class Model—are made. When you’re staying at the Plaza with your beautiful wife, doesn’t it make sense to order the best Scotch that money can buy before you go to the theater in your private limousine?” (McInerney 151). The narrator, therefore, not only gives the reader a brief overview of 1980s consumer culture, but he also invokes this culture to create purpose as his future in New York is crumbling and he strives to redefine himself. In this way, McInerney portrays 1980s consumer culture as an ethos that is imposed on the narrator and the reader just as McInerney imposes the situations in the book on the reader with a 2nd person narrative. Matt DelConte expands on this argument by observing:

McInerney's story… uses… [2^nd person]… to emphasize an existence dictated from the outside, an appropriate and effective narrative mode considering the novel's critique of the consumer culture of the 1980s…. The experience of the 80s is one imposed from the outside, an ambiguous presence of media/culture prescribing your desires and expectations; the novel exposes that in the 80s free choice was illusory. Second-person narration exemplifies this cultural climate, for it manifests in narrative technique the notion that someone or something outside of yourself dictates your thoughts and actions. (DelConte)

Furthermore, the idea that free choice in the 1980s is illusory parallels the claims made by Benjamin Barber in Consumed, entailing that the situation of infantilization by markets created by media and society in the 21st century is similar to consumerism in the 1980s.

By implicitly examining society in the 1980s, McInerney can relate to and help people struggling with the chaos of urbanization, making Bright Lights, Big City a sensation just as J. D. Sallinger’s Catcher in the Rye became a sensation after examining the troubles of teens in the 1940s and 50s. Furthermore, McInerney uses binary opposition to criticize American society in the 1980s by portraying the morally corrupt side of urbanization and juxtaposing it with traditional cultures and faiths. For instance, the narrator encounters a religious Hasidim and Rastafarian in New York’s subway and observes that, “He believes he is one of God’s chosen, whereas you feel like an integer in a random series of numbers… Sometimes you feel like the only man in the city without group affiliation” (McInerney 57). McInerney’s comparison of traditional religious values with the supposedly atheist urbanism that developed in cities in the 1980s reveals the desire American’s felt to belong to a group. The narrator endorses the desire to belong in a group by envying the simplistic and straightforward lifestyle of religious figures like Hasidim, indicating that urban residents were searching for a reprieve from the chaos of urbanism that people in cities needed to maintain their consumer lifestyles. The popularity of Bright Lights, Big City, therefore, was most likely caused by the relative ease that Americans related to the problems encountered by the narrator, such as the narrator’s anxiety over being alone in society. By revealing this double-edged sword, McInerney comments on the corrupting nature of consumerism, implying that consumerism traps people with cheap and abundant goods and matching the arguments of writers like Neil Postman and Benjamin Barber.

Works Cited

DelConte, Matt. “Why You Can't Speak: Second-Person Narration, Voice, and a New         Model for Understanding Narrative” Style. Vol. 37 No. 2 (2003). Questia. Web. 9         April 2014.

McInerney, Jay. Bright Lights, Big City. New York: Vintage Books, 1984. Print.

Catcher in the Rye Reaction

            Although Holden Caulfield and his tendency to pathologically lie allows J. D. Salinger to explore instances in which teenagers respond to conformity, Holden’s tendency to lie also helps explore 1950’s society and even adults’ response to conformity. Holden struggles not only to define himself better during the course of The Catcher in the Rye, but he also struggles to define adulthood and the responsibilities that accompany it. Furthermore, Holden’s tendency to lie makes his observations and definitions of adulthood and society amorphous since Salinger constructs Holden as an outright unreliable narrator. For instance, Holden knows he is a pathological liar, and he tells the reader that he lies after lying about Mrs. Morrow’s son to her for awhile when he explains, “Then I started reading the timetable I had in my pocket. Just to stop lying. Once I get started, I can go on for hours if I feel like it. No kidding. Hours” (Salinger 58). In this instance of Holden lying, Salinger not only constructs Holden as an unreliable narrator that lies to create conflict and test adults, but Holden’s observation that he can choose to lie without looking to the consequences of lying demonstrates that he refuses to conform. Furthermore, Holden’s tendency to lie also constructs him as an unreliable citizen. Since people in a society depend on the honesty of everyone else in order to live out normal days without complications (for instance, I must assume that teachers are conveying some level of truth to me during school just as I assume that my neighborhood Publix is not lying about the price of milk), Holden is complicating social interactions and preying on individual’s trust. Salinger’s use of lying to demonstrate society’s tendency to trust people expands on post-WWII social thought that reflects the destruction of individuals' faith in society that Hitler and his concentration camps caused.

            Salinger’s portrayal of Holden as a frequent liar also establishes connections between Holden as a character and Salinger’s own life as a writer. By constructing Holden as a frequent liar, Salinger creates a way of revolting against the social and writing order, using an unreliable narrator to tell a story studded with experimental and post-modern aspects. After New York’s Morgan Library released 9 letter written by 22 year-old J.D. Salinger, researchers like Jimmy So observed that, “J.D. Salinger founded adolescent angst, so what a relief to learn that he himself was a mimic of Holden Caulfield,” (So). The Catcher in the Rye, therefore, might directly represent ways in which Salinger revolted against the social order and continues to revolt through writing in an experimental manner. Moreover, Salinger puts Holden in many familiar situations for modern teenagers. After Holden is unable to order Scotch because of the waiter’s distrust of his age, Holden observes that, “I didn’t hold it against him though. They lose their jobs if they get caught selling to a minor. I’m a goddam minor” (Salinger 70). Holden’s exchange with the waiter demonstrates that not only is lying a weak strategy to achieve goals, but that people, especially teenagers, who lie often end up lying during situations in which they cannot get out of without hurting themselves or others. Holden’s tendency to lie, therefore, stands as a reminder of the costs of trying too hard to conform in society. Furthermore, Holden’s tendency to lie and shift his goals indicates that Holden is not trying to find his authentic self, but is instead only a simple narrator with little purpose other than to tell his story. Holden recounts at the end of the book that, “D. B. asked me what I thought about all this stuff I just finished telling you about. I didn’t know what the hell to say. If you want to know the truth, I don’t know what to think about it. I’m sorry I told so many people about it” (Salinger 213-4). Not only does Holden not succeed in finding his self or learning from his story, but Holden’s lack of purpose also hints that the book was written more for Salinger’s personal help. Therefore, by defining ways in which teenagers attempt to conform, Salinger tries to understand his past in addition to helping others understand their own teenage difficulties.

Works Cited

Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991.

So, Jimmy. “Was Salinger a Phony?” Newsweek 26 April, 2013. Print.

We Didn't Always Live in a Castle

            Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle utilizes the destruction of the family unit as a postmodern element through the constant symbolism of the living Blackwood house and Merricat’s interaction and internal dialogue with the house itself. Although it is very clear that the Blackwood family unit has already been destroyed when Merricat murdered its family members, the symbolism of the house stands to demonstrate the effect of the broken family unit as well as the ways in which Merricat and Constance can keep aspects of the destroyed family alive. As Thelma Shinn observes, “the abstractions of safety, protectivity, and acceptance are concretized in a house… As these houses provide protection for the young women who live in them, they produce fear in others… thereby both increasing the protection and attesting to their own reality. Despite its attractions, choosing such private insanity is indeed choosing death over life” (Shinn 54). Jackson utilizes the protection of the house to symbolize the double-edged benefits of safety since the house protects but also shelters its inhabitants from the outside world. Furthermore, Jackson does not place the theme of death immediately inside the Blackwood house after the murders, but rather chooses to have death follow Merricat through the story. Beginning with the scene in which Merricat wishes to see all the villagers in the grocery store, “lying there crying with the pain and dying,” (Jackson 9) Jackson makes it very clear that Merricat imagines death and will most likely cause a death at some point later in the novel. However, although the reader learns that Merricat is actually the murderer that put the arsenic in the sugar, figurative deaths occur throughout the novel that indicate that Merricat wants, and causes, death for the Blackwood family unit.

            Merricat’s mentally unstable tendencies not only make her an unreliable narrator, but the violence and death that surround her entails that she has very little power over her thoughts, her wishes or her actions. Her own tendencies to perpetually follow regimented schedules to maintain the house and the Blackwood property create a paradoxical set of values in which Merricat desires to maintain the house and the idea of family that it represents, but later destroys the house with fire and reveals that she killed the majority of its inhabitants. Furthermore, even though Merricat caused Uncle Julian to become disabled, she constantly thinks that she should be nicer to him; therefore, Jackson makes it very clear that although Merricat’s actions have great impact on the family, Merricat has little power over her own actions. This point regarding the power of children over their actions is reinforced by Thelma Shinn’s observations that, “The awareness of violence is omnipresent; but, while the women externalize it and try to remain in perpetual childhood within protective houses, only the children can acknowledge the savagery… Children, Jackson realizes, have no social power” (Shinn 76). Furthermore, Merricat uses the house and her actions as magical deterrents of bad things like the villagers or Charles; however, since none of her magic works, her failures only provoke her to try more dangerous deterrents until she finally burns the house down by dumping Charles’s pipe into a trashcan of newspapers. Merricat’s dependence on the broken house to reject bad influences demonstrates a larger social message about parenting in general. Jackson indicates, somewhat, that although it is the duty of the family (represented by the house) to guard their children, the children must venture outside their protective houses or risk destroying the family once the outside world rushes in (Merricat and the villagers destroy the house after 18 years of sheltering).

            The character of Charles is a constant reminder of the threat of the outside world if people remain within their protective houses for too long. However, the protective house and Constance gradually allow the outside world to enter with Charles, but this introduction is truly too late since Merricat rejects the outside world by perceiving that, “the house was not secure just because Charles had gone out of it and into the village; for one thing Constance had given him a key to the gates… He doesn’t belong in this house” (Jackson 74). Merricat even relies on the house to protect her from Charles, even though it was the house that allowed Charles in, by thinking that, “asking Charles to go away was the next thing to do, before he was everywhere in the house and could never be eradicated. Already the house smelled of him, of his pipe and his shaving lotion, and the noise of him echoed in the rooms all day long… I hoped that the house, injured, would reject him by itself” (Jackson 78). However, the arrival of Charles is only an introduction to the outside world, but the sudden destruction of the house by the villagers is the inevitable rush that destroyed the family. Angela Hague’s conclusion about the novel supports the argument that Charles is merely the calm before the storm by stating that Jackson’s novel, "is an extended narrative about the inability of the home to protect its inhabitants against invasive destruction, both psychological and physical… Charles… arrives to disrupt the ritualized domesticity of the family members, and his psychological invasion is completed by the physical destruction of the house” (Hague 1). As a result, it is not the villagers or Charles who destroy the Blackwood family unit, but rather the innocent and sheltered Blackwood sisters who allow time to degrade their family until the house is too weak to protect them.

Works Cited

Hague, Angela. "A Faithful Anatomy of Our Times: Reassessing Shirley Jackson.”

 Frontiers - A Journal of Women's Studies 26.2 (2005): 1. Print.

Jackson, Shirley. We Have Always Lived in the Castle. New York: The Penguin Group, 2006.        Print.

Shinn, Thelma J. Radiant Daughters: Fictional American Women. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986. Print.

Satirizing Persuasion or Persuading with Satire?

            Although Austen’s Persuasion follows complex relationships that become a large focus of the novel by its conclusion, Austen’s extensive use of irony, exaggeration, and wit to point out moral wrongs occurring in her early 19^th century society demonstrate that Austen uses satire as a genre and not simply a method. During the time period Austen wrote Persuasion, the changes occurring to the early industrial nation of Britain produced dramatic changes to the social order as early industrialists, merchants, government officials, and military men created enormous fortunes off of the expanse of the new market. Furthermore, Austen’s satirizing of the old social order with Sir Elliot adds richness to the social circumstances that began to threaten the privileged classes of Britain. Austen characterizes Sir Elliot as a selfish and vain individual who, “never took up any book but the Baronetage… [in which] he could read his own history with an interest which never failed” (Austen 1). However, Sir Elliot is ironically not able to uphold his responsibilities as a baronet, the title he holds dearly, and Captain Wentworth, a hardworking and new breed of gentleman, ends up surpassing him in wealth and merit. Austen directly comments on the irony of this circumstance by stating that, “Captain Wentworth, with his five-and-twenty thousand pounds, and as high in his profession as merit and activity could place him… was now esteemed quite worthy to address the daughter of a foolish, spendthrift baronet, who had not had the principle or sense enough to maintain himself in the position in which Providence had placed him” (Austen 185). Austen’s almost invective style of satirizing Sir Elliot demonstrates her disapproval of his destruction of the traditions evolving with Anne and Captain Wentworth, revealing the larger social tensions that existed in Britain during early industrialization. Moreover, Wentworth’s ability to overtake Sir Elliot in status is a symptom of the changes from war and industrialization that were taking place in Britain in the 1800s. As a result, Sir Elliot’s disapproval of the Navy as, “the means of bring persons of obscure birth into undue distinction, and raising men to honours which their father s and grandfathers never dreamt of,” demonstrates Austen’s satirizing of the hypocrisy of the old limits to social mobility (Austen 13). Austen implies that although Sir Elliot is an incredibly vain and selfish individual who goes to great lengths to ensure his happiness, he disapproves of allowing others to pursue the same happiness and wealth he enjoys through more arduous means. Therefore, Persuasion reveals the deeper conflict and moral corruption that developed in privileged society during Britain’s period of early industrialization.

Austen’s Persuasion continually uses situational irony, hypocrisy, and even invectives to demonstrate her support of the revival of older traditions by an evolved class of gentlemen. Despite Austen’s critique of her society’s practice of retrenching, which is the practice Sir Elliot is forced to do in which he lives modestly to pay off debts gained from living lavishly, Persuasion actually supports the gentlemanly traditions of the privileged classes. Anne, Austen’s main character, is conscious of class and has a certain amount of pride in her standing at Kellynch Hall, which entails that Austen does not think the class system should be abolished but rather updated without being inhibited by the old, landed aristocracy. Anne’s disapproval of having Mrs. Clay marry Sir Elliot and her discontent that her respected family must live in rented city rooms away from Kellynch Hall demonstrate that Austen still supports the class system. Austen supports class consciousness by directly stating that, “Anne would have been more thankful to ascertain… her father’s not being in love with Mrs. Clay,” (Austen 106) and that, “she must sigh that her father should feel no degradation in his change; should see nothing to regret in the duties and dignity of the resident land-holder” (Austen 100). Therefore, although Austen uses various satirical techniques to condemn and make fun of the vain abuse of privilege and tradition, Anne’s habits and the distinctions made between Sir Elliot and Anne entail that Austen still largely supports the caste system and opposes the irrational use of its provisions. David Groves and his article on social satire in Persuasion best summarizes Austen’s views in stating that Persuasion is, “conservative in its implied moral perspective, yet its satirical energy is constantly challenging readers to differentiate between the useless… self-serving conservatism of… Sir Walter, and the humane… concerned conservatism of Anne” (Groves 1). As a result, Austen’s use of satire as a genre to shape Persuasion adds a new layer of observations of the social status of 1800s society that enriches the book as a whole.

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Persuasion. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1997. Print.

Groves, David. Knowing One’s Species Better: Social Satire in “Persuasion”.                   Edinburgh, Scotland: Jane Austen Society of North America. Print.

Seriously, Where is this Movie Going?

           Although Joyce Carol Oates has praised Smooth Talk, the movie adaptation of her story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, for its representation of her story, there are aspects of the medium of movies that detract from the effectiveness of the story and Oates’s message. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? is a story that keeps certain aspects, such as the identity of the music that Connie perpetually plays, deliberately vague in order to add to the mysterious and uncertain path that Connie takes throughout the story. However, Smooth Talk takes the indirect discourse and the background symbols, such as the music, from Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? and distorts them so that the movie can be marketed, sold, and profited upon. First, the movie takes Oates's description of discussions between Connie and her mom and expands upon them. Although Smooth Talk has much more character development between Connie and her mom, the movie takes what was an unimportant part of the story and makes it important. For instance, I thought that Connie's encounter with Arnold Friend, not the character development between Connie and her family, contains the main part of Oates's message since statements like, "June did this, June did that, she saved money and helped clean the house and cooked and Connie couldn't do a

thing, her mind was all filled with trashy daydreams," demonstrate a quick establishment of relationships between characters (Oates 1). Also, around 75% of the movie is character development between Connie, her friends, and her family, while only 20% (1 and 1/2 out of around 8 pages) of the story contains similar character development. Second, the music is identifiable in Smooth Talk and no longer vague or playing perpetually as it is in the story. Since the music is present, identifiable, and not perpetually playing, the movie loses the symbol of music as 1960’s society and Connie’s religion. Oates makes the connection between music and religious zeal as Connie and her friends sat at the Big Boy and, “listened to the music that made everything so good: the music was always in the background, like music at a church service; it was something to depend upon” (Oates 1). Not only does the connection between music and religion enrich the social circumstances in which the story was written, but it also makes those circumstances relevant to Oates’s message and hints at deeper observations of society present in the story that are absent in the movie. Since Smooth Talk fails to represent these aspects of the story in the movie, it reshapes Oates's message to fit a 1980's rather than 1960's outlook on society.

As Oates used allusions to enrich her story with the social circumstances of the 1960's, Smooth Talk used allusions from the 1980's to recreate the story under different social circumstances. Oates’s choice to dedicate the story to and reference Bob Dylan, a folk singer and hero during the 1960’s, enriched the social setting of the story by giving readers a concrete source of inspiration present in Dylan’s song “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, which is mainly about letting go of the past and moving on in life. Although Smooth Talk uses some references to Bob Dylan (such as having Arnold say, “My sweet little blue-eyed girl,” to Connie before she leaves with him), the presence of a lot of music by James Taylor, especially the songs “Handy Man” and “Is That the Way You Look?”, significantly detract from any connections that were made to Bob Dylan in the story (Oates 9). Not only was Taylor a whole different breed of musical artist embracing fast paced rock and roll and not folk music, but his music also represented a later generation of youth that characterizes the era in which the movie was made (1980’s) much more than Oates’s story. Smooth Talk further detaches the story’s social message from the actual social circumstances that the message was created during when a new conclusion was created in order to finalize the story. Although it is obvious that the story’s conclusion was not filmable because of its vagueness and lack of closure, the addition of a new ending recast the message in the spirit of the 1980’s. In the ending of Smooth Talk, Connie becomes a resolute woman characteristic of a 1980’s feminist following her experience with Arnold, which opposes Oates’s characterizing of Connie as an uncertain girl who concedes to Arnold as the story ends. As Oates explains in Brenda O. Daly’s critical essay, “Laura Dern’s Connie is no longer ‘my’ Connie at the film’s conclusion; she is very much alive, assertive, strong-willed—a girl, perhaps of the mid 1980s and not of the mid 1960s” (Daly 149). Furthermore, as the story was transformed into a movie, most of the allusions that Oates made with Friend’s appearance, the “Death and the Maiden” title, and allusions to other writers were lost. Brenda O. Daly explains in her critical essay An Unfilmable Conclusion: Joyce Carol Oates at the Movies that the allegorical allusions from, “Friend’s Satanic appearance and Connie’s role as ‘Everyman’…, Oates’s allusion to Dickinson,… Bob Dylan’s ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’,… and Yeat’s ‘Leda and the Swan’… are, understandably, lost in the film” (Daly 147).  Therefore, although Oates approved of Smooth Talk’s adaptation of her story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, the movie was not able to repeat some of the effects that Oates was able to create in her written story because of the limits of the movie medium itself.

Daly, Brenda O. "An Unfilmable Conclusion: Joyce Carol Oates at the Movies." The Journal of    Popular Culture 23.3 (1989): 101-14. Print.

Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where are you going, where have you been?” New Brunswick, N.J:             Rutgers University Press, 1994. Print.

Where is Connie Going?

            Oates’ Where are You Going, Where Have You Been? appeared to me as a critique of modern society and the result of industrialization with the purpose of pointing out flaws in modern parenting tendencies. As a result of technological advancement and the rise of an urban lifestyle in America, the obligations of children have evolved so that, unlike children of past generations, the only real obligations children in the present have are to attend school. For instance, children were typically relied on heavily for labor during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, working in coal mines, textile mills and family farms to bring in much needed money and food for their families. Moreover, children of past generations became apprentices in order to continue the family business with an informal, but specialized, education and stay close to their families. However, since most children now only feel the obligation to attend school and possibly go to college, many have shattered the old ideology of maintaining the family business by moving far away from home or by becoming fiercely individualized. Oates represents this by demonstrating the dysfunctional nature of Connie’s family, starting with a mother who constantly scolds Connie, “Why don’t you keep your room clean like your sister? How’ve you got your hair fixed—what the hell stinks? Hair spray? You don’t see your sister using that junk” (Oates 1). The insignificant topic of the successive questions that Connie’s mother asks indicates that Connie neither listens to nor cares about what her mother is saying, which clearly demonstrates a failure in parental discipline and a lack of mother-daughter connection within the family. Furthermore, Connie’s father also fails to maintain discipline since her, “father was away at work most of the time and when he came home he wanted supper and he read the newspaper at supper and after supper he went to bed” (Oates 1). Since Connie’s family becomes more dysfunctional, her parents become more lenient with what Connie does as Connie lacks the self-restraint to control herself until the Sunday Arnold Friend arrives at her house. On that Sunday, “Connie got up at eleven—none of them bothered with church—and washed her hair so that it could dry all day long in the sun” (Oates 2). The fact that her family does not go to church is significant because it demonstrates that she does not conform to the Protestant work ethic, which largely entails that idleness will allow the devil into Connie’s life. Oates then uses Arnold Friend to represent the devil and the consequences for Connie’s idleness in order to demonstrate the failure of modern society to teach its children despite surrounding them with teachers for eight hours a day and five days a week. Gretchen Schulz and R. J. R. Rockwood make an argument similar to mine by establishing a connection between the situations and morals of common fairy tales and the situations in Oates’ story.

Although Schulz and Rockwood make a compelling connection between fairy tales and the events in Joyce Carol Oates’ Where are You Going, Where Have You Been? in their essay In Fairyland, without a Map, their argument that fairy tales would be substantially beneficial to Connie and children of her generation is flawed. First, the connection between fairy tales and Oates’ Where are You Going, Where Have You Been? is very strong. On top of all the parallels in the events and ideologies of Oates’s story and the fairy tales, it is very likely that Oates dedicated Where are You Going, Where Have You Been? to Bob Dylan because he is a folk singer. Schulz and Rockwood note the connection between Oates and folk fantasy by observing that in her story, “Again and again she presents characters and situations which parallel corresponding motifs from the world of folk fantasy. And never is this more true than in [Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?]” (Schulz & Rockwood 4). Dylan’s song “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” tells the story of lovers who have stopped loving each other, at which point Dylan serves as the voice of reason telling each to deal with the situation and move on. Dylan’s call to the lovers to move on and retake control of their lives parallels the common theme of Connie’s dysfunctional family and her lack of control over her future. However, Schulz and Rockwood attempt to extend their conclusion about fairy tales by claiming that, “the help provided by fairy tales proper is such that a child can learn to compensate even when adult society makes errors of the gravest sort, capping with a happy ending a situation which might otherwise prove tragic for the child” (Schulz & Rockwood 6). There are a few problems with this argument starting with the fact that the only real evidence that Schulz and Rockwood have to substantiate this claim is that, “Bruno Bettelheim argues that children’s fairy tales offer ‘symbolic images’ that suggest ‘happy solutions’ to the problems of adolescence” (Schulz & Rockwood 4). Although it helps to establish agreement between authors, this evidence is inadequate because it does not develop the credibility of Bruno Bettelheim and it inadequately covers the psychological claim that Schulz and Rockwood make. A claim that relies heavily on establishing the universal effectiveness of fairy tales in solving common social problems needs to be substantiated with evidence that contains more universal or standardized conclusions, such as a statistic cataloging the responses of children who have and have not been told fairy tales to similar societal problems. Furthermore, I would think that fairy tales would actually have very little to no effect on children’s responses to social problems because little attention would be paid to the details or moral of the story due to the relatively little experience children have to relate back to the story. Since most children lack the life experience prior to hearing a fairy tale, the story will largely be meaningless because each moral will only be able to be related to the corresponding, specific events the main character underwent, which would make the probability of unconscious recall of that specific scenario infinitesimal. Moreover, personal attitudes, habits, and beliefs are typically created by repeated experiences that can be made to interrelate with their perceived consequences; therefore, each fairy tale will most likely be swamped by multitudes of tangential social experiences that hold more weight due to their consequences. Ultimately, although it was interesting to read a psychological evaluation of a fictional character, there is almost always too little information contained within a fiction novel (or any novel for that matter) to accurately evaluate the psychological implications of fictional events.

Works Cited

Oates, Joyce Carol. "Where are you going, where have you been?" New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Print.

Gretchen Schulz and R. J. R. Rockwood (1980). In Fairyland, Without a Map: Connie’s Exploration Inward in Joyce Carol Oates’ ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’. Literature and Psychology, Print.

Consumed by Consumed by Benjamin Barber

Although Consumed made many enlightening and revealing arguments about the nature of capitalist competition, Benjamin Barber’s tone and writing habits detract from the effectiveness of the book. The most obvious and frustrating writing habit Barber has is that he surrounds his few good points by repetitive and unnecessary information. Instead of utilizing the 400 page space that Consumed takes up for synthesizing his clustered and disorganized ideas, Barber chose to extend the presentation of a good and easy to understand argument through meaningless repetition. During the chapter about globalization, Barber literally repeats the same basic claim that “globalization extends the effects of privatization” more than three times within the same paragraph:

Globalization effectively outsources privatization. That is to say, it takes the ideological claim that markets could be sovereign… and globalizes it. In the international arena… the argument for market sovereignty is unopposed. On the global level, the idea of the commonweal has no traction. (Barber 162)

Unfortunately for the reader, Barber harms the effectiveness of his argument in two ways. First, there is a direct tradeoff between the space Barber devotes to making arguments and the space he devotes to synthesizing the arguments he has already made. Therefore, since Barber utilizes Consumed as more of a ideological dumping ground, Consumed lacks much of the synthesis that is needed in order to construct quality arguments. Furthermore, the sheer amount of tangential topics that Consumed creates without clear synthesis or development of each individual tangent, such as his discussion on Freudian psychoanalysis, detracts substantially from the main ideas of the book. Second, without proper synthesis, Barber appears to change his idea of a viable solution from sustaining capitalist competition and civic engagement using government intervention to promoting corporate restraint and citizen action as an indirect way to reduce infantilization. Not only will this dramatic shift in the logical progression of Barber’s argument destroy the confidence that readers have in Barber’s message, but this shift will also persuade many readers to think that Barber offers little or no solutions because the new solutions do not depend on the same ideologies, problems, or political realities that Barber has been sustaining readers with for the majority of the first and second parts. For instance, Barber engages in an early discussion of the role of government in promoting capitalism after supporting the rationality of rational capitalists like John D. Rockefeller:

The balance between [monopoly and competition] was from time to time restored, both through liberal market ideology and government intervention on behalf of competition… In response to the market’s natural contradictions… the emerging democratic state played a balancing role that kept markets in check. As capitalism’s rapid growth created wealth faster than jobs, and promoted prosperity without redistributing it justly, the democratic state… saved capitalism from itself. Egoism found itself up against a civic community willing to enforce the rights of the public. (Barber 77-78)

Barber’s discussion of the merits of the civic community and the democratic state in sustaining capitalism voice a need for a directly involved democratic community in the policy decisions of the democratic state. The solutions Barber offer tend to shy away from altering the structure of the political landscape and, instead, simply favor enlightening individuals about the nature of and disadvantages to consumerism through practices such as cultural creolization or carnivalization. Furthermore, Barber encounters two big problems with utilizing solutions that have faith in the enlightenment of individuals. First, Barber has already spent the entirety of a 400 page book condemning and poking fun at the rationality of modern individuals, who happen to be the same people that he depends on for the success of his solutions. Second, Barber’s solutions have no enforcement mechanism or actor that could actually promote change in today’s corrupt system, which is mainly because Barber chooses not to expand his idea of utilizing government to institutionalize community participation in order to create a balance within capitalism. Moreover, if Barber chose to expand on this idea, there would be a much better synthesis of the ideas presented within Consumed and that solution would be viable enough to produce change. Through the analysis of Derick W. Brinkerhoff, governments function most efficiently after they sponsor and empower deliberative spaces (such as public forums) in order to funnel public opinion and solutions directly into the government’s policy making process:

[T]he most successful cases [of governance] are where participation becomes institutionalized. This allows for… civil… input [that is] continuously feeding back into new decisions. … Circumstances change continuously and it is important that disadvantaged groups have opportunities to keep on taking part in decisions about their country’s… fiscal posture. (Brinkerhoff 698)

Therefore, Barber has made all the arguments and logical connections that are necessary (or numerous enough) to make Consumed a great book that addresses pressing issues within any democracy while also creating many viable solutions. However, the lack of synthesis and continuity that Barber provides for his ideas detracts significantly from the effectiveness of the book in creating a valid address to the complex ideas of democratic and civic legitimacy.

Works Cited

Barber, Benjamin. Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2008. Print

Brinkerhoff, Derick W., and Arthur A. Goldsmith. "How citizens participate in macroeconomic policy: International experience and implications for poverty reduction." World Development 31.4 (2003): 685-701. Print.