Essay #5: Final Capstone Essay for 200 Points: Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life and Gogol’s “The Overcoat”:
Option One. Develop an argumentative thesis that compares the quest for identity in Wolff’s memoir and Gogol’s "The Overcoat." Consider maladaptation and the chimera as traps resulting from the search for identity.
Option Two. A wise man once said, having a chimera will kill you, but not having a chimera will also kill you. Develop an argumentative thesis that shows how this saying applies to Wolff’s memoir and Gogol’s "The Overcoat."
Option Three. Develop an argumentative thesis that compares the theme of self-destructive chimera, American Dream facade, and deformed masculinity as they are evident in Wolff's memoir This Boy's Life and the 1999 film American Beauty.
Study Questions: Appearances and Self-Betrayal
One. How does Norma’s phony married life inform the memoir’s theme of image over substance?
Wolff begins the memoir with the following Oscar Wilde quote:
“The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second is, no one has yet discovered.” What does this quote mean?
We are so obsessed with putting up an image of ourselves to others and ourselves that we have forgotten to have any content. We are full of fluff but empty on substance. We are a mirage to others and ourselves. We prefer image over substance. This is an ongoing theme in the memoir.
This “pose” was captured no better than by French philosopher Blaise Pascal in the Penees:
We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness, or generosity, or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence. We would rather separate them from ourselves to join them to it; and we would willingly be cowards in order to acquire the reputation of being brave. A great proof of the nothingness of our being, not to be satisfied with the one without the other, and to renounce the one for the other! For he would be infamous who would not die to preserve his honour.
Evidence of preferring image over substance:
Living for others’ approval and esteem
Self-abnegation (sacrificing one’s identity to conform to a script that one deems is venerated or approved by society)
Death (forgetting who one really is and not being able to retrieve that original self is a form of death)
Point of no return (succumbing to image for so long that one has no reference point of authenticity. As a result, one doesn’t understand what it means to be real. Therefore, one has reached the point of no return.)
Self-destruction (when we bury our self in the fluff of image, we have unharnessed energy that impeded from finding expression festers into poison, turns inward, and kills its host)
Addiction: A life of image creates a constant hunger for approval that can never be sated. To escape this constant, gnawing hunger, people resort to addictive behavior, digging their nose into their smartphone screen as they check their social media status even when it endangers themselves and others while their driving.
Danger of Living for Image: The Chanel No. 5 Moment
When we perceive that others value us for our image, we live in a trap of feeding our vanity.
Vanity is insatiable. We can never satisfy our cravings for vanity.
Once we’re on the vanity treadmill, we find we’re in a non-sustainable mind loop: The more people feed our vanity with praise, the more we crave people’s praise.
Vanity is a narcissistic enterprise: The fantasy and delusion that we are the center of the universe.
Advertising appeals to our vanity.
Perfume commercials play on the narcissistic fantasy that we are the center of the universe.
There is something called the Chanel No. 5 Moment.
There are people whose lives are enduring the intervals between one Chanel No. 5 Moment and another.
Two. Discuss theme of acclimation to misery and hell.
Whey do we choose our hellish existence over a better life?
Fear of Change
Many of us live in some kind of hell. We feel trapped, we feel stagnant, we feel unable to change, we feel unable to change, we feel the crippling effects of learned helplessness.
Many of us don’t consider that the hell we live in is a choice, is a self-imposed condition, and is a preference to a better life.
We often choose the stagnation of non-change and the hell it produces because the alternative is far more terrifiying.
What is the alternative? Freedom and change.
Freedom and change scare us so much that many of us will live in our current self-imposed hell.
The hell we know doesn’t scare us as much as the Unknown.
Freedom and change means embracing uncertainty.
Sadly, many choose the certainty of their hellish existence.
Tobias Wolff’s mother is an example of the above.
Change is more painful that our current hell in the short-term.
Consider change is more painful than stagnation evidenced by the Adam 12 episode.
Desensitization and Acclimation
Another reason we choose to stay in our hellish existence is that we have powers of acclimation and adaptation, which allow us to become numb to our private hell. This numbness is called desensitization.
One of our adaptive qualities is being able to acclimate to pain and suffering. However, if we misuse our adaptive qualities to stay in a condition that is bad for us we are not using adaptation. Rather, we are using maladaptation.
Ruled by Irrational Passions
Often we can escape our hell, but we choose to stay in it because our ego fools us. Our ego leads us to believe that we are entitled to be bitter and miserable because we have been “short-changed.” Life has treated us unfairly so we are entitled to be bitter and miserable. Such a position is a result of the irrational passion of egotistical bitterness.
A doctor’s wife left him for another doctor and the bereaved doctor chose to be miserable for the rest of his life even though he had all the resources available to him to lead a happy life. He made the mistake of seeing his being abandoned and betrayed as a “unique event” that had only happened to him. Because he suffered a “unique event,” he convinced himself that he had to spend the rest of his life in misery, bitterness, and hell.
Three. How does the memoir address class determinism?
Defining Class
Tobias Wolff spends his childhood in Concrete, Washington. The city name screams working class.
When we talk about class, we're not really talking about earning power as a sign of upward class mobility. Earning power is part of class, but is actually only a small part of it.
Another idea of class in America is the idea of mobility and ascent. When we climb the ladder, we use the term arriviste or upstart to describe someone who has gone from "rags to riches."
Part of the American Dream of upward class mobility is going to college and getting a bachelor's degree. Americans see college as a ticket to moving from a lower class to a higher class. We find, though, that less than 14% community college students transfer to college and get a bachelor's. Therefore, this American Dream is not as "easy pickings" as we'd often like to believe. The American Dream is hardly the low hanging fruit that's free for the taking like it was post World War II through the late 1970s for privileged white people.
Getting to the Heart of Social Class: Perception and Identity
Aside from going up the economic ladder and defining class in sheer numbers, social class is more about identity and the way others perceive us in terms of our rank or status.
So what we are really talking about is a particular type of American class status, the ranking system that exists uniquely in America. How people perceive us in the American ranking system, and how we perceive ourselves, defines our class.
We are dependent on validation and often addicted to flattery, so we rely on status cues or status symbols to receive the validation and flattery we crave.
Being able to afford first-class airline tickets is not just about luxury; it's about asserting one's privilege over the "common folk" sardined together in coach.
Material possessions also often point to this flattery. For example, a "Platinum" or "Limited" edition car makes us feel special, better, and privileged. And we want others to see this special designation on our car's nameplate.
Social Class and the Shame Factor
Mythology feeds a lot of our ideas about social class. For example, the rich, according to mythology, are rich because of their alleged superior character. They got rich because they were disciplined, hard-working, and willing to sacrifice.
Poor people are poor, the mythology goes, because of bad character such as laziness and bad choices.
In other words, we attribute virtue to the rich and exact shame on those who lack earning power. For example, some schools give "shame sandwiches" to students who are behind in their payments.
To be judged as poor is equivalent to being consigned to the hell of ostracism, shame, and stigmatization. Poverty is not just a monetary state but a psychological state as well.
Class Privilege, Whiteness, and the Uppity Factor
During times of slavery and Jim Crow, the United States was racially segregated. Therefore, for many years the idea of social class was based on "whiteness" or white privilege. Aspiring to "be white," that is molding oneself on stereotypes of "desirable white behaviors," for many decades was a sign of class. This thing we call whiteness has a certain pretentiousness, hauteur, grandiosity, superciliousness, privilege and entitlement in creating this aura of being "uppity" and "bourgie," a truncated version of the word bourgeoisie and pronounced boo-zhee.
To be uppity and pretentious was to study the body language and linguistic codes of white privilege.
To be uppity, a person of white privilege did not only disdain people of different ethnicities and races. The white uppity snob also scorned uneducated white people, who were deemed "peasants" or docile sheep or "trailer trash."
Class Continues to Flourish Even in the Aftermath of Jim Crow
Thankfully, there are huge swaths in America today where racism and Jim Crow are correctly deemed low class, ignorant and morally abominable. However, even in these forward thinking educated areas of America, class status not only persists but flourishes.
Americans of all races are obsessed with the codes that make up social class, the hierarchy or ranking system by which we judge our fellow Americans. Knowingly or not, we use a set of codes to ascribe class rank on others and ourselves.
The 6 Class Codes
The six major class codes that rank us in America's hierarchy system are the following:
One. Your zip code:
According to Paul Fussell, the higher the concentration of bowling alleys in a zip code, the lower the class ranking. Another sign of low social ranking is a zip code in which daycare centers are ten feet away from "gentleman's clubs."
Two. Your education rank:
Your education is evidenced by not only your diploma but your body language, speech cadence and inflection, vocabulary, your sphere of travel, and your grasp of irony.
Education is also evidenced by speaking many languages, being well traveled, and showing exceptional talent in the arts such as music, painting, and writing.
Three. Your professional designation:
Terms such as blue-collar ascribe working or lower class. White-collar ascribes upper or middle class. One of the highest classes is the creative class, a term popularized by writer Richard Florida. Creating software and computer apps or being a professor at a prestigious university are examples of the creative class. Working in the arts, media, and design are other examples.
Four. Your tastes in art, music, entertainment, fashion, transportation, and leisure:
Class is more than earning power. It is revealed in our tastes. Are our tastes cultivated, current, and educated, and nuanced? Or are they tacky? Tacky is a word associated with low class. Other similar words to describe low class taste are crass, gauche, gaudy, uncouth, unctuous, vulgar, tawdry, and if you want to show off your education, you can use the Russian word poshlost, which means vulgar banality or something that is produced with huge effort to show off but is grotesque and without imagination or humanity. Some people have used the word poshlost to describe vulgar people who define themselves only by their material possessions. Such people are also called philistines.
Overdone plastic surgery is an example of poshlost or ugly vulgarity.
Five. Your use of language:
Your vocabulary, cadence, inflection, intonation, lilt, and accent (not necessarily dependent on going to college; you could be autodidactic) are all part of linguistic code you use that determines your social class. Casually using words like interstitial, hauteur, verisimilitude, sycophantic, and synecdoche evidences someone of an educated and therefore higher class.
Six. Your grasp of irony:
Irony is the wry, sly, and sometimes sarcastic orientation of the educated cosmopolitan, the person who is a connoisseur of life's absurdities, contradictions, and ironic reversals. As a connoisseur of irony, the high-class cosmopolitan is not shocked by life's absurdities, but greets them with an expected sly grin.
Connoisseurs of irony are also experts at subtle self-deprecation, which gives the implicit message that they are too intelligent to take vanity and self-aggrandizement seriously even though their constant self-deprecation can often be an earnest attempt at being morally superior to those who don't efface themselves with equal rigor.
Conclusion About Class
Where you live, what degree of education you have, what kind of job you have, how you dress, and entertain yourself, and how you speak all are part of the class code by which our fellow Americans judge and rank us according to the hierarchy system.
Seven. What are the distinguishing characteristics of the middle class and why does the boy Tobias long to live in it?
They are inclined to pay each other compliments as a way of reinforcing middle-class standards, values, and aesthetics.
They are the most insecure of all the classes because they constantly fear they may fail in their middle-class performance and go down the social class elevator.
They are obsessed with manners, modesty, and etiquette so as to be perceived as “classy” and “good role models for the community.” For example, a domestic argument wouldn’t hit high decibels; in contrast, a working-class or proletarian argument can escalate into an ear-piercing maelstrom or ruckus.
They are eager to conform to society’s scripts for what constitutes a “decent family” and “achieving the American Dream.”
For Tobias Wolff, being a member of the middle class is the American Dream.
Eight. How is class imprinted on us?
Consider tribal imprinting and its effect on demeanor, language, and aspirations.
Consider Tobias’ brother, a Princeton student, being a class influence.
Consider TW’s new identity on page 276.
Consider the class differences on page 259.
Lesson #3: Evaluating Sources
“A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.” Alfred, Lord Tennyson
One. What are the 3 ways we acquire information?
One, can discover it for ourselves.
Two, we can absorb information implicitly.
Three, we can be told it explicitly.
In the latter case, we are dependent on the person’s expertise and reliability. We trust certain scientific data like there are oxygen molecules in water, or that the moon is comprised of 19% magnesium, or that the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, or that pasteurization kills bacteria or that certain vaccines reduce the risk of death for infants and toddlers.
We rely on ourselves to judge the credibility of our sources, alleged authorities, and credentialed experts.
Levitin writes: “Lying weasels who want to separate us from our money, or get us to vote against our own best interests, will try to snow us with pseudo-facts, confuse us with numbers that have no basis, or distract us with information that, upon closer examination, is not actually relevant. They will masquerade as experts.”
In other words, we have to distinguish legitimate information from the lies and deceit that flows from the mouths of charlatans, criminals, and mountebanks.
As an example, Levitin points out that one website makes the claim that listening to Mozart music 20 minutes a day will make you smarter. Another website denies this claim.
It’s human nature to want to believe in the claim, in spite of inadequate evidence, because it would be nice to believe it were true that doing something as easy as listening to Mozart music 20 minutes a day will make you smarter.
It would be nice to believe that a pill with no side effects would make you skinny or grow muscles.
It would be nice to believe that one book would give you 10 easy steps to go from an emotional wreck to a supremely confident, centered, disciplined human being.
It would be nice to know that if you followed a business guru on Twitter, you would soon gain thousands of followers and become rich and famous.
It would be nice to believe all sorts of things.
Liars take advantage of human gullibility coupled with wishful thinking to manipulate us.
Levitin uses the example of someone smart who gets manipulated by false information. When Steve Jobs got cancer, he didn’t get standard treatment because he wanted to try a special diet that he had read about on websites. The diet didn’t work and by the time he opted for standard medical treatment, it was too late; the cancer had progressed too far to be treated.
Being Sure Gets Us Into Trouble
Mark Twain is famous for saying, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
Ironically, Levitin has not been able to find any real proof that Mark Twain said this. In fact, the quote is actually taken from the less known writer Josh Billing.
Identifying Expertise
It’s hard to know who’s legit and who’s not.
And even legit sources are often wrong. For example, the US government was wrong about WMDs in Iraq and started a war that cost uncountable lives and trillions of dollars.
Legit experts do two things that frauds don’t do. First, legit experts review facts and evidence and synthesize them to form a conclusion.
Secondly, legit experts share their opinions and in essence are “peer reviewed.”
What is an expert?
An expert is someone has undertaken formal training, devoted a large amount of time to developing their expertise, and is esteemed by their peers.
Experts are often wrong, but not as wrong as non-experts.
The U.S. government keeps getting their nutrition wrong evidenced by ever revised food pyramids.
Business analysts often give their clients wrong stock investment advice.
Established business people often tell newcomers and inventors their ideas stink, but the newcomers and inventors become successful in spite of these experts’ wrongheadedness.
But it’s a logical fallacy to say that if Expert A gave bad advice, we should “clear the table” and accept advice from Non Experts B, C, and D.
For example, if the US government was wrong about some nutritional point or other, should be buy anti-fungal supplements from Alex Jones, a political pundit, who is making the claim on his YouTube channel that we are in the middle of a “fungal epidemic”?
Source Hierarchy
We rank publications based on those who consult true experts and peer-reviewed articles. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal are examples of top tier publications.
The New York Post is considered a lower-tier publication based on its paucity of expert sources.
TMZ, a website, is considered low-tier because it emphasizes “being first” on the scoop than being accurate.
Website Domains Evidence Degree of Credibility
Three-digit suffix of the website’s URL indicates the domain.
.edu is nonprofit educational institutions.
.gov is for government agencies.
.org is nonprofit.
.mil is for military organizations.
.com is for commercial enterprises.
.net carries no restrictions.
For credibility, .edu, .gov, and .org are the highest because they presumably lack bias or commercial interests. However, you are not guaranteed a non-biased account of information.
As an example, Levitin notes that MartinLutherKing.org contains “a shameful assortment of distortions, anti-Semitic rants, and out-of-context quotes.” The site is run by Stormfront, a white-supremacy, neo-Nazi hate group. Clearly, Stormfront uses the words of the great Martin Luther King as a ruse of being champions of civil rights, but take a great man’s name and use it for their own hateful agendas.
Always check to see how old the post is. A lot of websites are abandoned and they leave their old, inaccurate information for everyone to see.
There are millions of random sites out there. If in doubt, stick to tried and true sources
Institution Bias
Sugar lobby, Almond Growers’ Association, and other special interest groups may fund “studies,” which advance those organizations’ agenda. Even highly trained scientists can be paid off.
Watch for Studies That Are Missing a Control Group
Levitin writes: “The so-called Mozart effect was discredited because the experiments, showing that listening to Mozart for twenty minutes a day temporarily increased IQ, lacked a control group. That is, one group of people was given Mozart to listen to, and one group of people was given nothing to do. Doing nothing is not an adequate control for doing something, and it turns out if you give people something to do—almost anything—the effect disappears. The Mozart effect wasn’t driven by Mozart’s music increasing IQ, it was driven by the boredom of doing nothing temporarily decreasing effective IQ.”
Levitin further exposes best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell’s inadequate claim.
We read: “Malcolm Gladwell spread an invalid conclusion in his book David and Goliath by suggesting that people with dyslexia might actually have an advantage in life, leading many parents to believe that their dyslexic children should not receive the educational remedies they need. Gladwell fell for the missing control condition. We don’t know how much more successful his chosen dyslexics might have been if they had been able to improve their condition.”
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