2-Part Blue Book Exam for Week 16
Compare a chimera that possessed you or someone you know to Akaky's chimera. Focus on the chimera's power to both elevate and crush the soul. Also compare the aftermath of the loss of the chimera.
Support your thesis with 4 paragraphs. No introduction or conclusion.
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.
Paragraph 1: Summarize "Overcoat."
Paragraph 2: Summarize This Boy's Life.
Paragraph 3: Develop a thesis about how the chimera is both a form of adaptation and maladaptation is this contradiction pertains to the short story and the memoir.
Paragraphs 4-7: Your supporting paragraphs.
Paragraph 8: Counterargument-rebuttal.
Paragraph 9: Conclusion
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."
Use the same structure as above.
Option Three:
Compare This Boy's Life's themes of masculinity, identity, and the danger of wasting one's life with the 1993 film A Bronx Tale.
Paragraph 1: Summarize the movie.
Paragraph 2: Summarize the memoir.
Paragraph 3: For your thesis, compare toxic and stable masculinity as being expressed in the following ways:
Apollonian force of harmony, stability, and wisdom vs. Dionysian force of chaos and destruction
Self-delusion vs. recognition of personal responsibility and accountability
Free will to resist the immoral herd vs. learned helpless and determinism (having no free will but being controlled by one's upbringing and environment)
Paragraphs 4-6 Supporting the above
Paragraphs 7 and 8: Contrast major difference or differences between film and memoir.
Paragraph 9: Conclusion
Sources for Your Essay
Roger Ebert film review
New York Times film review
Option Four.
Compare and contrast the "crazy, abusive love" between Tobias' mother and Dwight in This Boy's Life with the couple in the 2007 documentary Crazy Love.
Paragraph 1: Summarize the film.
Paragraph 2: Rather than summarize the entire memoir, focus on summarizing only the dysfunctional, abusive relationship between Toby's mother and Dwight.
Paragraph 3: For your thesis, compare the notion of "crazy love" in film and memoir by focusing on the following:
demonic possession (both men are devils; in fact, Burt looks like the devil)
selfishness is the dominant force, not love
love is not evident; rather, an addictive narcotic intoxicant is
passion is one-sided, not two-sided
The women aren't looking for love; they're insanity is that they're looking for financial stability from devils.
The men's force of passion defies reality and pragmatism.
Paragraphs 4-8 support the above.
Paragraph 9: Conclusion
Sources for Your Essay
Roger Ebert film review
Slate film review
Option Five.
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. The idealized self can be a self-destructive chimera as we see in the following essay, which contains many parallels to Tobias Wolf as he renders himself in his memoir:
"I was hooked on meth for 11 years"
One. Tobias and the author Ed Kressy have a "me" problem. They hate who they are and feel so weighed down by self-loathing that they fantasize about being a super version of themselves. This super self is a chimera, a mirage, a sort of lie.
Two. Ed uses drugs to mask his self-loathing. Tobias disappears into a world of lies and self-aggrandizing fantasies.
Three. Both see the idealized life as never being safe enough, so they are both reckless with their lives on one hand while clinging to a more idealized version of life on the other.
Four. When you live a life of delusion and self-destruction that is obviously pathological to the casual outsider observer, you find that because you are used to such a crazy life, that this crazy life becomes your normal.
Suggested Outline:
Paragraph 1: Summarize the film American Beauty.
Paragraph 2: Summarize Tobias Wolff's memoir.
Paragraph 3: Develop a thesis that compares the chimera in both the film and the memoir.
Paragraphs 4-8 support the above.
Paragraph 9: conclusion
Grading Your Final Capstone Essay Based on SLOs:
The state of California wants to see how English 1C instructors measure their student learning outcomes (SLOs), so we submit our students' grades in addition to showing if they succeeded to meet the following 3 outcomes:
One. Students support a claim with credible sources.
Two. Students identify biases and fallacies in their opponents' views.
Three. Students use correct MLA format, paragraph composition, sentence structure, spelling, and usage.
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."
Example
I used to know a Bakersfield man, a Paul McCartney look-alike, who was fated to live in the shadow of the great celebrity. He had the same nose, mouth, chin, ruddy jowls, sad-shaped eyes, and arched brows. He hadd the same hair, which he kept groomed the way McCartney did in the 1970s and 1980s, long in the back and feathered in the front.
However, Bakersfield McCartney was a tad shorter, stockier, and most noticeably had acne scars peppered on his cheeks. I first noticed him “trolling” himself at clubs, standing by himself in his black sport jacket, his “Beatles jacket,” and patiently waiting for an attractive woman to approach him and “break the ice” by commenting on how much he looked like Paul McCartney, as thousands of past successes had taught him. At clubs he would wear a stupid half-grin since his brain didn’t really have to be active in any sense as he simply used his resemblance as bait. The whole pick-up sequence must have been a rote, perfunctory affair.
Perhaps his biggest challenge was trying to show that his heart hadn’t become too calloused by this routine and that the woman fawning all over him was one of a few to make the brilliantly observant connection between him and the real Paul McCartney.
I later saw Bakersfield McCartney at my health club, where he had the same dumb half-grin on his face. His expression betrayed a certain expectancy, as if he knew it was only a matter of minutes before an attractive woman approached him and commented on his celebrity resemblance, a precursor to greater pleasures ahead.
Not surprisingly, I later found out that Bakersfield McCartney was a salesman—of cars and cell phones mostly—and that his resemblance worked to his advantage in the sales arena. All he had to do when people gawked over his resemblance to the great Beatles legend was act coy and “Ah-shucks,” and he could remain effective in the realm of sales—whether it be cars, cell phones, or, at the clubs, himself.
You could tell by looking over his life that he had no real challenges other than feigning good-natured surprise when the 99% of people he met commented on his striking resemblance to Paul McCartney. Otherwise, he was content to live in the shadows of the Liverpool crooner. Last I heard, he had never married, had never carried a long relationship, had never really put much effort in anything he did at all. He was a man content to live off a one-note gimmick and he had no shame for being so easily satisfied. Lacking any rigorous struggles to become a real person, he had become somewhat of a cipher, a hollow man with nothing to say about anything. His mind was simply full of the expectations of receiving “goodies”—accolades, sexual attention, strangers’ obsequiousness as they become elated in the presence of a mock celebrity.
His life lost its cheap glory in middle-age when his facial features distorted—bigger ears and nose, a reconfiguration of jowls and chin—so as to significantly obscure his face so that he no longer looked like the Beatles legend. With no more celebrity connection, his posse of friends and lovers abandoned him and his sales dwindled. Sullen and bitter, he moved back with his mother, a widow, where he now resides. I imagine him now introverted and chubby from a sedentary lifestyle, his bedroom cluttered with Beatles souvenirs, as he languishes in his bedroom where he daydreams of his past glory, which existed in part because of his chimera, the very thing that also destroyed him.
Similary, Akaky Akakievich from Gogol's masterpiece "The Overcoat" and Tobias Wolff from his memoir This Boy's Life are victims of their own self-induced chimeras, which both elevate and crush them. What we see in the case of the lugubrious Paul McCartney lookalike, the equally pathetic Akaky, and the pathological lying Tobias is that to be enthralled by a chimera is to go through a contradictory journey of glorious transcendence and crushing despair, which includes ___________, ______________, _____________, and _______________.
(Continued from our last lecture)
There are many categories of chimera:
Chimera is a fraud in that it representing something good when in fact it can be bad or simply an outright sham.
"Choice" can be an illusion like a multi-paged menu of mediocre "same" foods at a chain restaurant where they must mix and match.
"Calm" can be a state of mind represented by something like Honda's branding.
"Success" has been branded by Mercedes and Rolex perhaps better than any other products in history.
Soylent is a fad drink that represents being a "serious tech worker who has no time for the frivolity of cooking," yet ironically this high-tech "food" is based on little understanding of human health and is making people sick.
"Rosebud" from movie Citizen Kane is a chimera that replaces something you lost, usually as a child. You might obsess over your childhood memory of your father's Gillette Fat Boy double-edged razor.
Chanel No. 5 Moment is the belief you are the center of attention, the cynosure.
Marlboro Man represents rugged individualism and freedom, yet the at least 4 Marlboro men have died of smoking-related diseases.
A chimera can be a small trinket (fidget spinner?) grows in your imagination against your will and becomes an obsession that overtakes you.
(Continued from last lecture)
Four. What bad omens do Tobias and his mother face in the memoir’s opening?
A truck with no brakes loses control and falls off a cliff, a sort of metaphor of living life without brakes (powers of reason to temper one’s dreams).
When we pursue a chimera full steam ahead, we have no braking mechanisms to abate our self-destruction, and we go into a free fall.
In many ways the memoir is about a boy and his mother falling down a rabbit hole and the mechanisms that eventually kick in that will save both mother and child.
As far as chimeras go, Tobias and his mother live off dreams of riches, of finding a home, of finding stability, of finding “transformation” (5). The problem, that neither the mother or son can see, is that their actions are not taking them to the Promised Land. To the contrary, their actions are pushing them deeper into the rabbit hole.
Mother and son live a life of poor nomads, and they are vulnerable to evil. Sadly, evil will be arriving in the form of a sociopath stepfather named Dwight.
One of the memoir’s themes is that dreams are a sort of drug or narcotic. As such, dreams can grow unabated by the powers of reason and skepticism and people can be crushed by their false dreams without even knowing it.
Dreams animate and motivate us, but they can also diminish our sense of what is realistic and pragmatic. A teenager who devotes his life to being a famous "YouTuber" is enjoying moderate success on YouTube but wasting his time, energy, and resources on what is ultimately a fool's errand, a project that is not making him competitive in his craft in the long-run.
But what makes the above assessment difficult is that a very small percentage of YouTubers actually enjoy long-term success, and they inspire millions of dreamers to squander their life going down a rabbit hole, but they don't even know it.
Perhaps that is the tragedy of self-destruction: It happens while we are unaware of it.
But Self-Awareness Doesn't Necessarily Help
However, I have “seen myself” behave in compulsive, self-destructive ways and felt powerless to intervene. And I have spoken to others who have been in the same boat.
Self-destruction can occur unawares or as the victim sees his atrocious behavior with full awareness. There is no universal formula for self-destruction except for one thing: The victim is powerless and in desperate need of an exit sign.
For example, Tobias’ mother is running away from a failed marriage and an abusive boyfriend and she thinks mining uranium and getting rich will free her from her self-destructive ways, but she is mistaken.
Too often we embrace some chimera or other rather than confront the real cause of our unhappiness—some sort of self-destructiveness inside us that makes us our own worst enemy.
Five. How does Utah become a chimera?
Utah was supposed to promise riches and transformation, but it was too late. Overcrowded with no vacancies, its inhabitants were failed dreamers—drunks, murderous criminals, and prostitutes litter the streets.
It’s like a zombie set of The Walking Dead.
We can infer that TV programs about zombies are popular because zombies resonate with us metaphorically. Probably the majority of the human race is victimized by its own self-destructive chimera-seeking and as a result the majority of the human race slogs through life in the zombie state.
Zombies by their very nature are both self-destructing and doing so under a cloak of darkness and ignorance.
Six. What dreams of transformation intoxicate Tobias?
Tobias, known as Toby, wants to change his name to a more masculine Jack and be the prototype of the Wild West Rugged Man, the quintessence of “strength and competence” and self-sufficiency that defines the pioneer and the cowboy.
He probably wants to be big and strong so he can protect his mother from the abusive men who keep finding her or vice versa.
But overall Tobias believes in a chimera: “If I become Ultimate Rugged Masculinity, my sense of inadequacy will dissipate and I will be able to conquer all my enemies and help my mother and me make it to the Land of Milk and Honey.”
This chimera world, we shall see, is internal. It exists inside his head. It is not connected to the real world.
Tobias has grown up feeding off the chimera because his parents taught him that chimeras are normal. For example, Tobias’ father is a con man selling dreams to get rich; his mother seems to be a victim of various cons.
Tobias lives in a swamp of illusion and shady snake oil salesmen. And from his point of view, this is all normal because normal is what you’re used to.
Dreams of transformation are based on him not knowing himself. As we read: “Because I did not know who I was, any image of myself, no matter how grotesque, had power over me. This much I understand now” (27).
He is so full of self-loathing and low self-esteem that any identity OTHER than who he really is must be better is the mentality that is instilled in him.
When we don’t know who we are, we have no rock, no stable foundation. As a result, we easily become unhinged.
Seven. What kind of anxiety plagues Tobias and how does this anxiety relate to his obsession with self-transformation?
We read that he is “subject to fits of feeling myself unworthy, somehow deeply at fault.”
When we feel unworthy, we have what feels like a hole in the soul and we desperately try to fill the hole, often in misguided ways.
When we feel unworthy we are prone to beating the crap out of ourselves than on being hard on ourselves. As a result, we are prone to the self-destructive disease of self-pity and the paralysis and ennui that such self-pity ensues.
Sad, lonely, and full of inadequacy, Tobias (Jack, as he calls himself) imagines himself being adopted evidencing his desire for belonging and for feeling worthy. He befriends other families’ dogs.
He writes grandiose and fictitious letters to his pen pal Alice in Phoenix in which he represents himself as a wealthy horse owner.
As with most people who feel fragmented and soul-tattered, he relies on materialism or things to fill his soul. He believes a .22 rifle will make him feel “complete” the way many men will be “completed” by a Mercedes and a Rolex.
He wants to be worshipped (have people in “awe” of him) as if that would fill his soul’s gaping hole.
Tobias’ dreams of grandiosity must also rise from his desire to protect his mother from her abusive boyfriends and the guilt from feeling so helpless to protect her.
Chimera Definition Review
There's a huge disconnect between the idea of something and its actuality.
However, sometimes a chimera becomes something Larger Than Life that transforms you in both a good and a bad way. Therefore, the chimera can be full of contradictions, too complex to be demonized or venerated (admired).
One thing for sure, having a chimera will destroy us; and not having a chimera will destroy us.
Some Common, Successful Chimera Examples I Have Received from Student Essays
The Past, Nostalgia (old flames on Facebook)
Therapy
Growing up too quickly
Recapturing your youth (making a comeback)
Bigorexia ("I need to weigh 300")
helplessly drawn to the world of the paranormal, ghosts, for example
you think you're "down" or cool, but then you see someone behaving like you and realize you are a helpless nincompoop.
a social circle that you long to belong to but its people have will have nothing to do with you; in fact, the people scorn and mock you even as you repeatedly attempt to gain entrance inside the group.
You want to leave an indelible print on people's memories by virtue of being larger than life, an exemplar of excellent; in other words, you want to become a chimera for others.
You value being part of a large family; however, as you witness your siblings getting married and having in-law problems, you see "the family" as a cesspool of hurt feelings, acrimony, and dysfunction.
Being razzle-dazzled by someone you met on a social media site only to find out that the person is a rank avatar, a charlatan, a mountebank, an impostor.
You know someone who explicitly expresses that he is a modest, humble person, yet you always see him bragging about his superior intellectual powers, boasting about how easy he gets A grades in various math and chemistry classes and delighting in your struggle to do half as well as he does.
I love nature. I am socially responsible. I see myself as a "green" person; however, I am too damn lazy to recycle.
My chimera is my superior power to transform my body in the snap of a finger. I can, if need be, lose 12 pounds in a week because of my efficient metabolism and rigorous discipline. In fact, I am deluded and stuck in a malaise of weight gain that compromises my self-image.
Being blunt with people. He thought he was pursuing honesty, but he was driven by egotism and anger, and his bluntness turns people off.
The pride of having sons (and not daughters)
Imagining using reciprocity with kind friends but not acting on your thoughts, just satisfying yourself with the thoughts themselves.
One of my students doesn't have a chimera, but her family has made her into a chimera, the Perfect Princess and they sheltered her to her detriment.
A countercultural tattoo artist mentor who turned out to be just another self-interested, conventional businessman.
A girl who ignores the nice man and only pursues the "Bad Boy."
A girl who ignores the "Bad Boy" and only dates the "pencil-neck geek," not realizing that some of these "geeks" use their nerdiness as a facade to conceal their evil sociopathy.
Chimera Contradiction
Chimera Is a Mixed Bag. It's Destructive, But Also Transforming in a Good Way
You haven't really lived unless you've found a Higher Purpose that motivates you to commit extreme sacrifices. Akaky’s transformation: he wakes up from his slumber, his Jahiliyyah, and becomes fully human.
Additionally, he learns how to sacrifice in the most extreme ways: he gives up tea, candles, walking on his socks, reduces his laundry to cut down on laundry expenses and to make his clothes last longer.
He doesn't sacrifice with misery. To the contrary, he enjoys this new state of sacrifice and living for something LARGER THAN HIMSELF.
One of the story's major themes:
All of us are lost in the Jahiliyyah until we find something larger than our vain, self-centered preoccupations.
Here we've arrived at the human condition: We are miserable, restless, anxious, self-involved, selfish, and bereft until we find Something Larger Than Ourselves to live for. This is the message of religion, philosophy, humanism, creativity, etc. We must be awakened from the Jahiliyyah, the protracted period of darkness and ignorance which defines Akaky's life.
But some might argue that the overcoat is simply another Jahiliyya, a chimera come to make a fool of Akaky.
The dream of the overcoat--either a delusion or a Higher Purpose, feeds Akaky's imagination, gives him hope, and makes his life more full. He feels like a married man with more a sharp focus. “He’s livelier, stronger, a man who’s made up his mind and established a goal.”
His body language changes and his eyes burn with fire. There is no hesitation or wavering in his expressions, just conviction and passion. He is born again, either spiritually or like a guy in a Lexus commercial.
The story is too ambiguous for one interpretation. He has a new charisma that inspires his boss to give him an extra Christmas bonus.
When we have a purpose in life, we are more than glad to make sacrifices. But when life is empty and is simply a monotony, then we can barely get out of bed. This is why we need chimera. A chimera gives us purpose, a reason to live, a reason to get out of bed in the morning.
But be warned: A chimera can also kill us.
The overcoat has magical powers; it puts Akaky on a bipolar crazy ride. It makes him happy; he doesn’t care where he walks; he suddenly finds himself at the doorstep of his department. His life is like a giddy dream, the promise of so many ads. The Chanel No. 5 Moment has come.
A brutal truth about superficial reality, materialism, and consumerism is that these things go deep into us and change who we are at our very core.
Let us repeat this: Material objects change us on the outside but they also change us on the inside. They are like placebos and we change on the inside when people treat us differently.
People treat us differently because they are reacting to our new self-confidence: Whether the confidence is born from reality or delusion, it does not matter.
After AA acquires the overcoat, people become obsequious sycophants and treat him like a celebrity. When people fawn over us, we turn into the image they worship and we inevitably go insane because we lose sight of ourselves. We become the image that is worshipped. Be careful of what you wish for. Discuss the Paul McCartney case and use his looks as an example of an overcoat that results in insanity.
Why does Akaky laugh at the picture of the woman baring her leg while a whiskered man espies her? It appears the ad is a reflection of the attention Akaky is enjoying. For the first time in AA's life, he is getting his ego tickled and massaged.
Because he was so needy and desperate, Akaky could not tolerate being separated from the overcoat after it was stolen from him. You cannot let an object, or even another person, be your salvation. You have to be whole first. Once Akaky has tasted human connection, he cannot return to his life of isolation, which he now sees for what it really is: an unbearable hell.
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 makes us a chimera to others and ourselves. But over time this chimera can become "real."
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)
Spiritual 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.
Akaky acclimates to his lonely, absurd existence.
Toby must acclimate to an abusive father and an unhinged mother.
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.
Akaky is willing to sacrifice everything for the Overcoat. This willingness to sacrifice all for a panacea or cure-all is Akaky's cure-all.
Toby is willing to sacrifice honesty and hard work and be a pathological liar to live in a fantasy world of the higher class. He even embellishes his biography to get into a privileged, upper class school, so he can escape Concrete.
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.
Both Akaky and Toby climb the social and economic ladder, one through an magical Overcoat, and one through the privilege that comes with higher education.
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.
Evaluating Sources Modified from Daniel Levitin's Weaponized Lies
“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 we 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.”
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.
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