This Boy’s Life Lessons
Lesson One for This Boy’s Life: Pursuit of the Chimera
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."
One. What is a chimera?
A chimera is part mirage, part all-consuming dream, and part obsession that attempts to fill a hole in one’s soul. The chimera is by its very nature an illusion so that at the end of the chimera journey is not a rainbow but a thunder shower of tears.
However, if one learns from one’s disastrous chimera journey, one will have hard-fought wisdom that will enrich one’s life.
One hasn’t really lived unless one has been inside the belly of a chimera and spit out like half-masticated lunchmeat.
The greatest books, therefore, are books about survivors of chimeras.
Typically, we try to fill the holes in our tattered souls with chimeras. We believe, erroneously, that we will find happiness and fulfillment by
UCLA degree
Trophy spouse
Six pack of abs
Viral YouTube video
Millions of social media followers
Some reinvented self that embodies genius, rugged self-reliance, and charismatic sex appeal
Physical beauty that causes the human race to fall to the ground and weep with desire and envy
Intellectual achievement that causes others to tremble with intimidation by our super-sized brain
Proving our detractors that they were wrong: We stay in a relationship, not out of love or even a desire to stay in the relationship, but to prove our skeptics that we truly are mature enough to be in a relationship.
Pair of “skinny” trousers in our closet that have been hanging there for 5 years as we wait to be “our old skinny self.”
Chanel No. 5 Moment: A Chanel No. 5 Moment is the delusion that you are the center of attention, that everyone is in awe of you, and that everyone longs to be like you. I know people whose entire lives evolve around creating Chanel No. 5 Moments
The Price We Pay for Our Chimeras
We sell our soul and our left arm to achieve the above chimeras and we get chewed up by our own foolishness and self-destruction.
This Boy’s Life is written from the point of view of an adult who looks at the foolish chimeras of his youth and the implicit message is that Tobias Wolff, the man and the writer, is a better, more moral, more wise person as a result of his battle with the chimera.
In contrast, Akaky from Gogol’s “The Overcoat” is consumed by his chimera with no opportunity for resurrection or redemption. Akaky’s life is predetermined by the limitations of his character to be fouled up by his chimera journey whereas Tobias Wolff has the presence of mind (metacognition) to be resilient in the face of his chimera journey and emerge from the journey wiser and smarter.
Akaky is limited in his self-awareness and metacognition. In contrast, Tobias Wolff has the powers of self-awareness, which give him the freedom to transform his personality for the better.
Two. 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. 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.
Three. What’s the difference between being hard on ourselves and beating the crap out of ourselves? (Tobias internalizes the latter from the abuse of his stepfather)
Being hard on ourselves means never being satisfied with mediocrity and constantly setting higher and higher standards. As a result, we’re constantly improving ourselves and/or our performance at a certain task or discipline.
To be hard on ourselves means to have a high self-regard, high self-esteem, high self-confidence, and high expectations.
In contrast, beating the crap out of ourselves means demoralizing ourselves into a state of paralyzed depression so that we never get out of our hole. We languish in self-pity and remain stagnant as life passes us by.
To beat the crap out of ourselves evidences low self-regard, low self-esteem, low self-confidence, and low expectations.
Low expectations translate into giving up on responsibilities and giving up on life, which means the person who beats the crap out of himself plays the victim and goes around sulking and having a self-pity party while waiting for the world to love him. He is a self-entitled self-destructive brat.
I have Marc Maron, creator of the WTF podcast, to thank for this distinction.
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).
But they 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.
Perhaps that is the tragedy of self-destruction: It happens while we are unaware of it.
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.
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, I 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 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.
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."
I once saw myself as someone who someday would be a successful novelist, but now 30 years later and still unpublished I'm reduced to tweeting about my quest for efficient digestion.
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.
Lesson Two: Masculine Maladaptation
Masculine Maladaptation and the Pose of the Macho Nihilist
Tobias is entering a closed society of adolescent misfits who are deluded by fantasies of greatness. They are desperate children hungry for a sense of belonging and family. They develop codes to be part of the tribe.
Tribes exist because they offer belonging, cohesive codes of behavior, standards of conduct, narratives that explain a chaotic world, and strength in numbers. They also give refuge to loners, misfits, and malcontents who find it difficult to make meaningful connections with others.
America is a huge country where it is easy to get lost, spit out by family, school, "the system" and find oneself a loner. Loners adapt by creating tribes that give them a sense of belonging.
The country is full of maladapted men who are lost and hungry for rituals that affirm their masculinity and belonging to a male tribe with a strict set of codes. These male tribes, be they bodybuilding or MMA circles, become substitute families for young men.
These men act brave and "in control," but in truth they are scared, lonely, and empty of meaning. In the case of Tobias and his associates, nihilism, the belief that everything in the world is complete BS, is their drug and their religion. By joining this religion, they become dead to their old selves, but their new selves are emotionally stunted. Their tribes codes are malformed, born from the mind of half-baked adolescent dreams.
These half-baked dreams give born to “the disease” of nihilism.
Nihilism is not reality; it’s a pose, an attitude, a disposition.
Study Questions:
One. How is TW’s mother leading a selfish life and how does her selfishness hurt her son?
Selfish parents send an implicit message to their children that hurts their self-worth. “I’m Number 1 and you’re Number Whatever.”
Her will to fulfill her dreams drags her son into the vortex of terror and evil: bad men cumulating into Dwight, the most evil of all. He has a visceral hatred for Tobias.
Two. How do Tobias his buddies embody nihilism?
Feeling alienated from their parents, the adult world, and any kind of moral universe, these boys embrace nihilism, the belief that nothing matters, that there is no right or wrong, that there is no higher purpose, and that there is nothing to live for. This song is embodied in Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Some distinguishing characteristics of nihilism:
Ennui: boredom with the universe
Can’t feel, state of complete numbness
Nothing matters
No meaning
No purpose
No right or wrong
No truth; everything is BS
Disease of acedia, a name for spiritual lethargy and paralysis
Some argue that few people are actual nihilists. Many people live the nihilistic lifestyle as a cool pose but don’t really believe in nihilism in their heart.
The only true nihilists, it is argued, are sociopaths, people who were born without a conscience.
I’ve known men who claim to be nihilists, but as soon as someone steals their girlfriend, takes their wallet, and uses their toothbrush these self-proclaimed nihilists suddenly believe in right and wrong, fairness, and morality.
Three. What dream of convention fuels TW’s desire to live with his abusive stepfather?
One of TW’s chimeras is the ideal American life, a house behind a picket fence, and a family that sits in front of the fireplace.
TW’s quest to live a life of image and status is so intense he’d be willing to live in a gulag, a place where he has to spend all day cracking chestnuts like a prison laborer.
Ironically, the ideal image of a safe and cozy conventional life puts TW and his mother in the lap of the devil.
Not surprisingly, TW’s quest to live a lie complements his life as a pathological liar.
Four. How does TW turn into a pathological liar?
TW lies compulsively without even thinking beforehand.
He longs to create an image of elevated grandeur and will change to facts to achieve this effect.
He longs to fabricate a parallel universe as a refuge from his real existence: hell.
Pathological liars eventually confuse reality with fantasy as my soccer coach friend’s life reveals.
I guess I’ll have to tell the story of a soccer coach from long ago.
Five. How does the memoir address the theme of failure?
TW’s mom spends too much time with men even when there are warning signs that the relationship is a failure. She says on page 143 that she is willing to do whatever it takes to make her marriage work. But should we always do “whatever it takes”? Are there situations that require we bail or abandon ship?
We all screw up in some career choice or relationship or whatever. The question is knowing when to bail. When do we abandon ship?
The question is knowing when to bail. When do we abandon ship?
One. Einstein’s Insanity Theory: When you bang your head against a wall over and over and expect a different result, it’s time to bail.
Two. When you’re putting all the effort in a relationship and the other person show no reciprocity, no effort, and no trustworthiness. You’re putting in 99% of the work and the other person is putting in maybe 1%. It’s time to bail.
Three. When your family and friends tell you you’re wasting your time and their appraisal is in constantly contradicts your own optimism. You’re lucky you have people who care about you. We often need an outside perspective to tell us we’re blind.
Four. When you determine the thing is taking more from you than it is giving to you. My brother dated a gourmet chef in Hawaii. She was tired and angry all the time. She finally bailed.
Five. When the thing you’re involved with consumes you so much you don’t even know who you are anymore. You’re falling asleep with your clothes on. You’re showering twice a week. You forgot you had a name. You’re developing psychosomatic illness you’ve never had before.
Six. When the thing you’re doing is causing you to betray your values. You’re selling something you don’t believe in. You’re cheating people. You’re deceiving people. You’re constantly trying to make up ways to take money from people. You’re always selling. You can’t live with your conscience. It’s time to bail.
Seven. When the thing you’re doing is no longer viable or causing joy but you keep on anyway in order to protect your ego. Like staying in a relationship to show others how “mature” you are. In this case, you’re sticking to something, not for your self, but to impress others and save face.
Eight. As Americans, we’re fed the Kool-Aid that “if we try hard enough we will succeed.” There is a difference between persistence and foolishness.
Persistence is only wise if it’s accompanied by progress. But if persistence is accompanied by stagnation, you’re undertaking a fool’s errand.
Look at all the artistic, business, and restaurant failures and resulting bankruptcies with people sleeping in broken-down cars and roach-infested hotels. In America, we have been conditioned to say, “I invested so much time and money in this thing I can’t bail out now.”
Sometimes in life you have to cut your losses.
Nine. You don’t have a Plan B, a Contingency Plan, or an Exit Strategy, so you cling to our failure. When failure is all you have, you are in a sorry state.
Ten. The thrill is gone. You can’t create the feelings anymore. They’re dead. You die to something. Don’t be ashamed. You simply changed. People do change. I used to be in love with oversized TV brand watches. One day the thrill was gone.
This Boy’s Life Lesson 3: Appearances and Self-Betrayal
Study Questions
One. How does Norma’s phony married life inform the memoir’s theme of image over substance?
See Pascal’s Pensees.
Living for others
Self-abnegation
Death
Point of no return
Self-destruction
Addiction
Two. Discuss theme of acclimation to misery and hell.
Consider change is more painful than stagnation evidenced by the Adam 12 episode.
Consider desensitization.
Consider preferring the familiar over the fear of the unknown.
Three. How does the memoir address class determinism?
Defining 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
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.
One. How does Fussell define “class”?
Class is a status system based on money, social prestige, and political power.
The class lines are “rigid” and suggest a caste system, Fussell argues.
There are different ways Fussell would divide the classes: “rich and poor; employer and employed, landlord and tenant, bourgeois and proletariat.”
There are gentlemen and there are cads, he writes.
You are either couth or uncouth (uncivilized, uncultured).
There are homeowners and renters.
Fussell explores the possibility of 3 classes: upper, middle, lower.
However, he resolves that there are in fact 9 in the United States of America:
- Top out-of-sight
- Upper
- Upper middle
- Middle
- High proletarian
- Mid-proletarian
- Low proletarian
- Destitute
- Bottom out-of-sight
These nine address the social differences more than the economic ones.
Two. For Fussell, being rich is no guarantee of being high class. Explain.
Fussell shows more than implicit contempt for the rich when they engage in the following:
People engage in vulgar displays of self-aggrandizement through their accumulation of things.
People with no self-awareness conform to all the clichés of “having made it.”
People rub your nose into their conspicuous consumption.
People define themselves solely by their material wealth and possessions. Such people are called philistines, a very disparaging term.
People rely on their wealth to define their “greatness” while they allow themselves to become humorless, mediocre, and complacent.
Because of their wealth, some people feel entitled to control and bully others who are “less” than they are.
Such people in Fussell’s view (and I agree) are petty, vulgar, narcissistic, small-souled, low-class philistines.
Three. Why do we know so little of the top class, the out-of-sight rich?
They are literally out-of-sight. They live in stealth. They don’t want to be seen since their privileges are best maintained without rousing the lower classes.
Because we rarely see them, we are unaware of their codes, language, clothing, travel, and even spending habits. Yes, we can generalize that their spending habits are extravagant, but we don’t know how specifically extravagant they are.
Four. What do the super rich and the super poor have in common?
Both exist in invisible mode. We don’t see them.
Both receive money without working. The rich get rich from stock dividends, interest, and inheritance. The poor get handouts.
Since neither extreme works for their money, they are both rather unemployable.
Five. What are the distinguishing characteristics of the middle class?
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.”
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.
Four. How does the memoir address twisted, misguided masculinity? See page 188 and 184. See 194-197.
Consider misfits, belonging, rituals, rites of passage, codes.
This Boy’s Life Lesson Four: Exit from Hell
One. How does TW escape Dwight’s hell?
His brother becomes a force. See 204.
TW sees a real world to contrast with his personal hell.
Sometimes we have no contrast. Hell becomes our normal.
Dwight is going off the tracks and he can no longer control his wife. TW sees his mother achieving freedom and this taste of freedom gives him ideas of escape.
TW sees Chuck and Tina as trapped in their hells and these cautionary tales motivate him to make an escape.
Two. What is TW’s turning point?
He begins to give up on his fantasies and is “being realistic.”
His fantasies betrayed him.
He had his butt handed to him on a stick. Sometimes that’s the best thing that can happen to us.
Three. What is the foolishness of youth?
We think we’re invincible.
We think we have time to burn.
We think setbacks are bigger than they are because we haven’t developed a sense of proportion. Mature people have witnessed themselves rising out of the rabbit hole after a setback, so when they descend into a pit they don’t panic.
Immature people panic when they fall into a hole.
Mature people don’t panic. They keep cool and develop a strategy to get out. In contrast, the immature person overreacts and sinks deeper into the hole.
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