To address the elephant in the room, this week has been the furthest thing from normal. Wednesday night, when my friends and I were talking about how school on Thursday is cancelled, one of my best friends went "Gosh, our high school experience is just super normal, isn't it?". And yes, I think that pretty much about sums it up. I used to think nothing in this world besides a flurry of snow could close school down, and in the past two years we've been shut down for diseases, and now...other people.
The more I hear about what happened, the more horrific it becomes. I sat, speechless, for an hour and a half yesterday alternating between CNNs and MSNBCs coverage of the shooting. The highlights:
Parents of Oxford Shooting Suspect Hid in Detroit Warehouse Amid Manhunt
Parents of Teen Accused in Oxford High School Shooting Plead Not Guilty to Involuntary Manslaughter
The Shooter "Methodically and Deliberately" Fired at Students.
I know we're supposed to put pictures and interactive elements to our blogposts, but that feels tonedeaf right now. So, I'm sorry if this is boring...
Now, switching gears to Raisin in the Sun, something that struck me when reading Act I of this play was the generational divide, and the simultaneous generational closeness. Mama is clearly completely different from Beneatha and Walter when it comes to ambitions, goals, and even values; she even, at one point, sardonically comments that "Oh-- so now it's life. Money is life. Once upon a time freedom used to be life-- now it's money. I guess the world really do change." We see that while Mama may have fought to stay alive in her youth, Walter is fighting for entirely different things. Beneatha even wants to be a doctor-- something even Walter cannot entirely fathom himself. At the same time, the fact that three generations of Youngers live inside of one household is pretty rare nowadays. And while this may be due to financial circumstances, this creates a tighter bond between grandson and grandmother than most people today (more specifically, I) have.
Most of us feel this generational divide twice a day, when we yell at our parents for "not understanding" us. This week, however, I saw the gaping hole in a new light; my mother came home from work and showed me the articles that claimed that the of students in neighbouring classrooms acted completely calm and composed, knew exactly what to do, and were even smart enough not to open the door when the shooter came to a neighbouring door pretending to be a police officer. And I realized, that (god forbid) if I'm ever in a similar situation, I'm alarmingly prepared. What Mama complains about, that Walter and Beneatha take their lives and safety for granted, and they have the audacity to aspire to greater things when a mere 20 years ago Mama herself was constantly fearing for her life, has flipped entirely. Now, it is the young who are hyper-aware of their own mortality, and the old who cannot fathom doing ALICE drills in between algebra and chemistry.
It's interesting how you contrasted the young and old. I think it has to do completely with circumstance and what situations we find ourselves in. I'm sure our kids will be a lot less germ-sensitive that we'll be due to the pandemic we live in. Similarly, Mama lived in times where ambition never went anywhere. Thus she fears it.
ReplyDeleteI like how you combined the current events with what we've seen in The Raisin in the Sun to highlight the generational divide that we see so much now. It's interesting to see how Mama's lived experiences influenced her views on life, how Walter's did on his, and now we have big events that shaped ours.
ReplyDeleteDeepti, this was such an intriguing blog post. I like that you began your blog post with a personal story as it helped to set a personal tone for the rest of the blog. I also think the direction that you took this blog post in is very interesting, how you connected the generational gaps in RITS to real world events. It's great that we're realizing these generational gaps and hopefully it'll drive us to be more understanding and patient!
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