The Good Ol' Days

When reading the chapter titled "Maggot" in Black Swan Green, I noticed a common recurrence that the adult figures in the story wished to use violent or aggressive means to fix the issues of kids, but were forced to restrain themselves. I think that this is representative of the growing allure of violent means for Jason to enact his revenge on Ross Wilcox.

The first instance of this restraint is how angry Mr. McNamara gets after Ross and his boys run over the bridge and skip class. He doesn't resort to violence, but his pure rage prompts Jason to envision a headline in which he drowns Ross' gang. Fighting back is clearly on Jason's mind. The second instance is when Mr. Nixon says that back in his day, a "sound thrashing" would've taught the boys a lesson about speaking back to authority. At the end of the chaper, the bus driver encourages Jason to slice Ross Wilcox's sinews, which is quite gruesome. Together, these adults with violent intentions are leading Jason to consider lashing out at Ross the next time he is messed with.

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 28, 2019 at 5:15 PM

    I think there is also the broader theme of adults being disconnected to jasons reality. I think there is a parallel to vietnam with Mcnamara, and nixon in the example you brought up. Mcnamara is brought in and makes some mistakes, and then nixon tries to fix it in a flawed way. Just like Rocks follows the falkland war, this chapter has an analogy with vietnam

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nic RamkumarApril 28, 2019 at 8:18 PM

    I think this connects with a larger theme of adults not really being able to do anything about issues of bullying in the school. They try yelling, threatening, and sending people to the office, but none of it really has any effect.

    ReplyDelete
  3. HenryApril 29, 2019 at 6:04 AM

    Jason does such a good job at avoiding lashing out violently. I can tell you from personal experience that it's hard not to lash out, even when you know you shouldn't. I think your post points out that Jason actually shows more self-control than many of the adults in his life.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I dislike Esther and Holden

Esther and Holden both suck, but Stephen does not. I think it may be a matter of perspective. The main thing is just how judgemental that Esther and Holden are towards others. We're able to see from a first-person perspective how much they ridicule others in their own heads. They constantly make others the butt of the joke, and that attitude makes them frustrating to read. In both of their cases, I feel like that might be why they feel so threatened by society--they're always judging others, so they assume that others view them the same way. With Stephen, though, we see him through the eyes of Joyce. Stephen is the butt of the joke this time. He's the same dorky outcast as Esther and Holden, but because we view him from a different standpoint, we see him for who he truly is. For me, being able to view the character in this way makes them much more tolerable. It doesn't mean that Stephen has humility, but the unflattering way in which Joyce depicts him gives a sense of
Read more

What does Coming of Age mean?

The first time that I encountered the phrase "Coming of Age" was in the description of the movie " Breaking Away ". My father was watching the movie while it was on TV, and I had nothing better to do, so I watched the last half with him. While we watched the scene where Dave races against the Italian cyclists, my dad explained to me how Dave had built up this image in his mind of these glorious racers and had completely immersed himself in Italian culture, wanting to become one of them. When the Italian racers see Dave catching up to them, they jam his tires and he crashes. He's shocked, and has to reconstruct his perspective on everything in his life in order to recover. This setup and subsequent "punchline" (for lack of a better word) found in Breaking Away has stuck with me since then. In my mind, the words "coming of age" are tightly bound to this concept of the debunking of childhood ideals. Dave's obsession with these seemingly su
Read more

The Narration of Catcher

In class, I was quite surprised when everyone concurred that Holden was writing about his own experiences over the few days after he left Pencey. The whole time, I was thinking that he was dictating it to someone else. I think that both approaches have their own meanings. If Holden himself were the author, the book really is a direct message from him to the reader. He's presenting his story so that it would resonate best with his ideal audience: other kids who might not know where they are in life. He also has more control over the product, and can more easily manipulate the story and its language to better convey the message that he's trying to send. If he dictated the story to some dude, which was I was thinking, the story suddenly becomes more authentic. Holden doesn't have the ability to doctor the story to his own ends. Another effect would be that Holden isn't talking to us, the reader--he's talking to someone else, who he might have reason to trust. This se
Read more