Sunday, March 1, 2015
Hennessey--ATKM Post #2
The West has always been a place for people in trouble to go and find a new, better lifestyle, or in Jack's case, just to find clarity. There isn't even a word to describe how Jack was feeling when he found out about the affair between Anne Stanton, his past lover, and Willie Talos, his boss. Jack decides he needed a break from all the complications in his life. He was tired of being disappointed and so he goes to the west. Jack says people go west solely because it is the thing to do when in times of trouble. “When you don’t like it where you are you always go West.
We have always gone West.” (431). By "we" in the quote he refers to all Americans in general. That is what americans do, during the depression people went west to find jobs, people went to california in the west during the gold rush and so on. People go west. It's Manifest Density and for most people it works. Jack describes the west that "there is innocence and a new start in the West,
after all" (434). That is exactly what Jack finds in the west. He finds clarity and he is able to accept the affair between WIllie and Anne or at least accept to the point of acceptance. Most people who go to the west find success whether through jobs, riches, or just clarity like in Jack's case.
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I agreee with your claim on how California has been a gateway for many years as a place to get away and start fresh. Jack was so baffled by the love affair between Willie Tolos and Anne Stanton that he escaped to find something to get his mind off and away from the busy noise of the crowded capitol. He did the opposite when instead of exploring and trying new things he stayed in his hotel room and reminiced about what his relationship with Anne was and could have been. "Before she left ke Christmas, and not like the summer before" (417). He is stuck too far into the past and can't crack out of his shell of deception and face the reality that Anne didn't love him anymore and he had to move on. He looks for that sence of clarity but he finds new hope and uses it to cover up his loss of control. "Lying there, I had what I thought then was a fine perspective on my own history, and saw that the girl I had known that summer a long time back hadn't been beautiful and charming but had merely had a mysterious itch in the blood..." (431). At the end of his journey down his memories of his past relationships, he does start to unfold his personality and his perseption of reality. He noticed that this wasn't his life around him but it was the place to get back him surroundings in a place of serenity.
ReplyDelete-Sophia Scherr