Post by Dr. Nemmers on Jul 13, 2024 2:11:26 GMT
Chapter Seis was a very sad one, but not altogether unexpected either. This is the chapter where Antonio/Tony takes leave of his family to attend school among the white folks of town. The entire experience for him is quite alienating: he doesn't speak the language; his name is Anglicized; at lunch, when he takes out his tortilla and beans and Chile peppers, all the students (and apparently the teacher) point and laugh at him, so much so that he becomes a sort of self-exile who eats outside or in the auditorium (he is joined by a couple of other boys in the same situation, and they apparently find a sense of belonging, but still eat many of their meals in complete silence.
Alienation much?
I think one of the things I'm noticing in this novel so far is that Antonio is feeling many of the things our other protagonists have felt, it's just that his is less acute (or less developed) on account of his age. Like, he's not going to jump down in the sewer and live there for a week like Fred Daniels did, but he's still going through many of the same things, just less dramatically.
I also wanted to note that this will be one of the central theses of my book: that minoritized/ multi-ethnic Americans felt existentialism more acutely because of their status; i. e., to be a minority (whether Black, Asian, Chicano, Jewish, Native American) during these decades meant that one was inherently alienated, automatically considered guilty, always living with your identity/ authenticity under question. I don't know if that means all of these characters and people were inherently existentialists (of course many were not), but it seems like this might happen more often to populations like Tony.
Alienation much?
I think one of the things I'm noticing in this novel so far is that Antonio is feeling many of the things our other protagonists have felt, it's just that his is less acute (or less developed) on account of his age. Like, he's not going to jump down in the sewer and live there for a week like Fred Daniels did, but he's still going through many of the same things, just less dramatically.
I also wanted to note that this will be one of the central theses of my book: that minoritized/ multi-ethnic Americans felt existentialism more acutely because of their status; i. e., to be a minority (whether Black, Asian, Chicano, Jewish, Native American) during these decades meant that one was inherently alienated, automatically considered guilty, always living with your identity/ authenticity under question. I don't know if that means all of these characters and people were inherently existentialists (of course many were not), but it seems like this might happen more often to populations like Tony.
