WEEK TEN BLOG ENTRY

So, this is sort of week ten, sort of not. But this will be our last week for blogging, so enjoy it!

I just attended a high school graduation on Thursday night...and then drove to Sacramento to watch another high school graduation on Friday night. It was fairly torturous. The key feature in common among the speeches of the students and faculty members here and there was a simple notion: each and every individual is special and unique and a winner in every way.
Have we gone too far in pushing self esteem?
If so, at what cost?
How will this generation deal with its inevitable failures?
How does a civilization find a balance between valuing all human life and heaping on piles of unmerited praise?
What say you?

WEEK TEN READING

ENJOY THIS: I AM OFTEN AMAZED AT THE WIDE BREADTH OF ISSUES THAT GET STUDIED THESE DAYS. there IS SOME GREAT RESEARCH OUT THERE!
ENJOY, DR. S


(CNN) -- Your spouse "had to stay late at work" -- are you skeptical? Do you think your friend doesn't like you if he cancels dinner plans? Do you suspect that your co-worker is putting her ambitions ahead of the team?

Curmudgeons of the world, listen up: This line of negative thinking might actually hurt your health.

A new study in the latest edition of Neurology, the journal of the American Academy of Neurology, found that cynical people have a higher likelihood of developing dementia.

"There have been previous studies that showed that people who were cynical were more likely to die earlier and have other poor health outcomes, but no one that we could tell ever looked at dementia," said Anna-Maija Tolppanen, one of the study's authors and a professor at the University of Eastern Finland. "We have seen some studies that show people who are more open and optimistic have a lower risk for dementia so we thought this was a good question to ask."

Studying cynicism

Cynicism is a deep mistrust of others. Psychologists consider it a kind of chronic anger that develops over time.

Specifically, the kind of cynicism researchers looked at involved doubting the truth of what people say and believing most people are motivated by self-interest rather than by what is best for the community.

Village only for people with dementia

The study tested 1,449 people with an average age of 71. The study participants took a test for dementia. A separate test measured their level of cynicism. Both tests are considered reliable by researchers.

The cynicism test asks if the person agrees with statements like "Most people will use somewhat unfair reasons to gain profit or an advantage rather than lose it"; "I think most people would lie to get ahead"; and "It is safer to trust nobody."

Those who agreed with the critical statements in the test were considered highly cynical. The people with the highest level of cynical distrust had a 2.54 times greater risk of dementia than those with the lowest cynicism rating.

Researchers also examined the test results to see if the subjects who were labeled highly cynical died sooner than the others. But once compounding factors were screened out, they did not. Previous studies have shown a link between cynicism and an earlier death.

Still, the new study does not prove that having a bad attitude causes bad health outcomes. To prove a causal relationship, a study would need randomized controlled trials to show that a reduction in cynical attitudes through treatment actually lowered the risk of bad health outcomes.

More research is necessary to replicate the conclusions. But the results complement a wide body of research showing how "over time, people with highly cynical hostility do worse health wise," said Dr. Hilary Tindle, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.

Why cynicism may be bad for you

What might explain an association between cynicism and poor health?

This is a complex issue that needs to be studied more, Tindle said. The relationships between psychological attitudes and health outcomes are very complex.

"I can tell you from my clinical perspective from treating patients, I am absolutely certain that psychological attitudes can lead people down a road to poor health, because I see it every day when I talk to patients," said Tindle, who wrote the book "Up: How Positive Outlook Can Transform Our Health and Aging."

Tindle was the lead author on a study that examined the health outcomes of over 97,000 women and found that cynical women had a higher hazard of cancer-related mortality.

"The bottom line is that a high degree of anger/hostility/cynicism is not good for health," she wrote.

Research shows cynical people also tend to smoke more, exercise less and weigh more. They also have a harder time following even the best medical advice, because their cynical natures won't let them believe what people tell them, Tindle said.

Cat defrauded out of big inheritance when owner suffers dementia

Past studies have also found that people who are cynical have a higher rate of coronary heart disease, cardiovascular problems and cancer-related deaths. Cardiovascular disease can contribute to dementia because it essentially damages small blood vessels everywhere in your body, including in your brain.

Cynical people also tend to have greater stress responses, which means they typically have a higher heart rate, a higher blood pressure peak, and a tendency to have greater inflammation of their immune systems. Chronic inflammation is now known to be harmful to one's overall health and it is linked to everything from Crohn's disease to high cholesterol to even Alzheimer's.

Do what makes you happy

Can you come out of cynicism?

The good news is, being highly cynical is not a permanent state of mind.

"I am also certain that people can learn to change -- they change every day in that they quit smoking, they lose weight, they cut ties in unhealthy friendships," Tindle said. "The ultimate message is people are not 'doomed' if they have cynical tendencies."

So if your assumptions about people are making you angry and irritable, try having a little more trust.

"All of us are capable of adopting healthier attitudes," Tindle said. "As a physician, I see people of all ages making positive change every day."

WEEK TEN WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ

As with last week, just work on your big essay this week.

FINAL ESSAY OF THE QUARTER

TIPPING POINT : For this assignment, you will upload the final draft copy of your essay to turnitin.

 

The essay should be attached as a Microsoft Word document and should be about 4 pages in length, double spaced.

There are two essay topics to choose from.

Write a 3-4 page double spaced essay on one of the following topics:

1. How might one or more of the ideas in the book The Tipping Point apply to your chosen profession or your major?

2. Locate a trend [social, political, cultural, or other] that seems to exhibit a "tipping point" phenomenon. Provide a brief explanation of why you think this phenomenon meets Gladwell's three criteria for tipping point phenomenon: a) contagiousness b) little causes having big effects c) not gradual but dramatic change.

THIS ESSAY IS DUE TO TURNITIN.COM BY JUNE 9TH, THE LAST DAY OF THE QUARTER. You are more than welcome to bring me a rough draft to revise with you or to turn in the essay early. I have had some great revision-interactions with some of you and would be more than happy to continue that practice!

HERE ARE SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS THAT MIGHT HELP YOU PROCEED--OR THEY MAY CONFUSE YOU MORE---BUT i HOPE NOT!

The Tipping Point is a book that has applications all over the place, so if you have an idea and want to get some conformation on it, post it here--or email me.

Here are some examples that I have thought about in the past week:
>>>food culture(ever since the original Iron Chef, food has become an obsession in the U.S.);
>>>wine culture;
>>>reality tv (be careful--this is not a simple issue)
>>>sushi (seriously, there was a time when Bako had no sushi restaurants);
>>>barefoot running(even Nike now has minimalist shoes);
>>>mud races, color me rad races;
>>>cancer awareness walks;
>>>paper or plastic? ecological awareness;
>>>ipads in the classroom;
>>>common core in education;
>>>slavoj zizek(if you are a philosophy major, you might know him);
>>>ted talks;
>>>digital data storage in hospitals;
>>>smart infusion patient care;
>>>robotic surgery;
>>>various ideas regarding globalization in business(read the World is Flat if you have not);
>>>neuroplasticity in kinesiology.
>>>low carb diets (Bako used to have a krispy kreme. It was killed by the low carb diet trend--so sad!).

That was just a quick brainstorm. People often write about Facebook or other online issues, os if you choose that route, do something unique! But for each of those topics listed, there are implications that can be gleaned by examining the idea in light of the Gladwell book.

Enjoy!

dr. s

WEEK NINE BLOG ENTRY

Ponder a bit on paper, answering one of the following questions:

When you are 90 years old, what will matter most to you?

Imagine I am giving you one billion dollars(you are welcome). Now, the only condition is that you must still find a job to do. What job would you chose, knowing that money is of no concern?

Ask yourself, when did I last push the boundaries of my comfort zone?

To what degree have you actually controlled the course your life has taken?

What is your number one goal for the next six months?

What did JFK mean by this quote? "As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them."

WEEK NINE READING

Read the Tipping Point.

WEEK NINE WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ

Just start working on your Tipping Point essay this week.
I will post that essay assignment shortly.

WEEK EIGHT BLOG ENTRY

HELLLLP! Seriously, it is the 8th or so week of the Spring Quarter. I think I have senioritis even worse than my daughter who is a high school senior. At this time of the quarter, what do you do to stay focused, to power through, to complete the term on the right track? Give me and your fellow students some good advice.

WEEK EIGHT READING

Start reading the Tipping Point this week. It is our final book. It is also quite fascinating.

WEEK EIGHT WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ

Write down one sentence you found interesting from the book. What made you notice that one sentence in particular?

WEEK SEVEN BLOG ENTRY

What is the single most important day in either
1. the history of the world?

--or--

2. in your life?

WEEK SEVEN READING

Q: What day most changed the course of history?

---

Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker
June 28, 1914. Franz Ferdinand’s carriage driver took a wrong turn and they ended up in a cul-de-sac, giving the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip a chance to kill the archduke. This was the first in a set of dominoes that put in motion the two largest wars in world history—and it all came down to a wrong turn by a carriage driver.

---

Timothy Snyder, professor of history, Yale University
On December 11, 1241, the Mongol warrior Batu Khan was poised to take Vienna and destroy the Holy Roman Empire. No European force could have kept his armies from reaching the Atlantic. But the death of Ögedei Khan, the second Great Khan of the Mongol empire, forced Batu Khan to return to Mongolia to discuss the succession. Had Ögedei Khan died a few years later, European history as we know it would not have happened.

---

Christina H. Paxson, president, Brown University
The day Johannes Gutenberg finished his wooden printing press in 1440, Western civilization turned onto a path toward more efficient, accessible communication of knowledge. The ensuing democratization of ideas had a profound impact on societies in the second half of the second millennium.

---

Philip Jenkins, professor of history and religion, Penn State University
For several years leading up to June 22, 1941, it had looked as though dictators and militarists would soon rule virtually the whole world outside North America. But Operation Barbarossa—Germany’s decision to send 3 million of its soldiers smashing across the Soviet border—would ultimately lead to Hitler’s defeat and the destruction of Nazism.

---

Neera Tanden, president, Center for American Progress
By empowering half the population with the responsibilities of citizenship, August 26, 1920—the day women gained the right to vote—allowed the U.S. to live up to its fundamental values of opportunity and equality.

---

Paul Kennedy, professor of history, Yale University
The day Thomas Newcomen invented his steam engine. America would be like a giant Angola without it.

---

Freeman Dyson, professor emeritus of physics, Institute for Advanced Study
The day the asteroid hit the Yucatán Peninsula and wiped out the dinosaurs, making room for our little primate ancestors to grow big and brainy and to take over the planet.
Note: This article originally stated that Freeman Dyson is a professor emeritus at Princeton University.

---

Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series
The day, in 1675, that Anton van Leeuwenhoek first looked through the lens of the microscope he invented. There are a whole lot of people making history who wouldn’t have been here save for the discoveries that followed from that drop of pond water.

---

W. Kamau Bell, host, Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell
There’s no way I can get this correct, so: It has to have affected me personally. It has to have had a big impact on America, culturally and historically. And it has to have involved sequins. Therefore, the obvious answer is May 16, 1983, when Michael Jackson first performed the moonwalk on TV. I think it’s one of the reasons we have a black president today. People went, Wow, black people are sort of magical. And Barack Obama is basically a walking sequin.

---

Oliver Stone, director and co-author of The Untold History of the United States
July 20, 1944, when Henry Wallace lost the vice-presidential nomination at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Had he won, Wallace, not Harry S. Truman, would have become president when Roosevelt died. The U.S. would have had a much better relationship with the Soviet Union, and I don’t think Wallace would have dropped the atomic bomb on Japan.

---

Anne-Marie Slaughter, Atlantic contributing editor and professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University
Trite as it may seem, the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, was the first public assertion of human equality as a legitimate rationale for political action. The Declaration would eventually eat away at the formal barriers of gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and any other differences that human beings have created to hold some down and raise others up.

WEEK SEVEN WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ

Of the events or moments listed, which one do you most AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH AND WHY?

WEEK SIX BLOG ENTRY

What is the best way to assess your understanding of something learned in a school setting?

By the way, while some personal reflection is acceptable, do not simply react autobiographically; instead, think in terms of the best way to show what you know about any subject. Is it a test, multiple choice, writing of some sort, talking about the subject, or something else?

WEEK SIX READING

HERE S A GOOD BOOK REVIEW OF THE TORTILLA CURTAIN:

The Pilgrim of Topanga Creek Date: September 3, 1995, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
Byline: By Scott Spencer;

THE TORTILLA CURTAIN By T. Coraghessan Boyle.  VIKING has somehow got the idea it has another "Grapes of Wrath" on its hands. Then again, T. Coraghessan Boyle may have contributed to the delusion by using a few lines from Steinbeck's novel as the epigraph to his own meditation on the dispossessed and the American dream, California style. But while Steinbeck's tale of the Joad family was the very apotheosis of the proletarian novel, with its almost surreal emotional clarity and passages of nearly overpowering pathos, "The Tortilla Curtain" is, as the dust jacket would have it, about "the Okies of the 1990's." This apparently means that the narrative contains no real heroes or villains, and that the suddenly old-fashioned hopefulness of Steinbeck's book is nowhere to be found. In "The Tortilla Curtain," Mr. Boyle deftly portrays Los Angeles's Topanga Canyon, catching both its privileged society and its underlying geological and ecological instability. But while the book has heft, its story is slight, and not unfamiliar: An undocumented Mexican couple struggle for survival in the interstices of society and in the canyon itself, even as an affluent Anglo couple live their fearful, selfish existence behind the dubious protection of a walled development called Arroyo Blanco Estates. We first meet Candido Rincon when he is hit by a car driven by the male half of the novel's Anglo couple, a self-styled Annie Dillard disciple named Delaney Mossbacher. Candido is in California with his young pregnant wife, America, having recently braved another crossing of the border. Candido and America are part of California's unacknowledged work force, cogs in the vast human machine that does the state's brute labor and without whom (Proposition 187 to the contrary) the state could probably not survive. Mr. Boyle is first-rate in capturing the terror of looking for work in an alien society, as in this passage describing Candido's experience at a parking-lot labor exchange: "The contractors began to arrive, the white men with their big bleached faces and soulless eyes, enthroned in their trucks. They wanted two men or three, they wanted four or five, no questions asked, no wage stipulated, no conditions or terms of employment. A man could be pouring concrete one day, spraying pesticide the next -- or swabbing out urinals, spreading manure, painting, weeding, hauling, laying brick or setting tile. You didn't ask questions. You got in the back of the truck and you went where they took you." Mr. Boyle is convincing, and even stirring, in his telling of Candido and America's story, bringing to it an agitprop artist's perspective on both society's injustices and the cold implacability of the privileged classes, as well as a Brechtian vision of how those cast to the bottom of society blindly victimize one another. Indeed, the journey of the Rincons -- from their desolate Mexican village to the terrors of exploitation on the undocumented edge of American society and finally into the whirling, pyrotechnically presented catastrophe toward which the story builds -- more than confirms Mr. Boyle's reputation as a novelist of exuberance and invention, gained with such pop extravaganzas as "World's End" and "The Road to Wellville." It also adds to his fictional range an openhearted compassion for those whom society fears and reviles. But Mr. Boyle was clearly not interested in merely writing a novel about illegal aliens scrabbling for a living. For he has divided his considerable narrative and stylistic gifts between the Rincons' story and that of Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher, the rather contemptible yuppie couple whose deeply unremarkable experiences are set in opposition to the Rincons'. It is here, alas, that Mr. Boyle undoes himself. Delaney is described on the very first page as "a liberal humanist with an unblemished driving record and a freshly waxed Japanese car with personalized plates." It is a mode of portrayal that is characteristic of much of Mr. Boyle's earlier work, a kind of comedy that finds its roots in sarcasm. In Mr. Boyle's case, this sarcasm is often taken for buoyancy and even daring, but in "The Tortilla Curtain" it rings hollow. When a character is described in terms of his driving record and his vanity plates, the reader can only hope that character is a minor one, a walk-on. But when you realize that you are being asked to read on and on about someone the author obviously doesn't care deeply about (and has, in fact, just trashed with the flick of an easy laugh), your heart begins to sink. Even when the novel's plot begins to activate Delaney and sour his usually beatific goofy world view, our reaction to the transformation is interrupted by the necessity of coping with Mr. Boyle's persistent elbow in our ribs: "He was in a rage, and he tried to calm himself. It seemed he was always in a rage lately -- he, Delaney Mossbacher, the Pilgrim of Topanga Creek -- he who led the least stressful existence of anybody on earth besides maybe a handful of Tibetan lamas." Like her nature-writer husband, Kyra Mossbacher is cut up and offered to us on a Lazy Susan of rude remarks. "Real estate was her life," the omnipotent narrator would have us believe, the moment Kyra appears on the scene. A bit later, we learn the following: "For Kyra, sex was therapeutic, a release from sorrow, tension, worry, and she plunged into it in moments of emotional distress as others might have sunk themselves in alcohol or drugs -- and who was Delaney to argue? She'd been especially passionate around the time her mother was hospitalized for her gall bladder operation." Mr. Boyle's fictional strategy is puzzling. Why are we being asked to follow the fates of characters for whom he clearly feels such contempt? Not surprisingly, this is ultimately off-putting. Perhaps Mr. Boyle has received too much praise for his zany sense of humor; in this book, that wit often seems merely a maddening volley of cheap shots. It's like living next door to a gun nut who spends all day and half the night shooting at beer bottles. The great risk of a novel with a dual structure is that the reader will fasten on one of the stories at the expense of the other. In "The Tortilla Curtain," the drama, feeling and stylistic bravado, the emotional reach that Mr. Boyle brings to the story of the Rincons so profoundly exceed what he brings to the Mossbachers that the book itself ends up feeling as disunited as the society Mr. Boyle is attempting to portray. And that's a pity, because there is life here and moments of very fine writing. ("The fire sat low on the horizon, like a gas burner glowing under the great black pot of the sky.") A few months ago, Mr. Boyle was asked in an interview how he voted on Proposition 187. Perhaps anticipating being asked the same question over and over on his upcoming book tour, he replied, "I don't want to reveal that. I'm not running for office." It's hard to imagine John Steinbeck being quite so coy about the rights of migrant workers or the importance of unions, but, as they say on television, "Hey, it's the 90's!" "The Tortilla Curtain" is a political novel for an age that has come to distrust not only politicians but political solutions, a modernist muckraking novel by an author who sees the muck not only in class structure and prejudice but in the souls of human beings. Yet where the socially engaged novel once offered critique, Mr. Boyle provides contempt -- even poor Candido, whose plight has been engaging our sympathies throughout this novel, is eventually seen "weaving his way through the scrub, drawn like an insect to the promise of distant lights." Contempt is a dangerous emotion, luring us into believing that we understand more than we do. Contempt causes us to jeer rather than speak, to poke at rather than touch. Despite his celebrated gifts, T. Coraghessan Boyle may be the most contemptuous of our well-known novelists.

WEEK SIX WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ

What did you think of the book review? What should a good book review do?

WEEK FIVE BLOG ENTRY

Think about or answer any one of the following questions this week:

How do you define nation?

What does language have to do with national identity?

What is the role of schools in inculcating national values?

Should nations require national service(military or civilian)?

U.S. Army recruiters were caught signing up future soldiers at a high school in Tijuana. How do you feel about that?

WEEK FIVE READING

Continue reading The Tortilla Curtain.
Every now and then, as you read, stop, look up and say "ahhh, brilliant." Then go back to reading. Especially do that if you are reading in public.

WEEK FIVE WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ

I am confused as I read through The Tortilla Curtain. Please explain one of the following concepts to me:
The title...what does Boyle mean by a "tortilla" curtain?
Animals as symbols.
Fences and walls.
The American Dream.
Alienation and ethnic division(is alienation key to ethnic identity?).
Gender identity...how are gender roles worked out in this book?
The ending of the book--for goodness sake, someone explain what it means.

Or, if none of that strikes your fancy, choose a theme from the book that you think is important and explain that concept.

TORTILLA CURTAIN ASSIGNMENT SAMPLE/EXAMPLE

TC BOYLE SYNTHESIS “ESSAY”   DUE TO TURNITIN BY MAY 10TH

 

I put "essay" in quotes because this is not an essay, per se. It is more, a synthesis exercise.

As you read TC Boyle, number on a page from 1-10. Write out the ten sentences from the book that catch your eye or make you think. After each sentence, give a brief description of what the sentences means to you or why you included it.

1.    "For a long moment they stood there, examining each other, unwitting perpetrator and unwitting victim, and then the man let the useless bag drop from his fingers with a tinkle of broken glass" Page 8

This sentence caught my eye because of the word unwitting. Why does the author put these people together so early in the book and then say that they are both “unwitting?”

2.    She didn't answer, and he felt the cold seep into his veins, a coldness and a weariness like nothing he'd ever known.   Page 355

Boyle does a good job of describing the emptiness of death in this sentence, both cold and weary and unlike anything Candido, or anyone, can experience.

After those ten sentences comes the more difficult but rewarding part. You are going to write a synthesis. A synthesis is a type of writing where you take various unrelated writings and find some insight drawn from them. It is writing that creates connections between thoughts. You are not comparing the thoughts, but you are using these ten sentences to say one thing. When you examine the ten sentences together, what new insight do you gain that may have been undeveloped just by looking at the individual sentences?

That will be labeled “Synthesis” and will be at the bottom of the numbered ten sentences.

As I said, this is a little weird, but it usually produces good writing. You are simply numbering and writing about ten sentences and then writing about how they are connected. In fact, STRIVE FOR CONNECTEDNESS. GO BEYOND THE OBVIOUS. SYNTHESIS IS ABOUT INFERRING MEANING, NOT ABOUT STATING THE OBVIOUS. I am grading your writing in this section, but more importantly, I am grading your ability to create a unique synthesis, an original claim about the book.

Since it is a bit odd, I wanted to give you one good example of the synthesis part. The length of the synthesis is about a page. The author should have used one or two more examples of his main point of synthesis. But as you can see, the author has located clearly what the one area is that ties his sentences together. By the way, if your key idea only captures five or six of your sentences, that is fine too. You do not have to use all ten. Also, where this one is lacking is in the analysis. It is a bit pedestrian. Strive for depth!

STUDENT SAMPLE: The similar connection between most of the chosen passages would be the racist or hate aspect. The focus on race or between being Mexican or not is a huge factor throughout the book. It seems as though all the characters want to be or think that they are better than the person next to them. “Fucking Beaners. Rip it up man. Destroy it.” (page 64). This is an example of a quote from the book that shows the anger or animosity towards different races. Most of the quotes are also driven with anger or hate. I found that harsh words were spoken when characters were most upset or seemed to be in some type of turmoil. The unique choice of words Boyle uses for these passages is also a connection between the quotes. It seems as though Boyle chooses words that build some type of emotion or fire within the reader, as if he was aiming to provoke emotion within the reader. At the very least these quotes cause the reader to pause and think or feel the anger or pain the characters are feeling at the time. Another link between these quotes would be their context they are almost all referring to someone other than themselves, or trying to pass the blame a different way. Overall this book and these quotes are thought provoking as well as emotion filled passages that allow a person to feel what the characters are feeling.

AGAIN, THIS IS A SAMPLE. YOU MUST FIND YOUR OWN BRILLIANT PIECE OF SYNTHESIS FROM THE BOOK...

Tortilla Curtain Synthesis

1.     “We were all right in America, sure, but it was crazy to think you could detach yourself from the rest of the world, the world of starvation and loss and the steady relentless degradation of the environment.” (Location 622).

This sentence refers to Americans tendency to shut their eyes to the things going on in the rest of the world, yet Delaney tries to keep his altruistic nature intact, despite the moral failings of his neighbors.

2.    “The ones coming in through the Tortilla Curtain down there, those are the ones that are killing us.” (Location 1807).

This quote from Jack is referring to the illegal immigrants that come here and are straining the resources of America, in his opinion.

3.    “This was what mattered. Principles. Right and wrong, an issue as clear-cut as the on/off switch on the TV.” (Location 2660).

This sentence is a bit of foreshadowing by Boyle, because the issue of immigration and basic human rights is not so clear-cut.

4.    “She had a passion for hiking, for solitary rambles, for getting close enough to feel the massive shifting heartbeat of the world.” (Location 2045).

I simply felt the idea of the world having its own heartbeat that we could hear, or feel, or somehow sense, was beautiful to me.

5.    “He stood rooted to the spot for what seemed like hours after she’d ducked into the car, backed out of the lot and vanished, and only then did he open his hand on the two quarters and the dime that clung there as if they’d been seared into the flesh.” (Location 3540).

The idea of begging for money being so shameful that it caused physical pain was intriguing to me.

6.    “The coyotes keep coming, breeding up to fill in the gaps, moving in where the living is easy. They are cunning, versatile, hungry and unstoppable.” (Location 3767).

Boyle is clearly using coyotes as a metaphor for illegal immigrants, albeit in a very negative fashion here.

7.    “It was like that day out on the Cherrystones’ lawn, the same look of contempt and corrosive hate, but this time Delaney didn’t flinch, didn’t feel guilt or pity or even the slightest tug of common humanity.” (Location 4980).

Delaney is changing, and not for the better. This quote illustrates that he is literally losing his sense of humanity and common decency.

8.    “He was starting from scratch, like a shipwrecked sailor, everything they had— clothes, blankets, food, a pair of dented pots and a wooden spoon— consumed in the blaze.” (Location 5179).

I thought this metaphor was very powerful and accurate, although Candido and America had been like “shipwrecked sailors” the whole time.

9.    “Was it wrong, was it a sin, was it morally indefensible to take from a dog? Where in the catechism did it say that?” (Location 5237).

Candido’s brief moral dilemma was heartbreaking. The thought of anyone ever having to make a rationalization such as this is terrible.

10. “But when he saw the white face surge up out of the black swirl of the current and the white hand grasping at the tiles, he reached down and took hold of it.” (Location 6108).

Although I hated that this was the way Boyle chose to end the book, the moral of the story is undeniable: be a good person and always do what you think is right, no matter how bad things may be for you.

Synthesis

 

            One of the major underlying themes of the book is resentment. “The ones coming in through the Tortilla Curtain down there, those are the ones that are killing us,” (Location 1807). This quote from Delaney’s neighbor Jack illustrates a resentment bordering on hatred that he feels toward Mexicans. Although it seems Jack is being
hyperbolic in saying that they are “…killing us,” he seems to mean it quite literally. While Jack is a relatively one dimensional character that is filled with resentment from the start, Delaney and his wife, Kyra start out as relatively likeable, liberal-minded people that care about the environment, with a clear sense of right and wrong. “We were all right in America, sure, but it was crazy to think you could detach yourself from the rest of the world, the world of starvation and loss and the steady relentless degradation of the environment,” (Location 622). This is an example of the way Delaney thought in the beginning of the book, with empathy and compassion. Kyra, although somewhat harder and more distant than Delaney, was portrayed similarly in the beginning of the book. “She had a passion for hiking, for solitary rambles, for getting close enough to feel the massive shifting heartbeat of the world,” (Location 2045). This quote shows a softer side of Kyra, the kind wife and mother with a penchant for hikes. Later in the book, when Kyra witnesses a dog locked in a car with windows up, she is filled with righteous indignation. As this is all happening, Delaney thinks to himself, “This was what mattered. Principles. Right and wrong, an issue as clear-cut as the on/off switch on the TV,” (Location 2660). Although this quote is a bit of foreshadowing of how blurred the moral lines will become for him, it still is a good example of the fact that he is still a good person with benevolent intentions. Another major theme in the book is transformation, especially for the white characters. “The coyotes keep coming, breeding up to fill in the gaps, moving in where the living is easy. They are cunning, versatile, hungry and unstoppable,” (Location 3767). This is a passage from Delaney’s newsletter, and it seems to be a thinly veiled metaphor for the Mexicans that he is beginning to despise. Whether he knows it or not at this point, the narrow-minded attitudes and beliefs of his friends and neighbors have begun to plant the seeds of resentment and set his seemingly inevitable transformation in motion. This transformation is clearly visible when he confronts the Mexican in the baseball cap. “It was like that day out on the Cherrystones’ lawn, the same look of contempt and corrosive hate, but this time Delaney didn’t flinch, didn’t feel guilt or pity or even the slightest tug of common humanity,” (Location 4980). The worst part of this is that Delaney is completely aware of the change within himself, and he relishes it, wallows in it like a pig in slop. Despite the fact that the reader knows that the Mexican in the baseball cap is a horrible person, a rapist and a thief, Delaney is not aware of this, he is simply giving in to the hatred growing inside of him. Candido’s transformation was different. He had a great deal of animosity and resentment toward the rich gringos he would see, in their fancy cars and clothes. Even their pets had more than he did. “Was it wrong, was it a sin, was it morally indefensible to take from a dog? Where in the catechism did it say that?” (Location 5237). This heart-wrenching quote illustrates just how resentful Candido was, that he was even jealous of a dog. Despite the resentment and indignation within Candido, his transformation was positive, as magnanimous as Delaney’s was malevolent. Delaney had hunted Candido and America down like dogs, with murderous intent. “But when he saw the white face surge up out of the black swirl of the current and the white hand grasping at the tiles, he reached down and took hold of it,” (Location 6108). In that moment of life or death, despite the potential danger he was putting himself and his little family in, Candido chose to help his enemy. He chose lend a helping hand to the man that had hurt him when he needed it he most. He chose, in spite of all of his bad luck, to be a good man.