Monday, September 19, 2011

Asch's Ending

Asch choose to end the story the way that he did because the final character stood in interesting contrast to the other characters in the essay. The first and foremost being that he isn't a stereotype. Almost all of the other characters in the essay are stereotyped. From the hospitable but mistrusting southerners to the burly lumber jacks who blow their money on cheap thrills in the big city, but the worker we meet at the end is quite different. At first, he strikes us as just another worker who is wasting his wages in a bar, but then he takes the narrator outside to look out at their surroundings and then he confesses that he is a poet. And, much to our surprise, he won't let the narrator see his poems. I do not understand why would he bring up the fact that he is a poet and then not want us to read any of his work.
What can we extract from this? Maybe this is part of the Agent/cy paradox? This worker is kind of an agent for his social class, because he has so many things in common with them, but he also has things that seperate him from his fellow workers, the primary of which being that he writes poetry. Should we assume that all of the other workers are secretly poets? We have not seen any evidence to indicate that any one else is a poet or other artist, but we didn't get any hint about this worker being a poet either. Maybe this teaches us a lesson about stereotyping?

2 comments:

  1. I am not quite sure it would be accurate to assume the last character in Asch's story to be an agent. I could just as easily argue that since the narrator met the last character in fear as opposed to curiosity and pity in relation to other characters, that the last character may stand out to him because of the difference in state of emotion upon introduction. Or I could also argue that the poet character was nothing more than a way to introduce an optimistic view on such a bleak and miserable story of people in order to induce the emotion of hope in order to feel as if the narrator did actually succeed his goals, which leans more towards a character as a rhetorical tool. However, even though I'm not quite sure if the poet deems agency, I do agree with concept of busting stereotypes. Also I believe there is some specific reasoning for waiting until the end to initiate them.

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  2. I agree that the final character Asch presents is in contrast to the ones met previously in the sense that the openly breaks the pattern of stereotypical labor workers; however, I think that he was placed there in more of an effort to show that no, not all of these workers are poets, but each person should be viewed as an individual who has a unique story and past. The last line of the story is incredibly interesting and leaves many questions both about the characters and about the meaning Asch is attempting to convey. The man refuses to let the narrator see his poetry because “It would be too much like showing [his] insides” (Asch 306). By considering this, it further enforces the idea that even though the majority of these characters fit a stereotype, they are still a single person and may or may not just be in a poor situation. However, it is also worth noting that this relatively deep conversation is drawn to an end by the man saying that they should “go in and have another beer” (306). This statement concludes the story by the character resorting back to actions that are expected of him. So, what does that say about stereotypes? Once people get stuck in a place or job that is seemingly appropriate for them, are they unable, or just unwilling, to remove themselves?

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