Is a Family Member Ripping Off Your Aging Parent?--Annotated Bibliography

Rosenblatt, Carolyn. "Is A Family Member Ripping Off Your Aging Parent?" Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 22 Apr. 2013. Web. 25 Apr. 2013.
     This article is about some of the warning signs that may point to a family member abusing and elder's finances.  This relates to King Lear because his daughters are sort of turning against him and now he wants their forgiveness, and will probably give them riches and maybe more land in order to persuade them to forgive him.  

     

     

Room/Allegory of the Cave Intertextuality

Donoghue, Emma. Room: A Novel. New York: Little, Brown and, 2010. Print.

"ROOM, by Emma Donoghue." ROOM, by Emma Donoghue. Http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/ 2012. Web. 29 Jan. 2013.

Plato. Allegory of the Cave.

 

 

"And if he were made to look directly at the light of the fire, it would hurt his eyes and he would turn back and take refuge in the things which he could see, which he would think really far clearer than the things being shown him."

                                                          -Socrates, Allegory of the Cave


     The Allegory of the Cave is a hypothetical story told by Socrates that is used to explain appearence vs. reality.  It tells of a cave where prisoners are kept, they are bound so that they can't move and can only face forward while their captors project images on the wall in front of the prisoners.  One of the prisoners is set free and, since he's only seen the projections on the cave wall, is confused on what is real and what isn't.  Once he figures out that the world outside the cave is real and the projections aren't, he goes back to the cave but the prisoners reject him, stuck in their own false reality. 
     The reasons this is like Room is because Jack is sort of like the prisoner who escaped.  Room was the like the cave, and Jack was being held prisoner in it; it was all he knew to be reality.  When he finds out that there is a world outside Room, he's stunned, he can't wrap his mind around it properly, just as the prisoner was blinded by the sun when he left the cave for the first time.  Ma could be considered one of the formholders (the ones projecting shadows on the wall) since she sort of led him to believe that Room was the only real place there is.  She's a prisoner in the sense that she can't escape from Room, but she already knows there's a world outside of it, so she's not really considered to be a cave prisoner.     

 

Cultural Factors: Generation

     I read the book Tuesdays with Morrie, and it was about a guy named Mitch who loses contact with his favorite college professor Morrie Schwartz.  Mitch gets back into contact with Morrie when he sees him in an interview on TV and finds out that he's deathly ill from a disease called ALS.  So every Tuesday, Mitch goes to meet with Morrie and talk to him about life and philosophy.  Mitch feels very happy to be able to spend time with his former professor again, and considers these meetings his "final class" with Morrie as the professor.  Eventually, Morrie is consumed and falls victim to ALS, slowly becoming a shell of his former self and dies. 
     This book is a memoir written in first person from Mitch's point of view.  It affects the way we understand the book because Mitch is from a newer generation than, say, Morrie, so he talks about more modern problems that he struggles with besides his former professor dying.  He seems to be much more concerned about his job and making money, which seems to be more of an issue now than in the past.  He apparently was concerned about his job enough to end up not having children with his wife.
     As I've said before, some of the issues Mitch faced are different than some of the issues Morrie faced because of the generational differences.  An example would be that when Morrie was young, his father tried to get him a job at a factory to help support the family, despite his young age.  Mitch never faced this, not only because his generation wouldn't allow them to work at a factory at such a young age, but also because of a difference in social class.  Morrie's family growing up was very poor, struggling to make ends meet, while Mitch's was likely somewhere in the middle class.       

Informal Narrative: Race

     As a caucasian male, I have a certain privelege over some of the minority races in the United States.  For example, I never had to ride the city bus to get where I needed to go.  I never had problems with getting my hair cut.  I've never experienced discrimination or prejudice because of my race firsthand.  To tell you the truth, white people have it pretty good compared to some of the minorities.

Informal Narrative: Social Class

     My social class is pretty average, I suppose.  We don't have a ton of extra money to throw around, but we've got enough to hold us for a while.  Although it's outside our Christmas budget to get a fancy new gaming system, we have a fair amount to spend for the holiday.  We have plenty of money for new clothes and shoes once we outgrow the old ones, so that's shows that we aren't too low in our social class.        

Informal Narrative: Gender

     Being an aspiring artist, I don't find it necessary to be as active or fit.  I usually spend more time inside reading or drawing, so I was never as fit as the other guys in my class, and was therefore not as active in gym class.  I couldn't lift as much, wasn't as coordinated, didn't have as much stamina, etc.  But that's okay; the majority of my gender can be fit if they want, I am an artist and I like it that way.

Informal Narrative: Religion

     I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm an atheist.  I don't believe in any sort of deity, and I don't think that I ever will; not in the forseeable future, anyway.  I've been openly atheist for nearly three years, but, looking back, I think I have been one all along. 
    I remember when my parents finally realized.  It was Easter in the year 2010, and my parents gave me the liberty of choosing for myself when I go to church since my Confirmation.  I told them that I wasn't going to go to church with them, even though both my sisters were going (and at the time, my older sister didn't go to church very often).  When my parents asked me why I didn't want to go, I simply stated that I don't believe in God.  They seemed sort of mad, and my mom even said, "Why should I bother buying you Christmas presents this year?"  And then my family left, and I was in the house all alone.  I felt a little betrayed, because my parents said at my Confirmation that they would support me no matter what I believed, and here they were mad at me because I stopped practicing religion altogether. 
     Now, they offer to bring me to church every once in a while, but I still decline respectfully and they don't seem to have so much of a problem with it.  Most of my friends know and have no problem with it, but no one in my family other than those in my house know.  I drop very subtle hints sometimes, but some of my extended family is pretty religious, so I'm going to hold off on flat out telling them for now.