In “Our Time,” John Edgar Wideman writes of “the forces arrayed against” his brother Robby, and argues that many of his difficulties were attributable to pressures placed on Robby by his community and culture that was rooted in a history of racism and oppression. We have discussed on-line, to some extent, the level of gains made by minorities in the twenty years since the events in “Our Time” took place; some of you have argued that these have been significant, but others would contend they haven’t made that much of a difference. What would John Berger say about this, and the difficulty each of us have had in changing the ways we see members of all communities? What keeps us from changing those viewpoints, and are those viewpoints responsible for keeping people (and points of view) in a place? Are there “formidable forces” arrayed against each of us in our society that make and map the paths we take in our lives?
While reading “Our Secret,” you saw that Susan Griffin arrives at some of the same conclusions about how we are shaped and affected by our families, communities, and our histories, both private and public. (Indeed, one of her most passionate arguments is that we are affected by histories we don’t even know.) To put it in Berger’s terms, powerful forces are at work in shaping “what we know and believe” and, of course, what we know and believe affects everything we see, and, according to Griffin, everyone we see.
You have three options for this assignment, ranked here from least difficult to most:
1. For your first assignment, you discussed a time when someone or something had power over you, and how you came to understand and respond to that power. For this assignment, I would like you to take a look at yourself or someone you know and care for and how you or that other person is affected by the larger expectations placed on you by society. You may use the Berger essay, the Wideman essay, or the Griffin essay to develop your essay, but you should try to use the principles of two of them to help you discuss your experience. What are the “formidable forces” at work in the experience you describe? Who or what is responsible for their creation, and how do you or the person you’re describing respond to them? Do you fight them? give into them? a combination of both?
You’ll have to use your imagination here, at least in an intellectual sense, to both describe your experience and consider how it fits into a societal or cultural scheme that in part shaped that experience. The connections between the personal and cultural need not be literal or complete; they aren’t made so in either “Our Time” or “Our Secret.” But both Wideman and Griffin see their families and their communities for the mysteries they are, while acknowledging that these mysteries are largely shaped and reared in a culture’s expectations of what a family is, what a community is, what a country is. I’d like to see you attempt to do the same in your own essay. Remember, call on Berger and Griffin or Wideman (or all three) to push your discussion forward, using their essays as context to access your own. This is a must if you take this option.
