Reading Response: Ordinary People By Judith Guest

Martha gets the honor of showing the world that women of her time did all they could to be as independent as possible. In The Midwife’s Tale, Laurel Ulrich explains, “She gardened, sewed, cared for her grandchildren, nursed the sick, laid out the dead, and delivered babies” (276). She was a woman of many talents. Martha lived by a value that she expects the same respect in return and undertakes full authority over the responsibilities she considers to be her own.

The movie Ordinary People is a movie which looks at a family struck by tragedy, It shows how an upper middle-class family handles life when tragedy strikes unexpectedly, and family order is turned into chaos. The movie in essence sheds light into a family, due to a tragedy, has turned into separate individuals living in the same house, who lack of communicating their grief effectively. The movie was shown through a realistic lens, without over dramatization; looked into misplaced guilt at every level. The inability of the family to work through the tragedies lead them to a place where they each felt a breakdown within each other as well as the family dynamic.

“Seeing Ourselves” by Arthur Gottleib is an opened form poem that consists of four no rhyming quintains with the exception of the last stanza. The subject focuses on a complicated relationship between a man and a woman. In the poem, the speaker is a man who is having trouble with his love life. The theme of this poem is that one can only fight and battle so much for something they love before they meet the end and give up. The tone begins in frustration mixed with sadness, but in the end switches to hopelessness and gloom. At this point, the speaker has realized that he has been ‘fighting’ for a lost cause.

When one thinks of a “citizen”, they often imagine the process of gaining the title of becoming a citizen within a country. But often times people do not think of “citizen” or “citizenship” to be connected to race. In Claudia Rankine’s book “Citizen”, she takes time to discuss and display specific moments that have happened in the lives of African Americans who live in the United States. By doing so, she is investigating in depth of what it means to be a Black American “citizen” today in society. These stories, although reflecting upon minuscule moments, paint a large picture of the true reality of racism in America very prevalent today. In context to Rankine’s Citizen and other supporting documents such as Keywords: “Citizenship”, White Like Me and Cops See it Differently it can be proven that racial bias deprives full Black American citizens of “citizenship” within everyday society.

Taking a look into the ways of her household solidified the fact that housewives were set apart from their counterparts because of their responsibilities. Their knack for multi-tasking and running a home efficiently was never held to very high standards. Now, with a look into these three women’s homes, it seems that everyone should take with them the notion that no matter the woman’s wealth or social status, her work in the home is pivotal to the success of her family.

Leaving the comforts of the first world, Jessica Alexander abandons her job, fiancé, family, and home to venture into the misleading volunteer work of Humanitarian aid. Chasing Chaos: My Decade In and Out of Humanitarian Aid by Jessica Alexander is a conglomeration of stories that are written from Jessica’s memory. “It is a true account based on [Jessica’s] best recollections of the events and [her] experiences.”.

Ordinary People written by Judith Guest is a story about a typical American family. The book examines how a family reacts to the adversity of losing a member. The book begins just over a year since the Jarrett family lost Buck, their teenage son.

In the movie Ordinary People, the Jarrett family is faced with traumatic events that provoke situations of crucial communication. The family members, Conrad (son), Beth (mother), and Calvin (father), have to deal with the loss of their beloved older son and brother. The loss of Buck hit Conrad, especially hard, resting displaced guilt on his shoulders. Conrad buckles under the guilt and pain, allowing him to draw in the dark emotions that fill his heart and mind attempting to end his life and end the agony. The opening of the movie is set in the time following Conrad’s release from the hospital when he returns to a quiet home with little love and compassion released from his mother's heart. He returned to a place of more pain. Beth, the mother,

Susan Griffin's "Our Secret" is a study in psychology. It is a look into the human mind to see what makes people do the things they do and in particular what makes people commit acts of violence. She isolates the first half of the twentieth century and in particular the era of the Second World War as a basis for her study. The essay discusses a number of people but they all tie in to Heinrich Himmler. He is the extreme case, he who can be linked directly to every single death in the concentration camps. Griffin seeks to examine Himmler because if she can discern a monster like Himmler than everyone else simply falls into place. The essay also tries to deduce why something like the Holocaust, although never mentioned directly, can

Nancy received her bachelor’s degree and is now working full time as a social worker, Evan is a full time furniture sales man. Hochschild argues that “most women work one shift at their office or factory and a “second shift” at home” (Hochschild 4). This is supported with what the Holt couple does when they return home from work, Nancy cooks, does housework, and cares for Joey, while Evan usually goes to the basement and works on his hobby. This is not uncommon for women to experience this “second shift” the gender system that is commonly practiced among American families is domesticity. “The ideology of domesticity held that men “naturally” belong in the market because they are competitive and aggressive; women belong in the home because of their “natural” focus on relationships, children, and an ethic of care” (Williams 1). This also relates to the gender norms placed on men and women. This leads to turmoil in the relationship causing both the man and woman

Most curriculums being taught to students withhold a mass amount of history. Some may do this because they feel some events do not have the same importance as other topics being taught. Such topics for example would be the rape and sexual exploitation of thousands of African American females during the time periods where racism and segregation was the norm. It is important for people to be educated about the horrific events that these women went through without justice. It is also essential because it shows the amazing activism Rosa Parks took part in. Most people are often just taught about Parks’ actions on the bus. At the Dark End of the Street by Danielle L. McGuire shows how Rosa Parks and many other dedicated their lives to receive equality not only for themselves, but for all African Americans in the south. Danielle L. McGuire’s work is an amazing way for people to not only learn more of Rosa Parks story, but to get a better understanding of what all African American woman had to deal with during this time period. The realism of sexual violence and its dominant impact on the African American women was one of the many events that helped ignite the Civil Rights Movement. McGuire wrote At the Dark End of the Street in order to resolve the negligence of this reality.

The Jarrett family from the movie Ordinary People have a variety of issues. Complicating matters is the complex, tangled nature of these issues. To combat these issues we need a clear plan. In the absence of a clear plan there would be a great deal of floundering about. Floundering which would likely end in opening hurts we can not resolve. Therefore let us be clear about what we are setting out to accomplish.

The film “Ordinary People” is story about the Jarrett family, an upper middle class family living in the picture perfect suburb of Lake Forest, Illinois. The story begins shortly after the tragic and untimely death of the oldest son, Jordan (also referred to as Buck), who died in a boating accident, that his younger brother Conrad, survived. When a traumatic event such as this occurs some families unite and battle the grief and heartache together, as a unit, while others become emotionally isolated and detached from one another. This is the case for the Jarrett's. The depth of grief that each individual character is suffering is uncovered as the film progresses. This tale is

Citizen, is a book by the author Claudia Rankine, who was born in Jamaica, and then immigrated to the US at a young age. After seemingly absorbing and understanding the culture of America, she writes the book Citizen, to not only define violence, but as a voice to black individuals on the racism and violence they face daily. The book does a very good job of putting the reader in the shoes of a black individual in America, without not making it believable. The book has its own style, which is used to show the violence that blacks face daily. This book was the perfect addition to the course in the sense it unwittingly attempts to answer the question, “How does it feel to be a problem?”.

LGBTQ social movements have evolved over time from liberationist politics of the 1970s to an enormous contemporary focus on gay and lesbian marriage rights, a controversial and arguably assimilationist priority for mainstream LGBTQ advocacy groups. Different forms of activism have approached assimilationism versus societal reformation or preservation of unique constructions of queer identities with a myriad of arguments. In “The Trouble with Normal” by Michael Warner, the author focuses primarily on a criticism of gay marriage rights activism in which he posits that all marriage is “selective legitimacy.” He points to other LGBT movements and issues as more worthy of pursuing, particularly intersectional pursuits of equal rights for people regardless of coupled status. In “Marital Discord: Understanding the Contested Place of Marriage in the Lesbian and Gay Movement” authors Mary Bernstein and Verta Taylor give a snapshot history of LGBTQ activism since the 1970s and offer similar arguments as Warner about the heteronormative and neoliberal nature of placing the fight for legal marriage rights at the forefront of LGBTQ activism, although they do also introduce emerging improvements with the increasingly intersectional awareness of modern advocacy efforts.