The story "Every Little Hurricane" as of now, is my favorite story read in class. The metaphors and symbolic language created a fantastic depiction of alcoholism. I grew up with alcoholism in my family, not as Victor in Every Little Hurricane did, but I still did.
My family did their best to shield me from their habits. However, no matter how little you are, you still know what their doing is wrong. The fact that he described his family as a hurricane or bad whether was completely appropriate. Alchoholism can easily pass, just like bad whether.
In the beginning of the story, when the Victor speak of his uncle's fighting, he says that they were "slugging each other with such force that had to be in love." This line was very powerful for me, because I've never really thought about the way strangers fight, compared to the way that family members/friends fight. In reality though, it's true. If you know someone, you know how tough they are and you know how hard you can hit without causing permanent damage. With a stranger, you're just fighting to show that you're tougher, and hitting him/her just hard enough to end the fight.
There was one part of the story that I disagreed with, however. The fact that it was targeted towards Native Americans. It just seems that Native Americans get a lot of "beef" for drinking a lot. When in reality, no matter what nationality you are, you are just as likely to become and alcoholic.
However, the person who wrote this grew up on a reservation, so in that sense he's just speaking from personal experience. I hang out with a couple Native Americans however and they grew up on a reservation. They despise being called Indian, they prefer Native. That's what was the most confusing out of the story for me, if the person that wrote the story grew up on a reservation, why was he referring to his family as Indians?
Ending of Caucasia
15 years ago
3 comments:
Brittanya,
ohhh my gosh. I can relate to your blog COMPLETELY. I also grew up with alocohilism being a part of my family, the only difference is, my parents have been pretty bad at sheilding it from me. It has caused the near divorce of my family, and has caused me to stay away from home at months at a time. I have a lot of respect for you for talking about the whole thing. I started a blog about it, but just thought it would be too hard to talk about because I never really thought people could relate..but I am glad that I know someone can.
-Shauna
Most reservation Indians refer to themselves as Indians, not native Americans. They see the NA term as an outsider's or academic's political correctness. They take pride in calling themselv
ves Indian People, and all the struggle and survival that represents. But they also view themselves as the original people of the continent even without using the NA label.
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