Of the three pieces we were to read for next week, I found “Tits up in a Ditch” to be the most compelling. I loved the imagery of the west coupled with the sheer bleakness of the main character’s life. It was like nothing we’ve read before.
Understanding where the story was going was perhaps the most difficult part. With the mother abandonment and the repressive nature of her grandparents, I the story of Dakotah would be a story of an ‘inspired’ child – whether she would be bright or lucky, I automatically assumed her life would be difficult, yet rewarding at the end.
It wasn’t. She dropped out of high school; her marriage failed; her child was accidentally killed by her grandfather; she lost her arm and the only person she built an emotional connection to. She didn’t even have her mother’s beauty. In other short stories about a child in a rural area that child usually is an outcast that finds them at the end of the text; Dakotah’s life is just the propagation of a vicious circle of ineptitude. Her mother slept around, most likely because of her mother’s complete emotionless relationship she has with the women related to her. Although Dakotah does not have the sexual promiscuity of her mother, she was doomed to her life by living in the same life her mother did.
I like the realist nature of this story; although it certainly does not reflect the lifestyle of all ranchers, it is a snapshot of some of the problems modern ranches have developed. Their distance from modern society creates a large separation in culture; this void provides ample ground for fascist religious nutjobs like Ted Haggard, Pat Robertson, Jim Baker and Jerry Falwell to spread their seed of idiocracy. Dakotah’s grandmother is heavily influenced by these hypocrite’s teachings, and Dakotah’s life is greatly affected by this fact.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I would have to agree with the majority of the comments made by Patrick. One of the more difficult parts of the story was trying to predict what was going to happen next through the text. Dakotah starts off being left by her mother;with the stories that we have read previously i would have concluded that she was in for a rougher life. It seemed that during her childhood the hardest thing for her to adapt to was a lack of affection from her grandparents. Growing up in a rural area, and being raised by grandparents who tried to correct where they went wrong with their daughter, made her live a life of solitude. Well solitude from outside influence. They didn't even keep around her mothers things as a memory. Patrick makes a good point about the connection that the grandparents have of Dokatah and her mother. They treat her extremely different than the way they treated their daughter.
One thing i felt was important was how easy it was for people in the story to leave family. In the very first page you are told that Dokatah was left by her mom, and was forced into her grandparents home. Then Sash and her decide on a divorce after a few months together. Then soon after her child is born, Dokatah decides to go to the army in order to provide for her child. But is that the best thing for her to do, leave her child alone with her grandparents? In a different way she does what her mother did, but justified it by heading to the army. The loss of love ones is a common theme throughout the story. As a reader you don't get a sense of compassion for another, or true love until the end of the story. And even at that it is an awkward gather of emotions. I don't know what the author was going for in this story, but i hope it wasn't to tell us about how dysfunctional rural families can be.
Post a Comment