Theme Of The Beggar In The Living Room

The Beggar in The Living Room is a short story which deals with a common but rarely talked about topic in American culture, the desensitization of the public to violence and other horrific images. Throughout the story there are 4 images involving something horrific, that make the daily news. The first being the car crash the narrator is involved in, followed by the starving African child, the Korean student being beaten, and lastly the people being gassed. The recurring theme in the holograms is that the narrators adoptive family doesn't see the holograms as actual events, but rather simply as a news broadcast. The views of the adoptive, rich family are a stark contrast to those of the narrator who has lived through both poverty and violence …show more content…
When the narrator first sees the image of the student, he is shocked by how real this hologram is compared to the rest of the ones he has seen. This is because his uncle included the sound from whatever news broadcast he took the video from in the hologram. The narrator is so engrossed in this particular hologram that he begins to shout at the policeman to stop beating the student. The narrator's reaction to the hologram is one of shock and wonder, he walks up to the image of the students bloody, smashed head and tries to feel it, while his “Aunt Zsu-Zsu” steps right into the horrific image of police brutality and casually asks what kind of salad dressing he would like for dinner. The narrator's frequent allusions to times when Lester would “beat the hell out of me” shows that he lived through domestic violence for much of his life, which likely gave him an increased sensitivity to violence, and such is why his reaction to the image of the beaten student caused such a strong reaction in …show more content…
The ending of the story partially reveals that by stating “ while it hasn't been 5 years yet, I suspect many living rooms are like that already”, referring to the violent imagery which became so commonplace in his adoptive home, and while there are some things the news won't show on television, it is all in all mostly true. Today more than ever we have mass shootings, terrorism, and violent crime, and one has to wonder if it is partially because the mentally unstable people see these images and believe that it is ok to do horrific, violent things. Not only on the news but in many types of media violent imagery is not only commonplace, but accepted as simply a part of everyday life, with no real attempts to explain that these images aren't