Delany Mossbacher, a confusing character from The Tortilla Curtain seems to be living the American Dream, in the Arroyo Blanco Estates with his wife, Kyra, and her son, Jordan. In Part One Delany’s character does not want to change anything because then he would have to voice out his opinion, and that would cause a problem for him since he does not have a “backbone” to start with or guts to stand up for himself. Delany is a very weak guy who is selfish, lacks social skills, and is a hypocrite. In Part Two Boyle depicts Delany to be affectionate, still a hypocrite, and more hatred towards the Mexicans. In the beginning of the novel Delany appears to be a selfish jerk, who only thinks and cares for himself, after the accident, the first thing
…show more content…
What Delany should have done was go help out the man he hit, because that is what a humanist does, since Delany considers himself to be a “liberal humanist” (3). This is the opposite of what Gladwell talked about in his book Outliers, where a small community of Italians lived, the Rosetans, “who discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures” (9). This statement was what Rosetans lived by and this was the reason why their community prospered well because they all helped each other, when one was in need. Delany should have taken better care of helping Candido out, instead of handing him a twenty-dollar bill. A twenty-dollar bill is nothing, if he thought of paying the immigrant off, at least he should have thought to refer Candido to a job or gave his number to call, if in the future Candido would need help, he knows whom to call. Delany tried to make it seem like the accident was all Candido’s fault because …show more content…
Delany has trouble on how to start up a conversation or how to get his point across. When Delany went to the community meeting, he did not know how to phrase his idea of wanting people to stop leaving food out for the coyotes, so instead he held out Kyra’s dog’s leg (44-45). Delany bringing out a graphic limb was not a professional way to get the audience’s attention and empathy perhaps while growing up he never had conversed with people around his age; so maybe Delany was an only child, because he never got to experience how to argue with a sibling or stand up for oneself to prove that he was right in an argument. This relates to Gladwell’s idea of questioning or having good communication skills to go far in life. In the book Outliers, Gladwell gives an example of a man named Chris Langan, who knew what he was talking about, but did not know how to question his professor about it (100). This misunderstanding held back Chris Langan just like Delany was misunderstood at the community meeting because people did not listen to what Delany had said, but were shocked about what they saw. Actions do speak bigger than words, but in Delany’s case no one wanted to listen to what he had to said because he did not hook the audience in with his words, but confused them with his actions. In chapter “Seven” Delany wanted to tell Jack Jr. that everyone should be given a chance in life and the Jack Jr. should not
What Delany should have done was go help out the man he hit, because that is what a humanist does, since Delany considers himself to be a “liberal humanist” (3). This is the opposite of what Gladwell talked about in his book Outliers, where a small community of Italians lived, the Rosetans, “who discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures” (9). This statement was what Rosetans lived by and this was the reason why their community prospered well because they all helped each other, when one was in need. Delany should have taken better care of helping Candido out, instead of handing him a twenty-dollar bill. A twenty-dollar bill is nothing, if he thought of paying the immigrant off, at least he should have thought to refer Candido to a job or gave his number to call, if in the future Candido would need help, he knows whom to call. Delany tried to make it seem like the accident was all Candido’s fault because …show more content…
Delany has trouble on how to start up a conversation or how to get his point across. When Delany went to the community meeting, he did not know how to phrase his idea of wanting people to stop leaving food out for the coyotes, so instead he held out Kyra’s dog’s leg (44-45). Delany bringing out a graphic limb was not a professional way to get the audience’s attention and empathy perhaps while growing up he never had conversed with people around his age; so maybe Delany was an only child, because he never got to experience how to argue with a sibling or stand up for oneself to prove that he was right in an argument. This relates to Gladwell’s idea of questioning or having good communication skills to go far in life. In the book Outliers, Gladwell gives an example of a man named Chris Langan, who knew what he was talking about, but did not know how to question his professor about it (100). This misunderstanding held back Chris Langan just like Delany was misunderstood at the community meeting because people did not listen to what Delany had said, but were shocked about what they saw. Actions do speak bigger than words, but in Delany’s case no one wanted to listen to what he had to said because he did not hook the audience in with his words, but confused them with his actions. In chapter “Seven” Delany wanted to tell Jack Jr. that everyone should be given a chance in life and the Jack Jr. should not