The Truth: Behind Gunnar Kaufman’s Eyes
Paul Beatty’s hilarious and humorous apprising of Gunnar Kaufman in The White Boy Shuffle is about an inopportune surfer bum who moved from the house that he grew up in, in Santa Monica, to a town called Hillside in West Los Angeles. Throughout his life, Gunnar was only surrounded by people who were dependent on him and who tried to control him. So he does not take charge of his life and because of this, Gunnar is heavily affected by mental stress because of the pressure so many people put on him. This lowers his self-confidence, makes him suffer from depression, and ultimately gives him a feeling of being an inhuman toy for those people.
To understand how he was a toy, the first the reader needs to know is that when we read the book we look at events from Gunnar's point of view. It is key to know this when analyzing the book because Gunnar always had a contrastive perception of the setting he was in (compared to the people surrounding him). Beatty never confirms what …show more content…
“I was the funny, cool black guy," (chapter two, page 26). Gunnar’s moral sense had based on a system: he believed that everyone around him expected him to habitually hold that funny, cool black guy attitude - in another sense this means they were dependent on Gunnar. Then it would make much more sense why Gunnar wasn't the one who was in control of his life because if he believed this - he would feel guilty of taking someone (himself) away from a lot of people who were dependent on him - in a way he gives them hope and is almost a tool for them to cope with their lives. This is also why Gunnar hadn’t changed a lot by the end of the book. Furthermore, there is no specific person that you can point to and say that they are the one controlling the course of Gunnar's life because it is not just one person, it’s everyone around him (friends and family: Scoby, Psycho Loco, Gunnar’s mom,
Paul Beatty’s hilarious and humorous apprising of Gunnar Kaufman in The White Boy Shuffle is about an inopportune surfer bum who moved from the house that he grew up in, in Santa Monica, to a town called Hillside in West Los Angeles. Throughout his life, Gunnar was only surrounded by people who were dependent on him and who tried to control him. So he does not take charge of his life and because of this, Gunnar is heavily affected by mental stress because of the pressure so many people put on him. This lowers his self-confidence, makes him suffer from depression, and ultimately gives him a feeling of being an inhuman toy for those people.
To understand how he was a toy, the first the reader needs to know is that when we read the book we look at events from Gunnar's point of view. It is key to know this when analyzing the book because Gunnar always had a contrastive perception of the setting he was in (compared to the people surrounding him). Beatty never confirms what …show more content…
“I was the funny, cool black guy," (chapter two, page 26). Gunnar’s moral sense had based on a system: he believed that everyone around him expected him to habitually hold that funny, cool black guy attitude - in another sense this means they were dependent on Gunnar. Then it would make much more sense why Gunnar wasn't the one who was in control of his life because if he believed this - he would feel guilty of taking someone (himself) away from a lot of people who were dependent on him - in a way he gives them hope and is almost a tool for them to cope with their lives. This is also why Gunnar hadn’t changed a lot by the end of the book. Furthermore, there is no specific person that you can point to and say that they are the one controlling the course of Gunnar's life because it is not just one person, it’s everyone around him (friends and family: Scoby, Psycho Loco, Gunnar’s mom,