Tarra Kooker
Essay 5
Within both “Who Invented the Jump Shot” by John Edgar Wideman and “Television” by Lydia Davis, the readers were presented with two narrators having obsessions. In “Television” the narrator is identified through being obsessed with tv shows. While in “Who Invented the Jump Shot”, presents a narrator that appeared to be more obsessed with racism, prejudice, and how the “white man” acts towards minorities. However, both narrators captivate themselves in other issues other than their own lives.
In “Televison” the narrator wasn’t much interested in her own life, but rather the ones that she saw on television, that appeared far less complicated than her own. She obsessed over wishing she could’ve had a life more similar to …show more content…
He obsessed himself over the racism and prejudice within the world. He focused his thoughts on white men being the enemy to minorities, and essentially stealing credit from the colored men. “My non-colored colleagues will claim one of their own, a white college kid, launched the first jump shot…Rewriting history because no native’s around to holler, Stop, thief” (Wideman 728). He most likely had this association towards white men, because he is a minority himself as he later described that he was Jewish. He continued on with his fixation towards racism through the character Rastus. Rastus was a black character in the book that the narrator described as an orphaned colored boy, that was essentially left abandoned in a white mans town. The narrator focused most of his resentment about racism through describing actions that happened to this Rastus. For example, Rastus was giving CPR to a passed out white woman and faced mistreatment due to him being black and performing this unheard of action on a white woman. The narrator refused to describe in detail what the white folk did to him, saying “these embarrassing undesirables and unemployables, who would lynch foreign CEO’s too if they could get away with it, are responsible for perpetrating the horror I’m asking you to imagine. And imagine you must, because I refuse to regale you with gory, unedifying details” (Wideman 746). The author of “Who Inventor the Jump Shot” had a clear obsession towards the racism and prejudice from the past and the present, and also seems to reference future events where unjust treatment occurs as
Essay 5
Within both “Who Invented the Jump Shot” by John Edgar Wideman and “Television” by Lydia Davis, the readers were presented with two narrators having obsessions. In “Television” the narrator is identified through being obsessed with tv shows. While in “Who Invented the Jump Shot”, presents a narrator that appeared to be more obsessed with racism, prejudice, and how the “white man” acts towards minorities. However, both narrators captivate themselves in other issues other than their own lives.
In “Televison” the narrator wasn’t much interested in her own life, but rather the ones that she saw on television, that appeared far less complicated than her own. She obsessed over wishing she could’ve had a life more similar to …show more content…
He obsessed himself over the racism and prejudice within the world. He focused his thoughts on white men being the enemy to minorities, and essentially stealing credit from the colored men. “My non-colored colleagues will claim one of their own, a white college kid, launched the first jump shot…Rewriting history because no native’s around to holler, Stop, thief” (Wideman 728). He most likely had this association towards white men, because he is a minority himself as he later described that he was Jewish. He continued on with his fixation towards racism through the character Rastus. Rastus was a black character in the book that the narrator described as an orphaned colored boy, that was essentially left abandoned in a white mans town. The narrator focused most of his resentment about racism through describing actions that happened to this Rastus. For example, Rastus was giving CPR to a passed out white woman and faced mistreatment due to him being black and performing this unheard of action on a white woman. The narrator refused to describe in detail what the white folk did to him, saying “these embarrassing undesirables and unemployables, who would lynch foreign CEO’s too if they could get away with it, are responsible for perpetrating the horror I’m asking you to imagine. And imagine you must, because I refuse to regale you with gory, unedifying details” (Wideman 746). The author of “Who Inventor the Jump Shot” had a clear obsession towards the racism and prejudice from the past and the present, and also seems to reference future events where unjust treatment occurs as