Mini-Document Essay
Students enrolled in English 1102 classes
taught by VSU Instructor Diane W. Howard during spring 2004 semester, read
“Going Through the Change,” Janice Daugharty’s
first collection of short stories. After
reading the collection, the students explored topics in the stories, relating
them to their hometowns or communities. Simply put, the students related the
ideas in a literary piece to their own lives, finding points or areas of
similarity as well as areas of disagreement. Once they identified points—in
agreement or in contrast—the students researched and wrote a mini-documented
essay on the subject “Regional Identity.”
Dinnertime
by Janell Brocks
In
today’s society as it has been for many years food is thought of as a comfort
and many times a conversational piece.
Many important events involve food.
People meet their blind dates for the first time at a corner
restaurant. Children bring their new
friends and partners home for their parents to meet over dinner. Business contracts are often negotiated and
made at the tables of five star restraints.
So, whether it is a quick lunch date with an old friend or a quiet
family dinner at home, the fact of sitting around a table
sharing a meal is important in the American society.
The
dictionary defines dinner at the chief meal of the day. However, the word has come to mean much more
than that. People sit down to dinner to
gain a sense of togetherness. During
dinnertime many important facts or concerns about the participating parties are
brought to light. Often times life
changing facts are brought out at dinner.
A husband may take his wife and children out to a new restaurant in town
to inform them of his new prestigious position at work. A wife may prepare a special meal to inform
her husband of a suspected pregnancy. A
son can come home for dinner and announce to his parents his new found
homosexuality. Still, a wedding proposal
may be made over dinner. The fact of the
matter is that the dinner table is an open field for the release of emotions. The presence of the whole family makes it
easy to convey important matters to everyone at the same time. Janice Daugharty displays this fact about
dinner in many of their short stories.
Janice
Daugharty in her short story “Nightshade” depicts the relationship of two
parents Nelson and Grace with their troubled daughter Martha. Martha is always getting into trouble and
looking to her parents to bail her out.
She has been through drug addictions, drug dealing husbands, crazy slasher boyfriend and is now on her newest trend
homosexuality. Nelson is extremely
disappointed in his only child and feels he does not even recognize her. On her visit home Martha brings her new
lesbian lover Sam although she knows her parents do not approve. The last night of the visit, around the
dinner table, emotions are let loose.
Martha attempts to blame her father for all of her crazy doings and it
is at this time the parents put their foot down. Grace tells her daughter “If you’re going to
hook into every popular notion that comes along, at least be smart enough to
look at the examples’ backgrounds. They
might have been left in some messed-up man’s care, but you never were. You were
never in that kind of situation, and your father was never that kind of man”
(“Nightshade” 95-96). Nelson accuses her of being a “fake Queer” (“Nightshade”
94) and gives her an old fashion whooping.
Nelson knows he can no longer take his daughter’s charades. On the final page of the short story Grace
pleads with her husband on her daughter’s behalf. “Grace crept to the spot
where he sat and kneeled before him, peering into his eyes with her hands on
his shoulders. “ “No, Nelson,no,””
she said crying, “ “you can’t change her, accept her or let her go””
(“Nightshade” 99). In the story the
dinner scene is almost the final event and everything else just builds up to
that climax. Through this technique
Janice Daugharty shows the importance of dinnertime and the underlying
emotional context.
Another
example of the dinnertime used as an emotional release in one of Janice
Daugharty’s short stories comes about in her portrayal of a dysfunctional
family in the short story “Living Lessons.”
In “Living Lessons” Daugharty describes the reaction of a small town
white trash father who learns his two daughters have been put out of school
because it was discovered that they had some black heritage. When the girls arrive home in mid afternoon,
the mother is sitting on her chair rocking and playing her juice harp as is her
usual. The oldest girl goes into the kitchen
to cook dinner for the family. As she is
finishing in her father comes in. The
family sits down to dinner and the mother tells the girls came in early from
school. The father demands to know why
and the oldest daughter says to him “I tell you what, Old Man,” … “we got run
off, me and Lovie, cause they fount out we got nigger
blood.” (“Living Lessons” 193) There is
a whirlwind of emotions at the dinner table. The girls try to deal with their
shame and anger. The mother feels
ashamed because she knows the black half comes from her side. The father is distraught on the mistreatment
of his girls. (Daugharty “Living Lessons”)
These
dinnertime confessions and confrontations are often good for a family. The dinnertime talks keep families informed
about the goings on of one another and, offer some release for the built up
tension. With today’s
on the go lifestyle and everyone always trying to keep up with the Jones’, many
people have strayed from the cleansing dinnertime ritual. The popularity of fast food and the drive
through have become phenomenal. In his book Fast Food Nation, Eric Sclosser says the McDonald’s arches are a more widely
recognized symbol than the cross (“Unhappy Meals). Most people grab a bite to
at on the go and never sit down to enjoy a meal. There are two or three fast food establishments
at every corner. Families no longer sit
together and eat rather everyone goes their separate ways throughout the
day. This is a plague to our
society. “ Americans now spend $120
billion a year on fast food, more than on higher education, PCs, computer
software or new cars, or on magazines, going to see films, recorded music,
newspapers, videos and books combined (“Unhappy Meals”). Little boys in
“ The American obsession with fast cheap food has replaced
the desire for prepared meals” (“Fast Food”).
“Every day in