Stories within Our Time

Stories within “Our Time”

John Edgar Wideman’s, “Our Time”, tells the story of how his brother’s mistakes have caused Robby lots of trouble. Many questions have roamed through my head about Robby, John’s brother, and why he turned out the way he was. Why did Robby have to turn out to be the rebel in the family? Could it have been his home town, his family, or his friends? Those are the questions. I feel like it may have been the “ghetto”, Homewood, that influenced him.

Robby’s life story seems kind of troubled. Since Robby was the baby boy of the family, he was very spoiled. Since his older brothers and sisters were very successful and were like “goody-2-shoes”, everyone expected Robby to turn out the same way. But that’s definitely not how Robby felt, he wanted to be the opposite. He refused to be “square”. He was the hard headed one of the family while his siblings had always excelled at school; Robby was on a completely different level.

Robby tells about his experience growing up in Shadyside, an all-white neighborhood, where his mother thought that he would be safe from the now corrupted Homewood, where violence reigned on the streets. Homewood was where Robby and John’s mom grew up. Back then, Homewood was a place where everyone was well respected and knew each other. It was quite the place to live, considering that Robby’s mom stayed there for a long period of time.

Robby was never quite able to fit in with anyone and he was always searching for the knowledge that he was missing -the knowledge of what his mother was trying to hide from him in Homewood. Robby tells about wanting to be the rebel of the family, just to be different and stand out and he goes ...

... middle of paper ...

...n French, taught her and she decided to keep it in the family. Apparently Robby didn’t get the memo. She changed after Robby went to prison. No more giving the benefit of the doubt, she became a bitter woman. “Mom expects the worse now.” (Wideman 668)

Although throughout the story I feel that Robby is an okay person and a truthful one at that, there was still something behind John’s thoughts and words. There were some things that he needed to come clean about to himself, Robby, and his mother, but he remained silent. That made Robby look like the better person because if anything their mother taught them to be truthful.

So from my point of view, I believe that Homewood had a huge impact on the way Robby chose to live his life. Everything pretty much came crashing down for him and his family there after the big move to the ghetto, Homewood