In “Hunger”, Andrew Lam centralizes food as the theme of this interestingly short story. He portrays the poor life of Mister Binh Nguyen and his daughter who are afflicted by the catastrophe of living in poverty as their rice field in Bac Lieu, Mekong Delta has been co-opted by the new government. Enthralled by the successful life of his cousin, Eddie in The States, Mr. Nguyen and his family decide to flee by travelling across the globe from Vietnam to America in their pursuit of their everlasting happiness in a new world. Food, in this story is the paradox of the American Dream; the American Dream is the national ethos of the United States or a set of ideas which freedom includes the prosperity and success of an individual by their own hard …show more content…
Food is the key for a healthy cognitive, emotion and physical developments. Mr. Nguyen makes the readers realize that food is necessary for psychological health every time when he has to face her daughter in order to force her to eat. For instance, Mr. Nguyen has no other choice except to force the spoon quickly inside her mouth, even though he is expecting her to spit it right back out (79). He is terribly down in the dumps when her daughter eats only rice and steamed tofu and sometimes, if he is successful in his begging, a fried egg (79). Food is seen as a psychological remedy when Mr. Nguyen tells her Easy-to-Love, “Do you know how much happier you would make your Ba feel if you would just eat? . . . Eat and be strong and beautiful” (80). By saying “being young and beautiful”, Mr. Nguyen is literally portraying that food brings innate happiness. Nonetheless, to be in such a good shape and thrive psychologically in the future, his daughter needs to gain her appetite to eat. The consequences of her behavior of having no appetite to eat has opened the eyes of the readers as she looks rather unhappy and frail; her cheekbones are high, eyes are sunken, hair is dry and she looks like a four-year-old even though she is already six (79). The saying “we are what we eat” is proven from his daughter’s appearance due to not taking food in the sufficient proportions that she …show more content…
Since the tragic death of her mother, Amy has been weeping and longing to see her mother back. Mr. Nguyen has been coaxing his Easy-to-Love by personifying their merging shadows with the presence of her mother. The clear example is when he convinces his daughter to believe, “Look that’s where your mother is now. She lives where our shadows are combined, in the shadowy world” (84). Nevertheless, his attempts to make her daughter to forget her pass comes to no avail when she begins to lose her interest with the shadow game. The existence of Miss Kathy Lee, who is their neighbor has somehow brings a change in their life. From Mr. Nguyen’s depiction of Kathy Lee in the story, he feels that she is a symbol food that is closely related to healing his loss of appetite. Kathy Lee is said to have a fruitful perfume smell as “it suggests all at once grapes, watermelon, and peaches,. . .” (93). Kathy Lee plays a significant role of the imagination of food or fruits with the maternal presence. In the aftermath, Amy is in a state of delight as she has been longing for the love of a woman since her mother’s death. Not only Kathy Lee has made Amy happy yet, she has become successful in making Mr.Nguyen regains his appetite. In his dream, “he sees Kathy Lee is carving a large Butterball turkey . . . for the first time in a long, long time, his stomach growls with hunger” (97). Thus, food is a symbol of maternal
Family Dinners: gone. Lunch at the new greek place: gone. Meeting up with friends for coffee: gone
In the first paragraph, Downe gives the impression that America lacks starvation to make his family more eager to leave England and start a better life. Downe exaggerates the abundance of food as the table piles high with “pudding, pyes, and fruit of all kind that was in season, and everything that a person could wish”. Through the imagery of food, he discusses the benefits of living in America by exaggerating how easy it is to get food here compared to England. Downe 's enthusiasm towards the ease of obtaining food and the vivid description of the variety of food already available suggests that America can solve his family's current problem of starvation. Downe describes his new life in America as “having a barrel of cider holding 32 gallons, for 4s., and 100 lbs. of beef for 10s”. To persuade his wife, Downe u...
Huey P. Long frequently refers in “Every Man a King” to how much there is to eat in the United States, and uses starvation to form the pathos argument that not supporting him is to make others suffer. Long grew up in an agricultural town where he saw greed and poverty firsthand. Unlike the rest of Louisiana, the town
Pollan states that food is not just a necessity to survive, it has a greater meaning to life. Pollan explains how food can cause us happiness and health by connecting us to our family and culture. Warren Belasco, in “Why Study Food”, supports Pollan’s idea that food is something social and cultural. In Belasco’s description of a positive social encounter food is included, whether it involves a coffee date with a colleague or a dinner date with a loved one. Belasco states that food forms our identity and brings our society together.
The concept of American dream originated in the 1600s, even before America was a country (“Ten Facts”). The forever changing American dream, has instilled in American literature the choices people are forced to make regarding their aspirations. Every generation has changed the common idea of what the American dream entails. There are immense possibilities as to how the common person interprets the American dream. The American dream inspires people to make their own decisions and prompts people that there is always another possibility (Izaguirre). In American literature the theme of choices and possibilities is prominent.
Xu Xi writes, “My parents ate sparingly, long after we were no longer impoverished, and disdained “unhealthy” Western diets” (124). Since during her childhood her parents ate sparingly and in moderation, she was never able to eat anything but plain foods and was unable to eat any food from other cultures especially Western. Even when her family was no longer poor and going through a famine, they continued to eat like they were. Her father was a vegetarian so they mostly ate tofu. He prohibited his family from eating meat. The food they ate was plain and her parents would often skimp on food. Now that Xu is on her own and alone in New York she decides to eat only the most expensive of foods. She can finally satisfy her curiosity for Western food. Now that she is free to order whatever she wants she goes all out and orders foods such as, hot scones, smoked salmon, steak, cold shrimp, as well as cabernet sauvignon. She over indulges in meals that she was not able to eat when her parents were still alive. She had many missed opportunities and now that she has no restrictions she is enjoying the pleasure of food. Growing up she was taught to be ashamed of a luxurious lifestyle and that there were more important things in life. Now she can finally enjoy the more expensive pleasures in life without having to feel the guilt from her parents. Now she is finally living a life and having the experience of something that she had wanted since she was a
Through many creative forms of literature one can see how authors such as John Cheever, Louise Erdrich, and John Updike present a variety of views on American Life. It is through short stories like “The Swimmer”, “I’m a Mad Dog Biting Myself for Sympathy” and “A&P” that authors put forth examples of how the American Dream means different things to different people. American politician Bernie Sanders once said, “For many, the American dream has become a nightmare.” Thanks to these stories it is possible to see how the American Dream is viewed and how the idea of freedom in this country affect people from all sorts of backgrounds. It could be argued that each story shows a struggle either while being at the pinnacle of success in terms of reaching the American Dream or while attempting to feel a sense of freedom within such a promising country. This is seen through Neddy’s struggle to get his life together after being hyper focused on artificial possessions that the American Dream often romanticizes, through the Native American narrator in “I’m a Mad Dog Biting Myself for Sympathy” struggling to accommodate and resist his displeasure with society via reckless behavior, and the group of girls in the A&P store who are displeased with Lengel’s remark on their attire or lack thereof.
In Janet Poppendieck's “Want Amid Plenty: From Hunger To Inequality” she argues that America puts excessive focus upon hunger issues among the poor when there are many other important issues that go unnoticed. Poppendieck believes that it is time to find a way to shift the discourse from undernutrition to unfairness, from hunger to inequality. In today's society, there are many food banks, food drives, soup kitchens, etc. Food is extremely abundant in America, therefore Poppendieck's statement is proven true when she states that there is too much focus on hunger. Throughout this text, she strongly supports her claims about hunger, equality, and poverty in general.
Later, a city girl hails a cab to meet her girlfriends at their favorite club to celebrate her new promotion over cosmopolitans. These people – the suburban soccer mom, the tired immigrant, the worried mother from the hood, and the successful city girl – each represent the different realities or fantasies that exist in the American society. They are all living or working towards what they believe to be the coveted American dream. Some of these people are similar to the Chinese immigrant, Ralph, in Gish Jen’s novel Typical American. However, all are confused as to what the American dream really is and whether or not the dream is real.
Originally the narrator admired her father greatly, mirroring his every move: “I walked proudly, stretching my legs to match his steps. I was overjoyed when my feet kept time with his, right, then left, then right, and we walked like a single unit”(329). The narrator’s love for her father and admiration for him was described mainly through their experiences together in the kitchen. Food was a way that the father was able to maintain Malaysian culture that he loved so dearly, while also passing some of those traits on to his daughter. It is a major theme of the story. The afternoon cooking show, “Wok with Yan” (329) provided a showed the close relationship father and daughter had because of food. Her father doing tricks with orange peels was yet another example of the power that food had in keeping them so close, in a foreign country. Rice was the feature food that was given the most attention by the narrator. The narrator’s father washed and rinsed the rice thoroughly, dealing with any imperfection to create a pure authentic dish. He used time in the kitchen as a way to teach his daughter about the culture. Although the narrator paid close attention to her father’s tendencies, she was never able to prepare the rice with the patience and care that her father
There are many policy issues that affect families in today’s society. Hunger is a hidden epidemic and one major issue that American’s still face. It is hard to believe that in this vast, ever growing country, families are still starving. As stated in the book Growing Up Empty, hunger is running wild through urban, rural, and even suburban communities. This paper will explore the differing perspectives of the concerned camp, sanguine camp, and impatient camp. In addition, each camps view, policy agenda, and values that underlie their argument on hunger will be discussed.
Each character in the novel has their own interpretation of the ‘American Dream – the pursuit of happiness’ as they all lack happiness due to the careless nature of American society during the Jazz Age. The American Dreams seems almost non-existent to those whom haven’t already achieved it.
As you can see, T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain introduces us to two completely opposite couples whose backgrounds correspond with their different beliefs and values of what the overly sought out American dream is. While immigrants seek out basic necessities in order to thrive and survive in America, many citizens to the states live overly shallow and superficial lifestyles, where what they already have never truly satisfies them. Both the Rincóns and the Mossbachers have their own image of the American dream and eventually realize that their dreams were nothing but false impressions. Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher are an unpleasant illustration of the American Dream, whereas Cándidó and América Rincón are a tragic example of how people struggle to gain that ultimate dream.
There has been an increase in the hunger and starvation rates all over the world. It is documented that nearly one billion people suffer from hunger and related illnesses each and every day (Eggebeen & Lichter, 12). In the United States of America, many people have been known to suffer from hunger. The most people who suffer from starvation and hunger are the low class and some middle class income earners. This has caused so many deaths, and it has been one of the factors that has caused so many deaths and increased mortality rates in the United States. According to research conducted by the household food security in the United States, they found out that approximately fifteen percent of all the households in America suffered from moderate
Food plays a large part in the play, “The Importance of being Earnest”. It is used to frequently express appetites and emotions that are not respectable or polite to air openly. In Act 1, Algernon orders a plate of cucumber sandwiches and bread and butter for his guests that he is expecting, Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen. He proceeds unknowingley to devour all the sandwiches before the guests arrive. Jack then joins in,and begins eating the bread and butter so greedily that Algernon accuses him of behaving “like you are married to her already.” (“Her” being Gwendolen). In these happenings, the act of eating seems to symbolically stand for gratification of the sexual appetite, which is then later reinforced by Algernon’s comment about marriage.