Analysis Of Wideman's Essay 'Our Time'

Being the “dominant discourse” in your family
Wideman’s essay is different from the rest between his essay is about him and his brother and the struggle of the dominant discourse and the “other” in their relationship. Wideman is the dominant discourse and his brother Robby is the “other”. The problem is that Wideman is trying to understand his brother but he is having difficulties because him and his brother are two different people and they don’t have a common issues that they share. They are truly like those siblings that is no way are like each other. Wideman is successful and Robby is in prison. Wideman tries to understand Robby because after all they are sibling. How do you make sense of the differences that exist between us, even the

They not only lived in different places but they had different experiences. Wideman was trying to figure out how he and Robby got to be so different. It is like an example of my sister and I, we lived in two different places most of my childhood and when we were actually living in the same place it was like we were stranger, we knew our friends more than we knew each other. So it is like that with John and Robby they just don’t know each other that well to see the similarity that they share. When I was younger my parents would tell me the tale of two squirrels. I was basically like the squirrel were standing on a rock and it spilt is two and one part drifted to hot south and the other went to the cold north, over time the squirrel became very different but they still retained some similarity. The whole point of that was to say that the Wideman boys might seem very different but they still have some traits that are the same. John would be the squirrel that drifted south because he had a greater opportunity to achieve greatness than Robby did because he left the life. The reason I say that he drifted south is because the sun is supposed to give people the warmth to do things and when it is cold people don’t want to do thing anything. Robby needed guidance and his older brother was not their to guide him so he did what

In a way it is like my sister and I, she is seven years older than me and she moved to the United States when I was three. So when I moved here it was like we didn’t know each other because I was too young to remember her but she remembered everything about me. The basics of “Our Time” is the communication and the emotion that Wideman was trying to show through the story. He is trying to show that he is patient and understanding. He also incorporated Pratt’s ideals about the dominant discourse and the “other”. In a way he was showing that he was the dominant discourse and Robby was the “other”. Wideman also turn his focus to his mother and his brother. His mother is those that see the best in their children even when they do something