The sprawl of American citizens into the suburban landscape resulted in a new set of moral standards that all participants were expected to live by. In John Cheever’s short story “The Housebreaker of Shady Hill”, the topic of morality is brought to the forefront and causes Johnny Hake to feel anxious after he steals money from Carl Warburton’s wallet. This directly correlates to Laura E. Migliorino’s photograph of Oakbrook Way #2 and how the moral code of the suburbs creates unjustified distress in the lives of a gay couples.
In Cheever’s short story, Johnny Hake lives in the banlieue of Shady Hill where he is expected to abide by the moral code of the neighborhood. This moral code is heavily influenced by the religious views of the people
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The moral code of the suburbs has historically sided against the presence of same sex relations because of its close ties to religion. This has created an environment where gay people have had to hide unjustified guilt and anxiety in their pockets because they were born with the inclination to be attracted to the same sex. However, around the time of this photo in 2007, gay marriage was starting to become more widely accepted across the United States. I believe this picture reveals a transition in this couples life to being accepted by the moral code of the suburbs. As shown in the photograph, the highway illustrates the lifelong journey the couple has struggled with to get to this community, and their smiles in front of their home symbolize the acceptance they now feel. Although this couple now feels more accepted in the suburban community, I still believe they doubt the authenticity of some of its participants. That is why this couple has chosen to live in a condominium community where they can still have some anonymity in their life. The large community makes it much harder to meet all of their neighbors and gives them distance from being around anyone that would make them feel anxious about being
The book In the Neighborhood, by Peter Lovenheim is a very interesting look into the lives of residents in modern suburban neighborhoods. His neighborhood in Rochester New York mirrors many communities across the country. He paints a familiar picture of a community that waves at each other as they drive by, yet do not know the person they are waving at. This disconnection of people that live their lives so close to one another was completely unnoticed by Lovenheim until tragedy struck his community. One night in 2000, a routine activity that Lovenheim practiced, walking his dogs, exposed his consciousness to the lack of association he shared with those who live in close proximity to him. As he approached his street he observed emergency vehicles
Several works we have read thus far have criticized the prosperity of American suburbia. Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus, and an excerpt from Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem "A Coney Island of the Mind" all pass judgement on the denizens of the middle-class and the materialism in which they surround themselves. However, each work does not make the same analysis, as the stories are told from different viewpoints.
Elijah Anderson’s Code of the Street book depicts two opposite communities within Philadelphia, the poor inner city black community and the residential middle class community. The majority of the book revolves around describing how the inner city functions on a ‘code of the street’ mentality, respect and toughness. Crime, violence and poverty run high in the inner city and following the code is a way to survive. Having a decent family or a street family greatly influences the path an adolescent will take involving delinquency. Anderson divides the book up into different themes and explores each one my not only giving factual information, but he also incorporates real life stories of various people who survived the inner city life style. Some of the themes include territory, survival by any means necessary, toughness, separate set of norms, campaign of respect and the mating game. Some criminological theories are also noticeable that take place in the inner city community.
He begins in Chestnut Hill, a high-income neighborhood in Philadelphia, at the city’s boundaries on Germantown Avenue. Anderson eloquently points out what most do not notice consciously, but are truly aware of as a matter of self-preservation. This self-preservation becomes more prioritized, or vice-versa, as a ...
America experienced an explosive period of suburbanization after World War II. The suburban “home represents a source of meaning and security” (May 24) for those seeking refuge and comfort after a tumultuous time of war. Among those migrating from the cities to the suburbs were middle-class African Americans, who sought a suburban life that both “express[ed] and reinforce[d] their newly won social position.” (Wiese 101) However, this middle-class migration from urban areas left behind working class African Americans such as the Younger family of Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play “A Raisin in the Sun.”
Have you ever seen the movie called “A Bronx Tale” starring Robert De Niro and Chazz Palminteri? Well, the answer for me is no. This movie arose in the 1990’s around the same time era that I was born, but this movie is an overwhelming movie that identifies numerous ethical dilemmas that a person may face throughout his or her lifetime. Therefore, this movie deliberates on abundant ethical dilemmas like, Racial, Interracial Dating, Peer pressure, whether to follow a parent advice or a relative/ friends, and several more. On that note, within this paper I will give a brief summary of the movie so that you can have a better comprehension about the different ethical dilemmas that I will be deliberating later on in this paper based on the movie.
Morals are usually the standards by one which lives in, whether them being good or bad. However, how about when religion influences ones morals? Religion isn’t or it doesn’t work for everyone, and that’s okay. But, there are many people out there that religion influences their morals; and the most common reason for that is that religion was influenced into them and into their morals as a child. Iri...
While crime is abundant throughout our world, it’s image is often magnified in urban cities. In the book, There Are No Children Here, Alex Kotlowitz describes the striking story of two brothers, Lafayette and Pharoah, struggling to survive in the community of Henry Horner Homes, a public housing complex on the West Side of Chicago disfigured by crime and neglect. With their mother’s permission, Kotlowitz follows the lives of the brothers for two years, taking note of their disappointments, joys, and tragedies along the way. Throughout the book, the environment that the boys are forced to live in acts as a predictor for their potential crime-filled future. Using environmental theories, such as James Wilson’s broken windows theory, we, as readers,
In Iris Murdoch’s text, “Morality and Religion,” she discusses what it means to be moral and what role religion plays. She brings to light the idea of being virtuous and how motives determine virtue. Murdoch points out that in order for you to be virtuous than your acts must not be done because you feel an obligation to do them, rather you act virtuously for the sake of it. This line of reasoning demonstrates that being religious may not equate with being moral, and it could be the case that those without any religious conventions could be the most virtuous. Many people tie together religion and morality, however, this is not always necessarily the case..
Meanwhile, Peyton Place’s power elite gather to discuss ways of manipulating zoning laws to get rid of the shacks. After the World War II the growth os the suburbs in the U.S. was facilitated by the development of zoning laws, redlining, and numerous innovations in transport, and contributed to major segregation trends and decline of inner-city neighborhoods.6 In the book, the tracks divide the poor part of the city, where the shacks are, from the rest. The expensive and better houses are in the heart os the town, making the social strata clearly
Starting off the discussion we will start with chapter one. Chapter one is about Decent and street families. Decent families are families who live by society’s norms and try to avoid violence, drugs, confrontation, whereas street families embrace violence and fear because it is a way to stay alive within their neighborhoods. In the chapter they discuss how many families in the inner city actually have the decent family values, but can also harbor the street values. For example in the chapter they actually discussed an instance where Marge a women they had interviewed had a problem with others in her neighborhood. Her story s...
...f destruction. Actually, the children whom with Mary associated often played within the abandoned houses. Shaw and McKay found that neighborhoods with significantly low socio-economic status had a correlation with higher crime rates. Arguably, one could say that children being able to play in abandoned houses or building, as if playing on a playground, lack significant social control in their neighborhood. It should be argued that for Mary Bell to go undetected in her behaviors, and for her personal abuse to continue for so long, shows that there was a failure in both formal and informal social control. Therefore, her neighborhood was socially disorganized and lead to the deviant behavior of Mary’s neighbors––and ultimately Mary’s. Sadly, if only some form of social control was present in Mary’s life, even in a minute form, possibly the two boys may never have died.
For many years now, people have always wondered what ethical principle is the right one to follow. These individuals are all seeking the answer to the question that the ethical principles are trying to clarify: What defines moral behavior? The Divine Command Theory and the theories of cultural relativism are two principles of many out there that provide us with explanations on what our ethical decisions are based on and what we consider to be our moral compass in life. Even though these two theories make well-supported arguments on why they are the right principle to follow, it is hard to pinpoint which one should guide our choices because of the wide array of ethical systems. Therefore, what is morally right or wrong differs greatly depending
For example, if a person goes against an established social norm created by bible teaching such as adultery or stealing, they will experience a guilty conscience about doing something morally wrong. This is a powerful socializing and controlling influence over individuals within society. Parsons also claims religion is a source of meaning and purpose in people’s lives and can also provide a ‘mechanism of adjustment’ which is the means of emotional adjustment in times of various crises that occur in life that can help people return to a sense of normality and strengthen social bonds within society, as Malinowski also suggested. However, it can be argued that religion is not the most important factor in controlling and regulating people’s behaviour as things like the idea of punishment and law enforcement can be more influential especially in a time of growing secularisation. Despite the bible instilling a strong moral code for people to live by in society, many people within the population continue to commit things like adultery and working on the Sabbath day, both of which are part of the 10 commandments and considered a sin. Postmodernists also offer the argument that the society we live in today is multi-faith and so has a range of core values and no single moral code, this dismisses Parson’s theory as invalid in contemporary society. Also in opposition to Parson’s theory is the feminist argument that the regulation of people’s behaviour through religion is very unequal as women face oppression by the powerful male figures within religion. An example of this is how the women of Islam are forced to wear hijab’s in the name of religion. In opposition to this, it can be argued that hijab’s are worn to protect women from the ‘male-gaze’ in patriarchal societies so they are seen as more than just their
Bonevac, Daniel A. Today's Moral Issues: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Pub., 1992. Print.