Russell Baker's Growing Up follows his five-year-old
self living in Newark, New Jersey with his mother during The Great Depression.
The way he starts the first section immediately captures the reader’s attention
with the use of ironic foreshadowing. Baker does so by making a reference to
the sociopolitical state of the nation: “President Hoover refused to use the
scare word ‘recession’ when speaking about the slump. It was merely ‘a
depression’…Good times were just around the corner” (49). This paints the scene
for everyone and sets up the reason for his departure to the house of his
uncle, Allen.
It is interesting to note how he starts the section about
Uncle Allen, which is the same as how he introduces each of the characters
excluding his mother. He always uses some kind of phrase to capture the
character’s personality quickly before jumping into more detail or using them
to describe a new situation or setting. For instance Baker has Uncle Allen say,
“Three can starve as cheap as two” (49) and Aunt Pat cry, “Jesus, Mary, and
Joseph!” (51). He uses these two characters to, first, show how he grew up and
also how they impacted or inspired him. They represent Baker’s quirky,
particular side and act as symbols for hope in spite of bad times. They are a
large portion of his life and need to be mentioned since they offer him wisdom,
particularly “streetwise” wisdom. And that seems to be a connecting element
throughout this portion of Growing Up:
always receiving some kind of knowledge, whether it’s streetwise or not, and
learning ways to overcome life and its many obstacles (i.e. The Great
Depression). A great lesson, and a way he reflects on his Uncle Allen, appears
at the beginning: “Like my mother, Uncle Allen believed that with hard work,
good character, and an honest nature a man could make something of himself in
spite of bad times…” (50).
The “streetwise” section starts on page 53 with his
encounter with the perversion of an adult female, and her attempt to molest
him. This section also plays into another theme of ignorance and literally
“growing up.” Baker almost puts one in the situation with him. His concrete
nouns, and minimal usage of concrete, yet quite descriptive, adjectives, such
as “authoritative maternal women” (53) and “timid five-year-old’s desire” (53)
within the section, allows one to truly see his five-year-old self through the
reflective style of Baker’s adult self: “I had the timid five-year-old’s desire
to be agreeable…The passion that wakened in me was anger” (53). It is simple
yet very effective in putting the reader in the physical and psychological
settings that the rest of the selection will embody.
Another aspect of the story that keeps the coherence and
cohesion intact are the spurts of literal depression followed by glimpses of hope:
“While I was experiencing the routine miseries of childhood, my mother was
discovering the Depression” (55), followed by “In December she found temporary
holiday work…” (56) and “Of course there was always the chance she could marry
again” (56). And then there is the introduction and explanation of Oluf, which
is basically a large Depression-themed roller coaster of emotions.
Baker eloquently describes Oluf and then uses the last 10
pages of the selection quoting his letters to Miss Baker and showing how they
affect her and the family’s personal lives. He writes: “Oluf’s work kept him on
the road much of the time…The graceful flourish of his handwriting contrasted
oddly with the fractured grammar and exotic spelling of his prose. Still, his
discomfort with the mysteries of English did not diminish his power to make
himself felt when he took up the pen” (57). Through these paraphrased, or
possibly verbatim, letters Baker is able to portray how the Depression sent
people on the aforementioned roller coaster of emotions and basically tore
families and lives apart. The way he describes Oluf’s writing style is a symbol
for his/his family’s search, and need, for meaning in such a dreary, apathetic
age: “…comical spelling…eerie grammar…devil-may-care punctuation…distinctive
voice…sweetness, despair, earnestness, love” (57).
Although the story does not end on a happy note, I ask:
should anyone really expect a happy ending in a memoir based around The
Depression? It turned people around him into hopeless cynics, and he must
wonder how hope was even possible to ascertain after seeing his mother and Oluf
crumble into dissolution. But Baker completes this selection, or chapter,
perfectly by ending on a depressing note since it represents how most people
ended up during those troubling times: “Oluf disappeared into the
Depression. My mother’s hopes for
finding love and security vanished with him” (67).
What interested me about Russel Baker's “Growing Up” was how it first focused on him and his unemployed, widowed mother moving in with his Uncle Allen and Aunt Pat during the Great Depression. Baker does a good job at describing his Uncle and Aunt and how miserable he was when he was a young child in New Jersey. However, the memoir then shifts its focus to the Depression and how it affects Baker's mother and her friend/potential lover Oluf. The effects are shown through Oluf's letters to Baker's mother. Though Oluf tries to stay optimistic, the letters get bleaker as the Depression gets worse. By the last letter, Oluf can't afford to write to Baker's mother anymore and feels they should stop writing each other and go their separate ways. It's a grim ending because Oluf was Baker's mother's real last hope for companionship and security.
ReplyDeleteI really liked how Baker recreates Oluf's broken English and crude grammar in the letters; you can really hear Oluf's voice in them. However, the letters get tedious after a while because there's so many of them and they say the same things. It's also interesting that during the second half, Baker takes himself out of the memoir and focuses in on Oluf, his mother, and the Depression. He comments very little on the letters themselves; he mostly reiterates what's being said in them and describes what is happening to country as the correspondence between Oluf and his mother develops. The only time Baker really comments on Oluf and his mother's relationship is during the first half of the excerpt. Because he lost his father, he is afraid of losing his mother, and he feels that he would lose her if she married Oluf. However, Baker doesn't go any deeper than that. There's not much reflection.
I felt that most of the more 'memoir-esque' moments happen at the beginning of this section. As Travis mentioned, the beginning portion seems to revolve around the theme of growing-up and maturity. Another thing I felt that it showed was Baker's growing understanding of city life and city people. He does this through the characterizations of his aunt and uncle: Aunt Pat is described as a "sassy, rambunctious, New York girl" who was a "full time combatant in the battle of life and flung herself into it with zest" (51). Her uncle is depicted as a "city-slicker" personified with his suits. Baker shows how he feels about the city by reflecting on his backyard as well, saying he "hated the stone and brick walls and dirty windows that glowered down at me when I searched for the sky" (54). This simple phrase shows how Baker is having a hard time adjusting to the new city life, and even without saying it directly, he shows how Newark is different than his previous experience and something he must learn to understand.
ReplyDeleteI also felt that this memoir was not entirely 'memoir-ish.' In the beginning, Baker definitely shows the reader how his character saw the scene of the Depression and moving to his uncle's house and how his mom wanted to find a job. But then the perspective shifts, and the reader really doesn't know where he is in the midst of the constant exchange of letters. (I can, however, see how this section of his overall memoir would fit--he does a great job of showing the huge impact of the Depression and how it didn't just take away money and jobs but also hope and a sense of accomplishment and usefulness.)
ReplyDeleteAs Travis mentioned, Baker uses particular phrases to characterize the characters in his memoir. Aunt Pat is quoted saying, "I'll give him a piece of my mind." Baker consistently goes back to this as he refers to his aunt. I think this is an interesting way of revealing character; I think it is a very childlike way of remembering people. As children, we tend to listen to and soak in our surroundings. Oluf's phrase that stuck with Baker was this: "Well it will all come out OK, I hope so" (60). Clearly, Baker recalls the people in his life from what they said on a regular basis. Though I didn't feel as though this section of Baker's memoir really revealed anything about him, I did enjoy how he characterized the people in his life.
I enjoyed how Baker started off his memoir by explaining the persistence and will of his Uncle Allen during the depression. Baker explains that it didn't matter what the job was, "He had been a day laborer in a Virginia sawmill crew, fished in New England waters aboard a commercial trawler, jerked sodas in a cigar store, and sold groceries over the counter in Washington," (pg 50). I particularly liked this part because of the thoughts it invoked about my own family and hearing the stories of my grandfather who, during the great depression, was working a wide variety of jobs to try and make ends meet for his family (One time even painting an entire room of a store, and losing the $10 he was paid on the walk home).
ReplyDeleteEven though Aunt Pat and Uncle Allen are described by Baker as being, "a study in the attraction of opposites" (51) we can just see how well their personalities’ compliment each other. The strength and wit that Aunt Pat is described as having, was highlighted to me when Baker reminisces about almost being hit by a car on his first day in Newark. The driver gets out and curses Baker and as soon as he takes that anger towards Aunt Pat, baker tells us, "The screech of the breaks had brought Aunt Pat on the run, and when the driver made the mistake of screaming at her too, Aunt Pat gave him a piece of her mind and set him packing," (53). Growing up in the city, this was typical behavior of children (and drivers) and was a pretty humorous part of the memoir to me.
While reading the memoir, all I could focus on was how Bake included the mood throughout the peace, in subtle ways, but most certainly affective. As others have mentioned, the Depression is not something to be take lightly, and I believe that Baker trusted his audience with acknowledging what we’ve learned about the Depression, so he lures us in with the mood. Even when discussing the good people in his life: Aunt Pat and Uncle Allen, Baker showed that good people even had hard times. For example, “…an honest nature a man could make something out of himself in spite of bad times, and he worked at the salesman’s trade with total dedication” (50). From reading this line, one may hope for the best despite what we truly know about this period of history. Continuing with the mood, Baker also even sets up scenes to coincide with the story line, “We had the use of a narrow backyard, enclosed by boards fences, in which soil as hard as rock produced nothing but a sickly crop of weeds” (53). The negativity can be seen though various other instances scattered through the piece, “There were plenty of diseases” (54), “The whooping cough passed, but humiliation lingered on,” (54), “I hated that gymnasium” (55), “No jobs” (56), “She loved him. I did not” (57).
ReplyDeleteAt first, I was indifferent how I felt about the integration of Oluf, especially his letters, in the text. However, as I kept reading, I took the letters as a form of Baker realizing that there is always a silver lining. We have Oluf, who is trying his hardest to get a job, continue supplying for people, and overall does not get discouraged too much. I think the real personality of Oluf came out on page 66, “…well I do hope some of all this neice tings they told us over the Radio will come true, Elizabeth I am very Radicall…” and so forth. I was utterly shocked on the last page when Oluf didn’t want Baker’s mother to write back to him ever again. It’s most definitely a shift in personality, which perhaps demonstrates the shift in many people during the Great Depression. Elizabeth perhaps put Oluf on a high platform, especially with the ending line of, “Oluf disappeared into the Depression. My mother’s hopes for finding love and security vanished with him” (67).
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ReplyDeleteI enjoyed Baker's memoir more than many of the others, due its strong focus on characters outside of the main character. While Baker is defining himself, he is often doing it through the people around himself, such as his Aunt Pat, Uncle Allen, and Oluf. At times it felt like it was drifting off into being more about these characters than Baker, especially after a few over Oluf's letters [58], but he manages to bring it back to himself without a jarring transition. His letters often set the scene of the Depression more than describing a personal relationship, even as the purport to do the latter. By delivering himself as a child of his setting, through yet another framing device, Baker creates a very unique and memorable memoir.
ReplyDeleteThe other benefit of this framing device is that although Baker himself was a child, too young to completely grasp the world he is growing up in, these letters create an image of this world from an adult perspective to contrast his own viewpoint against. Often it feels hopeful, but we come to understand how Baker views the world in the final letter. What begins with an upbeat feeling of love in the Depression between his aunt and uncle slowly becomes the opposite, of a man abandoning hope in a time of sorrow. Watching all of this filtered through the lens of a child is what truly gives Baker's story power.
I really enjoyed the section near the beginning that focused on the relationship between Baker and Aunt Pat. Baker spends a lot of time setting up Pat’s character and explaining how she helped him adapt to city life. One specific part I really enjoyed was the comparison of Pat and Allen. “She and Uncle Allen were a study in the attraction of opposites. He was short, quite, neat to the point of fussiness. She was big, noisy, and relished messy human combat.” Here Baker shows how different his Aunt and Uncle were from each other and how it is amazing that they worked well. He does a wonderful job of drawling the reader a description of them physically and psychologically which will allow the reader to more clearly create these characters in their head.
ReplyDelete“She was a New Yorker, half Irish and half Cuban, who had grown up in a Catholic orphanage and knew so little of country life that she proposed cutting thee milk bill by buying a cow, keeping it in the backyard, and feeding it scraps from the table.” This is one of my favorite sections from the memoir. You get a real feel for what kind of person Pat was because Baker uses a very compact yet extremely descriptive language that allows him to convey a lot of information in only one sentence. One other small thing Baker used was the “Jesus, Mary and Joseph” phrase that she constantly used. Because of the prior descriptions and the repetition of this phrase, I found myself feeling as though I had personally met Pat before.
Reading “Growing Up” by Baker, I was struck by how much this read like a story and not a memoir. Baker describes his feelings in the stories he tells (such as when the little girl tricks him into leaving his house to get cake and he realizes he won’t get cake), but there isn’t a lot of reflection.
ReplyDeleteI was interested in Baker and his descriptions of his Aunt Pat. I like how he describes her. He uses her quotes in an interesting way. He uses those to really bring her to life. Like when she opens the paper and exclaims “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” I like the way Baker uses these quotes and describes her, it definitely gives me, as a reader, a clear picture of Aunt Pat.
Baker’s story about the gymnasium was also interesting. I usually find stories that make the author uncomfortable or are embarrassing usually tell the reader a lot about the author. But Baker doesn’t speak about his emotions on this. I was fairly amused by the fact that Aunt Pat, who seems to be the upbeat/happy to the point of potentially becoming annoying to people, while Baker’s own mother flat out tells him he sucks.
The first aspect of Kate Simon’s Bronx Primitive that caught my attention is how quickly she brings the reader into her life and sets the scene: she gives her age, what’s happening with her parents, and where she was living at that time in three, quick sentences. Simon writes with an intellectually dark voice throughout the whole selection, and it is interesting how much reflection she fits into the eight pages. Her style is quite similar to that of Vandenburgh’s, in that she writes from the perspective of a very young version of herself (and seems to have an impeccable memory, recalling a lot of imagery she personally noticed as a four and five-year-old). I think the true theme behind the story is Simon longing for her personal vision of America and not being able to ascertain it within her childish means. “America was a stern man whose duty it was to cure us of being the cosseted spoiled little beasts our mother and her idiot sisters had allowed to flourish” (47).
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