Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Promote, Demonstrate, or Resist?
I believe that the novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets in many ways illustrates not only the promotion of uplift and the demonstration, but the resistance of uplift as well. Depending on the way that the reader identifies with each character and understands their struggle, an argument can be made towards all three ways of looking at uplift. In the beginning of the novel, when the children are younger I believe the strongest of the three would be the resistance of uplift. As the children struggle with the alcoholism of their parents they are forced to hide in the shadows of their own home in order to avoid their wrath. This shows a resistance to uplift because at this point the children have no hope. Early on they are stuck dealing with the horrors of their familial chaos and there is little chance for any sort of uplift. Later on in the novel are examples of Crane both demonstrating and promoting uplift but early on their is definitely resistance.
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I agree, and this is brought into later parts of the novel as well. Jimmie goes from fighting with the boys that live on another street to fighting with people that are too close to his truck. He makes little attempt to avoid fights at all. Maggie tries to avoid conflicts as a child, and does the same years later, although she does attempt to actually leave the situation. Unfortunately, this does not work out for her, and she is left worse off than before. She did, however, try. The family remained in much the same situation throughout the novel, but that was mainly because, with the exception of Maggie, they did not try to fix it. Unfortunately for Maggie, the path she attempted to take in order to better her situation was not one that worked, because she misinterpreted the character of Pete. It is possible that she could have bettered her situation if she had found some other way out, but her circumstances unfortunately put her in a position where she was unlikely to find it, especially after she had nowhere else to go. While Maggie did attempt to uplift herself, her family was resistant to uplift and simply remained in the same situation, with minor changes that occurred due to time.
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