The Pain of Loss Never Really Goes Away

When Rainsford said "When a family loses a beloved dog, they go out and buy another quickly before the self-pity replaces that life. When a father dies, there is only violence. I am violent" (8), I was reminded of when my first dog died. Boomer had been in my life literally since birth. With me being the oldest in the family, I always called him my big brother, and he often times acted like it. When I was thirteen my family made the painful decision that it was time to put Boomer down. The decision was made while I was at summer camp, but my parents waited to take him in until I got home so that I could say goodbye. However, they didn’t wait to go looking for a new dog. I remember how sad the day that we put him down was. On the flipside, we spend that night getting ready for the new dog. We purged the house of Boomer’s old things, then we went to the pet store to get new things. We even came up with her name, Bailee. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Bailee, but even now, eight years later, I still miss Boomer. He was my first dog, and I have a ton of memories with him. My parents’ decision to look for Bailee before he died was most likely for my siblings’ sake. They were all very young when it happened, so having a new dog to look forward to probably made the situation a lot easier to swallow.  We now have lots of great memories with Bailee, and we even have a second dog now, Bandit. 

Me with Bailee(r.) and Bandit(l.)

Fortunately, I’ve never suffered the loss of a parent, or even a grandparent, but I have suffered tragedy in my life. Last fall, my best friend was diagnosed with HIV. When he told me, all I could do was cry my eyes out. I was confused and angry. I didn’t understand why G-d would do something like this to someone as amazing and good-natured as my friend. I know that this situation isn’t as tragic as losing a parent, but to me, hearing this news meant that I had lost the friend that I knew. Our lives were never going to be the same, and I was upset by that. I think that when we react with rage, it’s because we know that we can’t change what is happening to us. Rainsford was most likely feeling the same way. He felt the void left by absence of his father with his death. Some people react to death with sadness, some with celebration of the person’s life. For him, anger and violence were his outlets.

American Born Chinese Transposed to Prose Pgs. 30-35

            Jin Wang stood next to his teacher in front of the classroom, looking out at the rest of the class.  He searched for a face that looked like him, and it took a real effort.  There was only one girl, Suzy Nakamura, in a sea of pale faces.  As the teacher mispronounced his name and misunderstood that he was not actually from China, Jin quickly discovered that it was going to be a long year.  Rumors began to fly all over the school about Jin.  Some kids accused him of eating dogs.  Others thought that Jin and Suzy were related simply because they looked alike.  When they discovered they were not related, the rumor changed to they were arranged to be married.  Because of all the rumors, Suzy and Jin spent as little time together as possible.  Their commonality turned out to be a curse.  Jin spent most of his time alone, when he was not getting teased for being Asian.  One day, a big boy named Peter approached Jin.  He told Jin that if he gave Peter his sandwhich he’d be his friend.  Peter was a bully, but since Jin had no friends, he agreed.  Peter continued to push Jin around for the rest of the semester, but to Jin he and Peter were best friends.  Over winter break, Peter went to visit his uncle in Pennsylvania and never came back.  Once again, Jin was all alone.
        I decided to try and turn a few pages of the American Born Chinese into prose.  This was an experiment in how the change in format would change to mood of the story.  To begin with, changing the format was a bigger task than I anticipated.  Though I tried to keep the pieces in order, there were certain details that I had to change in order for the story to make sense.  I also found that when the visual aspect is taken away from the story, the humor pretty much goes away.  In fact, the plot becomes incredibly depressing.  The one part that I feel became more apparent out of the transfer was how lonely Jin Wang actually was.  I saw this by emphasizing that he did not spend time with Suzy Nakamura, even though they had their heritage in common, because of the way that they were teased by their peers simply because they were similar to each other.  I also find it sad that the students made fun of them in that way, and yet all of the students look similar as well, yet none of them are making fun of each other for it.  It seems a little hypocritical to me.  Tolerance is what makes America such a great place to live.  What I want to know is if our society is based on originality and being proud of our own culture, why do so many people spend their energy bringing others’ down?  There is an extreme lack of disrespect in this passage that should be there.  That’s what this country is about.