Dialectal Journal: Driving with Dead People by Monica HollowayContex and Background: She is talking about when her dad saw a news story about a very young dead girl that happened to look like the writer when she was young. Her father was oddly quiet when she began to ask about the details of the girl's death. She was curious but he provided no answers which is strange due to the fact that her father enjoys documenting and talking about different forms of gore. She then begins to reminisce about the instances when her dad would document death and gore explaining that he’d keep a camera in the front just in case
Passage: “Dad drove his Ford pickup with his Kodak movie camera sitting shotgun just in case he saw an accident. If he was lucky enough to come upon something, he’d jump out and aim his camera at whatever was crumpled , bleeding, or burning. And Every Thanksgiving he lined up Mom and the four of us kids on the golden and brown plaid studio couch, hauled out the Bell = Howell reel to reel , and rolled his masterpieces. Images jiggled past, scenes from our tiny Ohio town of Galesburg. Christmas morning, four beautiful children in color coordinated Sabra pjs, my brother Jamie’s , a station wagon hideously wrapped around a telephone pole, blood dripping down the passenger door and plop, plop, plopping onto the road; my two older sisters and me in hats with wide ribbons from hunting Easter eggs, a dead cow smashed on the front of a Plymouth .” Analysis:The reason that I picked this quote is to show that even from the first pages the writer wishes to show her readers that even at a very young age she was raised in an environment that usually would be considered to be strange. but was common and even enjoyable for her and her family. The way that she calls her father’s photos of roadside gore or death mixed in with normal photos of the family “Masterpieces” shows that even as she wrote her memoir as an older woman she still thought of those gristly and gruesome photos that her father so proudly displayed as beautiful despite it being common for Americans to associate Death with fear or sadness which is both unusual and interesting at the same time. |
Context: Monica was now just feeling the effects of her traumatic experience and was suffering from a depression that no one seemed to know how to get her out of. She was staying in bed for 4 days without moving or eating. At the 5 day she was visited by her friend’s therapist who proceeded to make her condition worse by insulting her, causing her to stay in bed for an extra 2 days. Finally her sister asked her to move to LA and live with her until she felt she was able to stand on her own two feet once again. Although she tried to say no she eventually conceded, her friend buying her a ticket in order to get rid of her. She got a job and began to visit a psychiatrist trying to get to the root of the problem only to realize that her father’s … indiscretions where the cause.
Passage: “And I used to think that Dad pulling down my pants in public was to humiliate me , and that was part of it, but I now think that he wanted to see me naked; that he wanted to look, and that there was a sexual aspect to it. Even now I feel the heat of embarrassment- the shame of being publicly exposed.
When the one solid memory I had of Dad’s abuse finally surfaced, it didn't happen in therapy, it happened in my dentist’s office. I was waiting to get my teeth cleaned when I picked up a magazine. I opened to an article about a young woman who had been raped on her college campus. What struck me most about her experience was that while it was horrific to be raped, she described the sex as “eerily ordinary” in the back of the rapist’s car.”
Analysis: The reason why I had selected this passage is because in this story we not only get to look at the difficult journey that this woman has gone through her life but also see into the mind and witness the true struggle of what it is to be a rape victim. But it's not only that but it is showing that an issue like rape isn't something that is secluded to just certain people, it affects all people and leaves them damaged and broken. But it takes the message and takes another step with it showing that although not obvious sometimes rape can be hidden and unheard for several years before it resurfaces.
Word Count: 796