Sea Oak's Aunt Bernie = America

[Taylor Robinson]

Post  #4

I had an internal battle with myself while reading this short story; I was torn between whether it was to serve as a literal ghost story, or maybe something deeper. Because I am so obsessed with the US government right now, (thank Scandal and MSNBC) I like to think of it a representation of America.

So, I want to take the time to look at one of the main characters Aunt Bernie. Aunt Bernie is this angel on Earth who always does right by other and despite her crappy life is “thankful for what she has”. She is hardworking and kind and never reaps any benefits of her good nature. TO add insult to injury, she dies being frightened to death by robbers. I would like to think that Aunt Bernie is similar to the American people. We work hard every day at a job that, most of us are not crazy about to get a check that is distributed to at least three different people before it gets to you. Then after bills, rent and food you have just enough money at the end of the day to be broke. The American people are Aunt Bernie. However, when she dies and comes back, she is completely different. She uses profane language, speaks of sex and lust and is tearing herself apart (literally). She goes to explain how her life was lived in vain and that there were no rewards or fun in her entire life. I think that this Bernie represents how many Americans feel a sense of regret in their lives. We live these lives that we are told will help us to achieve the “American Dream” but always end up with the short stick. This Bernie is also a lot more ruthless and wise to many of the things that are going on in the house. She knows that education is the key to moving out of Sea Oak and she wants her family to get there by any means necessary.  I think that this shows how many of us learn vital lessons and have a greater perception of everything once we have gone through it and see how things can be changed for the better.  Aunt Bernie is much like America's haunting past and beginnings/ She is the stereotypical “good girl gone bad” that has been beaten so far down that the only way to go is up. Is this not the epitome of the American Dream? The down and out find a way to work hard and become successful? While Bernie may never see the fruits of her persuasion, she has indeed made life better for her family. At the very end of our story, she says she wants to be remembered only as she was before when she was good. I think that this is the same for America. We may pick wars with everyone and mess up our economy, but we want everyone to see us as this beautiful wonderful country that is the example for all others. America is Aunt Bernie.

[Donald Carbone]

Post #4

 

I agree with Rando through his readings of “Sea Oak” and “George Saunders and Postmodern Working Class” that class (class distinction and each culture) cannot be anything else but a relationship and experience that constantly exists as a relationship. This relationship also has sub relationships (class and race, class and nationality, class and gender) that also changes the relationship simultaneously. I think literature and literary expression can ultimately represent the working class and poor classes effectively, but it requires the abolishment of a façade that is put up by the ruling aristocracy. “ Politics of the form always interacts with the politics of content” the ways political ideologies often come into existence don’t always correlate to the way originally thought or the way they were originally supposed to effect. I also somewhat agree with him that poststructuralist theory can often misidentify cultural resources the proletariat is actually dealt with, which misrepresents them altogether, which is the reason that Saunders is cautious with literary techniques. American culture and zeitgeist is governed by ideologies, but these perspectives rarely ever help the poorest of the poor, people who are in a never ending struggle of suffering and pain. This is exemplified through Sea Oak, but the satire is used like Nietzsche, “ridendo dicere severum” (Through what is laughable say what is somber). The absurdity and sometimes uncomfortableness is meant to inflict on the reader, but to ultimately convey actual, not theoretical, social conditions that the impoverished are faced with on a day-to-day basis. Another example is conveyed when Jade calls Aunt Bernie an “optometrist” which is a pun because Bernie has a positive outlook and lens on life, but also reveals the education level (and therefore conditions) of the working class. Jade hopes to attain her GED, but this looks futile. Jade’s error shows the conditions that she has had to grow up with and the only circumstances she was dealt. This error has most likely been produced through terrible schooling, in poor neighborhoods, with very scarce resources. Rando conveys Saunders style effortlessly as he tries to express the error in value of suffering. This suffering and the draconian virtue behind it only permits the aristocracy to further ideology which continue to oppress all those it does not favor.

[Kayla Allen]

Judith Butler, “Merely Cultural”
highlights how we should understand class by examining class issues. I think it is important to note that parody is something you have to experience and be there to know it. So everyone is not equipped to note and state opinions about a particular class in which they do not and have never belonged. I think Butler’s argument is a “conservative” and orthodox Marxism form. Butler seems to be happy with disagreement and feels that all political issues should be on an equal play. Political issues not surrounding just one affliction or type of oppression but numerous. Meaning that they should not be separated, rather they should be addressed at the same time. Butler is also arguing that class should be one among many superstructures and things to analyze. She almost wants to break down the boundaries between a culture and an economy (post structuralism). George Saunders’s Sea Oak is a really interesting look at economic class. This short story was sad and depressing, yet relatable. You can envision each character from the story as a person in present day real life because they have the same class issues that real people are subject to. I have no answer as to how you represent the working class in a way that doesn’t isolate their class identity. By separating the classes you essentially do isolate them. Saunders also illustrates the difference between gender in class in a comical, but sad and truthful way. Typically women in our society are strippers and support their family. Saunders flips this scenario and shows that gender and class is not the fundamental base of economic status. The man is a striper and of the working class, the customers he serves are women and professionals. He is “immasculine” and works a job that trades on his sexual performance. Overall, the story was well crafted and shows how Marxism relates to literature.

Word Count: 318 

[Quenitra Knight]

Post 4

 

When I read the opening page of the story Sea Oak’s I couldn’t believe what I was reading because it was hysterical. In the first two lines, I immediately thought about Matthew Mcconaughey movie Magic Mike because in the movie he is the owner of a strip club, who has similar characteristics of Mr.Frendt. In the story, the audience gets an introduction of the main characters of Thomas, Jade, Min, and Aunt Bernie. When I continue to read the story I find myself finding empathy for the family, but particularly for Aunt Bernie. As a 60 year old woman she never experienced a full life, she tended the family home after her mother passed and in return received nothing for her devotion to her family, but she always looked at the bright side of everything. In life I find myself being optimistic just like Aunt Bernie, who is grateful for what she has instead of what she doesn’t. An example of her optimism is when Thomas makes a reference about how the apartment is a dump then Aunt Bernice reminds him that at least they have a roof over their head. In that moment she reminded me of how I look at things in my life which makes the story relatable to me and makes it deeper than a story because it reflects the average American trying to make it in society. When she died from apparent shock from a burglar it devastated the family, but even more so when she came back from the dead. Upon Aunt Bernie return she quit being optimistic and became a realist. In the return Aunt Bernie admitted how things sucked in her after life and in Thomas dream always making the statement “Some people get everything and I got nothing” and this is the thoughts of most Americans. In America, most work their 9 to 5 and go home at night to see people who are famous for nothing collect millions of dollars a year while they struggle for basic necessities. Overall, in agreement with Taylor Robinson. America is Aunt Bernie.   

[Keely Dorsey]

Post #4

Aunt Bernie's optimism kind of makes me think of her as a representation of the government. She's happy to turn a blind eye to her and everyone else's problems--surely it could be worse! You're fine!--but once she dies it opens up a space for her family to succeed. Don't really think that's what was intended, but her extreme optimism calls to mind. I think part of it as that I saw They Live at the SLC last weekend, and boy was that the most anti-capitalistic thing I have ever watched. Anyway.

Really it seems to me that Saunders is trying to cover wide range of working class members. Ma and Freddie are the ones who have broken the barrier and escaped; they consider the girls lazy for not working anymore to protect their children's lives. But when push comes to shove they're not there to actually help anyone but themselves. Then there's the narrator, who is willing to do anything he can to make money without completely selling himself, but in the end that's the only way he can actually get ahead. Bernie, who puts so much work into the void and still dies poor and unhappy.  

I think "Sea Oak" is a story about internalizing the rules of society and then projecting them on others; Bernie does this from both ends of the spectrum. She accepts the unfairness of her position and puts a happy face on it. Then, later, she rejects the position and starts pushing her family to find them a better place in the world because she wants to attain the things she realized she "missed out" on in life. She quite literally falls apart attempting to reach things that are considered the ideal. 

I wonder if Bernie's coming back to life isn't a result of her position in the working class as well. You work until you die and then what happens? You work some more. 

[Stephanie Areas]

Post #4:
Saunders' Sea Oaks tells the story of a family who live in a dangerous complex and are in dire need of moving out. The urgency of moving out is reminded of when Aunt Bernie is scared to death after a burglary. First of all, dying from being scared to death is crazy to me! In the beginning, the story talks about a strip club and you imagine that the plot takes place there but it does not. After dying, a Aunt Bernie returns from the dead. This to me, is beyond crazy! I did not expect the story to take this turn, at all. She's brought back from the dead and is apparently given these magical powers. The reason she comes back is because she did not have a life, she had no kids or husband. The whole coming back to life thing really freaked me out, especially when her limbs starting falling off. If that event didn't cause the characters to move out, I don't know what will! When she did come back, all she kept saying was "show your cock!" to the main character! But she just suddenly dies again, as if all she came back for was to warn them about Troy's predicted accident and to tell the narrator to show his penis to his customers.

To the previous posts that have compared Aunt Bernie to America, I agree. In life, you don't always get where you want to be. Aunt Bernie surely desired to amount to something before her time came but she never got the chance to. Although, not everyone can be blessed with the opportunity to return like she did but her visit really didn't do much for her life, since she's dead. All she did in her life was work and in the end, she died alone with just "beloved aunt" on her tombstone.

[Devin Healy]

Post #4

Saunders's Sea Oak acts as a commentary on the lower end of the social strata, providing an introspective look into what the majority of America, or any developed country for that matter, would hope to be a representation of the outliers of their society at the bottom of the barrel. The story succeeds in evoking a level of frustration in the reader at the characters' extreme levels of dysfunctionality and overall unmotivated outlook on their quality of life. Thomas is the only character with any aspiration, with hopes of moving to Canada (a nice little stab in the side of capitalist America) but even Thomas has no idea how to achieve what he wants in life.

Saunders doesn't want the reader to sympathize with these characters, because they represent a class of people who choose poverty over work. Characters like these are about as frustrating as the guy sitting outside the gas station convenience store day in and day out, not because he's homeless, but because he has nothing to do besides try to pick up a couple quarters to muster together enough change for a second pack of cigs. Like the gas station scavenger, these characters make you lose faith in all humanity. You hope that Bernie can be that guiding light to get them all to turn their life around but even her advice seems too crass and exploitative to be truly effective.  It's interesting because Sea Oak was first published in The New Yorker in 1998, and it seems like things haven't gotten a hell of a lot better since then. In fact, it feels as if this story predicted the future of what may in fact be in store for a sizeable fraction of my own generation, as well as the generations to come if a change is not made in the lower class and middle-lower clasws society's general outlook on work ethic and productivity.

[Thomas Scheip]

What I found most compelling and interesting in Rando's reading of George Saunders' "Sea Oak,” is his understanding of Aunt Bernie, specifically her resurrection as some kind of zombie. Using Saunders’ own ideas regarding “uncoupling from the actual,” Rando reconstructs his (Saunders) character Bernie in this light.

Upon my initial reading, it seemed rather strange that deviating from realism could more accurately depict what these characters (or the working class for that matter) are experiencing. That anything other than a completely realistic rendering of the story-world could do a better (or the best) job in getting us to comprehend the piece’s meaning and scope is counterintuitive to the reader of strict realism. But as I connected the idea of ‘uncoupling from the actual’ to the stories from Saunders and others, it seemed to make a lot more sense. Given his readership (the New Yorker, or readers of literary fiction, whatever that is), George Saunders most likely realizes and acknowledges the fact that these people are, for the most part, far from poverty. Taking that into account, he seems to believe that conventional plot movements in realism and satire might only afford his readers the more basic understanding of the plot, granting a sense of sympathy or humor, but does little to nothing to get across the “complex, differential experiences of the working class.”

This uncoupling from the actual seems to show up in other stories by Saunders, like in “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline.” Much like “Sea Oak,” the protagonist has a bad job and problems with his family. In this piece, Saunders uncouples from the actual relatively early, having the theme park in the story be haunted by a family of civil war era ghosts. Because of the utmost authority in the language itself, these supernatural aspects in both stories somehow feel part of the inherent fabric of the world - so as a reader I almost find the ‘uncoupling’ to be normal in these kinds of situations. Saunders writes in an unblinking fashion, which I imagine garners his success as an evocative writer.

[Bri Shatanoff]

I enjoyed reading Sea Oak because the content was so shocking I could not stop reading on and on. I thought that I was reading the story that sparked the idea for Magic Mike (even though it is apparently based on Channing Tatum’s real life experiences). It captures various and interesting characters: the two uneducated girls who have children but no father when they are probably the last people on this planet that should have children. Then there is the brother who tries to earn a living by stripping. Come on, that could not have been his only option as a way to make money. And then there is Aunt Bernie, the one who suffers the most but stays positive through it all. She tries her best to hold the family together and even though the world seems to constantly shit on her and does not give her much reason to keep going, she still keeps going. I admire her outlook on life.  Then you have Ma who decided to escape this life and go off with her boyfriend, Freddie. Her children seem to be not much of a concern to her. This family reminds me of a lot of struggling families in America. The people who work with what they have, such as Aunt Bernie, and then those who do not try very hard (Thomas), those who decide to do something about it and change their life (Ma), and then those who think everything should be handed to them on a silver platter (the sister and cousin). When Aunt Bernie comes back from the dead, she gets “real” with the way things really are by saying how everything sucked. She worked so hard and it was for nothing and she received nothing from it. I feel this reflects a lot of American’s because they work hard every day and yet they get nothing in the end.