River of Names and The Cathedral

River of Names is a very sad story. It reminds me a lot of Law and Order SVU where there are a bunch of different stories that you can't even imagine being true. Different ways people die and are abused. Also the girl telling the story seems like she is exactly like the victims in SVU. She doesn't wanna talk about her horrific past. It also reminds me of all the stereotypes of what people call rednecks. People that abuse their children physically and sexually, steal everything, drink and do drugs, live off welfare, and have many children but the family in the story take it to the next level. I don't see how more of them weren't in jail for the terrible things they did. The part that really made my mouth drop is the part about Butch. Butch seems to be a fun loving gentle boy and is murdered by his own family. "Butch could hang on, put his hand down into the tank and pukk up a cupped palm of gas, breathe deep and laugh. He would climb down roughly, swinging down from the door handle, laughing, staggering, and stinking of gasoline. Someone caught him at it. Someone threw a match. 'ill teach you.' Just like that, gone before you understand." It is crazy to me that a little kid who anyone would consider innocent was getting high off of gasoline. Then he is murdered by his own family in a scene that is something you would be seen in a movie.

I feel like the reason the narrator never talks about her family and past with anyone because she feels like if she does she will become like them. Her sister did and she didn't want to and did anyway when she almost hit her baby because it was crying. I think that may be why the narrator is a lesbian, because she feels like if she has a husband or anything close to kids she will turn into the fate or curse of her family and abuse her children and steal and have all those bad things happen except she is the one doing them. Being a lesbian in her mind seems to separate her from her family, she isn't like them. She has to have some sort of post traumatic stress disorder with all of that perversion and violence she experienced as a child. Evidence of this could be seen when she wakes up violently and asks Jesse to just hold her.

In the Cathedral I really see a correlation between that story and two of my favorite movies, American History X and Crash. At the beginning the narrator seems to bare a prejudice towards someone or a group of people but then through experience sees things through there eyes and understands them better and is no longer prejudice towards them. At first the narrator seems to hold some disdain for the blind man because he doesn't see the connection he has with his wife, in American History X the main character has become a brain washed skin head who hates black people and people who are in general different then himself. In the Cathedral the narrator makes a connection with the blind man when they draw a cathedral together. He even closes his eyes to finish the drawing and really starts to get the impression of how it might be to be blind and that's when the connection and the understanding is really met. "But I had my eyes closed. I thought I'd keep them like that way for a little longer." In American History X the main character's realization of his ignorance comes a little harsher. He goes to jail for murdering a African American for trying to steal his car. In jail he realizes how hypocritical his fellow white people could be and realized his beliefs had no truth to them. When he shuns the white people his only friend is a black man he works with in jail. He is then raped and beaten by his so called white friends for having a black friend. This was the enlightening moment for him, he saw how narrow minded his philosophy on life was and saw what it was like to be a black person, which was almost the same as a white man and is the reason it was so dumb to be prejudice against them because they were so similar.