Sunday, February 27, 2011

Wilshire Bus

Towards the end of class we began to discuss the significance of the ending to the story. This story is particularly interesting because Esther uses gender as an excuse for her emotional breakdown, linking her sobbing to the stereotypes of women as emotional. This mindset is peculiar because she decides to retreat into the traditional gender role instead of sharing what has just happened to Buro, perhaps because she was scared that Buro may question her about her dismissive attitude (that she knows was wrong). I think her action also portrays one of her characteristics, which is to detach herself from anything she finds unpleasant. For example, during the bus ride she keeps herself occupied by looking outside as the drunk man insults the Chinese woman. She does this to avoid the situation, and to call the least attention to herself as possible, for she is scared that the man might mistaken her as Chinese and scorn her too.

After the bus ride Esther reflects on her actions and realizes that her dismissing the drunk man was not acceptable. Through her stream of consciousness and realization of what is right/wrong, we can conclude that the bus ride not only took her from one place to the other but from one mode of consciousness to the other.

What saddens me is how silent the others were on the bus as they simply watched this happen instead of speaking up against the racist remarks the drunk man was making. The mild looking man smiling at the Chinese woman mirrored Esther’s earlier smile, but like Esther he does it just little enough to not call attention to himself, but enough to show the lady that he sympathizes with her. Though he comes over to the Chinese lady later, his words come too late and are very ineffective.

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