Assumptions based on the influences of friends, family, and community - Essay Example

In the tiny village of Lansquenet (in “Chocolat”) the villagers are appalled that Vianne has opened a chocolate shop and has disregard for the social expectations that Lent imposes. Rather than simply ignoring the chocolate shop and Vianne and Anouk and carrying on with their own beliefs, the town is outraged and ostracizes Vianne for not going along with their tradition of suffering and deprivation. The chocolate store is disturbing to them because they want to have fun too but don’t want to admit it.

Their first reaction is to ostracize them and point to them as being bad. This makes them feel better about staying stuck. However it forces the villagers to question why they are suffering, what would actually happen if they broke tradition, where did these rules come from (not from inside) and what is life for but to enjoy, why carry the burden of the past. It takes a few stronger villagers to stand against tradition, after which the whole village feels safe to also follow its desires. In Sula, society both dislikes and needs Bottom as a community.

It needs a place to look down on, it needs people to point to and say they are bad, in order to make them feel good. They needed Sula in order to unite together over something. They could all unite in their values and point at her together to say she was bad. When she leaves, they lack a cause to unify them and it is because deep inside the people of the community are not truly fulfilled by the trappings of their own structure and tradition. However when Sula comes back they find their common mission again.

The community’s stability and rigidity keep everyone stuck. In “Bet Me”, Min is very much influenced by her family upbringing. She is trapped, feeling as though she is only mediocre and that good-looking flashy people are selfish and would never give her the time of day except in passing and would soon get bored and unceremoniously abandon her. The story demonstrates how this is self-fulfilling too, in the recount of her first relationship which ends badly. Not surprisingly, when Min meets Cal, especially under the circumstances, she makes assumptions right from the beginning, and actually sets herself up for the same thing to happen again – she does not treat him right because she already believes he won’t treat her right.

Had Cal not been tied into a bet, he would have not even persevered and would not have found out who Min really was. Min also would not have wasted her time on Cal but for her own need for a date to her sister’s wedding. These unusual circumstances where they were tied to each other by their own selfish needs, kept them together long enough to realize their perceptions of each other had been wrong and had been borne out of the in-bred perceptions offered by others. They start to like each other.

Min learns to see beyond Cal’s good looks and finds a truly caring person. In “Sula”, the families of Nel and Sula are contrasted. Nel’s stable, rigid family of tradition and structure dictate to her what is right and wrong, and compel her to live the life of the straight and narrow. Sula has a very unconventional life with her mother and grandmother and several boarders, she is free from any conventions of society. Nel grows up in a trapped box of limits and Sula is