Dick Gregory: Shame - Essay Example

Dick Gregory: Shame The short story, Shame, by Dick Gregory explores the troubles, social trauma, and psychological afflictions of the narrator as he recounts a childhood full of poverty and adversity. The story does not focus more on the physical consequences of poverty as it does about the impact of poverty on the psychological state of the narrator. Poverty, in this story is presented as a dehumanizing force that denies people the opportunity to achieve a sense of selfhood and personal achievement especially when confronted by peers of a higher social and economic status. The narrator fails to enjoy his childhood because he lacks the necessary means that would place him on the same scale of life as other children at school and in the neighborhood. His state is worsened not only by the fact that he does not have a father but that everybody in class comes to learn of the fact when the teacher mentions it. The narrator’s refusal to acknowledge and adjust to the reality of his poverty complicates his sense of self in a manner that diminishes his self-worth when confronted by his peers and members of the society in which he lives. Helene Tucker represents the ideal and the absolute in the narrator’s mind. The narrator’s desperate efforts for recognition in the classroom and by Helene Tucker is a manifestation of the unease and instability in his consciousness that is caused by the desire to achieve a better kind of life and value other than the deplorable poverty of his family (Gregory 186). The character of Helene Tucker represents for the narrator the alternative kind of life, which he yearns to achieve at the subconscious level. Helene, the beautiful girl and the object of the narrator’s admiration influences the narrator in ways that fastens an illusion of greatness and false recognition. Helene embodies the absolute perfection and ultimate fulfillment that he has been deprived because of poverty and lack of a father figure in his life. He strives to make up for these deficiencies by being cheeky in the classroom and developing some pretense of satisfaction at a time when conditions at home are pathetic and deplorable. The narrator admires Helene because of her beauty, the completeness of her family, and the fact that she is easily recognizable and likeable by everybody in the neighborhood. In thought and action, the narrator rejects the state of hopelessness that afflicts his family. Despite the fact that he stays hungry most of the time in school and finds difficulties when it comes to class concentration, the narrator still wishes to donate some money to top up for whatever Helene’s father had pledged. The strain and effort are meant to demonstrate to his classmates that he is something other than what they might think of him. However, his meager resources fail to cover up for his poverty in the sense that he cannot actually manage to live to the same level as the other children in the classroom. The teacher’s act of uncovering his true condition in the classroom destroys the world of illusions that he has struggled to build and maintain for a long time. Exposing such facts before Helene because the lowest and most difficult moment. He is confronted by the reality he has tried long and hard to avoid. The teacher’s exposure marks the moment of awakening to the difficult conditions that afflict the narrator. The consequence of this exposure manifests itself in the manner in which he is forced to hide from members of the society. He misses class occasionally and fails to marshal up sufficient strength to revamp his deflated ego. The narrator finds himself in the unfamiliar situation where he has to define his life in accordance with what the society not thinks of him. Despite the fact that food is hard to come by, the narrator does not wish to be associated with the relief truck that comes with supplies meant for the impoverished households in the neighborhood. Battling inferiority complex because his daily engagement that distracts him from reality. In this manner, it becomes evident that some of the issues that afflict the narrator are dependent on the way in which he perceives of his poverty as some kind of handicap that makes it difficult for him to live a happy life like many of his peers. On this score, it becomes difficult for him to redeem his humanity and personality in the unequal society. The narrator’s troubling state of mind is caused by the bipolar society of affluence and adversity. The narrator’s social maladjustment and the psychological unease at the heart of the narrator could be explained by way of the stratification of the society along the lines of the rich and the poor. Helene and her family live in affluence, as they do not seem to struggle to meet their ends. On the other hand, the narrator lives in apathy and in a fatherless and crowded home where food and other necessities are in short supply. Helene’s beauty, affluence, and happiness are brought out in the mind of the narrator in ways that exposes him as an opposite equal. She is the elusive dream that thrusts the narrator on the difficult task of covering up his shame. The distance between the world and things, which he desires and the actual conditions of his life are some of the major causes of the conflict with self, which appears to manifest in the form of irrational characters and behavior of the narrator as he comes into contact with reality. The classroom is the realistic space that forces the narrator to acknowledge his actual condition. This is because he could not comprehend the full extent of his poverty in the safety of home because there were little comparisons. However, he encounters people whose lives are much higher than his are, particularly when he learns that the charity contributions were meant for people of his scale. At this point, he acknowledges the fact that he is a special case deserving of sympathy, mercy, and philanthropic actions. It is for this reason that the narrator acknowledges that he did not learn of shame at home but rather in school. Ultimately, the author’s account of his experiences at school expose an individual who endured the taunts of poverty and social exclusion at school in gradual and painful process that awakened him to the hard reality of poverty and unequal nature of society. The complications that follow his life are drawn from the fact that he refuses to hearken to reality but instead endeavors by every means to challenge the irrefutable truth. Works Cited Gregory, Dick. Shame. In Gregory, Dick, and Robert Lipsyte. Nigger: An Autobiography. New York: Washington Square Press, Publishers. 1986. Read More