As We Are Now by Sarton - Essay Example

‘As We Are Now’ by May Sarton – A Book Analysis Brief Summary On attempting to acquaint the general modern society of the injustice and abusive disrespect shown towards the old and the disabled, May Sarton authored ‘As We Are Now’, a story of the 76-year old Caroline ‘Caro’ Spencer who, upon retirement from teaching, is put into Twin Elms for not having good terms of relation with brother John and her sister-in-law. Thinking that this is a better option, Spencer decides to stay despite ill treatment from Harriet and Rose.

She, nevertheless, manages to find relief by keeping a journal to document her hardships and meeting with Rev. Thornhill who would empathize with her undeserved fate at Twin Elms. Analysis In the novel ‘As We Are Now’, M. Sarton designates the reader to acquire her thoughts and sentiments regarding a critical issue with nursing homes in reference to how old people are deprived of respect and austerely shown inappropriate treatment through the mean approach of their keepers within an institutionalized setting.

Equivalently, as Sarton exhibits this truth via the role of her protagonist Caro Spencer, the author’s creation in the form of journal entries by Spencer reflects at depth a character whose struggles are quite alarming to a reader who has stayed and observed matters at the surface. Little does everyone know that beneath the ideal perception toward social workers lies a huge mystery on the essential humanitarian traits for which only subjects like Caro, in coping with her sanity, can reveal what the real encounter with them is made of.

As a retired educator who never married and lived without a single offspring, Spencer appears to deserve opulently having the latter brief years of her life under fulfilled circumstances of living. Indeed, she has managed to earn a lifetime worth of honorable scholastic associations and plausible achievements out of a well-established career in teaching and writing. These, however, make no lasting guarantee of further anticipated recognition especially in places where old age becomes a great deal of burden to carry.

The turning point in her story is marked by the conflicts raised with close relatives whose attempt of keeping her proves to be a wasted effort and serves rather as a ground for Caro to be handed over the custody of medical assistance in the home for the aged. It must have been amply difficult to perceive an assurance with unwanted fate during the transition as such given that the old woman is primarily accustomed to ideal situations of reality. At her perspective, one is engaged in an understanding of the oppressed in the light of personal encounter as well as a concrete imagination of how psychological disintegration is frequently beyond control of an individual sick with old age yet maintains the will to keep logic and sensibility through writing journals.

‘As We Are Now’ takes to view a collective position of a general community for the elderly according to the regular ordeal of harsh reality that confronts every old person in the territory of caregivers. Spencer’s narrative of her own story manifests a particular cruelty that extends outside of her scope and may thus represent those others who have been subjected in the same awful tradition of severe unpleasant medical attention. Not only does Caro lose her sense of freedom to delight at certain things which are remarkably familiar as in the house left behind, her compositions in rich texts, and the warmth of sincere touch, her institutionalized confinement, apparently, tends to disillusion her original knowledge or belief about comfort and caring as obtained from another person.

Conclusion There emerges an opportunity to see the concept of Sarton here at an aspect that chiefly looks at how a global crisis on education may be properly addressed. The behavior portrayed by demeaning health workers indicates poor foundation with core values which should have been inculcated in schools during crucial stages of development. The mother-daughter tandem in Harriet and Rose where the latter follows the consent of her mother to mistreat Caro and the other residents of Twin Elms clearly exemplifies a problem of character that bears no concern for social welfare.

This moreover implies that the absence of moral discernment of Harriet and Rose is a mirror of misguided principle and poor system of education experienced by people with similar attributes.