Sociological Imagination - Book Report/Review Example

20 April 2007 "Mourning the Warrior, and Questioning the War" During 1959, CW Mills wrote that "people often feel that their private lives are a series of traps." Accordingly, the specific reason why people feel trapped is their limited perception of what is happening in their personal lives. Mills argued that "their visions and their powers are limited to the close-up scenes of job, family [and] neighbourhood," and are not able to fully understand the greater sociological patterns related to their private troubles.

Underlying this feeling of being trapped are the seemingly uncontrollable and continuous changes to society. This article is yet another manifestation of how people feel trapped because they are not equipped with the sociological imagination which enables them to understand that they are but a milieu of a larger integrated whole. Mrs. Niederer's clamor for justice for his son's death and her quest to "bring home the troops" emphasizes how individuals often perceive things psychologically instead of sociologically.

The article points out that she wants to confront Mrs. Bush because she believes that being also a mother, she can understand her concern and her laborious efforts are focused on fulfilling the last wish of her son who died in the war which just shows that she sees her situation as a personal issue rather than a public trouble. It should be noted that her reasons are all personal in nature disregarding the fact that since the whole United States is in war with Iraq, most of the mothers and sons are confronted with the same situation.

The article also signals the attempts of Mrs. Niederer of freeing herself from the clutches of "self-limitation." However, this seems in vain as she still perceives that the problem is still in her immediate surrounding disabling her to change her larger environment. It should be noted that her focus is mainly on how she can send the troops back but she fail to recognize the larger issues of war and global terrorism which causes her personal troubles. Mourning the Warrior and Questioning the War highlights the reality of how individuals in the current times still feel trapped as they are unable to use the sociological imagination in order to understand their situations in relation to the larger social structure.

Works CitedMills, CW. "The Promise." The Sociological Imagination. 1959. nd