Social Justice

1. The Gaming Industry's Greatest Adversary Is Just Getting Started

(http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-26/anita-sarkeesian-battles-sexism-in-games-gamergate-harassment)

This article is about Anita Sarkeesian, feminist and advocate for gender equality in video games. The Canadian-American launched a series of videos called “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games”on her website  Feminist Frequency detailed and attacked stereotypes and sexism both in video games and the gaming community. The controversy and backlash that has stemmed from the webseries has been deemed by the media as “gamergate.” Both the harrassment targeted at Sarkeesian and sexism when it comes to games are examples of injustice. The video games themselves are bad enough; women are tied to a handful of overused tropes. The damsel in distress, prostitute, princess, all used to be plot devices who push along the men and fail to be their own characters. One way that this is injustice because it furthers the objectification of women in today’s society. Often in video games, because the women are only used to push up the male characters and be sexy eye candy for the gamers, they feel less like people and more like scenery. For gamers who spend so much time playing video games, these perceptions can start to carry over and turn into real-life misogyny. Another reason this is injustice is because of the lack of representation for women who play video games. While there is a stereotype of gamers being all antisocial men, there has always been a female fan-following of gamers. Video games, like other forms of entertainment, is often used as an escape from reality. Unfortunately, this escape is tailored for men, making all the real characters male. This changes the feeling for women, who now find it hard to get lost in a world of which they are not major parts. This makes the gaming world unfair for women.

It isn’t just the games themselves that are sexist, it’s the gaming community as well. When Sarkeesian released her web series about inequality in games, she suffered major harassment from people in the gaming community.  This backlash ranged from respectful disagreement to insults to death threats. One person tweeted “I hate ovaries with brains big enough to post videos,” another “f-‍-‍- you feminist f-‍-‍-s you already have equality. In fact you have better s-‍-‍- than most males be glad what you got bitch.” One man even threatened mass murder, “This will be the deadliest school shooting in American history, and I’m giving you a chance to stop it,” the email read. “I have at my disposal a semiautomatic rifle, multiple pistols, and a collection of pipe bombs,” it went on. “I will write my manifesto in her spilled blood, and you will all bear witness to what feminist lies and poison have done to the men of America.” Hate like this illustrates just how rampant injustice and sexism is in the gaming community. Female gamers are excluded by male gamers who think they don’t deserve representation in the community.  The fact that a woman who just wanted to spread her opinion about video games was receiving death threats shows you how major the misogyny is.

This makes me think about my place as a women with a voice in today’s sexist geek community. I have been called a “fake geek girl”, as have many of my friends. An important thing, I believe, for girls in these communities to learn is that you have to make your voice heard. If we stay silent then the men who would like to think we are inferior will push us out of communities we love so much. I think that what we have to unlearn this idea of pop-culture communities being predominantly male and shutting out the women who hold it up.

2. Daily Injustice in my Neighborhood

• Longtime residents being evicted from rent controlled apartments so that their homes can be sold at higher prices.
• Low-performing schools are the only option for kids in a disadvantaged neighborhood.
• Immigrant families who are separated from relatives back in their home countries.
• Immigrants being taken advantage of in low-paying jobs with long hours.
• Systematic gentrification forcing out low-income, longtime residents.
• Real estate agents forcing out local small businesses so that they can charge high rent for corporate businesses, putting people out of work.
• Construction workers harassing women in the neighborhood.  

My neighborhood, like so many others, is home to schools that exist to perpetuate a cycle of poverty that way too many children are stuck in. In a district that has a high population of poor and lower middle class families, good schools are nonexistent. Children who come from disadvantaged families, who are unable to find a school outside of their zone, are forced into underperforming schools. In MS51, we are lucky to be getting an education with parents who, for the majority, have steady jobs that allow them to donate to the school and get time off so that they can participate in activities like the PTA. The majority of kids who go to schools where I live have parents who work without salary for long hours of the day and little money to show for it. These parents don’t have a flexible schedule or wallet that allows them to better their children's education. These kids, who are not getting the education or money they need to go to college, will likely be stuck in the same position their parents are, sending their kids to receive a below-average education, thus adding to this seemingly endless system of poverty that traps people in their low socio-economic position. This system also traps people of color in this unbreachable prison, not allowing for great progress in racial equality. This frustrates me greatly. How are we, as a city and as a country, expecting to dig ourselves out of this ditch of racism and classism if we are unable to break this cycle? In order for us to progress, we need to better the schools of the indigent districts as opposed to focusing on the kids that don’t need saving.      

3. An Interview With my Mother, Laura Frenzer

Me: What do you think is fair about the world?

Laura: This is difficult, I think unfair will be easier. It’s really all relative. I guess it’s fair that I get paid to work, and that I can choose the course of my life and be responsible for the consequences. Compared to some I have a plentiful life, and I’m grateful for that, but it’s not fair. It just is. And the universe will seek to keep it in balance, not fair to someone else. I feel that I can’t say what is definately fair because it’s a matter of personal experience. It is fair that I get paid to work, but many others in the world do not. It is fair that I can vote, but many can not. Maybe science is fair. It’s impartial, action and reaction and laws of physics.  Keeping things in balance.

Me: What do you think is unfair about the world?

Laura: Theres so much. That some women don’t have the same rights as men. That not all children can get an education. That some people have no food and others throw food away. That people born to privileged social classes get more advantages. That New York City students who can’t afford to pay for tutors have less of a chance to get into competitive schools. That schools in NYC in wealthier neighborhoods are higher performing than those in low income neighborhoods. That our rent keeps going up. That some people are imprisoned or put to death because they are homosexual. That slavery still exists. That racism still exists. That Broadway tickets cost so much. That some kids don’t get proper health care. That wars are fought for rich oligarchs. That selfish leaders use religion to manipulate people into war. That some American kids think evolution is a lie and ignorant adults are making them scientifically illiterate. Those are some things that are unfair.

My Reflection:

I think the struggle with finding what is fair is interesting when compared with all that is unfair. It’s easy to say what’s unfair, so much is. The unfairness of the world is the one thing I think mostly all humans can agree on. Whether it’s how nasty your boss is or the murder of your family, bad things happen to good people. It’s a fact of life. I really don’t think anything is fair. Sure, good things happen to people, they do all the time. While one may always be privileged with a right, there will always be more people denied that right. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word “fair” as “treating one in a way that does not favor some over others.” While, for example, I have always been given the right to education and that may be fair to me, the reality of millions of girls around the world who are denied education puts me unfairly on top. I agree with the point my mother mad about science being the only true fairness of the world. While I eat and others starve, we are all controlled by universal laws, we all have to breathe, we all have blood pumping through our veins. Things like science, that are not constructs of human desire or need, level the playing field. This is why, when it comes to human rights, nothing is actually fair.

4. News of Ferguson

The news is practically dominated by reports of Ferguson, Missouri. Protesters line the streets, not just in Ferguson, but all over the country to cry out against the jury’s decision not to convict police officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed young black man Michael Brown. What would I be feeling if I was a young, black girl rallying right now? I can never really put myself in a black young person’s shoes because I am not black, nor have I ever been discriminated against because of the color of my skin. I have grown up with the privilege that comes with being of European descent and I have no idea what it is like to live without that. I can say that I understand what it is like to feel so angry that it seems my mind will jump out of my skull. I know what it’s like to feel as if the world is against you because of something you can’t control. I can try and imagine the fear in the hearts of the protesters, faced with the bullets and tear gas of the police officers trying to keep them quiet. The uncertainty of whether or not their own police force, their own government cares about their lives and the urge to shake everyone who claims racism is over and ask if they are blind. That is what  I think of when I try to put myself in the place of the protesters around the country.

5.  An Interview With my Uncle, Joel Frenzer  

Joel Frenzer is an independant artist and professional animator. He has been involved in several Cartoon Network projects as animator and voice actor. Joel has taught and assisted animation classes at Harvard University, Massachusetts College of Art & Design, WGBH, and is currently teaching full time at the School of Museum and Fine Arts in Boston. His independent films have been shown on the web, at various international film festivals, galleries, and workshops. He has a podcast about animation with his friend Alan Foreman called “The Frenzer Foreman Animation Forum”.  Joel has dedicated his life to film and passing on what he’s learned to the younger generation.

Daphne: What do you do everyday to change the world?

Joel: That’s a broad question… I teach college animation classes to students, and we’re also an art school where we’re trying to think about a career in the art world. And I try and get them to think a lot bigger than small assignments, it’s about being a creative person, being able to problem solve, and learning how to have a good routine, helping them to come up with a good routine to build their creative thinking, which I know has helped me in all aspects of my life. So not just being an artist or being an animator, also being an organized person with a work ethic in the world to solve things creatively. Did you know that the more you practice a creative life, you actually reform your brain? You create different, new pathways in your brain that...it is like anything, it is like if you were going to practice the violin for years to become a master, you can practice creative thinking over time to actually become fine-tuned in it and problem solve faster. And also I talk about not sweating the small stuff. So, yeah. Instilling that work ethic, showing them what that means. Try to guide them to projects that aren’t arbitrary, but actually can be meaningful in the world. So, artistic work in the gallery is one thing, but the impact, relating humanness to other humans, taking a big idea and being able to visualise it, being able to be visionary, which is something that is not talked a lot about in art school. I realized that not everyone is a visionary, and so when someone’s not like that they won’t talk about their artwork that way, but when someone is then the conversation changes. So I like to think that I change the world by helping my students think in this creative way, preparing them for creative lives.

Me: Thank you for speaking to me today.

Joel: Thank you.

                       

"Dear Mr. President"

(feat. Indigo Girls)

Dear Mr. President,

Come take a walk with me.

Let's pretend we're just two people and

You're not better than me.

I'd like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestly.

What do you feel when you see all the homeless on the street?

Who do you pray for at night before you go to sleep?

What do you feel when you look in the mirror?

Are you proud?

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?

How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?

How do you walk with your head held high?

Can you even look me in the eye

And tell me why?

Dear Mr. President,

Were you a lonely boy?

Are you a lonely boy?

Are you a lonely boy?

How can you say

No child is left behind?

We're not dumb and we're not blind.

They're all sitting in your cells

While you pave the road to hell.

What kind of father would take his own daughter's rights away?

And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay?

I can only imagine what the first lady has to say

You've come a long way from whiskey and cocaine.

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?

How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?

How do you walk with your head held high?

Can you even look me in the eye?

Let me tell you 'bout hard work

Minimum wage with a baby on the way

Let me tell you 'bout hard work

Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away

Let me tell you 'bout hard work

Building a bed out of a cardboard box

Let me tell you 'bout hard work

Hard work

Hard work

You don't know nothing 'bout hard work

Hard work

Hard work

Oh

How do you sleep at night?

How do you walk with your head held high?

Dear Mr. President,

You'd never take a walk with me.

Would you?

This song is written in the form of a letter from the artist (P!nk) to President George W. Bush. The song is asking the president to spend some time in the world he created and experience the repercussions of his actions.  For example, P!nk pens the lines:

“Dear Mr. President,

Come take a walk with me.

Let's pretend we're just two people and

You're not better than me.”

This section of the song illustrates the high-horse politicians often ride that makes them see themselves as more important than the people they are supposed to serve. This ego is what allows politicians to ignore the real problems of the citizens and focus on personal gain.The president was able to make decisions that negatively impacted his nation and the world from a great enough distance that he himself could ignore the damage he caused, and P!nk presents clear examples of mistakes the president has made. An example of this is the lyric:

“Minimum wage with a baby on the way”

This line is referencing the dismal minimum wage during Bush’s presidency. Although the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 raised the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour, it was still not nearly enough money for a family to live on. The minimum wage was the source of poverty for millions of people, and still is. Another line that addresses a presidential mistake is:

“Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away”

This deals with the ramifications of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that the president brought to be.  At least 174,000 civilian casualties have occurred as a result of these wars, as American bombs fall on towns and villages.

This song also brings up the hypocrisy of President Bush. This theme is exemplified in this excerpt:

“What kind of father would take his own daughter's rights away?

And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay?”

This references Bush’s views on same-sex marriage and homosexuality. George W. Bush is the only living ex-president not to endorse same-sex marriage, despite his father’s and sister’s open  support (according to usnews.com). The lyric brings the president’s views to his personal life, asking if his feelings towards the gay community would apply to family as well, thus making it easier for the president to understand the plight of LGBTQ+ Americans.

While this song is clearly addressed to President George W. Bush, the message can be assigned to many politicians. A clean conscience is almost non-existent in politics, as power and wealth can get to a person’s head. Politicians always make decisions that negatively impact someone they serve, and corruption, on varying levels,  is ubiquitous. This song is a reminder to people in power that people are not just numbers on a poll, they are flesh and blood with families and lives that are in your control. The major message for politicians to internalize from this song is that the people you represent are human beings, and that we have to stop making politics about power and privilege and start making it about making sure civilian’s voices are heard in government.

7. Three’s Company

“Three’s Company” is an American sitcom based off the British sitcom “Man About the House”. The show, a comedy of errors, ran from March 15, 1977 to September 18, 1984. The plot revolves around two single girls and one single man who platonically share an apartment. The episode “The Crush” (season 3 episode 10) deals with a 13 year old girl who develops a crush on one of the roommates. The portrayal of teenage girls in this episode misses the mark by far. The girl, and all her friends, are exactly the same; white, with a mother and a father, living in a large home. The big houses and nice clothes imply that these families are all at least upper-middle class. A stereotype of the mindless teenage girl is perpetuated, as the girl in “The Crush” thinks about absolutely nothing but the boys she’s fallen for (and the other young women don’t think about much other than that either). I  know that today there are all kinds of thirteen year olds in America, one mother, two mothers, one father, two fathers, no father, no parents, white, black, latino, large home, big home, no home, etc. Teenagers are all different races and have different socioeconomic statuses and family lives. I also know that diversity is not new to American teenagers, and therefore that this show and shows of it’s time are misinterpreting or misrepresenting the adolescents of their time. This falsification makes me think about what the ideal teen was when this show aired. Television shows, especially sitcoms, tend to scrape away all the seriousness from their shows and fabricate a sort of escape from reality. Perhaps making teenagers mindless, white, well-off kids on television allows the viewers not to think about the fact that teenagers are thoughtful and angry at so many injustices and run away from the difficult realities of  children of color, children with single mothers, poor children, anyone who doesn’t fit the perfect suburban image. This makes me feel outraged and exasperated. Allowing people to escape from real-world problems so easily as watching television means that we as a people won’t be able to work towards fixing the privilege and prejudice that plagues our society. An informed public is a public that can make a difference. It also makes me think about all the kids that don’t fit this perfect image. What if they need someone on television to relate to, to understand, but they can’t find that character because of this filtering of reality? Representation is important for kids who need to feel like the lives their leading are equally as entertaining as other children.

The Giver by Lois Lowry

As human beings, it’s difficult to contemplate what we would be like without the millennia’s’ worth of memories that follow us. Lowis Lowry’s The Giver explores what it would be like to live in a world that purged these memories, in addition to sophisticated emotion, many rights, and even the perception of color, and started over. The book is written from the point of view of Jonas, an eleven year old existing in this dystopian society. When Jonas turns twelve, he is assigned a vocation along with all the other children his age. However, Jonas is placed in a unique profession, he is chosen at the Ceremony of Twelve to inherit the position Receiver of Memories. This job means Jonas will be given all the memories other citizens lost from the Giver, or previous Receiver. As Jonas gains more memories, he learns to see through the lies and into the twisted truth of his “happy” community. Jonas soon has to question what is the right thing for a people to retain: liberty and knowledge or happiness and ignorance?

         The utopian society in which Jonas resides has been altered to insure the contentedness of its citizens. “The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain or past.”  No one need worry about colors, pain, sorrow, or love. Deep feelings and vibrant, impactful memories are extracted by either time or medication. The striping away of collective memory not only takes away potentially painful experiences from human history, but also prevents the people who live in this world from wishing to engage in potentially harmful activities (hurtful relationships, etc) or dwelling on nostalgia for the things they all gave up to live in this idealized society. While to the modern American reader, one who has grown up being told that freedom is the key to happiness, everyone in this world is content. “They were satisfied with their lives which had none of the vibrance his (Jonas’) own was taking on.” Nobody living in this community knows any different than the “sameness” that has existed their whole lives. They’re happy without pain, happy without color, happy without knowing beyond their own, sheltered bubbles.  Jonas, once he starts to experience these memories, is frustrated by the ignorant contentedness of his family and everyone around him. “I feel sorry for anyone who is in a place where he feels strange and stupid,” he says. This is, while understandable, a sentiment coming from someone who was happy before painful memories thrust anguish upon him Jonas could not have previously imagined. The pain of someone given these memories is so intense that the previous receiver of memories asked to be released, or killed, rather than endure the pain. “The Giver shook his head and sighed. ‘No. And I didn't give her (the previous receiver) physical pain. But I gave her loneliness. And I gave her loss. I transferred a memory of a child taken from its parents. That was the first one. She appeared stunned at its end.’’ While Jonas feels the need to give people pain and free will, he doesn’t consider that they may be better off without the pain it causes. This difficult grey area shows the constant moral and philosophical struggle throughout the novel between understanding and peace.

         While the citizens of this utopian land are happy in their callowness and stupidity, the experiences Jonas acquires as the Receiver of Memories convince him that they would be better off with a greater depth, understanding, and quantity of pain in their day to day lives.  The abilities that allow Jonas to experience life on a deeper level than the rest of his community prompt him to imagine a world where everyone understood what he understood. “I liked the feeling of love,' [Jonas] confessed. He glanced nervously at the speaker on the wall, reassuring himself that no one was listening. ‘I wish we still had that,' he whispered.” Jonas enjoys the pleasurable things he gets out of his position, such as affection and the ability to see color. These are interesting capabilities; they bring both a newfound metaphorical and literal color to life that he sees missing in his life. At first, there seems to be no downside to filling the rest of society with what Jonas has come to learn. However, Jonas soon learns that there is more to memories than happiness and love. “He knew that there was no quick comfort for emotions like those. They were deeper and they did not need to be told. They were felt.” Jonas’s life had, until that point, been filled with simple negative emotions, people were, on the surface,  “sad” or “angry”, and these emotions found their roots in problems that were easily fixed. However, as the Receiver of Memories, he is faced with anguish and pain that cannot easily be remedied. They were deep, backed by years and years of torment and experience in the memories he was given. Was it worth giving up a content, albeit passive existence for this pain? “Of course they needed to care. It was the meaning of everything.” The meaning Jonas finds in these newfound emotions strengthens his belief that they need to be shared. While sometimes excruciating, they are what he believes bring a meaning and comprehension to the world that is necessary to live at full capacity. This exemplifies the difficult choice Jonas has to make, choosing agony and comprehension over blind contentedness.

         Lois Lowry’s novel expresses a common dilemma, whether it is right to sacrifice depth for serenity. This question is the topic of many dystopian fantasies. We find it interesting to imagine worlds in which our understanding of the world shrinks because our analytical and emotional intelligence is so much of what defines us as a species. While a dog may be able to think about how it will get it’s next meal or experience superficial pleasure, humans are able to feel things beyond ourselves and thusly be more connected to our environment, others, and us as individuals. Loss of this ability would almost take away our humanity, and so we wonder where we would be without it. Books that explore fantasies like this one allow us to find importance in things we take for granted, and that’s why they are so widely and deeply loved.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Exactly how far can a human being possibly be pushed? Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi pushes the protagonist, Piscine, “Pi”, Patel to his limits in this epic survival story. Pi, a god-loving Indian boy raised in his parents’ zoo, lives a colorful life filled with the animals of his childhood and multiple religions. When the Prime Minister of India enacts martial law,

Pi’s parents decide to leave their native home, Pondicherry, India, sell most of their animals, and board a Japanese cargo ship headed for Canada. Halfway to their destination, the ship sinks unexpectedly, leaving Pi on a lifeboat with a hyena, orangutan, zebra, and a tiger named Richard Parker. As we follow Pi in his months long journey across the ocean, we are constantly questioning the effects extreme circumstances can have on someone who is in a dire situation.

            Piscine starts his life off extremely connected to his principles. He is a devout Christian, Muslim, and Hindu. He sticks strictly to his vegetarian diet and pacifist lifestyle. He is quick to defend both his father’s zoo and his religion(s). “I have heard nearly as much nonsense about zoos as I have about God and Religion,” says Pi. He’s a thinker, analyzing everything he sees and applying them to his beliefs. “The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything,” he says, “is the bane of not only theologians but also of zoologists.” This thought comes from years growing up on a zoo, an experience that, as you can see, has shaped his lifelong principles.  Most of the first section of the book is Pi’s reflection on the world around him, lines like this: “To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation,” demonstrate the depth of the roots of Pi’s philosophies in his mind, the sheer frequency of these thoughts and the sureness with which he demonstrates them makes it clear their importance. Pi is so connected to his beliefs that he even defends his following multiple religions, without once backing down, to his religious leaders and his imposing father. This behavior illustrates how Pi keeps his faith and principles close to his heart. One would never think that they could ever be stripped away, and yet Pi’s experience on the lifeboat tells a different tale.

            After the ship sinks, Pi spends months and months stranded in the middle of the ocean with only a live tiger for company. As you can probably guess, it’s difficult to maintain practices such as vegetarianism when food and sanity are scarce. Pi is broken when he kills his first fish. “I wept heartily over this poor little deceased soul. It was the first sentient being I had ever killed. I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain. I was sixteen years old, a harmless boy, bookish and religious, and now I had blood on my hands. It’s a terrible burden to carry. All sentient life is sacred. I never forget to include this fish in my prayers." Pi’s reaction to his first hunt reveals how extreme circumstances can make you do things you never would have done. Pi has been a vegetarian his whole life, and here he was, killing a fish with his own hands to eat. Eventually, he doesn’t bat an eye when killing a fish or a turtle. Being a vegetarian was a significant part of Pi’s personality, linked both to his religions and his childhood with animals. Vegetarianism is also linked to his strict pacifism. After time passes, we see Pi beginning to strip all of his previous practices away, as he says later, after killing a dorado, that “You may be astonished that in such a short period of time I could go from weeping over the muffled killing of a flying fish to gleefully bludgeoning to death a dorado. I could explain it by arguing that profiting from a pitiful flying fish's navigational mistake made me shy and sorrowful, while the excitement of actively capturing a great dorado made me sanguinary and self-assured. But in point of fact the explanation lies elsewhere. It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even killing.” The fact that something so close to his heart can be stripped away shows how events can change a human profoundly.

            Throughout this novel, the persistence of the human body and its willingness to survive is shown thoroughly. The human body protects itself by hunting fish, retaining water, and entertaining itself so as to not die from boredom. At the end of the book, it is revealed that Pi probably made up his elaborate story about the tiger and other animals in order to protect his mind from the stress of dealing with the actions of the people the animals represent. Perhaps the stripping away of disciplines that take lifetimes to build is only another method the brain uses to assist itself to withstand stressful experiences. If you were trying to, for example, maintain a peaceful and vegetarian lifestyle while stranded in the middle of the ocean with nothing to eat but fish, you wouldn’t last very long. Basic human instinct is to survive, and that instinct is so strong that it surpasses things like tradition.

“It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse.”― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Ashes by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Ashes by Susan Beth Pfeffer

            Parental rivalry often confuses young people about what they want. In the short story “Ashes,” by Susan Beth Pfeffer, the protagonist is tangled up in arduous battles with morality that spring from her relationship with her divorced parents. Ashes, the main character, is asked by her father to take money from her mother in order to settle his own financial difficulties. Ashes enjoys the constant compliments and promises from her father and finds her mothers realistic attitude unsatisfying. Ashes’ complicated relationships with her parents and the questionable favor her father asks of her cause Ashes to question which parent is worth choosing.

            In the story, Ashes’ father, while manipulative and irresponsible, is the light of her life. She describes him as “a rescuer,” and that he “could make everyone in the world smile.” Ashes generally loves her father, he’s everything that she wants in a parent, except reliable. Ashes’ father is “unexpectedly there, like a warm day in January.” Ashes’ father is portrayed as thoughtless, “when Dad forgot to pick me up at school, or didn’t have the money for the class trip, or got all his favorite kinds of Chinese and none of Mom’s and mine.” Of course, what Ashes wants is a fun, loving, superhero dad. The “rescuer.” Ashes loves this part of her dad so much that she sometimes overlooks his tendency to not always be there when she needs him. Another instance in the text when her father was shown to be unreliable is when he asks Ashes to take her mother's money and give the money to him. This illustrates his inability to think about consequences, he doesn’t consider the trouble Ashes could be in with her mother if he has her “borrow” that money. This behavior clearly indicates Ashes’ father’s irresponsibility. Her father is also incredibly manipulative. In the text, Ashes is constantly pelted with compliments that she doesn’t believe. Her father calls her a “one-in-a-million girl”, a name Ashes doesn’t believe she lives up to. Her father keeps complimenting her, and it makes him seem warm and loving. Her fathers purchase of loyalty by way of compliments comes into play when he asks Ashes to take her mother’s money from the teapot. When Ashes is about to steal or not steal the money with her father waiting outside, she says “I looked out the window and saw only ash grey sky, In the cold stillness of the night, I could hear my father’s car keening in the distance. ‘You’re one in a million,’ it cried.” This shows how she is still being manipulated by her father’s compliments in ways she can’t understand. Ashes yearns for a caring, emotional parent, one that will promise her the stars and dreams as her dad does. But what Ashes needs is a down to earth parent, a trait her father has been shown to lack.

            The behavior and parenting methods of Ashes’ mother are in stark contrast to that of Ashes’ father. Ashes’ mother is, while authoritative, not quite as obviously affectionate as her father. This can be exemplified in the text with Ashes depicting her mom as “the most practical person I know, always putting aside for a rainy day.”  Her mother never promises her anything she can’t follow through with, as opposed to her father, who is always making promises that, while loving, he can’t keep. Ashes is less satisfied with her mother, she feels that she is too prepared, not personal enough, that her father is warmer and friendlier because he constantly compliments her and makes promises he can’t keep. For example, in the text Ashes says, “Dad used to promise me the stars for a necklace, but like most of his promises, that one never quite happened.” However, her mother cares in a way more than her father. She’s the one who Ashes can rely on to get things done, to actually provide for her as opposed to just saying she will. This shows how Ashes is confusing what she wants and what she needs. As Ashes has shown us, while she craves the affection of her father, Ashes requires the reliability from of her mother.

            “Ashes” illustrates how thinking about people’s roles in our lives can be baffling. This is especially true for teenagers, whose feelings about people often cloud our ability to think clearly and critically about their positive and negative attributes. Often times we will overlook things about people and either take them for granted or put them on too high of a pedestal. But will she take the money or will she leave it? This decision, more so than the money, is about Ashes’ choosing sides. If she takes the money and betrays her mother, Ashes picks her father. If she leaves her mother's money and leaves her father in debt, she clearly favors her mother. From a literary standpoint, it makes sense for Ashes to choose her mother. If she chooses her father then she would be choosing the character that is the root of this conflict, not resolving the story. However, in real life it could go both ways. It all depends on how courageous Ashes is willing to be. Is she strong enough to go against her father? Is she not? This story will hopefully clear many kids judgment, and cause them to consider all the complicated facets of people in their lives.