Reference no: EM133301258
Topic: Hillbilly Elegy, A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
Question 1: "I know this isn't right, honey. But she's your mother and she's my daughter. And maybe, if we help her this time, she'll finally learn her lesson". Throughout their lives, Vance's mother struggles with her drug addiction, and Vance struggles with how much to help her, financially and emotionally. Were Vance and Mamaw enabling his mother to continue using drugs by helping her pass the drug test? What are some other examples of drug use that Vance includes in the book? Does his analysis of the drug epidemic provide a clear portrait of the problems facing America?
Question 2: According to Vance, Mamaw "loathed disloyalty, and there was no greater disloyalty than class betrayal". Later in the book, Vance relates a story in which he cannot bring himself to tell a stranger at a gas station that he is a student at Yale, acknowledging that this incident: "highlights the inner conflict inspired by rapid upward mobility: I had lied to a stranger to avoid feeling like a traitor". Vance has achieved everything Mamaw wished for him, so why does his success feel like a betrayal? In what way does Vance's success echo or conflict with the role models he encountered throughout his life (e.g., the Blanton men, Mamaw and Papaw, his biological father)?
Question 3: Reflecting upon his service in the Marine Corps and his childhood, Vance states, "Psychologists call it 'learned helplessness' when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life... If I had learned helplessness at home, the Marines were teaching learned willfulness". What do you think Vance means by this statement? How did the Marine Corps change Vance? What life skills did he find especially valuable, and how did his service, particularly his time in Iraq, affect his college experience and his perception of fellow students at Ohio State? What does this comment ultimately mean when we think about the role education could or should play in students 'lives, perhaps especially students who grow up in poverty?