#patrickpeden

The simplicity and monotony of his job and humble beginning plays a huge role in who one becomes later in life and how they look back at their past. For Martin Espada, one of the main things that I recognize about this poem is his ability to show just how much detail and pain went into each of those little legal pads. The way he goes through his tasks to make the legal pads it seems like an extremely monotonous and tedious job. Gloves would be too bulky and difficult to do such a job that only fingertips can do right, he says, and then the glue gets stuck in the papercuts and burns extremely bad. He later went on to law school and recognizes the amount of legal pads being used, he has the experience in his past of the little boy working in a legal pad factory. The first question I would like to pose; is his point that every small seemingly insignificant thing in our life that we take for granted was created by a person, who probably put pain into doing the job and go unnoticed? Also I was wondering if he is making a point that unless we have experienced someone else’s life through their eyes and lived it, we cannot comprehend how difficult a job is or is not?

“This place is called an island of immortals,”

This line stuck out to me mostly because of the way that he translate the word angels as immortals. To me, when thinking about the idea of angels, the fact that they are immortal would be one of the last things that I would characterize them as. The place they are describing is an island where Chinese immigrants were sent outside of San Francisco when their citizenship papers did not follow through. The tone that he uses in this seems very resentful. It seems to speak to the fact that someone else has named this island and in their culture it is considered a place of angels. The way he says “this place” makes me feel resentment towards the area he is staying, that he doesn’t feel attached to the area he is in any way and he feels distaste towards his present location. Next he follows up this line with the line ; “When in fact, this mountain wilderness is a prison”.  This line works well with the disdain that he feels towards this island. It feels like he is almost saying, these people named this island after immortals, but really they have no idea.

The idea of the American dream often throughout our history as a nation has panned out to little more than the name suggests, a dream. Of course this idea is something that exists for many and there are countless people throughout history who have made such a dream a reality. When I think about the term “American Dream”, images of a house with a lawn, a car and a family flood into my mind. The 1950′s cliche of the husband in the suit coming come to the two children running down the stairs to greet him while the family dog brings the newspaper and his slippers in his mouth and his wife in the kitchen cooking dinner. This is a dream in which, in today’s world I find very hard to imagine for myself. Today this obsolete idea of the “American Dream” we all imagine is one that everyone in our nation seems to still aspire towards. People often go deep into debt trying to buy a house and car they cannot afford in order to fulfill this dream.

At it’s core the spirit of the American Dream, however, is still very much alive. The idea that no matter how downtrodden, how poor, how many past failures one has endured, they may still make something of themselves and become successful. Every day we hear about a person inventing a new App and going from eating Top Ramen to Millionaire. This is at the core of the American Dream idea. Back when the idea was created during the 1920′s by the Robber Barons, they would often write articles about a poor man who struck it rich with oil. This gives hope to those who otherwise would have none and keeps the lower classes from talks of revolution or changing the status quo. Walt Whitman has a similar tone in “Song for Occupations” he writes;

“Why what have you thought yourself?/ Is it you then that thought yourself less?/ Is it you that thought the President greater than you?/ Or the Rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you?”

He gives hope to the working man, the diseased, the rheumatic, those who think less of themselves because they are in a lower class than others he gives hope. He tells them that they are the same, they are just men and he views no men differently than the other. This mirrors the idea of the American Dream, that the only difference between those in higher class and those in lower class is hard work and American ingenuity.