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Tran 1 Delbert Tran 11/20/12 SOCI-001-02 Novel Reaction Paper Seeing the Sociology of A Hope in the Unseen If the

sociological imagination is meant to broaden and shift perspective from one element of society to another, then the novel is a powerful method of accomplishing this feat. As a biographic novel, Ron Suskinds A Hope in the Unseen employs literary imagination to connect the sociological imagination to the life of Cedric Jennings and the people around him. The very title of the novel expresses its sociological spirit not only does it reflect the personal aspirations of Cedric in A Hope, it identifies the sociological purpose of uncovering and explaining the wider social elements of minority and working class life that are often overlooked in mainstream media, the Unseen. In fact, the title of the novel, A Hope in the Unseen, originates from a misquoted passage of the Bible: Hebrews 11:1, says Mr. Taylor. The substance of faith is a hope in the unseen. NO. Wrong you messed it! Cedric laughs. It goes: Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Man, Mr. Taylor, you always getting em wrong. Mr Taylor howls. All right, extra point for you, but as usual, he wrestles the boy back to a middle ground, thwarting an outright victory. The Word, of course, is the Word my young friend. But make it into whats right for you. Thats the lesson for today A hope in the unseen. Sort of a pocket-sized version of the original, not really a religious phrase, he decides, but one you can definitely take with you (Suskind 49-50). The title, therefore, also represents an interpretation of meaning that re-appropriates it from something that is given. Similarly, sociologists examine the society and culture that surrounds them, interpreting and deriving the explanations that illustrate their workings. A Hope in the

Tran 2 Unseen therefore presents an opportunity to apply and examine sociological concepts in the life of Cedric Jennings. After recounting the general narrative of Suskinds novel, I will review three major themes that persist throughout the book: religion, education, and family. Once these themes are explored and understood from a sociological lens, I will conclude with my evaluation of the novels point of view and role as a sociological document. A Hope in the Unseen tracks the path of Cedric Jennings, a student at Ballou High School in the inner city of Washington, D.C. Although he is placed in an underperforming public school in an impoverished and crime-ridden district, Cedric hopes to escape such an environment through academic success, ultimately striving to gain admittance at an Ivy League university. However, his ambitions run into conflict with the world in which he lives and breathes. His academics alienate him from the rest of his peers, who readily jeer, bully, and ostracize the students that strive for academic excellence. Moreover, he and his fellow students are limited by the underprivileged status of their neighborhoods and school resources, which have lower standards of academic rigor. Eventually, as a junior, Cedric successfully gains entrance to MITs Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science (MITES) summer program. For him, this program becomes a gateway into a top university, since the majority of students in this program are eventually admitted into MIT. However, Cedric has a tough experience with the summer programs coursework, disadvantaged by his poorer background that deprived him of the same quality of education that his peers in the program received, and the director of the program informs Cedric that he would not be accepted by MIT. Initially discouraged, Cedric later finds out about Brown University, and latches onto Brown as his aim for academic pursuit. He applies with early admission and is accepted. Winning a number of scholarships to support his dreams, he goes on to attend that school, but faces similar challenges that confronted him in his time at

Tran 3 the MITES program. Not only does he face the challenge of more advanced classes that Buell failed to adequately prepare him for, he faces the additional burden of trying to connect with his classmates at Brown; these students, such as Rob Burton or Zayd Dohrn, come from such unfamiliar backgrounds relative to Cedric, and these differences become the source of much misunderstanding and tension. With the aid of his benefactor, Donald Korb, and a tutor, Helaine Schupack, Cedric begins to acclimate more to his life at Brown. After returning home at the end of the first semester, sees how much he has transformed, and looks forward to tackling the challenges of his second semester. Back home, though, his mother, Barbara, becomes encumbered with depression, and subsequently mismanages her finances and faces the threat of eviction from their apartment. When Cedric finishes the spring semester at Brown, he returns to Washington D.C. with dire news Cedric and his mother are being evicted, and his mother is suffering from further ailments with problems with her heart. Although their churchs minister steps in to prevent the financial calamity, the crisis creates a rift in Cedrics relationship with his mother. Eventually, as a culmination of the growth and experience hes gained through his academic and social undertakings, Cedric reconciles with his mother, and thrives in his new life at Brown. From start to end, the theme of family occupies a central role throughout the novel. Cedric Jennings lives in a single-parent household with his mother, Barbara Jennings, and a significant amount of social interaction occurs between the two. Structurally, family represents a foundational institution in the social life of a person. For symbolic-interactionists, family plays a key role as one of the earlier and important figures in socializing an individuals identity and culture, which include their language, symbols, values, norms, and beliefs. As George Herbert Mead explains, family members are significant others, especially important figures of

Tran 4 socialization. While attending Buell High School, Cedric is socialized by his mother in a way that closely aligns to Melvin Kohns description of social class and socialization. Kohn explains that working class families tend to discipline with physical punishment while heavily emphasizing strict conformity to the rules. Similarly, Barbara tried to keep a tight grip on the basics: strong physical discipline and tight scheduling. She made sure her son was either in school, in the locked apartment, or at church, visiting Scripture Cathedral four times a week (Suskind 35). Even prior to the nuclear family of Cedric and Barbara Jennings, Barbara Jennings own family history socializes her and by extension Cedric. Barbaras outburst toward Cedric one day exemplifies this influence: She feels herself start to simmer. She would have gotten a beating for saying that to her father, much less her mother. A bad beating. A switch seems to flip in her gut, starting a familiar internal monologue: shes been working like a slave her whole damn life and she never complainsShes been killing herself, her lifeblood channeled through scriptural pieties and long-shot hopes for Cedrics future, leaving her own urges unattended and volatile (Suskind 42). Here, she is transplanting her own family experience and status as a role onto Cedrics role as a child. Of course, it involves an internalization of those values, as she recalls her internal monologue. At the same time, she expresses how heavily she desires for Cedric to succeed, a hope for intergenerational mobility. Additionally, the three schools of thought, functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic-interactionism, can interpret this scenario according to their respective paradigm. Under functionalism, the beating can be seen as a disciplinary mechanism to ensure that children did their share of household labor, since parents were often overwhelmed and drained by their ordinary jobs, as Barbara is in this case. For conflict theorists, Barbaras acknowledgment that shes been killing herselffor Cedrics future, leaving her own urges unattended and volatile reflects the fact that Cedric is gaining in this state of affairs while

Tran 5 Barbara has been losing out. In fact, Lewis Coser points out that conflict most likely occurs in a close relationship, even in intimate ones like that of a family tie. Symbolic-interactionists, meanwhile, would focus on the meaning that Barbara attaches to her sons actions and the situation. They would highlight the meaning that she places on continual work without complaint, and the values of such dedication. Part of Barbaras attached meaning, notably, is phrased in terms of her scriptural pieties, (Suskind 42) relating to another major theme of the novel religion. The Jennings are members and frequent attendees of the Pentecostal Scripture Cathedral, as explained in the novel: For both mother and son, one thing was certain: at the darkest moments, there was always the sanctuary of Scripture Cathedral. Like for so many inner-city blacks who left mainstream churches for Pentecostal organizations in the 1970s and 1980s (making it the fastest growing denomination in the country), Scripture Cathedral offered Cedric and Barbara neat designations of good and evil and strict rules forbidding even common activities, like watching movies or dressing provocatively. For Barbara, who, like so many, came to fervent Pentecostalism from a life broken by poverty and neglect, the church provided both moral orderliness and an absolution for past failures that finally allowed her peace about all that had gone wrong over the years. Here, success was not an honor, nor privation a dishonor; the Lord assiduously threw up tests and kept score based solely on faith. Bishop Long, in his sermons, railed against the sins of pride and ambition (Suskind 36). As a congregation of people, the Pentecostal church represents a group of people, one that Charles Cooley would likely see as a primary group, since the church, more than a collection of people with a shared hobby, is a binding tie of membership in community, a community that eventually returns to care for them as Minister Borden intervenes in the eviction that happens near the end of the book. And the role of religion as a socializing agent is especially clear here. Scripture Cathedral offered Cedric and Barbara neat designations of good and evil and strict rules, indicating that religion laid down explicit norms of behavior. In doing so, religion

Tran 6 simultaneously embraces informal rules of social control, labeling such deviance from those norms as sins. Furthermore, this religion presents a counterculture for the Jennings that is more sympathetic to their social class in society. Traditional US core values celebrate things like success and wealth. While the novel does not specify the Jennings exact level of income, it is clear that they are somewhere between the working class and underclass, which occupy the lowest rungs of the US social ladder. Under mainstream US culture, these groups are condemned. However, the Pentecostal church presents a countercultural message, where ambition instead becomes a sin, and success was not an honor, nor privation a dishonor (Suskind 36). Accordingly, Barbara and Cedric celebrate such counterculture because it restores their sense of agency, and gives them a social group to integrate with and provide social glue, a function that Emile Durkheim acknowledges as crucial for the function of society. But even within the Church, there still is some form of hierarchy. For Cedric in his early youth, it is the Church choir: Yet one meritocracy was permitted: music. That was the path Cedric stumbled onto. Those who could sanctify God with their sweet or strong voices a dozen adults and half that many children were permitted a special place, front and center. Cedric became a youthful star of the childrens choir, a soloist. Where so much about life at Scripture Cathedral, indeed, meant a withdrawal from this world, the confidence infused in a young boy, standing before six hundred or so parishioners on a Sunday, was a single, buoying item an eleven-year-old Cedric, as a fifth grader, could carry beyond the churchs walls (Suskind 37). In fifth grade, Cedric gains the achieved status of being the soloist of the childrens choir. Not only that, this active participation as part of the choir and singing in Sunday mass helps commit Cedric to the ritualization of religion that further cements his bond to the social group as social glue.

Tran 7 Although religion serves as a major theme in Cedrics position at the start of the book, education serves as the guiding theme for his ambitions and later progress throughout the rest of the novel. Cedric certainly strives for academic success, but such a drive is actually an outlier in a place like Buell: Pride. Cedrics 4.02 grade point average virtually ties him for first in the junior class with a quiet, studious girl named LaCountiss Spinner. Pride in such accomplishment is acceptable behavior for sterling students at high schools across the land, but at Ballou and other urban schools like it, something else is at work. Educators have even coined a phrase for it. They call it the crab/bucket syndrome: when one crab tries to climb from the bucket, the others pull it back down. The forces dragging students toward failure especially those who have crawled farthest up the side flow through every corner of the school. Inside the bucket, there is little chance of escape (Suskind 17). Though Cedrics pride in academic work may be acceptable behaviorat high schools across the land, there is a different culture at Ballou and other urban schools like it. For example, the symbol of the wall of honor (Suskind 3) is one that is ignored and not recognized, despite the efforts of school administrators to embellish its design. There is also a language, and corresponding beliefs, values, and norms that are distinctly anti-intellectual at Ballou and such urban schools, where the opening assembly scene of honor students are instead bombarded by derogative labels of Nerd! Geek! Egghead! (Suskind 3). As Howard Becker points out, such acts are therefore deviant based on the reaction of others in this case, peers and various students. Even though the school administrators try to encourage a positive norm of academics, the prevailing corridor curriculum tends to hold more sway, as school figures possess little power and authority given the frequency of assaults on teachers, alongside the need and dependence on police and security to maintain order. Furthermore, this crab/bucket syndrome reflects the momentous weight of social control that this peers exercise on each other. In short, the corridor curriculum is one that embodies deviance according to the mainstream values of American

Tran 8 society, where other high schools would promote learning. Because a school like Buell is embedded in such a cycle of poverty, their lackluster educational resources place them at a disadvantage when it comes to securing the general social goals of success and wealth. This contributes to Robert Mertons Strain Theory, where the denial of institutionalized means to achieve cultural goals results in deviance. The institution of public education is simply lackluster given the poverty of the area, which therefore results in weak property tax revenue that funds the nearby schools. This is especially evident once Cedric enters the MITES program and later attends Brown University. He experiences a culture shock by gaining exposure to a world of privileged classes, even among other minorities at MIT who, relative to his background, have much higher social positioning. Still, he must press on despite his struggles; under a functionalist paradigm, Cedrics need to reach a top university is essential in a credentialist society. On the other hand, the conflict theorist points to his disadvantaged academic background and subsequent struggles as a sign that education tends to reproduce the current social stratification, where Cedric may simply be the exception to the norm, as other similarly bright students like LaTisha end up in the lower quality schools that they are expected to attend. But in the end, given a chance to read Cedrics narrative and participate in Verstehen, symbolic-interactions see how Cedric and his mother attach meaning to education as the key to mobility, which becomes the driving message that brings him his eventual success. Although I have reviewed three major themes of the novel and their sociological implications, this analysis has barely skimmed the surface of available material abundantly packed with sociological value in every sentence, A Hope in the Unseen is a strong exemplar of sociology, and as such, I would recommend this novel for use in next semester. When it comes to the authors point of view, I cannot offer a confident assessment because it is difficult to

Tran 9 disentangle the authors views from that of Cedric Jennings and the other narratives that he relays in his book. Though the author certainly had a role to play in inputting certain parts of their story and in choosing how to convey them, I cannot separate the cultural language, symbol, values, beliefs, or norms that may be Ron Suskinds or those of Cedric Jenning that he may have faithfully relayed. But even though it merges with literary form, the novel still expresses the qualitative form of social study that falls under the list of available sociological methods. While he weds biography with novel, Ron Suskind deftly maintains a balance between imagination and realism, where imagination broadens the readers sociological imagination while preserving the realism of social reality to depict the true and lived conditions of Cedric and those around him. This is evident in the narrative voice that Suskind utilizes. He narrates with a third person perspective, which approaches the story from the lens of any sociological observer that seeks to learn about a person or group. However, his third person narration includes frequent use of both character dialogue and character thought to express both their language and inner mind, allowing readers to jump from our outside role into the position of the protagonist. At the same time, Suskind includes the occasional intermission where the third person narrator steps back to provide background details and fact concerning the particular neighborhood, school, or group that a character lives in, giving the reader a more thorough and comprehensive picture that connects both the micro and macro level of sociological science. Finally, Suskind, though following Cedric Jennings, also writes from the perspective of other people such as Barbara Jennings or Phillip Atkins, making A Hope in the Unseen not merely a personal tale, but a broader tale that connects disparate narratives into a unified story, much as human society connects disparate individuals to form a broader collection of beings in interaction.

Tran 10 Works Cited Suskind, Ron. A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League. New York: Random House Inc., 1998. Print.

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