So, as I was writing my last post, I found myself wanting to talk a bit about Younger Brother's situation. In class today, we considered YB's use of blackface, and whether or not that was a wise thing to do, and what it meant. Many people thought younger brother was "dumb," which I disagreed with. I really think he found a cause he could identify with, and was fully engaged and devoted to it.
Being of that aimless adolescent age myself, I can relate to YB's struggle to find a purpose. While I love painting my nails every other night while watching Friday Night Lights (the tv show) on my computer, that's probably not the most productive thing I could be doing, nor the most important. So, I get where YB is coming from. He doesn't get his family; as Mr. Mitchell has brought up on numerous occasions, he literally runs from the room feeling like he's going to suffocate if he has to listen to Father read from the paper once more. YB needs something to do, but not just a distraction. He needs to believe in something, and I truly think he finds something to believe in in Coalhouse's situation.
One distinction I think is important to make is that he doesn't really go looking for a cause to immerse himself in. That, I think, would constitute a distraction. What happens is that Coalhouse's situation so enrages him that he literally has no other choice but to do everything in his power to help him. People's comments today about the fact that he forgot the nice, eloquent, principled speech he was going to make, and only said, "I know how to blow things up," were a little frustrating to me because the comments indicated that the blowing things up was all that was important to YB, and that he had abandoned this higher moral ground in favor of a more rash, seemingly testosterone-driven approach. I don't think this was the case at all. I think he planned this speech because he felt highly principled about the situation, and still does throughout the entire playout of the situation. I think he just got nervous when he was confronted with Coalhouse, a man he never really talked to, but has come to admire and respect greatly, and who he wants to help. It's this nervousness that causes him to say "I know how to blow things up."
The fact that he's willing to abandon his privilege, which is somewhat cliched and, some might say, "poser-ish," I think it's actually a really big move, and I think YB does it because he genuinely believes that this is a cause worth fighting, and dying, for. (And after having used that phrase several times in the post, I now have "A Girl Worth Fighting For" from Mulan stuck in my head...) Anyway, Younger Brother is not just a poser, and however cliched he seems to us, he knows he's doing what's right and that he's fighting for what he believes in.
1 comment:
Good point that he doesn't actively go "looking for a cause"--we could see his alliance with Coalhouse as an extension of Mother's impulse to apologize for the fire department't behavior as reflecting poorly on the white community. Brother takes this further, actively seeking to *undermine* the community itself, not seeing it as a "few bad apples" but as an institutionalized form of oppression. Coalhouse's experience seems to show that change from within is futile; the system must be attacked at its roots. It's not just the racist attitudes of these individuals, but the fact that the law gives Coalhouse no legitimate redress of grievances. The system, in this view, is corrupt to the core, and YB throws his lot in with the oppressed in the name of justice (and eventually dies for these beliefs in Mexico, in the service of another radical cause).
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