Rodriguez 1

Adrian Rodriguez

Ms Dott

AOIT English III

27 November 2017

Socratic Seminar Questions

Question 1: Characteristics for a transcendentalist is they must be self-reliance, intuition,

individualism, nature and spiritual. Rex and Mary are transcendentalist because they

values the same characteristics as transcendentalist. For nature, on page 156, Jeannette’s mother

shows how much she cares about animals and tries to justify why the rat was trying to take their

food. “When mom ran into the room, Tumble was strutting around, all pumped up like the proud

beast-slayer that he was. Mom said she felt a little sorry for the rat. “Rats need to eat, too.” She

pointed out.”​ ​For the father, on page 106, Jeannette said, “Dad missed the wilderness. He needed

to be roaming free in open country and living among untamed animals. He felt it was good for

your soul to have buzzards and coyotes and snakes around. That was the way man was meant to

live.” For individualism, on page 73, Jeannette’s mother promote individual freedom. “She

thought rules and discipline held people back and felt that the best way to let children fulfil their

potential was by providing freedom.” Rex and Mary’s viewpoints differs from romantic

viewpoint because they aren’t nostalgic and live more in the present and prefer educated

sophistication and values intuition and reason over feelings.

Question 2: Self-reliance is the reliance on one’s own power and resources rather than

those of others. To the Walls family, they believe self-reliance is refusing to get help from

others. On page 188, the mom explains “you can get cold for a while, but you always warm up.
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Once you go on welfare, it changes you. Even if you get off welfare, you never escape the stigma

that were a charity case. You’re scarred for life.” This shows that the mother believe that if you

depend on other people’s power and resources then you will always be dependant on other and

never on yourself. Self-reliance can be a bad thing because sometimes some people need help to

move forward. For example, PTSD patients and others with mental disorders are recommended

to get therapist because some people get stuck on the past and are unable to unlive their

nightmares without having someone else to help them. Some people are not knowledgeable in

some areas in their work and they must work with someone else in order to get the work done.

When someone refuses to get help completely, they tend to fall behind and are even seen as

stubborn or hardheaded as they struggle to do everything by themselves. However, reliance on

everyone for everything can cause someone to be dependant and they’re unable to do anything

without someone doing everything for them. Also, what happens if that other person can’t do

something for someone who is dependant? With life, it’s key to have a balance.

Question 3:

Non-conformity is the failure or refusal to conform to a prevailing rule or practice. In

simpler terms, non-conformity is the failure or refusal to obey the rules of either a law or morals.

“She thought rules and discipline held people back and felt that the best way to let

children fulfil their potential was by providing freedom” (Walls 73). On this page, Jeannette’s

mother is promoting individual freedom to her students by not establishing a set of rules or

discipline which in turns causes chaos in the classroom and the others teachers viewing her as an

irresponsible adult. This quote shows that Mary completely refuses establishing rules because

she believes it can interfere with individual freedom. Even though, this is causing anarchy in her
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classroom. Another example is on page 186 which says, ​“She was keeping it [the ring], she

explained….”But mom,” I said, “that ring could get us a lot of food.” “That’s true,” Mom said,

“but it could also improve my self-esteem. And at times like these, self-esteem is even more vital

than food.”​ This quote shows how the mother has failure to obey the rules of being a mother and

survival. Even though being a mother and survival don’t have set of written rules but there are

unwritten rules towards it. In order to survive, you must eat and for mothers, they believe that

they should feed their children first then themselves. Yet, Mary fail to expressed these. I believe

we live in a society that does not encourages nonconformity because even though it seems

Americans encourages individuality, it doesn’t. There are so many unwritten and written rules to

this society that there’s no room for nonconformity. If an Amercian fails to obey the laws, they

will be either fined or even jailed then in social view, if a certain person doesn’t fit the norm,

then they are outcasted or even deemed to have issues.

Question 3: ​How do we remember the events of our lives? Could you tell a true story

of your life without embellishment, selective fact selections, etc? What constitutes a true

story?

Everyone remembers a certain event or events of their lives differently. Most of the

times, people will remember an event if it evokes a strong emotions or impacts their live

positively or negatively. Others can forget a memory but a certain trigger word can cause them to

relive their past in details. A primarily example, is that my father, who had a traumatic childhood

in his home country, which was Cuba, and due to it impacting his life negatively and the

memories that were evoked, he is able to remember even the small details of his past. It’s

difficult to tell a true story of your life without embellishment, selective fact selections, or
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anything similar due to the fact that everyone has a different perception of live and beliefs.

Everyone is different and their train of thoughts are too. No two people think or interpret

anything exactly alike. They might be similar but it’s not going to be exactly the same. Also,

people have different view of what’s right or wrong in certain situations so one person might

think they did good deed and explain the event in positive way even though others might see it as

wrong. Also, we have opinion on everything so we’ll always have some sort of embellishment

when telling the ‘truth’.

Question 4: ​What then constitutes a free choice? When is a “choice” not really a

choice because of mental illness? Do we have a moral responsibility to do something about

homelessness in America? If so, what?

It depends on the mental disorder. Mental illness can either hinder the person unstable or

the person can still be stable enough to have free choice despite their mental illness. A Choice is

not really a choice when a person is announced unstable due to mental illness. Many of times, if

the person can’t distinguish reality with fantasy, have extreme paranoia, extreme memory loss,

have suicidal intentions or do not care about getting harmed or can’t tell the difference between

right or wrong, the person is deemed as unstable. This is because the choices with those

complications might not be safe for themselves or others or might not be the smartest or what

really wanted when they were stable.

In America, during “January 2015, 564,708 people were experiencing homelessness”

(State of Homelessness Report). And according to Treatment Advocacy Center, “approximately

one-thirds of the total homeless population include individuals with serious, untreated mental

illness.” Many times individuals with serious, untreated mental illness are unable to get a job due
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to the mental illness interfering with their free choice and their day to day ability to function. The

longer mental illness go untreated, the mental disorder worsen. The National Network for Youth

say that “1.3 to 1.7 million youth experience one night of homelessness a year with 550,000

youth being homeless for a week or longer.” With this being said, even children are homeless

with most of them being kicked out of their homes and rejected because they’re apart of the

LGBT community. These children do not have any support from their family and individuals

with mental illnesses are too rejected by families because of their illnesses. The government

promises to help the people in order to create a peaceful and stable society yet, so many

Americans are homeless and have to struggle everyday in order to survive today and tomorrow.

It’s the government duty by either making more shelters for homeless Youth and shelter for

individuals with mental illnesses. Also, the government might be able to pay therapy for those

individuals with mental illnesses and for medications. Besides, due to those individuals being

one-third of the homeless population, they aren’t going to spend billions of dollars. With this, it

is the government duty to help those homeless individuals that are unable to make the free choice

in order to create a peaceful and stable society.

Question 1:

Jeannette quest for opportunity was to gain a stable life. When she was young, she didn’t realise

that her life was truly affecting her, for example, due to parents not having money, she was

starving and homeless. After becoming a teenager, she began to realise that her life wasn’t

perfect and was progressively getting worse. Many times, she will have to eat out of garbage

cans at her school in order to get food and her mother had to steal in order for her to get dressed.

She even tried to convince her mother to leave father and get welfare so she can have that
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opportunity to have a stable life however, the mother refused. Once she was eighteen, she moved

to New York with her sister. There she finally started to have stable life. She married a man with

money after a few years in New York, this man assured her a stable life but she didn’t find love.

Jeannette divorced and found her current husband finding love and a stable life, achieve her

American Dream.
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Word Cited

Mondics, Jamie. “How Many People with Serious Mental Illness Are Homeless?” ​Treatment

Advocacy Center​,

www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/fixing-the-system/features-and-news/2596-how-many-people-wit

h-serious-mental-illness-are-homeless.

“How Many Homeless Youth Are In America? – National Network for Youth -- NN4Y.” ​National

Network for Youth -- NN4Y​, www.nn4youth.org/learn/how-many-homeless/.

“State of Homelessness Report.” ​National Alliance to End Homelessness​,

endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness-rep

ort/.