Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2017

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 4

Chapters 5-7

Chapters 8-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-15

Chapters 16-17

Chapters 18-20

Chapters 21-23

Chapters 24-28

Chapters 29-32

Chapters 33-36

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 21-23Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 21 Summary: “Enough to Lose” by RS Deeran

RS Deeran’s short story is set in economically depressed Michigan in the wake of the 2008 housing market crash. The main character, Tim, is employed by Secured Properties. For $10 each, he mows the lawns of homes that have been repossessed. Tim’s wife, Alice, hocks Wrap-It, a weight-loss body wrap sold by a multi-level marketing company. Together, they earn just enough to rent a duplex and feed themselves.

When they were in high school, Alice and Tim put their baby son up for adoption. Tim keeps the baby’s sonogram in his vehicle and sometimes looks at it wistfully. Alice is more forward looking and now ready to start a family. Tim worries that he cannot financially support a family and laments not owning a home.

Tim and his coworker Rid are sent one day to an unexpected “quickie” job on a suburban cul-de-sac. While mowing the overgrown lawn, the two encounter a man who has been living and sleeping on the porch; he is the home’s previous owner who lost it when the bank foreclosed and claims he is waiting for a new loan to come in. Tim and Rid return weekly to the house, where the man is always waiting. One week they arrive to the police arresting the man for trespassing on his former property. Against a backdrop of backyard grills burning and the sound of children playing, the former homeowner is whisked away. The next day, Rid and Tim return to complete their job. As he turns on the mower, Tim looks down on the freshly mowed lawn and tells the audience, “I swore I could see the grass I had just cut begin to grow again” (197).

Chapter 22 Summary: “To the Man Asleep in Our Driveway Who Might be Named Phil” by Anthony Doerr

In this personal essay, Anthony Doerr questions whether he should have called the police when his family found a man living out of his car asleep in the driveway of their suburban home. Doerr describes his confusion when he found the man there without any headlights on, sitting upright but not moving. He writes:

Were you a hearing-impaired traveler with car trouble? One of those meat salesmen who drive door-to-door hawking frozen rib eyes? Why didn’t you get out and say hi, or head to the front door and ring the doorbell? And if what you were doing was sleeping, how in the world were you holding your head so upright? (199).

The man sleeping in his 1988 Ford Taurus is none of these. The back of his car is clearly stuffed full of his possessions. The man is homeless. Doerr eventually calls the police: “Fear. Mistrust. Why was it so close to the surface?” (201). When the officers arrive, they knock on the car’s windows several times before the sleeping man is roused. They escort the man from the car, calling him “Phil,” and he appears frail and malnourished. Once they determine that Phil is not incapacitated, they allow him to drive away into the cold night.

Doerr asks, “Why is it okay to sleep in some places and not okay to sleep in others?” (202). He wonders if he has really done the right thing by calling law enforcement. Had the man been in a new car, dressed in professional attire, not carrying his belongings in the back seat, would Doerr have reacted in the same way?

Chapter 23 Summary: “Soup Kitchen” by Annie Dillard

In this brief contribution, Annie Dillard writes about the restorative nature of helping others. On days when one feels paralyzed by anxiety or hopelessness, she writes, “They can work in a soup kitchen. They can give blood” (205). It is impossible to wallow in despair when one helps others in the community. Dillard concludes that to help others is a “good day’s work” (205), even if one accomplishes nothing at a traditional job.

Chapters 21-23 Analysis

This section of the book deals with the precarity of human existence and encourages readers to empathize with those struggling financially. Likewise, these chapter remind readers that generosity and kindness to those who have less costs nothing and, in fact, can enrich the lives of all.

Though RS Deeran’s characters Tim and Alice are not homeless, they are, perhaps, one paycheck away from such a fate. While employed mowing lawns, Tim is confronted with homelessness when he finds a former homeowner living outside of his old house. Through this encounter, Tim realizes that he, too, has just enough that he could easily lose. The story stresses the futility of low-paid, constant, laborious work and highlights how hard it is for those living around the poverty line to rise above it.

Like the unnamed man in Deeran’s story, the homeless man who appears in Anthony Doerr’s lament may have also once had just enough to lose. Doerr regrets his failure to help this man when he finds him sleeping in his car outside of the writer’s Idaho home on a cold night. Had the man been driving something more middle class, rather than an old, beaten-up Ford Taurus, would Doerr have treated him differently? Doerr’s reflection highlights how implicit biases and the stereotypes that we have about the poor and homeless shape our interactions with them. Rather than offer the man a meal or even a place to sleep for the night, Doerr and his neighbor call the police, who arrive to make the unknown man leave although he did nothing wrong and harmed no one. Doerr’s rumination ends on sad note. The author overhears the police officers refer to the man as “Phil” and say that he is from Minnesota. He is someone with an identity and history, yet he disappears into the cold night so that Doerr and his readers are left wondering about both his background and his fate.

Doerr’s story ends with a quote from the fourth-century theologian St. Augustine of Hippo, who wrote, “[…] you are to pay attention to those who, by accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection to you” (204). Though Doerr failed to heed Augustine’s command, Annie Dillard encourages others to fulfill it. “Soup Kitchen” engenders the empathy and service that Doerr’s story lacks. It is the “right thing” absent from his account.