Literary Analysis #1

Jorge Garcia

Period 0

Literature Analysis

Book: Flat Broke in the Free Market How Globalization Fleeced Working People

Author: Jon Jeter

Topic(s) and/or Event(s)

1. (a) My book is about a man who grew up during the economic crisis. Throughout the book we see him grow up and we see how he deals with all of the hard times handed to him as a child and an adult. He always seemed to be poor, living on conditions that a normal person could not even think of, also we see that he grows up pretty much being an orphan. Tough times made him mature fast, and he never really had a childhood.

(b) Jon Jeter wrote about his life which took place during the economic crisis and because of that grew up in poverty.

2. I think that Jon Jeter wrote about his life because it helped shape who he is and why he became that way. He believed that how he grew up was important enough to make a whole story about because he was a black man living in a white mans’ world and at the same time facing many problems with the one thing everyone needs, money.

3. I chose this book in particular for several reasons. First off when I first saw the book at my local library the title itself reeled me in. In addition to that I also saw that the author was a black man, now I liked the idea of that because I have read many stories about a crisis that were all written by white folks and I was interested to see these same situations seen through the eyes of a person of color (who at the time were not equal to the white man). Then once I started the book I started realizing that I have read about those events before, but all seen through the eyes of people that were actually given all their rights and not through those of a man who really had no rights. What made me want to keep going is my curiosity as to how those events effected his life considering he was not seen the same as a white man.

4. Overall I did find this book to be realistic, I see most of his experiences as being able to happen to anyone. I can relate because my parents went through things like this too. When I was young my parents didn’t always have enough to make ends meet and had to cut back on a lot. They would go days without food yet made sure I was properly fed, in fact they at some points begged for money from their friends or relatives just to keep getting by. So I can honestly say that everything that happened to Jeter could easily happen to anyone, even nowadays.

People

1. Throughout these nonfiction books it is true that it is all told by how the author sees it happening, and there is always the chance that the author doesn’t remember exactly what happened so they would change up the story a little bit to get their main points across. Jeter’s choices in particular tell me that he was one that took notice of everything that went on around him by just noticing the actions of others. He was a man who noticed everything. Now with all the observing he chose to write about this because he wanted everyone to see things through his eyes, to see how the world could really be.

2. To begin with I always see the Jon Jeter himself as a little guy, he had a strong mental mind but as a kid he seemed like the little guy. Then as a young man he grew up with a dramatic change and hard a hard workers look to him, he was in pretty good physical shape and still kept his mind strong. He was a guy who kept to himself most of the time, and we would learn plenty about him just by the way he described things and acted towards others, in other words he was an indirect character. Also the economist that is mentioned, Nouriel Roubini. He is one who is very intelligent, he is a tall man who is on the thinner side but doesn’t seem to mind. He is a guy who gets along with people but at the same time knows how to act when around a certain type of people. He is not mentioned more than twice so he is one I would use direct characterization.

3. Well Jeter was interesting to write about because of course he is the author and wrote this whole book. He has so many back stories that made up his person and was still able to become a pretty well known author who is educated and everything. Also I wrote about Nouriel because I liked the fact that he was remembered by a phrase he said, “the worst housing bust ever” after a house bust that affected a great amount of people. By just being there and saying that phrase on a day to be remembered it became a phrase many now remember and more importantly now seem to remember the guy who said it. That just caught my eye.

Style

1. Jeter used a journalistic style to write this book, its noticeable by the way he tells the story since he doesn’t seem to know what will happen next even though he really does. He goes about as if he is reliving all these events as they go.

2. For the most part Jeter used pretty lengthy descriptions to describe his surroundings and overall it helped me get a good image of what he was really seeing and it let me use my imagination to create the scenes he was in.

3. The author starts to create a mood when he describes the area he was surrounded by. The way he describes things always makes the imagination believe that the area was a bad place, that someone was watching them all, and that he was only there temporarily.

4. Throughout the story I could tell that the authors attitude toward his life was very passionate, he truly cared about what happened to him throughout his life. Just think about it, he took the time to go back to all those memories that were clearly painful to him and write them each down on paper and in detail. This is why I can say he is passionate about what he writes, because he was able to write them all down to his audience.

5 This author in particular did not leave me with many resources, however I do not think that it would’ve mattered because I already had a good idea of what I thought about the book. The book was a good one and it really gave me a better idea of how the world can really be when the only thing that’s different is the color of your skin, and it is cruel.

Enduring Memory

            From this book I do expect to remember this lesson, the lesson being never take a good thing for granted because anything can happen and it can happen to you. Now I learned this from the book, but not just in one specific spot but in the whole book. There just seems to be a domino effect that happens after you start hitting hard times, there just seems to be more and more problems as the book demonstrates. I remember there was a time where I was getting ready for an important test in school and I stopped studying for it. After I pretty much gave up I began to get this weird feeling in my gut, to this day I’m not sure if it was guilt but I know that after I got that feeling I also started to lose focus on other things. Finally after that I started getting into fights with my parents and my girlfriend, then I started thinking what was happening to me. That things just kind of started going downhill. What I’m getting at is that I made one bad decision and it led to more bad things to happen. This book showed me that and I know that I won’t forget that any time soon.