Pages 167 to 186 (1993 HarperCollins Edition, different page numbers than in assigned list)<\/p>\n
WHAT ARE THE CONNECTIONS?<\/p>\n
Part One:<\/p>\n
This section opens up with Lionel, Norma and the four old Indians in Lionel\u2019s car. This story is interjected with the story of Lionel inviting Alberta over to meet his family.<\/p>\n
The first theme I noticed here that is interwoven into Alberta and Charlie\u2019s stories in the following parts of this section, is the idea that Lionel needs help<\/strong>. The Four Indians decide they are going to help Lionel, because humans need help (167), and the best place to start is with his jacket<\/strong>. King uses language specifically about choices, mistakes, and getting off to a good or bad start in this section to connect the story of Lionel and the Indians with Lionel and Alberta in his parent\u2019s home. Good ways to start include: changing the jacket, having dinner at Lionel\u2019s mother\u2019s house, and singing. Bad ways to start include: talking about work at the television store and Lionel\u2019s absence from his parent\u2019s lives. King uses this language of good versus bad starts to highlight what are seen as good and bad choices made by Lionel. Lionel is seen as rejecting his own family and culture. He doesn\u2019t accept his father\u2019s request for help around the house because he feels he needs to work and make money. This is another theme that King connects throughout Lionel, Alberta and Charlie\u2019s stories in this section: the contrast between values<\/strong> of tradition, family and one\u2019s own culture with a dominating western capitalist value of consumption and material wealth.<\/p>\n This part ends with Lionel at home, settling into the familiar routine of watching television<\/strong> in the dark: \u201cLionel squeezed past the Formica table, fumbled his way into the easy chair, and found the remote control without ever having to turn on the lights\u201d (173). The way King describes this indicates a level of practice. As someone that is portrayed as not really being accomplished at anything, and struggling because of that, King can subtly point to the fact that Lionel is accomplished at this task of sitting down to watch t.v., and make us reflect on the problems with that and why that is so.<\/p>\n When Lionel thinks about the old Indians and their singing of Happy Birthday<\/a> to him, he is filled with an ominous feeling, \u201cas if something was coming apart, as if he had unknowingly made yet another mistake\u201d (173). Perhaps King is trying to show the mistake is his inability to embrace his own culture, history, and elders. He is blinded by the ideal of making money, watching t.v., and wearing the gold jacket that represents western society\u2019s glorification of consumption.<\/p>\n Part Two:<\/p>\n Now we find Alberta, just arriving in Blossom to visit Lionel for his birthday. This story is intercut with flashbacks of Alberta\u2019s experience trying to get pregnant through artificial insemination.<\/p>\n In her motel room in Blossom, Alberta also contemplates how she can help Lionel; to start with, \u201cHe could use a new jacket\u201d (177). The gold jacket, representative of European ideals and values, is seen again as something that is holding Lionel back, contributing to his helplessness<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Here television is again seen as a constant presence, background noise when Alberta gets into her room and immediately turns on the t.v. before flossing her teeth (176). She is forced to watch a Western, as nothing else is on, a theme that comes up again later in this section.<\/p>\n The process Alberta goes through to gain access to services of artificial insemination to highlight a disconnect in western medicine between patient and healer. Her conversations with the many characters of the medical profession involved with this process remind me of Lionel\u2019s mixup with the hospital and his \u201cheart problem\u201d at the novel\u2019s beginning. The name of Alberta\u2019s gynecologist, Dr. Mary Takai, also might be an allusion to the cost of our medical system, as Takai, can be translated to mean \u2018expensive\u2019 in Japanese.<\/p>\n Alberta isn\u2019t being heard by the medical community, what she wants doesn\u2019t fit into the social norm. She isn\u2019t being listened to. This is seen most obviously during her conversation here:<\/p>\n \u201cAnd when you get the interview, make sure your husband comes with you. We can\u2019t begin the interview process unless both the husband and the wife are here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not married.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people make that mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sure.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe women come and the men stay home.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t have a husband.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then we have to start all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n The woman from the clinic is not listening to Alberta, not responding to what she says. She simply continues her dialogue.<\/p>\n Alberta\u2019s part ends with a return to thinking about how to help Lionel. She then reflects on the differences between Charlie and Lionel, Charlie being \u201cpushy and slick\u201d while Lionel is \u201csincere and dull\u201d (179), a theme that King brings back again with Charlie in the following pages.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Part Three:<\/p>\n This part follows Charlie, in Blossom to visit Alberta, interwoven with stories of his dad, and their move to Hollywood after Charlie\u2019s mother\u2019s death.<\/p>\n Like Alberta, Charlie also can\u2019t find anything else on television but a Western<\/strong>. Here King is able to highlight the lack of diversity in western media, the lack of choice. The availability of only one channel, showing only a Western comes up in several characters\u2019 worlds, exaggerating the strict lens through which the media controls what we watch, think, and like. We see another connection later to this idea, as well as the earlier portrayal of Lionel, when Charlie\u2019s dad, after his wife died, \u201cwould sit in the chair and flip through the channels, never watching any program for very long. Except the Westerns\u201d (181).<\/p>\n Charlie, like Alberta, also reflects on the differences between himself and Lionel. Charlie sees himself as \u201cbetter, better, better\u201d because he has a \u2018better\u2019<\/strong> job, education, car, clothes, physical appearance, and bank account (182).<\/p>\n King\u2019s placement of Charlie and his father in Hollywood, further highlights western society\u2019s glorification of financial success and material wealth. The first character we are introduced to from that world is a man named C.B. Cologne, short for Crystal Ball Cologne<\/a>, a manufactured perfume.<\/p>\n