In this short story by Charles Johnson, we’re told about events involving three characters – Loftis, Cooter (the two are brothers), and the deceased Ms. Bailey – told through Cooter’s eyes. We’re also privy to bits of information about the two men’s parents.
This is two parts – one part read attached file on exchange value and write it quotes from reading no word length, part two read Shipping out and answer the questions. There is also a video please look up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrXOTYhIkxY
In this short story by Charles Johnson, we’re told about events involving three characters – Loftis, Cooter (the two are brothers), and the deceased Ms. Bailey – told through Cooter’s eyes. We’re also privy to bits of information about the two men’s parents.
“Exchange Value” uses these characters to show us some different styles of getting through life, styles of relating to past, present, and future, and styles of relating to money and things that can have a life-defining impact on people. It shows us, in particular, a small sample of different styles of doing these things among racially and economically disinherited people living in Chicago in the 1970s, whose histories the story links to wider ones that include slavery, racism, and racialized poverty.
For Loftis, Cooter, Ms. Bailey, and for the parents of Loftis and Cooter (you can treat the parents as one character), I want you to reproduce at least one quote from the story that you think encapsulates that character’s style of getting through life.
If you think a character’s approach is to work oneself to death, to hoard against potential loss and thereby put off really living, to glide into nonexistence accepting that what one has is probably all one is going to get, or whatever, find a quote from the story that supports this aspect of the character, and then briefly explain what you think the quote tells us about that character.
So, for example, for Loftis you’ll include a short quote that says something about how he gets through life, and then you’ll briefly explain that, and then do the same thing for Cooter, and for Ms. Bailey, and for the parents.
There is no word length requirement for this, just write as much as you need to in order to demonstrate that you’ve read the story closely and grasped the differences between each of the characters’ experiences.
Part 2: Shipping Out
1. A question about tone. What seems to be DFW’s attitude about the things he describes in ‘Shipping Out’?
2. Give three examples of a detail he describes that gave you insight into the underlying message or purpose of his essay. Explain.
3. According to DFW, what is it that the Megaline cruise ships ultimately promise or offer? What features of the cruise embody such a promise? Is it able to deliver on that promise?
4. Prior to the cruise experience, what were DFW’s mental associations with the ocean? What were some of the literary references that formed those associations for him?
5. Convey what was said in the most interesting footnote you read.
6. How does DFW explain the apparent contradiction between the fact that mostly older people go on cruises and yet cruises are (because they immerse you in the ocean) surrounded by death and decay?
7. Explain what DFW means when he says the cruise’s brochures have a ‘queerly aythoritarian twist’.
8. How and why does DFW compare the cruise to the womb experience?
9. What does DFW say is so insidious about the 7NC brochure? What’s dishonest about it?
10. What do you think might be the significance (to the essay’s main thesis) of the story about the porter who got in trouble when DFW carried his own duffle bag?
11. What’s the significance of DFW’s choice to focus on the idea of being ‘pampered’, ‘pampered to death’ even?
12. What’s the significance (to the essay’s main themes) of the toilets in the cabins, how they work, the sign above them, etc.?
13. How does DFW begin to feel when another cruise ship, the Dreamward, pulls up next to his? How or what does DFW’s confession of that feeling contribute to the essay’s social critique?
14. How well does DFW’s attempt at trapshooting go?
15. Summarize the final entertainment event (hypnotism) that DFW describes. And explain how the hypnotist event encapsulates DFW’s main themes throughout the essay about the cruise experience, what people really want and get from it.