Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Little Boxes

Humming along with Malvina Reynolds’ catchy tune “Little Boxes” on my internet radio, for the first time I really listened to the words. “Little Boxes made of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.”   Not only are the boxes identical, but the individuals living in them are identical as well:  “Then [off] to the university where they are put in boxes and they come out all the same.”  But if you went inside the houses, everybody’s would look different because everybody is different – a unique valuable individual with thoughts and feelings.
I imagine the residents of the little boxes as people who have worked their way up from poverty.  Steven Jay Gould’s family is an example.  “Papa Joe, [Gould’s grandfather] who possessed extraordinary artistic talents that remained undeveloped and underutilized, lived an ordinary life as a garment worker in New York City. He enjoyed periods of security and endured bouts of poverty; he and my grandmother raised four children, all imbued with the ordinary values that ennoble our species and nation: fairness, kindness, the need to persevere and rise by one's own efforts. In the standard pattern, his generation struggled to solvency; my parents graduated from high school, fought a war, and moved into the middle classes; the third cohort achieved a university education, and some of us have enjoyed professional success.” “September 11, 1901"  http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/september_11_1901.html
Shouldn’t  those who sing for ordinary people in songs like “This Land is Your Land”  congratulate rather than sneer at the ones who make it into the middle class?