Anderson, William. “Facts, Fiction, and the Fourth Estate: The ‘Washington Post’ and ‘Jimmy's World.”’ The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 63, No. 5, Nov. 2004, pp. 965-986.
Within hours of news of the deaths of at least seven Americans due to Tylenol painkiller consumption in 1982, Tylenol manufacturer Johnson and Johnson ordered a total recall of all its products from supermarkets. As a result, the manufacturer was able to rebound its reputation as one of the most respectable corporations in the United States.
Li, Yuhao. “The Case
Analysis of the Scandal of Enron.” International Journal of Business and
Management, Vol. 5, No. 10, Oct. 2010, pp. 37-41.
Enron is one of the most
infamous examples of the company that faced the humiliating irony of destroying
its reputation by trying to keep one that is strong.The senior executives of the corporation
participated in accounting fraud as a way “to protect their reputations and
their compensation as the most successful executives in the U.S.” The gamble,
however, proved catastrophic, as executives became forced to file for the
largest bankruptcy any American had seen at that time.
Smith, Randall. “Wall
Street Mystery Features a Big Board Rival.” The Wall Street Journal, 16
December 1992. Web.
“Mr. Madoff is one of the masters of the
off-exchange "third market" and the bane of the New York Stock
Exchange. He has built a highly profitable securities firm, Bernard L. Madoff
Investment Securities, which siphons a huge volume of stock trades away from
the Big Board.”
“Mr. Madoff's firm can
execute trades so quickly and cheaply that it actually pays other brokerage
firms a penny a share to execute their customers' orders, profiting from the
spread between bid and asked prices that most stocks trade for.”
Twenty years later,
reports of a Ponzi scheme left the Madoff name to become synonymous with
narcissism, corruption and evil, especially in the world of business. One
decision in his career caused devastation to the reputation of his family and
his field.
The
characters in Rene Steinke’s novel Friendswood
face a crisis that centers on an inequality of reputation. Citizens condemn
those who seek positive change through their words and actions as purely,
“after some glory,” while they worship those who have knowingly caused crippling
harm to the health and livelihood of others (Steinke 47). The only effective solution for
balancing such a toxic social hierarchy is for the characters to act and
speak as if they do not care about their image to their family and peers.
The following video represents people who wanted to keep a positive reputation to their competitors, only to endure the most devastating consequence in their field.
1)Why does Lee appear so uncaring about the
image she projects to the EPA?
2)How many wrongdoings can someone commit
before he damages his reputation beyond repair?
3)Why do the Friendswood citizens forgive
Hal’s wrongdoings more easily than Lee’s alleged wrongdoings?
4)In what ways does reputation affect our
personal and professional relationships?
5)How would your reputation with family
members and peers affect your use of blame?
6)Why do people with poor reputations tend
to hold unusually high intelligence?
7)Why does Lee feel the need to accept all
accountability for the social and economic effects of the chemical dumping,
even when she knows the EPA is to blame?
8)Could it be that a bad reputation in the
public eye have more consequences than a poor reputation in the eyes of family?
9)Why was it that an explosion changed Lee’s
reputation greater than any of her statements to city council?
10)Why do words define your reputation in
society, yet your actions define your reputation with your family?
Andrew
McTigue Professor
Young English
Writing 1101 24
October 2016
4) Discuss Hal's confession to Justine. Does he truly apply positive accountability? Considering your understanding of static and dynamic characters, which is Hal? Use support to substantiate your responses.
Hal Holbrook has impulses that jeopardize his ability to internalize an everlasting change. In the 2014 dramatic novel Friendswood, Rene Steinke presents a small town that has been plagued with medical and economical devastation from an oil spill at a neighboring community. The issues create an atmosphere for both dynamic and static characterization to bloom. A handful of characters allow
themselves to use the conflicts as an opportunity to change along with building
personal understanding. Other characters, however, use the conflict as an
excuse to pursue negative habits. Hal Holbrook embodies the ideals of the
latter group. The spill had disastrous effects on his job as a real estate
agent and his infidelity and alcoholism had disastrous effects on his relationships
with his wife and son. Consequently, Hal sought religion as a way of motivating
himself to rid these “bad moods and doubts” that he believed prevented him from earning privileges in life.
In his goal to force his Christianity, he became
accustomed to receiving “gifts of the spirit” after every prayer (Steinke 46). Unfortunately,
his expectations began to increase for he expects blessings after every prayer
and feels betrayed when his life does not change for the better. The reader
sees this when Hal does not earn an exclusive listing from his boss and his son's athletic talents begin to falter. Hal felt
he deserved the promotion because he prayed and he was patient, and expresses
the grief by calling his mistress, Justine. He feels that
talking to a person who her would remind him of a time before a
daily repetition of “his wife annoying him, his business in shambles,”
when he had someone in his life who he "never had to explain" to (Steinke 324, 326).
Hal tells her about "Cully's confession about the girl and how he'd counseled Cully not to tell anyone." Steinke holds from expressing Hal's argument through quotations, as a way to juxtapose his immoral serenity with Justine's biting viewpoint of reality. She rightfully condemns him as a “monster” for not “thinking about
that little girl,” (Steinke 326). He attempts to manipulate her into holding back her grief through artificial compliments such as, "Sweetheart," (Steinke 326). When his attempt fails, he lays out a series of brief defenses such as, "She's hardly little," and “I’m
sitting at a bar. A bar on this woeful highway,” as a way for her to gain understanding of his actions (Steinke 326). To some readers, Hal's reaches for defense could feel as a callback to his introduction, when his business first began to fail. Before he attempted to improve his relationships, he first blamed
his problems with his job on the rise of people who “just recklessly relied on
the internet” to find work (Steinke 13). Even then, he decided to change primarily to reverse
the depression he felt with the collapse of his family structure, a primarily
personal motive. He first appears to understand that he needs to take
accountability for his actions, as he acknowledges that he needs to “be clean
in the mind, to turn this bad luck around,” (Steinke 17). Nonetheless, when he
experiences adversity again, his disastrous behavior patterns return. Once
again, he finds himself alone, drinking so he can “his
wife annoying him” and “his business in shambles,” finding excuses to avoid
taking accountability (Steinke 324). Therefore, Hal's impulse to blame devastate his dreams of change.
Works Cited
Steinke. Rene. "Friendswood." New York: Riverhead Books, 2014. Print. Accessed 17 October 2016.
Andrew McTigue
Professor Young
English Writing 1101
9/25/16 1) How does Hal use blame to protect Cully and himself? What is Hal trying to protect himself from? 3) Dex begins to befriend Willa. Is his friendship genuine? Why does he befriend Willa? Does he blame himself for what happens to her? 4) Use an institution to discuss why "they" are speaking and why "they" are blaming.
The friendship between Dex and Willa appears to center
around the desperation to be liked rather than a genuine connection. Life has
always served Dex with constant reminders that his father is at the drilling
station and he is the resurrection in the eyes of his shamefully overweight
mother and to his younger sister. He does his best to give pride to his mother,
yet he sees the football players he carries equipment for, “drinking hidden
beers,” and feels befriending them would ridicule his father’s last words,
“She’s a good person, and you respect that. Always,” (Steinke, 75, 37). In such a cycle of despair, he has searched
for a connection between his “inside self that was still unfamiliar to him” since
his father’s departure and an exterior source of hope: a person who had the
heart of his own and the grace of mind that embodied the “tomorrow of” himself (Steinke, 40).
In school, Dex could always look past his “skinny and unsmooth,” “just as liable
to get laughed at as liked”, appearance and view someone who was quiet in
speech yet neat and graceful on paper, "Like a neatly arranged ink garden," (Steinke, 40, 213). When Willa becomes the victim of a
sexual assault, Dex does not feel blame for what happened, as he had instincts
that Willa “wouldn’t be a drinker,” (Steinke, 105). However, he knows he would betray his
father’s creed had he not acted as the “good person.” If he were to extend his reach
to help a stranger to his thoughts, he could leave knowing the only guardian of
his identity could think of his son on the rig and smile. He goes to visit Willa, helping
her on her science project. His mother would be proud that he could help where
she would be emotionally unfit to help. He never speaks sentences lasting more
than four words; the image of his father appears to imply this. He may have
left feeling his nameless hatred with his colleagues would presume, but he had
meant the world to the tomorrow of himself, to his mother, to his father.
While
Dex is doubtful if the unexpected collaboration was a success, Willa
appreciates that a few are able to not dismiss her as “trouble.” She had
already turned to the church to seek the comfort of hindsight, only to become accused
of "being careless" about traditional values, (Steinke, 161). In the third chapter of Acts, it is written, “Anyone who
does not listen to him will be completely cut off from the people,” (Acts 3). However,
Willa had “only attended church for a few years but never made a formal
declaration of faith,” (Steinke, 182). Her closest connections to religion were
the words of her parents, people who “stopped looking directly at her face,” or
those who kept secrets from loved ones (Steinke, 23). Such disconnect only
furthers in her conversation with her meeting with the priest. She goes to the
church hoping to learn that she was a “good person” and not an unforgivably lost soul (Steinke, 186). After
all, the Book of Psalm promises that the Lord and Savior “will never
permit the righteous to be moved,” (Psalm 55). She had already appeared to find hope through her confusion.
Emily Dickinson's words have always appeared to welcome Willa's abnormalities.
Nonetheless, the church makes textbook
analysis to disguise their accusations. What would their image of hope be to
the masses if they were to reach out to the sinner, the one who appears to choose
treat artificial pleasure as the cathedral of her emotions? Every rumor that
the citizens of Friendswood have circled around about Willa seeking to end “lush
without a church or home” and worrying her mother becomes collected to target the
normal desires of any teenager, (Steinke, 186). This is the last time anyone at
the church had ever talked to their client. The book of Acts says she must be
cut off. The Ten Commandments demand her to be cut off. The gospel according to
John proclaims that she is “not living in the truth,” (John 1). Why should they feel the
need to give her forgiveness? Why should the devil find the “four angels
guarding the sky” like the righteous had (Steinke, 220)? It would turn the other sinners away
had they not left her to cry in confusion.
"Find people who you trust, who can help support and strengthen your faith."
Willa’s
only feeling of comfort appears to be the fact that her perpetrator also
appears to be cut off from his former self. His father, Hal, is left to at last
use honesty to In the first two sections of the novel, Hal had viewed Cully’s
grace on the football field as an excuse to focus on his blessings and ignore
his faults. In the first book, Hal uses Coach Salem’s words that “they’ve been
looking alive-looking crisp” as an excuse for his stream of consciousness
discussing Avery’s “reliance on other’s goodwill,” (Steinke, 45). In the second book, however,
the smell of bourbon rots Cully’s image to his father as the tomorrow of himself.
Nonetheless, Hal feels the opportunity to feel “inwardly rejoiced” as his son
swears he will stay from alcohol with “just a thin hint of fear in his voice,” (Steinke, 135). The
third book, however, sees his own thoughts and conversations “bouncing back to
hit him,” Hal becomes the witness of Cully falling apart “like a snowman when
the guy bumped into him, and in the next quarter, Cully dropped an easy pass,”
(Steinke, 205). These memories tarnish Hal’s self-esteem. He is left to stare at the father of
the one who was smart to rely on other’s goodwill, “smiling, his blue shirt
neatly pressed, still tucked into his trousers, his tooled leather belt,” (Steinke, 202). There
he is to despair, realizing he is no longer able to hide in the teachings of
Christ. A laziness in the field is a
smarter shortcoming than a laziness of character.
1) Discuss the perception of City Hall officials to Lee. How do they treat her? What quotes support this? Are they fulfilling their responsibility to protect?
2) Discuss the response of the EPA to Lee. What is their response to her? What quotes support this? Are they fulfilling their responsibility to protect?
The
local government of Friendswood, Texas label their choice of silencing the words
from the unofficial prophet with claims of providing stability. Lee Knowles simply
presents findings that “concentrations of benzene have actually declined five
percent since the chemicals were buried,” and cancer rates are “five times the
national average.” However, she knows there is no emotional connection to
persuade the high court, especially not Mrs. Dawson, the EPA representative
with “one of those overly animated faces,” (Steinke, 88). The devil always
appears to make the choice to not lose energy “trying to get” those who do fear
to view health defects in the mirror, as he knows they choose to ignore the “one
mistake after another rising up to laugh at” them (Steinke, 12, 13). He therefore
constructs the arrogance of those with success so such people can think an
outsider’s beliefs would “hurt” local businesses. Anybody who ever felt cursed
leaves the courthouse feeling their beliefs, that they had built tirelessly
through a lifetime of experience “can’t get any better than that” of written
evidence (Steinke, 91).
Nonetheless,
when the council responds to Lee’s claims that “there was no container on the
site the day after [she] supposedly took those photographs,” she finds her
weariness abruptly churns into a focused fury (Steinke, 90). The repetition of “so
much flatness, so much indifference” delivering excruciatingly obvious
dishonesty in her memory made her patience become completely dissolved
(Steinke, 90). She could practically feel her filter for her rage against unfeeling
implode on itself. She finds her mind to speak for herself as she praises her “common
sense,” seemingly acting uncaring of those who are about to claim, “You’re
good. You better watch yourself,” (Steinke, 91). Thus, the mental hierarchy of Friendswood,
Texas makes protection of basic living become practically a figure of Jess’s
imagination.
“I’d
be happy to take a look at your results,” (Steinke, 90). The shock from Mrs.
Dawson’s response ended Lee’s outflow. Any sense of optimism, however, once
again became ignited under instruction the subsequent night. As Lee read the Ecological Defense Manual, a book from a
colleague who works with the EPA, she felt as if every teaching she received
from Avery Taft became reflected back to her. The “misspellings, illustrations
like panels from a comic book [and] cheerful tone like a cruel teenager’s” gave
the appearance of the devil’s strawman, but there was a line in the longest
chapter (Steinke, 94). The agency attempted to defend their audacity of arrogance
through claims of purpose “to protect itself from the greedheads,” (Steinke,
94). Lee closed the novel being devastated to be unsurprised. The EPA stood as
an icon of governmental hierarchy disguised as protection. Just six years prior
to our protagonist’s tirade, the agency claimed the air in Lower Manhattan was “safe
to breathe.” Fifteen years later, the apology former EPA head Christine Todd
Whitman has become another sign of insincerity among first responders. "If
she was sincere she would have walked the halls of Congress with me. If she was
sincere, she could have gone to one of the 154 funerals with me. She was
reckless and careless because of her words, and believe it or not, words have
consequences. God's going to be her judge." If the Environmental Protection
Agency chose not to fulfill their promise to those who gave their lives to
rebuild America after its darkest day, how would they be selfless enough to
fulfill their promise to a forgettable location in Texas farmland?
"Security protocols are crucial. Above all, do not get caught," (Steinke, 94).
Works Cited
Ginger Adams Otis (2016). Ex-EPA boss
Whitman offers first-ever apology for bad info on post-9/11 air quality:
‘People have died because I made a mistake.” New York Daily News. Retrieved
from <http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ex-epa-boss-whitman-apologizes-bad-info-9-11-air-quality-article-1.2786706>.
Andrew McTigueProfessor YoungEnglish Writing 11019/7/16
Who should speak? The citizens of Friendswood? An esteemed institution? Why?
The
citizens of Friendswood should speak about the health and economic effects of
the chemical dumping at Banes Field, primarily due to the lack of restriction
on location. There is hardly a procedure or guideline to prevent any citizen of
Friendswood from searching for yet another “different artifact in the ruins,”
(Steinke, 9). Steinke praises such an advantage in the discussions of local
citizens the McHughs. “Lee remembered how the McHughs had tried to have a pool
installed in their backyard, but they couldn’t make the excavation stable
because the dirt contained so much oil, which also leaked up through the cracks
in the cement of their driveway.” Nonetheless, the Environmental Protection
Agency always “took a sample closer to the house, which was procedure, and the soil came up nearly
clean,” (Steinke, 34). A lack of accurate testing also shows distinct parallels
with the agency’s testing of an East Chicago, Illinois U.S.S. Lead testing
plant in 2011. While the EPA concluded that “breathing the air, drinking tap
water or playing in soil” would not be “expected to harm people’s health,” the
Indiana State Department of Health revealed in July 2016 that twenty-nine
children had elevated levels of lead in their blood in a nearby housing
development. Hence, the citizens of Friendswood should use their absence of
guidelines as a defense for free speech.
Another
reason the citizens of Friendswood should translate the conditions at Banes
Field into their own words is their experience with the area. Nearly every
citizen seems to act as daily “unofficial guardian” to the aftermath whereas
the Environmental Protection Agency has chosen to discard Banes as a successful
project. Due to the fact that investigators Steinke describes the field as “charred
with bright pink and brown stain,” and the air brings an audaciously
overbearing mist of “empty commotion,” (Steinke, 9). Lee unfortunately appears
to be the only individual who can visualize the aftermath. The text reveals
that Lee is left to act as the therapist of Banes Field since the field stopped
being a place of daily inspection “a year or two after” Rosemont became vacant
for the contamination of nostalgia (Steinke, 4). The lack of experience and failure
to communicate knowledge is not limited to the external conflict that Steinke
creates for her fictional characters. From January 2005 to June 2010, the
Deepwater Horizon oil rig undertook 16 fewer Mineral Management Services than
the minimum required amount, according to the Huffington Post. Within three
years of each other, both Banes Field and the Gulf of Mexico became locations
where the ignorance of authority traded solace with ruins. Hence, familiarity serves as another
advantage for the citizens of Friendswood to challenge the fallacies of the
federal government.
"The ugly field had seemed benign for so many years, fooling everyone with its open space and common weeds, its sorry-looking stooped trees." -Rene Steinke
When is it okay to dissent?
Dissent
should be spoken only if the speaker is able to prove his opinion is stronger
than the common belief. Rene Steinke identifies such a hard truth in her 2014
novel Friendswood. The protagonist, Lee Knowles, has used dirt-filled “empty,
sterilized jelly jars” to represent the health hazards at Banes Field. However,
her argument for environmental reform that she has voiced has repeatedly been
silenced under the “two one-thousand-page binders of evidence from federal
agencies, clearing Banes Field for human health,” (Steinke, 34). The fact that
she could not capture a picture of the chemicals at Banes with “anything around
it to put to scale” cancelled any redemption that Lee could have done for her
daughter (Steinke, 29). Once again, the characters'
primary conflict creates its own parallels with the struggles of the world of the audience. In a 2016 interview with Buzzfeed, an anonymous woman claimed how
she knew Judge Persky’s reduction of Brock Allen Turner’s sentence of six
months for sexual assault would produce a determination to “speak even louder,”
particularly due to Turner’s defense of promiscuity. “By definition rape is the
absence of promiscuity, rape is the absence of consent, and it perturbs me
deeply that he can’t even see that distinction.” The New York Times proved the
anonymous woman’s theory correcting, reporting shortly after the sentencing of
the creation of a recall challenge to Persky’s ruling. Thus, those who disagree
must present evidence that the igniter's argument holds against
objection.
How is Friendswood described? What quotes from the text can you use to support your answer?
In the first several chapters of the 2014 novel Friendswood, Rene Steinke establishes a
broken narrative to show the scope of the town’s surrender to unwanted
repetition. From Lee’s perspective, we see the “fallen branches and the toppled
road signs” from a major hurricane intertwined with a man “at the pole,
stringing up the flag again,” (Steinke, 3). The citizens have learned to balance trauma with
tradition, as many of the citizens continue to share lighthearted humor as “Don’t
you see what he’s doing? I’m not a marriage counselor, buddy,” Steinke, 13). The values seem
to repeat itself as well, as evident by the stereotypical Friendswood resident “flipping
through the pages of a Bible without looking down,” (Steinke, 4). Therefore, the citizens of Friendswood,
Texas act in acceptance of their sentence to the pattern of perdition.
Who are the main characters thus far? How do you know? What quotes from the text can you use to show how they're described?
Lee serves as Steinke’s representation of the
Friendswood citizens’ refusal to become independent from their memories. In the
texts, the mother of two admits remorse that her children are no longer able to
recreate their “fluorescent-colored" memories in the open fields of Rosemont.
She knows she should be grateful, but she feels as if she failed her own
promise that the “sporadic, shameful poverty” of her youth would not be forced
to ruin other generations (Steinke, 9, 16). Willa, daughter of Lee’s “good friend,” has a more
overbearing issue regarding acceptance of repetition (Steinke, 23).Once her father “didn’t have time anymore” to
go “running on the old golf course in the early morning” with her, she begins
to feel the impacts of immediate withdrawal from escapism without notice (Steinke, 22). Her
memory recreates her secluded emotional conflicts through the form of abstract
visions, such as the “plate of sugar-dusted cookies” to represent the
temptation to recreate nostalgia. (Steinke, 22). Lee and Wilma seem to be the only primary characters
in the novel; unlike Hal, who understands that he needs to “remain optimistic
because that was how you made sales,” the two female characters have areas in
their personalities that are bound to evolve overtime (Steinke, 13). Satan, however, will
likely serve as a secondary character for the novel, as many characters in the
novel, most notably Willa’s father, admit to fear that life’s struggles will
repeat if they are found “fooling around with Satan, " (Steinke, 23).
