Indeevari Kumarasinghe- Essay Draft #1

Indeevari Kumarasinghe

Professor Monroe Steel

ENGLISH 1121

June 8, 2020

Essay 1

Interpretation is an act of explaining. Interpretation can have different perspectives and anything can be interpreted in many different ways.  Interpretation could also be described as reframing or showing one’s understanding of an idea.  As different people come from different cultures or backgrounds, they also go through different experiences in life. It is those life experiences that drive people to understand things and express ideas and thoughts differently. In the content “The Money” by Diaz, J the two versions I choose to describe the story from the perspective of the oldest child in the family and the second one is my attempt at seeing the story through the eyes of the youngest sibling.

Story through the eyes of the oldest brother.

The America which I always watched in Hollywood movies always fascinated me as a child and it was always my dream to be a part of this world. As I grew older and my dream came true, I quickly realized that the Hollywood images were a little bit exaggerated, to say the least. Quite frankly, they turned out to be far beyond the reality that I found myself in. The clean, beautiful streets were nowhere to be seen. It also turned out that not all people here have the looks of a supermodel. Not all of them are happy or rich like in those awesome American movies I watched as a child. Admittedly, maybe I watched too many Disney movies? I thought that when we finally come to America, we will be living like royalty. To my surprise our standard of living has declined. Yes, we now have more food in the fridge, and chocolate candies, and Coca-Cola, but the food itself is much worse than back home. For the first few weeks I wanted to go on a hunger strike and could not force myself to eat the American bread and meat. Everything tasted horrible compared to the fresh and tasteful meals we had back home. Not to mention the small apartment we had to endure. My father is a very hardworking man; he is a forklift driver. I appreciate his hard work and effort to put food on our table.  Sometimes I feel sorry for him when mom yells at him for not bringing enough money home. I know he is trying his best and every time he loses a job, he is very emotional and goes out to look for another. He never gives up just like the spider who builds his web, and restlessly rebuilds it every time it gets damaged. Yes, that is my father; my hero who always tries hard to make our life better. My mother wants to go to work and make money to increase the household’s income, but it is hard for her to do so, since she has five children to take care of. My father wants her to stay home and make sure that we are raised properly.  He is rightfully worried that we may turn out like many bad apples in our neighborhood. I can not compare it to other neighborhoods as I have not seen many of them yet, but I know that ours is not considered to be an example of a good neighborhood. People get mugged, cars get vandalized, and apartments get broken into on daily bases. As a matter of fact, somebody broke into our apartment just yesterday, and all of my mom’s savings were stolen. This money was meant to be sent back home to support my sickly grandparents. Everyone is now devastated. Parents are blaming each other, and when they take a break from jumping to each other’s throat, then they re-aim their target of frustration at us. They yell and accuse us of telling somebody at school about my mom’s hidden safe. I have a feeling it could have been one of my younger brother’s shady friends. I don’t have a proof yet, but I will keep my eyes and ears open, and if I find out that my brother had anything to do with that, I swear, I will have one brother less.

Story through the eyes of the youngest brother.

For the past two days my friends at school keep talking about the new Lion King. This is the only thing that matters now. Our class is divided into two groups now; the cool kids, and the kids who haven’t seen The Lion King yet. I keep asking my mom to take me to the movies to see The Lion King. but she keeps telling me off. She says it will come out on DVD soon and we will watch it on TV. She says that she wants to watch it too but she is scared of big screens so she wants me to wait with her and watch it together. My older brother says that going to the movies is for the rich and spoiled American kids, and we can not afford it yet. My mom is always busy cooking  and cleaning around the house, so I would think that she should be getting enough money to take me to movies; so I suppose that my brother is lying. He must be lying. We are not poor. We have clothes, food, candies, and my dad has a car. My father is barely home and always at work; day and night. One of my older brothers is always reading books. Mom says he will be a lawyer one day. My other brothers are also older than me and they are always outside running around with their friends. One day I will be like that, too. Nobody has time to play with me, but it is fine. I like to be alone and watch everyone around me and learn new things. My father says that my oldest brother will soon be old enough to help him make more money for the family. For now, I kept it a secret, but I think I will tell them tomorrow during the dinner that my brother is already making enough money for them. Today, I secretly spied on him, and I saw him put lots of money into my mom’s hidden safe, where she keeps stashing away her change.  I do not know where my brother was able to get so much money, because I had never seen so many bills in my life, but I am sure my parents will be proud of him when they find out.

In conclusion, interpretation could be described as expressing an idea or a thought to others, according to your own way of understanding. What I struggled with the most, was putting myself in the shoes of other parties who could have been witnesses to the author’s story.  Then after choosing two different siblings as my two different points of view, I struggled a little with putting myself in the heads of those two young children , one of whom is significantly younger.