eakins wino essay

The Kool-Aid Wino
An Essay by Karen Eakins

I didn't particularly enjoy Richard Brautigan's short story "The Kool-Aid Wino," but I did find the boy to be a positive character because of his acceptance of reality, his contribution to the work of the family, and most importantly, his ability to create his own fantasy world in order to mentally rise above his situation in life.

The narrator tells us that the "wino" is unable to work because of his physical limitations and that his large family is extremely poor, which even limits their ability to buy him a truss for his rupture. Given these facts, which he is powerless to change, he could have chosen to wallow in the disadvantages of his life. However, he has accepted that this is the way things are. For example, more than once the narrator draws the reader's attention to the lushness of the pheasants in the field, which brings into strong contrast the images of the family's poverty when he tells of the "tattered revolution of old blankets," wet diapers in "various stages of anarchy," and a breakfast of "homemade bread covered with Karo syrup and peanut butter." This poverty, though, doesn't appear to disturb the boy; he simply accepts it as his reality.

   The boy is also shown to be in charge of some household responsibilities by his interchange with his mother about washing the dishes. This indicates that his mother trusted him to be responsible for some family duties around the home, although the dishes are obviously not his first priority.

   But, finally, the most important piece of the boy's psyche was reflected in his ritual of making the Kool-Aid, which the narrator tells us "was a romance and a ceremony. It had to be performed in an exact manner and with dignity." He was especially careful to make sure that this first part of his escapism didn't overflow and spill onto the ground, nor did he lose a drop when he transferred it into the quart jars. His "place of escape," the abandoned chicken house, has comic books, stories of fantasy to feed the imagination, strewn about. The boy's "real" life is symbolized by images of chaos and disorder. For example, the narrator uses the words "revolution" and "anarchy" in his descriptions. However, his "fantasy" world, the life where he feeds his imagination and copes with his physical life, is filled with images of order and "ceremony." The narrator also relates how the boy made twice as much Kool-Aid as the directions call for, which would make it last for a longer period. I think the last sentence neatly wraps up the ability this boy had to cope with a grim situation: "He created his own Kool-Aid reality and was able to illuminate himself by it." In other words, he managed to mentally "enlighten his existence" by his addiction to his form of escape. Many people have used far more damaging forms than Kool-Aid and comic books to cope with dreadful life circumstances.

   Some might argue that the text reveals that this boy is just lazy. They could offer as evidence the fact that when the narrator arrives, the boy is still in bed. However, it does not indicate what time of the morning the narrator actually arrived, or what time the boy had retired the night before. And upon rising, the boy makes his breakfast, indicating that it is still early. Some would argue that sleeping in his clothes is evidence of laziness. Not necessarily so. He is still a kid, after all, and kids do adopt their own weird quirks. Some might even see this as a streak of pragmatism, his claim that people are "only going to get up, anyway. Be prepared for it." Or possibly, he could only own this one set of clothes and didn't want to admit that to his friend - remember, they were incredibly poor. And the boy's response of, "Soon," to his mother's directive to wash the dishes only indicates that doing so isn't on the top of his priority list, not that he doesn't intend to do them at all, as some might argue. There are no facts given in the text to support the claim that the boy is truly lazy, just assumptions on the part of the reader that he could be.

Given the facts presented by the narrative, I would still maintain that the boy's ability to endure this type of life by accepting his position in it, and yet creating his own fantasy world to help him escape, and thus survive, definitely create a positive image for the reader.