| Critical
Reasoning "Wino Essay" by Sarah Kehm After
reading "The Kool-Aid
Wino" by Richard
Brautigan, I view the main character as not only a
negative person, but a person trapped within his own
delusional world. His poverty-stricken family works the fields for two and a half cents per bushel of beans, but when he awakens, he steps around his youngest siblings wet with soiled diapers on his way to make breakfast for himself, paying them no attention. I understand that the Kool-Aid wino is only a boy, but he can't even help his family out by changing a few diapers? I found this as a sign of the total disregard he had for his family. He goes about his day, paying no attention to his "condition" either as he walks three blocks one way, through a field thick with grass to get to the store to obtain his precious Kool-Aid. When he returns home, he makes his watered-down, sugar-free, but very sacred version of Kool-Aid with precision. He's careful not to spill a drop out of the gallon jar during the ceremony, as though it could be depicted as some sort of sin against the Gods to do so. During his Kool-Aid ritual, he paid no attention to his mother who had but one request for him which was to do the dishes. I know as a kid or even as an adult, nobody likes to do the dishes, but the wino ignores her and goes about his business, as if she was never there.Yet once he safely transports his gallon Kool-Aid into four-quart jars in the comer of his chicken coup hideaway, complete with comic books, his day is complete, He feels complete. I think the wino
feels his life wouldn't be complete without this ritual
as though it gives him a reason to get up everyday. It
doesn't change my view that he is a negative character,
because that outweighs the little part of me that feels
sorry for him and the delusional world he lives in. |