Read and Respond - 'The Men We Carry in our Minds' by Scott Russell Sanders

This is an extra credit assignment, since we did not take the quiz. Read and Respond.

This was a wonderful story about the timeless struggles of equality between men and women. It ended in a way I did not expect. He ends the story with a rhetorical question. "If I had known then, how to tell them so, would they have believed me? Would they now?" His story sheds light on the perspectives of class and gender, and the contrasts and comparisons that exist within these boundaries. He paints a wonderfully vivid childhood of growing up in the Midwest, well known for it's hearty people and tough work ethic. He then goes on to reveal that though he had come from a typical mid-western, hard working, 'dirt poor' country family, he was able to attend college and upper class university where he then discovered the dreams and comfort of rich men who had always assumed that wealth and power would come easily to them as it did their fathers. He finds surprise and shock in this and I sense his angst against his presumptuous and privileged peers. Mr. Sanders spend much of his childhood in envy of the woman's seemingly domesticated and comfortable role in contrast to the hard working men of Ohio where he grew up. To him, women held onto grace, beauty and contentment better than a man as the ones who were his influence were factory workers, farmers, hard laborers etc. The women of his childhood were smooth and comfortable by comparison and their lives full of social reprieve and domestic nurturing. Upon going to college and university, when coming into contact with privileged young people he not only realized how different he was in comparison, but was able to understand that women were just as competitive in nature to achieve their own freedoms and wishes, though he was accused of being in their way. The later part of the story then comes into the timelessness of this argument - class privilege and gender roles, and how we battle these all of our lives. This story leaves me to resonate with the old adage of "The grass is never greener" and that our public and private lives can be starkly different, and that we all have our own battles with potential - whether or not is it handed to us.