Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Pre-Turkey Day Ponderings

A lot of people have been home to see their families before this. They've come back dangling hopes for a change of family dynamic, regaling with tales of parents who have moved on; parents with new concerns; new families that don't really need them; who regard them as adults. After so much Todorov, I can't help but think of the young collection of colonies who declared their independence by first moving away and then signing the declaration of independence, and I assumed that moving away and turning 18 would be enough to assert my independence from my family. It was not. And as I hear all these tales of separation from my peers' personal Britain's, I can't help but wonder, if I'm not the colonies in this story, what part am I playing? It seems unfair that I could be as minor a character as a "discoverer" of America in my own story, sent out by my father(land) to explore new territories... and then to return, and report, but to still be the same poor civilian I was when I departed. I suppose I could be an altogether unmentioned territory, such as colonized India, and I'll just have to wait a few hundred years to claim similar prizes as my peers. I suppose I'll just have to finish reading to discover exactly where, or if, I fit in the grand scheme of Todorov-ian history.

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