乡下人的悲歌

What wrenched my heart is that because he eventually made it that his story can be known to people. If he didn’t, that would be a whole new story for him, but the same old story for people who share similar background with him and who is probably repeating their parents’, their great-parents’, their great-great-parents’ way of life. He could become one of them if his grandma did not buy the calculator for him; if he stuck with the clan of teenager who did nothing but misbehavior and vandalism; if he did not have his grandma on his back. A slight deflection could do him wrong and will never pull him back. The gravity in a place as small as Hillbilly, in a family as messy as his is just too heavy to escape from. If you successfully escaped from them, you’re lucky and gifted; if you can’t, no blame can be placed on you because no one would blame on the gravity for gainsaying our possibility to fly.

I can absolutely resonate with him because we share similar background even though we are from different side of the world. I got very emotional seeing him being helpless when he didn’t know the right order of forks and knives on the dinner table so he has to turn to his girlfriend for help. Being one of the best students in the class, not being able to let ourselves to lose control, having parents who attach importance to our education, we are one of the luckiest among our peers. Some of them already deflected from the normal path and stumbled into debauchery or hellish life, while we’re still lucky enough to see a bigger world, or at least have the chance to see to bigger world.

You could say it’s a typical American style chicken soup story. A happy ending probably already has enough to say about its inherently chicken-soupish style, I still gladly take this chicken soup as a special treat tailored for me and people like me or him, JD Vance.

Hopefully for everyone alike, for everyone who is currently struggling, this will turn out to be a eulogy in the end.收起