As I venture farther into Dishwasher Pete continues to share more about his life leading up to becoming a dishwasher. A new side to him starts to emerge that really changes some of my opinions about his mindset and way of life. In the beginning of the book Pete tells you of experiences that make you pity his deprived childhood and leads you to admire his way of life seeing as he makes it sound as though he is achieving his life goal of traveling the US through his career. Now he shares details about his life as he heads off to college. He says “I didn’t know much about the school other than it was far enough away from my neighborhood that I’d have to move out of the city, but near enough that I could easily scramble back if need be” (17). This is where I started viewing him more as lazy and my pity ended. He just views college as an escape from his life but never really commits to make use of his time there. It’s irritating because he complains of being singled out and having a poor life but yet when he gets the chance to fix some of these things and make his life better he doesn’t; instead he lets these opportunities pass him by. He is eventually kicked out of college and fired from many jobs due to smart mouthing and unmotivated personality. He knows he’s lazy and that’s why he’s losing all his jobs but he does nothing to fix this and instead mooches of the others around him.
But through all this there is one thing that stands out to me, his love for reading. It seem out of place, here you have this lazy slacker who never really tried in school but yet he loves to read, he views it as his “peculiar talent for sitting and reading for hours on end without complaint” (33). Also his frequent personality and location changes keep you interested. You never know just what to expect; one moment he’ll be enjoying his job feeling as though he might have finally found his calling and a paragraph later he’ll decide otherwise and mouth off, oversleep or just plain out leave to try something new.
Jordan, Pete. Dishwasher : One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States. New York: HarperPerennial, 2007.
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2 comments:
Your insights about Pete being lazy and unmotivated really help me understand him. It sounds like he really has no ambition, and is just contented to dabble in life. In my opinion, our society isn't designed for someone like him--many things in our culture revolve around being smart, pretty, rich, or successful in some other facet. Maybe the reason Pete gets pushed to the side of society is because he's not interested things.
Pete sounds like an interesting character. You describe him as being lazy and unmotivated, I agree. He is a lazy character, but it also seems like he is motivated enough to move around the United States searching for something new. He seems very curious about the world. I agree that he thinks school is just an excuse to "escape from his life" he doesn't view college as a learning experience.
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