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What's in a name?
Another element of the story of Weetzie Bat are the colorful names and descriptors that radiate throughout the story. Weeztie doesn't find the "man of her dreams", but "My Secret Agent Man" and Dirk finds "Duck", does this allow the reader to create an image of the character instead of telling you who it is? There are so many mysteries within this story.
What is a traditional family?
Weetzie Bat is a girl with a mission and a plan when she was trying to have a baby. Though it was not the most traditional of settings to have sex with multiple men just to have a child it does seem logical in her mind. Putting the idea of G-d and religion aside, were Weetzie's actions really morally wrong? In her mind they weren't because each of the men in her life, well not My Secret Agent Man, had a part in bringing their child into the world. Each of the men loved the little baby Cherokee and claimed a part of her as his own. Is that so bad to have so many people taking care of a child? Personally I don't think so and I don't think that Weetzie thinks so either due to her own experiences with her parents not being together.
What are the questions that you found yourself asking when reading Weetzie Bat?
-Rachel Ball
When reading the part where Weetzie decides to have a child with three fathers my initial reaction was like "Woah. Someone is going to get jealous, this is not going to work."
ReplyDeleteHowever, as I saw that it did work I didn't question the morals of it at all. My view was "to each their own!". When you brought up the fact that it might be viewed as morally wrong I realized that this would be taboo. In this case, if no one gets hurt and the child grows up fine, I agree and see no problem here either.
The concept of Cherokee being a part of all of them was the asspect i found most fascinating in the story. It made me think about why it is so different, the love between lovers and the love between friends. Isn't the main point that a child be raised with love? who is to say that a child then wouldn't be just as loved being brought up by friends instead of lovers or spouses, significant others whatever. Why can't the love of friends be the same?
ReplyDelete-Chloe Janvrin
Weetzie Bat was copyrighted 1989, I wonder what the reaction to this story would have been if it was written in a different time period, like the 1950's or earlier?
ReplyDeleteHowever, this seems like a very 70's idea, a question to pose to the author would be, does your upbringing and time period in which you were born effect ideas represented in your stories?
Did any of you read the remainder of the books in the collection? It would be interesting to see if all of this continued throughout the rest of the books.
ReplyDelete