Barack Obama's Journey of Self-Discovery in 'Dreams of My Father' - Essay Sample

introduction

Before the glamour of the presidency in the book "Dreams of my father," Barack discusses his struggles and coming to terms with his identity being raised in a multiplicity culture in different countries. Obama struggles to live as an Indonesian child and a Hawaiian child, and as a white child and as a black man with the absence of his African father. Through his journey of self-discovery, he moves from places to places: Hawaii, where he is born, Indonesia where he is raised, Los Angeles where he studies, New York, Chicago where he works, and eventually Kenya birthplace of his biological father. In his quest to find more about himself, he experiences and witnesses racism in his travels, and this drives him to try and find out what he can do to help his race.

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Following his father being absent in his life, Growing up in his hometown Honolulu Hawaii, his grandfather Lolo assumed the role of a father figure. Their father-son relationship is strengthened when Lolo was washing his motorbike, and Obama turns up with a considerable tennis size lump sum on his head after a tussle with an older boy. Later Lolo buys boxing gloves and tries to teach and train Obama on the art of self-defense, he goes further to give him advice on being a man with a soft heart, "That's a good thing in a woman. But you'll be a man one day, and a man needs to have more sense" (41). Despite his father's absence in his life, he barely knows his father's dreams always haunt him. As a result, he spends most of his life trying to figure out what his father wants and what he wants from himself. The hollow void left in his life by his father, his grandfather and his mother tries to fill by telling him what his father was like. His mother preferred to portray the gentler side of his father when mentioning him, and his mother would say to him, "You have me to thank for your eyebrows…your father has these little wispy eyebrows that don't amount to much. But your brains, your character, you got from him" (50).

While growing up his comes in reality with racism through stories from grandfather and grandmother. His grandmother recounts an account with the janitor, Mr. Reed, who was a tall respectable black man and a World War II veteran. Toot had made friends with Mr. Reed and had decided to address him as mister. One day as they were having a conversation, a secretary from the office walked in and expressed discomfort in grandmother’s address to Mr. Reed, "call no N-word 'Mister'" (25). Later his grandmother would find Mr. Reed sobbing at the corner of the building on which he lamented with a question, "what have ever done to be treated so mean? (25). Toot recounts another the instance on a hot windless day, when she found children chanting at a black girl and Obamas mother, ‘Nigger Lover!” “Dirty Yankee" (26) in an alternating rhythm. Lolo also recounts an incident in which Barack Obama senior experienced racism. It occurred when everyone was on festive mood friends, Obama Snr and Lolo had joined up at the local Waikiki bar where there was eating and drinking to a sound made by a guitar. A white guy came and announced to the waiter audible enough to be heard by everyone that why can't he afford to drink a lovely liquor without having to sit "next to a nigger" (20). Everyone expected a fierce fight from Obama Snr, but instead, he smiled, walked up to the man, and gave him a lecture about the foolishness of being narrow-minded. The guy felt sorry that he paid for all of their drinks and Obama senior’s rent for the month.

During his studies in New York living in a low-end apartment, he learns about class. He recounts the incidents where a rich white people from well to do backgrounds would walk into their neighborhoods and let their pets poop at their curbs and if it weren't for his roommate who had shouted with rage at the "scoop the poop you bastards!" (14) That got them scared probably they wouldn't have Mbend to pick. Obama is puzzled why privileged people would left their high-end residence and come to low-end communities and let their dog poop without picking up.

In New York, he was broke and employed. While attending a speech in an auditorium in Columbia, he is once again faced with the crisis of self-identity and purpose this is evident when Marty, who was looking to hire him as an organizer, asked him, "why would any Hawaiian want to be an organizer" (118). To which he replied by telling Marty more about himself. Marty replies that “You must be angry about something” since well-adjusted people would instead find more relaxing work. Marty is a Jew in his late thirties for fifteen years. He had been organizing student protests across and was now trying to get both the suburban whites and urban blacks to join in the plans to save jobs in the metropolitan Chicago and need a black person to work with. Obama's discomfort with the racial disparity that exists is evident when Marty asks him what he knows about Chicago. He replies, "America's most segregated city" (118); since a black mayor had just been elected and white people didn't like it. Obamas desire to venture into political and social issues is witnessed as he tells Marty that he wrote to a letter to join the mayor in his quest. Still, his message was not replied to by Harold's Washington office.

In his quest to experience life as an African American, he accepts the offer to work as a community planner in Chicago’s south side, a mostly poor and black community. Most of the work, as Marty said, was to be done in churches as they needed a base where the less privileged and the working class could come together. His first stages in experiencing the black American life he had longed for were both belong and understand. He organizes a group of black African Americans to enforce change, mainly pressuring Chicago's city hall to improve conditions in the poorly maintained public housing projects.

In Chicago, the needless, hunger, and desire to make social changes are shown by Obama's outburst to Angela. Obama reiterates that he is not in the organizing business because he needed a job, fame, or acquire wealth. He explains that he came to Chicago because he was convinced that there were genuine and serious people who were willing to change their community and neighborhoods of the less privileged and vulnerable like the kids he saw outside the window. Obamas resolve, and self-purpose is tested more and more in Chicago, Will asks, "Is that what we are going to do from here on out?" (143) to which Obama replies truthfully that he doesn't know. Mona also comments on Obama’s speech “you managed that meeting well, Barrack. It appears like you are aware of what you're getting into."(143) to which Obama replies that he doesn't have a clue to what he's doing.

The aspect of social ills, culture, and prejudice in the black community stems up from the conversation between Jonnie and Obama. Johnnie laments that when he was growing up, they would get high and engage in brawls out in public, at home when adults would spot a child misbehaving they would speak out against, and they would listen. He compares that to the current generation where kids use drugs and carry guns, and when confronted, they shoot each other. Johnnie states that “I’m afraid of ‘em. You have to be afraid of someone who doesn't mind. Don't matter how old you are" (207). It's with this drink of beer with Johnnie that Obama’s life long battle with self-identity is depicted when he internalizes what Johnnie had mentioned earlier about being afraid. Obama notes that he is not scared of physical harm, but he’s scared of the old fears of not belonging. In Chicago, Obama witnesses the problems that plague the African Americans of poverty living in the projects, drug use, and gun violence, and this instills in him the need for better education for change.

Although Obama, throughout his life, has felt the urge to find out more about his heritage as an African and the dreams his father left in him, in the thirteen chapters when asked by Johnnie, "why didn’t you travelled to Kenya?" (212) he responds that he is scared of what he’ll find out. In this chapter, we find out that Obama's fear of truth about his African heritage hinders him from trying to pursue his quest for a sense of belonging. The posters of Nefertiti and Shaka Zulu in his leopard skin looking fierce and proud triggers Obama's probe in search of his African identity. Obama compares his father's first-time visit to Hawaii for education, and when he, as a young, went to the library in search of his glorious birthright.

During his flight to Kenya, Obama observes that Africa has some similar problems with Chicago. In Chicago, children had carried guns while walking around while in according to the magazine he wielded, young Africans had AK-47s, which infuriated him due to lack of a specific target. The question of self-purpose is depicted as Obama is angry that with all the education and theories he has acquired, he had no clear answers to questions. The sense of not belonging hits him further as he views himself as a westerner who does not feel like he is at home, and now an African traveling to Africa full of strangers. During his week in Europe, Obama recounts how he felt uneasy in Europe, mainly due to the fear of facing his father's heritage in Kenya.

In Kenya, while at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Obama, for the first time, felt that he belonged, the comfort that his name provided was nothing that he felt in Chicago, Hawaii, Los Angeles, Indonesia, New York, or. In Nairobi Kenya, he felt no one struggled to pronounce his name in an unfamiliar tone. In Kenya, he was able to learn about his African heritage through Roy and his wife Michelle, and he happily appreciates this through a toast "to those who are not here with us! And to a happy ending" (291).

Work Cited

Obama, Barack. Dreams from My Father. New York: Crown Publishers, 2004.