Critical Essay on The State by Tommy Orange

Introduction

The Story, "The State" is adapted from Tommy Orange's novel "There There." The novel is his first piece of literary work, and it is fictional. Orange is a beneficiary and graduate of the MFA platform at the American Indian Institute of Arts.

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Predetermined Fate: Examining the Concept of Identity in "The State"

In the Short Story "The State" the author assumes an ambitious meditation on identity and its broken alternatives, on beliefs captured through the lens of time, urban life, and poverty as his point of view. The author takes the reader through the tribulations of the main character who he talks to direct, to bring out issues that affect the contemporary semi-urban societies. The point of view is that a person's life and fate is predetermined even before that person is conceived or even born. To inform the reader that he is taking a look at the identity of a person before they are born, Orange opens his narrative as "Before you were born." This emphasizes the fact that the author's point of view is that human life has a predetermined destiny, which is determined even before they are born. Orange forges a constant method of convincing the reader that human fate is predetermined. For instance, he uses the aspect of sound and music to show the consistency of the life of his subject. In the First paragraph of the narrative, he introduces this aspect of sound thus, "You had an arrhythmic heartbeat...The doctor said it was normal...Maybe he is a drummer, your Dad said." Later in the text, the author emphasizes the aspect of sound to show how life is predetermined. He says, "You did not think of any of the tapping or the knocking as drumming until you started drumming, many years later." This consistency on drumming indicates that the subject person of this narrative was born a drummer. To sum up on the issue of drumming which brings out the individual's predetermined life, the author states at the end of the narrative, "You pick up your drumstick and wait for others, you hear the sound but not the words...your heart starts to hurt from lack of breath when you see his drumstick go up and you know they are coming, the dancers, and it is time." This recaps the consistency of the aspect of drumming in the narrative to bring out the belief that human life is predetermined as the author's point of view.

Themes in "The State": Gender-Based Violence, Climate Change, and Generational Gap

The significance of the "The State" is to show the reader the conflicting meditation of human identity, how people perceive who they are and the issues of poverty and semi-urban life. The author goes in length to bring out the issue of identity and how individuals perceive who they are. The subject character in the narrative is born in a semi-urban setting of an economically challenged family; an aspect meant to address the issues of semi-urban life and poverty.

The Author has the intentions of showing how an individual's life is somewhat beyond their control and is under control and predetermination by forces of nature. This is evident from the manner in which the author uses the aspect of sound from since the child is unborn to when they grow to adulthood.

The narrative has several themes among them:

• Gender-based violence: the author says, "In the quiet between your parents after a fight they had both managed to lose."
• Climate Change: Here, Orange says, "This heat is too much...You take off your hat and squint up at the sun. At this point, you should probably accept the reality of global warming, of climate change."
• Generational gap: the issue of the generational gap comes out in the relation between the subject character and the father. The author narrates how the subject and his father's taste of music is different due to their difference in ages.

The themes in this narrative effect how the audience reads the book as they are key to creating meaning on issues presented in the reading.

Conclusion

The author uses the structure of narration to talk directly to the reader and to make the readers delve more into the issues presented in the narrative. From the structure, I learn that it is essential for writers to talk directly to their audience to make them more alert and draw them deeper into the narrative. The story generally emphasizes the fate of human life, teaching that some aspects of our lives cannot be changed as they are beyond human control.