Living with Strangers Analytical Essay

1074 Words5 Pages
We live so many people together in this world that caring about everything and everyone would be exhausting. But never recognizing the presence of strangers around your would not only make this world an uncomfortable place to live, but also unbearably dull. We have to appreciate one another, and this includes the crazy and the weird. We can never forget the old traditions of caring for one another and welcoming people, also strangers. Siri Hustvedt grew up in rural Minnesota. She was raised in the belief that greeting strangers in the street was a mandatory task, and was it not performed you could be accused of not only rudeness, but also snobbery. Moving to New York she experienced an extreme change in the amount of people surrounding her - and this called for quite different traditions, as well. In the essay she introduces us to the unwritten law that any New Yorker must abide by to survive in the city: “PRETEND IT ISN’T HAPPENING.” The coping technique simply states that one must pretend to be deaf, dumb and blind when witnessing outrageous behaviour from other people, to avoid getting hurt, or going crazy, or generally worrying too much. Hustvedt, who grew up learning that you have to treat everyone nicely, now obeys a law that basically tells you to disregard people who behave or look out of the ordinary. But this unwritten law has not been designed as a method of getting new friends in the city; nor is it for having the most exciting ride on the subway on the way to work. You subscribe to it to live as comfortably and trouble free as possible in a city where you are constantly faced with new people. In a subway ridden by over five million people each day there has to be a few wackos. Living amongst millions of people can become a curse if you pay too much attention to everything bad happening around you. Hustvedt expresses this by using several examples
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