POW #8

Invisible to Society

When children are born into this world, before they are able to even communicate, they are being conditioned to what is normal and to what is accepted. Girls (FUTURE HOUSEWIVES) are dressed in pink and given dolls, small and childlike, to play with; boys (FUTURE PROVIDERS) are dressed in blue and given toy cars and trains to play with(APPOSITIVES PARENTHESIS & ADJECTIVES OUT OF ORDER). They grow up hearing their parents—adults unaware of the conditioning they are placing on their children—tease them about marrying the little girl or boy down the street who likes to come over and play (APPOSITIVE DASHES). They learn, far before the age where they can conceptualize the results of their own actions and choices, what society views as normal. They should go to school, get a job, get married, have a house and kids: live the American dream (APPOSITIVE COLON).  But what happens when they grow up and find this dream doesn’t make them happy—that it’s not what they want? E Lynn Harris’s novel, Invisible Life, follows the life of a man who finds that he is torn between living the American dream and giving up the dream to find happiness with a man instead of a woman. Throughout the novel Ray, AN AFRICAN AMERICAN MAN, struggles with his identity, refusing to fully come to terms with his homosexual urges and tendencies (APPOSITIVE COMMA). Harris’s novel, filled with confusion, loss of hope, and psychological pain, illustrates the problems that arise due to society’s tendency to lean towards compulsory heterosexuality (PARTICIPLE).  In looking at how this affects society and the life of Ray, one can be begin to understand the social and psychological conflicts of self-identity that these compulsory actions place on homosexual individuals.