Monday, January 13, 2014

“Debt is the game and each of us choose its own pathway to win it or loose”

Margaret Atwood was born in Canada, she was majoring as prolific novelist, one of the famous nonfiction book was published in the Wall Street. “Debtor’s Prison” is one her writings that cough attention from much of the readers. She begins her writing with the word “dept”; dept is something that has always been throughout the history.  It’s always been that people owned one another. Debt crabs you with its wicked arms and puts you down, eventually debt happens from our own actions. The author uses metaphors to explain how we sink into the debt and how we get out of them. And how each stage of debt affect us, how it affects our behavior, and feelings.  Some people find it interesting to carry out debts with them throughout their lives, as if it our “private climate”.  Debt becomes a game for some of us, and we choose not to get out of this game, and more often repeat our past mistakes, despite all this facts we still want to escape from this debt. Our wants doesn’t have any limitation.
To begin with the analysis and evidence the author gives an example from her personal life. As the author mention before debt becomes a game and sometimes we forget the rules. People who take debts always strive for more even if they didn’t done with the old deals. But once they pay everything off they make parties about it, according to the Mr. Barne (the author of the book “Games People Play”, 1964). Mr. Barne also explains the root of the words of “mortgage” and he raises a question, ‘why people bind themselves in the chains of “mortgage: to present such a ring to your one true love?’ Paying off the debt is a game where we could cheat. Debt could be an entertainment in fictional life but not in real life, everything in real life changes and might become part of the entertainment but “debt” from the beginning of the history had an associating with a black hole which pulls you down as the time passes.
To support the claim, that debt is the prison, the author proves the reader with the affirmation from the Charles Dickens book “Christmas Carol”. She points out the story about main character Scrooge, who always sat on his money and was afraid to spend any cents. After the spirits have visited him he realized that people need his support as a person who has money who could provide better living conditions for poor.  To connect the authors affirmation she brings in another character Dr. Faustus, this character is completely opposite from Scrooge. Dr. Faustus had money and he wants to spend them, he wants to help people. Eventually in Charles Dickens book Scrooge at the end of the story become a philanthropist. As “debt” something that we have to pay off for a long time, Charles Dickens in his book brings up Scrooge’s old friend Marley who wore the chains from money boxes, and he still can’t pay off the debt that he left after him. The author bring a good quote “…its what you do with your riches that really counts” which means that the action that are taken after being reach that what matter in the future. Sometime you have to greedy in the begging, in order to spent then your money with knowledge.
To conclude all the points the author states “In hard games the stakes are high, the play is dirty, and the outcome may well be a puddle of gore on the floor” what she means is that we could make a game out of everything, but it depends on the person what rules he will choose to play with. And the ending of each game will be different, same thing in “debt” is we will have limitation for our desires then we would see what’s around us that might me useful as well.

Question #2
It's is important that the author notes that, she has no problem with Scrooge being "rich" because the upper classes were always portrayed as wealthy and mean, and I'm sure the author would of scored low with the upper middle, higher classes of society if he kept chastising and pointing that fact out.     
As a cultural icon Scrooge represents every lower/working class's persons nightmare, a typical stereotype. Scrooge represents the rich who grow off debt of the poor, kind of 18-19th century Dutch merchant


  1. I personally rather win when it comes to debt, being a loser is never a good title only when you learn from the loss does being in debt truly pay off.

  2. Good post, Alina, but you may want to proofread a little more closely :-)