Эссе по рассказу D. Barry DANCE CARDS "Freedom: a universal happiness-bringer or a disguised life-destructor?

«O tempora! O mores!»

M. Cicero

Freedom: a universal happiness-bringer or a disguised life-destructor?

One can only guess, what Markus Tullius Cicero, a great antique politician and philosopher, implied into his famous words. But by connecting “time” and “morals” in one expression, the famous orator probably wanted to show the mutual dependence of these two notions, meaning that morals are changing inevitably with the course of time. Unfortunately, as the history of the mankind shows, one can hardly find an example, when the moral values have been changing for the better. And sometimes the changes can show up very unexpectedly. The narrator of the story “Dance Cards” only proved this theory by the example of his own child, his son.

The time, describing by the author, unites two significant events in the history of the United States: the governing of David Eisenhower, the 34-th president, and the sexual revolution. The latter is revealed especially clearly through the difference of two generations - before and after the Second World War. The generation before the war still followed some old and traditional views. As far as the after-the-war generation is concerned, the young people did not feel any necessity of old morals in the half-destroyed world. Just on the contrary, they felt unknown earlier freedom, and jeans, hippy, rock-n-roll and drugs became their best friends.

The core point of the sexual revolution of the 60-s is the relationship between two genders, men and women. And there is no need to prove that the roots of a newly born behavior lie in the childhood. The author of the story, a typical representative of an old generation, recollects his childhood and the way he and his friend communicated with the girls, whom he leerily called “the enemy genders”. The narrator’s language is half-humorous, half-self-ironical. In a round-about way he compares himself and other boys with not really “attractive collections of stud muffins”, which “huddled defensively in one corner”, expecting an assault from the girls’ side at any moment.

By further describing of their appearance an attentive reader will notice at least two things: first, all the boys looked practically alike, wearing the same sports coats and smearing their hair with Brylcream; and second, the reason for this similarity was simple inability of the young people to take care of their appearance and to communicate properly with the girls, because they did not have enough knowledge and courage for that.

The final scene of this description is a dancing scene, where the boys’  clumsiness and the girls’ elegancy is underlined, and where the couples of teens are trying to maintain maximum separation from each other, and if they fail - well, they look “like miniature sports-coat-wearing versions of Frankenstein’s monster”.

After such an exact exposition it becomes obvious that the generation with such an upbringing could hardly become the founders of this new sexual trend of the 60-s.

With the feeling of slight confusion looks the author of the article at his son. The boy takes the disco process very seriously, he knows how to dress up and even uses a perfume (“about two gallons”). But what is more important – he has no fear in front of the girls, feels free while being with them and has no reasons to hide this fact.

And, as if to make a comparison between “the old” and “the new”  more prominent, another dancing scene is described in the story, in which the couples are swaying together in the darkness of the room. And the boy and his friends became the people, who later would proclaim the freedom of sex, and a lot more freedoms, and who later would be accused of the dissolution of morals.

The attitude towards this phenomenon varies. A lot of positive sides should be mentioned: women received the same civil rights, as men, they were given the right to vote, same-sex marriages became legal in many countries, or at least people of non-traditional orientation stopped being persecuted anymore, sex education became a norm.

Contrariwise, there is another side of the coin. The higher rates of divorces, abortions, suicides and the formation of pornography industry cannot but named in the list.

Trying to grasp the picture on the whole, one can get approximately the following logic chain: the situation, in which our planet found itself after the Second World War, became a prerequisite to the dissolution of morals, because people did not see any sense in them. The sexual revolution became a natural consequence of these changes, and brought into the society bunch of freedoms. And nowadays freedoms of any type a priōri is considered to be good, because they testify to the liberation of the modern world. But let us think about this: can the freedom with such history and basis really bring happiness to people? Does the acknowledgement of the fact that people can do practically everything to each other, because we live in a so-called democratic society, make us feel better? And finally why do we feel an inexplicable sadness, reading the last lines of the father’s story, when he looks at his son, but does not see his little boy anymore?..

O.Shlemova, gr. 526