Tuesday, August 11, 2009

A-Town and B-Ville Parable

I found the A-Town and B-Ville parable to be very interesting. At the end of this short story, Hayakawa leaves the reader to evaluate its lesson.

I made two conclusions after reading the parable:

1) The story is primarily about the significance of word choices within a society, and how the community reacts to such choices. A-Town's word choice, "welfare," was derogatory and denounced the unemployed. This, in turn, utterly humiliated the unemployed in that community, and led them down the path of suicide, a clash between classes, and unhappy lives. B-Ville, however, substituted "welfare" for "insurance" in order to avoid any acrimony amongst the people. The mere word "insurance" provided this community with the impression that the unemployed had already done their part for B-Ville, and deserved to be compensated. Word choices should therefore be selected wisely within a community, lest other issues arise and cause more trouble.

2) The community itself and its approach to an issue play a role in affecting how different social classes view each other. A-Town was a more industrious community because it was comprised mainly of business people. The moment I read that A-Town's leaders were "substantial and sound-thinking business people," I inferred that A-Town was more of a capitalist community. When recession struck A-Town, the leaders dealt with the indigent in the most limited way possible, with the welfare, but on the condition that the unemployed were exposed to the public through newspapers. B-Ville, on the other hand, was an isolated, small-town community. This forced the people to be closer, and help the needy when recession hit the community. The difference between both communities was their view on how to deal with the unemployed. A-Town's method for dealing with the indigent was brutal, demoralizing, and tainted from the beginning. B-Town used a more humane and encouraging method that kept the community together.

Does anybody else have other conclusions for this parable?

-Chloe Martianou

1 comment:

  1. I just finished reading the book a couple days ago and I agree with Hayakawa on the importance of word choices and the power that a word's connotation has. However, I felt like the "A-Town and B-Ville Parable" emphasized the power of the word far too greatly. Largely, American society judges the action of recieving government handouts negatively, regardless of whether these handouts are labeled as "welfare" or "insurance". Many other countries, such as France, are much more accepting of the "welfare system" (or "insurance system") and therefore have much more generous unemployment compensation programs. These differences in mindset result not simply because of differing nations' word choices, but because of the underlying social and cultural differences among nations.
    Because of this, I feel that (US)A-Town rejected welfare not just because of the word choice "welfare", but because their society was composed of "sound-thinking business people" who emphasized hard work while frowning upon laziness (or the possibility of laziness) and government handouts. The same can be said for B-Ville, which accepted insurance not just because of the word "insurance", but because it was a close knit community and its citizens valued helping their neighbors who may have had a stroke of bad luck. Ultimately, the two towns had different results because of social differences, not just because of their word choices.

    -Bryce Cody

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