100R Basic Composition RQ
Instructor: Jared Weigley
25 November 2014
Capitalism: America’s Imaginary Friend Capitalism and America have a love affair that is mutually a false belief. Productivity and competition make up a portion of what capitalism is. Whereas busyness is the action capitalism creates. As a whole, the incorporation of busyness adopts the smallest aspects of everyday life. In the Adam Gopnik’s essay “Bumping into Mr. Ravioli,” he writes about his three-year-old daughter’s frustration trying to find the time to play with her imaginary friend, Charlie Ravioli. Olivia creates an imaginary friend Mr. Ravioli, a busy New Yorker who “lived in an apartment on Madison and Lexington.” She would frequently state …show more content…
The importance of working and family is always facing one another. Working parents tend to spend less quality time with their children because of work demand. In modern America there’s more responsibilities that have to be taken cared of. Now, there is no time to time to waste. Gopnik worries about his daughter’s imaginary friend by writing, “I was concerned, though, that Charlie Ravioli might also be the sign of some “trauma,” some loneliness in Olivia’s life reflected in imaginary form” (154). Olivia who is just a three-year-old child is seeing the effects of capitalism. Her older brother is busy with his activities and her parents are busy with work. Olivia’s mimicking of her mother created this imaginary friend called Charlie Ravioli. She would constantly hear her mother talk on the phone with friends about work and Olivia would mimic that. Her imaginary friend who is too busy to play with her bounces between work and meeting, leaving no time to play with Olivia Gopnik. Mr. Ravioli’s character is a suggestion to the busyness she sees in her daily life. Therefore, Olivia is just creating and mimicking everything that she sees. The way Olivia rushes when she speaks on the phone is learnt from her mother. Parents take up a huge role in their children. Likewise, Hochschild argues how children as creating a similar lifestyle as their parents. She writes, “In other families, parents seemed to encourage children to develop schedules parallel to and as their own” (190). Due to the increase of the working demand, parents are trying to make their children’s schedules similar to theirs. Parents are constantly lacking time and cannot do certain activities with their children, by having parallel schedules everyone will be able to enjoy time together. Creating a parallel schedule is going to keep children busy as well. Eventually they will develop a similar lifestyle