Hillbilly Elegy – 2nd Reflection

    What comes to mind when I say the word ‘hillbilly’? Before reading this memoir, a certain life style would drift into my mind. Men work construction or doing other labor work until their faces and necks are beat red from the sun. Women took care of the lousy and naughty children in the modest homes and cook for the family. Some houses in the neighborhood would have garbage littered in the front yard and the grass was never mowed. This kind of image might ring true in some areas in America; however, it does paint the areas in a negative or gloomy picture.

    The author, J.D. Vance described his family, a generation of Kentucky Hillbilly, as a typical family in the American South. The men worked in factories and came home exhausted. The women cooked and cleaned the house. The children played without a single worry in their minds. And at nights, the husbands and the wives would shout at each other with their full lungs; and sometimes closed-fists would fly out and cause mayhem. This was how J.D.’S mother was raised and how J.D. was raised to a certain extend. However, J.D. also described another side of the hillbilly that people outside of the community often do not see: the fierce loyalty they have for family.

 

    When J.D. was a child, grandma and grandpa took him to a mall. He went into a toy store and began playing with a miniature air plane. The teenage cashier shouted at him for playing with it without paying, and J.D. went outside of the store crying. Regular parents or guardians would probably say something alone the lines of: Well, you shouldn’t go running off like that and taking something without permission. Lo and behold, grandma and grandpa Vance went into the store with clenched fists and crashed everything in the store. Also, they threatened do something really awful to the young cashier because he made their grandson shed a tear. In retrospect, J.D. reflected on the drama and the unnecessary threats that their family often make to protect or get back at somebody else. But that was how a hillbilly treats their family; loyalty always comes first.

 

    Reading this part of the story was truly fascinating because it made the character’s motives clear as day. They did what they did because they believed that was for the greater good of the family. Sometimes, the intention was good; however, it was the execution that made life a living hell for J.D. when he was young.