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In The Most Beautiful Woman in Town and Notes from A Dirty Old Man, the characters use physical appearance to either intentionally or subconsciously express their deviant views. In TMBWIT, the character Cass, although regarded as beautiful, attempts to distract from her beauty by scarring and sticking pins in her face, while the character from NFADOM expresses his distaste in culturally accepted physical traits. Both regard physical traits as both indicating their own and others mental or spiritual traits, distracting from them, or attempting to express traits they don't have.

Often in society the lines between freedom and imprisonment are blurred. This can be seen in the popular quote 'freedom is not free,' which alludes to the idea that although we pride ourselves, for instance, on the fact our country and the citizens within are free from all outside forces, we are, in fact, tied down by laws put forth by our government, social systems, as well as many other subcultures within. Spradley points out in his ethnography of urban nomads that although these "tramps" try so hard to be free from the institutions that house and people that unintentionally demoralize them, they create for themselves another culture in which there is a hierarchy of "tramps" that continues this demoralizing process. In essence, it is almost human nature to have freedom placed on such a pedestal that we will never truly reach it and even upon thinking it is within our grasp, we slip from ladder and fall back down into imprisonment through social norms. Can the concept of freedom ever truly become a reality? Or is it only in death that we can achieve absolute freedom, such as in Bukowski's "The Most Beautiful Woman in Town?" In this story, the main character falls in love with a woman who is drenched in her own deviance from society. She refuses to accept what our social norms deem appropriate and instead continues down a long path of destruction highlighted by her physically ruining her body until suicide seems to be the only choice to obtain freedom from the misfortunes of her beauty. The relationship between freedom and death are interesting in that they ask the individual to accept an alternate view of what we have accepted as truth throughout history; that through laws and social structure are we free from others. The most important thing to point out is that we are never free from ourselves.

From the circularity of the jail system in regard to urban nomads to the expectations that society forces upon its members to exhibit certain behaviors and perform certain actions, society creates the deviance it seeks to eradicate by imprisoning its members with expectations that are unnecessary for functionality, but enforced . Plagued by an inability to be seen on her own terms, something more valuable to her than the “gift” of beauty she received at birth, she acts out in a way atypical of a person of her physical stature. She is pigeonholed by her culture into a role in which she does not want to play. Cass was “kind to the uglier ones,” but “revolted” by “the handsome men” because of her lack of promiscuity. Despite the fact that kindness and virginity are almost always considered an admirable trait, this was not acceptable for the “most beautiful girl in town” with “snake-like” movements and a “fiery body.”

From the simplest to the most complex reasons, societies reject people who are not well fitted to their behavioral customs. These people’s lifestyles differ from what others would call an “acceptable” environment for a human being. Ethnographers and writers give us examples of the rhythm of lives that these individuals carry on a daily basis. When we read these stories it is difficult to identify the reason why these people become deviants. We are not sure if it is by choice, by a failed societal system or by much more complex reasons that are hidden in a dark reality. Still, however, they are judged in many ways by a public who has only seen one side of the story. By analyzing passages from stories, such as “Perishable” and “Notes from a dirty old man,” we will try to get the closest we can to the root of the problem. Depending on how we interpret a particular story, we will judge a deviant and explain how he/she is generally viewed in what we call a structured society.

"The Most Beautiful Woman in Town" by Charles Bukowski has a point that comes across as almost absurd, but when broken down into content you know exactly why Cass committed suicide. Cass who is the most beautiful woman in town gets broken down by her sisters for not using her beauty to lure the men she can. Its a sense of freedom that she throws around that she see's only taken for her beauty and not her inner self. Cass has a tendency to not go for the good looking men, but lure herself at the uglier men because she just thinks that every man is using her for her body. She is looked at from the outside community as one person, but in reality she is this sweet sensitive girl that is trying to make that perception of herself go away. She does sporadic actions to herself to take away that beauty which shows that she doesn't care about her beauty, but wants people to know that she has a inner self connection that drives her to make such radical actions.She likes herself, I think, but hates her body, and her
beauty becomes a personification of this body that doesn't allow her to express the feelings of her spirit or heart. Its not that she is insecure about her beauty, but if no one can take her for who she is what freedom does she have? You can ask that question to many people today, for example immigrants...what freedom do they have now and what actions do they take to get that freedom?
Cass is like a forest fire burning from the outside, but inside her spirit is condemned like a fire inside a house. She stops actions that hurt other people, but lets herself not care about her physical actions that she does to herself or others have done to her. At the end of the story Bukowski puts the man in her shoes of how she feels all the time by saying "the night keeps coming in and there was nothing i could do" this quote shows the everyday life of Cass and finally she sets herself free by committing suicide so her spirit can be free from the community that surrounded her everyday life.

"Freedom meant choices, and that guy had none."
When reading this line I can help but ask myself if this is really true. Does freedom imply that you have choices, or can we only choose a freedom that society will approve of? In the case of the dumpster diving dad, freedom is relative to how the person thinks about it, but can we really argue whether their thinking is right or wrong. And I guess another question we have to ask ourselves is whether freedom and deviance are two peas in the same pod? Can one truly have freedom without some deviance? At the time when Martin Luther King was fighting for freedom/civil rights, people deemed him as deviant. When Susan B. Anthony was fighting for a freedom/women’s' rights, she was deemed deviant. In any event where one goes against the societal norms or against the predominate thought of society one is deemed deviant. Most of the freedoms we believe we have are actually imposed on us during our years growing up and we seem to internalize these ideas and push our ideas of freedom and deviance onto others.

To the mom, freedom entail having choices. In my opinion she bases this on the idea that everyone has the same stereotypical dream of how to live their lives and be the typical American family living the American Dream, but want if one rejects that decision. In her mind they would be showing deviance, but what if they reject this idea of the typical American? It is in fact their choice and their right to do so. How can one proclaim freedom means choices when the only choice you have is to follow the rules and regulations of society? Is society being deviant by not allowing this freedom of lifestyle to take place?

In the end, freedom does not mean choices in a society where there is only one option given. Freedom does not mean that we all conform to what our societal expectations are. Freedom is in fact deviance in more ways than not. Freedom gives us the choice of being deviant against these ideals that some hold so near and dear to their hearts. Without this so called "deviance" on the part of other, would any of us have the chance to even have the freedom of choice?

One of the interesting differences between the mother and the father in “Perishable” is how the idea of freedom and choice play into their idea of the perfect life. The father wants freedom to enjoy life without the restraint of working for money. Having “no reason to pay for food” solves of the dad’s issues of being bound to his job. The need to make money limits the choices the father would like to have in his life. He would like to choose to spend his time being “more relaxed and content . . . than [he] could remember ever feeling” even if that means doing so “hip-deep in dregs”. The opportunity to feel this free helps the father to overcome quickly the disgust he initially felt at being offered some of the man’s “score”.

The mother deems the father’s idea of freedom “ludicrous”. She contrasts his idea of freedom from money with the choices that money offers a person. The mother’s idea that “freedom meant choices”, which were not available to the homeless man, is not expounded as much as the father’s ideas. This relates to the fact that the mother’s idea is more in line with the rest of mainstream American ideals. The author assumes correctly that most Americans understand what it means to associate freedom with choices and choices with money. This highlights the heart of the father’s deviance, the claim that freedom and choices come not from money but from choosing how one spends his time.

The social conceptions of deviance have been engrained into most of us as children. We should follow the rules in order to protect ourselves from harm, since it is safe to imitate popularly accepted behaviors. Deviance has been predominately viewed as dangerous or harmful, because it involves straying from the secure routine of social norms. However, the view of widespread society from the deviant’s perspective can take a multitude of forms. The variation in the portrayal of deviance should provide a better understanding towards the motives for diverting from usual behavior. It is possible to express deviance as an attack on these societal norms. A blatant form of individual expression that is forced upon those you feel have given in to popular opinion. This is no more evident than in Bukowski’s “The Most Beautiful Woman in Town.” His character Cass expresses her deviance out of spite to society, even to the extent of harming herself. On the other hand, deviance can also stem from internal motives, a method for accomplishing personal happiness that can live symbiotically with social normalcy. Dirk Jamisson’s “Perishable” is a prime example of this motivation for deviance. The author’s father believes “dumpster diving” offers a maximal degree of freedom, but he does not emphasize the shortcomings of his previous way of life. This reasoning focuses on the benefits of deviance and the level of contentment attained by those who practice it. Therefore, deviance cannot be generalized as merely a confrontation to the socially acceptable routines. The motives and goals can be rather diverse depending on the individual’s perspective.

This is a rough draft of my introduction and gives a broad overview of the direction my paper is going in.

Bukowski, in “The Most Beautiful Woman in Town”, paints deviance as being romantic. As the author and Cass walk through the beach, he takes note that things are “splendidly deserted” and that people are sleeping on “lawns above the sand” and that “gulls whirred about”. This type of description is exactly the type of scene that would be portrayed in a modern-day Hollywood love story. The only difference is that, with Bukowski, instead of models lying on the beach, it is bums; instead of teenagers playing volleyball, it is old ladies talking about their dead husbands. The romanticism that Bukowski is alluding to has been slightly twisted to apply to the deviant lifestyle. Bukowski is saying that there is a certain type of romanticism in the life of a deviant: that they can experience the same thing that so-called normal people experience, that they can feel the same things that normal people feel. The “peace in the air” is not just for normal people, but for deviants as well. Bukowski is saying that while there might be a perceived distance between deviants and normal people, in actuality there is not that much of a difference. The author and Cass, both deviants, can have the same love, the same type of life, that normal people have.
Bukowski portrays the deviant as ordinary. Their walk on the beach is the same walk that a normal person would take. They sat on the beach and had “a couple of sandwiches, some chips and drinks”, just like a normal person would. The dinner that the author makes for Cass is the same dinner that a normal person would make for their significant other. The author’s and Cass’s love is the same love that two normal people would have for each other.
This proto-typical love story for deviants, however, does not end in a story-book manner. In the normal Hollywood love story the plot is predictable: boy meets girl, they fall in love, something happens and they split up, they get back together and live happily ever after. However, Bukowski’s representation of deviants is not as simple as a Hollywood love story. In Bukowski’s story, the lovers do not get back together – Cass “cut her throat” and ended her life prematurely.
The ending is different for deviants. Instead of riding off in the sunset together, the author’s and Cass’s relationship ends with Cass committing suicide. Why did the relationship end this way? Choice. Cass chose not to “shack together” and ended up killing herself. Nothing forced her to do this. In the same way that Cass chose to end the relationship, Bukowski is saying that the deviant lifestyle is a choice. The difference between a deviant and a normal person is a matter of choice, of perspective. Cass chooses to be a deviant because she does not feel that she fits in with mainstream society: she rejects beauty, saying that “people are always accusing me of being pretty”, she hurts herself, running a “long hatpin through her nose”, and she “hustles”. Cass rejects all of the things that mainstream society values and because of this she is considered a deviant. She feels that she does not fit in with mainstream society and so she chooses to regard herself as a deviant. She even tells the author that he is “lucky to be ugly”. Cass realizes that she is not mainstream and chooses to be a deviant.

This is a post of sporadic thoughts for my paper. It is the mere foundation of ideas of what I will be writing my paper on, and eventually I will hopefully get these ideas to flow together for an actual and final paper. I will definitely tie in quotes as well.

Deviance is unavoidable. While the definition of deviance involves a huge spectrum of interpretation, this creates many ways to experience it as well. We have already accepted a society where everyone does not live life the same way. So who is to say what exactly the typical life that does not involve any sort of deviance would be? For all we know it is the “normal people” who have deviated from a certain life.
Does deviance parallel the idea of freedom? Deviance is definitely a natural and fair human instinct. It is certainly not just the “weird ones” who have deviated from any sort of cultural norm. It all depends on what the universal understanding of what a normal life in this society means. I think we can all come to an agreement that in today’s society, the normal way of life is to make money and the ability to support oneself. There are many ways to accomplish this that do not involve the everyday life of going to work and sitting in an office all day. So the true question is how far does one have to drift from the typical way of life to be considered a deviant?
In both Bukowski’s “The Most Beautiful Woman in Town” and Jamison’s “Perishable,” the main characters chose to be different. While there are many instances in real life where deviance is encountered by some individuals because of a true burden blocking them from fitting in, deviance definitely relates with the desire for freedom. In both stories, the crave for a new life is what causes the characters to desire what is uncommon. Freedom is apparently whatever the individual makes of it. As with deviance, freedom has multiple meanings and ideas.
Jamison's father, finds freedom when he abandons the idea that money is the way to happiness. What others consider the bum-life, he found to be blissful state of freedom. So isn’t that freedom if he believes in it? While his beliefs did not necessarily have the best consequences for his wife and kids, we blame him for his deviance because it was his choice. In his case, he did not want or understand why the cultural standard had to be his miserable way of making money. There is definitely something admirable in his new way of living, but we would mostly all agree that in today's society, that lifestyle is not the most efficient way to survive. He made deviation a choice.
Cass, the most beautiful woman in town exhibits deviance in a different way, but is definitely looking for her own fulfillment of freedom. Her desire to deviate comes with the problem that she is automatically perceived as someone she does not want to be by the look of her face, her beauty. She does not think that the some advantages of being pretty are worth while, which is why the ugly man was the gateway to the brief but true feeling of freedom for her. For that moment, she was no longer the girl in the body with a face, because it did not matter what that looked like for the first time in her life. She was Cass in love with the man who truly knew her as no else ever did. So if no one else truly knew her, did that make it ok for others to judge her for her actions? This is also another reason that freedom is completely what one wants it to be, and their happiness with that is what makes it freedom. It does not matter what others think.
Deviation is an inevitable factor in society, in which people will measure its impact with different opinions. But we ultimately cannot deny that no matter who encounters it, it has both positive and negative effects that America at least will always exhibit. At this point, one of the only things we can do is accept deviance whether people bring it upon themselves or if it is involuntarily encountered.

No two people in the world think in the exact same fashion. There may be people who share similar interests or persons who have the same opinions about most things, but no one person shares another person’s beliefs completely. Much of the time, the majority of people who come from a similar background tend to have their beliefs and ideals molded to fit into the social norm of the time. The unfortunate bi-product of this process is that people who have particularly strong beliefs or just hate any attempt to mold their thought processes tend to go in the opposite direction to show just different they are. They want to live their own lives without interference from others and this tends to cause conflict with those who have conformed in an attempt to remain on the inside of the society.

Bukowski, who from his introduction is quite proud of his status as a deviant, writes a wonderful story about a woman named Cass. Cass is, as the title tells us, “The Most Beautiful Woman in Town”. However, she hates that beauty is so important to society. Throughout the story, she disfigures herself in an attempt to mar her beauty. She does this in order to know if others still find worth in her without her inborn ability to drop men’s jaws. The narrator of the story seems to be the only person who understands and cares for her, and this drives her further and further from society. In the end, she is so disgusted by society’s focus on physical attractiveness that she goes too far in her self-disfigurations and ends her life.

Apart from the stranglehold on it’s belief that physical appearances are supreme, society also places a strong emphasis on the ability for people to get steady jobs and support themselves and their families. Dirk Jamison’s “Perishable” tells the story of his father and his attempt to free himself from the daily constraint of a job. It begins when he sees a homeless man enjoying himself in a dumpster. He begins to question why he has a job when there is all of this treasure placed behind stores for free. The conflict in this story is even more visible than in the Bukowski, because the mother of the story sticks to the mainstream, and so the friction between her and the father is easily seen.

I realize that I have no quotations in this posting. For my paper, I will be using quotations and expanding on these basic ideas that I have placed here. This simply contains the basics for my essay.

I have been looking more in depth into the quotes from Bukowski and Jamisson, specifically at Bukowski first, to try to figure out what lead these characters on their paths towards deviance and where it lead them. What interests me is what they are searching for through deviance and whether they are able to obtain their goals. This is a very rough draft of what I feel some of these quotes imply, but hopefully as I extract more out of these texts, I will be able to formulate my own cohesive thoughts on what deviance is all about to the characters in these pieces.

"Her mind was simply different; her mind was simply not practical." - Was Cass born different? Or was her difference an effect of the way she was born? Which came first, the egg or the hen?

"There was also a permanent scar along the left cheek but the scar rather than lessening her beauty only seemed to highlight it." - Scarring herself, something she did to try to destroy her beauty, ironically made her more beautiful. Different perceptions of beauty.

"I was probably the ugliest man in town and this might have had something to do with it." - she was also classifying people and only approached the uglier ones, not giving the better looking ones a chance.

"She had chosen me and it was as simple as that." - However, there did not seem to be anything simple about her. She wanted to deviate to achieve something that the norm had - love. so in a sense she was deviating not from society, but a little from herself, in order to be recognized by society as normal, and not an extraordinary beauty.

"What's your name?" I asked.
"What the hell difference does it make?" she asked.
-she wants to be individual, however some of her actions still defy it. why would a name matter? why does she not think that a name matters when she wants to be loved for herself, and not her beauty?

"Once you accept a drink you create your own trouble." -the more she tries to escape her beauty, the more attention she draws to herself.

""No, it's the fad, you fool." -she uses the norm, or the fashion of the day, to defend what she had done to try to deviate, by giving herself a scar.

"It was like joy out of fire." - The narrator's description of her can be confusing because she sometimes describes her beauty as her fire but now he is describing her laugh as joy out of fire. What should we as readers make of this contradiction?

This the first part of my essay... I'm not quite sure how I'm going to tie in the second part yet.

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Freedom is the rocky precipice upon which this bald eagle built its nest, right? Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of political affiliation, freedom of sexuality—all this championing of freedom might lead one to believe that Americans have produced some universal, all-encompassing definition of the word. Perhaps freedom can be imagined as life without boundaries, in which an individual is able to act as he or she pleases without censorship or limitation. Freedom, as an ideal, doesn’t seem like it should be such a baffling concept, and, seeing as Americans value it so much, one might think that individual pursuits of freedom are unanimously respected in the United States. Unfortunately —as with all ideals—freedom as it is pursued in day-to-day life is not so clear-cut. As we can see in “The Most Beautiful Woman in Town,” by Charles Bukowski, and “Perishable,” by Dirk Jamison, the individual pursuit of freedom in America does not necessarily result in a life without boundaries or a person who is widely respected by their community; in fact, sometimes the quest for freedom produces a life of self-imposed restrictions and a person who is despised, misunderstood, and labeled a deviant by members of the dominant culture.

In “The Most Beautiful Woman in Town,” Bukowski introduces us to one such misunderstood deviant, Cass. Cass has the kind of beauty that makes knees tremble. Men desire her. Women envy her. She has things that most people only wish for—beauty, presence, and attention from all sides of the room. But, despite her good fortune, Cass behaves in a way that confuses, shocks, and irritates people around her. She is accused by her sisters of “misusing her beauty.” When handsome men come on to her, she acts interested, only to dismiss them as dull. Cass is bored by good-looking men, claiming that they have no more to offer than “their perfect little earlobes and well-shaped nostrils.” She is drawn to the narrator of the story precisely because other people think he is ugly. In fact, Cass seems to abhor beauty in general and often tries to destroy her own. She cuts herself with broken glass and rams pins into her face. She gets drunk, fights, and intentionally makes people uncomfortable.

Why does such a beautiful and seemingly fortunate girl behave in such a way? Some might write her off as crazy, but that interpretation seems much too simple. How convenient it is to chalk deviant behavior up to insanity. Cass is certainly not a lunatic. On the contrary, her behavior is quite rational given her dilemma: Cass feels imprisoned by her beauty. Because of it, people assume they know who she is before she even has the opportunity to tell them. Cass wants freedom from her beauty. By mutilating her body and spurning so-called desirable suitors, Cass is actively pursuing freedom. Instead of allowing her perfect looks to speak for her, Cass expresses ownership over her identity by marring her perfect looks.

So, Cass’s behavior is logical, but does she get what she’s searching for? Going back to the ideal of freedom as life without censorship or boundaries, does Cass gain such freedom? The answer to this question can be found in a passage from the story describing a romantic day at the beach followed by the narrator’s discovery of Cass’s suicide.

The narrator describes a “splendidly deserted” weekday at the beach after a night of “slow and somber and wonderful” lovemaking. Cass and the narrator sit on the sand eating sandwiches and watching the seagulls in mindless flight. Few words are exchanged, not because they have nothing to say, but because nothing needs to be said. They “simply [feel] good being together.” After eating, they stretch out on the sand. The narrator holds Cass, and they fall asleep. For once in the story, Cass seems at peace and content. From an outsider’s perspective, Cass finally has exactly what she wants in another person—someone who has allowed her to define herself, someone who appreciates her for more than her physical beauty, someone who can take a nap with her and find it “somehow better than lovemaking.” For all intensive purposes, it seems that what is going on between Cass and the narrator is something like love.

So, later on in the night, when the narrator asks Cass to move in with him, why does she not accept? One can argue that the adoration is not mutual, that Cass does not harbor similar feelings for the narrator, but, when examining the preceding events, this explanation doesn’t add up. If Cass does not care for the narrator, why has she allowed him into her life? Why do other men have to pay ten dollars to have sex with her, while she makes love to the narrator free of charge? When the narrator tells her that it hurts him to see her with pins in her face, why does she take them out? And, most importantly, when the narrator asks her to move in with him, why does she hesitate? Why does she wait “a long time” and “slowly” say “No.”? If Cass lacks feelings for the narrator, it seems that she would have no trouble declining his offer. After all, we have already determined that Cass is not the type of person to censor herself for the sake of others. So why doesn’t she allow herself to be happy? Why won’t she just admit that she is in love?

Cass’s reason for denying herself of love seems to parallel her reason for destroying her beauty; she values freedom above all else. To give in to a relationship and openly express love would imply a lack of freedom. It goes without saying that relationships require compromise and alter the identities of those involved. Also, relationships involve a certain sense of mutual ownership between people. Cass obviously opposes the idea of compromise, and she certainly can’t be owned. So Cass denies love and destroys her beauty to ensure freedom, but, in the end, Cass can hardly be described as free. She has shed one straitjacket and crawled into another. The only difference is that this time Cass has tied herself up; her restrictions are self-imposed. If Cass were truly free, she wouldn’t have to pause and consider restrictions, self-imposed or otherwise.

After the day at the beach, the narrator does not see Cass for about a week. That Friday, he goes to the bar, hoping to bump into her. Instead, he learns that Cass has commit suicide. “She cut her throat,” the bartender tells him. The narrator asks for another drink.

Maybe Cass realizes that the struggle for freedom is futile, that in refusing to live by one set of standards she is embracing another equally restrictive set. Or maybe Cass’s suicide was a final leap toward freedom, her ultimate expression of independence. Either way, Cass’s story implies that the commonsense understanding of freedom as life without boundaries does not exist. But maybe that’s the problem; maybe the commonsense understanding is flawed. Maybe freedom is exactly what Cass created for herself—self-imposed restriction.

When I listen to the vocabulary someone uses in conversation, I subconsciously begin to examine the form of verbal expression they use in an effort to learn how to relate to them better. If I know something about their level of education, I can hopefully better communicate with them. Although their vocabulary does not always portray a true picture the knowledge that they possess in reality, it often discloses if they have made an effort to learn how to effectively communicate well or not. Such pursuits can help a person relate to a wider variety of people, the larger their scope of expression in language. When I read the passage written by Spradley, I was immediately struck by Mr. Tanner’s use of descriptive language. “Again—your bewildered, dismayed, bemused, delirious, bedazzled, defunct scribe salutes you with some gossamer-like, misty caperings.” His language is overflowing with so much expressive vocabulary that I had to look up some of the words because I didn’t know what they meant! This is not the type of language I would expect from someone regarded as homeless and deviant. Society usually considers deviant people like urban nomads to be unlearned, but this is only sometimes the case. In Mr. Tanner’s situation, he has no difficulty describing his feelings and emotions during this time of confusion in his life. But why is it that he finds himself in such a position when he obviously has some sort of substantial educational background? I view this as a form of deviance. I believe that there are many urban nomads who have education, talent, knowledge, and much potential. But for some reason, they have chosen to deviate from what society would do with such skills. There are possibly many reasons for why they have decided this. Perhaps they were discouraged by society or disliked what they saw others do with their lives. Or perhaps they did not have a choice in the matter. Something could have happened to change the course of their life. If this form of deviance was their choice, it is an interesting issue to ponder. Can we realize that not all urban nomads are like the uneducated stereotype? I hope we can gain more respect for them as fellow human beings.
In reading the excerpt from “Perishable,” I am again interested in the use of word choice to describe the action and emotion in the story. Phrases like “euphoric half-wit,” “his face was covered with grime, his teeth had rotted down to little brown spikes,” “got the hell out of there,” and “hip-deep in dregs” all give me a negative feeling about the whole situation. But Jamison explains through other expressive language that his father was very excited to discover this situation because in his eyes, it was a portrayal of the glorious, rugged freedom and happiness that he so desperately desired, with no work or sacrifice involved, all leading to a life of wealth and abundance. Phrases like “the happiest person” and “more relaxed and content” depict the father’s admiring perception of the old homeless man. To see this kind of situation would repulse the majority of society, as it did the mother when she found out. She pointed out that “freedom meant choices and that old guy had none.” Choosing to embrace something that society views as unacceptable or improper is a form of deviance. Jamison’s father viewed the cost of providing for his family normally as too high so he chose this deviant way of living. The father’s view of freedom was deviant because it was different from society’s view of freedom. The freedom that society enjoyed was complete restriction to the father, the exact opposite. When ideals are so contrary, there is bound to be differing lifestyles. However, what we have to remember is that all people are at their core, unique in their desires. Can we accept that not all want to lead the kind of life we do? I hope we can and in addition, not disregard or discriminate them for their choice.