Summary Of Paul Beatty s The Sellout - 1381 Words

On the Path to Finding Me Growing up in America means that one gets to experience situations that others in different countries would rarely do. For example, when you start to make friends in kindergarten, you go towards the peers that have the same mindset as you. As you continue through life, you realize that mindset does not really matter anymore - what defines you is your skin. Your skin is so simple and has the basic function of acting as a level one defense of deterring bacteria. However, in society, your skin tells the story of you and your generation, the definition of your past, present and future actions. It shows how you can relate to another person the same shade as you, can make you laugh and say, â€Å"Oh wow! My mom used to do†¦show more content†¦The protagonist knows next to nothing of love, only the thinking that everything can be deemed as a social experiment. With his father always putting so much trust in his son but not giving him the affection needed to complete the goals tha t he wanted, it make his goals very hard for him to achieve without the stimulation. Later on, Me states, â€Å"I wasn’t fed; I was presented with lukewarm appetitive stimuli. I wasn’t punished, but broken of my unconditional reflexes. I wasn’t loved, but brought up in an atmosphere of calculated intimacy and intense levels of commitment (Beatty 27).† After the death of his father, Me comes into contact with himself more than ever. Now alone and faced with the burden of finding himself by himself, it is amazing how quickly Me discards the solution to his problem by labeling himself as African-American. Having expected to have the same mindset of his father regarding race, the citizens of Dickens rebel in this manner, stating multiple times that his father would be very upset in Me. In four instances through the novel, the citizens of Dickens call him a â€Å"sellout† in response to questioning the rules that many race follow, such as â€Å"black folk or black folks.† In this case, the term sellout refers to someone who has gone behind the back of an individual or a group in order to do something that disagrees with the mission statement of that said individual or