Kazin's Use of Place as an Agent to Memory

Kazin is constantly conjuring memories through his observations of places he once knew. Geoffrey Douglass utilized props as his agent to memories, so perhaps that is what Kazin is doing in his autobiography. Kazin often describes a specific place, in which he spent time during his childhood or adolescence and then recalls exactly what occurred in those places. The places actually help Kazin introduce plotlines (mostly in the form of short anecdotal stories) and even some characters.

“In the darkness you could never se where the crane began. We liked to trap the enemy between the slabs and sometimes jumped them from great mounds of rock just in from the quarry. A boy once fell to his death that way, and they put a watchman there to keep us out. This made the slabs all the more impressive to me, and I always aimed first for that yard whenever we played follow-the-leader” (Page 87).

This is an instance in Kazin’s autobiography where he is able to take a place that he was familiar with and transform that place into a mirror that reflected his insides and what he was like as person, or what he is like in the present. A boy fell to his death in the quarry and yet, Kazin can’t help but still want to play there. From this little story in this particular place, we learn that Kazin was (and perhaps still is) a risk-taker of sorts and that he had a certain amount of respect for dangerous places. The quarry caused someone to die, and Kazin is enamored with that place’s natural power.

Kazin and I Agree that "Character" is Crap

"Character. I always felt anxious when I heard the word pronounced. Satisfactory as my ‘character’ was, on the whole, except when I stayed too long in the playground reading; outrageously satisfactory, as I can see now, the very sound of the word as out teachers coldly gave it out from the end of their teeth, with a solemn weight on each dark syllable, immediately struck my heart cold with fear—they could not believe I really had it. Character was never something you had; it had to be trained in you, like a technique. I was never very clear about it” (Page 20)

Me either, Alfred. Lack of “character” is the whole reason I was never inducted into my National Honor Society at my high school. It was a load of crap, let me tell you. I graduated fifth in my class, performed multitudes of community service work, especially with the community theatre troupe in town, and I served on Student Council. I had been the Foreign Language Student of the Year, and I had been named Social Studies Student of the Month three times. Yet, lack of character, that’s what killed me. I took that to heart for awhile, and I still don’t think I understand it completely. How can someone have a lack of character? How could Alfred’s teachers not believe he had character? What exactly is this ambiguous term, “character,” comprised of? Is it integrity? Is it enthusiasm? Is it a sense of self-value? Does it mean being an absolute brown-noser? I don’t think I’ll ever know. Alfred goes on to say that he believes character is related to (or maybe really is) the definition for unwavering obedience. I think I may agree with that, because though I participated in plenty of extracurricular activities and spoke up for the student body, I caused controversy. I was vocal. I didn’t let things die. I was a rebel-rouser, in some cases. I think that is something that my high school couldn’t take. Shame. Shame. Shame…