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Until I Eat This Thing

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Life rarely hands anyone pleasantries, and that goes for the prison, mortuary, and roadhouse businesses; which are incredibly unnerving to many people. These industries are essentially infinite even after a human 's demise. They are seemingly singular in focus and it all boils down to perspective, numerous things are multi-faceted — even facts. In the stories "The Last Stop," "I 'm Not Leaving Until I Eat This Thing," and "The Long Good-Bye: Mother 's Day In Federal Prison," they each have an obscure agenda in cupidity for money. A sign reading, "Visa and Mastercharge Welcome Here" (Cable 58), an enthusiastic pig lips seller working hard to "Corner the market on lips" (Edge 142), and a federal prison that pretends to care about individuals visiting loved ones, by allowing visitors to "Bring in pockets full of coins and" on special holidays like today, "That Mother 's Day flower" (Coyne 70). Reading these stories consecutively felt …show more content…

A point often overlooked is the banality that businesses have a way of making individuals fearful. What kind of fear? There are a few types: Avoidant, Unknown, Suppressed, and Survival Mechanistic fear. As exemplified in "The Last Stop", "Death is a subject largely ignored by the living" (Cable 57), and when walking by a mortuary "More than a few people avert their eyes" (Cable 57) thus implying Unknown and Avoidant fear. For others fear is suppressed by getting 'buzzed '; "My courage bolstered by booze, I 'm ready to eat a lip." (Edge 143). In essence, Survival Mechanistic fear becomes habitual when, there are families that would not touch upon a subject that is percieved to be painful and/or clearly avoidable. Such is the case for the inmates at a federal prison camp, "The mothers never say what they want to say to their children. They say things like, "Do well in school," "Be nice to your sister"" (Coyne 74). In a moment, the situation becomes bittersweet and it is up to the persons involved to come to terms with the

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Multiple human rights organizations, as well as political and social organizations, are condemning what they are calling a “new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States,” where a prison population of up to 2 million – mostly Black and Hispanic are working for various industries for a subsistence wage (Pelaez, 2008). For the businesspersons who have invested in the prison industry, however, it has been like finding a ‘pot of gold.’ All of their workers are full­time, and never arrive late or are absent. Moreover, if they don’t like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation

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