Loneliness

After class on Monday I went back and looked at the similarities between Jones the Super and Lutie. They share one very distinct feature and that is that they are trying to combat loneliness in whatever way they can. We discussed how Jones was stuck in the hull of a ship, as a watchman in basements and now as a disliked super in a dark dingy building in class and tried to sympathize with his situation. Although the way he finds refuge is one that is disliked by the majority of the class as he is viewed as over sexualized to the point of disgust, but Lutie is essentially trying to do the same thing in a slightly different way. In the chapter where she visits Junto a local bar she has to choose where to sit and she "turned abruptly to the long bar, thinking that she needed people around her tonight, even all these people who were jammed against each other at the bar." (Petry 145) She, like Jones, was looking for a sense of community and human contact, but as readers we consider one way "good" and one way "bad". I wonder how this will progress and if the parallels will continue or dissipate.