Nick Rashid

Nick Rashid
2/27/2009
Reading Response 8

The thesis of North Country is “A determined mother can struggle to do anything necessary to make a living and provide for her family.” This thesis can be supported by the introduction of the movie and how it shows the main character, Josey, played by Charlize Theron, is brutally beaten by her husband in her house around the time of Christmas. After this, she decides to pack up and leave her husband. Just from this introduction scene you get a sense of one of the many challenges Josey faces. Later on, the issue of biological parents is brought up when Josey’s parents question who the fathers of her kids are. This issue might have been brought up because of the relationships Josey had back in high school.
The individual in these beginning few scenes is Josey, the mother, because she is the one that is trying to provide for her family; her current husband seems to persistently neglect her. The system that the mother faces is supporting her family in any way she can. One of the issues this system throws at her is sexism. Many people in Josey’s life, including her own parents, seem to have no respect or hope in their daughter. They tell her to find a “suitable” job, and this refers to “women work.” Josey argues that she can do anything that will allow her and her family a sustainable income and this is when she presents the idea of working at the mining facility in their town. When Josey starts work at the mining facility she faces many sexist issues dealing with how she is treated, such as not being able to go on a restroom break. This shows that Josey has no power against her workplace, in this case one of our systems, because it is one of the only places that pay a fair amount throughout the entire town. The entire male population at her workplace kept ridiculing and making sexist remarks toward Josey and the few women that worked at the mine and this increases the struggle she has to make to stay strong and keep the job.
One of the techniques that the director of this movie uses in his or her presentation of the movie are being able to incorporate flashbacks to aid the setting, location, and time of what has occurred in the characters life. The task is quite difficult to undergo through writing because it is not visually present. A writer can try to incorporate this style by talking about past events that have led up to present time and in that way, give a recollection of why the character acts the way they do. In formal writing, it is a lot more difficult to switch back and forth from present to past, and this can cause the authors writing to sound confusing.
An example of this type of work I’ve seen elsewhere has to be the movie, The Pursuit of Happiness. In this movie, the father of a broken family is left to make a living for his son and himself. This family is actually quite poor and eventually gets evicted from their home, which forces them to become homeless and wander the streets aimlessly. This compares to the challenge that the author in Nickel and Dimed undergoes. In both pieces we see a struggle occurring and this conflict connects the pieces.
Overall, this piece is quite effective in discussing the thesis and how people have to struggle to survive.
One of the new words that I discovered when watching this movie was union. After doing a little research I found out that a union is a group of people, usually that work for a company, that band together and have each others back if a problem occurs.