Unlucky

Brooke Zeman

Lucas

English 131

October 19 2016

 

Unlucky

 

In Sara Vowell’s, Assassination Vacation, Vowell takes a road trips to various places of historical significance relating to the first three presidential assassinations: President Lincoln, President Garfield, and President Mckinley. While President Lincoln is an amazing president that has created significant change within our country which creates a greater awareness and knowledge of President Lincoln among the American people, Vowell continues to keep the reader’s attention when on the subject of maybe a duller former president that is President Garfield. Vowell creates the same level of interest with her readers through her second chapter on President Garfield’s assassination through the use of adding a comical spin to the information, adding facts relating to president and time around his assassination, and her own story along the way.

Vowell starts President Garfield’s assassination chapter with her own uncensored opinion by voicing “[t]he most famous thing ever said about President James A. Garfield is about how nobody has any idea who the hell he was”(123); Vowell is well aware that there isn’t many  basic facts or knowledge on President Garfield, but is very upfront about it, seeing it in a more funny sense. Garfield’s long, slow, inevitable death after being shot was ironically when people payed the most attention to President Garfield. People of America now wanted the play by play of how his “healing” was coming along, being that the most interesting thing going on in the country; “The people were obsessed…following the daily, sometimes hourly, dispatches on the dying president conditions as if the progression of his blood poisoning was the fourth quarter of the NBA finals”(124). This funny comparison of how captivated the Americans were towards President Garfield’s death is how Americans are now towards popular sports. During President Lincoln’s term he was trying to create and pass the 13th amendment on top of the Civil war, having all types of Americans listening to every ones of Lincoln’s words, wanting to know his next move and strategy whatever it may have regarded. When Lincoln was shot is was for a multitude of reasons creating war and conflict, abolished slavery, which half the country was not too thrilled about, and many other controversy during his time of presidency. In the time of President Garfield’s death Vowell couldn’t help herself but make a witty comment on how irrelevant the reasoning behind President Garfield’s assassination was stating, “The fact that this man shriveled to the grave all because American voters picked him to be president, well, it seems tacky that we forgot him”(125). Vowell is trying to express that Garfield was an American president, that is wrongfully forgotten and has the potential to be just as interesting in a different way than President Lincoln, even if that means for Vowell putting her own witty comments and humor to make us realize it.

Throughout Vowell’s second chapter on President Garfield’s assassination she includes interesting facts throughout the chapter about his death and information on his life. The chapter goes into detail on the history that is the reasoning behind where Garfield was killed, Vowell explains: “[O]n Wall Street stands the building that got Garfield killed…a few months ago it was…a luxury hotel that opened its doors to relief workers when nearby World Trade Center fell down…that hosted the reception for Liza Minnelli’s wedding in which the “co best man’ were Michael Jackson and his brother”(126). Adding these details in the chapter help liven Vowell’s Garfield chapter making the reader just as interested as they were in the President Lincoln’s assassination chapter. Another fact the Vowell adds in is how President Garfield  was such an avid reader; according to Vowell “[Garfield was] known as the most voracious reader on Capitol Hill…Garfield’s assassination meant he would miss out on so much, from the double wedding of his children held in [his] very library, to finishing out his final presidential term. But I would imagine he would also have mourned all the books he never got to read”(133). Vowell aded these personal facts about President Garfield’s life not only providing more information on the president we know very little about, but including facts about him that many might even relate to making the rest of Vowell’s book just as interesting as her chapter on President Lincoln’s assassination.

Sara Vowell and her road trip visiting President Garfield’s house, going through the rooms and described the little things about Garfield and his life; Vowell even through her tour made this statement “coming across that downbeat commencement speech was the first time I really liked Garfield. It’s hard to have strong feelings about him. Before, I didn’t mind him”(135). Vowell even goes into detail about other events during President Garfield’s time by connecting it into her own life,

“One winter night in my kitchen, as I poured peppermint tea into my friend Lisa’s cup, she said that she liked my teapot. I told her that my happy yellow teapot has a kinky backstory involving nineteenth century vegetarian sex cult in upstate New York”(137).

Vowell goes on to explain that his cult is harboring the infamous resident who was hanged for assassinating President Garfield. Even though President Garfield’s presidency isn’t made out to be as interesting as President Lincolns, and certainly doesn’t have the same impact as President Lincoln’s assassination, Vowell did a strong job at including what she encountered on her journey and the interesting things that she learned along her trip.

The average American citizen  knows little about President Garfield and couldn’t imagine a chapter on President Garfield’s assassination to be interesting let alone grab the reader’s attention as much as Vowell’s chapter on President Lincoln. However, with Vowell’s witty humor, interesting facts, and journey learning about Garfield, Vowell keeps the reader just as interested in Chapter Two as Chapter One. When a president leaves his term we as Americans often forget about them. On top of that we learn very little about our past presidents unless they served during a significant part of our country’s history. We choose these people as our leaders, and as Sara Vowell would say it’s “tacky” that we forget about them and don’t care about them. Reading the chapter on Garfield had the potential to be uninteresting and dry but, as it should be, taught us a lot on a easily forgotten president giving us the idea on what we might be able to learn and find out on some of our other presidents.

 

Work Cited

Vowell, Sarah. Assassination Vacation. Simon and Schuster, 2005