Outside Reading: A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind
As I strolled into my high school auditorium, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would it be a happy man? Or a man so worn down from what he had been through that he would find it hard to smile. After finding my seat and studying his face I realized it would be an interesting experience. For the first several minutes Cedric Jennings introduced himself, talked about his hometown of Washington, D.C and thanked us for having him there. Then he cracked a smile, which broke the uneasy feeling in the room.
“A Hope in the Unseen” by Ron Suskind is an autobiographical novel about the life of Cedric Jennings and his sort of rags to riches story. Cedric Jennings attended the Frank W. Ballou Senior High school in Washington D.C. It was one of the most violent and blighted schools in the southeast corridor of the city. The dropout rates were in the double digits and just 80 of the 1,350 students attending the school had a B average or better. Cedric is one of the few students who receive straight A’s. Unfortunately, he’s in a school which is not understanding. To encourage better grades the school hands out awards to students who receive a B average or above and have a assembly to hand them out. Unfortunately this leads to several problems for Cedric. “It was just a day or two after last spring’s awards ceremony. A kid came up to him in the hall, a smallish kid in a green army jacket. The kid said something about not liking Cedric’s face and how he saw him get his $100 dollar award check and it made him sick-and there was a bulge in the army jackets pocket…Cedric looked down and could see the back of a rat-gray steel handle.” (Suskind 22)
Cedric eventually went on to attend MIT, where he had a rocky beginning. His grades were not where they should have been and many believed this was because of his roots, and the violent neighborhood he grew up in. He eventually went on to prove them wrong and attended Harvard for graduate work. After reading Cary’s “Black Ice” this book instantly popped into my head. The two just sounded so similar and it left me thinking about a lot about the race card, which we also viewed in Douglass. While Jennings did not write this book he collaborated with Suskind about what to say and to me it sounds a lot like Cary’s style of writing. In this book there’s a lot of description to create a feeling that the reader is really there and experiencing the emotions of Cedric. For example the book starts out with this passage, “A hip-hop tune bursts forth from the six foot high amplifiers, prompting the shoulder-snug slopes of black teenagers to sway and pivot in their bleacher seats.” (Suskind 1) Just as Cary did with everything described in intricate detail. Jennings also included the family aspect by talking about his mother in every chapter and how she had helped him get to where he did
Scene is also a huge part of this autobiographical novel. This book is written similarly to Wolff, and seems to play out almost like a movie. The order of the events would make a perfect movie, as we see the book almost come to life in our eyes. Personally I see this autobiography as an exposition. I believe Jennings is trying to share the message that you should never listen to anyone when they tell you, you can’t do something, and if you put your mind to it you can do whatever you want. Jennings’s did this by attending two of the most prestigious schools in our nation coming out of a neighborhood where no one seemed to succeed.
This particular autobiography stood out to me, because of the strong exposition highlighted in it. I personally have a similar exposition, which I want to talk about in my personal autobiography. While not as bad as Jennings’s I was often ridiculed about my size in high school, and how I would never make the varsity team in anything because of my height. I could have given up by agreeing with most of the people who told me I couldn’t do something, but I stuck with it and proved them wrong by making the team. “A Hope in the Unseen” echoes Cary’s “Black Ice” and provides a powerful experience to the reader, and makes them believe that they can do whatever they want to do.
