Essay Questions

Deconstruct the line “had never been able to fill himself up since” using psychoanalytic theory.

Attenberg elucidates, “At meals, he (Edie’s father) ate and ate; he was carnal, primal, about food. He staked out territory, leaning forward on the table, one arm resting around his plate, the other dishing the food into his mouth, not stopping to chew or breath. But he never gained a pound. He had starved on his long journey from Ukraine to Chicago eight years before, and had never been able to fill himself up since.” His familiarity with starvation elicited an unconscious dread of starvation-linked death. Meal times contribute to Edie’s father’s Regression of the starvation occurrence. He eats ravenously to alleviate his unconscious fright of starvation which he has never suppressed. Accordingly, his incapability to fill himself is unconscious; hence, although he feeds profoundly, it does not increase his weight.

How does Edie’s routine underwrite her ailments?

Attenburg expounds, “Her mother refused to eat properly or exercise, and in the last decade she had grown obese. Two years ago, she had been diagnosed with diabetes. It was an advanced case. The diabetes, combined with a disastrous gene pool, had led to an arterial disease in her legs. What had started out as tingling had turned to constant pain.” Although genes subsidize her ailments, her sedentariness and diet subsidize the arterial infection. Had she been enthusiastically engrossed in gymnastics she would not be overweight and this would have contracted the prospect of diabetes. This disclosure is pertinent for it mirrors the actuality currently whereby lifestyle adoptions underwrite menacing ailments. Healthful eating and unswerving working-out should be advocated by all people to alleviate lifestyle-linked ailments.