This chapter in part 3 was pretty interesting to read about. It focuses on Jackie Tabor, her husband Heath, and their two kids. Hochschild follows Jackie around and listens to her stories about her past and current life. The chapter starts out with the whole family and Hochschild sitting down for lunch and talking about the family’s love for the outdoors and anything to do with fishing and hunting. They briefly brought up the effect of oil on the fish that Heath was catching, but Heath and Jackie both agreed that the effects was very minuscule, if anything at all, and decided that it wouldn’t hurt them to eat it. After lunch Jackie and Hochschild sat in the living room and discussed Jackies childhood. She explained how she came from nothing. Her mother was a single mom of five kids and worked three different jobs, until she finally remarried, but that married didn’t go well either. At the age on 19 Jackie walked out of her house and never went back after her stepfather told her if she left she wasn’t aloud to come back. Jackie described how she was lost, and lived with her older sister for a little bit of time, but still felt emotionless and lost.
Jackie explains how one day she looked up at the sky and ask God for help , and after that day, everything changed. She once read a bible verse that explained how you could never wish to much Avon something, or else you wont ever get it. After explaining this part of her life story Jackie took Hochschild to see three different houses. The first one was the first house Heath and Jackie lived in together, the second one was a slightly larger house they lived in after, and the third house was a house that they never actually lived in, but Jackie wished so badly to live in. Jackie never told Heath about wanting to live there, but wished every time she saw the house that she would one day live there. That never happened. This was the example that Jackie used to prove her bible verse was true. She explained how she wanted and wished too much for that house, so she never got it.
The three things that were the most interesting to me in this chapter was how strong Jackie’s religious beliefs were, considering everything she had been through. From personal experience I know that a lot of people that go through trauma or a bad childhood no longer believe in God because “why would he put people through that”. The second thing that I found interesting was how strongly she lived by one bible verse. Jackie based her life off of the Bible verse she read that day in her sisters home, and ever since then she lived by it, and even proved it with the house that she never lived in. The last thing that I found interesting and a bit irritating is the fact that Jackie and her husband both do not believe that global warming is a thing. With all the study’s and things that prove it is true, I find it frustrating that they don’t think it will affect them at any point in their lives.
I personally dont see myself connecting this chapter to my interviewee. The only reason I think this is because I know that my person is not religious, as he has clarified multiple times during our interviews, and because I know my interviewee believes that nothing will ever happen unless you work towards it. He doesn’t ever “wish” for anything, he works towards it. The only thing I could possibly use from this chapter for my interview are questions such as, “is there any certain quote you live by?” or “What is one thing you have always wanted but never received?”.
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