{"id":87,"date":"2018-03-09T15:42:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-09T15:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/lightingthepage18\/?page_id=87"},"modified":"2018-12-07T03:30:22","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T03:30:22","slug":"carscabs","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/lightingthepage18\/transportation\/carscabs\/","title":{"rendered":"Cars, Cabs, and the Spaces They Construct"},"content":{"rendered":"

Automobiles play an important background role in many stories of Lost in the City<\/em>. Cars infiltrate the lives of suburbanites, drug dealers, and the lonely working class. So, what do cars and cabs mean to these stories, and what do they tell us about Edward P. Jones\u2019 characters?<\/p>\n

Cars serve as a barrier for Black people in these stories. The separation of residents by race in Washington, D.C. is a well-documented phenomenon. Tonya Price describes how, historically, D.C. has created barriers for People of Color via urban planning related to transportation. Opened in 1976, the city\u2019s Metro did not reach the suburbs in its early constructions, thereby necessitating a car for people to access the\u00a0wealthier areas of the metro area. In later stages, the Metro system came to reach those areas and provide special amenities and better maintenance to suburban metro lines. The Red Line to wealthier outlying areas was completed before lines serving predominantly Black communities (Price 314). \u00a0Price contends that many choices made through D.C. urban planning have had an alienating effect on non-white residents.<\/p>\n

Jones\u2019 short stories seemingly parallel and animate Price\u2019s position on white spaces. The Black characters of Lost in the City <\/em>rarely have access to certain areas of the city, and cars act as a conduit to these spaces for the powerful. Furthermore, in one story, \u201cHis Mother\u2019s House,\u201d cars are a clear status symbol as well as a major driver, so to speak, of the plot. The story centers on Joyce Moses, though much of it involves Rickey Madison\u2014Joyce\u2019s common-law husband\u2014and Santiago Moses, her son. Rickey drives Santiago around to suburbs and drug deals, providing Santiago access to wealthier areas of D.C. than those familiar to his mother. Rickey describes money and power in terms of car travel. When telling how he met one of the most notorious gangsters in town, Smokey Peebles, he notes that \u201cSandy had me drive him to this place off Florida Avenue, to some kinda old-fashioned drug store\u201d (Jones 163). Moreover, Rickey describes the location as \u201cjust like in those old black-and-white movies,\u201d as if the store is some ethereal setting, untouched by the mundanities of Rickey\u2019s world (163).<\/p>\n

Rickey is often in awe of cars and how their ownership projects power. Later in his story about Smokey Peebles, Rickey links the man\u2019s car to his wealth. Rickey notes that Smokey\u2019s car is a Mercedes and illustrates the power grab of him driving the car on his own with his bodyguard assisting him. Finally, the scene ends with Smokey throwing money in the air as he departs. The gesture is dramatic, to say the least, but it does get the point across: successful people have the luxury of automobiles. Smokey and Santiago are the wealthiest characters in the story as well as the only ones in the story that have automobiles.<\/p>\n

Two more moments of \u201cHis Mother\u2019s House\u201d address the way that cars function as a conduit to a different life. \u00a0The first pertains to a secondary character, Adam. Essentially abandoned by his mother after she breaks things off with Santiago, Adam is characterized as transient and disillusioned by his life. After his abandonment, Adam lives with Joyce before seeming to go into foster care or adoption. However, the object repeatedly associated with Adam is a small toy car. He seems attached to it; Joyce distills his weeks living with her by saying that \u201che mostly sat out of the way in a corner of the room, rolling the car back and forth\u201d (Jones 160).<\/p>\n

It appears that Adam utilizes the toy as a form of escapism. Maybe he does this simply because it is a toy, but the car may also symbolize a form of escape to a freer life. According to urban policy scholar Paul Ong, car ownership provides socioeconomic mobility (240). Adam may see the car as a symbol for this kind of mobility, allowing him to move away from his current life. The second moment pertains to the suburbs that Santiago inhabits during the short story. It is worth noting that these areas are still difficult to access using the current train and bus systems, let alone those of 1980s D.C. The fact that Santiago can afford to live in Fort Washington is made convenient only by his car. In effect, Santiago\u2019s car ownership is tearing down housing barriers.<\/p>\n

In \u201cAn Orange Line Train to Ballston\u201d, a car is featured again as a mode of escapism, but in this case, the escape is unsuccessful. In the story, the main character, Marvella, borrows a car so that she can try to find a man she encounters on the train. She takes her children on an outing to explore the city looking for him. This outing serves as an escape, as Marvella hopes to find a man she romanticizes. Similarly, the children see this event as a departure from normal life. Marvella comments that for the kids \u201cthere was nothing said, except for Marvin\u2019s comment that being so far away from home, they might miss their father when he arrived\u201d (113). For all the characters, the usage of a car disrupts their daily life.<\/p>\n

Taxis also mirror the theme of escape in Jones\u2019 stories and provide similar affordances to Black characters, but as vehicles that are hired temporarily rather than owned, they produce an alienation beyond that of private cars. In the short story \u201cLost in the City,\u201d Lydia attempts to throw off the shackles of her ego by taking a cab. She tells the cab driver, \u201cJust keep on driving and get us lost in the city. I\u2019ll pay you. I have the money\u201d (148). This moment tells us two things: Lydia wants the taxi ride to permit a respite in her life, and she\u00a0has enough money to buy that respite without considering cost. By contrast, in \u201cHis Mother\u2019s House\u201d, when Rickey\u2019s car breaks down before he joins Santiago in business, Sandy has to give him money to take a cab to work, alleviating Rickey\u2019s stress about getting his car fixed (159).<\/p>\n

Therefore, to answer the inciting question of this page, cars and cabs mean a lot to the characters of\u00a0Lost in the City<\/em>. They are status symbols as demonstrated in \u201cHis Mother\u2019s House.\u201d However, they also permit a kind of freedom to characters, allowing them to escape from normal life, or at least to fantasize about doing so. Characters such as Marvella, with her unsuccessful attempts at seeing the dreadlock man, show how fleeting the fantasies derived from cars can be. Even Santiago and Rickey\u2019s prosperity disintegrates by the end of \u201cHis Mother\u2019s House.\u201d Jones is conscious of how cars constructed a level of privilege and afforded access to historically inaccessible places, while still complicating the car\u2019s relationship to his characters.<\/p>\n

Works Cited:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ong, Paul M. \u201cCar Ownership and Welfare-to-Work.\u201d Journal of Policy Analysis and Management<\/i>, vol. 21, no. 2, 2002, pp. 239\u2013252. JSTOR<\/i>, JSTOR.<\/p>\n

Price, Tanya Y. \u201cWhite Public Spaces In Black Places: The Social Reconstruction Of Whiteness In Washington, D.C.\u201d Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development, vol. 27, no. 3\/4, 1998, pp. 301\u2013344. JSTOR.<\/p>\n

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Automobiles play an important background role in many stories of Lost in the City. Cars infiltrate the lives of suburbanites, drug dealers, and the lonely working class. So, what do cars and cabs mean to… <\/p>\n

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