Dark Shadows Red Bayou Book

I read this book as part of an English course I had taken the Spring of last year on Protest Literature. What really made the novel appealing to me was Chip Samuels love for his son and explaining to him his reasons for doing what he did. I compared their relationship much to that of my own with my Dad, who I rarely saw as a kid. I did admire Chip for his belief that the beachfront belongs to all, not just the wealthy. Also, his practice of neutrality in not taking stands on either side. At its heart, this is a novel filled with imagery. The characters are used as televisual images in stories you would see on television. The images filmed are used as incriminating. Chip and Wendy walking along the beach together, Sukey and Chip's interactions and when he teaches Hank how to read (referencing psychological and literary visual representations). This includes descriptions of the explosions themselves and how they should look. There is a moral emptiness of the spectacle Chip Samuels makes more tangible, so he can mold it. it is based in personality with a connected element in the spectacle itself. There are no right or wrong non-emotional reasons behind the bombings. To Chip it is a vendetta for nature, how beaches should look. The bombings bring out the houses "personalities" and stories once they have been blown up. This raises the question: Is the house morally empty? All the images are connected and constructed. Television in the novel is also a spectacle and does not define a person as well as morally empty. Chip rebels against that which I admired to a degree. The beach houses are spectacles too. They just do not belong. That is why Chip destroys them. He pushes things normal people cannot get done. Even his lawyers are creative legislature spectacle too. On page 40 for instance, there is a very good grasp on the morality of violence. The moral sense that drives Chip on, the clash between idea and the instance. He only cares about what is morally fair. Broken families and the destruction of manifestation of the character also make up a great deal of this novel. Hank's character I related with quite a bit, primarily with having an absent father who was still loved by him. Similar to Hank, I read a lot during my Summer vacations. Sukey also shares the emotional and physical gap when her father left. Her satirical style was what struck most to me about her character. She and Chip had a tight connection and complemented each other well I thought. Giampicolo was a Femme Fatale. The relationship between her and Chip was one fated to hit the rocks in my opinion. Anais was in some respects similar to Giampicolo. I did not like it when she left who she was to embrace an Anarchist self, plus leaving her son and causing Hank to leave his father. Yet she does have her good moments where she cares about Hank's actions and starts taking her duty as a Mother seriously. This story is about a man who does not consider the moral repercussions of what he is doing. He has a lack of remorse, only he is portrayed as that in the media publicly. No one in the book really owns anything, only what they have within themselves. Ownership of one self conflicts with ownership images of the self play a key part in the story. While this is a novel filled with anarchy, I find myself relating to a few of the characters, even Chip somewhat and asked myself "What separates acting for what is right from acting for your own self interests?"