By: Todd Long
Submitted: 2010-06-14 23:10:35 | Word Count: 754
In this paper I am going to analyze the results of the interview I carried on William Barton, a 68 year old September 11 survivor. I will seek to examine how historical experiences have influenced his current behavior and interaction with others. Burton is a divorcee who lives in North Carolina with one of his two children who is married. He divorced his wife in 2003 over what his wife described as irreconcilable differences and partly because of his excessive drunkenness that had become characteristic of him since the 9-11 tragedy. I will also seek to analyze his life using life course perspective theory in order to investigate weather his past experiences have had any significant influence in his current life. The cohort generation emerges out as an important theme from my short discussion with him.
Life course perspective is a theory which examines how ones historical experiences, transitions in one life, and social change influences ones entire life (Hutchinson 20). She argues that it is important to try to understand ones behavior by studying the changes that have occurred at different stages of hi life. Oral history is ones account of significant events, life experiences, and life transitions as narrated through the word of mouth. Life is made up of a sequence of chronological events each of which tends to have a significant effect on ones life as noted in the interview with Barton.
William Barton is a 68 year old octogenarian nursing nagging spinal injuries that he sustained in the 9-11 tragedy. Since his divorce with his wife, life has taken a dramatic turn and as a result he drifted off from casual to heavy drinking. His son Derrick who is married looks after and lives with him while his daughter lives with her husband in Delaware where they work. William was a hard working man with a very stable family and a well paying career as an accountant until the tragedy claimed his job and the life of one of his son who was visiting him in his office. He survived with a spinal injury that rendered him unfit for any other job.
This ideal combined with circumstances that followed him after were devastating to him despite frequent counseling efforts that desperately failed. The death of his favorite son Michael was particularly devastating to him and the family. To date he remembers the events of the tragic bombing with vivid account and swears that given a chance he would join the US army at least to revenge the death of his son against the terrorists. He seems to have lost confidence with life and developed a habit of outburst which according to him his wife could not condone. Since then he has taken to heavy drinking nearly exhausting his savings which he seems intent to.
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William happened to live a block away from my uncles house in North Carolina. It was during one of my many visits that I was introduced to him by my uncle. Due to the prior introduction I did not have difficulty interviewing him at his house. The rapport enabled me to carry out a forty five minutes oral interview before he excused himself for a drink with his friends at a local joint where they regularly met with his childhood friends. Due to the nature of our relationship, I did not take any notes nor did I tape the discussion since I felt that would lead to suspicion hence withholding some crucial information. I also probed about the Vietnam War which he had informed me that his father was killed in combat after which his mother remarried an event that severed the relationship following their disapproval of the man.
From the case study interview, it emerged that familial mode of production played a huge role in shaping the life of William. According to Leinbach & Casino (1) the study of the mode of production is important in generation of a deeper understanding of economic survival and the social economic structures of the households. The loss of his father for instance had catastrophic effect on his life and his family. His father had just taken a mortgage which he was servicing and a result of the death they were kicked out of the house and the house repossessed. By then, Barton was still in college and only his mother was working as a lowly paid sales woman in a pharmaceutical company which the family supplemented with sale of doughnuts after work.
