Russell Baker's "Growing Up"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that Russell Baker's memoir "Growing Up" begins with his mother's deteriorating health in old age and then flashes back to the times when he was growing up with a widowed, strong-willed mother and a little sister, all struggling to survive during the Great Depression. The author points out that Baker details the strong familial love he grew up with as everyone in the country scrambled to make ends meet and how his family first lived in a rural area in Virginia, then Bellville, New Jersey and later in Baltimore, Maryland. The paper reveals that not until his mother remarried was he able to return to the happiness that large rooms and green vistas seemed to grant him.

From the Paper:

"Luckily, Baker's uncle moved all of them out to Belleville, New Jersey, and out of the urban grit that so characterized Newark. Belleville was a town of "big grassy lawns and streets canopied with trees" (90). Here, his mother focused her considerable energies on giving her son the best education possibly, making him ahead in school and giving him straight A's. It was also here that he met a group of friends, learned roller-skating and took banjo lessons. But, sadly, his time in Belleville came to an end when his mother moved them all to Baltimore to fund his uncle's lumber company, the lumber company that quickly went out of business."

More papers on Russell Baker's "Growing Up":

• Book Review # 123101 : "'Growing Up' and Wartime"
• Analytical Essay # 11545 : "Growing Up" by Russell Baker"
• Book Review # 125276 : "Growing Up In Mississippi"

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