What is AWOL?

America otherwise known as “The Land of the Free and The Home of The Brave,” says we have freedom and equality. To most, this is an extremely positive factor in how they perceive their way of life. While interviewing several people, I have found a general consensus as to what aspects of the American Way of Life (AWOL) are. The points made were that in America, “People have the freedom to work hard and achieve their dreams whatever those may be.” Men like John Fanning (a principle at SOF) and Kate (a producer at the Play Company) agree that values of AWOL are family and making enough money to support themselves and their lives with their families. While everyone I interviewed agreed with this statement, there were many different answers when asked what influenced this way of life and this thinking. An Employee at American Apparel (who appeared to be a Hispanic living in “the ghetto”) had this idea that “The only thing Americans value is money. Nobody can do shit in this country unless their rich. This whole damn country is a fucking hustle. All people want to do is get even because they hold grudges against the minorities. We can’t go to college or get good jobs because the cops are too busy putting our fucking people in jail. And we can’t fucking get jobs so we have to sell drugs in order to get money and then we get fucking thrown in jail because it’s cheaper to do that then send our boys to college.” In the meanwhile Lauren (another producer at The Play Company) suggested that “AWOL is now more than ever based on Materialism, Consumerism, easy answers and easy ways out. Americans are now expected to have their success and dreams handed to them. For example we have easy weight loss programs where you don’t have to do anything, college on the internet, internet dating. No one really has to do anything anymore.” While Lauren has a steady working job where she is, most likely, highly paid and held in high regard for what she does, The employee from American Apparel said she was struggling to put herself through college, to make enough money to support herself, she lives in “the hood” and she isn’t happy with her life. From all of this we can conclude that factors in one’s life such as financial status, social status and living environment. Because Lauren is financially well off and has a good environment, her answers to the question of values and pros and cons were less cynical and angry for lack of a better word. The Employee from American Apparel shared that she was struggling and she wasn’t financially secure and her environment left much to be desired so this influenced her to feel so strongly about this topic. From her cursing and big gestures as she explained her harsh, cynical thoughts about how America is run. Although the employee from American Apparel leads this life, Isa Claudio-Abdul (My mother) led a very similar life and has different thoughts. Isa was born here and lived in Puerto Rico and then moved to “the hood” in the Bronx. She wasn’t financially stable, she had difficult family life and she had to deal with gangs. She expressed that “AWOL is a myth. We as Americans have a right to grow up and be whatever we want. But we as the “super society” know nothing of our culture. We glorify our society and cause immigrants to want to come here to lead a better life and when they get here, the Americans don’t feel like working and they get mad at the immigrants for taking jobs that they didn’t want to do.” Living in Puerto Rico could have possibly shown my mother how America was glorified and how people in Puerto Rico really wanted to be just like America. So because she heard all of these good things about America in Puerto Rico, she could have inferred that other places in the world held America in extremely high regard. In agreement with my mother, Linda (the third producer at The Play Company who also lived in Germany for sometime) spoke about the differences in society. “Europe used to think America was one of the greatest societies, but now they are becoming more and more fed up with us, yet they still are dependent on America. Some Germans admire the fact that in America, you can change your profession based on your dreams. This is extremely difficult in Germany due to finances. Although this is a positive aspect of America, a negative aspect is the fact that in America, politics and religion are mixed more than they should be. Germany is less religious than America and while it is good that we get to express any religion, the Constitution states that church and state should be kept separate and this idea is getting more and more lost.”

Image Links Based on AWOL:

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Living in other countries and states has shown these to women different views of America. They can see how America is glorified and, now that they have lived here for a while, what it actually is. While my mother spoke about ignorance and seemed more cynical towards ideas in America, Linda seemed more undecided because of the fact that she believed that you could only tell what the American way of life was if you compared it to something else. And of course if you compare America to a terrible regime, America will look wonderful. Not only is religion playing a big role in AWOL, but according to John Fanning, “Americans are being force fed a certain way of thinking and feeling about AWOL and being raised to think that they need to be patriotic and pass that down through the generations. The media is feeding people ideas of what AWOL should be and while the ideas like Family are good, they still don’t learn good aspects of America and the mistakes we’ve made. John has led an extremely interesting life, one in which he has seen Europe and the things that go on there and gotten to know what life is about. He explains negative aspects possibly because he knows what other countries think about America and he knows what America is actually like. This possibly makes it easier to see what things are good about American and what things are glorified and what needs to change. In summation, all of these people came from different backgrounds, different social statuses and essentially different AWOLs, but they still have equally strong arguments on what they think AWOL is. From the information compiled I can safely say that there is not one AWOL, but categories of AWOLs those of which are lived by those based on education, life experiences, social status, financial status, media and many other aspects. What one chooses to believe in, change and hold in high regard forms their AWOL. So there really is no one answer to what AWOL is. You just have to observe, take in ideas and except that there may be more than one answer.