(These are every rough thoughts for the paper) The words salvage and savage go hand in hand. depending on which way you look at the words. Salvage can be seen as thrifty or using your resources well instead of wasting them. It often has positive connotations and you were thought highly if you can salvage something. Now the word savage, is though to be rough, grizzly, and aggressive, at times, an overall bad trait, but for the Batiste family, it is one of the ways that they survive and they really can't afford to think of it in a bad light. For the main character Esch, she betrays both attributes interchangeably. She salvages things like relationship with men she sleeps with. and She salvages food out of the pit like the eggs her mother told her to find. Skeetah is both savage and salvageable. He's savage in that he fights his dog, other people at school, his own family for that matter. He hides blades in his teeth and is not afraid of blood or pain; he wants to be like China. He walks around in the nude in front of his family, swims in the pit, sleeps in the shed with his dog some nights, runs with China for hours and trains her to be vicious. He's also salvageable he knew even have medicine so he broke into in a local wealthy white farmer's house to steal cow worming medication for China. He took linoleum flooring from his grandparents house to provide a better floor for the puppies. He broke the puppy's neck knowing that it was suffering already, so he took it from it. He had cuts all over his body after breaking through the glass in the hurricane and yet he still ran out in the rain while it was pouring down looking for China; pain doesn't seem to bother him.
How do you think the act of salvaging is tied in with the concept of love in the family? I would move to say that the act of salvaging takes on a particularly important metaphorical position in the story because of the poverty the family lives in, but it makes me wonder how the family dynamic would change were they slightly more wealthy. A part of me feels like the salvaging was out of necessity, but without it as an act, there is very little the family do to care for one another. Without the necessity of attainment, then, do you think the family would appear in any way loving? Were they wealthy, would they care for one another in the same way or is it simply them caring for one another because of it's necessity?
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