I prefer chocolate, but...
In class the other day, we had discussed Jefferson’s
wish for his final meal:
I want me a whole gallona ice
cream," he said, still looking out the window. I saw a slight smile come
on his face, and it was not a bitter smile. Not bitter at all. "A whole
gallona vanilla ice cream. Eat it with a pot spoon. My last supper. A whole
gallona ice cream.
A whole gallona ice cream. There’s
something undeniably human about
that. When you think about it, ice cream only exists in human society. You’re
not going to find a hot fudge sundae when you take a hike into the woods or go
spelunking in a cave. If you did happen to come across a pint of Belgian Chocolate
Haagen-Dazs, it definitely didn’t come there naturally. Just like money, ice
cream doesn’t grow on trees. If you find a place where it is, please share your
location with me.
Jefferson asking for a “whole gallona
ice cream” was a pretty huge step in his journey as a hero for the community. I
mean sure, eating an entire gallon of vanilla ice cream with a pot spoon is
pretty childish, has no real nutritional value, and is terrible for your health.
But we have to cut Jefferson some slack on his choice for his final meal; it’s
not like Jefferson cares that he’ll gain a few pounds and become a bit
chubbier. It’s not like he’ll be alive long enough to face any of the long-term
consequences that scarfing down a gallon of vanilla ice cream would cause.
On the contrary, Jefferson wanting a
gallon of vanilla ice cream is very positive. It accomplishes the goals of
showing us that Jefferson finally cares about food after having scoffed at any
kind of food offered by anyone before. It also shows us that he still has a human
side buried underneath his façade of being a hog. So yah, I may personally
prefer chocolate ice cream over vanilla, but ice cream is ice cream, nonetheless.
Ice cream is more than just a sweet mixture of dairy products, sugar, fat, stabilizers,
and flavorings in this book. It’s also a symbol for food, humanity, and human
desires. It shows us that Jefferson isn’t a hog and is a human with human desires
that hogs wouldn’t have.
Another thing that the ice cream represents is essentially a "checkpoint" for Grant as he works to make Jefferson a man. He started out as calling himself a hog, asking for corn and eating without hands. Now, he's progressed to the stage of a child, saying that he wants to eat a gallon of ice cream with a pot spoon. Finally, we saw in last night's reading that instead of ice cream, Jefferson as a man asks for his Nanan's cooking as his last meal, and eats it like a normal person. Jefferson has progressed from a hog to child to man through the ways he eats and what he wants to eat.
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