69 Cents Notes Short Story Notes PDF

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Some notes on the story 69 cents...

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What is the setting/settings? - Florida, where the speaker’s family and another family are taking a vacation to an Orlando timeshare, in which they also got free tickets to Disney - A hotel in Miami Beach, which were ugly and decrepit, crawling with huge roaches - After decamping the Miami hotel, they stayed at a motel in Fort Lauderdale run by a Yugislav woman - On their drive back to New York, they stop by a McDonalds Who is the speaker? - Speaker seems to be the author: Gary Shteyngart - He is 14 years old in the story - He seems to be a Russian that immigrated to America - Has 3 motivations: Go to florida, have a American girlfriend, and eat all his meals at McDonalds - He was taken aback when he reached Miami Beach, calling it his “real naturalization ceremony” - He “wanted all of it”:the palm trees, the yachts bobbing beside the hard-currency mansions, the concrete-and-glass condominiums preening at their own reflections in the azure pool water below, the implicit availability of relations with amoral women - Is very insecure about his accent to the point where he rehearsed his “Oh, hi there,” but still couldn’t talk to any of the “baking midwestern girls”at - The vacation was not a pleasant experience for him - He wants to fully embrace American culture, eating American foods and wanting to live an American lifestyle, to the point of even rejecting some parts of his culture Other Characters in the story? - The speaker’s family, whose father is a mechanical engineer, that all immigrated from Leningrad - Speaker’s family think that eating McDonalds is for the wealthy and extravagant - They wondered why their son was sitting away from them, hungry and alone - They don’t like to spend money as they live in a state of fear that something will happen that will cause them to lose their jobs - Another Russian family that accompanied the speaker's family to Florida - He describes them as very “ample” - Packed a Russian meal to eat at a Southern Geoergian McDonalds - The Daughter - Same age as the speaker - Was also embarrassed when her family was eating a Russian salad at a McDonalds, but unlike the speaker, she was a lot more calm and collected in that situation, choosing to eat the beet salad instead of rebelling like the speaker Imagery - Use vivid details where you want the reader to focus on in the story...