Everybody's Crazy Theme

“A Slice of Life” has a large collection of interesting themes and concepts. Each story carries with it something new and different, and I am going to discuss the ones that I think are most important. The first major theme that I found to be pretty important was in “Everybody’s Crazy.” I would identify the biggest theme as loss of identity, or even loss of sanity. The whole time, Jimmy is going through PTSD, which is extremely common amongst Vietnam Veterans. The theme of losing one’s self is everywhere. You see it in movies, books, etc. Now a days you hear about people going on inner journeys to self discovery, and you can often hear people say things like “I lost myself along the way.” Like I said, I thought this was a very interesting theme,
Pressure is a common theme, especially amongst stories in relation to students, or even athletes. Sometimes, pressure can make or break you. With the pressure to to good, comes with a lot of things. Sometimes those things can be both negative and positive. In Danny’s case, it was not good. Danny was under constant stress of possible failure. The coach, his parents, maybe even the whole town thought of Danny as their hero. Secretly, Danny hated it. Although he was well loved, he still couldn’t stand what pressure came with his status, and in the end, he just ended up taking it. There was one big overall theme that I seemed to notice within the entire group of stories. The topic of racism kept popping up. We see it in “The First,” we see it in “The Heights,” and in “Just Like Television.” The problem of racism subtly appears in many of the stories, and I would like to think that was done purposefully. Overall, there were many themes to be found in this collection of short stories, but in the end they all seem to relate to each other in one way or another. If you think about it, that could be a theme all in itself. Maybe everything happens for a