If you were Flossy Gathers' parents would you have given her insurance or dresses? Why?
shareI think I would have given Flossy the dresses because once she is dead she wouldn't care if she was in Potter's Field but the dresses made her happy when she was alive and I think that is important.
-Shannon
Life is too short not to have a pretty dress. Flossy's mom did the right thing. I think about that often with my own kids.
shareI too would go with the dresses. All they could give to the little girl at that point was something that would make her smile and look pretty.The family is poor and knows it. what good was a plot going to do for them if they dont have their daughter anymore? it's all about what they could do at that time for her. And they did. They lived in the moment.
Funny, I was just thinkin' this question myself a couple days ago. I too would have done th dresses instead of just some plot of earth to throw her shell of a body. Life to the living.
shareThat is one of the most beautiful scenes in the film and one of the most telling about all the characters. Johnny understood the value of life and happiness (even if he was unable to attain it for his family), and from the look in Katie's eyes as he watched Johnny and Flossie talking, you know somewhere deep inside her that she knows it's true.
The following lines were absolutely gut-wrenching for me:
Johnny: It was nice that her Mama got her all those pretty dresses.
Katie: Only now the poor thing will have to lie in Potter's Field.
Johnny: But at least she had the dresses!
Magic. Pure and simple. Jimmy and Dorothy McGuire were amazing actors.
<<<<The following lines were absolutely gut-wrenching for me:
Johnny: It was nice that her Mama got her all those pretty dresses.
Katie: Only now the poor thing will have to lie in Potter's Field.
Johnny: But at least she had the dresses! >>>>
His "Annie Laurie" scene later is really touching.
Yes, it's a great scene, one that's not in the book but the perfect addition to show the differences in their personalities.
Her parents could have given her some pretty dresses without spending ALL their money on them. No other kids had dresses like that, so it wasn't a matter of making her presentable. And if you were a parent, would you really want your child to end up in an anonymous mass grave? That's what Potter's Field was. So I'm a compromiser - grave first, luxuries second.
BTW, this is different in the book - it's a sort of amalgam of a brother and sister - the brother was dying slowly of TB, and the sister sewed her own dresses and went out on Saturday night. I think they had a good idea, creating a new character out of that situation to give us this conversation.
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Dresses. It probably made the child happy, even if she was overdressed compared to her economic peers, in the same vein as sending a child with cancer on a dream vacation is today. It may also give an excuse for the parents and others to say how good she looks. How can she die if everyone keeps saying how good she looks?
I believe Francie would feel the same way. She had the intelligence to know her father lived on in her, and in any future children of hers, promising to name a boy child she hoped to have someday after him.
Who would keep the insurance man in business if there was not the social pressure and one-on-one advertising of this guy showing up every week collecting nickels and dimes? And this is going in large tenements where everyone knows your business. It was a way of convincing yourself, and presenting yourself among peers that at least you could afford a "proper" burial.
Even my mother who knows too well the rural poverty of 1930s is absolutely convinced she needs a big send-off and grave marker when she passes, what she feels "everyone else" in her subsidized senior complex is getting. She is greatly disturbed her mother is in an unmarked grave, buried next to her father, who happens to have a stone only due to being drafted and serving in the military. Perhaps she feels I too would be embarrassed if she did not take care to prevent her going into an unmarked grave as her sister has. (I presume the isolated bush near my mother's stone is my aunt. My mother by chance was positioned near her own stone to toss a flower onto her sister's casket as my aunt was lowered into the ground.)
Another of her siblings recently passed (December 2008) and I asked my cousin's wife at the funeral where her father-in-law was going to be buried. It was only then I learned being impoverished in my state does not even get you a burial lot. So my aunt must have done some pre-planning to at least buy her plot.
If anyone should have qualified for a pauper's burial, I would have thought my uncle did as a long-term nursing home resident and recipient of SSI (Title XVI). I am stunned he ended up in an urn. Maybe my mother was onto something with all her funeral pre-planning after all.
§ 2301. Burial responsibility
(a)(1) When a person dies in this state, or a resident of this state dies within the state or elsewhere, and the decedent was a recipient of assistance under Title IV or XVI of the Social Security Act, or nursing home care under Title XIX of the Social Security Act, or assistance under state aid to the aged, blind or disabled, or an honorably discharged veteran of any branch of the U.S. military forces to the extent funds are available and to the extent authorized by department regulations, the decedent's burial shall be arranged and paid for by the department if the decedent was without sufficient known assets to pay for burial. The department shall pay burial expenses when arrangements are made other than by the department to the maximum permitted by its regulations. In any case where other contributions are made these payments shall be deducted from the amount otherwise paid by the department but in no case is the department responsible for any payment when the person arranging the burial selects a funeral the price of which exceeds the department's maximum.