A Question of Frames

All of this “framing” and “frameless” talk makes me wonder who I would be if my parents weren’t Paul and Cheryl Harbaugh. What if my parents were Scott and Anna and didn’t live in Martinez California with two children Melissa and Ryan? What would my so-called frames consist of? It’s a strange feeling to think of who I could be, what my morals could be and what my goals and outlook on life could be like. It’s a bizarre thought to think about these frames that have brought me up and influenced my development. And just now, after our introduction to Bessie Head’s A Question of Power, do I recognize them and appreciate them.

George Lakoff, a Berkeley professor explains, “Frames are metal structures that shape the way we see the world. As a result, they shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we act.” (Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, pg xv). Erving Goffman author of Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience, points out that nationality, gender, ethnicity, race, class and religion are all frames. We all have frames. We all have experience in life, and we are well aware of how we see the world around us. I believe everyone, no matter if adopted and lacking the knowledge of one’s birthparents and/or place, we are familiar with our self, our goals, our needs, likes and dislikes, etc; we all have frames of reference. Bessie Head, on the other hand has gone through something I can’t relate to in any way, shape, or form and sees herself drowning in an unknown, frameless life.

After being born in a mental hospital, growing up in foster care and never having a sense of home, Bessie Head wrote A Question of Power about a woman Elizabeth, whom went through similar life experiences as Head herself. Elizabeth and Head were both placed in a missionary school at the age of 13 where they were brutally told about their mother and true identity. Years later Elizabeth (and Head) took a one-way exit permit to Botswana where, as readers, we are brought into her frameless life. Bessie Head brings us through a confused, twisted world with her novel that has made a reputation for being one of the most powerful and “authentic” treatments of madness in such form.

Bessie Head explains her feeling of living a frameless life because of not knowing any of her family members. She states, “I have always been just me, with no frames of reference to anything beyond myself.” (Artists of the Floating World, pg 64) To my understanding, her reasoning to a frameless life is caused by being parentless. Yet, when George Lakoff explains this term he talks of “metal structures”, which to me translates to anything from family upbringing to life experiences. So having said that, Head makes me wonder if I just won’t ever feel her pain, maybe because I am white and my parents have always been there for me, and maybe the fact that they have been married for 30 plus years. In terms of Lakoff and his ideas of the topic at hand, I recognize that my experiences have made crucial effects at changing my outlook on life. My parents never put pressure on me to do certain things, or be a certain way. As I was growing up I obtained my own self standards and was highly affect by incidences I went through. But to end my thoughts, I still am left with a lack of knowledge at how Bessie Head has not managed to create her own frames of reference based on her own experiences….