A Fictional Reality : Friendly Fire

The story, Friendly Fire is a piece of fiction that describes the life of two hard working women in New York. Although it is a made up story with fictional characters and situations, it portrays the reality of many Americans.

Pam and Shelley are cleaning ladies that are coworkers and go out one night to clean a warehouse. They are separated the whole time they are doing their job, but in a way they are connected. As each one of them is working, their minds are concentrated more on their personal problems than on the job they are elaborating. These women are full of troubles and on top of that they are responsible for sustaining their homes. The tone of this story reminds me of the movie, Maid in Manhattan. This story takes place in a hotel in New York, and the characters are the cleaning ladies, which are all independent women that have to take care of their families. This seems to occur a lot, not only in the United States, but everywhere else in the world. The author is sort of victimizing women in this story, showing them as the beings who are suffering the most. It is probable that this piece has as a target the sexism in lower classes, but maybe it just wants to show the reality of these people.

As I read through the story, I saw that there are certain topics that are recurrent not only in the newspapers but in US literature as well. A perfect example of this is the war in Irak, and the soldiers that are the always pictured as the victims of the situation. The problem with this, is that in the US, they have the choice of choosing if they want to join the army or not. The approach of the author in this story is based on the pressure that the families and society have over these young people, basically because of the economic advantages that are store for them. In Friendly Fire, there is a lot of pressure from part of the father towards the son to join the military,” “They’ll soon have him sorted out,” she said, but actually she’d been so angry that she couldn’t forgive him—or anyone else, either. She’d blamed Roy for reading war books and leaving them lying round the house. Or it was Anthony’s girlfriend’s fault: Leanne only wanted the money for those two kids who weren’t Anthony’s. She didn’t care what he had to do to get it. ..He’s going to make a proper career for himself,” Roy had said. “You ought to be proud of him, working so hard to pass his qualifications.”(Hadley)

Another topic that is very recurrent is teen age pregnancy. Lately there has been a lot of propaganda against this situation, due to the fact that it has increased so much during the last years. In this story the daughter of one of the main characters has a baby at seventeen and this creates a lot of tension in the mother-daughter relationship. Movies like Juno and Knocked up, show how important teen age pregnancy has become, and they are similar to this story because they address the same topic to give the message to the readers. “You’re such an ungrateful cow, Kerry had said cheerfully. “Just wait and see.” Roy hadn’t seemed to mind the sight of his seventeen-year-old daughter with her pregnant belly swollen out like a football. Like a bomb, Kerry put it...She was so clever at school. I wanted her to do something better,” Shelley had said. “Not just what the rest of them around here do—shelling out more kids.”(Hadley)

Overall, I concluded that this fictional story was really an attempt to create a crude image of reality by hiding a very general situation with names and places that do not exist.