The Educated

Workers in Construction on the Golden Gate Bridge

Both of the protagonists in Kromer’s Waiting for Nothing and Conroy’s The Disinherited, are educated men who find themselves wandering the country—in the first case entirely on the bum, and in the latter in search of work. For both men, it seems that their education should have some benefit, should somehow set them apart and give them an edge or an advantage, but both find out rather quickly that on the road formal education is not the kind that matters. It is not how learned you are that will help you survive, it is only how clever and literally street smart you are.

            After the men that Conroy writes about escape a run in with a policeman thanks to the quick thinking of a circus barker they have encountered, they are faced with this truth, that formal education is meaningless without quick thinking. “The barker reminded us that his nimble wit had saved us all from disaster, and we were not disposed to argue with him. ‘If you can learn to think just a second faster than the other guy, young fellow,’ he said to me, ‘you’re just as good as wearing diamonds right now. If you can’t, all the education this side of hell will never make you anything but a slave to somebody else who can think a little faster than you.’” Conroy’s narrator learns just as quickly that his education is not the type of knowledge he needs in order to find work either. In addition to the street smarts required to survive, his job search requires him to lie, to fake his experience and knowledge of machinery and manual labor in order to get hired and get by.

            Kromer’s protagonist finds the meaningless of his education firsthand, when, after being arrested, he plans out his plea in court, thinking he will impress the judge with his knowledge of the legal system. He sees the whole scenario as it will play out, “‘Your honor,’ I will say very polite, ‘I am guilty, with mitigating circumstances’…‘Explain the mitigating circumstances,’ he will say” (29), and then he imagines he will explain the whole situation, beginning with the national crisis, the necessity of beggary for a bum, and the hardship faced in this life, and this will get through to the judge and sway him. This of course is only wishful thinking however, and the judge passes over him like all the rest, like Conroy’s character learns, it is the quick thinking that counts, and here, our narrator was just too slow, he never even got out his words. Studied and rational thinking will not work here, only quick wit and cunning can pull the bum ahead. The indignation Kromer’s narrator feels at not being able to speak is compounded by the fact that he is educated, and feels that this should set him apart as the creed of America would lead us to believe. “Maybe they can pull this on some of these stiffs with no education, but they can’t pull it on me. I have got a good education. I’ve had good jobs in my time. I had privileges then, and I got privileges now” (29). Only he doesn’t, once on the street as a bum, the stiffs are demoted to a status below that of a human. As they search for a meal and a warm place to sleep, their necessities become more and more survival oriented, they become animalistic in nature, and so society begins to treat them as animals.