White Angel

“It was the sixties—our radios sang out love all day long.”

In the first paragraph, the 1960s emerge as an important context. The decade was a time of great generational tension, change, and optimism; inspired by national movements and the promise of the hippie movement, many young people felt they could change the world. Carlton, inspired by these changes, sees Woodstock as an icon of counterculture. Carlton, too, is a symbol of his time. He’s an experimental visionary who takes risks but also inspires others. The 1960s are a backdrop to the story—now that the narrator is in the future, he can see that many of the era’s promises didn’t play out as expected. Carlton dies, and with him die Bobby’s dreams of Woodstock and a boundless future. The following sentence—“It happened before the city of Cleveland went broke, before its river caught fire” (1)—suggests there was already disaster brewing, even as the radios played love songs.

“I was, thanks to Carlton, the most criminally advanced nine-year-old in my fourth-grade class.”

Carlton is 16 and experimenting with drugs, sex, and alcohol. Bobby is nine years old at the time of the story, but Carlton nevertheless brings him along on his adventures. This sentence demonstrates how Cunningham uses humor to establish character; the phrase “criminally advanced nine-year-old” is absurd, but it demonstrates the dangerous freedom that Carlton wants to instill in his brother.