Word: rootlessness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...contrast, Paul Hammer, Nailles' fated counterpart, is literally a bastard. "There is some mysterious, genetic principality," Cheever observes, "where the children of anarchy and change are raised." Hammer carries the passport of that principality. Brought up as a foundling, he becomes an unsettling, sinister figure. Rootless and rich, he is odd in some dreadful way that puts him outside humanity. A haunted, solitary drunk, he seems to epitomize the danger and disorder that lurk in self-preoccupation. A pet cat, or familiar spirit, called Schwartz, suggests that Hammer may be some sort of warlock. But in any case, Hammer...
Such a society will not just serve the individual but give him an opportunity to serve. When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless; they no longer feel rootless. Without allegiance and commitment, individual freedom degenerates into a sterile self-preoccupation...
...toddler, Sirhan had witnessed a terrorist bombing, and one of his brothers was killed by a car speeding to outrun hostile gunfire. From modest comfort, the family was reduced to the mindless misery of refugees. It was, Sirhan insisted, a tragedy that had transformed him into a rootless being, even after he reached the U.S. in 1957. "I always felt that I had no country," he declared to the court last week when he took the witness stand in his own defense. "I wanted a place of my own where the people would speak my own language, where they would...
Today, however, progress and urban renewal have doomed this curious form of nonsociety to extinction. From a Depression-era high of more than 1,000,-000, the national census of rootless men (and women) has dropped to a scant 100,000, most of them over 50. On the Bowery, a squalid mile-long stretch on Manhattan's Lower East Side bordered by wine dispensaries, flop houses and rescue missions, annual head counts of the residents have disclosed a steady attrition. Between 1949 and 1967, the population of the Bowery fell from 13,675 to 4,851. Every year...
Twenty per cent of every class are alumni sons. Bender commented that prep schools. Bender commented that this reflected the belief that "in this too rootless world inheritance and nurture mean money." Yet inheri- tance and nurture mean more than money. A qualified applicant doesn't come out of a wallet. A good family, cultural background and an excellent education mean a great deal beyond academic credentials...