Epitome of the American Dream

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 5 July 2014.

I wonder if Stan could have been accused of murder in the cement burial of a worker (or someone else--Jimmy Hoffa?).

A line of grates cover the outflow of Savoyard Creek

And the Witkowski name--previously an irreproachable pillar of the community, an epitome of the American Dream--was suffering. This is all during the time of the riots, so it could be suffering for multiple reasons (and I think you've already mentioned that is was, even among the members of the Polish community).

Will always thought his father had achieved definitive success, that his father had paid all the appropriate dues and that his legacy was therefore assured inside the American "covenant."

Maybe Stan was killed before a verdict was pronounced.

But this would definitely set Will in motion, attempting to achieve the decisive ascendency owed his family by the American Dream--leveraging everything, sacrificing everything, risking everything. He is kind of like "Happy" at the end of Death of a Salesman speaking of his father: "He had a good dream. It's the only dream you can have--to come out the number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I'm gonna win it for him."

Depending on the circumstances surrounding the murder and the victim, I like Stan ending up in the Savoyard Creek, which was buried as a sewer in 1836, became Black Bottom, and then was partially paved over by I-375. I'm sure there is still a canal in Detroit's sewer system that follows its flow. These primordial rivers persist despite the concrete.

Here's the video about the woman who gives tours of Detroit's buried rivers. Also, check out these pictures of other rivers that have been forced underground due to the dominant concrete.



Pretty spooky!