San Francisco

San Francisco, officially named the City and County of San Francisco, was founded on June 29, 1776. It is the leading cultural and financial center of Northern California and the San Francisco Bay Area. The City had grown rapidly concerning the California Gold Rush of 1849. The increasing population form 1,000 to 25,000 in one year made it into the largest city on the West Coast at the time. 1906 the city was destroyed by the earthquake and fire but it was quickly rebuilt. After the Second World War, the unification of massive immigration, liberalizing attitudes and other factors made San Francisco to a center of liberal activism in the United States.

Nowadays, San Francisco is one of the top tourist destinations in the world. It is the 35th out of the 100 most visited cities worldwide. The city is beloved for its cool summers, fog, steep rolling hills and landmarks including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, Alcatraz Island, its former prison, and its Chinatown. San Francisco is also a primary banking and finance center, and more than 30 international financial institutions are based there.

Chapter 2

The No-Daddy-Blues

This second chapter of the novel “The Pursuit of Happyness” written by Christopher Gardner is about how he had to struggle through difficulties. Chris has to grow up with a gruesome stepfather and his mother is unfit to fight against this sheer brutality. For the first the author describes his familiar situation: Chris has to live in bad conditions. His mother can not help him and his stepfather Freddie is always drunk. He is not able to change this hopeless situation. The author uses often cusses when he talks about Freddie. The young Chris needs a real father and wants to be beloved. Chris has only one possibility to run rings around Freddie because compared with Freddie he has the ability to read and write.

Chris feels alone and Freddie continues beating up his mom. No one helps Chris in this horrible situation not even the police show interest. He begins to hate Freddie and wants to take revenge. Eventually Chris learns by this experience that he never wants to be like Freddie to his children. He wants to be a nice dad and wants to give love to his own kids in the future so that they will have a happy childhood. There is a ray of hope when the family tries to separate from Freddie.  At the end Freddie accomplishes that the whole family has to turn back to Freddie’s house.  The reason for the return among others is that Chris’s mother is financial dependent.

Due to the situation Chris made mistakes. One time he stole and was caught. Chris has to live constantly in injustice.  In addiction he tries early to become self-employed. He gains money with the so called ‘junking’.  There are some older teenagers who help him and so he does not need to take the money from his mother.

Chris’s rage against Freddie grows faster and faster but on the other hand he knows that it would be too dangerous to take action. Furthermore Chris can not stop searching for his fatherly origin.

Concluding the author describes in this chapter how he learns to handle the situation and his mother looms large at that point.