In Gloria Naylor's Linden Hills, the vignette of Ruth and Norman's lives on Wayne Avenue stands in stark contrast to the stories of residents living in the adjacent, wealthier Linden Hills neighborhood. Naylor uses this couple to illustrate that, despite their crippling poverty, Ruth and Norman make up one of the few families in the book who have real goals and dreams. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay At first glance, the Anderson couple seems less than impressive; upon the reader's first sighting of Ruth, Ruth is described as "a young woman pressed against [Norman's] arm, her body turned slightly toward his for warmth because the thin beige coat offered her little" (31) . We quickly realize that this is not a financially well-off family. Later this point is underlined when we witness the couple entertaining Willie and Lester - rare guests - using their three precious Styrofoam cups, plastic spoons and paper napkins. Ruth and Norman proceed through an almost ridiculous ceremony in which they arrange the inexpensive utensils and pour the coffee. Content with what they have, the couple look “around their apartment as if the warm, fresh air filling the empty rooms were all that mattered” (33). Yet, what these two people lack in financial resources seems to be more than made up for by a powerful bond that not even the greatest hardships can dissolve. Naylor introduces us to the Andersons' home by stating that “it was difficult to notice what wasn't in the Andersons' apartment because it seemed like so much care had been put into what was there” (33). You can sense that this apartment, although made up of only three rooms and located in a dilapidated building, is truly a house in itself. Each of the few objects in this apartment seems to have its own intrinsic value (in addition to its material meaning), playing a necessary role in the integrity of the house. This attribute may be contrasted with Ruth's friend Laurel Dumont's luxurious twelve-room stone Tudor at 722 Seventh Crescent Drive in Linden Hills. This impressive dream villa is equipped with everything you could want in a home: four bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, a plunge pool and an acoustically perfect music room. Nonetheless, the reader quickly realizes that the Dumonts' lavish material quarters only detract from their marriage: the music room is conveniently designed to have room for only a single lounge chair, and the deep swimming pool is hostile to children who do not they will ever have, the untimely murderer of their mother. The sad fact remains that “Laurel's pool and music room hadn't turned 722 into a home; they just gave her an excuse to go back there” (233). Ruth and Norman, like any other couple, definitely have their problems. Unlike many Linden Hills couples, however, they are not overwhelmed by the crisis, ultimately guided by their devotion to each other. Although Norman is, to the average passerby, an ideal husband, one who gives Ruth every paycheck and dotes on her, the reader discovers that he is afflicted every twenty-one months by a disturbing psychological disorder: the "pinks." With the onset of this characteristic disease, Norman believes that the skin on his body is literally being eaten by pinks; he then desperately attempts to rid his body of the horrible parasite using every means available, from teeth and nails to "jagged sections of plates and glasses, wire hangers, curtain rods, splinters of wood" (34). In this senseless frenzy, Norman wreaks havochis home, wiping out the possessions he and his wife had so carefully amassed over the preceding months. At one point Ruth is ready to leave Norman, tired of the cycle of destruction and disappointment and plagued by inflamed ovaries that can't be cured because there's no money. Although Norman then goes into a real pink attack. He struggles to maintain control to get aspirin and water for his wife when she collapses from the pain in her side. At the height of a nervous breakdown, Norman still feels that Ruth needs him and is willing to sacrifice himself (he can see the pink slime digesting her body before his eyes) for her well-being. In turn, Ruth sees that he is about to collapse and ultimately urges him to fight the pinks, taking the final step of accepting this disorder as part of her husband. Norman later evaluates and eloquently explains that “love rules in this house” (38). Through love, Ruth embodies the literal meaning of her name: compassion and mercy towards the man with whom she has pledged to spend the rest of her life in sickness and in health. Once past a traumatic calamity such as the Pinks, one would expect relationships to thrive in the face of minor conflicts. Unfortunately, this assumption turns out to be tragically wrong when applied to many Linden Hills couples. A prime example is the Dumont couple, whose abundance of material wealth only contributes to their scarcity of true love. One telling and haunting image illustrates their home literally tearing them apart: in the ordinary act of climbing the stairs, "slowly, deceptively, the steps tilted until the couple's fingertips could barely meet through the abyss" (232). Likewise, material concerns end up shattering the relationship between Winston Alcott and his true love David. Winston ultimately chooses to leave David behind and marry a woman, giving in to his father's pressure to conform and bury his true self. For his efforts, Winston receives the reward of an immaculate bride, along with a residential upgrade package bestowed by Luther Nedeed himself. The high price of this gain in social status, however, is the abandonment of his soulmate and the final rejection of his true identity. Luther Nedeed, the driving force behind the perpetuation of Linden Hills (ironically a place where families should reside and thrive), embodies the worst of relationships. Marriage for him and his predecessors had the sole meaning of producing an exact copy, a replica of Luther Nedeed, to pick up where the previous one leaves off. The Nedeed wives are, for the most part, chosen for their lighter skin color, almost as if they were an exotic prize to be shown off alongside the rest of Linden Hills. Even an intimate place like the marriage bed is desecrated and reduced to a methodical and perversely calculated means for the selfish purpose of producing another Luther. And having served their sole purpose as vessels for the next Luther, these women are then emotionally neglected and left to drag out the rest of their days alone, scorned by both husband and son. It's clear that the couple who live in the decrepit building on humble Wayne Avenue are far richer emotionally than many of their peers who live far more comfortably in Linden Hills. In their obsessive need to acquire material glory, it seems that the inhabitants of Linden Hills are “devoured by their own impulses” not even leaving “enough humanity…to fill the rooms of a real home” (18). These “drives” are, at a basic level, fueled by Nedeed's original dream of taking revenge on white people, exacting revenge on them for despising and doubting the potential of.