The White Boy Shuffle ends with
Gunnar giving his daughter Naomi a bath and telling her the Kaufman history.
I’m not sure how I expected The White Boy Shuffle to end, but this
definitely wasn’t it. One of the things that surprised me is that Gunnar is
telling Naomi the Kaufman history at all. He proudly tells his family history
in his Santa Monica elementary school, but later seems ashamed and disdainful
of his ancestors. At the beginning of chapter one, he describes himself as
“Preordained by a set of weak-kneed DNA to shuffle in the footsteps of a long
cowardly queue of coons, Uncle Toms, and faithful boogedy-boogedy retainers” (Beatty
5). Gunnar continues to distance himself from “Kaufmanism” as he grows up,
developing his own identity in Hillside as a poet, basketball star, Gun Totin’
Hooligan, and member and eventual leader of the African American community. Until
the end of the book, I thought that Gunnar’s last connection to his Kaufman
history had been severed on the day of the Rodney King verdict when while looting
with Scoby and Psycho Loco, he is caught by the police and beaten by his
father, who tells him “You are not a Kaufman. I refuse to let you embarrass me”
(137).
Even more surprising, however, was that he begins the story with
his father, Rölf Kaufman. Even as a child proud of his family history, Gunnar
never mentioned his father. In his own words, “The schoolyard chronicles never
included my father’s misdeeds. I could distance myself from the fuckups of the
previous generations, but his weakness shadowed my shame from sun to sun. His
history was my history” (Beatty 21).
So what changed? I think that a large part of it is that Rölf joins
the movement influenced by Gunnar and commits suicide, leaving a poem.
I
begin with the end—Rölf Kaufman, her grandfather, my dad, who died last week.
The only officer in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department to commit
suicide by eating his gun, choking on the firing pin and leaving the following
poem in his locker.
Like
the good Reverend King
I too “have a dream”
but when I wake up
I forget it and
remember I’m running late for work. (Beatty 226)
I too “have a dream”
but when I wake up
I forget it and
remember I’m running late for work. (Beatty 226)
I definitely
don’t think that Gunnar forgives his father, but maybe his death and poem show Gunnar
a side of Rölf he didn’t know was there. As we see in the poem, Rölf too had
dreams that he was never able to realize. However, unlike Gunnar who is “abandoning
this sinking ship America” (Beatty 225), Rölf allowed society to turn him into
just another cog in the machine.
These are also the final words in the book, giving them additional
significance. I think Beatty chooses to end the novel with Rölf’s suicide
because it drives home yet again how deeply engrained racism is although the novel
takes place after the Civil Rights Movement. Even Rölf, the embodiment of
Kaufmanism and a police officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, is driven
to suicide just like the thousands who have either already mailed Gunnar their
poems and committed suicide or are pouring into Hillside.
Yeah and it's really interesting to see an example of when Rolf Kaufman gets carried away by society when he beats his own son, when he's stealing the safe. Rolf could have easily seen that this was part of the L.A Riots a movement which expresses how the mistreatment of blacks from L.A cops has become extremely serious. But instead of seeing the larger theme and recognizing that Rolf himself is getting in the way of his own dreams, he beats his son and continues to battle against what he's fighting for.
ReplyDeleteIt is kind of ironic how the book ends with Gunnar telling his daughter the family history, when she will never grow up to understand it and pass it on. Ending the book like this is really unsettling when you think about it because Gunnar is just going on with his life like he isn't going to commit a mass suicide in the near future.
ReplyDeleteI think the reason Rolf may have been driven to suicide was because he too was tired of the rampant racism he faced. He laughed when he was hit on the back, perhaps because the jokes weren't funny but because it was what he was expected to do. Maybe he was tired of having to put up with this for the sake of his job, and Gunnar realized that and forgave him.
ReplyDeleteIt definitely seems like an ironic ending to have Gunnar sharing the family history with his daughter, and it's easy to overlook this detail with so much else in the air at the end. It's possible, of course, to reframe this same narrative as a chronicle of all his family has had to endure--to see all these so-called Uncle Toms as doing what they feel they have to do to survive in this racially obsessed wilderness of North America. And it's also possible to frame the narrative in terms of Gunnar representing a decisive break with this past--to show how he's "rolled down the hill" from his father's tree.
ReplyDeleteBut you make a good point about how Rolf's recent suicide might be reflected here: like the other apparently "happy" and "successful" people who respond to Gunnar's call for death poems, we can see Rolf in a new light, confined by and aware of the lack of freedom his "Kaufmanism" with the LAPD entails--his "dreams" are interrupted by the need to hurry to work, and we know that "work" for him doesn't just entail sketching suspects and doing police work. It entails "taking a joke," every day--which we see tracing all the way back to his "assimilation" back in Jim Crow Mississippi. The end of this novel portrays lots of seemingly contented people ripping off the "mask" and giving voice to their deep-seated frustrations with American racism.
It seems like Rolf's final words were representative of the non-Gunnar's of America. The side of black America that was merely trying to get by. Even if they did have revolutionary ideas, even if they recognized the wrongs that existed, their priority was merely surviing.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing I thought about this passage was how the chasm between Rolf and Gunnar bridges somewhat, as Rolf wrote a poem for a suicide letter (something gravely consequential) and Gunnar was a poet. As you pointed out, chapter one showed us a huge emotional distance between Gunnar and Rolf brought forth by how closely they existed together; Rolf's "history was [Gunnar's] history", like you quoted. What it means that White Boy Shuffle ends with focus on the character that Gunnar wanted to brush over back in elementary school, I don't know exactly. I wonder if there's some implication that Gunnar, as a kid, used to think his father was completely spineless, but after growing up understands the weight crushing down on his father's spine as something maybe out of his control. Who knows?
ReplyDelete