Pilate's Death

The moment that surprised me most in Song of Solomon was Pilate’s death. How could Pilate--the most powerful character in the novel, who “piloted” the story, saved Milkman on multiple occasions, and taught him introspection and empathy--die? But the more I reflected on the ending of the novel, the more fitting her death seemed, even if it wasn’t what I had wanted to happen.

In Pilate’s death, her life in many ways comes full circle. She has returned to her family’s place of origin and finally buried the bones of her father, which she had carried with her for decades. Milkman also sings to her as she dies: “Sugargirl don’t leave me here/ Cotton balls to choke me/ Sugargirl don’t leave me here/ Buckra’s arms to yoke me” in an inversion of the opening scene, where her own version of the same song heralds his birth. Pilate’s connection to supernaturality and flight persists even in death. When Milkman sets her body down, a bird swoops down and carries off the earring containing her name that she had worn since her father’s death. Birds are not only symbols of freedom and flight, but are often seen as bridging the human and spiritual worlds much like Pilate did.

Pilate’s death signals the completion of Milkman’s coming of age. She was portrayed throughout the novel as powerful and strong, but compassionate and ultimately a force of good. When Milkman stands back up after her death, he takes on her traits of strength, courage, and empathy and launches himself into the air without a thought as to his own safety. This moment also shows his connection to his family, something Pilate felt deeply, and his taking a decisive course of action for one of the first times in the novel. Also showing the completion of his coming of age is how Guitar refers to him in this scene. Where as Guitar had previously abbreviated “Milkman” to “Milk”, using the childish part of the nickname and dropping the part that implied adulthood and maturity, he calls Milkman “my man” in this scene, dropping the “milk” and using only the second half.

Pilate also changes the way Milkman perceives the notion of flight. The men in the book who fly (Solomon, Macon I, Milkman, Robert Smith, etc.) are portrayed ambiguously. Their flights are dramatic, almost mythical, and take them physically into the air, but at the same time cause incalculable damage to those left behind. In contrast, Pilate’s last words express her compassion, and sorrow that she hadn’t “knowed more people. I would of loved ‘em all. If I’d a knowed more, I would a loved more”. Milkman realizes here that there is more to flight than the physical state that had amazed him as a child.“Now [Milkman] knew why he loved [Pilate] so.Without ever leaving the ground, she could fly.” The defining moment of Milkman’s childhood was when he realized he could not fly, and so it’s only fitting that the moment he becomes an adult is when he realizes there are many forms flight can take.

Milkman’s reaction to Pilate’s death is also reflected in Morrison’s life. In the foreword to Song of Solomon, she writes about her father, and her reaction to his death:

He had a flattering view of me as someone interesting, capable, witty, smart, high-spirited. I did not share that view of myself, and wondered why he held it. But it was the death of that girl--the one who lived in his head--that I mourned when he died. Even more than I mourned him, I suffered the loss of the person he thought I was. (xiii)

Pilate plays the role of a mother-figure in Milkman’s life, and his reaction to her death could be read as the same as Morrison’s reaction to her father’s. Pilate saw in Milkman what he did not see in himself: someone whose life was worth saving on multiple occasions, someone worth lying for and being humiliated for, someone worth loving despite his faults. And through observing this relationship and Pilate’s unconditional love, Milkman began to learn introspection and empathy (think of the scene in the bathtub). When Pilate died, he, like Morrison, lost not only a loved one but a more positive picture of himself and who he could be. It could be argued that much like how Morrison’s father became her muse while writing Song of Solomon, Pilate is Milkman’s inspiration when he launches himself off the cliff and comes to the realization that “if you surrendered to the air, you could ride it”.

Through the Looking Glass

Throughout the semester, we have seen authors use mirrors to represent a character’s sense of self, or to provide additional insight into their personality. Clarissa Dalloway ponders the various aspects of her identity and draws them together into a coherent self in front of a mirror. Jake reflects on his injury while standing in front of a looking glass. When Meursault looks into a mirror, he sees his surroundings but not his reflection. The image of a looking glass is repeated many times throughout Wide Sargasso Sea, and is often used to show tensions within a character.

Antoinette mentions twice that at Coulibri, her mother still “planned and hoped--perhaps she had to hope every time she passed a looking glass”. This portrait of Annette as someone with hopes and plans is not one that we see anywhere else. In the other descriptions of her, she is withdrawn from the world, walking along the glacis talking to herself and rejecting all attempts by Antoinette to reach out to her. Perhaps this line is meant to show that Annette’s mental state was not inevitable or caused by something innate to her personality, but rather brought on by external factors, and that her inner self is still very much human and capable of human emotions. This theme is one that continues to be important throughout the novel.

We also catch a glimpse of the conflict in Rochester’s personality through how he sees himself in a mirror directly after Antoinette gives him the love potion. “I got out of bed without looking at her, staggered into my dressing-room and saw myself in the glass. I turned away at once. I could not vomit. I only retched painfully.” Rochester had been trying to distance himself from Antoinette, having seen her as repulsive and destined for insanity since hearing from Daniel Cosway. However, when she explained her childhood and feelings to him, he started to relent, regretting how he had been treating her and even saying in retrospect that she would not have needed to use the love potion on him. Perhaps his inability to look for long in the mirror symbolizes the conflict between his actions and morals, and how although he had briefly felt more sympathetic towards Antoinette, he is not prepared for the soul-searching and inner strength it would take to reverse his course of action.

Of course, the character that Rhys reveals the most about through this device is Antoinette. Looking glasses are mentioned in connection to her six times over the course of the novel. The first is during the burning of Coulibri when Antoinette runs from her family to Tia, who throws a rock at her. “We stared at each other, blood on my face, tears on hers. It was as if I saw myself. Like in a looking-glass.” Antoinette is rejecting her Cosway identity and running into the mob, but they too do not accept her. Antoinette and Tia see each other as if the other was their own reflection, but there is at the same time a solid and impenetrable barrier between them.

The second time Antoinette talks about seeing herself in a looking glass is when she tells Rochester a story of a previous night at Granbois. Antoinette awoke in the middle of the night to see two gigantic rats in her room. “I could see myself in the looking-glass on the other side of the room, in my white chemise with a frill round the neck, staring at those rats and the rats quite still, staring at me”. This might be a little bit of a stretch, but I think Antoinette catches a glimpse of the future when she looks into the looking glass here. Her white chemise that she sees in the mirror symbolizes her current state of innocence, but the two rats that she is also watching represent her future self and Rochester. Rats are often symbols of betrayal and untrustworthiness, and this could be foreshadowing how their betrayals of each other will destroy Antoinette’s innocence and sense of self.

Twice in Part II, Rochester mentions Antoinette “smiling at herself in her looking-glass”. The first is shortly after they arrive at Granbois, and the second is as they are leaving, when he says that she will never “smile at herself in that damnable looking-glass” again. I think for Rochester, Antoinette’s reflection, like her name, is very much tied to her sense of self. At first when he accepts Antoinette, he finds these things charming. Later, however, he becomes determined to strip her personality and these representations of it away from her. Maybe he even sees her smile as another version of how everyone he encounters seems to be laughing at him. His use of the word “damnable” to describe the mirror at the end of Part II reflects this new violence towards Antoinette, and there is no mirror in the attic room in England where she goes by Bertha Mason.

For Antoinette as well, her reflection in a looking-glass is closely tied to sense of self. At the end of the novel, when she is considered mad by all those around her, she says “names matter, like when he wouldn’t call me Antoinette, and I saw Antoinette drifting out the window with her scents, her pretty clothes and her looking-glass. There is no looking-glass here and I don’t know what I am like now.” In class today we discussed whether or not Antoinette lost her soul at the end of the novel. Whether or not this is the case, she does seem to have lost a key part of her self. But the loss does not seem to be inevitable, nor her madness innate part of who she is. She is not like Meursault who looks in the mirror and sees nothing. Rochester has simply taken away her ability to look.

Creating Meaning out of the Absurd

As I was scrolling through my Instagram feed a few days ago, I saw a Humans of New York video clip that reminded me of The Stranger. A boy wearing a suit was sharing his life motto: “The meaning to life is that there is no meaning, and because of that, you have to make there be a meaning for the people that haven't realized it yet”. In addition to being incredibly insightful, his advice speaks to the same themes that Camus does in The Stranger, and is not as different from Meursault’s worldview as it might seem.

Absurdism, a philosophical school of thought developed by Camus, centers around the conflict between humans’ attempts to find inherent meaning in life and ultimate inability to do so. One key question is how humans should go forward once having recognized this absurdity. Camus and other absurdist philosophers present three possibilities: suicide, belief in the existence of a reality beyond the absurd (whether religious or more general), and acceptance of the absurd. The solution endorsed by Camus, as we see in The Stranger, is the acceptance of the absurd. Meursault detests the fact that the method of his execution forces him to become complicit in hoping his execution succeeds, and hopes in the last line of the novel “that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate” so that he can at least feel defiant despite being powerless (123). Meursault also rejects religion, and any attempts to try and convince him there is greater meaning or a life after this one. The one time we see any display of emotion or passion from Meursault is when he lashes out at the chaplain after his many attempts to reach and sway Meursault. The approach Camus believed in was recognizing the Absurd, but continuing to live and create your own meaning. Meursault seems to have been living with the knowledge that there is no larger meaning in life throughout the novel, but only truly grapples and comes to terms with it in the last chapter, saying “As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself--so like a brother, really--I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again”.  He recognizes that the universe is indifferent--there is no greater meaning--but in spite, or perhaps because of this, is happy and able to create some meaning of his own.

This is where I saw the similarities between his outlook and that of the boy interviewed for Humans of New York. Both agree that there is no larger meaning in the universe, and any meaning that humans can find they have to create for themselves. Where their philosophies differ is that Camus would be against perpetuating in any way the “delusion” that there is meaning inherent in the universe, while the boy believes in finding meaning by creating it for others.

Although I’m not going to analyze them in this post, I also found it interesting how relevant some of the comments on the post were to other aspects of The Stranger:

1. “This is a dangerous worldview.”
2. “That’s literally what I think about life. To me life has no meaning, so just enjoy it while it lasts.”
3. “If life has no meaning, why is it a bad thing to go around killing each other?”

What kind of insect is Gregor?

We’ve spent some time in class while reading The Metamorphosis discussing what kind of insect Gregor is, and the potential implications thereof. Although Gregor is often described as a cockroach in English translations, the type of insect he is is never mentioned in the original German text, and Russian author and scholar Vladimir Nabokov argued in a lecture on Kafka (link below) that Gregor is not transformed into a cockroach but rather a beetle. Nabokov argues:

A cockroach is an insect that is flat in shape with large legs, and Gregor is anything but flat: he is convex on both sides, belly and back, and his legs are small. He approaches a cockroach in only one respect: his coloration is brown. That is all. Apart from this he has a tremendous convex belly divided into segments and a hard rounded back suggestive of wing cases. In beetles these cases conceal flimsy little wings that can be expanded and then may carry the beetle for miles and miles in a blundering flight.

Gregor is in fact described on the first page as having a “hard shell-like back”, a “curved brown belly, divided by stiff arching ribs”, and “numerous legs, which were pathetically thin compared to the rest of his bulk” (64).  

I was intrigued by this hypothesis and looked through the book and on the internet for further evidence to support or counter this argument. It took a while to find any information online on how to differentiate between a beetle and a cockroach based on behavior; I learned that both can and will climb on walls and the ceiling as Gregor did, and that you can keep a decapitated cockroach alive for over a month (tie off the head area with a tourniquet and keep it in a cool, humid area), but nothing particularly useful until I took a look at the life cycle of a beetle.

The life cycle of a beetle, coincidentally called a metamorphosis, is in some ways reflected in Gregor’s short life as an insect. The cycle begins when a female beetle lays “hundreds of tiny, oval white or yellow eggs”. Right after Gregor wakes up, he observes a spot on his stomach “covered with a mass of little white spots that he was unable to interpret” that could be intended to bring to mind eggs and show that this is a new state of being for Gregor (65). The second stage in the life cycle of a beetle is the larvae stage. Again, although Gregor is physically an adult, he exhibits some of the behavior typical of the larvae stage, such as eating copious amounts of food. Early in his transformation Gregor complains of extreme hunger and eats whatever he can of what his sister brings in. Later, his appetite diminishes until he barely touches his food at all. Next in the life cycle of a beetle is the pupal stage. During this stage the beetle creates a cocoon similar to that of the caterpillar and inside it grows into an adult. This could be represented in the novel by the hiding place under the couch with a sheet draped over it that Gregor creates for himself and spends most of his time in. The fourth and final stage of a beetle’s life is the adult stage. It is during this final stage that the beetle reproduces and then dies. Although Gregor does not reproduce as an insect, the reason he finally does burst out from his cocoon under the couch is to try and save the picture of the woman in furs he had framed and hung on the wall.

Kafka was not an entomologist, so these observations may be a bit of a stretch in trying to support an argument for what kind of insect Gregor is. Another interesting twist of Gregor potentially being a beetle is that, as in the Samsa and Seuss radio play, Gregor had wings the entire time without having any idea. This fact emphasizes the qualities in Gregor that made him insect-like in the first place. He was so willing to go with the flow, do exactly what he was told, and make himself as innocuous and helpful as possible that he never noticed the one thing that could have saved his life or at least made his predicament somewhat more enjoyable.

If you’re interested in reading more of Nabokov’s lecture on The Metamorphosis, or more about the life cycle of a beetle and how cockroaches don’t actually need their heads to survive, here are the links I got my information from:

http://www.kafka.org/index.php?id=191,209,0,0,1,0

https://animalcorner.co.uk/beetle-life-cycle/

http://www.pctonline.com/article/pct1107_cockroaches/

Is Brett the Main Character in The Sun Also Rises?

During panel presentations today, one group while discussing the role Brett plays in the novel brought up the idea that in some ways she is the main character of The Sun Also Rises. Although Jake is the narrator of the novel and the only character whose thoughts we have access to, Brett is truly the person who drives the plot and who the other characters are defined in relation to. She is also the character who arguably shows the most growth over the course of the novel.

Although Brett is not introduced until the end of chapter three, it is only when she makes her first appearance that we get some real insight into Jake and the plot starts to pick up. Jake’s feelings for Brett are the first thing in the novel to dismantle his “tough-guy” facade and allow the reader to see through to his actual character. The scenes in the taxi with Jake and Brett, and then of Jake alone in his room thinking about her paint a clearer and more honest picture of him than we had gotten in the entire three chapters preceding. This theme of the reader learning more about Jake through his interactions with and feelings for Brett continues throughout the novel, from where she comforts him in his bedroom to their conversations in Pamplona to the final scene in the taxi in Madrid.

Brett is also the character who drives the plot of The Sun Also Rises. If she were not in the novel, there would not be much of a story to tell. Jake would continue with his life on the outskirts of expatriate society in Paris, interrupted by a brief interlude in Spain where he fishes with his old friend Bill. The trip would be made only slightly less relaxing by the presence of his annoying acquaintance Cohn. There would be almost none of the tension that exists between Cohn and Jake, Mike would be out of the picture entirely, and Jake’s value system would remain unchallenged as he and his friends wholeheartedly joined Montoya in supporting Romero in the bullfights. Brett is the character who again and again defies the reader and characters’ expectations, creates the tension and drama, and forces the other characters to question their values and what they hold to be true.

Brett is also the character who grows the most over the course of the novel. At the beginning, she is perpetually drinking and rushes from one relationship to the next to avoid looking back at the damage both that she’s caused and that’s been done to her. However, in the last chapters she acknowledges that she “can’t just stay tight all the time” and is able to stop and reflect on the status of her relationships instead of just continuing to rush forwards. She sends Romero away when his intention to marry and reform her becomes apparent, plans on returning to Mike whom she identifies as the best match personality-wise for her and someone who will still allow her to have the freedom and lifestyle she wants, and in the final scene appears to be resigned to the fact that she and Jake will never be able to have the relationship they had hoped for.

The Lost Generation

“You are all a lost generation.” -Gertrude Stein in conversation

“One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever. . . . The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose. . . . The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. . . . All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.” -Ecclesiastes

The two epigraphs that Hemingway includes at the beginning of The Sun Also Rises paint an ambiguous portrait of the generation of young adults affected by WWI whose lives he depicts in the novel.

There are two ways that the second epigraph (Ecclesiastes) could be interpreted. One could read it as saying that generations are simply something that come and go against the larger background of the earth that “abideth forever” and the natural world. Human life is presented as transient, temporary, and ultimately unimportant against this background. Regardless of the state of human life, the earth keeps turning and the sun will continue to rise and set. In this context, having Gertrude Stein describe Hemingway and the characters’ of The Sun Also Rises generation as “lost” does not have a large impact. The little blip in the cycle that they are is insignificant in the larger cycle of generations, and even more so when compared to the natural world.

However, you could also read the second epigraph as comparing the cycle from one generation to the next to things as fundamental as the sun rising and setting. All of the elements of nature mentioned in the epigraph are described in a cyclical way. The sun rises, sets, and goes back to the place where it rose. The wind “whirleth about continually, and … returneth again according to its circuits”. The rivers flow into the sea and then back to the places where they began. This imagery echoes how as “one generation passeth away… another cometh”. In this context, Stein’s description of the generation described in The Sun Also Rises as “lost” takes on a much greater significance. Imagine if one day the sun didn’t rise, or rivers just stopped flowing. Like in those extreme cases, a piece of a recurring cycle we take for granted is simply gone.

So which reading of the epigraphs did Hemingway intend and base his novel on? I would say both. On the surface, the struggles of the “lost generation” seem negligible. Almost none of the characters we’ve met has a job, they spend almost every night out drinking, dancing, and talking, and none of them (except for Robert Cohn who Jake makes fun of) take anything seriously. However, once you get beneath the surface, the reader sees that the characters do have very real struggles, as well as trauma associated with the war.

The Admirable Hugh

A large amount of the comic relief in Mrs. Dalloway comes in the form of Hugh Whitbread. Although a relatively minor character, Hugh, who was a friend of Clarissa’s at Bourton and is now in the same social circle as she and Richard, has had two substantial appearances so far. Woolf has taken advantage of both of these to poke fun at “the admirable Hugh”. He is introduced as “Hugh Whitbread; her old friend Hugh--the admirable Hugh!”, and is described a having a “very well-covered, manly, extremely handsome, perfectly upholstered body”, and while not particularly intelligent or original, “a good sort in his own way” and “still not a positive imbecile”.

The mockery continues when Hugh and Mr. Dalloway attend a lunch at Lady Bruton’s. Hugh is reintroduced as he walks down the street, “ruminating” on a variety of topics he has in the past brushed the surface of (“dead languages, the living, life in Constantinople, Paris, Rome; riding shooting, tennis,”) without pursuing at any meaningful depth. When he arrives at Lady Bruton’s, he greets the secretary by asking, as he always has, if her brother is doing well in South Africa despite the fact that “for half a dozen years, he had been doing badly in Portsmouth”, and when Lady Bruton mentions that Peter is back in town “They all smiled. Peter Walsh! And Mr. Dalloway was genuinely glad, Milly Brush thought; and Mr. Whitbread thought only of his chicken.”

I could continue to catalog a list of Hugh’s funniest moments, but why does Woolf take this mockery to such an extent? And why even include a character like Hugh at all in a novel as serious and nostalgia-laden as Mrs. Dalloway in the first place? I think to Woolf, Hugh is another representation of the Edwardians she criticizes in her essays and of the English upper class and their culture in general. He has a vaguely described job in Parliament or Buckingham Palace, and is described by Peter, one of the most astute characters we have encountered so far as having “no heart, no brain, nothing but the manners and breeding of an English gentleman”. Despite having perfect manners, a job in government, and being well-off and part of an elite social circle, we see that on the inside Hugh is shallow, materialistic, less than intelligent, and so blundering it’s comical.

These criticisms also fit in with how Woolf critiques the people lining the streets and trying to catch a glimpse of the Queen (or maybe it’s the Prime Minister) during the motor car montage sequence. Again using irony and humor she undermines their reverence, patriotism, and awe with the fact that nobody has any idea who’s in the car, and by diverting the attention of the crowd with a toffee advertisement as the car finally enters Buckingham Palace. It will be interesting to see if Woolf continues to use humor and irony as methods of social criticism, and how the critiques she makes in Mrs. Dalloway connect to her identity as a modern writer and her ideas on how novels should be written.

Future Posts will be for the class The 20th Century Novel

The BB

In the chapter “Gangsters”, Randy shoots Benji with a BB gun, leaving a BB stuck just above Benji’s eye. Benji decides not to see a doctor, but is then unable to remove the BB on his own. At the end of the chapter, Ben says,

It’s still there. Under the skin. It’s good for a story, something to shock people with after I’ve known them for years and feel a need to surprise them with the other boy… I asked a doctor about it once, about blood poisoning over time. He shook his head. Then he shrugged. “It hasn’t killed you yet” (159)

With Sag Harbor being semi-autobiographical, a natural thing to wonder after reading this section is whether or not the adult Colson Whitehead actually does have a BB stuck in his eye socket. In an interview for The New Yorker just before the publication of Sag Harbor, Whitehead was asked this very question. Although had he admitted earlier in the interview that the BB gun episode was real and “too stupid an escapade to leave out [of the novel]”, when asked specifically about the BB he says only, “don’t we all?” .

While frustratingly vague, this answer is in line with Benji’s transformation into Ben and how it ties to coming of age as a more general concept. The presence of the BB has no physical consequences for Benji. His parents don’t ever notice the scar, and his doctor seems pretty nonchalant about the whole thing. It’s only significance lies that it is physical proof for the older Ben that he and Benji (who he refers to as “the other boy”) are in fact the same person.

The gap between Ben and Benji is so wide that the reader, and in fact Ben himself, are unsure as to how Benji will grow up and become him. There is the sense that if Ben were somehow at the Labor Day Party at the end of the novel, Benji would never even consider him as a possibility when trying to spot his older self. We talked about this feeling as representative of coming of age in general. Someone mentioned that the amount of change that occurs makes it almost like the person you may be in ten years is someone else entirely who has just stolen your name and continued living as you. For Ben, who very much feels this way, the BB is a way to ground himself and realize that both selves are real--he can have been Benji, be Ben, and still become someone else entirely. Like Sag, the BB is simply a part of who he is, and at the same time something that forces him to acknowledge and embrace the paradox of his life.

If you want to read the full interview, here’s the URL: http://www.newyorker.com/the-new-yorker-blog/fiction-q-a-colson-whitehead

Hugo Lamb, Immortal Villain?

I didn’t like Hugo in Black Swan Green, but I also didn’t quite see him as the type who would grow up to join a league of super-villains who achieve immortality through drinking children’s blood. Something characteristic of David Mitchell’s works is that they take place in a single literary universe; characters introduced or featured one novel often turn up in others, but always in a way that is consistent with, or at least doesn’t contradict, previous descriptions of them. This is the case with Hugo, who in addition to appearing in Black Swan Green is one of the main characters in The Bone Clocks. I did not make this connection until Mr. Mitchell (the teacher, not the author) mentioned it in class today, but now thinking back on when I read The Bone Clocks about a year ago, Hugo’s childhood sheds a significant amount of light on why he eventually decides to join the evil Anchorites when offered the opportunity as a young adult.

The Hugo in The Bone Clocks is almost exactly how one would imagine a college-aged Hugo to be. He goes to Cambridge, and has the same elitist, amoral personality, and ability to use language as a tool and a weapon that he did in Black Swan Green. Hugo’s greatest fear as a teenager is that he’s going to end up being like his father. He tells Jason:

“I was you myself, Jace, once. Just the same. Always afraid. But there’s another reason why you must smoke this cigarette… If you don’t kill ‘Not Today’”--Hugo did a horror-movie-trailer voice-- “One day you’ll wake up, look in the mirror, and see Uncle Brian and Uncle Michael!” (65)

Most of what Hugo does seems to be in an attempt to differentiate himself from his father. He develops his own sense of style and what is cool, steals (“liberates”) when he feels like it, and takes up smoking. However, despite all of this, Jason still remarks that Hugo reminds him of Uncle Brian (61).

A similar dynamic exists in The Bone Clocks, although it is not explicitly mentioned. Hugo had maintained his amorality and various infuriating mannerisms, but much as Jason observed in Black Swan Green, it still seems like Uncle Brian has significant power over him. Hugo attends Cambridge, one of the schools Uncle Brian had pushed Julia to consider in Black Swan Green, and Hugo’s pretensions and elitism could also have increased in part due to his father’s influence. It is possible that when Hugo is offered immortality and a chance to join the Anchorites, he accepts it not because he is evil, but because he sees it as his one chance to finally eliminate the possibility of being like his father, and do something completely beyond the realm of what he can control, or even comprehend.

Fingerbone as a Landscape Painting

Something that I found interesting in Housekeeping is how the deeply personal stories of the characters are set against the background of geological time, where the whole of human existence is inconsequential and transpires in the blink of an eye. One example of this is the town of Fingerbone itself, a place “chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere”. Fingerbone is a place of huge significance to Ruth’s family—it’s the site of the Great Derailment, the town where Sylvia raised her children, the place Helen returned to and left her children before she took her life, and where Ruth grows up under the care of Sylvia, Lily and Nona, and Sylvie. But despite the connections the main characters have to the town, the reader is constantly reminded that Fingerbone is just a temporary dot on the map that “flooded yearly, and had burned once…a diaspora threatened [it] always”. Even the name of the town reflects that it is a tiny and unessential component of something larger that will also eventually decay and disappear.

The realization that the things we often see as the most solid in our lives—civilization, history, our society—are impermanent and in the larger scheme of things irrelevant is a difficult one to accept, or even wrap one’s head around. Something that immediately came to mind while reading the early chapters of the novel that helped me better visualize Fingerbone against the backdrop of geological time was a Romantic landscape painting, such as the one below (painted by Simeon Marcus Larson).

            The river, trees, rocks, and sky dominate the landscape to such an extent that the village on the left-hand side is nearly invisible. Presumably there are people who live in these houses, each with their own important story, but when placed in the middle of the landscape portrayed in the painting, the entire village fades into the background until it is barely visible, much less significant. 

The Rosenbergs

One of the things that struck me as strange and a little morbid about the opening of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar was Esther’s obsession with the Rosenbergs. Reading more of the novel and doing some additional research has added more dimensions to this detail, with worrying implications.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were a married couple who lived in New York City and were executed on June 19, 1953 after being charged with conspiracy to commit espionage and transmit information regarding military technologies to the Soviet Union. The method used in their execution was the electric chair. It is not immediately clear why Esther is so empathetic, but throughout the following chapters we see her describe herself again and again as an imposter in New York City. She’s been presenting herself for years as the smart, hardworking student who aspires to go to graduate school and write poetry, and feels like she’s been exposed as a fake when she realizes in her conversation with Jay Cee that that’s not who she is anymore. She even says when thinking back on the conversation later “I had been unmasked only that morning by Jay Cee herself and I felt now that all the uncomfortable suspicious I had about myself were coming true, and I couldn’t hide the truth much longer” (29). Esther also describes herself as having an acute awareness of how to present herself as someone she’s not.

I’d discovered, after a lot of extreme apprehension about what spoons to use, that if you do something incorrect at table with a certain arrogance, as if you knew perfectly well you were doing it properly, you can get away with it and nobody will think you are bad-mannered or poorly brought up. They will think you are original and witty. (27)

It’s possible that Esther’s feelings of being an imposter and not belonging in New York City are connected to her empathy towards the Rosenbergs and fascination with their execution.

            There might also be some dark foreshadowing here. Knowing that The Bell Jar is semi-autobiographical, I learned a little bit about Sylvia Plath to see if that would provide any insights into this scene. Much like Esther, Plath was studious, excelled academically, and spent a month in New York City as a guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine after her junior year of college. It was during this experience that Plath first experienced the depression that would affect her for the rest of her life. She began electroconvulsive therapy to treat her depression, but would still make her first documented suicide attempt later that summer. I wonder if these events will be depicted in the novel, and if Esther’s fixation on what electrocution would feel like is connected to this treatment that the person her character is based on undergoes.

            I might be reading too much into this opening scene, but given how Esther is feeling like an imposter and that Plath, who was treated using electroconvulsive therapy is depicting Esther, a character based on herself, as obsessed with electrocution, it seemed like too much to ignore. The opening paragraphs were disturbing when we read them the first time. Rereading them with this new information, I am getting even more worried about Esther.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath 

Learning how to Fly

In this blogpost, I’m exploring a different interpretation of the Dedalus/Icarus dynamic in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

            Everything that Stephen is trying to escape in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man can be boiled down to one word: monotony. He is very romantic, intellectual, and has an innate sense of being different from and superior to everyone else. Stephen (even if he doesn’t always recognize or admit it) feels he has to go soaring above and beyond what anyone else can do much like his namesake soars above the labyrinth designed to constrain him. Connected to this, Stephen is constantly on the look-out for mysterious, enlightening experiences and goes through several of what seem to be these transformative moments. However, in nearly every case, Stephen’s attempts to transcend end with him plunging back into the ocean of monotony.

            The first major example of this is Stephen’s desire for an encounter with a Mercedes-like woman in which “weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from him” and how he goes about encountering such a woman. At the end of chapter two, Stephen “wander[s] into a maze of narrow and dirty streets” and a woman reaches out to stop him, much like in his fantasies.  If we ignore the identity of the woman and the reason she stopped Stephen, the scene in her room can be read as a beautiful, transformative experience for Stephen in which he briefly soars above the maze of dirty streets outside. However, this doesn’t last long. Even on the next page, Stephen’s “wanderings” to the neighborhood containing the brothels are no longer sugar-coated, and in addition have become simply part of his regular routine.

            Stephen experiences something similar when he confesses at the end of chapter three and turns back to the Church after fancying himself for some time to be the worst sinner who ever lived. Immediately following his confession, Stephen seems happier and more connected to something emotionally than we have ever seen him. “The muddy streets were gay. He strode homeward, conscious of an invisible grace pervading and making light his limbs … His soul was made fair and holy once more, holy and happy.” However, Stephen again immediately takes this religious epiphany and reduces it to routine. A page in a half later he has his prayers reduced to a list of tasks to be done at specific times, is completely detached from them emotionally, and sees religion more as a way to get out of going to hell than anything else.

            Although Stephen’s decision to leave Ireland and pursue art looked like it might end in the same way, it was instead what finally broke the pattern. We don’t know this from the book, but based on our discussion of Joyce’s life after he left Ireland this feels to me like a reasonable claim. Joyce creates art as Stephen defines it, and never reduces it to merely a routine. Throughout his career he was constantly pushing to do something new, and each of his four books was dramatically different from the others. Much as Dedalus used his art to escape from the labyrinth, it is art that finally frees Stephen from the monotony that had previously defined his life.

Flying too Close to the Sun?

One character trait that has appeared again and again in Stephen is his arrogance. Though present throughout what we have read so far, Stephen’s sense of superiority has seemed to build throughout the novel. In Chapter One, we barely see this side of Stephen. Though we do see moments where he sees himself as above his peers and the school system, he is so overwhelmed and isolated in nearly every scene that on the whole he comes across as innocent and meek.

Stephen’s arrogance and sense of superiority build and become more evident in chapters two and three. Over the course of Chapter Two, Stephen’s sense of self-importance increases as he begins to see his life through the lens of The Count of Monte Cristo with himself as the hero. Stephen builds up a brooding, mysterious persona, spends hours wandering the streets in search of a romantic encounter intended especially for him, and sees himself as far more sophisticated and intellectually advanced than his classmates.

In Chapter Three, Stephen’s arrogance becomes deeply intertwined with his feeling of having sinned beyond redemption. He sees himself as the worst sinner that ever lived, and takes a kind of pride in this. In his mind, he is superior for his act of rebellion (sinning and acknowledging his sin without taking action to stop and ask for forgiveness) than those who truly are, or pretend to be, virtuous.

A certain pride, a certain awe, withheld him from offering to God even one prayer at night though he knew it was in God’s power to take away his life while he slept and hurl his soul hellward ere he could beg for mercy . . . on Sunday mornings he glanced coldly at the worshippers who stood bareheaded, four deep, outside the church, morally present at the mass which they could neither see nor hear. (111)

To me, the most interesting thing about Stephen’s arrogance is the possible implications it might have in light of his name. Though Dedalus, Stephen’s last name, could be in reference to his developing identity as an artist, the fact that his father shares the same name makes it possible to think of Stephen in terms of Dedalus’s son Icarus. In Greek mythology, Dedalus invented wings out of feathers and wax to allow himself and his son to escape from the labyrinth containing the minotaur. Dedalus warned his son to be careful not to fly to close to the sun, but Icarus dismissed his father’s warnings, and flew increasingly higher. Eventually the wax holding his wings together began to melt and, no longer able to fly, he plummeted into the ocean.

Stephen’s pride and arrogance reflects Icarus flying higher and higher despite his father’s warnings, and throughout the first 3 chapters I have been waiting for Stephen too to figuratively fall out of the sky. So far, however, everything seems to be working out more-or-less ok for him. As we move forward in the novel, I am curious to see if this connection will continue to play out, and whether or not Stephen will meet a fate similar to that of Icarus.