"Hog's Gut" Privilege - Sexual Double Standard in Song of Solomon

Something that's particularly gotten under my skin in Song of Solomon is the sexual double standard that we see evidenced in the lives of every main and most supporting characters. This double standard has come up in other books we've read this semester -- scrutiny of Brett for her philandering instantly comes to mind -- but it's most pronounced in Song of Solomon, and it's effects on women are by far the most striking. The men are able to gallivant about the town, while the women characters are either cloistered away and/or tortured by unrealized sexual tensions.

The first blatant acknowledgement of the general sexism of the environment of Song of Solomon doesn't come until the end of  Chapter 10, when Lena points out Milkman's privilege to be both oblivious and exercise absolute power: 

"'You've never picked up anything heavier tan you own feet, or solved a problem harder than fourth-grade arithmetic. Where do you get the right to decide our lives? (...) I'll tell you where. From that hog's gut that hangs down between your legs."

"Hog's gut." What an exhilarating read. Anyway, Lena is absolutely right. Here, she is chastising Milkman for breaking up Corinthians and Porter (something I'll discuss later), but she's onto something bigger than just that one incident. To do a run-down of the evidence:

• Men
• Milkman: Is in a twenty-year relationship with Hagar, which he abandons for no reason other than that he's getting bored. During this relationship, he is known to be involved with other women. Guitar references him having a "red-headed bitch" as well as a "South-side bitch," -- the "South-side bitch" (Hagar) sees Milkman with another woman shortly after their breakup, which does nothing but further compound her eventually fatal heartbreak. When Milkman goes to Shalimar, he cannot help but observe the impoverished women and comment upon how he really "needs" one, and he eventually spends the night with Sweet.
• Guitar: There's the reference Milkman makes to Guitar getting rid of a woman every six months or so. Presumably, his lack of commitment is due to Guitar's involvement in the days necessitating a solitary lifestyle, but for a woman, it would mean eschewing sexual contact all together.
• Macon II: Withholds sex from his wife as a means of punishment, meanwhile lays with renters who are unable to pay (yick). 
• Women -- Milkman and Guitar's behavior isn't especially problematic in and of itself, but when we see that the same activities aren't possible for the women in the story (the double standard), their behavior really becomes ugly.
• Ruth: As referenced above, is made to be sexually frustrated for twenty years when her husband won't sleep with her. She is crippled by the monogamy, but he is not.
• Hagar: As a result of Milkman's nonchalant attitude towards their relationship, she is driven insane. It's not clear as to whether or not Hagar is able to have relations with other men in the way Milkman is, but their subplot exemplifies the differing attitudes towards sex with which women and men are brought up in this society.
• First Corinthians (and implicitly, Lena): Both Milkman and the girls still live under their parents roof, which serves as a chastity belt for Corinthians and Lena in a way that it does not for Milkman. Macon and Milkman are free to determine Corinthians partners, and send Porter packing when they don't approve of him (the reason doesn't matter -- as Lena unintentionally points out, Milkman too associates with a member of the Days, so he really has no right to react against Corinthians associating with a different member).
• Pilate: Seems to have experienced the double standard to a much lesser extent. However, she notes that it was hard for her when nobody would sleep with her (due to her belly button). If nothing else, Pilate's experience shows that women have desire, too.

Up until Chapter 12, our protagonist, Milkman, had been blatantly oblivious/unapologetic about his attitude towards his relations vs. those of the women. So, my jaw just about hit the floor when on page 300, Milkman realizes the torture faced by his mother:

"The best years of [Ruth's] life, from age twenty to forty, had been celibate, and aside from the consummation that began his own life, the rest of her life had been the same. He hadn't thought much of it when she'd told him, but now it seemed to him that such sexual deprivation would affect her, hurt her in precisely the way that if would affect and hurt him [emphasis added]. If it were possible for somebody to force him to live that way, to tell him 'You may walk and live among women, you may even lust after them, but you will not make love for the next twenty years,' how would he fee? What would he do?"

He goes on to continue an analysis of his other unenlightened attitudes about his life and his family. Perhaps his demolition at the hands of Lena did make it through his skull. As we discussed in class on Friday, the quest for the gold seems to be shaping into a vehicle for Milkman's long-awaited maturity into adulthood. His acknowledgement of the sexual double standard that has so shaped his relationships and his society is crucial to overcoming his arrested development. 

Cherish Your Lives

The Stranger puts forth some points about the value of human life. We have a main character, Mersault, who doesn't seem to put much of a premium on the fact that we are alive. (I'm into justified font right now, though please tell me if it impedes your appreciation of my ideas).

When his mother dies, while he is a bit melancholy about the whole affair, he seems to shrug it off. Much to his defense lawyer chagrin, he remarks that "at one time or another all normal people have wished their loved ones were dead" (65). Concerning his own death, while for he toys with the idea of caring for a long time, he comes to the apathetic conclusion that it doesn't really matter, because we will all die eventually:

"What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did God or the lives people chose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people who call themselves my brothers?" (121)

But Camus isn't endorsing this nihilistic, "damn the world", nothing-matters attitude. On the contrary, he is attacking it, showing it to be soul-crushing and deadly. In a way, Mersault is dead long before he is actually sent to the guillotine, because he doesn't care to live anymore. His execution will simply be the realignment of his physical state with his spiritual state. 

Additionally, the "senseless" murder of the Arab is another example in which the sacredness of life is cast aside. And certainly, this is a negative event, furthering the point that Camus actively sougt to expose the flaws of apathy. Mersault doesn't even have a reason to take somebody's life, but he does anyway, even more unsettling in its lack of logic. When we consider the racial implications of the incident and the focus of the ensuing trial, the commentary broadens to not only a condemnation of Mersault's indifference, but the indifference of the white world to the suffering of people of color -- their lack of interest in whether they live or die. 

Camus is definitely critiquing indifference, highlighting how it ends up killing both Mersault and his victim.  In the subplot with Raymond, he even goes so far as to say that indifference is ultimately impossible (Think about how Mersault inevitably is dragged onto a side, even though he doesn't really care about Raymond).

Finally, a shameless plug: If you're into this whole "life is sacred" creed, and your interested in the implications of knowing your time of death (i.e. the temporary revolution that Mersault's thinking undergoes when he knows that he will die soon), I recommend checking out the Saw franchise -- or at least the first one, before they begin to descend into the category of "torture porn." Valuing one's life is a central theme, and if Mersault certainly has the makings of a "victim" in the series ( the movies actually raise similar questions to that of Mersault's perceived victimization by the court system).

Questions of Intentions

After a few negative reviews of center alignment, I'm trying justified. 

Something I grapple with often in making moral judgement on various situations is intentions (I think I might have blogged about it last semester, too). Should someone's actions be understood in the context of their internal feelings, or is one's external impact on the world the only thing that matters? Or something in between?

In day-to-day life, our ability to understand other people's thoughts is extremely limited. Because of this limitation, in the "real world," we are urged from a young age to try and "see things from others' point of view" and "understand where they're coming from" and that "it's the thought that counts." To be a nice person is to consider others' motivations and internal workings.

But in literature, we typically have the privilege of an intimate understanding of the gears grinding in one or more character's heads. In The Stranger, we are buried deeply inside Meursalt's conciousness -- or lack thereof. And we find that motivations are quite important when we dissect the actions of a character.

Handily, Meusalt really is only motivated by one thing, indifference (which one could argue isn't a motivation at all, but whatever). We see all of his actions through the lens of his indifference. A good example is the letter to Raymond's girlfriend. Ordinarily, if we as outside observers were to watch somebody help Raymond "punish" a supposedly cheating girlfriend, perpetrating an action that ultimately leads to the woman in question being beaten, we would react horribly. But are we inclined to let Mersault slightly off the hook because we know that he wasn't fully behind the principle of hurting her, he was just going with the flow?

Or similarly, the shooting. The way in which it is written makes the murder -- athough the question was raised in class, can it be called "murder" without intent? -- seem much less dramatic than it would be to an outsider. Does his apathy cast a shadow of a doubt on whether or not he perpetrated the crime. I'm inclined to say "no," but the trial scenes disagree with me. Not on the issue of the actual act of killing -- as we've mentioned, the prosecutor doesn't really bother to focus on that --, but it criticizes Mersault for some of the outward manifestations of his indifferent attitude. 

It seems that Camus is highlighting the importance of motivation. However, at the same time, he's also painting a picture of the impossibility of neutrality (with Mersault getting pulled into Raymond's side of the conflict), suggesting that, ultimately, it doesn't matter how you felt, it only matters what you do. A bit of a disjointed post, but hopefully the clean look of the justified font will ease the distressing lack of flow. 

Kafka's Modern Man

I'm experimenting with center alignment, in my obviously exhaustive efforts to make the experience of reading my blog more aesthetically pleasing; to create a coupling of beauty with genius. 

One of my favorite passages from part II was the one in which Grete wants to move the furniture out of Gregor's room, and Gregor hear's his mother's protests, on page 89:

"(...) Gregor realized that the lack of any direct human address during the course of these two months, coupled with the monotonous life within his family, must have confused his mind; otherwise he was at a loss to explain how he could seriously have wanted to have his room cleared out. (...) Not a thing should be removed; everything must stay; the good effects of the furniture on his condition he could not do without; and if the furniture should hinder him in his senseless crawling expeditions that was no drawback, it was a great advantage."

 -- A small note before proceeding: Observe the tragic irony of his mother's pleas to keep his room as he would have wanted, when later on, his room becomes a filthy storage room for anything the family or renters do not want to see anymore. --

I definitely read this as Gregor further conforming to his parents' will. It's almost like even as an insect, he doesn't have an identity beyond what his family wants him to be. I also think Gregor's family are somewhat to blame for his more bug-like inclinations (although I don't necessarily blame them for treating him like, well, a bug, and not understanding that he is their son/brother).

A common thread throughout this novel is that Gregor has been shaped by his family's perceptions of him. We see him trying to break away from their grip, for instance, with the snide comment about their secret savings, but by and large, he believes what his family believes, including what they believe about him. So, it makes sense that, as his family comes to see him as a bug, Gregor comes to see himself as a bug, and thus act like one. It's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Kafka's modern "man," Gregor, is completely defined by his relationships. He has no identity of his own, painting a depressing picture of what it means to be human in the modern age. 

Concerning Things that Can't Rise Anymore

Upon finishing up The Sun Also Rises, there seems to be considerable reason for sympathy Brett. Perhaps it comes from her relative pathetic-ness in the last section; having to telegram Jake to bail her out of the Hotel Montana, which stands in contrast with her usual on-top-of-the-world vibe. Perhaps the final scene forces us to contemplate the tragedy that is Brett and Jake's eternally unrealized romantic relationship.

Speaking of which, was it really a tragedy? My reading of the last scene had bitter, not wistful undertones. Brett and Jake's relationship is anomalous in the sense that it seems to be much more enduring than any other (particularly any other of Brett's). On the surface, this seems to be a testament to that there is more to Jake and Brett than sexual desire, and if only it wasn't for Jake's wound, Jake and Brett would be able to have this beautiful and whole relationship. Isn't their doomed love the reason behind Jake's lack of self-confidence and withdrawl and Brett's philandering (a search for a surrogate Jake)?

I don't buy that painfully tragic, romanticized take on it. I acknowledge that Jake is in love with Brett. But I don't think that if Jake and Brett had been able to fully realize their desire for each other -- if Jake hadn't been sexually incapacitated -- their relationship would have even progressed to its current point. Paradoxically, Jake's inability to love Brett has been what has kept Brett interested in him.

We know that Brett was truly in love with some man who died in the war. While Jake's reliability when we receive that information may be somewhat questionable, as he is attempting to dissuade Cohn from getting involved with her, I am inclined to believe him because Jake isn't one to poetically or ironically (remember how bad he is at irony?) refer to himself in such cryptic terms. So I actually believe that there was a guy before Jake who Brett was actually in love with.

This means that there's a large possibility that Jake isn't intrinsically more attractive to Brett than any of the other men she gets involved with. The one thing separating Jake from the rest of Brett's lovers is the fact that Jake is physically incapable of being her lover, and thus, incapable of the post-sex letdown that seems to come with a relationship that is only founded on lust. So while perhaps Brett was originally attracted to Jake in a similar manner that she was attracted to Romero's green matador pants, she never experienced that letdown, allowing her and Jake's relationship to continue to grow.

Cruelly, the only reason Brett and Jake could have had the romance of a lifetime is that they couldn't have had the romance of a lifetime. If Brett and Jake were able consummate their relationship, they never would have developed their true, deeper love for each other, because Brett's tendency to flit from man-to-man would have gotten in the way.

The Sun Also Rises (especially when you're on vacation)

In class, we discussed the shades of the pastoral tradition in Jake's travels to Spain. It's clear that Jake feels more at home in Spain, and life in Spain is simpler and less hedonistic than that of Paris. When people in Spain say something, it's not weighted down with cynicism and there doesn't seem to be the same worship of irony as there is in Paris.

We can see this even in expat-Parisian humor vs. Basque humor. Expat humor comes from a nonchalant disenchantment with cultural institutions. Take Bill's boxing story, which contrast racist pejoratives with the vast superiority of the black boxer, and Harvey Stone's drunken disgust with Cohn's anachronistic code of valor:
     "'You're awfully funny, Harvey,' Cohn said. "Some day somebody will push your face in.'
        Harvey Stone laughed. 'You think so. They won't, though. Because it wouldn't make any                     difference to me. I'm not a fighter.'"
Stone strips away all power from Cohn's tough man act by pointing out that it won't mean anything. Similarly, it's arguable that Bill is criticizing racism by invalidating racist terms with the fact that the white man is the butt of his joke (although I acknowledge that the overall merit of Bill's joke is murky at best, especially from a 21st century approach).

Basque humor is less bitter. One of the funniest moments on the bus, when a Basque peasant drinks a bunch of somebody else's wine under the guise of teaching Bill how to use the wine skin, has a slapstick quality:
      "One [Basque] snatched the bottle away from the owner, who was himself about to give a                    demonstration. He was a young fellow and he held the wine-bottle at full arms' length and raised          it high up, squeezing the leather bag with his hand so the stream of wine hissed into his mouth.          He held the bag out there, the wine making a flat, hard trajectory into his mouth, and he kept on          swallowing smoothly and regularly.
         'Hey!' the owner of the bottle shouted. 'Whose wine is that?'"

Undoubtedly, Paris is presented in a somewhat critical light when contrasted with Spain. But I can't help but read into the fact that Spain is a vacation. If Hemingway wanted to create a story where one of the main themes was the degradation of morals and human behavior that comes with the modern age, the most efficient way to drive home that point isn't to make your example of a purer side of humanity a vacation.

By putting Jake on vacation -- as opposed to, perhaps, moving to Spain -- in order to exemplify Spain's virtues, it actually ends up implying that the apathetic modernity of post-war Paris is a necessity to the continuity of civilization. Earth shattering things -- Brett's haircut, for instance -- aren't happening in Spain. The pastoral, simplistic quality of the people in Spain almost implies a sort of backwardness when contrasted with the complexity of many aspects of West Bank life -- humor, for instance. So, Jake's travels to Spain functions as more than a simple idealization of traditional life. It does have a kind of nostalgic quality to it -- back to a time when things weren't so screwed up and hardened from the war. But in the nostalgia, we realize that the Basque way of life is on its way out.

Woolf's Black Sheep

Mrs. Dalloway is marked by the intricacies of Wool's characterization. Everybody is seems like they are easy to identify and typecast -- Clarissa is a middle-aged, upper middle-class MP's wife and socialite, Peter is a slightly bitter Brit abroad, Septimus is a crazy veteran -- until we scratch just below the surface, and discover that nobody in Westminster is just one thing. A couple of my favorite examples are explicated below:

• Richard Dalloway - We don't meet him until well into the book. We get quite a negative picture of him from Peter (and Bourton-Sally, who conjures Peter to save Clarissa from Richard), who recounts his Richard at Bourton as somewhat of an uninteresting buffoon. For the first half of the book, as we peer into Clarissa's thoughts, we shift uncomfortably in our seats as she makes statements that put the happiness of her marriage into questions. But when we finally uncover Richard, he turns out to be, if not sweet, endearingly dopey. His excitement and anticipation when he thinks of expressing his love to her is cute. Richard is a pleasant surprise.
• At the end of the book (pg. 184, to be exact), Sally (Lady Rosseter, oh, the irony) passes judgement on Clarissa for marrying Richard and slipping into a life, as she puts it, of "all this" -- of all the parties and hobnobbing. Peter, of course, has been having similar thoughts throughout the entire party and the entire novel. What's fun about this particular instance is that, in the other room, Clarissa is having a very deep moment after she hears of Septimus' suicide.

Even the old bat Mrs. Kilman gets this subtly treatment. The way in which she proudly brands herself as not-one-of-the-rich but still envies them is insufferable for sure, but as readers, we can see where her hatred of Clarissa comes from. Perhaps that is one of the points of the novel; that everybody is such a complicated and varying ball of emotions and contradictions that for anybody else to be able to characterize them is near impossible.

But that's not 100% true, because we still walk away with some idea about the nature of the person that we read -- their "net" qualities that we can distinguish from the tangled mess that is their inner monologue. I would still call Mrs. Kilman "net bad." She's particularly disturbing in the way that she only takes pleasure in eating anymore, so bitter is she towards the rest of the world. 

One of the two significant characters to whom Woolf's subtle characterization and my "net" terminology doesn't seem to apply to is Hugh. I'll give it to him, Clarissa seems to like him, or find him harmless. Fine. NOBODY else does. I laughed aloud during the party scene, in which the narration bounced from character to character, and every time Hugh was seen anew, something defamatory was said about him. I think my favorite is Sally on 184 (again -- it's an excellent page):

   "Hugh Whitbread it was, strolling past in his white waistcoat, dim, fat, blind, past everything he         looked, except self-esteem and comfort."

I am inexplicably reminded of a balloon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

I wonder if Woolf meant anything by making Hugh the black sheep of her cast -- the one who doesn't get to be complicated. It's worth noting that another decently universally hated figure -- in a novel where other character's opinions are often somewhat close to the mark, yet unavoidably simplistic -- is the much more secondary character of Dr. Bradshaw. Knowing a bit of Woolf's history is key to understanding Bradshaw's treatment; she was prescribed the rest cure for her breakdown, and was skeptical of psychiatrists because of it. Perhaps Woolf is using Hugh as a comment on early 20th-century British pomp. 

Final Thoughts of The Mezzanine

One question posed as we were reading the Virginia Woolf essays is, "What would she have thought of The Mezzanine?"

On the one hand, she makes a number of statements that would suggest that she would be a fan of Baker. In Modern Fiction, she says "Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind, in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight of incident scores upon the conciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small" (155). This last sentence in particular seems to summarize perfectly the approach that Baker takes to fiction.

She even offers a prophetic rebuttal to the argument that the focus of The Mezzanine isn't worth writing about: "'The proper stuff of fiction' does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss" (158). However, on the other hand, she also says that one of the shortcomings of contemporary popular fiction is that the writers "write on unimportant things; that they spend immense industry making the trivial and the transitory appear the true and endearing" (153).

Huh. In Modern Fiction, we get no further explication as to what might be "trivial and the transitory," which is somewhat concerning, because the object of The Mezzanine is the glorification of the trivial and the transitory. Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown offers a further hint as to what Woolf might consider to be fluff masquerading as fiction, in her critique of Arnold Bennett's Hilda Lessways. She says that instead of showing us the character, Bennett uses minute detail to describe the environment, in hopes that we can't help but believe in the person living in such a realistic environment: "he is trying to hypnotize us into the belief that, because he has made a house, there must be a person living there" (19).

The Mezzanine also uses minute detail as a method of characterization, but for a much different purpose that Woolf would have liked more. All of Baker's minute examination of objects gives us more insight into Howie himself than into his environment (although a nice side effect is that we get a lovely little piece of 1980s everyday life). Furthermore, the expose familiar objects and human dynamics in a new light, rather than simply helping us imagine whatever is in the author's mind.

But a crucial piece of the puzzle is that we know what Howie is talking about. The Mezzanine is such an entertaining read because we identify with his experiences and can compare his thoughts about the world around him to our own. His stream of consciousness is dictated by his environment; an environment that isn't radically different from the one we live in today. At various instances, our identification with his world is interrupted by vintage, though, such as the discussion of records, or the milkman. And these instances tend to be less interesting to read, because it doesn't feel as personal.

I wonder how The Mezzanine would read if it was set in the Mongol Empire. The huge cultural/time different would probably inhibit its enjoyment by a 21st century, American reader. Or, for a less extreme example, early 20th century London. I wonder, will Woolf be able to Clarissa Dalloway's daily life and thoughts ring as many bells as Howie's did?

Go Watch Netflix

This post's appearance marks the end of any posts about the 20th Century Novel, and the beginning of any posts about the Hero's Journey, which you are surely not bored enough to read.

Hero once On Air

Something I noticed as I was doing the reading for Thursday, in which Macon gets his first tastes of celebrity life on the Joe Francis Show and Rise and Shine News and Pedantic Perspectives (lol @ that name) is that Macon seems to become decidedly less obstinate and asshole-y about expressing his views. I'm comparing the scene in the BSU meeting, where he is quite rude, period, regardless of the whole "does he have a right to be there and have an opinion?" debate, to his later behavior on the talk shows and such.

First, let's look at the BSU meeting. He announces his presence by disparaging their ideas for speakers, as told with the classic cynical aside of our narrator: "'Boring,' muttered Macon, too loud to be accidentally too loud" (123). Then, when he is given to opportunity to speak his peace -- hell, he's explicitly given to floor, is told the "say what [he's] got to say," and is totally put in the position to lay his whole ideology out there --  he opts to make the inflammatory and hyperbolic suggestion of "buying a gun and killing a cop" (124).

Even at his very first press conference a day later, he is much more comported and articulate with his what he says: "I guess I'm exposing white people to themselves. We've gotten so good at pretending we're not racist that we've started to believe it. We act like racism got dealt with back in the sixties (...) We teach our kids the doctrine of color blindness, tell them not to notice race. Which is impossible in a society as racially stratified as ours (...)" (141). Later, on the Joe Francis Show: "What I will address, though, is the sense of entitlement with which white people grow up, and which they hold on to for their entire live" (190). On Pedantic Perspectives: "'Forget channels of dialogue,' interrupted Macon. 'That lets them [Katie's note: them?] off the hook too easy. How can you even start talking without a basic acknowledgement of culpability?'" (203).

Clearly, when Macon actually talks about what he believes, it's the whites that he has a problem with, which begs the question of 'Why is he even giving the BSU crap in the first place?' because it doesn't really fit in with his ideology. But the seeming irrelevance of the BSU to Macon's goals is part of a larger shift in his character. Before his rise to fame/infamy, Macon is just sort of shooting out aggression, black militancy, and bravado without a very clear focus of what he is doing with it. He's robbing taxi-goers, he's stalking and cherry-picking his roomate, he's doing an open mic, and he's intruding on the BSU meeting. His haphazard behavior seems to us to be just as much of a cry for attention as a "down" whiteboy as it is an expression of any sort of governing principles, as murky as those seem to be.

But once he is given a voice, or more accurately, a listener, he becomes a lot more coherent. Coherent in the sense that his actions reflect his ideology. Before, he seems to be just as much trying to be a part of black culture as he is trying to show the problems with white privilege, but that aspect of him takes the back burner as he goes on media appearances. In fact, if we hadn't gotten the little manifesto in the Letter from a Birmingham Bus, his rise to fame is arguably the first time that we actually get a clear picture of what he believes. But we have to remember that the Letter from a Birmingham Bus was written after everything that transpires in the novel.

This shift implies that perhaps Macon hadn't 100% distilled his ideology until he gets the opportunity to articulate in an effective way. He does rhetorically ask for permission to speak at the BSU meeting, but that too is fraught with subtext, for he already bullied his way into the conversation: "The humble request for an invitation was always a respect-getter, a perfect way to carve out space for himself where none existed" (123). What are the club members supposed to do, not allow people to talk? Before his rise to fame, he has to make insane statements for their shock value, so people may listen to his actually intelligent ideas. The taxi cab robberies serve that purpose in perpetuity, so after he goes public, he doesn't have to make a name for himself, and he can focus on telling people his beliefs.

Here we have a possible exposition of Macon's heroism. Once he no longer requires his asshole version of himself, he sheds it to a certain extent and focuses on his admittedly admirable goals of a recognition of racial injustice. Of course, this doesn't negate the fact that his asshole self had to run its course in order for him to express his goals, that it was instrumental in its own fade-out. Nevertheless, Macon is somewhat redeemed in my eyes, because this shift lays aside my worries that Macon was simply using hip-hop culture and racial inequality as an outlet for his own lust for violence and feelings of inadequacy.

Conflicted Tan White Girl

I'm now three readings into Angry Black White Boy,  and I still struggling with what to make of the character of Macon Detornay. He seems like a bundle of walking contradictions, and it's especially hard to evaluate because the issues of race and cultural appropriation still carry so much weight in current dialogue.

I've been trying to come up with analogies to provide an alternative lens through which to critique Macon's character. The analogy would have to have a traditionally empowered group endorsing and appropriating the culture/symbols/whatever of the very group that they've oppressed. I think that point is very important, as we discussed in class on Friday, because it really isn't the same for a white person to be told to stay in their place and for a black person to be told the same thing

But so far I'm not having tons of luck, because I realized that I'm not really able to relate to a white person mimicking any culture other than black culture. Today (Thursday the 30th) I thought about its parallels to transgender women (meaning, individuals who have made the switch from man to women), which has some interesting results. I'm not really sure about how fitting the analogy is, , but the incongruities do help illuminate the problems with Macon (I'm going to be referring to a man-to-woman transition for the rest of the post).

The transgender transition seems to be renouncing ones man-ness in the same way that Macon wants to denounce his white-ness, but I'm guessing that we as an English class would have much less animosity and reservations about a transgender woman than about Macon. I think motivations play into it. People switch genders because they don't feel like they were assigned the correct gender. I don't think Macon feels like he was assigned the wrong race, because he relishes the thought of himself as the one white person who renounces white-ness. The color of his skin is a crucial part of the equation. I think that might not sit well with us because it seems like he has picked up on this thing just so he can feel special, and if we want to analyze it really deeply, he is still using the color of his skin to satisfy a feeling of superiority.

Of course, he is also motivated by a hate for white privilege. His method of fighting it is kind of weird though. If you were a man who hated sexism, your route of action probably isn't to switch genders. It's to tell your fellow men to not be sexist. I'm not sure if Macon's renunciation is really a fight against white privilege, certainly not enough to be compared to Malcom X, and his excessive arrogance is why we are looking at his whole ideology in such a critical light.

Another point is that even if Macon renounces his white-ness, he will still be white and still have white privilege. By contrast, when a trans woman makes the switch, she is now completely subject to sexism (I talked to a transgender woman once who had some astonishing things to say about how her professional life changed, how she was treated worse in meetings and her ideas given less thought, etc.). The fact that Macon can't ever actually be subject to racism makes his renunciation seem less authentic, even if he wholeheartedly believes in it.

One final idea: I keep getting pissed off that Macon goes to Columbia. But so does Andre, and Nique goes to NYU, and not every black person lives in the projects, etc. However, these facts don't totally invalidate the claim that if Macon was really as balls-to-the-wall as he says he is, he would live a much less affluent life, because (a) his money was gotten at racist means -- it's not even implicit, it's explicated with the Cap Ansen thing -- (b) Nique and Andre aren't the ones that have REALLY gotten screwed by racism. You don't evaluate a group of oppressed people by it's more prosperous individuals, you evaluate by how many of them have been denied opportunity.

I would get into flaws in my analogy but this post is already getting really long and heavy and I want people to read it, so please point them out in the comment section.

Ma's Suicide Attempt

Ma's suicide attempt is one of the most dramatic moments in a book filled with dramatic moments. Upon first reading, it's baffling why Ma, who has never showed a waver in her drive to protect her son, would abandon him.

When she was in Room, Ma coped by creating a routine, a mask of normalcy, that served to block out the actual horror of her situation. Ironically, when Ma leaves Room, she is forced to confront Room and her trauma. This is evidenced by the talk show scene, where Ma is asked questions that -- while eloquently answered -- we never saw her having to think about in Room. So perhaps Ma's suicide attempt is, at its core, simply a response to fully realizing what has happened to her (of course, we can't really ascribe a logical chain of thought to this situation, and it's probably more a confluence of factors that push her over the edge).

Another thing to consider is that Ma had never raised the questions that had been asked of her on the talk show, and her suicide attempt is perversely fueled by her desire to help Jack. I'm referring specifically to the question about giving Jack away. Perhaps Ma felt that she couldn't parent Jack now that she was out of Room, or that the "professionals" could help him better than she could. We discussed how Jack's tether to Ma was limiting his adjustment to Outside, and how the silver lining of the suicide attempt is that Jack had to learn to run before he learned to walk (so to speak), so in a sense, that line of thinking might not be too far off the mark. Of course, the idea that Jack would be better off without Ma borderline ludicrous at best, because her death would traumatize him. But it's understandable that Ma might come to some of these conclusions in her severely depressed state.

I also wondered about how Ma never attempted suicide in Room. She had access to knives and pills, and it could be days before Old Nick checked in. It's possible that she considered suicide on some of the days when she was Gone, but couldn't do it with Jack there (I think there's a world of difference between killing yourself and killing yourself in front of your child). However, there were two comparably horrendous years in which Ma didn't have Jack to serve as an anchor, so if she was going to kill herself, she probably would have done it then. This makes me think that Ma didn't consider even suicide until after she got out of  Room.

Thursday Night Fever

I logged on to find that my blog had moved almost to the bottom of Mr. Mitchell's list! I cannot abide (another toe). So I'm joining in the Thursday night posting orgy.

One of the things that I've noticed a lot more in this read though -- I read Room once before -- is Ma and Old Nick's interactions. I think in the first read through, I was just totally skeezed out, but their conversations are interesting in a dark way.

First and foremost, Ma's conversations with Old Nick exemplify Ma's overriding commitment to protecting Jack. We see how she placates him and plays into his delusion that she somehow wants to be there and be subjected to him. Jack's arrival actually made Ma's situation a lot more complicated in terms of her behavior with Old Nick, because when Jack was born, she acquired something to lose. Still, Ma never wavers in her insistence that Jack's birth was the best thing that ever happened to her. I think Ma's devotion to Jack, even though it puts her in a more vulnerable position, is an awesome statement about the inherent heroism in motherhood, the idea of putting another persons needs completely above your own.

I wonder what exactly Old Nick's plans were. Ma was certainly getting edgy about Jack's development in Room. Old Nick doesn't have the same concerns about Jack being happy in his world, but he had to recognize that, at some point, Jack would become strong enough that him and Ma together could pose a physical threat. It seems like he might have had to dispose of Jack eventually, or otherwise make Jack go over to his side (which seems very unlikely). On the other, Jack seems to have always been Ma's domain. If Old Nick tried to mess with that, she undoubtedly would flip.

The Memory of Running through the Airport

I wasn't incredibly into The Memory of Running, with its misleading title (it ought to be called The Memory of Biking, as you know if you've ever overheard Berit and my pre-class conversations.) However, I didn't hate the ending.

Artistically, it made sense. It had to end pretty much directly after Smithy gets to Bethany's body. You can't continue the 1960s narrative after that point, and while you could have continued the 1990 narrative, to do so would have been stupid and anticlimactic. The 1990 narrative is linked to the 1960s narrative. The 1990 narrative provides the framework (Smithy's x-country musings) into which we see the 1960s narrative. The 1990 narrative needs the 1960s narrative to give it oomph, and as the explanation for the bike ride in the first place.

So the ending wasn't abrupt, it was clean. I would have hated seeing anything to do with Norma and Smithy's return home and the "aftermath". Nobody cares. Speaking of Norma, she needed to be there to symbolize Smithy's transition to some sort of life in the present. If she hadn't been there, she would have seemed perfunctory, and her presence in the rest of the book would become an annoyance rather than necessary buildup.

Yes, it was corny to have her enter the way that she does. But the fact that it's not ultra-realistic isn't really a problem. We read to divorce ourselves from reality, and the corny ending is much more seamless than Norma coming in at a later time and having to explain herself (because, in McLarty's ending, the necessity for an explanation is drowned out by the serendipity of her arrival).  Imagine:

"Over the beach, kites rose and soared side to side, and Bethany did, too, held only by string to the earth, and she dove and dipped and finally broke free of us, trailing the string behind. I stopped running and watched as my sister drifted up into a clear evening sky. When I finally wrenched by gaze from where she had disappeared, I saw a figure gliding toward me. Not gliding, rolling, her red hair shining in the setting sun. 

'Norma?' I whispered, and broke into a run.

'Smithy! I wanted to get here earlier, but there was a storm over Chicago and they delayed my connection by two hours and then they changed the gate, but by the time I figured it out, they were boarding and I couldn't get my wheelchair down to terminal C that fast, so I had to catch the next flight to LAX. They were refueling the plane, so we had to sit on the tarmac for 85 minutes, and when I finally arrived in California, they lost the bag of clothing I had packed for you, it somehow got sent to Toronto, Canada, and the woman in front of me in line at the baggage claim help desk couldn't speak English and took forever. Then I had to wait 20 minutes for a cab that is wheelchair accessible, and some mail truck of full of cocaine had wrecked all over I-10 W and it took two hours to get through.'"

Plus, the shining sunset Hollywood ending fits with the nostalgia of the rest of the book. If you don't like that, fault the book as a whole, not just the ending. For me, the worst part about the ending was Bethany flying off like a character in a Far Side comic.

Goose Fight

Smithy Ide is hands down the most self deprecating character I have ever read, and his continual castigation of himself has quite a few effects on the story. I don't find it to be particularly endearing. However, it does factor into the reader's opinion of Smithy in the sense that his self deprecation is a part of the whole Smithy-to-us vs. Smithy-to-the-rest-of-the-world dichotomy, which is a thread that runs through the whole book. 

Every time Smithy says or does something stupid, he mercilessly ridicules himself for it, and, as readers of his thoughts, are privy to his private little hatefest. Whichever other characters witnessed his screw-up don't see him upbraid himself. All they see is an obese man who with seemingly sub-par social skills. We, then, see that he does in fact understand social rules and recognizes when he is awkward, other characters don't. 

The self-deprecation also complicates the issue of narrator reliability. On one hand, Smithy's self-deprecation could make us trust him. Maybe it's because he seems to trust us, or maybe it's because of the fact that he is willing to portray himself in such a negative way. I've tended to trust him.

But sometimes I wonder if he doesn't become blinded by his own self loathing. For example, when he talks about how his shorts were getting looser, it never even occurs to him that he might be losing weight, which is odd, considering how fixated he is on his size. Of course McLarty fully intended for the readers to pick up on that bit of subtext, but maybe Smithy's behavior isn't always as idiotic as he makes it out to be. 

This little concern is kind of hard to address because Smithy's narrative style. Often, his descriptions don't leave a lot of room for subjectivity: "I was 279 pounds." He gives a pretty succinct accounts of his dialogue and actions. But sometimes this succinctness (not a word?) works backward, allowing ambiguity. He assumes he seemed stupid when he said/did such and such. Do we believe him?

Smithy's lack of self-confidence is a really interesting and unique character trait, so I'm excited to see what McLarty does with it as Smithy makes his way across the country and confronts the issues from his past. 

Also sorry if the title of this post misled you, and you thought there would be a connection about fighting geese. You have been tricked into enlightenment.

Fun fact: I googled Ron McLarty, and it turns out he's an occasional TV actor and has appeared in Law and Order and did a voice in a Batman video game. Huh.

What the Faulk just happened (sorry everybody)

The ending of As I Lay Dying is pretty crazy. Darl proves the be more mentally unstable than everybody thought, Dewey Dell has some really sketchy experience at the pharmacy, and Anse GETS REMARRIED? A day after he buries his wife? Cora's gonna have a field day with this one.

Anse's remarriage certainly adds some new... dimension ... to his character. Throughout the book, the line of sympathy for Anse has been "He may be a bumbling idiot, but he's honoring his wife's dying wish and taking her to town." His whole excuse is really thrown into question when he marries the first woman he meets in twelve years, and Anse's heroism, which we've been tentatively tracking for the whole novel, is shot out of the sky. This makes the ulterior motive of new teeth look saintly.

The whole Darl situation is a lot less cut and dried. He does seem pretty whacked in his last chapter, and he did set Gillespie's barn on fire. On the other hand, as Cash points out on 233, maybe "it aint non of us pure crazy and it aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it." This observation certainly fits with the whole "what is objective reality, anyway?" theme of the book.

Anyway, let's assume that Darl is nuts. How would that bit of information affect the rest of the book? On one extreme, we could reread his highly perceptive, borderline clairvoyant moments as lunacy. Early in the book, Darl's objectivity, easier-to-read descriptions, and narration of events he is removed from compel the Faulkner-shocked reader to trust him. If he's crazy, his narration of moments like Addie's death or Jewel breaking the horse is could be completely made up. I'm not inclined to believe that they are. It's made clear that Darl knows about Dewey Dell's pregnancy, and it's fairly heavily implied that he knew about Addie's adultery. So, Darl's supposed insanity doesn't drastically change my understanding of the book. But I'm super into conspiracy theories, so comment if you have any ideas!

In the last chapter, there is a marked change between all of Darl's other narration. He starts using third person, referring to himself as "Darl" and "our brother Darl." I don't think it's that weird that he is talking about himself from his siblings' point of view, because for the whole book, Darl has specialized in extreme understanding of other people. Something must have snapped though. He was probably pushed over the edge by Addie's death. Since we never see him grieving in any other way, her death seems like a rational explanation.

In Defense of Addie

As a class, we haven't been kind to Addie. I noticed we easily decided that she was more bad than good - in some cases, all bad - and I'm going to play devil's advocate here.

Up until this point, we hadn't at all gotten a clear picture of Addie, having to formulate our opinions on snippets from Cora (mainly). From the Addie chapter, we find out how she lived her life in this depressing, apathetic limbo, marrying Anse as a way out of the school, bearing children because she feels some sort of duty, dying when she believes she's fulfilled her duty, etc.

Does she love her children? She certainly didn't love Anse. Addie's whole bit with words is that they are grossly inadequate representations of concepts, created in an attempt to convey the concepts to people who don't understand them or haven't experienced them. Addie says that when she had Cash, she and him didn't need to use the word "love," implying that they both understood it because they both loved each other. "Let Anse use it" she says.

But she doesn't seem to have any qualms about abandoning her family and just dying. That statment sounds worse than it actually is, as everybody but Vardaman is full grown, and she had no idea that Dewey Dell was pregnant. Of course, she does have this bizarre mathematical approach to her children, which probably comes from her belief that it is her duty to Anse to have his kids. Perhaps this could be the cause for resentment of her children, that they remind her of Anse? No, she says "My children were of me alone". I don't have an answer, but I don't think that we can just unequivocally say that she didn't love her children.

Nor can we say that she's just "a bad person." Considering we don't know much at all about her from other characters, we are only in a position to pass judgement on her based on information from her chapter. I identified 3 negative traits:

1. She is resigned to being unhappy.
2. She committed adultery (might I add, prompted by a loveless marriage)
3. Her affection for her children in ambiguous.

In regards to her acceptance of her unhappiness, is that really problematic or unexpected? Again, she's so locked into her role as farm-wife that there's no other course for her.

In regards to her children: As a woman in the rural South in the early 1900s, it is basically predetermined that she was going to have to have children. Maybe Addie didn't have a maternal bone in her body to begin with, and assuming that a woman who feels "violated"  by birthing her children, isolated by raising them (this comes from the whole thing where she says her aloneness was made whole again by her children), and no love for the man she bore them to, ought to have no disdain for her kids is really, really harsh.

Especially considering we have spent weeks waffling over the moral character of the perhaps well-intentioned but still useless Anse.

A related side note: The fact that Addie's motives for being buried with her people in Jefferson were vindictive is immaterial to the merit of the trek to town. We have been crediting Anse with wanting to honor his wife's dying wish and his values. It doesn't matter why she wanted to be buried in Jefferson, it matters that Anse is doing it for her. It arguably makes him a better person that he still does it, even though she's doing it to spite him (although this assumes he knows she hated him, which may or may not be the case).

Okay it is time to wrap this post up or nobody will read it. Show some compassion!

Respective religious motifs in The Odyssey and O Brother, Where Art Thou?

In the Odyssey, the pantheon played an important role in the actual plot both a physical and a thematic sense. That is to say that their actions (ie Athena's meddling and Poseidon's anger) shaped the story, but so did their values. Time and again, we saw that the gods value hospitality, so the characters would act hospitably in order to please the gods.

I noticed, however, that the gods seemed to value vengeance even more than hospitality. The whole wanderings are set in motion by Poseidon, who is trying to get back at Odysseus for blinding Polyphemus. There's also the incident with the Phaeacians, and Athena (and, to a lesser extent, most of the other gods) want Odysseus to get back to Ithaca so he can teach the suitors a lesson.

Revenge seemed to be a motif in the Greek religion (further research backs this observation up). And revenge is certainly a huge part of the mortals' actions in the Odyssey. In fact, it's pretty much the whole point.

From my understanding - and I am by no means an expert, so please correct me if I'm wrong - revenge wasn't as important in early 20th century southern Christianity. The emphasis seems to have been more on redemption, and this motif is reflected in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Our characters start out as convicts, so right from the get-go, they are in the moral/spiritual hole, and over the course of the movie, the viewer has to decide whether Everett in particular is more of a hero than he is a scam-artist. Furthermore, the film is less concerned with revenge than that of the Odyssey, even in the instances where the parallels are the strongest. For example, in the Odyssey, the reclamation of Penelope is saturated in vengeance, with the fact that the suitors kept hassling her cited as one of the main couple of justifications for the slaughter. The corresponding subplot in O Brother, the reclamation of Penny, is much more concerned with Everett redeeming himself in his wife's eyes, not killing her suitor.

Redemption is also brought up constantly by Delmar and Pete.

One more subtle parallel between the Odyssey and O Brother, Where Art Thou? is the way in which the motifs of the contemporary mythology and religion played into the themes of the story.

Differing Heroic Traits

To a certain extent, there are traits that are universally considered to be part of the heroic equation. The bedrock trait is probably bravery; it appears in every heroic narrative I've encountered.

Other subtler character traits differ from hero to hero, and these traits can be examined to draw conclusions upon traits that are considered heroic in the wider culture. One example in the Odyssey is the idea of being blessed by the gods. People respect Odysseus (and Telemachus) more when they have evidence that the gods have taken special interest in him. Alcinous hints at this when he talks about the reasons that he treated Odysseus kindly, and the suitors take Telemachus seriously after Athena enhances his appearance. There is never an attitude that ample help from the gods detracts from the characters' heroism.

Contrast this with American heroic values. We don't really consider somebody blessed by a higher power to be heroic; we tend to lump them into the same category as somebody who won the lottery. I think the importance of self-sufficiency in American heroism comes from the historic American emphasis pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. When somebody raised on the American ideal of independent hard work to achieve the American dream encounters Odysseus, who gets tons of help, we almost feel like he cheated. But clearly the ancient Greeks didn't see it this way.

Since heroism has so long been associated with hyper-masculinity (epic battles, physical feats, etc.), it's interesting to see how a culture's hero reflects the culture's ideas about the ideal man. On numerous occasions, Odysseus cries, but his tears never cast him as weak. This Greek acceptance of an emotional male stands in contrast modern Western ideas of masculinity, which favor unattainable emotionlessness.

One trait that both ancient Greek and modern American heroism share is humility. Homer makes a point to punish Odysseus for his hubris. All of his trials could have been avoided if he could have refrained from gloating to Polyphemus. Similarly, during some of our first few discussions in class, we definitely established that bragging detracts from heroic acts and makes a capable person less likable, citing sports stars as examples.

(On a related note: who's ready to watch Richard Sherman put a serious blemish on his heroism tonight?)

In conclusion, heroic narratives, especially widely popular/accepted heroic narratives like the Odyssey, can be instructive into a society's greater values, and comparing heroic narratives is a decent way to compare cultures.

Desperate Housewives!

I love Desperate Housewives (DH), all I did over winter break was binge watch it. In fact, I almost did DH for my heroic narrative personal reflection. So I wanted to talk about it here.

When you only get 45 minutes of the story on Sunday night, you have an entire week to mull the story over, think about the plot, etc. When you watch over 9 hours a day, your focus shifts to the more concrete and easier to think about plot. Resultantly, I didn't even think about heroism in DH until the essay was assigned. Before I settled on my final topic, I thought about writing my paper on the character of Bree Van de Kamp.

One challenge of analyzing the heroism in DH is that there at 8 seasons, which follow the characters lives rather than a story arc. So it's a bit harder to track a character's heroic arc. 

Some background (spoiler alert, but since they TOOK IT OFF OF NETFLIX, it doesn't really matter). I'm going to throw a bunch of names at you, only really have to pay attention to Bree and Carlos.

 At the end of season 7, a main character named Gabrielle's sexually abusive stepfather, Alejandro, found her after 20 years and began harassing her again. When he broke into her house - presumably with the intent to rape and/or kill her - her husband, Carlos, killed him. Then, Gabrielle, Carlos, Bree, Susan, and Lynette buried his body in the woods. Over the course of season, we see the coverup deteriorate to the point of Bree going to trial for a murder which she did not commit.

However, Bree decides that she is willing to take the fall for Carlos so that his family isn't torn apart. While all the women behaved heroically throughout the series, their sacrifices were mostly for their immediate family. Which I will come back to. But Bree's actions were to benefit her friends, and it stuck out to me as the most prominent heroism in the show.

Another thing DH does is highlight the inherent heroism in motherhood. By definition, mothers put their children before themselves, and time and time again, the women do just that. Interestingly, watching Desperate Housewives made me appreciate my own mother more, which isn't something you would expect from a show titled Desperate Housewives. 

Thoughts on Victory Lap

I wasn't present during the period where Victory Lap was discussed, so I thought I would lay out some of my reactions to it. Please tell me if it lines up with what was talked about in class, etc.

It took me a little while before I recognized the hero narrative, but once I saw it, it became very conspicuous. Kyle breaks the rules of his weird, obsessive, slightly abusive sounding parents, whose wrath he is terrified of, to save Alison. In this act, he discovers a powerful, independent part of himself, and then controls it.

One of my questions from class concerns motives. If an act has positive results, can the perpetrator be hailed as a hero, no matter how selfish the motive? We never explicitly understand why Kyle decides to take action -- I don't think Kyle consciously does, either, because he's thinking of all the reasons he shouldn't save Alison then and there when he starts running -- but it's implied. He could never live with himself. It also might have been because he liked Alison (they were childhood playmates), but this reason is less prevalent.

Is the cleanliness of your own conscious a heroic motive? I tend to think not. It's pretty self-centered, actually. Yet, Kyle still strikes me as heroic, so perhaps considering motives are too hard and calculating a thing to do when evaluating seemingly heroic actions, since these evaluations tend to have heavy emotional weight. But I still want motives to be part of the equation! It seems too simplistic to ignore them.

Finally, a couple of things I have to get off my chest: Of course Kyle Boot runs cross country, he fits the xc boy stereotype way too well for him not to. (Think of Paulie Bleeker from Juno.) Popular stories have you believe that cross country boys are nerd incarnate. Also, nobody runs that much in practice.