My Sag Harbor

When I began reading Benji's account of life at Sag Harbor, and then heard Mr. Mitchell's personal experience growing up on the Jersey Shore, I found a lot of similarities and interesting contrasts with the beach I like to call my own.  My beach is Marco Island, Florida.  It used to be this really small fishing village about an hour south of Fort Myers but now it has become a grossly overcrowded tourist spot.  Ever since my dad was born my grandparents have been going down there during December.  A guy who my grandpa met through his advertising work in the 60s had a place down in Marco and would invite them down to stay with them.  Verlin, the guy who my grandpa knew moved into real estate, and soon the properties that Verlin would rent throughout the year became the houses my grandparents would stay in during their time there.  Years later I came into the picture, but sadly the all day fishing trips with good old Dennis and the morning bait fish expeditions off Verlin's dock were over.  Verlin had died, and my grandparents were too old to be out on the water all day.

As I began to get older, my uncle and I became a lot closer because he still wanted to fish all day and no one else besides him and I did, so we have had many adventures over the years.  There was the time we were fishing off the narrow sea wall at the farthest tip of the island and I jumped down onto the rocks to try and grab the black drum (that's a species of fish) that had gotten off my line in the rocks but couldn't get back into the water.  We only realized as we were walking back--sans fish--that I was bleeding all over the place from a gash in my thigh.  There was the time the stingray was going through the water right next to us as we were walking to Hideaway Beach near low tide.  When it was time to fillet the fish, I would dutifully stand next to him and throw all the pieces of the carcass to the swarm of pelicans around our dock, and then a few years ago he taught me how to fillet, and allowed me to butcher my first few dozen fillets until I could finally get a full one without any bones.

That point where I dove in after the fish has now been blocked off by the condo association above it.  Hideaway Beach has become even more difficult to get to as the mega-mansions built along its edge have continued to encroach, breaking mariner law and trying to privatize land below the high tide line (which we dutifully ignore and walk through anyway).  The boat that we've fished from my entire life, the Little Brat is starting to show its age, and the dock is slowly come apart.  The invading tourists have taken their toll too, normal public beaches are practically not fishable now, and the good fishing spots are being over fished to the point of nonexistence.  Manatees and dolphins, previously normal sights out on the water, have become scarcer in response to the increased boat traffic and decreased food.

Even though I'm not a townie, I only go down for a week or ten days every year, I still feel like a true member of Marco Island kind of like Benji.  I know the best restaurant in town (Snook Inn) that literally has charter captains come to the dock the restaurant owns and throw in fresh fish.  The chefs even go so far as to cook anything an unknown customer brings in.  Sue's Garden is the go to place to get carry out on Christmas Eve and Christmas day when everything else is closed.  Walker's Coon Key Marina has the best live shrimp in the area though Calussa has the cheaper bait and gas.  If you have the time Cape Romano is always a guaranteed success in the fishing department, Coon Key is a bit of a gamble but the trout and whiting available make it worth the risk.  

For me the "going out" issues that Benji presents is the questions my uncle and I always ask each other at Thanksgiving-What's the weather look like for December, and more importantly what's the water temperature like?  Have any hurricanes blown through and hit Marco?  Are there any red tide warning or beach re-nourishment projects?  When we get there the first day is always spent sorting out the rods, checking which parts we need to replace, and what fishing spots are gone and which news ones have popped up.

My experience year to year in Marco defines me.  I know when I've gotten stronger because pulling in the anchor is easier, or when I've gotten taller after noticing that I can see more over the console at the helm than I could the year before.  Coming of age for me in that part of my life was when my uncle got me my own fillet knife, the same type my grandpa bought him forty years ago.  In Marco I'm more in tune with nature, and I'm more confidant in my physical skills, whether it be navigating through the maze of identical mangroves, or sensing a storm when the water gets cloudier and the current starts running.  Marco is where I feel most alive, and my countdown towards when we will go there usually starts in July, also about the time I start checking hurricane forecasts and praying that they will miss Marco and instead push the fish from out in the gulf more towards the west coast of Florida.  Marco runs within my family, and no flock of tourists or greedy homeowner can ever take away my Sag Harbor, because Marco will always be my home.

Big Bad Michael

Today near the end of class Mr. Mitchell asked us if we like Michael Taylor.  My first instinct was to say no, almost that he is a character created for us not to like.  Reading the "Souvenirs" chapter my opinion of him was compounded by his behavior.  Up to that chapter he had always seemed to me to be an arrogant, self centered man.  I didn't like his smugness when Moby gets taken by a crane, or his passive aggressive way of verbally fighting with everyone (mostly Helena and Brian) at dinner.  I thought it was a character flaw that he couldn't at least hide his displeasure at Jason's stammer a little better, because after all it's not like Jason chooses to have it.  I took his actions in "Souvenirs" to be a continuation of his poor character.  He passed Jason along to his trainee Danny, didn't call Jason about being tied up with a seminar, and then made Jason apologize to Craig for getting elbowed in the face.  I did think the scene with the kite was nice, but it seemed more like an outlier of his personality, that everyone has one of those days where they're exceptionally nice and attentive yet they go back to the same old curmudgeon the next day.

As I thought about Michael more after class though, I began to not really be angry or annoyed with Michael so much as feel sorry for him.  He's a middle level person in every sense of his life, he's a middle manager at work, middle class socially, and of middle intelligence.  I don't get the sense from Jason's description that he's very attractive (though I don't know how much any of us see would describe our parents as being attractive), he's clearly not funny, and his one talent is apparently identifying fossils.  But I'm sure when he was a teenager he had dreams of being somebody, or changing world.  Instead he's a manager at Greenland.  He was probably picked on by the previous incarnations of Ross Wilcox and hoped to escape his tormentor once he was a professional.  In a sense he did, I don't think Craig Salt would be described as a hard man like Ross is a hard kid, but Michael still has to quietly follow everything Craig says and does.  Jason says that his dad wouldn't meet his eyes when he tells Jason to agree with Craig's incorrect identification of the fossil.  He's clearly ashamed by the whole situation, though he probably finds more value in advancing up the food chain at Greenland than Jason's momentary respect.

Taken in this light, a lot of Michael's behavior can be explained.  His weird rule about not going into his office which Jason breaks in the first chapter is clearly more about control than hiding anything in his office.  At work he is only a mouthpiece for Craig, so to have people listen to his personal commands at home is a big deal. Pretty much all of the other stuff he does seems related to this thirst for some small level of control over his life.  I think his issue in life is one many of us fear, or at least I do.  I don't want to live my life as a middle man who passes on my boss' ideas to my subordinates without ever getting to use my ideas.  Michael lives the life none of us want to live, so it's easier for us to overlook him with a simple judgement of his personality without bothering to look at why he is who is, because deep down we fear becoming him.

Destruction in the Rocks

In the "Rocks" chapter, Jason watches from the sidelines two wars over a pile of rocks, The Falklands War (between Great Britain and Argentina) and the rockery (between Helena and Michael).  By the end of the chapter Jason reflects on how the result of neither war stirs up any joy for him.  When I first read this over I believed that the death of Tom Yew and the open fighting between his parents essentially killed his childhood, marking the point where he changed from a naive boy to a more world weary young man.  To some degree I think this is a proper characterization of how these events changed Jason: he goes from the boy keeping a scrapbook of the war and ranking his parents' fight by a number of stars, to writing the word "bloody" six times in one sentence.

On another level this chapter shows the death of Jason's future, or at least the one he seems to have been planning on.  Ever since the first few pages of Chapter 1, Tom Yew had been the man Jason idealized, his proverbial lighthouse if you will.  He says on page nine that Tom was a minor legend in Black Swan Green, and when he shares his opinion on anything everyone instantly changes theirs to match his.  Jason's first understanding of love and sex is from Tom, albeit accidentally, when Jason's up in the tree watching Tom and Debbie have sex.  Jason always imagines fighting for Britain, shooting down MIGs and refusing medals from Margaret Thatcher, and Tom serves in the Navy and is treated like a hero for it around town.  Jason wants to be Tom Yew in a few years, the cool care free guy who can say anything he wants, both because people won't mock him and he doesn't have to worry about a stammer.  When Tom dies the path Jason was wanting to follow abruptly vanishes, he almost becomes a moving ship without a rudder to keep the theme around sailing going.  This lack of control against the social current is probably a lot of what pushes Jason towards the spooks.  He wants something he can work towards, and he wants to find another Tom Yew, hoping he'll find it as a spook.  The closest guy to Tom in the group would probably be Pluto Noak, but unlike with Tom, Jason seems to realize that Pluto charts a course just a little too far of f normal life routes.

More alike than different

I know it's kind of late to be talking about Housekeeping but as I was looking back over my notes to try and find something to write a reflective response on I stumbled back upon a note that I had underlined about Sylvie and Lucille.  I didn't work this into my paper but I still think it's an interesting point to bring up here.  All that being said, here I go:

Lucille makes her feelings towards Sylvie pretty clear to everyone with her leaving the house to go live with her Home-Ec teacher.  She then tries to go back for Ruth, to save her from the path she eventually ends up going in life.  Sylvie to her credit seems to take Lucille's utter contempt of her in stride, telling Ruth that, "Well, we'll be better friends" (Robinson 142).  While much of this mellow reaction can be credited to her general nature, I propose that it's because of her actions at Lucille's age that she so calmly accepts what happens.  Sylvia, Ruth's grandmother seems to have been a very orderly person, keeping a clean and tidy house while her daughters were growing up.  When Sylvie leaves her mom, only being a few years older than  Lucille when she leaves, she almost completely abandons the way she was raised.  She becomes a transient, never settling in a place long enough to make a house her own and have to bother keeping it orderly.

People in class brought up the similarity between Sylvie and Ruth, or the near copycat personality Ruth develops to match Sylvie.  The one thing that Ruth lacks in this comparison is a strong independent spirit.  Ruth isn't about to go against the mother figure in her life, she won't really go against anyone for that matter.  Sure she tells us when she disagreed with something, but in the moment she just accepts pretty much everything thrown her way.  Sylvie couldn't have done that when she was younger, or else she never would have left Fingerbone or had the gall to take a nap on the bench in the park as an adult.  This independence is what really defines Sylvie in every sense of her life, and it's what defines Lucille too, even if her independence is leading her into the main stream she still has to break away from the norm that she grew up in (i.e. Sylvie's way of living).  I hesitate to completely say that Lucille is more like Sylvie than Ruth is, but I do think that in terms of instinctive personality Sylvie and Lucille are two peas in a pod, whereas Ruth has to morph her personality to align with Sylvie.

Changing Alone

So far through the first eleven chapters in Bell Jar Esther hasn't done anything productive.  She has pretty much realized that writing in a magazine may not be her future, as it seems she didn't end things with Jay Cee too well and gets turned down for the writing course (Plath 114).  She starts writing a book but then there's the whole issue with her not sleeping for weeks and being sent to a psych clinic.  But there's one more key area where Esther seems to be floundering: relationships.  There's Buddy, Doreen, Betsy, and then  Jody.  With Doreen and Betsy there's the obvious reason why Esther left them, because their one month adventure in New York was up.  Buddy not only unzips his pants in the middle of a conversation, later he sends Esther a letter saying he is in love with a nurse but, "If I came along with her, he might well find his feeling for the nurse was a mere infatuation" (Plath 119).  Jody, the friend Esther was supposed to live with while they are all in summer programs at Harvard, would probably be too hard for Esther to see on a daily basis as she has succeeded in doing what Esther couldn't.  On the surface all of these failed relationships seem to make sense, but I think there's something inside Esther which is at least contributing to the failed relationships.

It's pretty obvious that Esther doesn't want to be a typical housewife.  She doesn't want to just wait around until someone comes to marry her.  She doesn't want to be the typical 1950s woman.  Unfortunately for Esther though, it seems everyone around her is content with the status quo.  Buddy wants a wife who will only raise their kids and not have a career, so Esther comes up with other reasons to tell herself she should forget Buddy.  Doreen, who is wild now, at 19 or 20, doesn't seem to want to work, after all, "The only thing Doreen ever bawled me out about was bothering to get my assignments in by a deadline" (Plath 5).  In a few years she'll probably settle down with someone who can support the way she likes to live.  Betsy, as Esther tells us on page 6, was brought straight out of a cornfield, about as all-american as you can get, so in all likelihood she's going to end up becoming a housewife.  Jody, the girl who Esther met at college, the girl that out of all the characters could think most like Esther, doesn't.  She's working in Cambridge and taking a sociology class.  Esther doesn't seem to find anything wrong with that, but at the same time Jody is going to be living in an apartment with three girls, working and going to school.  It's not that I think Esther is consciously deciding that these people will not be different, therefore she shouldn't be with them, it seems more like Esther uses other characteristics or situations to hide herself from why she really doesn't want to stay with them, which is their conservative view on life.

Imitating a Legend

I think we can all agree that Holden Caulfield's narration of his week around Christmas is one of the most famous weeks for a teenager in literary history.  His voice is also very distinctive.  This weekend I've been working on the extra assignment trying to write a reflective response to Portrait in Holden's voice.  At first I was leaning towards doing just a standard plain voice and throw in lots of "and all" "goddam" and "that depressed me."  Until I started writing I hadn't looked to much into the voice-sure I knew it sounded different, a little older and slightly more elevated voice than Gunnar Kaufman's, but that what made it different was the words he loved to use.  I wrote two sentences, two sentences, before I realized that it's the whole way Holden looks at things, like how he doesn't mind digression, or he repeats an idea when he gets really excited by the idea that makes his voice so distinctive.

Then as I started writing and I was forced to make another decision.  As Mr. Mitchell said in class we had to decide which style of speech we wanted Holden to be speaking in.  I didn't want him to speak in such a conversational tone as in Catcher, it's supposed to be a school essay and all.  I read over the scene with Mr. Antolini, and in it they are witty and speak to each other more in a peer way than a student to teacher dynamic.  I decided to go with a semi-conversational tone for Holden because while he wouldn't be one to follow every guideline as to appropriate essay writing, he also is doing it for a grade for a teacher he cares about.  Once I started writing in his voice, it became easier to write in his voice, I almost didn't have to think about writing in a different voice than my own because it was a very natural voice.  It really just flowed, and once it did, it was really enjoyable to write in his voice.

A Sister's Influence

Towards the end of The Catcher in the Rye, Phoebe pretty much dominates Holden's thoughts.  There is the scene with Mr. Antolini, and the scene with the two little kids at the museum (looking for the toons) but the rest of the last few chapters are devoted to Holden's interactions with Phoebe.  Even before we ever meet her Holden tells us about her.  He obviously cares a lot about his family, he brings up Allie and D.B. a lot and he seems to not want to distress his mother, but he really focuses on Phoebe.  At first it seemed a little strange to me, a six year age difference at that point in his life is a big deal.  We see how his age ostracizes him from the kids at the playground when he goes to look for her.  He knows he's too old to really hang out with them, and they definitely know it, but with Phoebe it's just different.  When he breaks down in her room, the way he describes it makes her almost appear to be the older sibling, she's comforting him on the edge of the bed as he struggles to control himself.

People in class threw around the idea that she represents the aspects of childhood that Holden wants to keep a hold of in his attempt to avoid the phoniness he equates with being an adult.  While I agree that Holden wants to keep alive his childhood by being with her, I think her personality has a large part to do with it.  If you look throughout his week that Catcher covers, almost all of his complaints are about the different traits of people in his life.  Holden is annoyed by Stradlater because he is a secret slob as he puts it (27), the girls at the club because only one of them can really dance (74), and then Sally and Sunny because they aren't good conversationalists (96,128).  Then, when it seems like Holden can't find anyone who matches all his criteria, we meet Phoebe.  He tells us she's really smart, a great dancer, can lie through her teeth, and she can clearly keep up with him in any conversation (165,175,177).  Phoebe is the opposite of practically everything Holden dislikes in other people.  By spending time with her, he can reaffirm to himself that not only is childhood more real than adulthood, but that there are people out there who are everything he's looking for in another person.