A Portrait of the Explorer as a Tourist Man

In Ragtime, Peary's journey to the pole is fictionalized with Father being our eyes and ears into that adventure.  Here is one of the canonical events of American exploration, right up there with Lewis and Clark and the Moon landing.  Doctorow is writing in the early 1970s, a very patriotic time because of the bicentennial, though with the Vietnam War still fresh in the American Conscience, triumphs like these, battles against nature not man were less divisive things to wave the flag over.  Yet Doctorow makes this triumph of American will and spirit into a scene from Apocalypse Now only older and colder.  I admit I don't really know what happened on the expedition, and that I'm not wholly discounting Doctorow's version, but I do think it's important that we recognize that Doctorow is trying to do something here beyond tell the story of the expedition.

This is really a story about Father, Doctorow could have chosen to set the chapter framed from Peary or even Henson's point of view, but instead it stays with Father.  This is to accomplish his goal of showing the 20th century man.  We've seen Tateh representing the immigrant man, we've seen Mother's Younger Brother as a Septimus Warren Smith-esque young man, but Father is the missing piece of manhood, the distinctly American part (so much so that he owns a patriotic supplies shop).  Father is our more stereotypical image of the American turn of the century man in his moral views and appearance.  In this chapter though, we see the Teddy Roosevelt image being shown as just a front.  Father isn't a Rough Rider, as Peary explains to him "This was from no lack of heart...but from the tendency of his extremities to freeze easily" (79).  His reason for being there is laughable, his society donated enough money so Father got to come along, as essentially a dressed up tourist.

The short talk between Henson and Father over who will go with Peary to the Pole is also telling.  Father admits to himself that Henson has a right to that honor probably more so than anyone else.  He relates his skill in building shelter and driving the dogs.  Yet he resents him for his confident nature, compounded by the fact that he is African-American.  He never says this as such, though it seems clear to me because in the same sentence that Father tells us of his resentment over "Henson's presumption" that he challenged "the Negro" over why he thought it would be him (77).  We knew Henson was African-American already so this isn't telling us something we didn't know, only something that clearly matters to Father.  Father's racism also carries over to the Eskimos, more so actually.  He treats them not as people but as animals.  They're used as unnamed assistants, indeed the Eskimos were always going accompany Peary to the Pole yet he still said he was going to do it alone.  Then there's Father watching two Eskimos have sex in the same way someone might at a zoo of two caged animals.  Later, when Father tells of his relations with an Eskimo woman he refers to her as "the stinking fish" (111).  This fills in our picture of the American man as Doctorow shows him--racist and fake.

Brand Loyalty

Magdalene called Lena tells Milkman that "When you got grown enough to know the difference between a woman and a two-toned Ford, everything in this house stopped for you" (215).  It got me thinking about Macon Dead II especially in light of the story Lena tells Milkman about going to the ice-house.  She sets it up as "You see, he took us there so they could see us, envy us, envy him...And when he talked to the men, he kept glancing at us, us and the car.  The car and us" (216).  What Lena interprets as a being more about making the poor Blacks jealous, I would say is really more about Macon.  He missed that maturation step where he could tell the difference between a woman and a two-toned Ford.  The reason that Macon is so domineering is because to him there is no difference.  Women (and really I would say men too) are just objects that he drives until a newer model comes out and then he either trades them in or leaves them sitting in the garage.  If you will indulge me with this metaphor...look at Ruth.  She was the big name import brand that made all the other guys stand in awe as he paraded around with in.  Soon though, the mouth agape factor wore off, and she needed a a lot more TLC than was expected.  Macon keeps her confined within the home, never really taking her out anymore, forcing her to sit and waste her life away.  Because Macon sees the people around him in near car-like roles, he just fills them up with gas every now and then and thinks they'll be fine.

Like a lot of gearheads, we see Macon try and pass this on to his son.  We see how intent he is that Milkman develop the same feelings towards other people as Macon feels himself.  He is insistent that Milkman work with him at Sonny's shop, even making him the guy to collect all the rents so he experiences that feeling of superiority.  Macon wants for his son to inherit everything, the business, his personality, and with that the "cars."  Where conceivably, are Lena and Corinthians going to live in Macon's mind? Probably in the house, like they have for the first forty five years of their life, making them Milkman's responsibility.  This really is just a spin off of the old slavery rooted idea that people can be property, only for Macon they aren't just generic property they are cars.  Look back throughout the book and there are a lot of cases where cars come into play along with the notion of Macon--and Milkman--being Black on the outside but really with the "heart of a White man" (266).  The literal cars are a status symbol for Macon, by making people into car-like figures he is further classifying them, and then Morrison is showing us then, that this takes on the added level of a racial pride aspect to go with class identification.  This could then be rooted down to "Brand Loyalty."  

The Goddess of Speed

*Note: This comes from a 1928 5th Series 528 Formal Sedan. Though the scene in Song of Solomon occurs sometime around 1936, from 1929-1942 Packard changed their logo to a more chiseled masculine hood ornament.

Toni Morrison doesn't add superfluous details, anything that makes it into the book is something worth noting.  So why then, is the one thing Milkman can see outside of the car this image of a woman shown above?  And then what is the importance of it being in front of him, while looking behind makes him uneasy?  Let's tackle the former first.  The most obvious reading is the freedom she represents.  Her wings allow her to fly away from anything she wants, nothing can hold her down.  This is of course very different from Milkman's life, true he is only six or seven, but even at this young age he recognizes the domineering nature of his father.  Macon Dead II lives his way, and makes sure his entire family does as well.  In the car, the time when Milkman sees this image of the goddess of speed, he is quite physically constrained between his mother and his father.  His father controls everything about Milkman in the car, even something as basic as when he can go to the bathroom.  When Milkman starts squirming his father is reluctant to stop the car, he only does so when Magdalene tells him he could stop (Morrison 33).  Then there is the independence that the goddess having a tire suggests.  Even if a tire ruptures, she can still keep the car moving because she has an extra tire.  It isn't next to her, she isn't standing on it, it is in her outstretched arms ready for use.  Milkman doesn't have anything to give him independence.  It isn't until later that he does anything against his father's wishes (visiting Pilate's house) and only much later that he asserts anything to his father by punching him.  

I would argue though, that it is the action pose the woman has that makes this small thing such an important detail.  Look at her, she's running (or flying).  In the first chapter Milkman doesn't do anything, everything happens to him.  In the start of the second chapter Milkman's first real action that we see is him having to go to the bathroom--notice how we don't actually see him pee on his sister--that is relayed to us back in the confined car.  Like I said earlier, Milkman is physically constrained at the time he sees this image, and I think we can all remember being a 6 year old kid and wanting to do anything rather than sit in the car (moving at a crawl no less!).  Later Guitar and Milkman talk about how Milkman doesn't fit in, he lives on Not Doctor Street, but he hangs around Southside (103).  He wants something to do but the big old house that his grandfather created confines him just as much as his father does.  He can't just go in the backyard or to the park to play, and it isn't like he can throw a ball around with his dad.  Milkman is stuck, physically and emotionally, and this hood ornament is the only "role model" he has for escaping his current state.

That idea of the goddess of speed being his role model I would propose as why that is the only thing he can see out the front.  Milkman can't actually see the wide open expanses of lakes or neighborhoods, but up on the hood the goddess of speed can.  She isn't constrained by anyone or anything, the world literally opens up to her as the car moves, she is the first to see the new land.  By being the first thing anyone sees as the car approaches she is the face of the car.  Contrast this to the scene at Feather's pool hall, where Milkman is denied entrance because of who his father his.  Even though Macon isn't there, his image is strong enough that it projects over that son, casting a shadow that everyone notices.  Out front the goddess is always traversing the new, virgin, frontier.  Macon assumes after Milkman works for him for many years that he will take over, even Milkman says that he kind of assumes it as well (107).  But Milkman from the very beginning wants to be different, he doesn't want to follow his father in to real estate.  It just doesn't interest him because it's what he's always grown up knowing.  Yet, unlike his sisters and mother he won't content himself to living statically, he needs change, and he wants somewhere that his father hasn't touched already, where he could be Macon Dead, not Milkman, and no one would mistake him for his father.  The goddess represents everything Milkman wants, and the fact that she's the one thing he can see out front, in his future, shows his determination to get what she has.

Native Stranger

There is perhaps no more harsh criticism of the society of this country, with a special focus on the societal structures around crimes than Richard Wright's 1940 novel Native Son of a poor Black man who finds himself waiting for the electric chair.  Bigger Thomas is 20 years old and lives in a one room apartment with his mother, brother, and sister.  He is constantly pushed by his mother to get a job to support his family, with the final impetus being their threatened eviction if he does not begin work.  He has a few "friends" that together form a gang, committing muggings and small time robberies, as well as Bessie, a girl that he really only keeps around for sex.  His job is to be the chauffeur for the rich Dalton family.  One night (actually his first night on the job) Mary Dalton, roughly the same age as Bigger, goes out with her boyfriend Jan.  She is so drunk by the end of the night that Bigger must carry her from the driveway up to her room.  As he gets Mary to her room, her blind mother walks in, and to keep Mary quiet he puts a pillow over her face.  She dies accidentally, but Bigger realizing how it will look, hides her body and goes on the run.  Along the way he picks up Bessie to assist in his fake ransom scheme before raping and killing her.  He is subsequently caught and put on trial.

Sound familiar? Camus writes a (relatively) similar story with The Stranger.  In both the trial and punishment phase take on an entire section of the novel.  Each trial is much more an indictment of the ideas Bigger and Meursault represent then the men themselves.  The trials are sensational on both sides, the prosecutors in each play the role of the keeper of righteousness, while the defense lawyers make impassioned speeches detailing the humanity of their clients (Wright spares us no detail in the closing argument of the lawyer, Mr. Max.  The argument lasts roughly 30 pages in total).  Both clients are sentenced to death, and in each we see what prison does to them, with special emphasis paid to their disbelief of religion.

Each author is arguing against the court systems, for they are killing someone just as much as Bigger or Meursault did.  For each of the men, the death by their hand was an accident of sorts, while the all powerful court is very deliberate in its murder.  The outcome seems decided before the trial really begins, with the witnesses serving more as stories for the press than the jury.  Bigger is tormented by everyone around him, Whites hate him for killing Mary Dalton, Blacks hate him for the negative attention he has brought their ghetto.  Meursault of course hopes for the hatred of the masses on the closing page.

Christianity also has a similar role in each novel.  Both Bigger and Meursault violently reject the religion that pervasively dominates their cultures.  For each, it is seen as a giving up of hope for the current life, and is tied very closely to the idea of escaping their prisons (for Bigger this extends earlier into his childhood prison of the Black Belt).  This rejection alienates them from everyone, though this is met with some level of appreciation that they no longer have to try to explain themselves to others.

Both authors are calling for people to start valuing the current life and stop shutting their eyes in prayer for the next one.  Many viewed Wright's story as a call to arms of sorts, to get Blacks up on their feet and push, physically if necessary, for more equal rights.  Camus is writing during the Nazi occupation of France, and as an active member of the Resistance, he too it can be argued is making a similar call to his compatriots.  Their anti-justice system views make sense, as the system only works if it goes along with whatever group is in charge, even if that means bastardizing the principles of its laws, and at that point the justice systems of the U.S. and Vichy France were seriously doing just that.

While certainly the philosophies of existentialism and naturalism that so greatly influenced these two works are different, the approach to a similar end can be to some extent disregarded.  These two novels were published within only a few years of each other, and in relatively similar social environments (though importantly Meursault comes from the ruling side, while Bigger is part of the exploited side) so the use of them in conjunction with each other I find is a compelling one.  That is not to say that they are sister novels, meant intentionally to compliment one another, but I certainly see that it works out that way.

The Sins of the father

In writing my response to The Metamorphosis, I became angry with one character that I had never really focused on.  In Good Night, and Good Luck. Edward R. Murrow's famous line "The sins of the fathers do not belong to the sons so long as we own them." is highlighted.  Of course this line was spoken in a much different climate than that of Gregor Samsa, but the idea remains the same.  Gregor's entire life is altered by having to return to work for the company to pay off his fathers debt to the bank.  This raises the question, is it fair to make Gregor change his life because of the mistake (i.e. sin) of his father?  My answer to this question is no, parents are supposed to be the supportive ones, it is not the role of the child to make up for the mistakes of its parents.  This is not to say that parents don't need support, or that children should not give it, but it should not be required by a third party or by any party for that matter.  

Gregor's father doesn't work while Gregor is working as a travelling salesman, he spends all day reading the papers out loud and enjoying his retirement.  Sure, he is an older man and presumably worked hard all his life, but once Gregor morphs, his father goes back to work.  He was not just living off the success of his son, which would be one thing, but he tied a harness to his son's neck and was forcing him to pull the plow.  It seems Gregor was having a successful career in the army, a rank of lieutenant is a big deal, but because of his father's mistake he is recalled home.  His father is being selfish, by screwing up his business and then forcing his son to work off his debt, he has potentially altered the course of the family.  Gregor could have very well risen up the ranks to become a respected and well paid high ranking officer, making the Samsa name famous.  Instead he is a middling employee who becomes an insect.

The most despicable thing about Gregor's father is that, besides the fact that he doesn't own his sins, he disowns his son instead.  Look at part one where for the majority of the time he believes Gregor to be still human.  He completely throws his son under the bus for being late, he doesn't stall the manager, he doesn't try to defend his son, he just capitulates to the boss.  We see later he defends his wife and daughter from the perceived threat of Gregor, yet he has no inclination whatsoever to defend his son who is keeping him out of debtor's prison and his entire family in a nice apartment.  The only actions that Gregor's father makes, that are described in any sort of depth in the entire novella, are the few times he attacks his son.  The apple assault helps lead to Gregor's death, yet he suffers no grief for his son's death (or at least disappearance if we want to quibble with how much of Gregor was left in his insect body by the end).   Gregor's father is the kind of man that Edward R. Murrow hated most.  He is a weak man who allows injustice to happen in front of him because he doesn't have the nerve to say anything, and relies on others to clean up his own mess.  

Copycat

There is something comforting about enveloping yourself in someone else's style.  People do it all the time with fashion, identifying with a certain group, sports, mimicking a touchdown dance or batting stance mannerisms, and it is really no different in writing.  When you imitate the style of someone else, it is relieving because your writing is less personal.  It isn't really your voice that is on the paper, at least it isn't if you did a good job.  Sure some of you will shine through, but the majority of your work is to make people forget that they aren't reading the author you're imitating.  Pastiches are a relatively new genre for me as a writer, I only discovered them last year in Coming of Age, but in the few that I've written, I've grown rather fond of them.  There is no doubt that they are challenging, some voices are more difficult than others, but they are a perfect mix of creative freedoms in the direction of the essay, while still providing structure of how to write it.  One of the hardest things authors say when you are just beginning to write, is finding your voice.  With a pastiche, that is taken care of, and all you are left to do is internalize the voice and produce a great story.

Looking back at both my  first pastiche, of J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield, and the blog post I wrote on it, I realize that not a whole lot has changed in my approach to pastiches.  I often do write a paragraph or so and then delete it, just to get "warmed up" in the voice.  I would say it's nearly impossible to come into a pastiche cold and instantly get the voice and tone right.  Sure there are sentence examples you can use, certain words or phrases that evoke images of a character to include, but it's all the things not on the page that you have to really grasp.  Good books are more than just words on a page, and that has to be the goal in a pastiche of a good book, to get beyond the physical words and get to the next level.

This next level is the elusive part of writing pastiches that is also so enticing.  Sometimes you identify with a character and their voice just comes.  I felt that way about Holden I think, once I realized how to really write a pastiche.  With other voices, it hasn't been so easy.  I wrote a pastiche of Julia Taylor, a character most of you have probably never heard of (she's from Black Swan Green, a book I highly recommend).  She is an 18 year old girl in 1983, and British.  I was none of those things.  Trying to rebuild her voice was a more step by step process.  I had to first capture the British voice, then the female voice, and finally a dated one.  Thirty four pages later I had some parts where I think I really captured her voice, but in between I fear there were points where I only captured pieces of it.

The same can be said for my pastiches from this year, I believe I had flashes of brilliance in the pastiche, but stretches that many readers would find slightly off.  Of course my goal has always been, and will always be, to write perfect pastiches.  I would never create a dialogue with the intention of ruining narrative flow, but sometimes as the author, the tone in my head doesn't match with the tone on the page.  As a kind of added challenge to myself this year, and also to make a good study of the differences of authors' voices, I've decided that through all my pastiches I'm going to write "chapters" of the same story.  The final pastiche I do this year will end my story, and then I will put them all together and read them sequentially, in all the different voices.  It will be curious to see how much is consistent throughout them all, that would be my voice, and at that far removed point how much I associate each chapter with the influencing author.  This distance I will gain from my work will be important in the maturation of my writing, because I hope it will allow me to find my voice, ironically enough by reading my best imitations of other, more famous, voices.  I suppose ideally I won't find my voice through this exercise at all, though I do suspect my plan will work, but only time will tell.

The Best Fisherman

Brett is one of those characters, at least for me, that are so frustrating to look at because your opinion of them is so complicated.  I suppose most of the characters in The Sun Also Rises are like that (with the exception maybe of Mike).  Brett is first introduced to us very physically, "She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht" (30).  Throughout a lot of the scenes with Brett she is depicted very sexually, especially by Mike calling her things like "a lovely piece" (85).  She also lusts quite strongly, and more importantly openly, towards Romero.  Brett is about as promiscuous as they come, and in a sense I don't have a problem with it, but it's the men she chooses that I don't like as much.  She tells Jake that she didn't think Cohn would be like what he turns into-- that is, a mopey guy doggedly following Brett around-- but at least from our perspective filtered through Jake's, it seems pretty obvious that he would be so clingy.  With her fling with Romero, she seems surprised that Romero wants her to look more feminine and wants to actually marry her.  Though, as has been brought up multiple times in class, the man is the epitome of tradition in his dedication to the art of his craft, so it makes sense that he would want a traditional relationship.

It seems to me that Brett is looking for special notches in her belt.  It isn't satisfying for her just to say she's been with some number of guys, but that she's broken their hearts.  Notice how the only guy she doesn't pursue is Bill, probably the one guy who could have a casual relationship.  He wouldn't fall in love with her, so he really isn't interesting to Brett.  She is trying to play the masculine role in all her relationships.  Look at how Jake mocks Cohn for him being dominated by his two previous women, essentially that he isn't being masculine enough.  Men are expected to control relationships, so part of Brett's identity, as well as looking masculine (though maybe androgynous is a better descriptor) is to also "be the man" in the relationship.  It's not that I don't approve of Brett because she is upsetting traditional relationship roles, it is that she goes to the extreme end of the spectrum, hurting a lot of men in the process.

The one relationship that I don't really feel Brett does anything wrong with is her one with Jake.  They talk about how his injury keep them apart, but it is the only thing that brought them together.  They met in a hospital in London, so if he hadn't been injured specifically in that way they never would have even met. While maybe Brett takes Jake's devotion to her for granted, she clearly cares for him.  She's more emotionally vulnerable with him than any other character, and with the little we learn about her past, that is really hard for her.  I can't expect her to be with Jake and remain celibate, if their fortunes were reversed I don't see Jake giving up sex to be with Brett.

The first time we met Brett I described her as intoxicating, unknowingly ironic as she drives so many men to drink, but that description of her still fits even to the last page.  Maybe some of this is part of her subconscious character, maybe some of it is an act she puts on.  No matter what the split is, even knowing her behavior as well as we do, I still want to meet her, not to yell at her, certainly not with a blank slate, but she is still intoxicating to me, even living on the page.  As I'm writing this I'm saying to myself, "You don't really like her, why do you want to meet her so badly?"  The answer is that I don't know why, like I said at the beginning my feelings towards her are complicated, I can't condone who she is but I also can't condemn her, kind of like Jake I suppose, she ties me into knots.