Fireflies' Parents

In the chapter "Gangsters" of Sag Harbor, Benji Cooper goes out one evening to fight with his friends using BB guns. Benji lies down in an empty lot to ambush people, sees a firefly, digresses about fireflies, and then recalls us from this digression with the impact of a BB pellet at the space between his tear duct and brow.

Benji's explanation of fireflies highlights the fact that people only notice them when they light up. The rest of the time, when they are dark, people don't notice them. In the minds of people, the fireflies may as well not exist when they are not flashing. The people choose to characterize them only by the times when they are flashing; this is why they are called fireflies and not flies-that-sometimes-light-up-but-are-usually-dark. The important thing to realize is that most of the fireflies life is unnoticed.

For Benji during the summer, his parents only see a small slice of his life, since they spend most of the time working. The BB game itself is notably part of his life which he really does not want his parents to know about--this will become a great worry after the BB pellet gets stuck behind his eye.

We've seen many coming-of-age individuals whose parents don't really understand them this semester, and all of these might be represented by fireflies. However, Benji seems to have an especially difficult relationship with his parents, both because of his father's abusiveness and because of his parents' work habits.

Cynthia

the texture of a peach:
the taste of a white-flesh peach;
the appearance of a white-flesh peach that has been nibbled?
the smell of an overripe, nibbled white-flesh peach,
the sound of an overripe, nibbled white-flesh peach hitting the ground.

Mr. Blake's Transgressions may include sleeping on a bench in the town centre

When Jason Taylor knocks on Mr. Blake's front door (indirectly, of course), Pluto Noak and Moran end up berating Mr. Blake for beating up Martin. There is no substantial explanation for why Martin would have been assaulted by Mr. Blake, although Mr. Blake definitely has a reputation for being abusive to teenage boys. All that Mr. Blake actually has going for him is his appearance: he lives alone in a house with a fence and a gate, and after his wife died, his son ran away after a fight with his father--this gives him a "dangerous" backstory, and combined with his hostility to local teenage boys (e.g. confiscating balls), there is potential for adventure-seeking teenagers to make him into a legend.

Sylvie seems similarly harmless, except that she sleeps in the middle of the town on a bench, and has other misadventures. When the uptight people of the town see her, they make further assumptions that Sylvie is up to even worse things behind the scenes. As far as they are concerned, Sylvie is likely doing terrible things to her children. This leads them to be especially worried about Ruth after they come home on a railroad--corruption of the youth is a terrible crime. In the end, Sylvie takes Ruth over the bridge with her.

Who is seen as worse, Mr. Blake or Sylvie? Mr. Blake is accused of violent crimes by the youth themselves. Sylvie is accused by the older generation of more insidious but less tangible misdeeds in leading Ruth astray--besides Lucille, there isn't much of a youth voice in Housekeeping.

What do we think Mr. Blake was like growing up? Where did his wife come from? What kind of friends did his son end up having, and how did he go away? What kind of interesting backstory can we invent?

The Foundations of Violence

On page 112 of Black Swan Green, the principal Nixon of Jason's school speaks about Tom Yew's death, suggesting that "you will note who initiates violence, who conducts the violence, and who must pay the price of violence...I also hope you will consider what is truly precious in your own lives, and what is merely...flimflam...grandstanding...froth...posturing...egotism." Jason says that he is "not sure if even the teachers were sure what Mr. Nixon meant", but I think that from what Jason has been telling us, we might be able to guess.

Jason's life, for the first few chapters, seems characterized by many status games. There are rules about the way to address others based on relative social positions, and artificial postures to make people seem cooler. The way that Jason masks his true personality when Hugo visits characterizes this--Hugo offers Jason a chance to improve his social standing by being seen with a person of high status.

The behaviors the principal mentions might easily refer to these dynamics. I think that the principal is trying to say that instead of playing these games, people need to respect one another and stop judging them for unimportant details of their life, like Jason's stammer. If people were more empathetic, wars might not get fought--this passage represents a turning point in the chapter, after which Jason no longer regards the Falkland War as just another game, between the UK and Argentina. The principal may have been only disparaging thd joke contests about Argentinians in the newspapers, but his point is just as important when applied to the students.

And What to Make of This Laughter?

The third chapter of Black Swan Green, "Relatives," ends with Jason Taylor's cousin Hugo Lamb laughing at Jason Taylor. Attempting to prove himself by smoking, Jason fails spectacularly by puking into the grass by the lake.

[page 66] I'm so ashamed. Hugo's trying to teach me how to be a kid like him, but I can't even smoke a single cigarette.
"I'm really"--I wipe my mouth--"really sorry."
But Hugo's not even looking at me.
Hugo's squirmed out on the bench, facing the churned-up sky.
My cousin's sobbing with laughter.

The phrase "sobbing with laughter" is an interesting choice of words. Ostensibly, it means that Hugo is laughing so hard that he appears to be crying and upset. Hugo is laughing so hard that he is physically out of control, and has been forced to recline on a bench in order to be comfortable until he regains his composure. However, the aspect of "sobbing" also reminds us that Jason has been put in a bad place by this accident on his part. In some way, Jason is "sobbing" that he has failed to succeed for Hugo.

Throughout the chapter, Jason sacrifices a lot to impress Hugo. Someone suggested in class today that Jason might have a crush on Hugo. It's hard to tell what to make of this, although homosexuality has a large role in the novel so far, as Hugo and other "cool" kids tease others about having "gay" interests and habits. Hugo is definitely very charismatic.

When Hugo laughs at Jason, how does he judge Jason? Should Jason feel very ashamed, and "sob" internally? Hugo might be laughing because Jason's inability to hold down a cigarette is simply humorous due to its absurdity--Jason has a major reaction. Hugo is a "cool" kid, and this might make him confident enough in himself that he won't care enough about this to judge Jason any worse for it. Hugo can afford to not be picky in his associates?

Alternatively, I wonder if this is the turning point when Hugo will begin to reject Jason, and Jason will slowly become more true to himself and unaccommodating to Hugo. Could this be the first big turning point in Jason's character? "The Maggot" isn't a very sympathetic character, and I think it would be nice if this turned out to be the case.

Lucille and Ruth's Housekeeping in the Woods

In Housekeeping, there is a turning point after which Lucille and Ruth become estranged. Lucille doesn't accept Sylvie any more, and eventually goes off to live with the home economics teacher, while Ruth begins to embrace Sylvie's transient lifestyle, until she ultimately runs away at night with Sylvie. While Ruth and Lucille are initially somewhat equally accommodating yet nevertheless uneasy with Sylvie's behavior, Ruth begins to grow closer just as Lucille grows farther. Thinking back to physics class, it is almost like Lucille and Ruth were two objects next to one another--when Lucille started to conform more, Ruth was pushed in the opposite direction by an equal and opposite force--or did Ruth's increasing accommodation to Lucille really trigger this division of the sisters? A division of Ruth and Lucille is by no means inevitable--one must only think back to Lily and Nonah for an example of close, old sisters in the family.

Importantly, Lucille and Ruth's separation seems to be less about Sylvie than about a growing difference between their basic approaches to their environment. Although Sylvie's arrival hastens this change by exposing Lucille and Ruth to a new lifestyle, Sylvie is only a catalyst in this process. This can be seen in Chapter 7 of Housekeeping, pages 113-117.

Ruth and Lucille stop by the side of the lake to hang out in the woods on a Saturday. "It was a place of distinctly domestic disorder, warm and still and replete" (Robinson 113). Even though they are in the woods, a sense of domesticity is nonetheless present. They see not a house they are living in, but a space they have constructed for themselves that they feel in control over. "Lucille and I sat down and tossed pebbles at dragonflies for a while. Then we fished...tossing the guts up onto the beach for raccoons. Then we made a shallow fire...rituals of predation engrossed us until late afternoon" (Robinson 113-14).

At the point described, Lucille and Ruth have a balanced posture in the woods--they aren't afraid of its wildness and dirtiness, but they take significant steps to make it "theirs." As night comes, they realize they cannot get home; "the woods at night terrified us" (Robinson 114).

Together, Ruth and Lucille built "a low and slovenly structure, to all appearances random and accidental...We had to sit with our chins on our knees to avoid bringing a wall down" (Robinson 114).

Later at night, Ruth woke up, and woke up Lucille. Lucille stood up through the roof. Lucille "sat down beside me in our ruined stronghold, never still, never accepting that all our human boundaries were overrun" (Robinson 115).

"Lucille would tell this story differently. She would say I fell asleep, but I did not. I simply let the darkness in the sky become coextensive with the darkness in my skull and bowels and bones... ...While it wass dark, despite Lucille's pacing and whistling...there need not be relic, remnant, margin, residue, memento, bequest, memory, thought, track, or trace, if only the darkness could be perfect and permanent" (Robinson 116).

On this duo trip without Sylvie, Lucille finds herself unable to cope with the darkness and company of woodland creatures. The house is broken, and she is resigned to whistling and frantic attempts to ward off the wilderness. Tranquility is gone for her, just as it is truly appearing for Ruth. Ruth finds that, in the darkness, having so little domestic possession or pleasure at the moment, she can simply embrace the lack of normal comfort. Once they return to the house, Lucille's disgust and recent trauma with un-domesticity will make her greatly resist Sylvie's housekeeping, while Ruth suddenly can appreciate Sylvie more. Although Sylvie definitely helped to speed up and incite Ruth and Lucille's estrangement, this episode of Housekeeping allows Marilynne Robinson to show that rather than being about Sylvie, the story is fundamentally about Lucille and Ruth.

Dead Children into a Vase

Esther shares early in The Bell Jar that she doesn't like children. She doesn't want to get married at least for that reason. Her date-tour of a medical center with Buddy showed her as well why she didn't want to give birth, to be objectified and manipulated. When Esther has a brief volunteeting stint at a hospital in chapter thirteen, Plath's narrative reflects Esther's perspective on birth and children.

On page 161, the very first line begins with "the flowers nodded like bright, knowledgeable children as I trundled them down the hall." Esther thinks of the flowers as she would children. Esther "felt silly in my sage-green volunteer's uniform, and superfluous... all I got for a morning of pushing round magazinds and candy and flowers was a free lunch." Esther is unfulfilled by the service, and the way she connects it to children brings to mind her lack of empathy with young people, only annoyance. Compare this to Holden Caulfield, who fails out of school as opposed to Esther's academic dedication previously.

Esther switches to comparing the flowers to cadavers. "I thought it would be discouraging for a woman who'd just had a baby to see somebody plonk down a big bouquet of dead flowers in front of her, so I... began to pick out all the flowers that were dead. Then I picked out those that were dying... This must be how they laid the bodies away in the hospital morgue."

Esther starts with children and substitutes them with corpses. When the women in maternity make a fuss over the children, this almost cements Esther's sense that women giving birth and deceived and controlled by a bad system.

Esther sees children, and herself, as already dead and gone.

Holden Caulfield: a perfect bigfoot

Holden Caulfield displays interesting character features in Catcher in the Rye, judging the world unfavorably for its phoniness and expressing a desire to escape and become a hermit; individuals of Magnopeditus barbarus, the Nearctic Sasquatch (referred to as Homo pilosus in some old manuscripts, and popularly referred to as bigfoots as well [yetis are a related species, M. spelaeus]), also isolate themselves from society. Do these apes also resemble Holden in their disgust for self-dramatization and condemnation of others' phoniness?

Cryptid apes have vanished from most of the planet as their habitat has been encroached upon by humans. In North America, they were already extremely rare by the time that Europeans arrived; fossil records indicate that their populations took a huge hit after early humans began competing for food. The host of overheating-related diseases that proliferated after the end of the last ice age in the southern parts of their range didn't help any. As a result, the apes today keep to themselves in areas apart from human habitation. When Holden Caulfield proposes to Sally that they run off together to "the woods or some goddamn place" (145), his behavior is quite like what one would expect from a sasquatch which had rendezvoused with their sweetheart in a crowded city. Cryptid ape males wander outside of their comfort zones during the mating season, but once they have found a partner they attempt to retreat to their normal habitat. Holden has a romanticized view of self-sufficiency in the wilderness, impractical for a modern specimen of Homo sapiens like Holden but normal for a sasquatch.

At the end of chapter 14, alone in his hotel room in New York City after a night of misadventures, Holden contemplates throwing himself off of the building to the ground, but decides against it because of the unwanted publicity it would attract. "I didn't want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory" (117). Holden wants to be anonymous and unnoticed just as much as bigfoots, which avoid journalists and photographically talented hikers at all costs.

Holden's individuality is reminiscent of wild North American apes, which can be very solitary. Staying away from one another, whose values they regard as pretentious, they form emotional relationships with inferior animals. "Take most people, they're crazy about cars... I don't even like old cars... A horse is at least human, for God's sake" (145). Holden sees the meaningless interactions with material objects as worthless, but considers bonding with an animal. Holden's repeated inquiries with taxi drivers about what fish do in the winter also evinces his awareness of nature.

At one point, Holden considers the potential of being a lawyer. However, Holden worries that he would end up arguing cases not for the actual benefit of being a lawyer but for the congratulations of other people. Holden fears that this would prevent him from being true to himself, and make him into just another phony. In a paper published in 2006 in the Journal for Bovine Empistics, Dr. John Ombleton of the Oregon Zoological Center presented his findings which he had gathered over five years using cameras placed in remote areas of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. This paper claimed that bigfoots, talented in sculpture, valued originality--when they shared their work at annual "conventions," one of whose sites Ombleton happened to place a camera at, remote similarities between entered sculptures led to head-bashing rituals against the offenders. Sculptures which had features deemed "conforming" or "gaudy" were destroyed, and their creators censured loudly. Holden certainly doesn't try to convince people to be less phony, and from his reaction to football at the beginning of the book, among other things, one could judge that Holden would be remote from joining violent action against "phony" people. Furthermore, the wild apes' perceptions of phoniness may not have extended to general social practices--the very existence of sculpting "conventions" suggests that the apes care about others' impressions; the apes essentially made nonconformity into the mainstay of conformists. Holden Caulfield runs into a paradox by trying to stay true to himself  against personal change. By resisting change, Holden actually influences his growth. Similarly, anyone who tries to free themselves by resisting outside influences will in fact be subjugating themselves to internal influences.

Although not perfect, I thought that these commonalities between the behavior of sasquatches and Holden Caulfield brought an interesting perspective to the reading of Catcher in the Rye. If you made it this far in my post, I hope you enjoyed yourself!

Holden's Attitude Toward Movies

Throughout Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield criticizes others for laughing at the wrong parts of movies. But what are the right parts of movies to laugh at?

To answer this question, I'd like to look at the scene immediately after Maurice, the elevator pimp, has punched Holden and exited with Sunny from Holden's hotel room with the stolen money. On page 116 (Chapter 14), Holden shares how he imagines that Maurice shoots him. He goes on to share how, in this fantasy, Holden, bleeding and dying, confronts Maurice with a machine gun, and is nurtured by Jane Gallagher back to health like in some kind of spy movie.

Holden expresses discomfort with his imitation of the movies, but can be seen nevertheless to identify with movie characters and their reaction to imaginary situations in this scene. Instead of laughing at the pain and vengeful emotion of the actors like I imagine the people Holden scorns to do, Holden projects his own feelings onto them.

Holden has an "abnormal" empathy; for example. he finds himself incapable of taking non consensual sex from his dates, unlike his fellows, and where most people would objectify, he tries to connect emotionally (we see this when Holden talks about his double-date with Stradlater and in the scene with Sunny in the hotel room). Holden tries to understand people and see the good in them, and he sees them as people.

Perhaps the big problem Holden has with the movies is the way they force a particular perspective on their characters, effectively taking away a whole dimension. In action movies, soldiers and spies are pawns of good and evil but lack mundane problems and hygienic flaws; in comedies, we laugh at the mindless misfortune of others without much empathy; in romances, we idealize love and attraction while ignoring the problems and uglinesses. Holden's description of a movie he watched on page 154 (Chapter 18) of Catcher echoes these complaints. I imagine Holden would movies corresponding to these stereotypes distasteful because of the disregard for reality--this constitutes an imposed phoniness inherent to most cheap fiction.The screenwriters are at fault here because they take such a limited approach to make people laugh, cry, or have fun, at the price of a 360 degree character. As I see it, this is Holden's biggest objection with D.B.'s current work.

Lice of Sweat and Spark

As Stephen broods on the smell of his decade-long infatuation, and the effect of her body on her fabric, he is interrupted by the piercing sensation of a louse.

Stephen has been pleasurelessly indulging in recollections of the rough and sexually loose regions of the city which he himself used to frequent. Stephen insists to himself that it is inappropriate to think of her image in the same "secret and inflaming" manner that he contemplates the young wives "gaily yielding to their ravishers" (253).

"That was not the way to think of her. It was not even the way in which he thought of her. Could his mind then not trust itself? (253)

Stephen seems to consider her image unworthy of contamination by the "monstrous reveries" of his mind (95). He reassures himself that he never though of her in the evil way he had previously reduced women to sinful machines, before his anonymous confession. Although he has now given up on mortifying his senses, he apparently still considers his sexuality to be a low thing.

Just as Stephen finds himself being mentally corrupted by imagining her sensually, "the tepid limbs over which his music had flowed desirously," the lice recall to him his physical corruption (254).

"A louse crawled over the nape of his neck and . . . the tickling of the skin of his neck made his mind raw and red. (254)

Much as lice were said to spontaneously generate from human sweat by medieval philosophers, "His mind bred vermin. His thoughts born of the sweat of sloth" (254). In other words, Stephen considers his own thoughts to be equitable with lice.

Although Stephen has rejected piety in favor of art, he considers himself weakened by sin. This influences his actions; he decides in the end of this moment that if she is "too good" for him, she should "go and be damned to her. She could love some clean athlete who washed himself every morning" (254).

Thoughts on Coming-of-Age

This is a new blog for a new semester's first class; the topic of the class is"coming-of-age novels." I might say the class has three 'windows.' The first window is the circle in which the students sit. The second window is the words that they read. The window that dominates for any student is the unique window that each one brings.

The students might not notice it, but there is irony in this literary study. The students think that they are reading about the life of ancient another but really the students are looking at themselves. For example, when students read about a poor neighborhood of Dublin, some may imagine it with slummy shacks, some with tall but crumbling buildings, and some with gleaming but cramped and unsanitary tenement-houses.

Individual readers also make distinct character judgements. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce suggests certain interpretations of Stephen's actions, but each reader brings a special flavor to their perception of Stephen. This is based on a person's ideals; a frugal reader would likely have a different take of Stephen's money-spending than a less thrifty reader.

This might all seem obvious, yet the various aspects of personality that determine the way a reader interacts with a book are themselves the things which undergo a change during the coming-of-age process, and may even be influenced by the reader's current selection. For a reader who is his/herself coming of age, reading a coming-of-age novel represents a cause-and-effect circuit as the book changes the reader who changes the book which changes the reader and so on.