When Having High Hopes can Potentially Ruin your Life...

     Ok, long story short, I had another "Paper Pills" moment...and it was with "Respectability." More than anything, this was a complete opposite of "Paper Pills" in its content. Everything goes so wrong with Wash Williams and his love life, and the damsel in distress is, in fact, Wash. Maybe it's because I'm a girl, or maybe I'm just underexposed to female antagonists, but reading this short story was like swallowing a very large, nasty pill. I knew situations like this happened all the time, where the woman is unfaithful and the man is over-emotionally attached, but the reality of it didn't really hit me until reading about Wash. His story is a representation of any man out there who had to deal with a broken, cheating marriage; the woman almost always escapes the situation as a victim, and the man is the one to blame. It's sad, it's pathetic, and it's so very real. And I can't believe it took me this long to realize the pain that not only women, but men feel in the effects of heartbreak.

     However, first paragraph in, I wasn't completely sold on that belief. The correlation between the monkey and Wash already made me assume the worse for this hateful man. He's physically dirty and portrayed as this primal creature who can't even maintain his hygiene, let alone a marriage! Everything about him seemed dirty--"even the whites of his eyes looked soiled" (113). He was ugly, he was fat, he was smelly...need I go on? Basically, everything about him screamed slob--except his hands. This is important later (to be honest, when are hands not important in this book...?). Sherwood Anderson spends so much time elaborating on this man's uncleanliness and hatred of life, men, and women. By the end of the second page, there isn't a doubt left in your mind that would suggest Wash as an innocent victim of love. This is where I learned that you can never assume an outcome if Sherwood Anderson is writing what you're reading.

     The line that first threw me off was an off-putting sentence about his hate for women, which is described as "a love as absorbing as the hatred he later felt" (115). Hold up, what? I thought Wash was just born with this hatred, and I'd be reading a sob story about how his mother left him as a child and he was brought up loveless and with an aloof father who never took care of him. That literally would be the background for a third of the characters in this book.
   
     But this is different. He actually had a life. He was clean, once upon a time. He had a wife, a postcard-perfect house, a job, a garden. Such small details made me start to doubt Wash's backstory; what horrible thing happened that caused so much hate? And in a woman? In literary terms, hating a woman would symbolize everything from hating birth, hating life, hating comfort, understanding, softness, motherhood...that's a lot to hate. It's tiring to think about.

     Go back a couple years to when Wash was a clean, aspiring man, precious, polite, and thoughtful. He was a gentleman, a far cry from his present slobbish self. He is one of the only male characters that is described as virginal, which takes a lot of self-control and faith in one central idea: true love. I hope you're beginning to think that this idea is his version of a truth, because you'd be right, in my opinion. He believed in this childish, naive love and poured all of this faith into a blonde, blue-eyed girl. They marry, buy a house together, have tons of sex (reading about the seeds was more uncomfortable than watching a sex scene with your parents...almost), and Wash is a pure, happy man.

     But when he figures out that faith doesn't run both ways, he is devastated, and in turn I'm crushed and just a lump of metaphorical tears. The angelic girl with the golden hair and blue eyes is a cheater, and has been with at least two lovers while Wash was away at work. Wash's complete faith in true, pure love is ruined. This girl, who was his anchor and his ideal, his truth, was destroyed by reality: infidelity, lying, and cheating. But it doesn't end there.

     It was the assumption of Wash as an indifferent animal--a beast--that really made me angry. Very angry. For when Wash left his wife and sold his house, the girl's mother called and asked to meet with them at her house. The mother gives Wash hope, and he "ached to forgive and forget" (119). What they really needed was to sit down and talk: communicate their problems and resolve the situation. But the mother didn't go about it this way. She assumed that Wash was an unthinking, unfeeling creature that wants nothing more than sex, and this is what she abhorrently offers him when he arrives in the home. The mother pushes her naked daughter in front of Wash and locks them together in a room, hoping that sex will ultimately solve everything. Her assumption of Wash's primal mindset really pushes my buttons, for some reason. To think that lowly of a human being, to assume that he doesn't understand any higher-order cognitive functions other than impregnating a woman--that to me is the most monstrous thing you can do.
   
     'Unfortunately' for the mother, Wash's primal instincts do fire off--but not in the direction she had intended. Instead of having sex with his now ex-wife, man's violent streak sets in, and he bashes the mother's head with a chair before he is pulled away from instilling more harm. This event was what really sealed the deal on Wash's present attitude towards women; it wasn't just an unfaithful wife that shut down his empathy towards females, but the belief that all women think they can get away with anything because they are the smarter, more emotional sex.

     So is the claim of Wash being the monkey out in the streets justifiable? Maybe, to an outsider looking in, sure. But remember that his hands are clean--in fact, they are the cleanest parts of his body. This says a lot about his innocence as a character, amidst all these sneaky and dirty people living around him. "His hands are clean" therefore apply to him literally and figuratively. Again, we shouldn't judge a character based on his overall presentation; the details will give you the most insight. Take, for instance, his ex-wife; she is the only woman in this book depicted as having blonde hair and blue eyes. You almost imagine her as an angelic figure, but in reality she is an unabashed cheater with a witch of a mother. Then you look at Wash, this unkept, primal-looking man, but his purity shines through his hands and his name. He put his heart into love, and this truth became his falsehood. He is innocent to infidelity and crime, but guilty to believing the impossibility of true love. Who really is to blame? I don't really know...but I understand a bit more of why the men of Winesburg respect Wash so much. He is the wounded soldier in battle, a traumatized human being who had to fight the most dangerous enemy of all: women. In war, there really is no one to blame.

     When we were talking about writing for a timed essay, the teacher emphasized that we should always write in the present tense when analyzing a piece of literary fiction. For some reason, this rule of thumb reminds me of this story, and it makes my heart sink. In any regular novel, the prince will always end up getting the princess, every time you read it, in whatever language it's transposed in; the ending is still happy, still the same. But in "Respectability", you can't hope for anything like that; in whatever dimension Wash is living in, he will always hate women, he will always be wrongly compared to a dirty monkey, and he will always bear the pain of losing the girl he loved too much.

The Subway Will Never be the Same

In a Station of the Métro, by Ezra Pound

     The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
     Petals on a wet, black bough.

Wait...that's it? That's all you get to say on the Parisian subway station, the New Yorkesque hubbub of the European world? All I see are two disjointed sentences that seem to have no connection to each other (except the semi-colon--not that that helps). What else? Is there more? Where is it?!?!

So the poem might have driven me crazy over the past week; yes, I could have simply chosen another poem from this dense Lit book, but to be completely honest I didn't want to be beaten by two (or three, if you count the title) lines of text. Upon reading the poem again, a picture formed in my mind: a solitary, old Asian lady sitting on a wet bench inside the Métro, people-watching. There's a mural in front of her, where the subway tunnel is, of a Japanese-like painting of those trees with white-tinged-pink petals on it...kind of like this:

http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/cherry-blossom-andrea-realpe.jpg

I still can't decide if this is a sad or happy picture. I do feel this twinge of sadness, not for the old lady, but of overall dark and empty this sentence brings. There's no connection between the people in the crowd and the speaker, and this irks me for some reason. Even the title brings this up; the description of the setting as a subway station alludes to the ever-changing, temporary place--an intermediary for people who travel, whether from the house to the grocery store or from Germany to Russia. It's like this lifestyle makes people move too much, too fast for anyone to make any type of personal connection to anyone else in this station, despite the physically close proximity to all these travelers.

Now comes this feeling of discord and isolation in the first line. The word 'apparition' is used here, which you would think is connected to some type of ghost or imaginative figure; however, this is used to describe 'these faces in the crowd'. The addition of the word "these" gives it a sense of almost wonder that faces even exist in such a place as the Métro. Faces stand for emotion, for liveliness and connection, but adding on the "apparition" changes this connotation entirely into that of a ghostly, pale feature without a body. Kind of creepy, now that I think of it: apparitions of floating faces on top of indistinguishable, blurred bodies due to fast-paced movement. And what is up with the lack of bodies in general? It's as if all the speaker notices is the face, and all these faces are part of a crowd, which isn't a living thing either--it's just one moving, machine-like entity.

Now comes the second part of the poem, which provides a metaphor for this loneliness, if you look hard enough. 'Petals on a wet, black bough' is that painting of the tree I was talking about before. There's that parallel between faces and petals; petals are the parts of the flower that everyone notices first; it's the part of the flower that's beautiful and makes an impression on the mind. But then again, there's the fact that the petals only form part of the flower, in the way that faces are only part of the body. By itself, petals are quite lifeless things, and don't keep well without the source that brings them life: a body, a heart, or a stem, the roots.

The second portion--"a wet, black bough"-- is the medium for which these lifeless things live through. The alliteration of the hard 'b' in "black bough" first gives me that ominous feeling of darkness and uneasiness. Or maybe it's just me.
And what's a 'bough', you ask? It's a branch of a tree--connections, connections. Like a crowd, the boughs form this unquantifiable number of branches, similar to the crowd. And yet, there's no mention of the branch, or the stem, that the petals are part of. It's black, which may refer to how wet the branches are. Black symbolizes the usual, depressing topics: death, intimidation, secrets, the unknown. Is this not like the crowd running around from train stop to train stop?

I guess Ezra Pound does have a point to get across with this deceivingly short poem; something about our movement, our constant shifting, contributes to this lack of connection to the human spirit in our body's core. Of course there are faces that have the ability to convey emotion, but it's only temporary, and that's all the speaker notices; a flower's petals are appealing to our olfactory senses, but only if connected to the source that gives them their smell. The ever-changing, fast-paced life takes away from the whole picture, the whole figure of the being disappears and all we see are unrecognizable, blank faces. Now that I think of all these parts that make up the poem, the emotions and picture that rises matches to the one before the analysis--a lonely woman on a bench viewing this generation of hurried souls who only take notice of faces, not of people.

Opposites Attract: "Tintern Abbey" and Frankenstein

     I have to admit, after the first reading of "Tintern Abbey,"I couldn't for the life of me connect it to Frankenstein in any way. The calmness, the effervescence and warmth and bittersweet memories that come from "Tintern Abbey" don't mesh well with the horror, science fiction, and aestheticism of Frankenstein. And then I realized, it wasn't about comparing the two ideas; in fact, they complemented each other fairly well in their differences, not their similarities. It's the contrast that makes "Tintern Abbey" fit so well within the terrifying ideas that Shelley proposes in her novel. 

     In fact, on page 139-140, Shelley cites a certain passage from the poem to describe Victor's closest friend, Henry Clerval. The section in particular seemed to just describe Clerval's love of literature and nature in general, expressed through his passion for the natural aura around him and that gives him such delight. This contrasts with Frankenstein's background in the rigid natural sciences, the mechanical creation of nature that doesn't provide him these similar pleasures. In essence, these two works of fiction (Frankenstein and “Tintern Abbey”) are doubles, just in the way that Victor and Henry are doubles; each has what the other doesn't. Victor has the bookish knowledge, the memorized rules and laws of nature, while Henry possesses the internal salvation, the "aching joy" and profoundness that nature offers.

     When I read this portion of Frankenstein again, the impact of nature in Victor’s life and the whole work becomes more apparent; the connotations of nature now include what Wordsworth described as “Nature” in his poetic ramblings, which range from "anchor" to "savior" to "guardian." Shelley put “Tintern Abbey” in her own work to display nature’s workings on man, such as the feeling of joy, tranquility, and other pleasurable sensations in a way that a mechanical recreation of nature never could. In addition to Victor’s overreaching personality, his unnatural conception of his creature--which should have been the epitome of human discovery, the recreation of nature in man's hands, not God's-- doesn’t give him this type of solace that Henry Clerval is able to achieve through his travels in the European countryside, enjoying nature for what it has to offer. These two contrasts of 'fake' nature and 'real' nature occur throughout the book, in each character's past, present and future. Kind of similar, again, to the structure of "Tintern Abbey" itself...the layout of time frames and the effect of nature from the mind of a boy to the mind of man.

     Just think about the poem that Wordsworth uses to describe nature; his words, his lines, and his poetic laments of nature could have just as easily been placed in Victor’s mouth and we wouldn’t know the difference! Victor's situation only digresses in that nature, in the form of the creature he created, doesn’t share the same awe-inspiring, eye-opening effects that real nature gives. But other than that, is there not a distinct past, present, and future that Victor goes through in the book? It starts with his past misunderstanding and crude interpretation of nature through Agrippa’s works; the present insight—unfortunate, but still, insight—of the power and dangers of nature, regardless of superficial formation; and the future of passing down what he learned to a youth (Walton, in this case) about he mysteries of nature, in the form of warning and reverence for this power. In addition to creating a convoluted allusion of the Creation story and Prometheus, Shelley does the same with “Tintern Abbey” in her novel, which in the beginning, was a whole lot to process for just one book.

We Need to Talk About Kevin.......and Literary Fiction, of Course

     Some day, I'll blog about something that has nothing to do with movies and won't hint at my bad habit of watching them during school nights...but today is not that day. While procrastinating yet again on schoolwork, I stumbled upon We Need to Talk About Kevin, and I think I've found that rare gem of a film, one that practically no one's ever heard of, that just might fit that elusive definition of a literary fiction (if it were a movie, that is). There is just something about how this movie was shot, the actors involved in it, and the plot that it was centered on, that really set a new standard for all movies out there...this film made me think, it made me wonder about the human condition and how external and internal forces influence us in ways we can't imagine. It's nothing like your summer blockbuster, which comes out every summer and gets billions of dollars in sales. People will talk about it in the next couple of weeks, the news will be applauding its financial success, but after a few years-- maybe even after a few months-- no one will remember the main character. Or the plot. What was the movie even about?? Don't look at me, that stuff is too mainstream for my taste. That is a perfect example of a commercial fiction--er, I mean movie. You get the idea. But We Need to Talk About Kevin will surpass the obstacle of time, and maybe years from now people will finally watch this film and uncover the great insight it offers about our messed-up era we call Post-Modernism. The future generations can infer our beliefs of the human condition and the inescapable flaws we're presented with. The future high school students will analyze this movie as much as we did with Frankenstein, if not more. And that, reader, is what finally made me able to differentiate literary and commercial fiction. 

     But enough about the differences; fiction is fiction, and whether it's literary or commercial, if it's pulled off well then everyone can enjoy it, right? Well, We Need to Talk About Kevin was a variety of things; it was artistic, it was gritty, it was subtle, and it was downright horrifying. I've seen my fair share of scary movies, but this psychological twister really pushes all the buttons. I don't want to give the whole plot away, but I also have a hard time shutting my mouth about these types of things, so read at your own risk. The movie is centered around a young couple who recently got married; the two love traveling and doing lovey-dovey couple things together, etc. etc.-- think of it as an extended, 2-year honeymoon. Of course, at one point, the woman (named Eva) gets an unexpected pregnancy. The father, Franklin, is overjoyed; the mother is not. She spends the nine months of the pregnancy wallowing right up until the very end, when she gives birth to a baby boy named Kevin. Here is where all notion of normalcy ends.

     

     We need to talk about Kevin. Why? Because he is born with an innate hatred towards his mother, and his mother only. He has no problem with the father, or any other living being for that matter, except for the woman who gave him life. After birth, Eva actually does a slow turnaround about the idea of having kids, and has just begun to accept her new role as a mother with cautious enthusiasm, but this enthusiasm is short-lived. As the child gets older, it becomes more and more apparent to Eva that Kevin tries his very best to spite, bother, annoy, physically and mentally hurt the mother; nothing she would say or do would lessen this hatred within him. But when the father was around, Kevin would do a complete 180; he turned into the adorable 5 year-old that wanted to play with paper planes and hug his daddy, all in front of the boggled, exhausted mother. Things don't look up as he becomes a teenager; at this point the mother conveys no love nor interest for her son, and he returns this in kind. He still does subtle things to annoy her, such as leave his room a mess, watch pornography when she's around-- any horrible thing you can think of that a teenager could do, he's probably done in the movie. 

     Eva, on the other hand, thinks she's going crazy. She keeps telling her husband that Kevin doesn't act right around her, as if he wasn't even her son, and Franklin doesn't believe a word she says; this is justified from his perspective, since Kevin acts like the perfect teenager around him. All of these psychological torments lead up to a final, desperate act by Kevin to really show the world how much he hates his mother; he locks down the school during a pep rally and starts shooting at random students on site. This was the final straw, and he's sent to jail for his actions. Now, the last scene is the most interesting of all. The son finally lets all of his emotions out during a jail confession about how he's had this unexplainable ache to harass his mother since he was born. He confesses that he used to know why he wanted to kill all those students, but now he isn't sure he remembers. And in that moment, Eva (who was in the confession room with him) did an unexplainable thing; she hugs her son for the first, and probably only time. 

     I didn't give everything away, but even from the crude summary all you think is "Whaaaaaaat? did I miss something?" But that's exactly how it ends: in their embrace. These two seemingly sworn enemies, hugged it out, as if nothing ever happened in those 18 years of purgatory in raising a child that does nothing but hate you back. But what I got out of this movie was a lot more than goosebumps for the actor Kevin's chilling performance, or the massive bloodshed throughout the latter half of the movie; it was how seemingly plausible this could all be. The movie raises the controversy of nature versus nurture, battling both sides against each other upon analyzing Kevin's upbringing. What was it that really made him hate the mother? Was it something within those nine months prior to conception that contributed to his behavior? Was it purely by environment alone? It also questions the strength of that bond between mother and child. Can it persist even the most heinous of crimes? Is this love innate, or is it learned? The director seemed to have at least one concrete idea in mind when answering these questions: some mothers will love and support their children even if her children don't deserve it. This is displayed through the hug that Eva gives to her son in the end of the movie, but this is solely from one perspective. Many others claim that the hug was her final ironic act as a mother, and that she was actually resolved to let go of her monster instead of her child in giving that hug. 

  

     Then there's Kevin himself. The director mixes nature and nurture in this character to make him what he is, and what can we deduce of this? Maybe sometimes hatred is innate in children, and that it must be unlearned a certain way for the child to properly love his parent? Or that the life source is just as important, if not more important, than the creation itself in determining its fate? It twists the societal impression that children are born as a blank slate, and that mothers have no influence on the behavior of the child. This movie contradicts our ideas or parenthood into something quite nasty and uncomfortable instead of loving and supporting. As I sat back when the credits rolled, I created my own doubts in my head. What would happen if I didn't love my child because it was ugly? What if my child didn't want me? What if, what if, what if...I wasn't lying when I told you this movie made me think. Sure, the whole plot could have been a dramatization  that might never actually happen in real life, but its rooted in questions that many parents may have when they want to start a family. These what ifs are what make this movie worth your time; it's bold and unforgiving when it displays not the good, but the dark side of both children and parenthood.