The Comparative Literature Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst presents
The Best of…
JJUNIORUNIOR YYEAREAR WWRITINGRITING
Vol. 1 Fall, 2005 Copyrighted Material
Program in Comparative Literature Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures University of Massachusetts Amherst 430 Herter Hall 161 Presidents Dr Amherst, MA 01003-9312 USA
© 2005 by the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Nikolina Dobreva, editor and book design
Essay selection committee: Nicole Calandra David Lenson Daniel Pope
Essay authors: Buffy Berthiaume Jack Eskin Kaitlin “KC” Forcier Alice Gray Jaclyn King Table of Contents
Introduction 4
Buffy Berthiaume From Japanese Haunting to Americanized Horror: The Transformation and Acculturation of a Foreign Genre of Film 5
Jack Eskin Russkies and Rednecks: Anti-Modern Currents in Literature 11
Kaitlin “KC” Forcier From the Wicked to the Wise: Feminist Re-Appropriations of the Witch Identity in the Fiction of Monica Furlong 17
Alice Gray Robinson and Glover: Two Different Times for Tap-Dancing in Hollywood Film 24
Jaclyn King The Onslaught of Dread and the Consequences of Freedom: An Inquiry of Existential Thought Within The Things They Carried and Slaughterhouse Five 31 Introduction
In the Fall of 2005, I requested to teach Junior Year Writing (Comp-Lit 397B) mainly because I was intrigued about teaching writing, and because I wanted to ex- perience working with Comparative Literature majors and students with a strong motivation to grow as writers, rather than those merely looking to fulfill the requirements for a course. I knew I had big shoes to fill, as both Dale Hudson and Alix Paschkowiak before me had done an outstanding job. What I did not realize was how exceptional our students are: I was continuously impressed and challenged by their knowledge and analytical skills that were on par with what one would expect from accomplished scholars. The Junior Year Writing final conference, an all-day event that allowed the students to formally present their findings in front of their peers and friends, as well as in front of Comparative Literature faculty and graduate students, took place on December 6, 2005. Once again, the students brilliantly handled all the difficulties involved in completing their research in a timely manner, delivering their papers well, and providing exhaustive replies to the complicated questions that their professional audience was eager to ask. The exceptional quality of all the papers presented at the conference led Professor William Moebuis, the Chair of the Comparative Literature Program, to suggest that the work of our students be showcased online in the form of a publication, as it deserves better acknowledgement and a wider audience. Although all the essays were excellent, the publication was to be competitive, and it contains only the “best five” essays written for the class. I would like to acknowledge the dedicated work of Professor David Lenson, as well as that of two of my fellow graduate students, Nicole Calandra and Daniel Pope, who read through all the papers and selected the five finalists. The essays that follow focus on different topics, and vary stylistically, yet they are all the result of careful research and a painstaking writing and rewriting process. I hope this will be only the first of many publications that will continue to exhibit the outstanding work of Comparative Literature majors.
Nikolina Dobreva Instructor CompLit 397B Fall 2005
From Japanese Haunting to Americanized Horror: The Transformation and Acculturation of a Foreign Genre of Film by Buffy Berthiaume
This article examines the aspects of AMERICANS as a nation are driven Japanese horror films that generate a by violence and death. Every media source trepidacious uncertainty among young and in the country is on constant alert for the old, and how such foreign content is next horrific story of the day, each vying for conducive to Americanized versions of the top authority on the matter and watching as same material. By exploring the structure, people stand enthralled by the gruesome dialogue, and impact of two American sights of murder, destruction, and uncon- remakes of Japanese films, The Ring (2002) scionable events lain before them. It is no and The Grudge (2004), the study also surprise, then, that horror films have always identifies the elements governing the appeal held a strange sense of captivation for for the subject matter which Japanese audiences; generation after generation horror provides to an American audience willingly pays to feel that rush of adrenaline unaccustomed to cultural diversity and that comes from the unfamiliar. It is the cognitive dissonance. unknowable and unforeseeable that draws curiosity and intrigue in one’s day-to-day This paper won the first prize in an all- life, playing on the unconscious fears within campus contest for the best essay written in the depths of the mind. It is an anxious a Junior Writing class. anticipation for the unexpected and for
feeling that flush of terror from the body’s Keywords: horror film, Japan, US, remakes, defense against certain irrationalities. It is cultural difference the desire to validate the unease that a mind
harbors against things which cannot easily
be explained, where childhood fears are revisited through adult eyes with no less irrationality, but with a better understanding of the potential truth behind films. However, as audiences grow more accus- tomed to the typical American horror film, directors and producers are increasingly aware of the need to incorporate new territories of the unexplored into their work. Instead of rotting bodies or masked men, which have become all too familiar, Ameri- cans have now turned to the greater intan- gibles to be found in Japanese horror, namely ghosts and revenge. The Japanese horror genre blends amplified music with heavy atmosphere and a sense of foreboding within a seemingly ordinary setting to produce a
psychologically unnerving response of apprehension. The westernized horror film, however, is commonly linked with blood and gore brought on by a crazed killer, something which initially contributed to its widespread success as a genre but recently has been outdated. A new way of viewing fear was needed to make the hearts of an audience beat within their ears once more. A new path needed to be found in order to purge the innermost recesses of the mind, where lost secrets, misgivings, and nightmares lurked, waiting to see the light of day. Such a route was taken and explored through the modern day Japanese horror boom, cleverly referred to as J- horror, with movies like Gore Verbinski’s The Ring (2002), and Takashi Shimizu’s The Grudge (2004). Typically, the American horror film features a mentally disturbed character, such as that of Michael Myers in each of the Halloween movies, but Japanese horror films have instead introduced characters who are mentally disturbing. The character of Samara Morgan in The Ring and that of Kayako Saeki in The Grudge evoke a chilled sense of the uncanny with their irregular movements, stilted gait, and supernatural deliberateness, combined with an amplification of strangely unsettling music and abundance of shadows. Most times one’s fear is increased with the simple presence of these characters because the point is not to be completely menacing, but to be enigmatic and perplexing in an overtly minimal way. Customarily, American horror films never offer an overwhelming feeling of uncertainty or “the unnerving feeling that rationality is a luxury [one] can no longer afford” (D’Angelo), but instead are predictable and to the point, leaving little to the imagination. J-horror films leave more to the imagination and more to think about; when there are questions without ready answers, it makes the plotline more intriguing and allows for a lot more discussion. It is apparent that Japanese horror films have a much more illusory and incorporeal quality within their structure, which some say has given Hollywood a reason to disregard all rationality (Lovgren). But clearly, disregarding the rational has greatly benefited horror as a genre because that is precisely what horror is about – letting go of inhibitions and losing control. Japanese horror allows our country to experience a terror different from the traditional American horror stories involving ghosts, where spirits only exist as enemies. In Japanese culture, spirits do not exist simply as foes, but they subsist in day to day life, as an ever-present force. Koji Suzuki, author of the novel Ringu, which spurred the production of The Ring films, has made it clear that he is profoundly disappointed in what he describes as “conventional horror flicks” that offer no more than blood, evil, and overused sound effects. Suzuki feels that real fear must stimulate an audience and be able to evoke a feeling of tension that borders on panic. He describes the typical horror films in America and Europe as tales that must ultimately eradicate evil spirits, while the ending of Japanese horror movies typically suggests that the spirit still lingers, unable to be extinguished. Suzuki believes that such a suggestion is made because the Japanese regard spirits not as adversaries, but as entities that must be accepted as coexisting with us (“An Interview with Koji Suzuki”). Such a concept is disconcerting in and of itself because spirits are free of worldly control and therefore are much more powerful than any mortal person they may choose to torment. In both The Ring and The Grudge, it is difficult to tame the encountered spirits because their intentions are never quite clear, nor are their subsequent actions. But, it is this cultural divide between the Japanese and the American that invites new ideas and refreshes one’s senses by introducing aspects of history that are not primarily American. In the same respect, it also adds effect to the horror genre by once again highlighting unfamiliarity amongst a Western audience while sparking that strange lust for fear. One of the reasons why Americans became enveloped in the production of Japanese horror movies is that the Japanese view of horror is based on a completely different worldview. In an interview for the Japanese online journal Kateigaho, Ringu director Hideo Nakata mentions that there is an awareness in Japanese culture of a spiritual world that ultimately differentiates their kind of horror from American horror, making it difficult for Western audiences to understand. Life in Japan is lived in the belief that there is another world beyond the living, one that co-exists, yet is unseen. It is said in Japanese culture that if a spirit were to appear, damp and enclosed areas would be the conditions most suited to attract such ghostly apparitions, rather than dry, wide-open spaces that could often make for a good hunt as a victim flees from his or her would-be killer (“Interview with Koji Suzuki”). Water is used in both The Ring and The Grudge to connote the presence of a spirit, marking a point of atmospheric terror and creating an apparent theme which American audiences can then relate to. It is the kind of challenge that a filmic remake struggles with in order to integrate an original storyline and cultural background with a particular nation’s willingness for acceptance and level of understanding. Many Japanese films incorporated storylines wrought with cultural themes that an American audience is unlikely to understand (Mazurkewich), therefore the remake rights for many Japanese films were initially not of much interest. However, with the help of people like Roy Lee, who functions as a Korean-American intermediary between Japanese and American filmmakers, more and more foreign-born films are being remade, thus introducing new concepts into an American culture that could use some open-mindedness. However, one should not diminish the fact that it still remains difficult to integrate foreign concepts and lifestyles into another culture. Lee comments that there are several steps usually taken in order to acculturate Japanese storylines so that American audiences can understand the plot better, including the reworking of scenarios and settings to bypass any knowledge needed of Japanese culture. If a film is completely beyond the understanding of an audience, it would be pointless to make because the only emotion it would evoke would be utter confusion. “The role of Japanese films and how they will be evaluated in Hollywood will depend on how much their original content can directly appeal to the American people” (“Interview with Roy Lee”). Americans are more accustomed to having answers or, at the very least, being able to obtain them with little difficulty, which is why certain adjustments must be made when trying to integrate media originating in another country. An American audience isn’t as willing to accept breaks in continuity as much as a Japanese audience, which is why gaps in the original storyline are often filled in, losing much of the original subtlety (Lovgren). It is assumed that Americans need connections, lack of ambiguity, and a continuity of ideas, even if it means forsaking some of the artistic quality that the original may offer. It is because “the roots of J-horror twine through the 2,000-year history of Japanese culture and traditions” (“Interview with Hideo Nakata”) that those adaptations for other audiences need to be made. There will always be something at stake when it comes to choosing between preservation, basic understanding, and monetary gain, especially when the dealings are done with a capitalist society hungry for economic wealth, though usually a middle-ground can be reached. The Grudge is a prime example of how a successful compromise can be achieved and is even able to help pave the way for future remakes of films. The film was directed by Takashi Shimizu, who also directed the original Ju-on film, which has a strikingly similar storyline to the remake. Shimizu was able to retain much of the Japanese cultural appeal from the original by setting the film in Tokyo while substituting the Japanese protagonists with Americans. By employing a fundamentally American cast, Shimizu was able to provide American audiences something they could identify with, even in a foreign setting. Many Americans desire a figure that they can relate to, which Shimizu aptly gives them while maintaining the original’s disparate sequencing and disquietude (D’Angelo). Even with the language barrier between the American cast and himself, Shimizu is able to understand the fundamental drives behind human emotions and the ability to create fear through the unexpected. The result of his film is one that displays a cultural integration where the end-effect is both Japanese and American, which is properly suited to the effective production of a remake. The imprint of the film on one’s mind leaves a lingering sense of caution and each creak or bang has one wondering if the spirits have decided to stop co- existing so they can exist alone. The film operates on the idea that each person is born with a spirit and at the time of death is either released or held to its place of passing because of the circumstances surrounding its death. “When a person dies in extreme sorrow or rage, the emotion remains becoming a stain upon that place. The memory of what happened repeats itself there. Death becomes a part of that place, killing everything it touches” (The Grudge). It is Detective Nakagawa that speaks these words which give an insight into each of the deaths within the movie. The audience is initially unaware of the particular events surrounding the primary setting in an elderly woman’s home, but it is clear early on in the film that there is something odd about the noises and successive disappearances. It is only learned towards the end of the film that a woman’s unrequited love for another man steers her husband into a rage that kills her, her son, his cat, and finally the husband himself. Such a powerful rage is terrifying in the knowledge that an intrinsically raw emotion is able to subsist in every human being. Hideo Nakata expresses a common opinion that “it is horrifying to consider the possibility of a person holding such strong, fixated hatred toward someone else, and frightening to see someone turned into such an inhumanly disfigured specter” (“Interview with Hideo Nakata”). It is as though when an emotion gets too intense, a restless spirit emerges and the emotion cannot be contained; it consumes the body and everything within reach. In the afterlife, those that die at the hands of rage or wrongdoing yearn to avenge their deaths, but that yearning never goes away. As the title suggests, The Grudge is an emotion where the feelings of resentment never truly dissipate, remaining ever-present and always ready to resurface in order to sacrifice those willing to enter into its hold. Sarah Michelle Gellar, who plays Karen Davis in the film, mentions that in a conversation with director Shimizu they talked about how The Grudge represents a woman’s rage, especially in relation to the lives of women in Japan who are continually oppressed so that there is an accumulation of intense emotions and desires. The film ends up being a culmination of such repression (A Powerful Rage) so that, in effect, The Grudge is not only about producing a psychologically frightening response, but also about pursuing the idea of unleashing the repressed female spirit. It voices the wrongs done to women and proposes the message that even in death they cannot be silenced, making sure to punish all those that come into contact with them. The spirit, then, does not become intangible, but continues on in a tangible state of post-human readiness. There is much of the same spiritual revenge to be seen in The Ring, but here the question is why? The character development of Samara Morgan suggests that even before she was killed there was an element of malicious intent. After being placed in a psychiatric ward, Samara is told, “you don’t want to hurt anyone,” and she replies “I do and I’m sorry. It won’t stop.” It is said that she never sleeps and the fact that she says it will never stop suggests that she has unearthly abilities beyond any human capabilities; it is almost as if she has already embodied her spirit. The film hints that Samara is a sort of supernatural being with the explanation that her mother was never supposed to give birth and by giving Samara the capability to etch images onto film, apparently with her mind, which is where the tape comes into play. The Ring is able to achieve a feeling of terror that rings true to life by introducing a common videotape as the source of spiritual communication (“Interview with Koji Suzuki”), signifying that spirits do not disappear with modernity. The tape is one filled with a slew of images that don’t seem to make any sense in sequence, which is partially why the video is so jarring to watch. There are so many incongruities in the frames and so much dissonance that watching the scenes makes the viewer uncomfortable, especially with the combination of the footage’s silence, jolted by the piercing background music. Katie Embry, one of the teen characters in the film, described it as being “like somebody’s nightmare.” The unnerving element behind The Ring must also be due in part to the use of such universally recognized items like the television and the telephone. Todd McCarthy comments that it “surely [has] something to do with the universal consciousness of the invasiveness of television and the telephone in everyday lives, as well as with the irresistibility of both inventions; if a TV is on, it’s almost impossible not to look at it, and if the phone rings, it’s hard not to answer it.” For these reasons, it’s extremely frightening to think that something the world has grown accustomed to could so easily be the source of one’s own death. Alvin Lu describes the essence of The Ring in his article titled “Horror Japanese-style,” as a kind of virus that consumes people whenever an illegal copy is produced. So every time a duplicate of the original video is made, somebody must die for another to live, but it is the way that the viewer dies that is most fearsome; seven days to live, each day seeming less and less real as images from the video come alive. An intense feeling of unease grows with each day because, as Stefan Lovgren points out, Japanese horror films progress slowly, whereas American horror films tend to be more action-packed. Silence, empty spaces, and white noise are often used to create an impression of impending disaster, which can certainly be felt when a victim’s television will suddenly turn on, displaying nothing but static. Somehow the noise is immediately uncomforting, most likely because the TV was not turned on by human means, but also because there should be reception. It is through such bypassing of technology that a spirit like Samara Morgan’s is able to be heard. As Mr. Morgan says in the film, it is taking “one person’s tragedy and [forcing] the world to experience it,” but that’s always what the world has wanted; to live off of someone else’s destruction, plagued with fear. It is no surprise, then, that such films are so widely received, especially with the growing anxieties surrounding the state of the world, its politics, and all too recently, its wars. Subconsciously, these kinds of films are about dealing with those things that are hard to face, things that cannot be fully explained. Both Japanese horror and its remade counterparts strive for that same inexplicable feeling that comes from too many questions without answers. Just as life leaves us wondering why death is always at the front door, so too do Japanese horror films. This genre of film is racked with images of vengeful spirits, eager to satiate their hunger in the afterlife with more souls. It can certainly be said that the originals are more ominous with their completely unfamiliar cast, setting, and background and are racked with inconsistencies that play with one’s mind, but the remakes are able to offer the best of both worlds in the same respects. Japanese horror remakes have managed to keep the outline of the original storyboard while incorporating elements that the American audience would more likely have a relation to, such as American cast members, the English language, and a slightly more sequential storyline. However, it’s not to say that the irrationalities and surrealism within Japanese horror films are not accepted, on the contrary, they are all the more compelling. These tales of the supernatural work with both ordinary and unearthly sounds, amplifying feelings of dread with shadows and slow-gaited movements. Japanese horror films are neither quick nor painless, and nor are they meant to be. These films are deliberate in each sound and scene, gradually raising the height of alarm until it is almost unbearable, and then starting all over again.
Works Cited
D’Angelo, Mike. “Comin’ to Getcha.” Esquire 143:4 (Apr. 2005): 38-40. A Powerful Rage: Behind The Grudge. Dir. Michael Gillis. Perf. Jason Behr, Rosa Blasi, Clea DuVall, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Ryo Ishibashi. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2005. Kateigaho International Edition. Heianna, Sumiyo. “Interview with Roy Lee, matchmaker of the macabre.” Nov. 13, 2005.
Russkies and Rednecks: Anti-Modern Currents in Literature by Jack Eskin
Both late-nineteenth-century Russia WHEN reflecting on the issue and the early-twentieth-century Ameri- of Southern literary influence in her can South experience a specific artistic collection of essays The Mortgaged assertion of identity, which are Heart (1941), the Georgia native examined in this article through the Carson McCullers declares affirma- lens of literature. The study focuses tively: "Modern Southern writing primarily on William Faulkner's The seems rather to be most indebted to Sound and the Fury, Anton Chekov's Russian literature." (252). In both The Cherry Orchard, and Fyodor literatures, this identity arises from a Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment in similar problem of coping with the order to show how the literature of cheapness of modern conditions. In both these cultures depicts anti- regards to the American South of the modern conditions through the decline early twentieth century, Stephen G. of the aristocracy, the prevalence of Marks explains: "The introduction of honor, the socio-cultural role of Yankee industry threatened the Christianity, and a stylistic abstraction traditional agrarian heritage, which of time in the narrative. materialized into cultural disorienta- tion." (Cowan 91). McCullers adds: Keywords: turn-of-the-century litera- "Economically and in other ways it has ture; Russia; the American South; been a sort of colony to the rest of the modernism nation. The south is the only part of the nation having a definite peasant class." (252). To these characteristics, late nineteenth century Russia hardly differs: "The image of Russia as a collectivist, autocratic, agrarian society suggested that here was a culture far removed from Western ideals. None- theless, by the late nineteenth century, western liberalism and capitalism were tearing it away from its original moorings." (Marks 2). In both cases, these social and cultural dilemmas arose from a more concrete power structure, based on politics and economics. Just as the American South was politically and financially subor- dinate to the American North, Russia had been affected by the wealth and hegemony of its Western European neighbors since the seventeenth centu- ry. Once political and economic sovereignty have been subordinated, a more abstract cultural sovereignty becomes the object of desire. Within both these cultures, there is a deliberate focus on establishing identity, which is reflected clearly in their arts. For late-19th-century Russian culture and early-twentieth-century American Southern culture, this condition crystallizes particularly within the genre of literature, which this study will specifically examine. At the center of both literary traditions rests the theme of modern alienation, which translates further into depictions of the aristocracy in decline, the socio-cultural role of Christianity, and the stylistic abstraction of time. Anton Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, and William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, all exemplify these similarities in literary culture. As stated above, the very nature of capitalism plays a central role in the modern alienation of both these cultures. In both literary traditions, a disdain for capitalism materializes particularly in the vilification of characters who have adapted the ways of capitalism; for these characters, money and ambition outweigh established social morality. Additionally, since men are seemingly the only characters in these works that participate in capitalism, the dynamic of capitalist men causing harm to pure native women is also a consistent theme. One especially vivid example is Lopákin, the deceptive merchant from Anton Chekov's play The Cherry Orchard. The play depicts an established aristocratic family that loses its great manor once the government has put it on auction, after they fail to pay taxes. Lopákin comes within the family circle through the courting of Varyá, the family's adopted daughter. For most of the play, Lopákin appears as a rational but awkward character: he is constantly reminding the irresponsible Andréy family of what they must do to retain the house, a dilemma that they themselves never look square in the eye. Yet, when asked whether he and Ánja will marry soon, Lopákin's answers always lack ease and certainty. When the day of the auction finally arrives, Lopákin shocks the family by outbidding them for the house, which he plans to turn into vacation property intended for making profit off of tourism, thus displacing the Andréy family from their native space. Needless to say, after this has happened, his ties with Varyá are severed. His last words to her feel contrived: "Well, so long, my friend. It's time to go. You and I, we turn up our noses at each other, but life goes on." (232). This motif is to be found also in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. The sister of Raskolnikov, the book's protagonist, becomes engaged at the beginning of the narrative to Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, a rich and prominent St. Petersburg lawyer. A letter from Raskolnikov's mother expresses that he is "practical and positive" (55), but she also adds that Luzhin likes the idea of a rich man saving a poor woman with his wealth, which both mother and daughter find to be unsettling. Yet, as long as Luzhin guarantees Raskolnikov a job at his law firm, the marriage seems positive. However, Raskolnikov's distrust is uncompromising: he holds no restraint towards insulting Luzhin and eventually spearheads the excomminucation of Luzhin from the family circle. Naturally, Raskolnikov's severity is apt: Luzhin later makes a failed attempt at framing Raskolnikov's mistress Sonya for stealing a one-hundred-ruble note. However, he is caught in the act by his roommate, and thus the capitalist flees from the rest of the narrative. Jason Compson of William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury provides a solid counterpart from the Southern context to these capitalist characters. Despite the fact that he is a biological member of the family, his actions certainly never indicate this. Much like Raskolnikov, he is lined up for a profitable job handed down by his sister's fiancé, Herbert Head. Unfortunately, Herbert declines this bank job offer once he discovers that Jason’s sister, Caddy, has given birth to a child that is not his. Unlike Raskolnikov, Jason is a capitalist, and thus renounces his own sister after this alleged economic setback. As a failed capitalist, Jason's absence of morality is more greatly revealed than a success story like Lopákin's. As the narrative progresses, he begins stealing large amounts of money from his sister and niece, which he devotes towards playing the cotton market and paying off an expensive prostitute in Memphis, Tennessee. The anti-modern sentiments found in the literature of late-nineteenth-century Russia and the American South of the early twentieth century materializes also in a disdain for intellectualism. What the most academically skilled characters of these respective literatures possess in terms of intellectual fortitude, they consistently lack in spiritual grounding. Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov is the embodiment of this condition: he commits murder haphazardly in the name of an intellectual idea1, and thus spends the rest of the novel wandering the streets of St. Petersburg trapped in paranoia. The name Raskolnikov incidentally is derived from the Russian word for "schism," which seems appropriate since Raskolinikov's experience is not only a schism between thought and reality but also between thought and morality. It is not until the end, when he renounces his intellectualism, when "life had stepped into the place of theory" (Dostoevsky 628), that his story becomes resolved. Quentin Compson of The Sound and the Fury serves the role of the Southern disillusioned intellectual. The chapter where his voice provides the narrative describes the day of June 2nd, 1910, the last day of his life. Quentin is a Harvard student disillusioned with his sister's pregnancy and his displacement from Southern culture into Cambridge, Massachusetts. He spends nearly the entire day wandering aimlessly, neurotically disputing the construct of time in his mind (a topic which I will return to later). His thoughts, matched with his alienation, soon bring him literally over the edge, when he drowns in the Charles River. As opposed to Raskolnikov, Quentin finds no resolution when his story ends (and the reason for this will also be discussed later in this essay). In spite of all this cultural disgust for modernity, neither the South, nor Russia held great enough political or economic power to impede these paradigmatic shifts. Thus a prevalent theme in their respective literatures is decline, a result of the failure to adapt to social change. This theme is especially present in their similar depictions of the falling aristocratic family. For if traditional society is dying out in the modern age, it is only natural for the traditional social hierarchy to die as well. Aristocratic disillusionment is illustrated firstly through geographic displacement from the home. Chekov's play The Cherry Orchard, which is centered primarily around the loss of the family manor, once again provides a vivid example of this theme. The family members were in fact all separated from this geographic central point for many years, taking for granted its importance in terms of providing identity, and only re- congregate when the house and their identity is at stake. As stated before, they are outbid by the son of a former slave, and thus their elite heritage is nullified. Once the house is lost, they all diverge, and the play ends. The geographic central point lost in The Sound and the Fury is not as dramatic, but is still pronounced. The wide acres and woods that surround the Compson family manor, which capture the children's imagination as well as provide horseback riding territory, are sold so that Quentin has tuition money for Harvard. This trading of geographic identity for a future investment proves to be disastrous: Quentin commits suicide at college and the family is left with a fraction of the living space that their heritage should dignify. Just as the cherry orchard property surrounding the Andréy manor will be converted into vacation real estate, similarly
1Based on Nietzsche's "übermensch," which states that certain individuals have the power and spirit to overcome a socially encouraged morality. Raskolnikov uses Napoleon Bonaparte as his example. the Compson complex is converted into a public golf course. Benjy, the family's retarded son, often stands in front of the course moaning over his lost property. However, there still remains the question of how these families lost their geographic central point: in both these literary contexts, aristocratic decay is linked to the absence of a strong leader from the family bloodline. In terms of parental figures, The Cherry Orchard and The Sound and the Fury both experience the same motifs: a premature death of the father figure and a maniacal mother figure; this, combined with their consistently decadent behavior, facilitates the decline of their respective families. In The Cherry Orchard, the alcoholic father has long since been dead, and the premature death of her only son sends Ranévskaya, the family matriarch, into a state of irrationality. She flees from the family estate to Paris, setting the precedent for her daughter to abandon the manor also, and thus leaving the servants alone in the house. The mother spends many years in Paris with a French lover, until he betrays her, and after a failed attempt at suicide, she decides to return to her home in Russia. Once back at the Cherry Orchard, she hardly provides the senior leadership needed to save the manor. Instead of attending the auction to save her house, the mother throws a ball in the manor for one last time. At one moment during the party Ranévskaya declares vehemently: "I love this house, without the Cherry Orchard my life has no meaning, if it must be sold then sell me with it." (222). However, only moments later she adds, "It's the wrong time for a party, but oh what does it matter." (223). Ranévskaya's frivolous behavior also is exemplified in her careless dealing of family money to beggars on the street, in spite of the need to hoard funds for the auction. As the leader of the family, she simply spearheads their decline. This premise is almost identical in The Sound and the Fury, where the father, Jason III, is portrayed as a decadent alcoholic, seemingly ambivalent to the absurd developments occurring around him. When his son Quentin declares that he has committed incest with his very own sister Caddy, the father replies: "It is sad too that people can not do anything that dreadful at all: they cannot remember tomorrow what seemed dreadful today." (80). Jason III dies of alcoholism in the middle of the narrative, leaving his wife Caroline as the sole Compson parent. However, Caroline is also incapable of providing leadership due to her incessant hypochondria, which keeps her in bed all day, and makes her unable to perform normal parental duties. When such a mighty void is left behind by their parents, pressure then falls on the children to provide order in spite of their tender age. In both of these narratives, none of the aristocratic children are able to meet this challenge. Jason Compson IV arrives closest by generating family income, and assuming the dominant role in the house (even above his mother’s authority). At the same time, he steals money from family members and is so tyrannical towards his niece that she runs away from home; thus he by no means preserves family stability. His siblings prove even more incapable of assuming a leadership role: Caddy has been excommunicated from the household for giving birth to a child before marriage, which prompts Quentin (the neurotic and introverted sibling) to commit suicide while he is at college. The only other option this leaves is Benjy, the retarded sibling. The same problem of assuming a power position plagues the Andréy family's children: the seventeen year-old Ánja is too trapped in the sentimentality of her childhood to push her mother's decision- making and her seven-year old brother Grisha, like Quentin, dies by drowning in the river. Neither Chekov, nor Faulkner mourn their respective aristocratic characters, and they certainly are not reactionaries longing for the feudalism and plantations of the past. However, as Karl Marx states, "historical culture is defined by the ruling classes" (47); in both situations, these families reflect the failure of traditional culture in the modern age. The only characters that seem to be able to hold these disintegrating families together are their humble, pragmatic, god-fearing servants, a motif that reveals the value of Christian humility in both cultures. For The Sound and the Fury, this character is Dilsey, the "negro" cook who practically runs the Compson family's household from start to finish. As Cleanth Brooks expresses in his essay "Man, Time and Eternity," "Dilsey believes in something like original sin: men are not naturally good but require discipline and grace. Her view of mankind and the world is thoroughly Christian, simple and limited as her theological expression of her faith would have to be." (69). In spite of all the immorality that surrounds her, verbal moralizing is rare for Dilsey, while her stoic faith and consistent maintenance of the Compson compound seems unending. This theme of Christian spirituality providing stability amidst decay is transmitted quite clearly in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, through the character of Sonya, the saintly prostitute. She spends the majority of the narrative in a situation similar to Dilsey’s: providing stability for a family plagued by the death of an alcoholic father, a delusional mother, and steady economic decline into poverty. To generate family income, she is forced to become a prostitute. However, this social sin stands as inconsequential when the power of her spiritual faith is revealed. It is primarily for this reason that the lost soul of Raskolnikov comes to her to confess his sins, for it is through her that his soul will eventually be redeemed. She encourages him to turn himself in, and once he has, she moves to Siberia to aid him in his spiritual recuperation during his time in prison. In the end, Sonya's humble faith is seen as having healing, redeeming qualities. As Marks explains, "he equates true freedom with a Christ-like spirituality that overcomes Modern Man's fractured personality with love, brotherhood, and community" (65). Both Dilsey and Sonya provide the essential characteristics of spiritual stability needed to survive in the unstable modern age, which the non-spiritual aristocrats specifically lack. A final, stylistic product of the anti-modern currents found in the literature of late-nineteenth-century Russia and the early-twentieth-century American South is the abstraction of time. Many of the nineteenth-century's Russian writers, at least, viewed the standard Western narrative as "creating personalities whose basic human feelings and moral sense were frozen" (Marks 62). The result of this in respect to time is that the narrative moves forth rationalistically without changing the tempo to accommodate the unique quality of certain moments and personalities. Dostoevsky is seen as doing the exact opposite: "his novels are a plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of full valid voices" (Marks 62). This, of course, is one of the reasons why his novels take so much time: Crime and Punishment for example is six hundred sixty-two pages. However, what was manipulated by Dostoevsky and passed onto writers like Faulkner is the long, psychoanalytic inner dialogue. Raskolnikov spends the overwhelming majority of Crime and Punishment wandering the streets of St. Petersburg brooding over the murder that he has committed. It is easy for the reader to lose a sense of timing because the character’s thoughts are essentially a continuum. At times, his inner dialogue reaches the length of three pages. This could be seen not only as time inefficiency for the length of the narrative, but also for Raskolnikov as a character, who spends a great deal of time in thought rather than action. However, time is not rejected but redefined, and the only important clock in Dostoevsky's novel is the soul. Once Raskolnikov can no longer bear to conceal his evil secret, he turns himself in. The clock stabilizes once he has become spiritually grounded, much in the manner of his lover Sonya. A similar sense of timing is found in the Quentin Compson chapter of The Sound and the Fury. Like in Crime and Punishment, the reader is trapped in the skull of neurotic university student wandering around a city brooding over the notion of death. William Faulkner takes the abstraction of time even further by blending memory with action: it is often hard to distinguish between past and present in this chapter, thus creating an even greater sense of continuum. However, the notion of a soul outside of human time is never a revelation that Quentin has, thus his rejection and paradoxical compliance to the construct of time becomes more extreme than Raskolnikov's. From the chapter's very beginning Quentin’s rejection of time is pronounced; he even goes into a jewelry store and asks the clerk which clock in the window is correct. The clerk responds that they are all correct, to which Quentin responds viscerally, "please, sir, just tell me if any of them are correct" (Lowrey 57). The clerk eventually gives the answer that Quentin wants to hear, that none are correct, and that they all stand in contrast to "real time." As Perrin Lowrey explains in his essay "Concepts of Time in The Sound and the Fury": "Quentin cannot tolerate the watch; his ancestors not only tolerated it but valued it as a symbol. He thus attempts to whip himself up into an emotional trance." (57). Ultimately, Quentin relates negatively towards time because he equates it with decay, much in the manner that his family's honor and the identity of the Old South are in decay. He eventually takes time into his own hands by committing suicide. In spite of their different endings, both The Sound and the Fury and Crime and Punishment abandon the rational Western narrative in favor of the abstraction of time. At the center of the literary traditions of both late-nineteenth-century Russia and the early-twentieth-century American South is the theme of modern alienation, which translates further into depictions of the aristocracy in decline, the socio-cultural role of Christianity, and the stylistic abstraction of time. However, these literary currents were not simply restricted to the works of these two cultures: throughout many of the world's cultures, the abstraction found in modern art proved an essential voice in the face of the dehumanizing effects of rational modernity. Change naturally challenges identity, which of course was not restricted to the time period, but is an eternal issue. That is why the words of writers from such seemingly different contexts still successfully spark thought and emotion.
Works Cited
Chekov, Anton. The Cherry Orchard. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1992. Cowan, Michael, H, ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of the Sound and the Fury. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1968. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. New York: The Modern Library, 1994. Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. New York: Vintage, 1984. McCullers, Carson. "Southern Literature and the Russian Realists." The Mortgaged Heart. Ed. Margarita G. Smith. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971. 71-97. O' Connor, Flannery. The Complete Stories. New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1971. Weisgerber, Jean (translated by Dean McWilliams). Faulkner and Dostoevsky: Influence and Confluence. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1974. From the Wicked to the Wise: Feminist Re-Appropriations of the Witch Identity in the Fiction of Monica Furlong by Kaitlin “KC” Forcier
Within the last three decades, in large Juniper was different from us… part due to second wave feminism, a She did not live as our women cultural movement has arisen that seeks lived. She was what in our to re-appropriate witch identity. In this language was called a cailleach – context, this article analyzes a trilogy of it meant a single woman, but books for children by British author more than a single woman, one Monica Furlong. Wise Child (Random who had something uncanny House, 1987), Juniper (Random House, about her…When we called her a 1992), and Coleman (Random House, cailleach, what we really meant 2004), are an excellent example of how was that she was a witch, a the representation of witches has been sorceress, probably in the pay of transformed in the last two decades into the Devil. (Furlong 3) a more positive female image.
This paper won the third prize in an all-
campus contest for the best essay written THIS is the opening of Wise in a Junior Writing class. THIS Child, the novel by Monica Furlong that
recounts the fictional life of a woman Keywords: Witchcraft, feminist theory, who becomes the target of a witch-hunt Monica Furlong, children’s literature because she was independent, because she was powerful, and because she
defied a patriarchal, Christian social
order. Furlong’s fiction gives voice to a historically marginalized population – those women who were persecuted for practicing Witchcraft – and in so doing exposes and subverts the misogyny behind the witch stereotypes that have been perpetuated from the Middle Ages until today. The persecution of witches in medieval Europe was significantly misogynistic in origins and in practice. The majority of those accused and convicted for practicing Witchcraft were women. The persecution of witches can be seen as systematically punishing those women who deviated from the feminine ideal of one who was obedient, chaste, pious, passive, and maternal. Cultural and historical representations of witches since the Middle Ages have maintained this stereotype – a process which has continued to operate as a mechanism for the social control of women by upholding a certain conception of womanhood, and vilifying traits such as sexual promiscuity, independence, and power in women. In the latter half of the twentieth century, a number of sociologists and historians have begun to posit an alternative history of Witchcraft – one which critically challenges previous notions about the European witch trials. Gerald Gardner, in 1954, was the first to bring forth evidence that Witchcraft in the Middle Ages was a religion, still in existence today, surviving from ancient Paleolithic goddess-worshiping cultures. Numerous anthropological and historical studies have confirmed his theories. The new history of Witchcraft revealed by Gardner and also by Egyptologist Margaret Murray, coupled with second wave feminism, gave birth to a feminist spirituality movement that actively embraced the beliefs of Witchcraft. This movement has influenced literary representations of witches; the last three decades have seen the first woman-positive novels that are sympathetic to witches, for example Elizabeth George Speare’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, even Gregory McGuire’s Wicked. A particularly apt example of this body of literature is a trilogy of novels for young readers by Monica Furlong, which relate the story of a witch in medieval Britain. In particular, Wise Child, the first of Furlong’s novels, is notable as a conscious revision of the witch archetype in light of the feminist late-twentieth-century scholarship on the history of Witchcraft as an ancient earth-based religion.
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During the period of the European witch trials, which were concentrated between 1400 and 1750 B.C.E., tens of thousands of individuals were tried, tortured, and executed for the crime of Witchcraft. It is impossible to determine the exact figure, but estimates range from fifty thousand (Wiesner 265) to nine million (Gardner 35)1. Of these victims, it is estimated that at least three quarters were women. According to sociologist Christina Larner: Figures for particular criminal archives suggest that in areas at the centre of the witch-hunt, in Germany, France, Switzerland and Scotland, 80 percent of the accused were female. For areas on the periphery – in England and Russia, for example – the proportion of females was nearer 95-100 percent. (Oldridge 274) Some have argued that though women were disproportionately affected, this does not prove that the persecution of witches was motivated by misogyny. Larner’s statement that, “Witchcraft, while sex-related, was not sex-specific,” is much contended by scholars
1 Gardner’s figures are now generally discredited, although the nature of the surviving records make it impossible to definitively determine the number of individuals adversely affected by the European witch- hunt. in the field (Oldridge 275). Larner theorizes that the reason why women were more likely to be condemned for Witchcraft than men lies in the fact that women more closely fit the witch stereotype. This argument is inherently flawed, as it does not consider where such stereotypes came from in the first place. A set of characteristics was considered to indicate a witch: she was on the margins of society, generally old and poor, or else she was overtly sexual. The suspected witch almost always lived by herself. Village midwives and healers, or those possessing unusual knowledge were suspect. It was commonly believed that witches worshipped the devil, copulated with the devil, stole and murdered children, poisoned crops and livestock, bewitched young girls and caused impotence in men, among other things. These myths are directly addressed in Monica Furlong’s novel, Wise Child. The villagers in the book speak about the village witch: It was said that witches brought diseases, poisoned crops and animals, and killed people they did not like. ‘She has these two huge cats that are her familiars, and they talk with her just like people!’ ‘She rides on a broom…’ ‘She meets with other witches sometimes, and they all dance without their clothes on.’ (17) This stereotypical witch was the inverse of the ideal Christian woman of the Middle Ages, as she was un-maternal, poisoned rather than nurtured, was sexual rather than chaste, and rebellious rather than compliant. In this light, it becomes apparent that the medieval conception of the witch was the direct result of the literal demonization of a certain type of woman. The negative witch stereotype vilified women who were independent, powerful, or in any way threatened the patriarchal social order. Furlong’s trilogy for young readers concerns itself with such a woman. The books tell the story of Juniper, a sorceress and a healer – her education in natural magic, her persecution as a witch by the Christian church, and the young girl she takes in and educates in the ways of her ancient religion. The opening of Wise Child, Furlong’s first novel, is a portrait of Juniper seen through the eyes of the first person narrator, one of the young children in the village where Juniper is the village healer. This child, a nine-year- old girl named Wise Child, is later adopted by Juniper, but at the opening of the novel, Wise Child, like the other children in the village, fears the witch: Juniper was different from us. In the first place she came from another country – Cornwall – and… she looked different. She was taller, darker skinned, and although she had black hair as Finbar and I did, she did not have our bright-blue eyes. Her eyes were a soft, dark color, brooding and quiet. (3) Explicit in this statement are issues of xenophobia, ethnicity and “Otherness,” that were often factors in the persecution of witches. Wise Child continues to enumerate the ways in which Juniper is different from the women of her village: “No woman lived alone, as Juniper did. Juniper lived away from the village.” (3). A little later on, we learn that the villagers’ term for “witch” is synonymous with a single woman, an unusual woman, one who does not conform to the patriarchal social order. The introduction to Juniper thus incorporates essentially all of the major medieval stereotypes about witches. She lives independently from any man, she does not attend Christian Mass, she is physically different, and as the village healer, she possesses a unique and powerful body of knowledge. Other characters in Furlong’s stories represent different aspects of the witch stereotype. Juniper’s childhood tutor, Euny, is an exemplary “crone.” She is described as “[a] tiny old woman dressed in black […] she was wrinkled, white-haired, and scrawny and had lost several teeth” (71). In Juniper, the novel about Juniper’s childhood, we learn that Euny lives alone, on the literal outskirts of society, in dire poverty. She is fiercely self-sufficient, un-maternal, harsh and eccentric by any standard. A third witch is Wise Child’s mother, Maeve the Fair, who is beautiful, sexual and influential. These women possess those qualities of autonomy, power and sexuality that were threatening to the patriarchal status quo, which, because it was heavily invested in maintaining the inferior position of women, maligned such subversive characteristics. The genre of explicit misogyny involved in the persecution of witches, coupled with the statistics regarding the percentage of female victims compared to male victims, make it difficult to deny that witch-hunting was the result of a patriarchal social order asserting itself. As a patriarchal religion, Christianity was a major driving force behind this patriarchal ordering of society. Furlong’s fiction is significant as more than a simple case study of the misogynistic nature of the persecution of witches. Wise Child, Juniper, and Colman, can be seen within the context of the feminist spirituality movement of the twentieth century as conscious re-appropriations of a witch identity. Many women in the latter half of the twentieth century, feeling that they could not identify with patriarchal religions such as Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, embraced the beliefs of the ancient woman-centered religion that was being “rediscovered.” Gerald Gardner and Dr. Margaret Murray were the first to propose that Witchcraft in the Middle Ages was the survival of an ancient Paleolithic religion focused on nature and goddess worship. Gardner writes: There have been witches in all ages and countries. That is, there have been men and women who have had a knowledge of cures, philters, charms and love potions and at times poisons. At times they were hated, at times they were loved; at times they were highly honored, at times persecuted. (31) Gardner sees witchcraft practices as dating back to the Paleolithic Age, and the existence of ancient goddess-worshiping cultures has been corroborated by numerous archaeologists and scholars, such as Maria Gimbutas and Merlin Stone. Over the millennia, Goddess worship had been marginalized and eventually transformed into the medieval “witch cult” described by Gardner. Witchcraft, or Paganism, was widely practiced in Britain even after the arrival of Christianity. The two religions coexisted relatively peacefully until upheaval caused by wars, crusades, disease and peasant revolts began to threaten the stability of the Church. It is at this historical conjuncture that Furlong situates her novels. A description of medieval Witchcraft, by Miriam Simos, better known as Starhawk, one of the foremost figures in the modern feminist spirituality movement, perfectly applies to the magic portrayed in Furlong’s trilogy: The covens, who preserved the knowledge of the subtle forces, were called Wicca or Wicce, from the Anglo-Saxon root word meaning ‘to bend or shape.’ They were those who could shape the unseen to their will. Healers, teachers, poets, and midwives, they were the central figures in every community. (Starhawk 19) The new history of Witchcraft that was propounded by the feminist spirituality movement is fictionalized in Furlong’s works. Furlong sees the medieval “village witch” as a practitioner of the “witch cult” as described by Gardener and embraced by modern spiritualists such as Starhawk and Z. Budapest. The witches, or dorans, as they are called in Furlong’s works,2 are represented as honoring and harnessing the powers of nature and working as guardians of all life. In addition to philosophy, the tools and practices of Furlong’s dorans are identical to those of real witches, both ancient and modern: herbs, spells, magical talismans, Beltane rituals, flying ointments, and animal familiars. Furlong’s novels reclaim the witch identity in fiction in the same way that feminist scholars and spiritualists were reclaiming the history of Witchcraft – that is, rewriting witches as positive figures. In truth, the majority of those accused of Witchcraft were not in fact witches: “Any old woman who then lived by herself, and who was a nuisance or unpopular, was liable to be accused. Such an accusation meant fun for the mob, stripping, pricking, ducking and so on.” (Gardner 35). Essentially anyone who deviated from the norm or was in some way offensive or threatening could be suspect, for example, homosexuals, foreigners, and the mentally ill. Although the original tension was between patriarchal Christianity and matrifocal Witchcraft, itself a sort of meta-struggle between misogyny and female resistance, the ultimate consequence of the medieval witch-hunts was not the persecution of witches per se, but of any women who threatened the patriarchal, Christian status quo. These dual elements are synthesized in Wise Child, in which the woman who is persecuted for witchcraft fits the medieval profile of the stereotypical witch – a nonconforming, therefore threatening woman – and who is also a true practitioner of a Goddess religion. Although by all accounts the majority of those persecuted for Witchcraft were not witches, the ultimate effect of the witch-hunts were to drive underground those nonconformists who threatened Christian hegemony, witches among them. Both as autonomous, powerful women, and as practitioners of a non-Christian religion, the women in Furlong’s novels are obvious targets for persecution. Through Wise Child’s narrative, the audience, like Wise Child herself, first perceives Juniper as frightening, bizarre, perhaps even threatening. As Wise Child becomes familiar with the witch and her ways, the philosophy that is the foundation of her unconventional existence becomes apparent. She lives alone because she can – she is strong and self-sufficient. She is different from Wise Child’s people, but that difference brings a wealth of knowledge. It becomes evident that she is not at all malicious as witches were believed to be, and Wise Child learns that her unusual lifestyle is liberating. Furlong does not discard all negative stereotypes about witches; in many cases she embraces these characteristics, a process through which she both exposes and subverts
2 From the Gaelic “dorus,” meaning “one who can enter a separate way of seeing.” the misogyny that demonized such traits to begin with, and ultimately reclaims these characteristics for women. The women in Furlong’s works may not be traditional females, but they are certainly strong, positive females. Euny, the oldest witch, is solitary, harsh and ugly. She has much in common with the witch villain in tales such as Hansel and Gretel or Frank L. Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. Yet, in Furlong’s works, much as she is feared by the children, she is a source of knowledge, she is revered by those who know her and respected by the powerful. We are told that Euny “was a law unto herself,” (Colman 260). Juniper herself is deeply loved by the characters who know her well. She has an almost supernatural capacity for kindness and tolerance. She is highly intelligent and values education – teaching Wise Child Latin, mathematics, astronomy and other subjects that were certainly considered unsuitable for women in the Middle Ages (Wise Child 35). Juniper inspires young Wise Child with her courage, independence and strength of character. “I loved Juniper and wanted to stay with her and be brave, as she was” (Wise Child 204). Not all of the female witches in Furlong’s novels are positive characters, however. In each of the three novels, Juniper and Wise Child are confronted with an evil sorceress – either Wise Child’s mother, Maeve the Fair, or Juniper’s aunt, Meroot. Both of these women are similar to the “good” witches in that they are powerful and independent. These “evil” witches, however, use their power to manipulate or oppress others. Significantly, the sexuality of the “evil” witches is alluded to, whereas Juniper is essentially presented as nonsexual. Furlong embraces independence and power in women, but not, it would seem, sexuality or ambition. Though sexual or manipulative women are excluded, at the core of Furlong’s tale is a close female community. A number of women of different age, nationality and economic class, support one another. At the conclusion of Wise Child, as Wise Child and her mentor are escaping from those who would execute Juniper for Witchcraft, the two women literally do support one another: “Unable to imagine we could finish the journey… we had our arms around each other’s waists, each helping the other along, encouraging, supporting.” (225). The trilogy is undeniably a woman-centered story. However, Furlong’s works are not only woman-positive texts because of the strong female protagonists; the books reclaim a lifestyle that has historically been a source of power and freedom for women. As Furlong herself once wrote, “I think a good deal about witches, because I care a lot about harmony in nature, respecting the environment, and women’s proper power.” (Colman iii). Furlong’s works make significant progress in reclaiming “woman’s proper power.” Aside from the persecution and death of tens of thousands of individuals, the greatest evil of the witch-hunts was the oppression caused by the vilification of insubordinate or deviant women. The invidious witch stereotype created in the Middle Ages has been codified and sustained until the present. The idea that old women, foreign women, women who live alone, un-maternal women, powerful women or sexual women are somehow evil is part of the witch stereotype that has been regenerated in popular culture throughout the centuries, and this process of denigrating specific characteristics in women operates to maintain woman’s subordinate position. Monica Furlong’s works embrace the characteristics that are attributed to witches, and reclaim an identity that is a source of empowerment.
Works Cited
Baring, Anne, and Jules Cashford. The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image. New York: Penguin, 1991. Furlong, Monica. Wise Child. New York: Random House, 1987. Furlong, Monica. Juniper. New York: Random House, 1992. Furlong, Monica. Colman. New York: Random House, 2004. Gardner, Gerald B. Witchcraft Today. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel, 1954. Kors, Alan Charles and Edward Peters. Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700: A Documentary History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Kramer, Heinrich and James Sprenger. The Malleus Maleficarum. Trans. Montague Summers. New York: Dover, 1971. Larner, Christina. Enemies of God: The Witch-hunt in Scotland. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1981. Oldridge, Darren, ed. The Witchcraft Reader. New York: Routledge, 2002. Spretnak, Charlene, ed. The Politics of Women’s Spirituality: Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power Within the Feminist Movement. New York: Doubleday, 1982. Starhawk. Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex & Politics. Boston: Beacon Press, 1982. Starhawk. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1989. Wiesner, Merry E. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Robinson and Glover: Two Different Times for Tap-Dancing in Hollywood Film by Alice Gray
Comparing the tap dancing of tap stars TAP DANCING,G an art groun- Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson and Savion ded in African American culture, has Glover in the two Hollywood films Stor- moved from an upbeat style with its my Weather (1943) by Andrew Stone collection of steps that characterize the and Bamboozled (2000) by Spike Lee, Jazz Age, such as the Charleston and the calls for the analysis of each film’s Stomp Time Step, to a style that better historical context. There are race issues mirrors rap’s explosive rhythms and deeply embedded either in the political tendency towards synchronization. Much and social situation at the time the film like African American music, tap- was made, as is the case with Stormy dancing’s evolution has been closely Weather, or in the narrative of the film, aligned with social progress and the slow as with Bamboozled. This article pro- breaking-down of stereotypes developed poses that the markers for the evolution in the minstrel shows of the late 1800’s. of tap have been closely aligned with the The direct effects of racist stereotyping progress of African Americans in this on tap-dancing are best observed in pre- country. 1960’s Hollywood films because these films reached a wide, mostly white, This paper was nominated for the audience and were financed and directed Michael S. Roif Award in Film Studies. by Whites. Tap legend, Bill ‘Bojangles’
Robinson, the star of Stormy Weather Keywords: tap dancing, Hollywood film, (1943), was forced to funnel his talent (self-)representation of African through a colander of social prejudices Americans set to White Hollywood’s liking, and
these social confines are visible in his dancing in this film. It was not until the 1980’s that modern tap emerged in Hollywood as an energetic battle cry from young African American dancers who demanded respect for their art form by refusing to conform to stereotypes. The film Bamboozled (2000), directed by Spike Lee, contrasts modern-day tap to the old-school style. In it, Savion Glover performs both the funky, urban style in street scenes and the smiley, traditional style in modern-day minstrel shows recreated for the film. In order to demonstrate how early conformity with and later break away from stereotypes have fueled the formation of two
different generations of tap dancing, I will discuss historical context, and specifically the influence of minstrel shows on Stormy Weather and the 80’s tap revival on Bamboozled, before isolating and analyzing a scene from each film as representative of the two styles of tap-dancing. Stormy Weather, by white director Andrew L. Stone, follows the story of Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson’s character (Bill Williamson) as he makes his way to the top in show business. Robinson stars in the film with other performers associated with American jazz culture of the time like Fats Waller, Cab Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers. This film not only brings together some of the great jazz artists of the time, it also pushes boundaries by being one of the first all-black Hollywood musicals, and by allowing the depiction of a romantic relationship between the two leading roles (Robinson and Lena Horne). Black entertainment was already a hot commodity, and it made sense to put African American talent on screen, especially when it came to tap- dancing. In a way Whites accredited Blacks as better performers when they eventually allowed them on stage rather than exclusively dressing themselves up in blackface as they had done when minstrel shows began. Fred Astaire himself once called Robinson the greatest tap dancer of all time (Bogle 84). In this ironic world, the minstrel show continued to degrade a race seen as inferior, even as black performers proved their talent as dancers and comedians. Bamboozled on the other hand, with an African American director (Spike Lee), is the story of a T.V. screenwriter, Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans). He is encouraged, in a condescending manner, by his white boss to use his African American background to write material that will boost the station’s ratings. Pierre, offended, decides to present an idea so racist that it will get him fired. However, his suggestion of a new age minstrel show, once aired, starts a nation-wide frenzy to see more. It is easy to recognize the minstrel show scenes, in which Savion Glover’s character blacks out his already black face and performs satirical representations of old-school tap dancers, as motivation for the anger that drives the abrasive style of tap we also see him perform in street scenes. Behind the success of stereotyping in the entertainment industry is the audience, and Hollywood is always aware of its audience. In the opening scene of Stormy Weather, Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson is tap dancing on a wooden porch out in the country, surrounded by five small black children happily doing Stomp Time Steps with him. Robinson has already been placed in circumstances in which contemporary white audience would have expected to see him. The set for this opening scene is very similar to the set constructed for the “New Millennium Minstrel Show” in Bamboozled with its typically southern plantation setting, wooden porch and vast cotton fields. The adorable children at Robinson’s feet are taken straight from a stereotype initiated by the minstrel shows which often employed cute black children labeled “Pickaninnies” whose main purpose in variety shows was to charm and delight (Bogle 7). While Glover performs a simulation of offensive stereotypes, for Robinson, these confining stereotypes were a reality, considering he himself got his start in show business as a Pickaninny (Haskins 43). Since the very beginning he was forced to conform to Whites’ stereotypes in order to get work, and since the very beginning Stormy Weather employs those stereotypes. Author Donald Bogle remembers firsthand how clear it was that his race was being falsely portrayed on the silver screen: When I watched Stormy Weather with an all-black audience that openly mocked the stereotypes on screen… or when I saw The Birth of a Nation with a black audience that openly cheered for the black villains to defeat the white heroes […] I knew I was seeing reactions far different from those that initially greeted these […] films and other black movies. (Bogle xi) In Stormy Weather the characters that were ‘openly mocked’ by black audiences as Bogle mentioned, were drawn directly from minstrel types and it is “The Coon” and the “Uncle Tom” types that are most prominent in the film. “The Coon” served as comedic relief by stressing his own inferiority (Bogle 8). “The Uncle Tom” stereotype was the “Good Negro” in the sense that he was ready to please, loyal to his white master, and satisfied with his place in society (Bogle 5). Together, these two stereotypes made Whites feel good about themselves by providing reassurance that African Americans were happy in their ‘place,’ willing and ready to entertain and too simple to merit more humane treatment. From a modern point of view, it is striking how socially acceptable the use of these stereotypes was in the 1940’s. Comedian Tommy Davidson who plays a coon in the new-age minstrel show in Bamboozled, expressed awe at the talent of his comedic predecessors even while they mocked their own supposed inferiority: “…these brothers that were behind blackface were talented… comedy skills, dramatic skills, they really gave a show, but the flow of their material was geared towards putting themselves down, putting down who they were, and making whites feel superior (Pollard and Robinson).” African American tap dancers, as part of the variety acts featured in minstrel shows, suffered the same constraints on their art form, and were bound to the expression of a single emotion, happiness, and as long as political freedom for African Americans remained restricted, so did their art forms. Tap dancing suffered a recession in the late 1950’s when hoofers who could no longer make a living by dancing were forced to take jobs such as bell hops and bar tenders, and it eventually became more of an American pastime than an active art form (Hill 252). It was not given the chance to truly thrive again until well after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the 1960’s. Interest in tap dancing was rekindled in the 1980’s, and it gave rise to new forms of the dance. African American artists were able to take advantage of new political freedom, and to break out of the prison of stereotypes. Along with the emergence of a hip-hop and rap boom, tap dancing changed and adapted to the times. With the success of African American dancers like Alvin Ailey, came a new push by African American tap dancers to be regarded as artists rather than purely as entertainers (Hill 246). Harriet Jackson, a writer for Dance Magazine, described the 1980’s phenomenon as artists “emerging from the minstrel-vaudeville cocoon” giving way to “the Negro dancer and choreographer who no longer feels he must be confined to dancing ‘Negro Roles’ (246).” The movie Tap (1989) starring Gregory Hines put the reality of an evolution of mainstream tap on the big screen. A young Savion Glover starred in Tap, and today has clearly developed into a modern-day product of the 80’s tap revival. Glover’s style is a grounded one as opposed to Robinson’s uplifted and uplifting dancing. Glover is less animated in the traditional vaudeville sense, and allows his dancing to express more than one emotion. In one particular scene from Bamboozled where his character has been thrown into a back alley for refusing to perform in blackface any longer, he runs at the door and, airborne, kicks it. When he lands he begins to pound furiously and rhythmically at the ground with his precise feet. This scene is a clear example of how tap, when given the freedom, can be used as a dynamic instrument to express emotions. In this case Glover’s character uses his art to express anger, something that would never have been allowed in a pre-Civil- Rights Hollywood film when white audiences did not want to see black entertainers expressing their discontent. I chose one tap-dancing scene from each film to illustrate old-school and new- school forms in Hollywood. Both scenes involve makeshift stages and unconventional audiences. In the scene from Stormy Weather, Robinson’s character is working on a steamboat, trying to make his way south to Louisiana. He has just lain down for the night and announced that “there ain’t no money in the world can get me on my feet again… unlessin’ this boat sinks” when he hears the sound of a traveling minstrel show practicing on deck. His feet begin to twitch, his eyes grow wide at the sound of the music and he is compelled by some inner force to find them and join them. His character’s audience, therefore, is made up of the members of the traveling minstrel show while Robinson’s audience remains Hollywood’s target audience, white America. In the scene I selected from Bamboozled, Savion Glover’s character, Man Ray, is performing for change in the courtyard at the Lever Building off Park Avenue. We can see that Man Ray’s audience, the upper-class population working in downtown New York City, crowded around the courtyard, is mostly white. Glover’s audience is not meant to be a single race. By 2000, Bamboozled was Spike Lee’s fifteenth film and the director was already known for making movies, mostly controversial, about the African Americans’ experience in U.S. society (Pollard and Robinson, Pinkett). In other words, many of the people who see this film will do so because they are familiar with Lee’s work. The proportion of African American viewers is likely to be high because of the subject matter, but anyone of any color with either an intellectual interest in race issues or an appetite for Hollywood films is likely to be drawn to this film. The set and costume for the steamboat scene from Stormy Weather are important for understanding how prevalent and socially acceptable the stereotyping of black people in film was in the 1940’s. All the black actors in this scene have supposedly appropriate occupations. There are the entertainers, dressed up in ill-fitting tuxedos, who dance, tell jokes, play music, and throw their bodies into violent spasms for the amusement of Whites. Then there is Robinson’s character whose job is to clean the boat. He is dressed in dingy clothes and a country hat, his sleeves rolled up. There are men around him sleeping on the hard wood of the decks, and other men passing the time by listening to the minstrel show practice. We understand this setting to be how white people would have imagined ‘a good time’ among black people performing for each other. The scene presents their manner of singing and dancing as hardly veering from their presentations on the traditional stage. This shows how important it was for white audiences to believe that the jolly performances they were used to, accurately reflected the black entertainers’ satisfaction with their status in society. In Bamboozled, Glover and Womack are also dressed in dingy clothes that suggest poverty. Both men have five-o’clock shadows and wear gloves with the fingertips cut out. The warm yellow hat on Womack’s head and the terracotta color of Man Ray’s pants clash not only with the cold structure of the Lever Building, but also with the black and white suits worn by their audience. This time there is a self-awareness about the film that openly comments on the fact that these two men living on the streets are both black. A major element of this film is its criticism not only of the history of the representation of Blacks in American culture, but also its effects still present today in television, art, sports, music and film. Spike Lee’s film rallies for a more keen awareness of modern-day utilization of the leftovers of racist stereotypes. And in the same way, Glover’s tap dancing breaks through these age-old stereotypes that used to constrain his art form. When we first see the all-black traveling minstrel boys in the scene from Stormy Weather, they are in the middle of their routine. One young man who shakes his thick lips and be bops at the same time is followed by a second young man who steals center stage and uses his own voice to imitate the sound of a trumpet. Robinson’s character ads the missing tap-dance sequence when he marches in and happily lays sand on the planks beneath him to create a certain sound. The base violin, kazoo, ukulele, guitar, washboard and drum set that make up the band, slow down to meet the tempo Robinson sets with his steps. He begins with two bars of a traditional Buck and Wing step then falls gracefully into a turn, dragging his foot along the planks made grainy by the sand. His feet move fast and he bounces effortlessly with the music, smiling all the while. Robinson’s arms stay at his side and his upper body is smooth as he verbally sets up his next step and then moves into it “here’s one I stayed up all night tryin’ to do. Get this.” The step is a combination of Scrapes, Slides, Taps and Shuffles done within the frame of the familiar Time Step: a two bar pattern repeated three times and followed by a “break” (Gray 111). The next three steps he performs follow the time step form and they are all given a feminine edge reminiscent of the harmless Pickaninny type. In the first step Robinson places one hand on his hip and turns in circles while executing pivoting Toe-Heels. When he comes full circle his eyes are rolled back and he is still sporting an ear-to-ear smile. The next step, a flapper-like version of the Charleston, brings him forward and backward as he flings his heels out keeping his knees together and his hands on his hips. The last Time Step ends in a finale that involves the entire troupe gleefully jumping up and down to the sound of the kazoo as it grows louder and louder. This scene is magnificent and energetic, its main aim being to leave the viewer with a good feeling. In the scene from Bamboozled at the Lever Building, Glover’s dance set begins in an almost menacing fashion. Before we even see him, we hear the sound of his steady heels pounding “one, two, a three and four” over and over again with intricate variations building each time on the last beats. When we finally see him, he is surrounded by a small crowd of mostly white business men and women, waiting in suspense for him to truly begin. When he does, it comes in a commotion of complex rhythms, and we hear him clicking his mouth and loudly breathing in rhythm with his feet. Glover hardly looks up and hardly smiles. What follows is not a one-dimensional use of talent for simple entertainment; it is a dynamic expression by Glover of himself and his genius. Throughout the dance sequence he keeps a deep base beat with his heels while he jumps around and makes lighter, more intricate sounds with his toes. His dancing, between spinning and dragging his toes, is a flurry of Cramp Rolls, elaborate Adlibs, multiple variations on Paddle and Rolls, Heel-clicks, Pullbacks, Stomps and Stamps. In the middle, his partner cleverly jumps in and shines his shoe in rhythm, craftily referencing an occupation traditionally held by African Americans, and conjuring up an image of a scene in Stormy Weather. In it, Robinson approaches his shoe-shiner friend and taps in rhythm to his friend’s shining cloth. Glover references the past again by ending with a traditional tap step, “Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits.” Glover pays tribute to tappers who came before him by including this last step whose rhythm mirrors the jingle that give it its name. It still indicates the end to his routine, but it no longer has to come across as a final high note demanding that he freeze with a smile and open arms. Instead it can signal the ending, on a powerful note, of an emotional routine. The “Shave and a Haircut” step is a reminder that not only is Glover the embodiment of modern-day urban tap, he is also the keeper of an old American art form that nearly died out. Glover reveres the hoofers who came before him and acknowledges the African American role in stereotypes as “something that we did. It was us pretending to be someone who was pretending to be us (Pollard and Robinson, Glover).” As we have seen, the evolution of mainstream tap-dancing has been recorded in Stormy Weather and Bamboozled. Robinson’s style, with its femininity, predictable reliance on phrases like the time step, and loyalty to the singular expression of joy, clearly adheres to white Hollywood’s devotion to black stereotyping in the 1940’s. Glover on the other hand, refuses to mold to stereotypes, tapping with his head down rather than making eye-contact, and letting his legs go in all directions rather than keeping them contained and underneath him as Robinson does. Tap dancing was a nearly forgotten art form, but it survived because it evolved. Evolution, however, does not mean a complete break with the original dance and dancers. In order for a historically oppressed society to progress, it must first fully embrace its past. Glover embraces his talent and makes no apologies as he drills out complex rhythms of his own, and jazzes up traditional tap moves originated by hoofers from Robinson’s era.
Filmography
Bamboozled. Dir. Spike Lee. DVD. New Line Home Video, 2001. Pollard, Sam and Butch Robinson. Documentary: The Making of Bamboozled. Trish Giffori, James Lefkowitz. Two Dollars and a Dream Production. New Line Entertainment, 2001. Stone, Andrew. Stormy Weather. 1943. VHS. Twentieth Century Fox, 1993.
Works Cited
Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York: Viking, 1973. Gray, Acia. The Souls of Your Feet: A Tap Dance Guidebook for Rhythm Explorers. Austin, TX: Grand Weaver, 1998. Haskins, Jim and N.R. Mitgang. Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson. New York: William Morrow, 1988.
The Onslaught of Dread and the Consequences of Freedom: An Inquiry of Existential Thought Within The Things They Carried and Slaughterhouse Five by Jaclyn King
This article argues that the texts of WAR may be defined as the Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, inherent and historical bastion for the and The Things They Carried, written by human capacity of psychological Tim O’Brien, display many of the reformation and rebirth, but this refor- characteristics associated with Post mation and rebirth mark the baptism of Traumatic Stress and schizophrenia, the individual into a new realm of particularly the fragmented structure of illusionary loss. The past structures of the narrative. When the psychological existence have been shed, the individual consequence of trauma, fragmentation, no longer views life as a controllable is coupled with the existentialist’s dread situation where “they themselves are of meaninglessness, the consequence is worthy and […] other people are the breakdown of objective reality and worthwhile to relate to” (Staub 47). the employment of subjective truths. Individuals involved in combat leave the situation with a great responsibility, in
that they now must create themselves a Keywords: existentialism, war, trauma, new psychological structure in the Kurt Vonnegut, Tim O’Brien immediate collapse of the former struc- ture. When in combination, the weight of the responsibility involved in making choices, and learning the “lessons” of war, wherein individuals will redefine themselves, can either force the bearer of these responsibilities to uptake the burden of existence with a newfound sense of freedom in these choices, or view them as a persistent sense of dread that must accompany the responsibility involved in the making of choices. And as Schopenhauer once stated pertaining to the dread of existence, “For this very reason I wish I had been left in the peace of the all-sufficient nothing, where I would have no need of lessons or of anything else” (Edwards 467). When we are faced with the trauma of existence, the weight of its responsibility in the realization that there is no order, no framework to rest one’s life upon, this lack of inherent structure
becomes the burden we must accept in order to find subjective meaning in a meaningless world. The concept of rebirth into new structures is something many people face inherently in life, but to those involved with war the search for structure is vital for the preservation of the individual. Thus, the notion of freewill is intrinsically a part of the creation of new structures, because it is through choice that one defines oneself. And in the essence of choice we create the cross of our own demise, or psychological salvation. We determine its edges through the loss of illusions, and cut its measures by thrusting ourselves towards the future with the nails of the past hindering our progress. But perhaps it is progress, viewed from a linear perspective, that is the problem. Progress should rather be viewed in a way which realistically portrays the subjective perception of reality through fragmentation. By embracing the fragmentation of thought as a pinnacle of narrative style, moreover as a subjective way to deal with the pressures of the world, its bearer can shed its weight. The works of Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut and The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, exemplify this fragmentation of style as a consequence of trauma and illustrate the ways in which one can analyze a text through the lens of existentialism. When the psychological consequence of trauma, fragmentation, is coupled with the existentialist’s dread of meaninglessness, the conclusive result is the creation of subjective reality in the midst of objective breakdown.
The Existentialist’s Concern with Death and the Consequences of Freedom
The existential search eliminates the “fluff” of existence, the notions that one may live forever in the “all-sufficient nothing” with its structures and moral disciplines to guide the individual through life, and explain the notions of death. The existentialist claims that death is the final and most noted fear encountered within life. We are thrust towards existence and told that subscribing to moral and social rules will give our lives meaning and purpose. Death illuminates the idea that the actions one can perform on a moral and/or social level cannot save one from the ceasing to do those said actions one day. The structures which we center our lives around will cease to exist, so one asks him/herself: what would existence encompass if structure were arbitrary? Death illuminates the absurdity of our existence by way of creating arbitrary structures, but through the individual’s choosing not to end his/her own life he/she exercises freewill towards the continuance of this absurd life. Life, and war, are not merely an accident which one must endure, rather one can always end them by means of a “suicide or desertion” (Sartre 54). Sartre simply states, “for lack of getting out of it, I have chosen it” (Sartre 54). However, by understanding that we have the rights to our own death, we can take some control of our lives by understanding we have chosen to partake in living. Yet, the majority of questions remains regarding the nature of death and its consequences for the individual. Death prompts those in combat situations to constantly reevaluate the meaning of their lives, because the fear of death is an intrinsic threat within war. The individual embarks on a crusade to give purpose and meaning to his/her life by regarding the central question posed by death. Tolstoy once posed this query in his Confession: “Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort?” (Edwards 469). The existentialist answers the question of meaning by boldly saying, choice. The search for meaning in one’s life, justification for the purpose of life itself, is a subjective search employing the vehicle of choice. Choice is directly related to freedom because, as stated by Sartre, “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does” (Edwards 473). We are the sole bearers of our choices, exclusively responsible for their consequences. Likewise, the soldier is responsible for the war and his actions within it. In choosing not to stop the war and by choosing to participate in it (because suicide is always an option) the individual has chosen the war. Sartre explains, “Furthermore, this absolute responsibility is not resignation; it is simply the logical requirements of the consequences of our freedom.” (Sartre 53). Our freedom allows the employment of structure on a world that is lacking it, and forces the individual who is creating an illusion (or the structure through which he/she will see the world) to perhaps see life as a fraud to which we must create the best and most befitting illusions to. Through choice we find the subjective meaning of life. The existentialist believes in the infinite possibility for the different modes of thinking, different illusions. When the past structures of our lives have failed, we refashion them to fit our new psychological makeup. Such is the case, for example, of a veteran returning home. His youthful, naive knowledge of life is broken upon the back of realties pertaining to the human capacity for slaughter and destruction. The description of men in war situations is illustrated in Tolstoy’s inescapable dragon of death. While clinging to the twig of life, suspended in a well, a traveler hangs above a dragon below. As two mice gnaw at the twig, he notices honey on nearby leaves: “So I too clung to the twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably awaiting me, ready to rear me to pieces . . . I only saw the inescapable dragon and the mice and I could not tear my gaze away from them. And this is not a fable but the real unanswerable truth” (Edwards 469). The existentialists, and the protagonists of Slaughterhouse Five and The Things They Carried, reply to these ideas by stating that the questions of death can be found through the choices we make in life.
Existential Questions Posed by Death Illuminate Death’s Absurdity
Perhaps the greatest trauma of life is the absurdity of death. The absurdity of death, and life, are intrinsically existential queries because so much of “life” is viewed through its structures. The existential psychodynamics pertaining to “the dilemma of a meaning-seeking creature who is thrown into a universe that has no meaning” illuminates the absurdity of existence (Yalom 8). Therefore, notions of death, images, and the development of the individual as traced through his/her altercations with the Reaper are vitally important when analyzing a text through existential theory. The existential questions of death and meaning, when combined with the intrinsic qualities of war such as trauma, force the individual to evaluate his psychological capacity for change and manipulation in order to create subjective truths. The inherent nature of war produces a fragmented style due to disassociations perhaps through the onset of schizophrenia or post traumatic stress disorder evident throughout war literature, including Slaughterhouse Five and The Things They Carried. The traumas of war, in both texts, are derived from a range of experiences, specifically those pertaining to the existentialists’ foundational points of death, freedom and meaning. However, evidence of these foundations culminates in specific experiences which come to symbolize the greatest trauma of war, its absurdity as shown through the concept of death. Death’s absurdity can be illustrated through specific examples which become the bastions for the creation of subjective realities. Slaughterhouse Five is a novel through which Kurt Vonnegut projects his experiences involving the bombing of Dresden onto the character of Billy Pilgrim. Immediately, the author has disassociated himself by creating “double narrators” in the text in order to relate a point of view that includes the “brutal facts of reality and expressions of fantasy” which serves to shatter “the notions of reality as a clear and coherent whole” (Loeb 7). His own reality eventually dissipates in the bombing of Dresden, where the absurdity of the war finally culminates in this event. Billy Pilgrim has been placed in a slaughterhouse under the streets of Dresden, and avoids the bombing. When he emerges from the slaughterhouse he is confronted with images of death; he sees a green coffin-shaped wagon being pulled by two horses, survivors from the bombing who are consequently bleeding from the mouths and walking on cracked hooves. After describing the horses, Vonnegut writes, “…when Billy saw the conditions for the means of his transportation, he burst into tears. He hadn’t cried about anything else in the war.” (Vonnegut 197). The reasons why Billy Pilgrim feels so strongly about this experience lie in the notion that he equates himself to the horses. Much like a beast of burden, Billy must carry the responsibility and weight of the war. The hooves symbolize that the structures upon which he must stand himself, have cracked, where “every step meant agony” (Vonnegut 196). The steps that he must take in order to create subjective truths, new structures, will place him in a position of agony and dissociation with the rest of the objective world. The traumatic experience was not merely the witnessing of the bombing, but also its absurdity. The reemergence from the Slaughterhouse, Billy’s rebirth back into the world, is marked with his riding in a coffin- shaped wagon, pulled by beasts of burden that he relates himself to. All the fighting, destruction, and death that he witnesses do not end with the bombing, rather the coffin and horses illustrate that suffering, and death, will not cease. The situation is similar to the existentialist’s persistent concern with death, in that there is constant “tension between the awareness of the inevitability of death and the wish to continue to be” (Yalom 8). In this example, Billy Pilgrim has to encounter this tension, and consequently must come to terms with his own mortality and the absurdity of his eventual death. The culmination of the absurdity of war, as shown through death, in Tim O’Brien’s account of Vietnam, is illustrated through his “haunting” of Kiowa. Much like Vonnegut’s impression of the bombing of Dresden, O’Brien’s account culminates in one specific instance. Throughout the book he seeks to understand the death of his friend, specifically the reasons for his death. He is haunted by the absurdity of death, and the idea that death is not finality. O’Brien states, “They’re all dead. But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world.” (O’Brien 225). The notion that death is an ultimate ending is obliterated; instead, death provides more questions, and the person continues to live on through these queries. The existentialist relates this confrontation with death, as a type of dread that pertains to a vital role in subjective experience, where “it haunts as does nothing else; it rumbles continuously under the surface; it is a dark, unsettling presence at the rim of unconsciousness” (Yalom 27). Death will continue to plague O’Brien until he confronts it at the end of the novel.
Subjective Realties Within the Texts: Fragmentation as Narrative Style
The existential questions posed by death illuminate death’s absurdity and cause the creation of subjective truths as evident through fragmented narrative. In order to come to terms with death, the individual generates for him/herself defense mechanisms, specifically the creation of subjective realities. Subjective realties which serve as a type of defense mechanism are related to existential notions of psychological defenses which are based on denial (Yalom 27). These subjective realties are directly related to the ways in which the individual copes with death in that clinical syndromes arise as the “result of ineffective modes of death transcendence” (Yalom 27). Throughout Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut’s dissociation with the objective world is evident within the opening remarks of the book, wherein he describes his style of writing as one that pertains to the “telegraphic schizophrenic.” His writing in many ways mimics schizophrenic behavior, perhaps relating to the perpetual causality of the need to reinvent reality in order to survive. His constant need to reinvent was a consequence of the war and his return home, because the trauma he experienced upon returning produced a break with reality. This break with reality, his schizophrenic psyche, is evidenced by the fragmented style of the text. He encapsulates this fragmentation through a description of the alien Tralfamadorian philosophy, by way of the aliens’ writing style. Vonnegut describes it as a style in which “[e]ach clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message – describing a situation, a scene…There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time” (Vonnegut 88). This philosophy is adopted by Billy who, unable to relate to society when he returns home, “increasingly withdraws from reality and ultimately looses his sanity” (Broer 88). The fragmentation of Slaughterhouse Five is directly related to Vonnegut’s perception of his own mortality. When in contact with his own mortality the character Billy cannot cope, and the “imminent presence of danger and the fear of death appear to provoke Billy’s time travel…Consequently, his time travel can be seen as escapism as a response to the world around him. Death in his situation must have appeared as the easiest way out of meaninglessness and danger.” (Loeb 33). By “being unstuck in time” Billy Pilgrim can re-experience his life where he can simply “be dead for a while and live again” (Vonnegut 143). However, he cannot isolate experiences of the past in order to understand them. These fragments of time are not constructed in a manner that he controls. Vonnegut purports that “Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next and the trips aren’t necessarily fun” (Vonnegut 195). Unlike Slaughterhouse Five, which illustrates a break with reality with a complete unconscious severing of the objective world through the creation of Tralfamadore, O’Brien’s novel is rooted in reality through a conscious act of storytelling. He doesn’t exhibit schizophrenic behavior, but he does show signs that he may have posttraumatic stress disorder, such as “re-experiencing the traumatic event(s)…through intrusive recollections, dreams” (Staub 47). However, he is actively trying to overcome these feelings, whereas Billy Pilgrim is subjected to his static experiences. Through storytelling O’Brien can project “truth,” which can be seen through his inquiries of the past, to provide a uniquely clear, yet divergent illustration of an event. For example, he describes the act of remembrance as an event in which “[t]he pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always this surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but when in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.” (O’Brien 71). To the existentialist the concern with memory is important, “insofar as it is part of one’s current mode of existence and has contributed to one’s current mode of facing one’s ultimate concerns” (Yalom 11). When, ss a consequence of the psychological trauma of war, fragmentation occurs with the intrinsic existential questions posed within combat, the individual is forced to make choices through which he/she will construct a new reality. The construction of a new reality in the wake of the collapse of previous truths is the only way in which the individual can survive. These questions pertaining to the meaning of one’s life and the collapse of previous illusions cause the individuals to recreate themselves in a fashion of their own design. The reformation of the individual is a coping mechanism used to deal with the reemergence of the individual back into a society that now appears distant and absurd. Vonnegut and O’Brien take responsibility for their lives by making the choice to disassociate the war from themselves by way of storytelling. Through the creation of Billy Pilgrim, “an act of symbolic amputation”, Vonnegut purges himself of “self- imprisoning fatalism,” and has “asserted his inviolable humanity” (Broer 96). Similarly, O’Brien projects the slaughter and destruction of Vietnam into his accounts within The Things They Carried. The creation of the book marks a personal and psychological salvation. The author’s quest for truth leads him to see life much like Vonnegut, in fragments mutually connected through the total experience of the event, in which the context and the effects of it cannot be separated from the event itself. Experiences and events are a continuous flow of thought and history. O’Brien states that, “The human life is all one thing, like a blade tracing loops on ice: a little kid, a twenty-three-year-old infantry sergeant, a middle aged writer knowing guilt and sorrow” (O’Brien 236). The act of storytelling preserves O’Brien, as illustrated by the ending remarks of the novel, “…and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy’s life with a story” (O’Brien 246). Many contend that trauma cannot be found within one solitary moment. Furthermore, many contend that it is a small percentage of us that have contemplated the Reaper’s question of meaning. Many simply hold fast to the illusions of life without knowledge of its inherent fraud. The existentialist exalts the fraud for its subjective nature, and forms a life with the most befitting of illusions, to give rise to meaning and a purpose. Works Cited
Broer, Lawrence. Sanity Plea: Schizophrenia in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1994. Edwards, Paul. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York: Macmillan, 1967. Loeb, Monica. Vonnegut's Duty-Dance with Death: Theme and Structure in Slaughterhouse Five. Umeå : Umeå University, 1979. O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1990. Sartre, Jean Paul. Existentialism and Human Emotions. Citadel Press, 1957. Staub, Ervin. The Roots of Evil. Cambridge University Press, 1989. Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse Five. New York, New York: Dell Publishing, 1966. Yalom, Irvin. Existential Psychotherapy. Basic Books, 1980.