Barbara R. Kay, BA a Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in Partial Fulf'ill• Ment Of

THOMAS WOLFE, THE EXILE MOI' IF, AND THE JEt.B by (Mrs.) Barbara R. Kay, B.A. A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulf'ill• ment of the requirements far the degree of Mas ter of Arts. Department of English, McGill University, Montreal, P.Q. April, 1966. TABLE OF CONI'ENl'S PREFACE . iii Chapter I. THE CHIID AND DREAME:R . l II. "WELCOME TO OUR CITY" • • • • • . 2ft III. THE VOR.I.D OF ESTHER JACK • • • 67 IV. THE LAST FAREWELL • . • • • . 98 CONCLUSION . 127 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 12!1 ii PREFACE Most readers of Thomas Wolfe tend to be extrema in their judgements of him. They become either devotees or violent dissenters after reading only one novel. Hence it has been difficult for those relatively few critias who have tackled a depth criticism of him to analyze his work objectively. For the man and his art are of a piece: one is sympathetic to Eugene-George's seismic emotional confrontations with life, or one considera such intimate confessions a formless effluvience of neurotic anguish. This study attempts to define and articulate the essentially ordered rhythms of meaning governing Wolfe 1 s quast for psychic fulfillment. It seeks to explain his significant relationships and decisions in terms of the 'exile motif': Wolfe 's perennial and heroie struggle to overcome the forces of background and temperament, which made him a stranger and exile, in order to establish a normal life for himself. Practically untouched by Wolfe's critias has been the anormous impact that certain New York Jaws had on his life and work. In their insistance upon dealing with the ultimately irrelevant question of Wolfe •s anti-semitism, those few writers who deal exclusively with this area have failed to grasp the importance of Wolfe's Jewish contacts. The mistake of these critics, and of many others dealing with Wolfe's work in general, is their failure to recognize the patterns of spiritual growth represented in the novels. This study will, I hope, help to palliate that tandancy to underastimate Wolfe's progression to emotional iii iv. roaturity in his ambitions to understand himself and America. I am grateful to Professer Alec Lucas of McGUl University•s English Department for his guidance in this effort, freely and judi ciously given during his sabbatical year. I am grateful, too, for the moral encouragement I received through his great enthusiasm and sympathy for Thomas Wolfe 1s work. And it was the child and dreamer that governed his beliet. He belonged, perhap~to an older and simpler race of men: he belonged with the Mythmakers. (From Look Hom.eward, Angel} CHAPTER 1 It comas as no great surprise to readers of Thomas Wolfe to learn that his favourite authors, those with whom he liked to associate his own writing, are the great Fabuliste of western literature: the Mythmakers. He read and relished the works of Homer, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Swift, Melville, Goethe, ])ostoevsky, Voltaire, Coleridge, Hardy, Joyce--and the Bible. That these authors represent eight different cultures and span more than 3,000 years of civilization is an indication of Wolfe's catholicity of literacy interest. Hovever, it is in their similarities, not their differences, that we may see the significànoe for Wolfe's own novels. Man sean beyond the limitations of normaloy, transoending the prosaism of life here and now, making his way against the dark current of flowing, inexorable Time; man exalted, oonf'ronting the stark, and often tragic, polemics of existence; man alone, cursed and threatened by the horrar of solitude: these are the tales of the Mythmakers. They see, in the life of one man, the story of the family, the race, and the world: •Each of us is all the sums he bas not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin agaia in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas. 111 l Thomas Wolfe, ~ Homeward, Angel (New York, 1952}, p. 1. All subsequent references shall be to this edition and will be inàicated as -LHA. 1 2. There are fev themes in Wolfe's novels, and those tend to be quite simple in essence. They have universel application, just as his characters, while almost palpably real as individuels, have a legendary, timeless quality about them. They have Homeric epithete attached to their names to remir.d us of their fundamentally stark and synoptic personalities. Gant in~ Homeward, Angel is the "Far•Wanderer," Ben isnthe quiet one,• and Eliza has •the tribal look." The Faust theme in particular had an intensely personal appeal for Wolfe. He himselt spent long, tortured yeare, burning with a mythic fever to engulf all the world 's knowledge. He claims he tried to read every volume in the Widener Library at Harvard, a wildly impossible schema, but typical of Wolfe 's early ambitions. He groaned over his enormous mental catalogues of things undone, places unseen, wo:men unloved, and food untasted. He wept for the lack of communication in his relationships. Once he vrote to his mistress, Aline Bernstein, "Faust 's ow problem touches me more than Hamlet•s ••• the problem of modern life ••• to know e~rything, to be a God--and he is caught in the terrible net of human incapacity.n2 His sy.mpathy for the Faustian legend led Wolfe to include it in his work, but it is not intellectuel omniscience that taunts the protagonist. Rather Wolfe attempts to chronicle the efforts of a modern Faust to plumb the impossible depths of human understanding, and bring artistic expression to his discoveries. In all his struggles he is alone. There is this, the isolation of the seeking individuel; the 2 Quoted in Richard s. Kennedy, The Window ,2! Memor.z (New York, 1962), P• 207. restless and perennial rather search; and the now familiar •you-can•t• go-home-again' motif. The se few themes domina te and direct the growth of the hero of the four great novels, Eugene Gant-George Webber. While Faust, Telemachus and Orestes are conscious modela for Wolte's protagonist, he also assumes important aspects of many other hero archetypes not specifically alluded to. He is Prometheus, bringing understanding and comf'ort to man, but tortured and harassed by the gods as a punishment for his daring. He is Achilles, seeker of glory, and aware of its price--death, yet powerless to deny himselt this sole path to fulfillment. He is Satan, the fallen angel of Paradise tost, too rebellious and proud to live a "normal" lite--a savage and intriguing iconoclast. He is Cain, the outcast son, wearing the mark of exile all his lite. He is the Byronic hero: handsome, dark, moody, and guilty cursed for some unutterable sin. And of course he is the 'Wandering Jew, doomed to roam the earth and never find peace, rest, or home. What all these anti-Christs have in common is the destiny of solitude. They are exiles, social and spiritual pariahs. They live on the periphery of society, partly through their awn wish or their ow actions, but also because they have been ostracized and oondemned by a •society" that connot comprehend or tolerate their singularity. That, essentially, is howWolte saw himself in his early works. Tormented by loneliness, frustration and guilt, he reacted to the outside world almost paranoically at times, as a result at a constant feeling of rejection in his formative years. On the other hand, 1Jolte was incredibly astute in his insights into his own sufferings. With typical 4. candour, he always insisted on his immaturity and the need for emotional and social growth. And his four major novels are the record of his struggle. ~ Homeward, Angel and the first part of The~ and the Rock chronicle the childhood, youth and young manhood of Eugene Gant and George (Monk) Webber. The frame of reference for Look Homeward, Angel is, however, a more literal and more interesting account of Wolfe1s development. Family relationships have a huge significance in~ Homeward, .A:n§el, accounting for the major movements in the plot and shape of the novel, while the environment of~ Web~~~ has been pared down to accommodate the symbolic force of the story, which is itself far more fragmented and episodic than ~ Homeward, Angel. From the outset, Look Homeward, Angel proposes a broad, sweeping theme: lfaked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not know our mother1s face; from the prison of her flesh have we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth. Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father1s heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Vf'hich of us is not forever a etranger and alone? (LHA, preface) We are all etrangers to ours elves and our neighbours, and we are all searching for the way out of our individual prisons. Fear, weakness and compromise form a bridge to temporary comfort for some, but others remain forever encysted in self, strangers to the world and themselves. This novel is a study in tensions between the etrangers and those who have found the way out of loneliness. The stor,y of the tensions begins with Eliza and Gant, long before the birth of Eugene. Eliza and Gant represent the primal1 opposing facts of existence. Gant is the etranger, the vanderer. Eliza 1s communal, of the tribe, of the earth. In a sense, they are Everyman and Everywoman. Every marriage is a compromise of opposite forces; every son and daughter is a result and a victim of the union of opposites, and must choose his or her •side" in the struggle.

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