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INITIATION MOTIFS IN ROBERT CORMIER'S NOVELS

Ruth Wilson Witten

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the

College of Humanities in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, Florida

December, 1987 INITIATION MOTIFS IN ROBERT CORMIER'S NOVELS

Ruth Wilson Witten

This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. William Coyle, Department of English, and has been approved by the members of her supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the College of Humanities and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Ar ts.

SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:

Thesis Advisor

Chairperson, Department of English

Dean, College of Humanities

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i i ABSTRACT

Author: Ruth Wilson Witten

Title: Initiation Motifs in Robert Cormier's Novels

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

Degree: Master of Arts

Year: 1987

A central theme in the novels of Robert Cormier is the

confrontation between the individual and society. Because

the protagonists are teenagers, this encounter represents

a form of initiation or rite of passage into the adult

world. Numerous symbolic images relate the initiation

experiences of Cormier's characters to the initiation

rituals and practices of primitive tribes. Because the

images reveal perversions of modern initiation ordeals

- and corruption of the mentors who guide them, aberrant

values are transmitted. The abundance of symbolic imagery

elevates Cormier's work to a significant voice in

contemporary mythology. Instead of mystical monsters,

Cormier's novices must face the institutional evils found

in religion, education, government, the military,

international terrorism, and experimental medicine. Most of

the youthful heroes fail to complete the passage

satisfactorily; some are annihilated by it. Cormier warns

that the implacable establishment can corrupt and destroy

both individuals and itself.

i i i TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract i i i

Introduction 1

Primitive Ritual Images 6

Mentors' Twisted Motives 38

Aberrant Passages 53

Conclusion 7 0

Works Cited 73

Works Consulted 75

iv INTRODUCTION

To dismiss Robert Cormier as just a currently

controversial novelist for young adults would be a mistake.

His three early adult novels and five more recent young

adult novels constitute a rich addition to American

literature, especially to those works which deal with

initiation or rite of passage themes. Cormier's biographer

Patricia J. Campbell defines his central theme in the question "How can we confront the utterly Implacable and

still remain human?"(32> Cormier himself has said that he explores "the plight of the individual versus the system"

literature. Ihab Hassan in Radical Innocence points out

that whether the individual completes the initiation or becomes its victim is the concern of initiation fiction:

Our concern is the encounter between the

self and the world in .fiction, that confrontation

of the "hero" with experience which may assume

the form of initiation or victimization. Now

initiation may be understood as a process leading

1 2

through right action and consecrated knowledge to

a viable mode of life in the world. (34-35)

In Cormier's work a mythology of initiation evolves through many images and symbols that relate these

"confrontations with experience" of Cormier's youthful protagonists to primitive initiation rites. While modern society is so complex, and adolescence is so varied, contemporary initiation cannot match exactly the rituals of a primitive culture. The resemblance, however, is significant. As these rites are perverted by individuals who would further their own power or by the power of some contemporary institution, society is corrupted. In the religious practices of primitive societies, rituals of initiation for youth passing into adult membership in the society follow consistent patterns. Anthropologist Arnold van Gennep and religious historian Mircea Eliade provide extensive catalogs of examples of the patterns of initiation. Many others have done the same. Because such events are usually perceived symbolically in literature, it becomes necessary to discover possible symbolic images that express the contemporary equivalents of such rites and rituals. Such imagery is abundant in Cormier's works.

Because cultural and spiritual values are passed to the emerging individual via these rituals, a sort of mythology evolves from the literature where their symbolic images appear. 3

Robert Cormier the man seems to present an enigmatic

picture to those who have written about him. His dark

central vision is at odds with the mild-mannered, quiet-

spoken family man. Because of Cormier's long career as a

newspaperman, biographer Campbell draws an obvious parallel

with Clark Kent<8). Like Kent, Cormier enters his

phonebooth-like study and becomes a literary Superman. His

novels for young adults are a contemporary publishing

phenomenon. The first of these, The Chocolate War <1974),

has sold almost half a million copies .

Cormier's other novels- After The First Death (1979>, I Am

The Cheese <1977>, The Bumblebee Flies Anyway (1983>, and

Beyond The Chocolate War <1985) -create a world not

unlike Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County - fictional,

autobiographical, mythological. The town of Monument both

is and is not Cormier's own hometown of Leominster,

Massachusetts. The early adult novels - Now And At The

Hour (1960), A Little Raw On Monday Mornings <1963), and

Take Me Where The Good Times Are <1965) -establish the world of French Hill, a neighborhood of working-class

French Canadian immigrants. Cormier himself is the san of

just such an immigrant father and an Irish Catholic mother.

These early works reveal Cormier's own Roman Ca~~licism, ----··--.. an element in his life that he admits has been ambivalent.

Biographer Campbell discusses at length the misery in

young Cormier's life at the hands of tyrannical nuns, 4 contrasted with the "theology of love" Cormier feels as a result of the changes during the era of Pope John XXIII

Are:

The name of this town is Monument, like I

probably mentioned, and the people here are crazy

about monuments, feeling maybe that they have to

live up to the name of the place. (73>

Cormier's Catholic attitude in this early work is revealed

in a description of Monument's main street:

Mechanic Street is long and it stretches all the

way from the town line at the dump to the

business district uptown where you'll find the

fancy stores and City Hall and the public library

and the Common full of monuments where I used to

sit on summer evenings, watching the people going

by. But the part that was really Mechanic Street,

the part you thought of when anybody mentioned

the name, was a small section, maybe three bloc ks

long, with St. Jude's Church at one end and Lu ' s

Place at the other. It's funny that the church

and the saloon should be located that way. My

mother always said that God was at one end of

Mechanic Street and the Devil at the other.

(85) 5

While there is little overtly religious language in

Cormier's later works, and in fact The Chocolate War and

Beyond The Chocolate War confront the Catholic educational institution, it is clear that Cormier believes in the existence of evil. Campbell confirms this belief in absolute wrong by introducing her biography of Cormier with an excerpt from the poetry of Yevgeny Yevtushenko in which he warns of the danger of telling lies to the young. In

Cormier's young adult novels, these lies, seen as distorted, even perverted rites and rituals of initiation directed by corrupted mentors, result in aberrant passages,· some of which are never completed. These rituals, the mentors who guide them, and the inevitable results are the focus of this thesis. 6

CHAPTER ONE: PRIMITIVE RITUAL IMAGES

In order to understand the leitmotif of recurring

initiation rituals in Cormier's work, it is necessary to

look first at what initiation rituals are or have been in human history, what purpose they have served, how and why historic rituals become literary symbols, and how their abundance elevates the entire body of Cormier's work to the level of a significant contemporary mythology.

A brief look at the works of two scholars will help define what initiation rituals are in primitive societies.

As early in this century as 1906 Arnold van Gennep in his

The Rites of Passage described a pattern of trials or ordeals that a young man had to undergo in order tG be considered an adult or a fully-privileged member of society

<74-76). The pattern of the rite involved three stages: separation, transition, and incorporation. In his study of several primitive tribes, anthropologist van Gennep documented many examples of specific tests and ordeals

that followed this pattern. Although the details of the rituals varied, there was remarkable similarity in their

adherence to the pattern. A young man was separated from 7

the world of his childhood, instructed in the ways of the adult world, then marked with some physical sign of his having completed the course. Religious historian Mircea

Eliade, half a century later, in his Rites and Symbols of

Initiation, refined vanGennep's formula slightly. Eliade describes the basic initiation ritual pattern as symbolic death, followed by rebirth in an existentially altered state:

In philosophical terms, initiation is equivalent

to a basic change in existential condition; the

novice emerges from his ordeal endowed with a

totally different being from that which he

possessed before his initiation; he has become

another.

Whether van Gennep's three-phase process or Eliade's two step formula is accepted becomes less important than the realization that initiation rituals represent fundamental changes in the person involved. The young protagonist emerges from his ordeal a different person.

Both van Gennep and Eliade offer some help in understanding what magical power exists in these rituals that bring about such fundamental change. What do they do?

Eliade describes the process in religious terms:

Initiation introduces the candidate into the

human community and into the world of spiritual

and cultural values. He learns not only the 8

behavior patterns, the techniques, and the

institutions of adults but also the sacred myths

and traditions of the tribe, the names of the

gods and the history of their works;

above all, he learns the mythical relations

between the tribe and the Supernatural Beings as

those relations were established at the

beginning of time.

Every primitive society possesses a

consistent body of mythical traditions, a

"conception of the world"; and it is this

conception that is gradually revealed to the

novice in the course of his initiation.

Similarly, van Gennep views this mysterious transformation as "the ceremonial whole which transfers the neophyte from the profane to the sacred world and places him in direct and permanent communication with the latter" (89). Moving from primitive to contemporary society, van Gennep includes the Christian Mass in his formula:

It would be easy to show that the ritual of the

Mass also constitutes a sequence of rites of

separation, transition, and incorporation. The

only theoretical distinction between initiation

and the Mass is that the latter is an initiation

which is periodically renewed, like the Hindu 9

sacrifice of soma and, in general, sacrifices

whose purpose is to insure the normal course of

cosmic and human events. (96)

Transference of cultural and religious values, then, can be seen to be the purpose of these rituals. Spanning society's range from ancient to primitive to contemporary, rituals of initiation profoundly affect those whose norms and values they transmit.

In a modern world where prescribed rituals of initiation no longer exist as the primary method of transmitting society's values, how and why do they become important in contemporary literature? Eliade offers an explanation:

[Medieval] literature with its abundance of

initiatory motifs and scenarios is most valuable

for our purpose because of its popular success.

The fact that people listened with delight to

romantic tales in which initiatory cliches

occurred to satiety proves, I think, that such

adventures provided the answer to a profound

need in medieval man. It was only his

imagination which was fed by these initiatory

scenarios; but the life of the imagination, like

the life of a dream, is as important for the

whole psyche of the human being as is daily life .

. what happened to the majority of 10

initiatory patterns when they had lost their

ritual reality; they became . literary

motifs. This is as much as to say that they now

deliver their spiritual message on a different

plane of human experience, by addressing

themselves directly to the imagination.

(125-126)

This address to the imagination is important to an understanding of the Cormier process. Cormier himself has

said that he experiences almost total recall of the emotions of his own past . It is easy to

imagine the short step from a kind of Wordsworthian emotion recollected in tranquillity to Cormier's imaginative symbolism. There are many such imaginative symbols in the works of Robert Cormier.

Both van Gennep and Eliade describe the first step in primitive initiation rituals as separation from childhood, often specifically from the mother. Eliade describes an elaborate process practiced by tribes in eastern Australia wherein an area of sacred ground is prepared prior to the

beginning of the initiation ritual <4>. Great care is taken

to prevent the women from knowing what is going on there.

If they do discover these clandestine activities, their very lives may be at stake. When the actual ceremony begins, the novices are arranged in various patterns within the sacred ground, sometimes surrounded by their mothers, 1 1 other times already removed from them. Sometimes the separation ceremony is quite brutal, and the women are sent screaming to their dwellings to mourn the initiates as if they were dead. Variations of this scenario can be seen in virtually every one of Cormier's young adult novels. In The

Chocolate War the opening chapter is a reenactment of the scene. Jerry Renault is introduced on an area of sacred ground commonly known to contemporary young males, a football field. As a freshman trying to make the team,

Jerry is taking his share of low blows. His feelings are exactly those of a young man being separated from his childhood:

Landing on his knees, hugging the ball, he urged

himself to ignore the pain that gripped his

groin, knowing that it was important to betray no

sign of distress, remembering The Goober's

advice, "Coach is testing you, testing, and he's

looking for guts."

I've got guts, Jerry murmured, getting up by

degrees, careful not to displace any of his bones

or sinews. . He was aware of the other

players around him, helmeted and grotesque,

creatures from an unknown world. He had never

felt so lonely in his life, abandoned,

defenseless.

By the end of the afternoon's tryout session, the reader 12

has learned that Jerry's mother has only recently died of cancer <10>. If the symbolism of this scene is so obvious

that it seems trite, consider that it is but the first in a series of separation scenes that become increasingly subtle

throughout Cormier's works.

In the opening chapter of I Am The Cheese, Adam Farmer describes the terrain of his sacred ground:

This is Mechanic Street in Monument, and to my

right, high above on a hill, there ' s a hospital

and I glance up at the place and I think of my

father in Rutterburg, Vermont, and my pedaling

accelerates. It's ten o'clock in the morning and

it is October, not a Thomas Wolfe October.

but a rotten October, dreary, cold, and damp

with little sun and no warmth at all. <11>

Throughout the chapter, only Adam's father is mentioned, although before leaving the house Adam studies himself in the mirror on his parents' bedroom door (13>. Under drug assisted questioning from the mysterious Brint, Adam divulges clues that his mother is actually already dead. It is not until the end of the novel, however, that Cormier confirms her death, in Adam's hideous recollection of the car hurtling from around a nearby curve, toward his famil y :

The car smashing, shattering. A flash of steel,

sun glinting, and he felt himself, crazily,

moving through the air, no feeling, no pain, no 13

sense of flight, but actually in the air, not

flying but moving as if in slow motion,

everything slowed down, tumbling now and

twisting and in the tumbling and the twisting he

saw his mother die. Instantly. Death without any

doubt, and he regarded her almost curiously,

numb, without feeling. (207)

What was suggested in the opening chapter by omitting any

mention of Adam's mother is confirmed. The complex series

of mysterious ordeals which are the plot of this novel

begins with the separation of young Adam Farmer from his

mother.

After The First Death contains a still more complex

development of the symbolism of separation. This novel is perhaps Cormier's most violent, and the symbols are consequently more cruel. The title of the novel is taken from a line by Dylan Thomas: "After the first death, there

is no other." The obvious reference is to the murder of a child on the bus. Symbolically, however, there is an earlier death of a child, the young boy Mire Shantas, recruited from the streets of a war-torn city and trained to become a ruthless terrorist. Given a different name, a new identity, and taught to kill for the cause of a non existent homeland, Mire appears as a walking dead man:

He had been waiting for four, almost five years

now. How else could he justify his existence, 14

make his life meaningful before it was taken

away from him? His brother, Aniel, had died too

soon, before making his mark, before fulfilling

his promise. No, Miro was not apprehensive about

the delivery of death; he worried only that he

would not do a professional job. <24)

Mira's first kill is to be the driver of a hijacked schoolbus, carrying pre-school children to a daycamp. The driver turns out to be eighteen-year-old Kate Forrester, filling in for her uncle on his usual route. Miro, of course, is distracted and confused, and he eventually is attracted both physically and emotionally to Kate. It is

Kate's question late in the book that reveals the true horror of Mira's identity:

Those two men who were with you are dead, the one

you called Antibbe and the black guy. And

Artkin. Who's left? Nobody. Your brother's dead.

And now your father."

He looked at her, startled. "My father

what do you mean? Now my father?"

When she had spoken the words, she didn't

realize the knowledge they contained, knowledge

she had somehow absorbed earlier, knowledge she

didn't even know she had until it emerged.

Now, the possibility of Artkin being Mira's

father blossomed fully and also the awareness 15

that Mire didn't know, had never suspected.

"It's not possible," Mire cried out, trying

to turn away from her. But there was no place to

go, no way he could escape her or her words.

(209)

Trained by Artkin to kill without feeling, Mire in his

anguish pulls the trigger and kills Kate, and he escapes

alone through the woods. The unfeeling, inhuman monster

that he was molded to be by his own father is loosed on the

world. The symbolic death of the child Mire has occurred

long before the death of the child in the bus. Mire had

believed that both his parents were killed by an exploding mine. The truth of that is also clouded by the revelation

that Artkin was, perhaps, Mire's own father". The reader is

left to imagine the possible hideous reality of Mire ' s

separation from his mother, in preparation for fulfillment of his initiation- a kill for the glory of the cause.

This novel contains a vivid example of what happens to women who intentionally or accidentally intrude on the

traditionally male rituals of initiation. Eliade cites the

words of a Kurnai headman: "lf a woman were to see these

things, or hear what we tell the boys, I would kill her."

<7> Kate Forrester and Adam Farmer's mother have both

stumbled into a forbidden realm, the sacred ground of the

initiation rite, and both are sacrificed. Cormier leaves us

to imagine the details of Mire's mother's death. 16

After The First Death includes another symbolic image

that relates to primitive initiation-rites, an image most interesting because of its combined visual and auditory

impact. Eliade describes a device called a bull-roarer, which is used in the initiation rites of tribes in

Australia, New Guinea, North and South America and other parts of the world. It is made of long, thin, narrow pieces of wood attached to a string, and when whirled through the air makes a roaring sound (4). Both Eliade and van Gennep refer to the use of this device at several times during varying parts of the initiation rites. It is believed to be at times the voices of Supernatural Beings, the voice of a particular Great Spirit, or the voice of divine beasts of prey who devour the novice but resuscitate him eventually.

The sound of the bull-roarer is evoked as Mira stands guard at the door of the hijacked schoolbus:

Mira did not react immediately to the strange

sound that reached his ears. The sound was a

whoosh, not an explosion but a muffled eruption

of noise close by the bus. Then, another

whoosh, this time enveloping the bus, and the bus

seemed to move slightly.

The gunfire started. More than gunfire.

Explosions, the quick stutter of machine guns.

Sirens. The throbbing of a helicopter; two

perhaps. . An orchestra of chaos, deafening 17

to the ears, jarring to the senses.

The winds had started. The turbulent winds

of the helicopter's blades were dispersing the

fog, tearing it to shreds, as if the fog had

been a massive cotton blanket. (200-201)

The symbolic sound of the bull-roarer signals the beginning

of Mira's first kill. He escapes through the confusion,

dragging Kate with him, and initiation is soon complete

with the death of Kate. Ironically, of course, it has been

his responses to Kate that have elicited his first

glimmers of humanity.

For two reasons, Mira's double, Ben, the son of

counterterrorist General Marcus Marchand, is a curious

example of the novice separated from his mother. First, Ben

is more a victim of his father's ambition than an initiate.

In his Introduction to The Young Man In American

Literature, William Coyle questions the consideration of

sacrificial victims as initiates

that Ben is, indeed, a victim (80). He was observed by his

father from infancy, and was known to be the kind of

innocent who would crack under pressure. The girl he is

attracted to responds as if he did not exist. The other reason is that we do not actually witness Ben's separation from his mother. He does kill himself, but in the passage where Ben faces his mother, there is only a brief wandering of his mind: 18

"You know your father doesn't like to be

called a general," she said.

"True," I said, and felt myself drifting

away from her, something I have been doing

recently, drifting away while standing still,

letting myself go as if the world is a huge

blotter and I am being absorbed by it. ( 15)

Rather than suggesting Ben's separation from his mother, this passage may more probably support Campbell's belief that all of the journal writings are not actually Ben's work, but are really those of his father who cracks after

Ben ' s suicide and assumes Ben's identity 1n a mental hospital <75-76). Ben's separation may be his absorption by his father, a curious and uniquely symbolic way of suggesting a passage to another existential state. In

Chapters Two and Three, greater consideration will be gi v e n to the identity of the Ben/Mark persona.

Barney Snow's separation from his mother in The

Bumblebee Flies Anyway is perhaps Cormier's most symbolic.

Throughout the novel both of Barney's parents are obviously

absent, erased from Barney's memory by the experimental

drugs he is being given for that very purpose. Barney

believes himself to be a non-affected control subject in a

hospital for terminally ill patients. The periodic

hallucinatory flashes that he experiences only seem to be

related to the experimental drugs he is given. At the end 19

of the novel, when Barney discovers that he, too, is

terminally ill, both the reader and Barney discover the

source of the visions. Barney stumbles inadvertently upon a

machine in a remote room in the hospital:

He was sitting in a car that was not a car, only

the front seat and steering wheel and dashboard

and windshield, like the kind you find in

amusement parks to test your driving ability for

a dime or quarter. He had sat in this car many

times - but when? why? - and he knew what to do

now. He touched a button on the dashboard. A

humming in the walls, growing louder.

The huge screen in front of him glowed green, and

the seat began to rock under him as if he were

sitting in a real car and the car had started to

move. Then the screen burst into life and he

found himself in the middle of his

nightmare. <174)

Watching his own recurrent vision being played out before him on the screen, Barney begins to realize that he has been monstrously deceived. The doctor explains how pieces of Barney's own past were dramatized on film and implanted in his subconscious mind. The nightmare involving Barney himself behind the wheel of a car, striking a young girl whose face he sees through the windshield, was a mental screen, intended to shield him from the memory that he too 20 is dying. The accident is related to the actual death of

Barney's parents in an auto crash when Barney was seven, a part of his life that Barney no longer remembers. Although he does not consciously recognize her, the face of the young girl is an enlarged photo of Barney's own mother.

Under the guise of protecting him from painful knowledge about his own life, Barney has been a non-comprehending subject in an over-zealous program of experimentation involving human memory. He has been kept under control by a subliminal vision of his own mother's death. It is difficult to imagine any primitive separation ritual be i ng more brutal. If the intent of the experimentation was honorable, its implementation was at best suspect.

The initiatory cabin or area of sacred ground common to most primitive initiation ceremonies recurs symbolicall y many times in Cormier's novels. Eliade describes the elaborate preparation of the ground and its meaning. In many tribes it represents the first ground sanctified by the Great Spirit, a kind of creation of the world myth (5).

The settings of Cormier's novels seem to symbolize just such sacred areas. The adolescent world of the sports field, already mentioned as part of Jerry Renault's initiation, is only part of a larger sacred ground, Trinity

School. Known initially as the scrappy freshman struggling to make the football team, Jerry's reputation spreads through the whole school. He refuses to sell the fund- 21 raiser chocolates, symbolically passing one initiation trial, only to find that as he has become a celebrity in school, he must now prove himself to a wider world. Jerry's growing independence is defined by the poster in his locker that asks "Do I Dare Disturb The Universe?"<97>. Taken from a line in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, the epigraph suggests that Jerry's sacred ground is in danger of being laid waste. That is exactly what happens. Tragically Jerry learns that Trinity School is rotten with corruption, lies, and deceit. Either unwilling or unable to confront this evil, Jerry and his peers through their inaction allow it to grow. The initiatory cabin, on its sacred ground, is desecrated. The final episode, the staged fight on the football field, where Jerry is almost killed, rounds out the imagery begun with the opening line of the book. "They murdered him"

Chapter Three.

The true nature of the initiatory cabin in I Am The

Cheese unlocks the mystery of the entire novel. To the first-time reader the setting moves from one New England town to another, with flashbacks to other towns, and interjected passages which seem to be transcripts of taped interviews between a questioner identified only as Brint, and a person who increasingly becomes Adam Farmer. Not until the startling end of the book is it revealed that 22

Adam has, in fact, not been going anywhere. His bicycle

ride has been in circles around the grounds of the facility

where he is confined. The ground on which he has been

trying to discover his own identity is not sacred, but is

actually a prison for Adam. Returning at least partially to

his present reality at the end of the ride, Adam senses

that for him there is no escape, no future:

I look for a telephone booth but I don't see

any. I'm not sure why I want to find a phone

booth; in fact, the thought of a phone booth

makes me sad. I don't know why it makes me sad

but it does. It opens up a loneliness in me,

like a hole, a deep, dark hole. The hole is

threatening somehow; if it gets too big it

could swallow me up, so I try not to think about

it. The medicine always helps me not to think

about it. ( 211 )

The hole is, of course, his fading past. Semiconsciuusl y he knows there is no longer anyone out there whom he can

call on the phone. Although he has divulged every detail of

his former life that he can remember, Adam is not allowed

to pass beyond his present drugged state. The final

transcript reveals that he will never be released, but will

be held until policy changes allow his termination or

obliteration <220>. Again the sacred ground of the

initiation rite is tainted with evil. 23

Mira Shantas' initiatory cabin resembles Eliade's description of the rites of tribes in southeastern Africa:

The assimilation of initiatory tortures to the

sufferings of the novice in being swallowed and

digested by the monster is confirmed by the

symbolism of the cabin in which the boys are

isolated. Often the cabin represents the body or

the open maw of a water monster, a crocodile, for

example, or of a snake. (35)

In this description it is easy to see the rickety old schoolbus, its windows taped shut, perched on top of the abandoned railroad bridge, with its squirming cargo of partially drugged toddlers, the disturbingly beautiful Kate

Forrester, all guarded by a nervous and very self-conscious

Mira. Although Mira does complete one traditional rite of passage, the discovery of his own sexuality, in his awakening responses to Kate, it is what he does not discover in this hot, musty monster's belly that is significant. Kate's response to Mira describes it best:

But now she recognized him for what he was: a

monster. And the greatest horror of all was that

he did not know he was a monster. He had looked

at her with innocent eyes as he told her of

killing people. She'd always thought of innocence

as something good, something to cherish. People

mourned the death of innocence. Someone had 24

written a theme paper on the topic in school.

But innocence, she saw now, · could ~lso be evil.

Monstrous. <130)

With typical Cormier irony, the initiate misses the intent

of the symbolic ritual of loss of childhood innocence. Miro

remains an innocent monster. On the other hand, Kate sees

the truth, but is destroyed by it. The site of the sacred

ritual is once again corrupted by the perverted intentions

of those who would guide the young protagonist through his

ordeal.

Miro•s symbolic death in the belly of the yellow iron

monster contains another characteristic irony common in

Cormier's work. An image is suggested that relates to

primitive rites in a very different way. Mira's greatest concern throughout the novel is proving himself worthy to

be one of the group. Eliade describes an initiatory motif common in both puberty rites and admissions to secret societies which emerges here:

But there are yet other archetypal motifs that

recur in various types of initiations, notably

the ritual of climbing trees or sacred poles.

the novice during his initiation . . climbs

the tree or the sacred pole; and despite the

variety of socioreligious contexts in which it

occurs, the ascent always has the same goal

meeting with the gods or heavenly powers, in 25

order to obtain a blessing. (77)

Perched precariously high above the Moosock River, Mira is

not blessed but cursed by the gods. The sacred ground on which his initiatory cabin has come to rest is thin a1r.

The ironic symbolism of the climb to the top of the bridge

is repeated when Ben Marchand ascends the bridge to deliver his erroneous message from Delta Force, and still a third time through his father's journal entries that reveal Ben's suicide by jumping from another bridge. For these novices ascent leads to doom.

Barney Snow's hospital is an ironic combination of t he initiatory cabin that represents death with tree-and-pole climbing that represents communion with the divinities. Th e building and its surrounding fence are clear symbols of the death-as-birth paradox in initiation:

The Complex wore an air of mystery, like an old

convent. The roof slanted toward the front of the

building in a steep pitch at the astonishingly

sharp angle of a ski jump.

From the beginning the top of the roof suggests descent.

Barney soon finds a way to escape, even briefly, the narrow boundaries of the Complex. With Allie Roan looking on

Barney begins his ascent:

He began to climb the fence, his feet finding

support somehow in the small spaces between the

slats. The exercise cost him a lot, but he 26

thought, What the hell. The Handyman would be

furious if he saw Barney climbing the fence so

soon after the last merchandise, but Barney kept

climbing, developing a rhythm now, matching his

beating heart to the rhythm of his breathing and

the movement of his body. He reached the top,

straddling the fence, his heart accelerating

dangerously and his breath coming fast, but he

felt triumphant as he clung there, gathering his

strength. • Barney felt noble, as if he had

completed a mission for Allie. ( 13)

Barney's noble mission grows to include Mazzo as the boys plot to steal the mock-up car Barney finds in the junkyard beyond the fence. Barney, Billy the Kidney, and Allie Roan dismantle the car and hide it in the attic of the Complex .

When it is finally reassembled they carry the car to the roof and drag themselves and the dying Mazzo to the skylight opening where the Bumblebee is to make its final flight to glory. The ascent and its symbolic images are almost heroically mythological. Mazzo dies before Barney can push him into the car. Billy can't make the final climb. Barney suddenly realizes that he does not want to die, . so he releases the Bumblebee to make its symbolic flight for the doomed boys:

And he realized that getting there had been the

important thing. Not the flight, although the 27

Bumblebee could still fly. For them. Hey, Mazzo,

the Bumblebee is going to fly and we don't have

to be in it. The Bumblebee will fly for us and

we'll be part of the flight because we made it

possible, you and me, me by building it and you

by giving me a reason to build it. . He knew

he was hysterical, barely coherent, didn't know

whether he was talking or shouting or just

thinking these thoughts, didn't know whether

Mazzo could hear him or not but it didn't

matter. What mattered was the Bumblebee and the

f 1 i gh t. ( 233-234)

The symbolic ascent of Barney and his friends from the

hideous reality of the hospital to the heroic flight of the

Bumblebee is perhaps Cormier's closest approach to the

actual intent of primitive ascent rituals. The conflict

between Mazzo's death and Barney's realization that he

wants to live is a kind of completed passage. Barney

understands what is happening to him and determines to resist as long as he can.

Although there is little overt sexuality in Cormier's novels, there is vivid imagery related to emerging sexual awareness in the heat and cold images of After The First

Death and l Am The Cheese. Eliade reminds the reader of the

Old lrish iain Bo Cualnge in which the young hero

Cuchulainn reaches a dangerously overheated state and must 28

be doused in three vats of cold water to extinguish his wrath against the other warriors in Ulster. The men were

able to subdue him as he averted his gaze from the sight of a troop of naked women. Eliade cites the rituals of the

Kwakiutl cannibal in which the young warrior is treated similarly as part of the religious experience of gaining possession of something sacred <84-85). Mira's experience in the bus is just such a scene. Betrayed by her weak bladder, Kate Forrester slips to the back of the bus to change her damp underpants. Enjoying the coolness against her bare skin after the heat of the bus, Kate reacts:

Turning slightly, glancing over her shoulder, she

saw Mira at the far end of the bus. He was

looking at her, suspended, caught in mid-

motion, one foot on the top step near the

driver's seat. Frozen. He wore the mask,

which always emphasized his eyes. His eyes now

were huge and startled.

Mira entered the bus and removed the mask.

His skin was hot and flushed. • His face was

still warm now as he looked at her. She was not

yet aware of his presence, or if she were, she

was pretending he had not entered

Mira was confused, his face warmer than

ever, the pulse throbbing in his temple.

(104-106) 29

It is only when Kate speaks to Mira that he begins to cool

off and allows himself to relax:

And now he could recall the sight of her

nakedness with pleasure. a stirring inside him

that he had never known before. <107)

Combining the increasingly oppressive heat of the bus with

the symbolic sound of the bull-roarer, the helicopters,

Cormier intensifies Mira's physical and emotional

discomforts:

The long afternoon burned on, the heat

increasing, pounding at the taped windows,

pressing on the roof of the bus like a giant's

hot hand. The helicopters came and went, roaring

and throbbing and fluttering and then receding,

fading away. <146)

Mira's blind but passionate dedication to proving himself cools but is rekindled.

Cormier's use of cold imagery is as powerful. The opening paragraph of I Am The Cheese contains one of his most often quoted but most effective similes:

I am riding the bicycle and I am on Route 31

in Monument, Massachusetts, on my way to

Rutterburg, Vermont, and I'm pedaling furiously

because this is an old bike, no speeds, no

fenders, only the warped tires and the brakes

that don't always work and the handlebars with 30

cracked rubber grips to steer with. A plain bike

- the kind my father rode as a kid long ago.

It's cold as I pedal along, the wind like a snake

slithering up my sleeves and into my jacket and

my pants legs, too. But I keep pedaling. ( 1 1 )

Only the closing pages of the book reveal that Adam's

journey is in his mind. It is not a cold October day but

actually springtime with lilacs blooming <213). The image

of the snake-like chill is Cormier's warning that evil

lurks. As Adam's ride brings him nearer the truth, the

ominous cold appears again. From a pay phone on the wall of

a gas station he tries one last time to call Amy:

My hand trembles as it holds the phone. The

office is getting colder, as if someone had just

opened a door and allowed in the coldest air in

the world.

The cold has invaded my body now, seeped

into my bones, a cold like no other I have.ever

felt, penetrating, relentless.

I have never been so cold in all my life,

but it's a cold coming from inside. (196-197)

As Adam is forced to confront his isolation, all warmth vanishes and the evil cold surrounds him. Unlike Mira, who

finds his burgeoning emotions pushing the heat higher, Adam

is plunged into numbing cold as his past is stripped away from him. 31

The heat imagery employed by Cormier to introduce Obie in The Chocolate War warns that Obie and Archie are destined to explode eventually. As the "assigner" of the secret club The Vigils, Archie has a powerful hold over

Obi~, his assistant. Although chronologically Obie and

Archie are peers, Obie is controlled by Archie:

It seemed [Obie] was always tired these days.

He went to bed tired and he woke up tired.

Most of all, he was tired of Archie. Archie the

bastard~ The bastard that Obie alternately hated

and admired. For instance, at this minute he

hated Archie with a special burning hate that

was part of the boredom and the weariness.

(War 11 )

Although Obie hates Archie, he allows himself to be manipulated:

"Do you want to come to school every day,

Obie?"

"Hell no," Obie responded, knowing what

Archie wanted and giving it to him but resentful

as well, feeling like a stooge, as if Archie was

the ventriloquist and Obie the dummy . . (125)

The burning hatred felt by Obie early in the book turns to cold at the end as Obie and Archie sit in the bleachers after Jerry Renault's fight with Emile Janza:

They were sitting in the bleachers, watching 32

some of the guys cleaning up the place.

The night had grown cold and Obie shivered

slightly.

"Someday, Archie, you'll get yours,"

Obie said but the words were automatic. Archie

was always one step ahead. (190)

Fully aware of Archie's malevolence, Obie follows him

anyway and even hopes to beat Archie at his own game

someday. Obie's plot to "get" Archie, as developed in

Beyond The Chocolate War, almost destroys both boys.

Another ordeal whose symbolic image is seen in

Cormier's work is sleep deprivation. Citing the Wiradjuri

of Australia as but one example, Eliade describes the

practice as almost universal:

The Wiradjuri novices must not go to bed until

late in the night. This is an initiatory ordeal

that is documented more or less all over the

world, even in comparatively highly developed

religions. Not to sleep is not only to conquer

physical fatigue, but is above all to show proof

of will and spiritual strength; to remain awake

is to be conscious, present in the world,

responsible. (14-15)

Wakefulness for Cormier's novices often has quite different

implications. Adam Farmer finds sleep a welcome escape from the pain of his situation, although it is sometimes 33

interrupted violently:

He had awakened from sleep as if shot out of a

cannon. Out of the everywhere into the here. And

now. The room, the bed, the cold moonlight chilling the room. He was in the bed and aware of the cold sheets but he was also suspended, isolated, inhabitant of an unknown land, an unknown world and he himself unidentified.

Caught and suspended in time. Who am I? I am Adam

Farmer. But who am I? I am Adam Farmer. But Adam

Farmer was only a name, words, a lesson he had

learned here in the cold room and in that other

room with the questions and answers.

Unable to hold on to his own reality, Adam allows himself to slip back into drugged sleep. If only he could stay awake long enough, he might remember; but that will not happen. Adam is destined not to regain full awareness of

his own identity, for the sake of his own survival.

Like Adam, Barney Snow senses a threat in the drug

induced sleep his guardians offer so generously. Barney has

volunteered for the tests, so he willingly accepts the

needle, but in preparation he hides a piece of paper

containing his name and other facts about himself under a

Band-Aid between his toes. Several days later, emerging

from the aftermath of the drugs, Barney realizes the Band

Aid is gone: 34

The Handyman extended his hand in greeting and

Barney realized immediately that it wasn't merely

a greeting. He looked down at what had been

deposited in his hand in a swift deft movement:

the Band-Aid and the crinkled piece of paper

containing the notations of his identity.

"Clever of you Barney."

Barney looked away sheepishly, realizing he

could never outwit the Handyman. (92)

Aware now that the drugs could rob him of what little identity he has left, Barney tries to escape their effect.

He also avoids sleep, hoping to evade the killer he now knows infects him too:

That night he didn't swallow the capsule. He

tossed it into the toilet bowl and watched it

swirl away into the bowels of the building. He

had been afraid to sleep, afraid the invader

would come, find its way through his body while

he slept. He felt that he could keep it away if

he stayed awake, on guard, alert. <199)

Staying awake becomes for Barney Snow the key to guarding

his identity, his very life. Campbell cites this

existential dilemma as "Cormier's preoccupation with

identity . laid bare"

himself claims to work best in the late night hours:

This is when knowledge seems to arrive, when 35

thoughts are lucid and clear • a time to

ponder imponderables, to entertain thoughts that

the dazzle of daylight prevents.

Cormier's characters have other reasons to stay awake.

Mira Shantas allows his attention to wander and Kate

makes her unsuccessful attempt to back the bus off the

bridge and out of reach of the captors. Mira determines not

to be caught off guard again:

He stayed awake through the night . so he had

trained himself to do without sleep when it was

necessary~ to remain awake and alert, his bod y on

guard, his mind sharp and aware. . And that

is why the girl's voice made him leap as it

reached him from the darkness. . He turned

to the voice and realized with dismay that he

had been betrayed again, this time by his body ,

which had fallen asleep even as he watched. (165>

Cormier allows the reader a brief chuckle at Mira's quite ordinary humanity in this novel of death. The evil

innocent is, after all, merely mortal.

Jerry Renault's sleep is disturbed by more sinister forces. Insisting on his right not to sell Trinity's chocolates, Jerry is confronted by the animal Emile Janza.

When Jerry angrily denies that he is "a queer," Janza unleashes a mob of younger kids who savagely beat up Jerry.

Emerging from the shadows of the pine trees, the pigmy- 36

like hordes evoke yet another image from T.S. Eliot; in

"Burnt Norton":

The leaves were full of children,

Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.

The children who attack Jerry are not laughing. Later, at

home, Jerry tries to sleep, but anonymous phone calls and

voices calling his name from the shadows across the street

keep him awake

asleep, the phone rings in his dreams. Even sleep offers

little escape from those who would destroy Jerry.

Eliade points out a characteristic element in the aboriginal societies of North America that has been seen 1n

Cormier's motifs; that is, withdrawal into solitude <67 ).

Each of the protagonists looked at so far has experienced a profound sense of isolation, a break with society. That is, after all, one purpose of the separation stage of initiation. Jerry Renault's alienation from the other students at Trinity School magnifies his grief over the loss of his mother. Adam Farmer loses contact with reality entirely in his effort to remember what happened to his parents. His "trip" to find them is around in circles. Miro

Shantas is driven to murder the girl who elicits his first true human emotions; unable to sustain his emotional isolation, Mira becomes a crazed killer. Ben Marchand is pushed to suicide when he believes that he has not lived up to his father's expectations. He never knows that his 37

father expected him to crack and divulge the secret

knowledge Ben thought he was carrying. The emotional and

mental manipulations remind the reader of the many physical

mutilations seen in primitive rites. Characteristic of

Cormier, however, is the permanence of these effects. The

emotional damage becomes the Implacable.

The many instances that evoke images of primitive

initiation rites and rituals work together to form a kind

of contemporary mythology in Cormier's novels, and the

trials they undergo endow his youthful protagonists with

archetypal qualities in modern settings. Two further

mythological elements are apparent in Cormier's works: the mentors who guide the young heroes and the results of manipulating the rituals for perverse ends. CHAPTER TWO: MENTORS' TWISTED MOTIVES

Although there are few adult characters in most of

Cormier's young adult novels, there is in each at least one person who can be identified as a sort of teacher, guide, or mentor to the youthful protagonist. Like the chief priest in a primitive initiation ritual, these tutors

"reveal to them . the secrets by whose power death will always be followed by resurrection"

The mentors in Cormier's novels may be described in four groups; the first are those whose authority is derived from their being biological fathers, either real or assumed. General Marchand and Artkin in After The First

Death are such paternal mentors. A second group are those

38 39

one-dimensional, al~ost anonymous personae who represent an

institution. Adam Farmer's questioner Brint, and Barney

Snow's physician/researcher Dr. Lakendorp

form this group. Next is the combined role of Brother Leon

in The Chocolate War and Beyond The Chocolate War. As both

father-figure and institutional-liaison, Leon is both sinister and insidious. Leon's nemesis, Archie Costello, is

the most powerful and therefore most destructive mentor. As a peer he guides Obie and the other Vigils to discover the worst in themselves and others. All are effective manipulators of their young heroes. None, however, can be

trusted; all have ulterior motives.

CQrmier's first novel, and several of his short stories, deal with relationships of fathers and sons. Now and at The Hour was written as something of a catharsis following the death of his father. It is apparent that

Cormier himself feels acutely the responsibility of being both son and father. Campbell describes Cormier's loss of his father as the experience from which he derived a theme central to all his work, "the nonhero who struggles to hang on to humanness even under siege from an all-powerful Them or It" <19). Because Cormier's technique is to start with the emotion of a situation and then ask himself "what if?", it is not surprising to find in most of his work the basic question "what if the adults were less-than-honest?"

Neither parents nor peers escape his scrutiny. 40

After The First Death offers two pairs of fathers and

sons in powerful mentor-novice relationships. Young Ben

Marchand obviously loves his father very much and feels the

awe and reverence nat uncommon in sons of powerful fathers.

General Marchand loves his son-but. The General is a

flawed father. Throughout Ben's life he has been observed more as a guinea pig than as a son, and both his strengths

and weaknesses are filed away in his father's mind, as if

they were personnel records. When a messenger is needed to

carry information to the hijackers of the school bus,

General Marchand knows immediately who the victim must be.

He writes later in his journal of Ben's visit to his office:

So as we talked in the office, it seemed as if I

were carrying on two conversations, one with my

son and the other with a member of staff

personnel being given an assignment. It was

important for me to remain neutral, neuter. In

the service of your country it is often necessary

to perform these deceits. (184)

Like the novices being initiated into the secret society of the Mandja and Banda tribes, as described by Eliade<75>,

Ben is given the sacred stone retrieved from the place where one terrorist was captured. Just as the young primitives must endure tortures inside a hut representing the belly of the monster who swallowed the sacred stone, so 41

Ben is tortured by the hijackers in their van parked on top

of the bridge. As his father knew he would, Ben not only

delivers the stone, but also reveals information he has

overheard regarding the time of a planned attack on the

bridge. What Ben does not know until much later is that

his overhearing a telephone conversation was planned. His

father knew he would crack under the pressure of torture,

and specifically gave Ben wrong information to be passed on

to the terrorists. In order to assure the success of the

mission, the General sacrifices his own son. Ultimately

that sacrifice destroys both father and son.

Mira Shantas and Artkin are the other pair of mentor

and initiate in the same novel, and they present an equally

horrifying end, reached by only slightly different means.

Ben Marchand was allowed to develop naturally in a loving

home, but his father's secret observations revealed Ben's

underlying human weakness. Mira was actively indoctrinated

from childhood to assume his role in the terrorist organization. With great effort, Artkin conditioned Mira to

behave according to a rigid code; not to forget his purpose; not to feel. Like Ben, Mira is devoted to Artkin, although Mira does not think of Artkin as his biological father. Because he has not known any other, however, Mira reacts to Artkin as a son to a father, and Kate ultimately asks the question that strips away Mira's defense~ "Would he have done all that if he wasn't your father?" <210). 42

Although what Artkin has done is turn Mira into a monster, what Mira suddenly feels is rage and responsibility for

Artkin's death. The diabolical nature of what Artkin represents is perhaps most clearly seen in his t r eatment of

the child who dies of accidental poisoning by the drugged candy. In a hideous parody of a primitive chief priest

lifting up sacrifices to the divinities

Artkin displays the body of the dead child:

Artkin walked between the two vehicles and stood

near the parapet. He held the child aloft.

His masked face was raised to the sky. He offered

the child to that same sky. Turning and

turning, a dance of depraved delight. The child's

dangling arms swinging wildly as Artkin whirled.

The spinning was building momentum now, and Kate

feared that Artkin would lose his hold on the

child, who would go spinning off into the air,

over the side of the bridge, falling to the river

below. But the child was dead, of course. The

child could no longer be harmed, thank God. He

was beyond reach of Artkin's madness. <78-79)

Mira's response shows the total success of Artkin's indoctrination of the boy:

"He knows exactly what he is doing. He is showing

them that we do not go by the rules of others,

the laws of others, and that life is not precious 43

to us. Not a child's, not our own." (79)

Cormier provides further evidence of Artkin's success when

it is revealed that Mira can accept the idea of his own death more easily than the thought of Artkin's death:

Mira felt that Artkin would never die. He

accepted the possibility of his own death as a

natural consequence of his work. But it was

impossible for Artkin to die. They would never

win the freedom of their homeland if men like

Artkin died. The world would become meaningless

without him. So would Mira's own life. ( 115)

What neither General Marchand nor Artkin anticipated was the depth of emotion the two novices experience when each feels he has somehow failed his mentor. The devotion of the student to the mentor is far greater . than the mentor ' s sense of responsibility toward the student. The child is more loyal than the parent.

Campbell points out that proof of Artkin's paternity is never fully established <81>, but that the mere suggestion of it is enough to push Mira into total depravity. The theme of hidden and disclosed identity ties

Artkin and the two mentors in the second group together.

Eliade describes the initiation mystery of the Australian

Kurnai tribe in which the essence of the ceremony lies in communication of the name of the Supreme Being <10-11).

Artkin, Brint, and Dr. Lakendorp pose that very question: 44

who are these people, anyway? The question is never really

answered. Artkin may or may nat be Mira's father;

regardless, Artkin is nat his real name. The only firmly

established fact is his membership in a vaguely defined

terrorist organization, dedicated to publicizing the

desires of an amorphous group of people for a homeland. His

identity as a representative of an organized institution,

however loose, is clear. Brint and Dr. Lakendarp are also

the anonymous faces of institutions.

Campbell offers a lengthy discussion of Brint's character in which she describes Brint as the mast chilling of all of Cormier's sinister characters (62-65). Cormier ,

she says, chase the name Brint

to suggest someone bloodless and cold, to rhyme

with flint and glint

Adam comes to him completely innocent in his

amnesia, and Brint corrupts that. That's what

evil is, the destruction of innocence. (64)

Mordecai Marcus in "What Is An Initiation Story?" cites

several scholars, including Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn

Warren, and Leslie Fiedler, who believe that initiation is

just such an acquisition of the knowledge of evil through

lass of innocence <31). Adam's innocence begins to fall

away early in the cycle of taped sessions with Brint: