True Colors

A particularly expressive scene in David Mitchell's Black Swan Green comes when Jason Taylor and Dean Moran pause from their individual journeys down the bridle path and lie down on the barn roof together. Although Jason tends to view others through the more categorical lens of a middle schooler -- evident in his explicit articulations of the hierarchy and dynamics among his peers and family -- his ability to observe constructed divides allows him to distinguish the weightiness of the "surface reality" seemingly universally agreed upon in an unspoken fashion and the distinction between one's projected image and true identity. Consequently, this only increases Jason's introspection and self-awareness of his concealed identity.

As much as Jason is able to know himself however, he seems to believe the divide between image and identity to be so severe that authentic human connection -- overcoming that divide and knowing or coming close to knowing another in their purest and fullest form -- is nearly impossible. Although he understands pride to partly account for this divide, his recognition of this inability to connect and truly know another's reality seems to go beyond that. The conversation between Jason and Moran is especially significant because Moran has begun to trespass the divide between image and identity -- words you should or shouldn't say -- in speaking of his feelings concerning his father -- a sort of honest interaction Jason has yet to have experienced in this novel up until this point. And yet, when Moran asks Jason if his father ever gets extremely drunk like his own father and Jason replies that he doesn't, Jason thinks, "That no turned the three feet between us into three miles." Despite the beginnings of an honest attempt to connect with each other, the endeavor remains constricted by the barrier of being unable to truly experience another's subjective reality even after gaining a sense of it. 

As Moran says of his father's drinking, "...but only I... know that it isn't him. The rest of the world doesn't know that, see. They just say, Frank Moran's showing his true colors...But it ain't...But it is. But it ain't...Oh how am I s'posed to know?" In this way -- in how "it is" and "it ain't,"Moran illustrates how one's projected images blurs with or is derived from their "true" identity in such a way that distinguishing what is false and projected from what is supposedly true becomes impossible, made even more difficult from the fact that Dean must think of his father from an external perspective. As Jason thinks to himself in response, "Green is made of yellow and blue...but when you look at green, where've the yellow and blue gone...Somehow this is to do with everyone and everything." Jason's perception of aspects of himself as Maggot, Hangman, and the Unborn Twin seems relevant in this sense. At different and even arbitrary times, Jason's actions in the objective reality are attributed to one of these concealed personas. Combined, his actions create the image of someone else altogether and that identity is him in the sense that Maggot, Hangman, and the Unborn Twin prove themselves to be essential to the image, and yet the subjective thoughts of the other personas concealed at arbitrary times shows that, in the choices and thoughts that one may obsess over but not physically act on, there remains a perpetually hidden part of one's identity. As such, the image is not him in this way. 

Imagination seems to play a significant role to the suggestion of this perpetually concealed identity because although images of the imagination can be expressed, there remains a vast amount and essence that cannot be captured and fully conveyed. Jason's younger age and greater fascination with his imagination seems to illustrate this more apparently. As he skates on the lake by himself -- acknowledging that he can skate perfectly without the presence of others -- in the beginning of the novel, he describes his awareness that his perception of Ralph Bredon may have been grounded in imagination. As he says, he "wouldn't've argued" if the doctor told him it was his imagination, or is Julia told him he was just trying to feel special, or if a mystic told him there were more supernatural powers at play. Jason seems to imply that the reason for his conjured perception of Ralph Bredon matters less than the fact Ralph's presence nevertheless exists in his mind and proves to be particularly meaningful to him as he contemplates Ralph's loneliness and death in relation to his own sense of isolation. Of that evening Jason says, "the sky was turning to outerspace" and as he runs with Moran towards the barn he describes them as "dizzy with intergalactic travel." Such sensations seem to exist in the realm of yellow and blue Jason attempts to express through poetry.

After the unspoken words hang between Jason and Moran and Jason notices a vaportail "gashing the sky," he observes, "But the sky healed itself. Without fuss." There are various ways to take this line, but in this, I saw an implication of Moran's exposure of his hurt reverting back to this concealment with the image of the return of the perfect surface of the sky. And yet in this perhaps ultimate isolation, there is the suggestion that the certain amount of unbreakable isolation is not particularly negative, in that sense that one can "heal oneself" and find refuge in one's own "imagination."

"Darkness Falls from the Air"

Although the role of "darkness" in Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping conveys multiple connotations, one such interpretation is its representation of "oblivion," in the sense that one perpetually carries the underlying fear of being ultimately unable to understand, define, or be fully aware of their own reality. In all of the novels we have read thus far, significant scenes have described the terror of this sensation. The inner sense of disappearance and disintegration among the relentless activity of the world is apparent when Holden begs Allie to "not let him disappear," as Esther feels herself shrinking in the company of Doreen and Lenny, and Stephen's silent and panicked inner repetition of objective facts like his name, his father's name, and where he lives, when he feels lost in the company of his father during their return visit to Cork. This sensation of disappearance is perhaps derived from this pervasive and undefinable darkness, the "blue volts" and sour air Esther speaks of, or "the terror of sleep" ("oblivion") and the "unseen sleepers"-- like Ruth's perception of the "children" -- Stephen fears. What is so intriguing about Robinson's novel then, is her suggestion that the "darkness" is not "pervasive" because there aren't any natural perimeters and boundaries separating darkness from light, memory from history, or dream from reality. One can disappear in a room of light and laughter or while walking on a concrete street. This lack of boundary is what Esther, Holden, and Stephen all arguably fear, and yet, Robinson suggests that understanding this lack of distinction between seeming unawareness in the context of "dream" and the objective awareness of "reality" is true self-awareness as opposed to seeming "oblivion." In this way, she recognizes that through understanding the omniscient presence of the darkness one doesn't have to be completely claimed and  terrorized by it, instead mutually claiming the darkness for oneself, as Ruth and Sylvie do. As Ruth says of her night out with Lucille, "I simply let the darkness in the sky become coextensive with the darkness in my skull and bowels and bones."

Before his conversation with Cranly towards the end of the novel, Stephen watches the girl perpetually on his mind pass through the dusk and thinks, "Darkness falls from the air," remembering incorrectly the line, "Brightness falls from the air." Subsequently, he thinks, "Could his mind then not trust itself...All the images it awakened were false. His mind bred vermin..." In significant contrast, Ruth conversely thinks,  "Everything that falls upon the eye is apparition" and in such a way proposes the idea that a concrete and objective reality is nonexistent. It is not the subjective images our individual minds internally conjure that are false but the seemingly straightforward images we directly absorb from the external world. As such, Robinson suggests that reality is whatever we individually and subjectively perceive it to be -- evocative of some aspects of Plath's bell jar though Robinson might dispute the metaphor of the bell jar as a boundary between darkness and light -- and the distinction between dreams and "reality," memory and history, is consequently either nonexistent or meaningless in its existence. If Ruth perceives the Sylvie before her to be Helen, then she "might as well be" because it matters only what Sylvie/Helen means to her. 

Nevertheless, in arriving to this conclusion, Ruth recognizes and feels the unfavorable and sinister aspect of this concept. As Stephen contemplates the terror of death through being forgotten and this sort of living death, Ruth contemplates the terror/potency of memory and thought -- like the fluidity of water -- so arbitrary and capable of creating haunting phenomena, for example the Helen that Ruth constructs with Helen's death, or the constructed idea of Mercedes/the girl that plagues Stephen in his distance from her. Though she accepts it, Ruth expresses similar frustrations of being unable to trust her own mind, "Darkness is the only solvent. While it was dark...despite what must have been dreams (since even Sylvie came to haunt me), it seemed to me that there need not be relic, remnant, margin, residue, memento, bequest, memory, thought, track, or trace, if only the darkness could be perfect and permanent."

Significantly, Ruth recognizes the transience of the "darkness," nothing, not even that feels permanent. And as Sylvie and Ruth go on to live what has arguably been interpreted as a living death Stephen would have feared, it is notable that Ruth implies Lucille's inability to escape her constructed memory of them. In this way they are permanently alive in a sense, though this true and subjective permanence is one which Ruth and Sylvie seem to particularly fear.