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."