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. 

"Old Brag of My Heart"

One of the most well known quotes from The Bell Jar comes at the novel's close. Esther recounts  attending Joan's funeral, saying: "I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am." The first time I read this book, I was particularly devoted to this line. And not without good reason as the line suggests the appealing and essential idea that our existence, the mere fact that we are alive, is beautiful in itself; our ability to exist and go on existing gives inherent meaning to our existence. That purpose alone, simply being, without some fundamental articulated and laboriously defined reason -- not I am she or I am he or I am free but just I am -- could potentially be sufficient motivation to get out of bed each morning. It's an empowering resolution to the novel and although I do not admire the potential truth in this idea any less than before -- upon multiple readings, I have come to understand the more sinister undertones and the true ambivalence of this mantra.

During the period Esther tries to kill herself more than once earlier on in the novel, she points out how her body seems bent upon preventing her from carrying out the act as if it is making a mockery of her. The first awareness of her persevering heartbeat comes when she attempts to drown herself: "I thought I would swim out until I was too tired to swim back. As I paddled on, my heartbeat boomed like a dull motor in my ears. I am I am I am." In this way, we see how the potential meaning of "brag" has been subverted by the end of the novel with Esther's shift in perception. Perhaps it has not been completely subverted however and continues to hold the double meaning/possibility of potential empowerment and mockery, the idea that this continual existence itself is meaningful in contrast to the terror that comes with the imprisonment and suffocation of existence where perhaps there is no inherent meaning after all and unable to find the purpose, we are trapped in this mundane emptiness.

As Esther is lying, bleeding on Joan's sofa, she recalls, "I lay, trying to slow the beating of my heart, as every beat pushed forth another gush of blood."  Even here there is the suggestion of her lack of control over this "heartbeat," her existence, this lack of control that can be understood both in its freedom and imprisonment. Consequently, as opposed to being a constant one can cling to, this heartbeat resonates with Esther's bell jar as what it represents is so wholly dependent on Esther's perception of reality. As Plath says in "Lady Lazarus": "There is a charge/.../ For the hearing of my heart / It really goes." She seems to present this here as not necessarily good or bad but somewhere in between. As she centers on this ability to die and be reborn on her own will in this poem, she perhaps ultimately suggests her ability to manifest some higher agency/ control over this old brag of her heart.

Just for the Hell of It

When Mr. Mitchell commented on the Dante-esque quality of Esther's experience in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar in class today, I was reminded of Stephens shifting perception of Hell in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  Describing a visit from the minister of the Unitarian Church at the asylum, Esther says, "I told him I believed in a hell, and that certain people, like me, had to live in a hell before they died, to make up for missing out on it after death, since they didn't believe in life after death, and what each person believed happened to him when he died." This line particularly struck me because it resonates with Stephen's disregard for following the Church and "disrespect" for Hell's existence and the consequences of sinning at an early point in the novel. As such, he accepts a sort of  "living death" as he believes himself to already be cursed to Hell after death. While it is clear that at this point -- unlike Esther -- he does believe in a Hell after death, it is partly this belief that contributes to his pain and "living Hell" on earth.

The essence of both Esther and Stephen's living Hell -- even if to different extents -- is their utter isolation and despair towards their ability to understand, connect, or even want to attempt connecting with others. For Esther it is symbolized through the image of a bell jar constantly suffocating and occasionally hovering over her, and with Stephen, his wandering in the streets half-hoping for Mercedes. Perhaps if they were able to perceive this isolation in a solipsistic sense, they would be in less anguish but they are unable to do so. It's not simply that they have resigned themselves into believing their own selves are all that they can understand to exist and embraced the amount of individual agency that comes with that; on the contrary, there remains lurking a constraining, un-articulated force hiding behind the smoke screen restricting and potentially desiring to harm them in their isolation. Because of it, Esther and Stephen cannot even know themselves. What force is it that dictates Esther's reality on earth, even while she believes herself to be able dictate what comes after? What force is it that makes Holden and Esther start to disappear even as they are aware they must have a pure self? And even after Stephen ultimately does believe he can understand his reality in its absolute beauty through isolation, there's still the old man with the red eyes representative of all he has feared that he must perpetually run away from. Like the hovering bell jar after Esther's shock treatment, Hell has not truly let Stephen go.

As Joyce writes early on in the novel, "The terror of sleep fascinated his mind...unseen sleepers filled him with strange dread as though they could harm him." These "unseen sleepers," this un-articulated force continues to haunt him closely even in his utter isolation. At the same time, the "unseen sleepers" and this intangible restrictive force is representative of his isolation. He cannot see the sleepers just as he cannot understand and connect with others. Similarly, Esther thinks, "I didn't see how Doctor Nolan could tell you went to sleep during a shock treatment, if she'd never had a shock treatment herself. How did she know the person didn't just look as if he was asleep, while all the time, inside, he was feeling the blue volts and the noise?" Here Esther/Plath emphasizes how one can never truly know another and their isolated experience and the "blue volts and the noise" that continue to constrain individual agency in one's isolated experience.

This realized suggestion that perhaps one is ultimately powerless in defining and understanding reality -- especially not even being able to trust one's own individual reality and consciousness -- is what interestingly makes Holden spontaneously toy with the idea of becoming a monk, Esther, a nun, and Stephen, accepting the offer to become a priest. In all three of these acts, there is already a defined, concrete reality and understanding that they can embrace, a sort of refutation of the haunting hellish force they cannot articulate. This "hell" is not a hell one can ever completely and permanently ascend from. We know however, that ultimately Stephen comes to believe he can define and understand reality in a very specific way and Holden accepts reality in its mutability and lack of definition.

"Going Around and Around"

Forced to confront the prospect of the future, Holden and Esther seem to fear the inevitability of living in mundanity and consequently their own fragility within the perpetual cycle. However, both of them seem to regard genuine connection with others as a potential antidote and method of maintaining or grasping individuality within this repeated manufactured "game" of conformity which -- at first glance -- everybody else seems to play. Despite seeing the positivity of connecting with others, perhaps they hold its potential to such an idealistic level -- like Stephen's Mercedes -- that in their small attempts to do so, they either believe themselves to be disappointing, as Esther is more inclined to feel, or claim to be disappointed by others, as Stephen and Holden do. The idea of recognizing someone else in their "pure" form and having your own unadulterated self exposed and fully understood by the world is appealing, but neither Esther, Holden, or Stephen seem to know how to act upon this desire. By the end of Portrait, Stephen concludes that isolation is in fact necessary to realizing your pure form and that the only way to attempt having this unadulterated self fully understood by the world is through a measured distance between the "artist" and "audience." He chooses the potential of some ideal -- and extremely abstract -- form of art and truth and the suggestion that he can ultimately fulfill and discover himself as a supposed constant to combat the constant mundanity of daily life and the sense of repeated lack of fulfillment he feels; (whether or not this sense of "future" and "true" beauty ultimately fulfills him, I don't know). Similarly, Esther desires to seize new opportunities to engage but in actuality only feels "pure" alone in the bath, when the world dissolves.

Holden too, seems to believe in a "pure" self; like his red hunting hat, a unique constant within the mundane constant of life's carousel and low quality tunes. As evident from his misinterpretations of the lyrics as "catch a body" as opposed to "meet a body," Holden seems to desire not only understanding someone in their pure (un-phony?) form but preserving them in this way; perhaps wanting to catch people is what makes it all the more difficult for him to "meet" or understand them in their purity. There's this one part in The Catcher in the Rye, where Holden sees two men with a Christmas tree, one of them saying, "Hold that sonuvabitch up!" And Holden thinks, "It certainly was a gorgeous way to talk about a Christmas tree." I might be letting my imagination go, but it's as if he believes everyone to have a beautiful and pure form, somewhat sacred like a Christmas tree -- yet people fail to recognize its existence and like the "crude" words of the man wrestling with the tree -- in contrast with Holden's daydream of catching others -- the act of keeping each other intact and upright is no longer as simple and potentially fulfilling as he once thought.

With the commitment to this excessively vague concept of a "pure" self, however, it becomes so much easier to feel like you can easily disintegrate. In attempting to constantly distinguish between your unadulterated self and the image you consciously or subconsciously put out without having the pure form understood by others -- or validating its individuality yourself like Stephen attempts to -- you can lose all sense of self. As Holden is walking, he begins to panic, saying, "Allie, don't let me disappear." Watching Lenny and Doreen dancing, Esther thinks, "I felt myself shrinking to a small black dot...I felt like a hole in the ground." In supposedly wanting so much to engage and be fully known, they are reduced to crumbling spectators.

The distaste for the stifling of inevitable routine is further manifested through Esther's disgust at the process of giving birth, the forgetting of pain, willingly going into and experiencing the pain again, and so on, seems to me applicable to patterns of daily life. As such, when Esther stops changing clothes, it shows how her conclusion that pain will always come back -- which no supposedly life changing action like choosing a branch on the fig tree or losing her virginity can erase -- has induced her into living with perpetual pain without "deluding" herself with moments of hope by putting on fresh clothes. As she puts it, "If you don't expect anything, you don't get disappointed." Significantly however, Holden ultimately experiences a sense of euphoria watching Phoebe on the merry-go-round, saying, "All the kids kept trying to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she'd fall off the goddam horse but I didn't say anything or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall of, they fall off..." In this way, in letting Phoebe reach for the gold ring, Holden has allowed for the dangerous inconstancy of hope -- which may bring pain and lack of fulfillment -- amidst the endless circular movement of the carousel.

False Images

Towards the very end of the novel, Stephen writes,

"Michael Robartes remembers forgotten beauty... presses in his arms the loveliness, which has long faded from the world. Not this. Not at all. I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world."

And yet, despite this conviction, for all his asserted perspectives on esthetics, there is the sense that Stephen still fears the reality he has come to believe in and adopt, not only for its potential lack of truth but the part of himself that continues to run contradictory to the perspectives he claims; the part of him that dwells on what should not be beautiful and the desires and consequences of the physical world. Despite his supposed contentedness alone and his asserted desire to discover and create beauty, he still longs to be discovered himself, dwelling on the girl and the idea of being beckoned into a house like Davin. Consequently, he is similarly hesitant to dismiss the potential of faith and religion completely. Stephen is, however, aware of this perpetual underlying self doubt which he symbolizes with the idea of the crocodile in the mud and the old man with the red eyes, writing, "It is with him I must struggle all through night till day come, till he or I lie dead..."

Another specific scene captures the essence of Stephen's residual fear and doubt. Before his conversation with Cranly, Stephen contemplates the girl and the dusk she passes through, remembering incorrectly, the line, "Darkness falls from the air." Initially, he feels a "trembling joy" but then begins to contemplate the reason behind the sensation, and as he does, concludes that the feeling is associated with physical desire which he does not want to "corrupt" his perception of her with. He wonders, "Could his mind then not trust itself?" and later thinks, "All the images it awakened were false. His mind bred vermin. His thoughts were lice born of the sweat of sloth." In his conversation with Lynch, Stephen seems to emphasize the significance of the mind and soul above all as they are the sources of transcendence and control necessary to an artist and life; the soul must learn to take flight and avoid the "nets" wishing to delude it. In this moment, however, Stephen faces the possibility that he cannot trust his mind, may not possess any control over it or the agency involved in creating. Instead, he wonders if it is possible that what he creates are illusions (vermin), whether his art can ever get close to the truth, and if it is possible he lives in just as much delusion as the ideologies of others he has come to reject. This self awareness, however, is what allows Stephen to go out into the world simultaneously wandering lost yet with direction, the dreaded "abandon" he mentioned to Lynch and the forging of his own path.

"The Terror of Sleep"

From the moment Stephen Dedalus makes the journey to Cork with his father in James Joyce's The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, his mindset becomes increasingly ambivalent, his idealism merging and colliding with the opposite extreme of growing defeatism. While his somewhat voluntary alienation can be perceived as a sort of superiority, I think it arises from his mounting fear; the fear of certain isolation which consequently prevents him from acting upon the potential of connection.

In Chapter II especially, this feared "isolation" seems to manifest itself as the concept of living death or oblivion. On the train, Stephen falls asleep for hours and wakes up to find his father and most everyone else asleep, realizing his fear of not being fully conscious while life continues to unfold, of not understanding others and himself: "The terror of sleep fascinated his mind.. unseen sleepers filled him with strange dread as though they could harm him..."  As his father goes on inquiring about the deaths of friends and relatives, Stephen contemplates Parnell's death, Dante, and the more terrible "death" of ceasing to exist through being forgotten, in relation to how Stephen currently views himself as potentially unseen and misunderstood by others. The lust and desire he attempts to quench with his romantic image of Mercedes similarly illustrates this feared oblivion or unconsciousness in the death of his romantic dreams.

Notably, in his encounter with the woman in the street, Joyce first depicts Stephen's thoughts as relief: "He was in another world: he had awakened from a slumber of centuries." At first, this woman represents to Stephen a potential Mercedes, someone who will hold him and finally see and understand him. Yet despite his want for this, he cannot kiss her and when she does, the result is a darker resolution as opposed to a romantic culmination, the resolution of his repressed lust. Through his descriptions, Joyce describes Stephen as willfully giving up his consciousness, surrendering to the previously feared oblivion. In such a way, he doesn't wake but instead goes on to perceive himself as "in mortal sin," essentially half-surrendering to living death as he believes himself to already be spiritually dead.

I couldn't help thinking of T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" throughout this section. Throughout the whole poem, Prufrock fantasizes about and struggles with the idea of acting upon his desire in the potential of connecting with others and never does, similarly perceived as "pretentious" in his fear of being misunderstood. What strikes me the most, however, is the last line of the poem which reads, "Till human voices wake us and we drown." I interpreted this line to mean that ultimately one is disillusioned by ideals, but in this increased awareness enters a sort of living death and surrender, not dissimilar to Stephen's sexual encounter.

Death is of course, contemplated in great depth in the Father's sermons concerning Hell. Part of why he is able to make such an impression on Stephen is because he is able to take Stephen's previous concentration on living death and isolation which he has already somewhat submitted himself to and shift it to the consequences of literal death, preaching that this death and the "last things" is what should be prioritized in the mind. Stephen's previously feared unconsciousness on earth is translated by the preacher into Time and the indulgence of sin that comes with it ("Time is, time was, but time shall be no more!") Consequently, Stephen is supplied with hope as he now believes in the lack of alienation of a life after death and through being loved by God.

Eliot's reference to Dante's Inferno in "The Love Song"suggests that for Prufrock, Hell is this isolation and alienated turmoil he is going through. While Stephen may have been of like mind before, he is now supplied with this concrete description of Hell he can latch on to, something known to be feared as opposed to the "unknown" he submits himself to in his first sexual exploit. This higher mindset, this pre-constructed consciousness is what currently absolves him of attempting to further develop his own struggling perception of those around him.