Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Relocation
After only a couple of months on Blogger, A Noble Theme has headed for more flexible pastures. You can find all of these entries and all the future ones here.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Albert Camus--The Plague
Albert Camus, hardly a comfort to the Christian reader in most cases, has two things to recommend him despite his atheism: his unflinching attention to matters of good and evil, and his doggedly rigorous thinking. Although Camus' mind leads him to some destinations that a person of faith find unpleasant, we cannot claim that he has reached these locations without careful deliberation. He therefore forces us to think hard and long, an exercise for which we can thank him.
Both of these qualities show themselves in Camus' great wartime novel, The Plague. For our purposes, I would like to set out with a single quotation, spinning out from there:
"The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance" begins this statement. My first reaction is to refuse this assertion. After all, we traditionally associate evil and knowledge, since evil came into the world when Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But let's be clear. Knowledge did not cause Eve to sin. That first sin brought about a great deal of knowledge and a great deal of responsibility, but the knowledge did not cause the sin.
Did ignorance cause Eve's sin? I could argue for that. For a moment, Eve looked at the fruit, saw that it had benefits and appeared delicious, and decided that this fruit's positives outweighed its negatives. Had she known the negative results of her disobedience, would she have committed this evil? Had she known the positives she would be forfeiting, would she have taken that bite? I have to believe that answer to be "no."
The great evils in Camus' novel are those who escape from the city of Oran, in defiance of the quarantine, therefore risking countless other people's lives for their own selfish needs. Other evils include those who profiteer from the situation in various ways. All of these place their own selfish needs over those of the larger community.
Similarly, the greatest virtues are to be found in the self-sacrifices of the citizens. Dr. Bernard Rieux, the main character and narrator of the book, risks himself beyond what is necessary in treating the sick and dying. Around him, a variety of others demonstrate a self-sacrifice and nobility that is not always rewarded with positive outcomes. Nevertheless, these people are held up as moral exemplars.
In 1 John 3:15, we learn that "no murderer has eternal life in him." This verse matches well with Camus' assertion that the ultimate evil is that which claims the right to kill. Having just read and written on East of Eden, I am quick to run to the example of Cain and Abel here. What Cain discovers after killing his brother is that he has not made his situation better by this deed. Indeed, he has estranged himself from the rest of humanity and diminished his world. He has deprived his parents of not one but two sons.
In the spin of systematic theologies, we as Christians can sometimes forget that the new command Jesus gave at the Last Supper was that his disciples love one another as he had loved them (John 13:34). How did Jesus love? Like Rieux, he lived and loved in a self-sacrificing manner. Although not a Christian, Camus gives the believer a great deal to chew on in this novel.
Both of these qualities show themselves in Camus' great wartime novel, The Plague. For our purposes, I would like to set out with a single quotation, spinning out from there:
The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.The Plague deals not only with a natural evil, the bubonic plague, but with all manner of human evils as people respond nobly and basely to the illness, the quarantine, and the privations that arise in the wake of the plague. This evil, and the virtue that is brought into sharp relief by the presence of the evil, is Camus' principle interest in this book. But is his view of evil tenable for a Christian. I'd like to camp on that for a moment.
"The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance" begins this statement. My first reaction is to refuse this assertion. After all, we traditionally associate evil and knowledge, since evil came into the world when Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But let's be clear. Knowledge did not cause Eve to sin. That first sin brought about a great deal of knowledge and a great deal of responsibility, but the knowledge did not cause the sin.
Did ignorance cause Eve's sin? I could argue for that. For a moment, Eve looked at the fruit, saw that it had benefits and appeared delicious, and decided that this fruit's positives outweighed its negatives. Had she known the negative results of her disobedience, would she have committed this evil? Had she known the positives she would be forfeiting, would she have taken that bite? I have to believe that answer to be "no."
The great evils in Camus' novel are those who escape from the city of Oran, in defiance of the quarantine, therefore risking countless other people's lives for their own selfish needs. Other evils include those who profiteer from the situation in various ways. All of these place their own selfish needs over those of the larger community.
Similarly, the greatest virtues are to be found in the self-sacrifices of the citizens. Dr. Bernard Rieux, the main character and narrator of the book, risks himself beyond what is necessary in treating the sick and dying. Around him, a variety of others demonstrate a self-sacrifice and nobility that is not always rewarded with positive outcomes. Nevertheless, these people are held up as moral exemplars.
In 1 John 3:15, we learn that "no murderer has eternal life in him." This verse matches well with Camus' assertion that the ultimate evil is that which claims the right to kill. Having just read and written on East of Eden, I am quick to run to the example of Cain and Abel here. What Cain discovers after killing his brother is that he has not made his situation better by this deed. Indeed, he has estranged himself from the rest of humanity and diminished his world. He has deprived his parents of not one but two sons.
In the spin of systematic theologies, we as Christians can sometimes forget that the new command Jesus gave at the Last Supper was that his disciples love one another as he had loved them (John 13:34). How did Jesus love? Like Rieux, he lived and loved in a self-sacrificing manner. Although not a Christian, Camus gives the believer a great deal to chew on in this novel.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
John Steinbeck--East of Eden
Where do you put your hands on a huge, sprawling novel like this in order to get a hold of the entirety of the thing? Oprah's favorite Steinbeck novel, East of Eden, covers some sixty years, the breadth of North America, and a host of characters, including three generations of one family and two of another. Whose novel is this? The most obvious answer to this question is that the book belongs to Adam Trask, the character whose life is covered in the most completeness and with whose death the narration ends. Yet Adam does not appear in the story, in Connecticut at that, until two chapters have passed by, focusing on the Hamiltons and the Salinas Valley of California.
Unlike many other stories, I believe that the "Whose story is it?" approach is wrong-headed when it comes to East of Eden. To ask this question of this novel would be like asking whose story is Genesis? Does Genesis belong to Adam? Noah? Abraham? Issac? Jacob? Joseph? Certainly Joseph can lay claim to a bigger share of chapters than any of the other patriarchs, but does that mean Genesis is his story? I don't choose Genesis lightly, of course, since Steinbeck draws heavily on the narratives of Genesis, especially the Cain and Abel story and the story of the Fall, in order to create his novel. The title comes from Genesis 3:24, in the aftermath of the Fall and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. The ostensible main character is Adam. Two pairs of brothers, Charles and Adam Trask in the book's second generation and Cal and Aron Trask in the third, appear to mirror Cain and Abel. Steinbeck argues "I believe there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us . . . . Humans are caught . . . in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence."
East of Eden must not be read as a sort of allegory for the primeval history. Adam cannot, in such a reading, be simultaneously the original Adam and Abel. Adam Trask, I should add, does not die at the hand of his C-named brother, Charles, although Charles does attempt to kill Adam early on. The second C-brother, Cal does bring about the death of his brother, but he does so indirectly. And if we try to fit all the characters into a Genesis mold, what on earth are we to do with Cathy/Kate? She's a long way from Eve, and closer to the Serpent than any other character in the book.
This book, it has been suggested by some clever commentator, takes the form of a Midrash on the early chapters of Genesis. A Midrash is a form of peculiarly Jewish commentary on the Scripture, quite far removed from the typical Bible Commentary. The Midrash form, especially in its Aggadic or non-legal aspects, is composed of analogies, stories, folklore, and anecdotes. Many of Jesus' parables might be taken as Midrashim (the plural form of Midrash).
Clearly, Steinbeck finds special significance in a single word to be found in the Biblical text, the word rendered as "thou shalt rule over him [sin]" in the King James Version. He transliterates it as timshel and prefers a translation of "thou mayest." Since this word occupies a spot in the next to last sentence in the book and dominates two lengthy philosophical asides in the middle of the tale, I think a person can profitably focus on it to understand this novel.
In one way of thinking, every significant character in this novel is Cain and Abel at the same time. Some characters are more Abel-like, yet even they are hardly perfect. Adam, for example, is clearly to be seen as a more virtuous character than his brother Charles, yet he, like Cain, winds up "a restless wanderer on the earth" early in the story as he first re-enlists in the army and then delays in various ways his return home.
The more Cain-like characters are not without redeeming characteristics. Charles possesses more compunction regarding the source of their father's wealth than does Adam. Cal, except for his father's rejection, would not have led Aron to his death. Even the thoroughly evil Kate seems to have a dram of goodness or at least awareness of her evil nature when confronted with her son Aron. Why does Kate commit suicide? She has apparently seen through the attempts of her henchman Joe to mislead her. While she has cause to worry that her murder of Faye will be discovered all these years later, whatever threat stands against her remains several moves away. Her suicide seems motivated by something else, perhaps awareness of her own fallen nature.
In the end, I would argue that Steinbeck paints a world filled with people caught in a net of good and evil. All of us, he would suggest, have different measures of good and evil. Some of us, like Kate, possess mostly evil, while some, like Adam, possess mostly good. All of us, however, Steinbeck asserts, may opt to shift this balance. While we cannot utterly banish the good or the evil, we can shift the ratio and thus choose good versus evil.
A Christian reading of this novel, however, recognizes the insufficiency in Steinbeck's vision. True to a point--in fact true through and through--Steinbeck's view suggests that we can opt to do less evil and more good, but holds out no hope for the banishment of evil. Steinbeck's view leaves us with a variety of wandering, shiftless characters. Adam squanders a huge portion of his life as a result of his own foolishness. Aron dies. Cal despairs. Charles withdraws further and further into himself. Lee fails to launch into a life of his own. Kate harms everyone with whom she comes in contact, even spreading damage after her death.
Steinbeck's world, then, is a Christ-less world, a hopeless world. Although he got many things right in these pages, he left the one great thing unsaid. This, to my mind, makes all the difference.
Unlike many other stories, I believe that the "Whose story is it?" approach is wrong-headed when it comes to East of Eden. To ask this question of this novel would be like asking whose story is Genesis? Does Genesis belong to Adam? Noah? Abraham? Issac? Jacob? Joseph? Certainly Joseph can lay claim to a bigger share of chapters than any of the other patriarchs, but does that mean Genesis is his story? I don't choose Genesis lightly, of course, since Steinbeck draws heavily on the narratives of Genesis, especially the Cain and Abel story and the story of the Fall, in order to create his novel. The title comes from Genesis 3:24, in the aftermath of the Fall and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. The ostensible main character is Adam. Two pairs of brothers, Charles and Adam Trask in the book's second generation and Cal and Aron Trask in the third, appear to mirror Cain and Abel. Steinbeck argues "I believe there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us . . . . Humans are caught . . . in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence."
East of Eden must not be read as a sort of allegory for the primeval history. Adam cannot, in such a reading, be simultaneously the original Adam and Abel. Adam Trask, I should add, does not die at the hand of his C-named brother, Charles, although Charles does attempt to kill Adam early on. The second C-brother, Cal does bring about the death of his brother, but he does so indirectly. And if we try to fit all the characters into a Genesis mold, what on earth are we to do with Cathy/Kate? She's a long way from Eve, and closer to the Serpent than any other character in the book.
This book, it has been suggested by some clever commentator, takes the form of a Midrash on the early chapters of Genesis. A Midrash is a form of peculiarly Jewish commentary on the Scripture, quite far removed from the typical Bible Commentary. The Midrash form, especially in its Aggadic or non-legal aspects, is composed of analogies, stories, folklore, and anecdotes. Many of Jesus' parables might be taken as Midrashim (the plural form of Midrash).
Clearly, Steinbeck finds special significance in a single word to be found in the Biblical text, the word rendered as "thou shalt rule over him [sin]" in the King James Version. He transliterates it as timshel and prefers a translation of "thou mayest." Since this word occupies a spot in the next to last sentence in the book and dominates two lengthy philosophical asides in the middle of the tale, I think a person can profitably focus on it to understand this novel.
In one way of thinking, every significant character in this novel is Cain and Abel at the same time. Some characters are more Abel-like, yet even they are hardly perfect. Adam, for example, is clearly to be seen as a more virtuous character than his brother Charles, yet he, like Cain, winds up "a restless wanderer on the earth" early in the story as he first re-enlists in the army and then delays in various ways his return home.
The more Cain-like characters are not without redeeming characteristics. Charles possesses more compunction regarding the source of their father's wealth than does Adam. Cal, except for his father's rejection, would not have led Aron to his death. Even the thoroughly evil Kate seems to have a dram of goodness or at least awareness of her evil nature when confronted with her son Aron. Why does Kate commit suicide? She has apparently seen through the attempts of her henchman Joe to mislead her. While she has cause to worry that her murder of Faye will be discovered all these years later, whatever threat stands against her remains several moves away. Her suicide seems motivated by something else, perhaps awareness of her own fallen nature.
In the end, I would argue that Steinbeck paints a world filled with people caught in a net of good and evil. All of us, he would suggest, have different measures of good and evil. Some of us, like Kate, possess mostly evil, while some, like Adam, possess mostly good. All of us, however, Steinbeck asserts, may opt to shift this balance. While we cannot utterly banish the good or the evil, we can shift the ratio and thus choose good versus evil.
A Christian reading of this novel, however, recognizes the insufficiency in Steinbeck's vision. True to a point--in fact true through and through--Steinbeck's view suggests that we can opt to do less evil and more good, but holds out no hope for the banishment of evil. Steinbeck's view leaves us with a variety of wandering, shiftless characters. Adam squanders a huge portion of his life as a result of his own foolishness. Aron dies. Cal despairs. Charles withdraws further and further into himself. Lee fails to launch into a life of his own. Kate harms everyone with whom she comes in contact, even spreading damage after her death.
Steinbeck's world, then, is a Christ-less world, a hopeless world. Although he got many things right in these pages, he left the one great thing unsaid. This, to my mind, makes all the difference.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Joyce Carol Oates--"The Lady with the Pet Dog"
I've never been all that drawn to Joyce Carol Oates, but the vagaries and vicissitudes of life--and the shortcomings of a textbook--have forced me into reading some of her work that I would have happily left untouched. Still, even in the least pleasant reading there is typically something to learn. If you want delve into Oates' short fiction, you could do worse than with High Lonesome.
"The Lady with the Pet Dog," although a tale of adultery justified, holds some interest for the Christian reader. Far from the many tales of adultery punished, including films like Unfaithful or Fatal Attraction, Oates relates the story of a wife who, for apparently no real reason, opts to engage in an illicit tryst and then, after breaking it off once, to resume it. In the story's end, Anna, the only named character among the key three, feels, "joyfully . . . a miraculous calm." She "discovers" or rationalizes to herself that this man, despite her marriage to another man and her lover's marriage to another woman, "was her husband truly--they were truly married, here in this room--they had been married haphazardly and accidentally for a long time."
Anna, like the protagonist of Kate Chopin's The Awakening, has no significant complaint about her marriage. She cannot point to abuse or lack of support or infidelity on the part of her husband. Granted, the husband is not painted by Oates in a particularly flattering manner, but the reader is left to wonder whether his greatest fault is his lack sensitivity or his declining physical appearance. The husband's insensitivity is evidenced while they're making love: "her husband was impatient. He was apart from her, working on her, operating on her; and then, stricken, he whispered, 'Did I hurt you?'" While nobody wants this guy as their Valentine, this sort of callousness is hardly a hanging offense. Couple that fact with Anna's reaction during the same act. "He made love to her and she was back in the auditorium again" seeing her lover. Might the fault for her husband's detachment lie in both of their hearts and minds?
The glorious faux "marriage" that Anna celebrates as the story closes is, of course, no marriage at all. It is a series of liaisons, experienced furtively in a different hotel room each week. This relationship, experienced in darkness, evokes the teachings in 1 John 1:5-10. This is not marriage. The shame that Anna mentions several times during the story should be a real shame, but she manages, at the story's conclusion, to smooth it over, to decide that her shame should not be shame at all, but this is something that she can do only by playing semantic games, deciding that her husband is no real husband at all and that her affair is somehow a real marriage, playing the sort of games that Paul decries in Romans 1:25.
Of course, Oates would not have seen things in this light. She seems to admire the development Anna achieves by the story's close. However, her re-identification of evil as good is no more convincing or authoritative than is Anna's.
"The Lady with the Pet Dog," although a tale of adultery justified, holds some interest for the Christian reader. Far from the many tales of adultery punished, including films like Unfaithful or Fatal Attraction, Oates relates the story of a wife who, for apparently no real reason, opts to engage in an illicit tryst and then, after breaking it off once, to resume it. In the story's end, Anna, the only named character among the key three, feels, "joyfully . . . a miraculous calm." She "discovers" or rationalizes to herself that this man, despite her marriage to another man and her lover's marriage to another woman, "was her husband truly--they were truly married, here in this room--they had been married haphazardly and accidentally for a long time."
Anna, like the protagonist of Kate Chopin's The Awakening, has no significant complaint about her marriage. She cannot point to abuse or lack of support or infidelity on the part of her husband. Granted, the husband is not painted by Oates in a particularly flattering manner, but the reader is left to wonder whether his greatest fault is his lack sensitivity or his declining physical appearance. The husband's insensitivity is evidenced while they're making love: "her husband was impatient. He was apart from her, working on her, operating on her; and then, stricken, he whispered, 'Did I hurt you?'" While nobody wants this guy as their Valentine, this sort of callousness is hardly a hanging offense. Couple that fact with Anna's reaction during the same act. "He made love to her and she was back in the auditorium again" seeing her lover. Might the fault for her husband's detachment lie in both of their hearts and minds?
The glorious faux "marriage" that Anna celebrates as the story closes is, of course, no marriage at all. It is a series of liaisons, experienced furtively in a different hotel room each week. This relationship, experienced in darkness, evokes the teachings in 1 John 1:5-10. This is not marriage. The shame that Anna mentions several times during the story should be a real shame, but she manages, at the story's conclusion, to smooth it over, to decide that her shame should not be shame at all, but this is something that she can do only by playing semantic games, deciding that her husband is no real husband at all and that her affair is somehow a real marriage, playing the sort of games that Paul decries in Romans 1:25.
Of course, Oates would not have seen things in this light. She seems to admire the development Anna achieves by the story's close. However, her re-identification of evil as good is no more convincing or authoritative than is Anna's.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Raymond Carver--Cathedral
Raymond Carver's short story, "Cathedral," is, like so many of this author's stories, a peculiar piece of work. Populated by mostly unsympathetic characters living drab lives, Carver's work stands a long distance from the classic narrative structures of O. Henry and Guy Du Maupassant.
In this story, an unnamed husband and wife play host to the blind former employer of the wife. The husband and narrator of the story does not want the blind man, Robert to come over. In fact, he doesn't seem to want anybody to come over. This character leads a hopelessly detached life. When he protests that he doesn't have any blind friends, his wife replies by noting "You don't have any friends. Period."
Although married, he and his wife sleep in separate rooms. They rarely go to bed at the same time. Instead, he sits up watching meaningless TV late into the night. Clearly the couple don't have much meaningful communication of any sort. The husband dislikes his job. He's just an alienated being bobbing along through life, moving toward death because there's nothing else to do.
Robert, we're told, has just lost his wife, Beulah. What an intriguing name that is, Beulah. It derives from a Hebrew word meaning married. Is that significant? I think so. In fact, I think the entire existence of Beulah is important. Carver could have easily portrayed Robert simply as the wife's former employer without the baggage of a recently deceased wife, but he compounds the significance by describing Beulah as the reader who came to work for Robert after the wife gave up the job. It doesn't take too much imagination to wonder if the wife didn't see herself in Beulah's shoes. She could have married Robert, but instead she married this guy who, although sighted, is as blind as can be.
Why is it, do you suppose, that Robert and Beulah have names while the husband and wife, clearly the closer characters to the narrator, do not have names? I would suggest that these names indicate the greater reality of these characters. Although blind and dead, respectively, Robert and Beulah have experienced what the husband and wife have never experienced, connecting in a way they have never connected.
The name "Beulah" also evokes images of the Promised Land or the land of peace in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. This suggests to me that there's more to this idea of connection than just friendship. Raymond Carver is not known as a religious writer, but here he seems to be describing a character with a God-shaped hole, a hole that he cannot fill with the alcohol he continues to drink throughout the story, the marijuana that he persuades Robert to share, his pointless job, his marriage-in-name-only, or his late-night television marathons.
What does eventually fill the husband's void or at least suggest the potential of filling is a moment of communion when he and Robert together hold a pen and draw an image of a cathedral. One can imagine this bit of collaborative art as an act of worship, or at least an act of potential worship. Is that what Carver intended? I don't think so, but often artists say more than they ever intend to say when they put pen to paper.
"Cathedral" is the title story in a fine collection of Carver's work.
In this story, an unnamed husband and wife play host to the blind former employer of the wife. The husband and narrator of the story does not want the blind man, Robert to come over. In fact, he doesn't seem to want anybody to come over. This character leads a hopelessly detached life. When he protests that he doesn't have any blind friends, his wife replies by noting "You don't have any friends. Period."
Although married, he and his wife sleep in separate rooms. They rarely go to bed at the same time. Instead, he sits up watching meaningless TV late into the night. Clearly the couple don't have much meaningful communication of any sort. The husband dislikes his job. He's just an alienated being bobbing along through life, moving toward death because there's nothing else to do.
Robert, we're told, has just lost his wife, Beulah. What an intriguing name that is, Beulah. It derives from a Hebrew word meaning married. Is that significant? I think so. In fact, I think the entire existence of Beulah is important. Carver could have easily portrayed Robert simply as the wife's former employer without the baggage of a recently deceased wife, but he compounds the significance by describing Beulah as the reader who came to work for Robert after the wife gave up the job. It doesn't take too much imagination to wonder if the wife didn't see herself in Beulah's shoes. She could have married Robert, but instead she married this guy who, although sighted, is as blind as can be.
Why is it, do you suppose, that Robert and Beulah have names while the husband and wife, clearly the closer characters to the narrator, do not have names? I would suggest that these names indicate the greater reality of these characters. Although blind and dead, respectively, Robert and Beulah have experienced what the husband and wife have never experienced, connecting in a way they have never connected.
The name "Beulah" also evokes images of the Promised Land or the land of peace in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. This suggests to me that there's more to this idea of connection than just friendship. Raymond Carver is not known as a religious writer, but here he seems to be describing a character with a God-shaped hole, a hole that he cannot fill with the alcohol he continues to drink throughout the story, the marijuana that he persuades Robert to share, his pointless job, his marriage-in-name-only, or his late-night television marathons.
What does eventually fill the husband's void or at least suggest the potential of filling is a moment of communion when he and Robert together hold a pen and draw an image of a cathedral. One can imagine this bit of collaborative art as an act of worship, or at least an act of potential worship. Is that what Carver intended? I don't think so, but often artists say more than they ever intend to say when they put pen to paper.
"Cathedral" is the title story in a fine collection of Carver's work.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
There Will Be Blood aka Upton Sinclair's Oil!
Although it did not win the Best Picture Oscar this week, There Will Be Blood, a screen adaptation of Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!, stands as one of 2007's finest offerings on the big screen. Paul Edwards sees a spiritual silver lining around the dark clouds of violence and greed in this film. It's worth a read.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Zora Neale Hurston--Sweat
To my mind, Zora Neale Hurston is the best of African-American fiction writers. I appreciate the work, such as it is, of Ralph Ellison, and some of Toni Morrison's offerings, but Zora continues to delight me each time I return to her work. Why? Perhaps it is because she writes of an African-American experience that includes discrimination and oppression, but doesn't become utterly possessed by those forces. She writes of humans.
In "Sweat," we have a marriage gone bad. After sixteen years of life together, Sykes and Delia can say, without fear of contradiction, that the good is gone. The problem is obvious: Delia works like a slave to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, while Sykes flits about and womanizes. Joe Clarke, who comes off looking a lot better here than in Hurston's masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God, compares the relationship to people sucking on sugar cane:
The Christian reader of this story has a good inventory of approaches to take. We might consider the imagery of the snake, the "harlot" Bertha, or the theme of forgiveness. Those all have potential, but I'd like to dwell for a moment on the Biblical metaphor of Christ and the Church being husband and wife. Compare the husband in Hurston's story with the husband in that Biblical metaphor. Where Sykes does not provide, Jesus provides. Where Sykes is unfaithful, Jesus is completely faithful. Where Sykes is full of hate, Jesus abounds in love. Sykes seeks to bring death to Delia; Jesus promises life--abundant life--to his bride.
Delia on the other hand, mirrors the church reasonably well. She is faithful but not perfect. She seeks to turn the other cheek, moving her church membership rather than take communion impurely with Sykes. She even attempts to accomodate the snake. How many women would allow a caged rattlesnake to remain in their house for weeks on end? As a woman of God, Delia knew what her husband ought to be, she knew the model held up for her. She could see plainly that Sykes did not come close to measuring up, yet she did not use his unfaithfulness as an excuse to turn away herself. Her only sin against Sykes, if we can call it that, is walking away in his dying moments. All things considered, this seems a justified response.
In "Sweat," we have a marriage gone bad. After sixteen years of life together, Sykes and Delia can say, without fear of contradiction, that the good is gone. The problem is obvious: Delia works like a slave to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, while Sykes flits about and womanizes. Joe Clarke, who comes off looking a lot better here than in Hurston's masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God, compares the relationship to people sucking on sugar cane:
There's plenty men dat takes a wife lak dey do a joint uh sugar-cane. It's round, juicy, an' sweet when dey gits it. But dey squeeze an' grind, squeeze an'
grind an' wring tell dey wring every drop uh pleasure dat's in 'em out. When dey's satisfied dat dey is wrung dry, dey treats 'em jes' lak dey do a cane-chew. Dey thows 'em away. Dey knows whut dey is doin' while dey is at it, an' hates theirselves fuh it but they keeps on hangin' after huh tell she's empty. Den dey hates huh fuh bein' a cane-chew an' in de way.
The Christian reader of this story has a good inventory of approaches to take. We might consider the imagery of the snake, the "harlot" Bertha, or the theme of forgiveness. Those all have potential, but I'd like to dwell for a moment on the Biblical metaphor of Christ and the Church being husband and wife. Compare the husband in Hurston's story with the husband in that Biblical metaphor. Where Sykes does not provide, Jesus provides. Where Sykes is unfaithful, Jesus is completely faithful. Where Sykes is full of hate, Jesus abounds in love. Sykes seeks to bring death to Delia; Jesus promises life--abundant life--to his bride.
Delia on the other hand, mirrors the church reasonably well. She is faithful but not perfect. She seeks to turn the other cheek, moving her church membership rather than take communion impurely with Sykes. She even attempts to accomodate the snake. How many women would allow a caged rattlesnake to remain in their house for weeks on end? As a woman of God, Delia knew what her husband ought to be, she knew the model held up for her. She could see plainly that Sykes did not come close to measuring up, yet she did not use his unfaithfulness as an excuse to turn away herself. Her only sin against Sykes, if we can call it that, is walking away in his dying moments. All things considered, this seems a justified response.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Leo Tolstoy—What Men Live By
If you have any doubt about the theme of this little fable presented by the great Russian writer, the six separate scriptural epigraphs should help to clarify matters. “Love,” it seems clear, must be at the center of this story. I cannot read this story without thinking of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez’ story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.” More on that in a moment.
In Tolstoy’s story, Simon, a poor shoemaker, heads to town in order to collect some debts and buy sheepskins in order to make himself a decent winter coat. After his debtors let him down, leaving him with only a few cents, Simon heads home. En route, he encounters a naked man, Michael, shivering near a shrine. He brings the man home, makes an apprentice of him, and eventually experiences a measure of prosperity as the youth emerges as a skilled craftsman.
As the story concludes, we learn that Michael is indeed an angel being punished by God for a moment of disobedience. After a series of personal revelations, which serve to restore him into God’s good graces, Michael’s angelic glory is revealed and he heads back into heavenly service, leaving Simon without an assistant.
The Garcia-Marquez story serves as a worthy counterpoint to this one. In that story, a winged man, presumably an angel, appears after a storm. The family in that story, assuming the man to be angelic, treats him abysmally, housing him in a chicken coop and exploiting him for their own monetary gain. In Tolstoy’s story, the family does not recognize Michael’s true nature yet treats him very well. In both cases, we revisit the Homeric theme of hospitality, seen in The Odyssey.
For my taste, Tolstoy’s story is a bit too didactic to be completely pleasing. Rather than following Poe’s idea of “Singleness of Effect” and beginning with a desired effect, Tolstoy begins with a message, rarely the route to achieving great literature. In fact, as we proceed through the stories of Eyes to See, the genius on view is that of authors capable of revealing a worldview without preaching, of expressing Christianity without appearing as apologists.
In Tolstoy’s story, Simon, a poor shoemaker, heads to town in order to collect some debts and buy sheepskins in order to make himself a decent winter coat. After his debtors let him down, leaving him with only a few cents, Simon heads home. En route, he encounters a naked man, Michael, shivering near a shrine. He brings the man home, makes an apprentice of him, and eventually experiences a measure of prosperity as the youth emerges as a skilled craftsman.
As the story concludes, we learn that Michael is indeed an angel being punished by God for a moment of disobedience. After a series of personal revelations, which serve to restore him into God’s good graces, Michael’s angelic glory is revealed and he heads back into heavenly service, leaving Simon without an assistant.
The Garcia-Marquez story serves as a worthy counterpoint to this one. In that story, a winged man, presumably an angel, appears after a storm. The family in that story, assuming the man to be angelic, treats him abysmally, housing him in a chicken coop and exploiting him for their own monetary gain. In Tolstoy’s story, the family does not recognize Michael’s true nature yet treats him very well. In both cases, we revisit the Homeric theme of hospitality, seen in The Odyssey.
For my taste, Tolstoy’s story is a bit too didactic to be completely pleasing. Rather than following Poe’s idea of “Singleness of Effect” and beginning with a desired effect, Tolstoy begins with a message, rarely the route to achieving great literature. In fact, as we proceed through the stories of Eyes to See, the genius on view is that of authors capable of revealing a worldview without preaching, of expressing Christianity without appearing as apologists.
Helen Norris—The Christmas Wife
This story, the next entry in Eyes to See, is about as far from a warm-fuzzy, holiday TV movie as I can imagine. Think O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi” with its huggy ending. Norris’ story is nothing like that. Instead, the coldness of the Christmas season is embraced as both main characters wind up isolated and only vaguely edified by the last page.
The first sentence of this story should not be missed in the headlong pursuit of persons and plot. “His name was Tanner, a reasonable man in his early sixties, desiring peace, a measure of joy, and reassurance.” Tanner, a widower, desires three things, all of them things offered in a pure form by Christ, but Tanner desires not these actual things but their appearance. In reality, what Tanner seeks is control. He wants to craft the same sort of controlled Christmas that he enjoyed with his wife, which is why he goes through the “social arrangements” service in order to find his “Christmas wife.”
Essentially, what Tanner seeks to create is his own version of a Hallmark advertisement, a holiday weekend, crafted in every detail, eliciting from his companion, “Cherry,” exactly the right responses. His project, naturally, fails.
At the same time, we find that the project of Cherry’s husband, the social arranger, is largely failing as well. He, desperate for money, puts his wife into this awkward situation hoping for a good result. While several of the couple’s bills undoubtedly get paid, the reader intuits that the couple emerges from this episode no happier than they had been before.
In much the same way, Cherry, who comes into the arrangement most grudgingly, does not get what she had hoped, although her hopes are minimal. In one of the simplest and most pathetic sentences I’ve read, she says, “’He’s my husband,’ she wept.”
Another telling sentence arrives on the heels of that simple exclamation. “He was forced to see with what grace she suffered them both [Tanner and her husband].” Grace is indeed what is needed for both of the male characters in Norris’ story. Both Tanner and the husband seek control, Tanner in the form of a carefully crafted yet artificial social setting and the husband in the form of the temporary relief dollars can bring. Neither of them, however, has any hope of a sustainable control. Tanner’s Christmas tableau will end, for better or worse, with the close of the weekend. The husband, with no prospects beyond this desperate rental of his wife, only postpones financial ruin.
What is not spoken, in this rather bleak but not utterly hopeless tale, is the true source of peace, joy, and reassurance. What is not spoken is the source of unending provision. What is not spoken is the miracle of the incarnation, the center of Christmas that each of these characters misses entirely. Yes, “Jesus is the reason for the season” may be a cliché, a sort of bumper-sticker discourse, but it is true and profound. Norris, in this story, expands this cliché beyond the bumper-sticker, presenting it in a nuanced enough way to cause the thoughtful mind to pause and ponder.
The first sentence of this story should not be missed in the headlong pursuit of persons and plot. “His name was Tanner, a reasonable man in his early sixties, desiring peace, a measure of joy, and reassurance.” Tanner, a widower, desires three things, all of them things offered in a pure form by Christ, but Tanner desires not these actual things but their appearance. In reality, what Tanner seeks is control. He wants to craft the same sort of controlled Christmas that he enjoyed with his wife, which is why he goes through the “social arrangements” service in order to find his “Christmas wife.”
Essentially, what Tanner seeks to create is his own version of a Hallmark advertisement, a holiday weekend, crafted in every detail, eliciting from his companion, “Cherry,” exactly the right responses. His project, naturally, fails.
At the same time, we find that the project of Cherry’s husband, the social arranger, is largely failing as well. He, desperate for money, puts his wife into this awkward situation hoping for a good result. While several of the couple’s bills undoubtedly get paid, the reader intuits that the couple emerges from this episode no happier than they had been before.
In much the same way, Cherry, who comes into the arrangement most grudgingly, does not get what she had hoped, although her hopes are minimal. In one of the simplest and most pathetic sentences I’ve read, she says, “’He’s my husband,’ she wept.”
Another telling sentence arrives on the heels of that simple exclamation. “He was forced to see with what grace she suffered them both [Tanner and her husband].” Grace is indeed what is needed for both of the male characters in Norris’ story. Both Tanner and the husband seek control, Tanner in the form of a carefully crafted yet artificial social setting and the husband in the form of the temporary relief dollars can bring. Neither of them, however, has any hope of a sustainable control. Tanner’s Christmas tableau will end, for better or worse, with the close of the weekend. The husband, with no prospects beyond this desperate rental of his wife, only postpones financial ruin.
What is not spoken, in this rather bleak but not utterly hopeless tale, is the true source of peace, joy, and reassurance. What is not spoken is the source of unending provision. What is not spoken is the miracle of the incarnation, the center of Christmas that each of these characters misses entirely. Yes, “Jesus is the reason for the season” may be a cliché, a sort of bumper-sticker discourse, but it is true and profound. Norris, in this story, expands this cliché beyond the bumper-sticker, presenting it in a nuanced enough way to cause the thoughtful mind to pause and ponder.
Shusaku Endo—The Final Martyrs
Another new author from Eyes to See, is Shusaku Endo, whose story “The Final Martyrs” takes the reader into an unfamiliar world, that of crypto-Christians during the politically turbulent times of nineteenth-century Japan. In reading this story, which explores, not surprisingly, the experience of persecution and martyrdom, my mind returned to “Sea and Sunset,” a story of thirteenth-century Japan by Yukio Mishima. Mishima, not an author particularly inclined toward Christianity, relates the utter otherness of a young European man brought as a slave to Japan in the aftermath of the abortive Children’s Crusade.
While Endo’s story stands as a fairly unremarkable study of the psychology of persecution, I find it intriguing for its location in an incredibly hostile, incredibly foreign locale. Both Endo’s and Mishima’s stories locate Christianity in a profoundly isolated place. The cavalry will not be riding in to save the day in either story. Comfort and hope will not be arriving from any external source. This leaves the would-be martyr in a vulnerable position, while affording him a purity of action. No one can ascribe political or social motivations to the steadfastness of these persecuted Christians. Perhaps most importantly, their potential for self-delusion, while not eliminated, is diminished.
While Endo’s story stands as a fairly unremarkable study of the psychology of persecution, I find it intriguing for its location in an incredibly hostile, incredibly foreign locale. Both Endo’s and Mishima’s stories locate Christianity in a profoundly isolated place. The cavalry will not be riding in to save the day in either story. Comfort and hope will not be arriving from any external source. This leaves the would-be martyr in a vulnerable position, while affording him a purity of action. No one can ascribe political or social motivations to the steadfastness of these persecuted Christians. Perhaps most importantly, their potential for self-delusion, while not eliminated, is diminished.
Andre Dubus—A Father’s Story
Before picking up Eyes to See, I had never heard of Andre Dubus, a Louisiana product and yet another in the outflow of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. “A Father’s Story” did not suffice to make me rush out to buy all of Dubus’ books, but it is a story worth reading. The narrator of the story is Luke Ripley, a divorced Catholic father, struggling to balance the demands of his faith with the calls of his flesh.
After a very long lead-in—roughly half the story’s length—Dubus finally arrives at the central concern of this narrative. Luke’s daughter, now a young woman, during the course of a visit, comes home late one night having struck a pedestrian with her car after a bit of drinking with friends. The conflicting calls of justice, truth, fatherly protection, and fear play out over the remaining pages of the story. It’s not brilliant stuff, but the last page or so, in which Luke relates a conversation with God regarding this event, is worth the price of admission, worth the time invested in the story’s thirty pages.
Rather than analyzing this discourse myself, I’d rather leave it to you with a couple of questions. Does Dubus, through Ripley, rationalize his choices in the wake of the accident? In other words, is the voice that he ascribes to God really a God-worthy voice or is it more a self-justifying version of his own voice? I’ve always taken the Socratic dialogues of Plato with a bit of skepticism. After all, it is rather easy to win an argument when you’re responsible for both sides of it.
How often do we, as thoughtful believers, generate a pseudo-God voice in order to justify the actions that we intended to take all along? Is that what Luke Ripley is doing here? I don’t think that is the intention with which Dubus presents him, which may explain that apparently overlong exposition in the story’s first half.
After a very long lead-in—roughly half the story’s length—Dubus finally arrives at the central concern of this narrative. Luke’s daughter, now a young woman, during the course of a visit, comes home late one night having struck a pedestrian with her car after a bit of drinking with friends. The conflicting calls of justice, truth, fatherly protection, and fear play out over the remaining pages of the story. It’s not brilliant stuff, but the last page or so, in which Luke relates a conversation with God regarding this event, is worth the price of admission, worth the time invested in the story’s thirty pages.
Rather than analyzing this discourse myself, I’d rather leave it to you with a couple of questions. Does Dubus, through Ripley, rationalize his choices in the wake of the accident? In other words, is the voice that he ascribes to God really a God-worthy voice or is it more a self-justifying version of his own voice? I’ve always taken the Socratic dialogues of Plato with a bit of skepticism. After all, it is rather easy to win an argument when you’re responsible for both sides of it.
How often do we, as thoughtful believers, generate a pseudo-God voice in order to justify the actions that we intended to take all along? Is that what Luke Ripley is doing here? I don’t think that is the intention with which Dubus presents him, which may explain that apparently overlong exposition in the story’s first half.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Edgar Allan Poe--Cask of Amontillado and Tell-tale Heart
These two stories are among Poe's most widely anthologized and read. If you've had the misfortune of sitting in one of my literature classes in which we studied one or both of these, then you probably know my fascination with applying Poe's idea of "Singleness of Effect" to the tales. That's all fine, and I do believe that my theory of Poe's evocation of a sense of dread in acquaintances who seem perfectly polite (Cask) and household servants (Heart) gets to the core of these stories. However, a new thought--one that bridges both stories--has come to me today.
In both stories, the narrator is a killer, calculating and supposedly unaffected by his deeds. In both stories, the victim is killed for an apparently trivial reason.
The narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" indicates "I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! . . . Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold." Thus, the old man offended the narrator unknowingly. The same can be said of Fortunato in "The Cask of Amontillado." Granted, the narrator complains of a "thousand injuries" and "insult," but the wrongs committed by Fortunato must have been fairly inconsequential since he does not seem to consider that they might have undermined his relationship with Montresor. In a sense, both victims can be seen as unwitting and undeserving. Certainly the thousand injuries of Fortunato are returned in a disproportionate manner, while the old man is wholly innocent.
In both cases, the killer plots carefully to commit the action and escape punishment. This suggests the primeval killing, that of Cain against Abel in Genesis 4. In that case, Cain rose up against his brother after talking with him and while in a field. One might infer that conversation put Abel off his guard while the location in the field placed the deed out of sight of his parents.
Poe's killers, not only curry the favor of their victim and plot carefully to avoid detection in the commission of their deed, but they take pains to hide the body, in both cases incorporating the corpse into the structure of their house. In "Cask," the murder is committed by walling Fortunato into a niche in the crypt, while the "Tell-Tale Heart" narrator apparently smothers the old man, secreting his dismembered corpse beneath the floorboards of the bedroom.
The play of guilt over these characters differs, yet it is present in both of them, just as it is present with Cain in his "Am I my brother's keeper?" response. Montresor attempts to portray himself as a completed unmoved killer, yet he discloses a moment's hesitation as he finishes the masonry: "My heart grew sick--on account of the dampness of the catacombs."
The old man's killer is full of misgivings and guilt. Most readers understand the sound of the heart to be either some physical manifestation of guilt or the sound of the blood coursing within the killer's ears (or both).
Both killers, Cain-like, have attempted to excise something from themselves that has caused pain and discomfort, yet in both cases, they have only succeeded in further internalizing the hatred consuming them. By secreting the evidence of their guilt within the structure of their residence, these killers effectively ensure that they will live with the guilt, discovered or not, for the rest of their days. In the "Tell-Tale Heart," the guilt overflows in confession quite rapidly. In the "Cask of Amontillado," it seems to have lay undisturbed for half a century. Montresor would, perhaps, suggest that he has not been troubled by his deed over the intervening decades, but a few glimmers within the story suggest otherwise. First, why is he now confiding this story to a third party? Whether the "you" of the story's first paragraph is a confessor or confidante, one wonders why, after all these years, Montresor feels the need to share his action. He also concludes the story with the Latin phrase In pace requiescat. While this might simply be a chilling postscript, one might wonder if Montresor wishes for something, peace, that has eluded him over the years.
In both stories, the narrator is a killer, calculating and supposedly unaffected by his deeds. In both stories, the victim is killed for an apparently trivial reason.
The narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" indicates "I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! . . . Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold." Thus, the old man offended the narrator unknowingly. The same can be said of Fortunato in "The Cask of Amontillado." Granted, the narrator complains of a "thousand injuries" and "insult," but the wrongs committed by Fortunato must have been fairly inconsequential since he does not seem to consider that they might have undermined his relationship with Montresor. In a sense, both victims can be seen as unwitting and undeserving. Certainly the thousand injuries of Fortunato are returned in a disproportionate manner, while the old man is wholly innocent.
In both cases, the killer plots carefully to commit the action and escape punishment. This suggests the primeval killing, that of Cain against Abel in Genesis 4. In that case, Cain rose up against his brother after talking with him and while in a field. One might infer that conversation put Abel off his guard while the location in the field placed the deed out of sight of his parents.
Poe's killers, not only curry the favor of their victim and plot carefully to avoid detection in the commission of their deed, but they take pains to hide the body, in both cases incorporating the corpse into the structure of their house. In "Cask," the murder is committed by walling Fortunato into a niche in the crypt, while the "Tell-Tale Heart" narrator apparently smothers the old man, secreting his dismembered corpse beneath the floorboards of the bedroom.
The play of guilt over these characters differs, yet it is present in both of them, just as it is present with Cain in his "Am I my brother's keeper?" response. Montresor attempts to portray himself as a completed unmoved killer, yet he discloses a moment's hesitation as he finishes the masonry: "My heart grew sick--on account of the dampness of the catacombs."
The old man's killer is full of misgivings and guilt. Most readers understand the sound of the heart to be either some physical manifestation of guilt or the sound of the blood coursing within the killer's ears (or both).
Both killers, Cain-like, have attempted to excise something from themselves that has caused pain and discomfort, yet in both cases, they have only succeeded in further internalizing the hatred consuming them. By secreting the evidence of their guilt within the structure of their residence, these killers effectively ensure that they will live with the guilt, discovered or not, for the rest of their days. In the "Tell-Tale Heart," the guilt overflows in confession quite rapidly. In the "Cask of Amontillado," it seems to have lay undisturbed for half a century. Montresor would, perhaps, suggest that he has not been troubled by his deed over the intervening decades, but a few glimmers within the story suggest otherwise. First, why is he now confiding this story to a third party? Whether the "you" of the story's first paragraph is a confessor or confidante, one wonders why, after all these years, Montresor feels the need to share his action. He also concludes the story with the Latin phrase In pace requiescat. While this might simply be a chilling postscript, one might wonder if Montresor wishes for something, peace, that has eluded him over the years.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Fyodor Dostoevsky—“An Honest Thief”
The second story in Eyes to See is this story by Dostoevsky, an author with the same level of religious intensity as that possessed by Chesterton, but a profoundly greater narrative facility. “An Honest Thief” is a simple story but at the same time a vexing one.
The basic plot is simple. Astafy, a lodger in the home of a reluctant landlord tells a second-hand tale about an honest thief. This thief, Emelyan, also a lodger of sorts, had stolen riding breaches from Astafy, his benefactor. Emelyan denies the crime vehemently, yet his actions proclaim his guilt more clearly than would a confession. Eventually, apparently sick with his sense of guilt—or perhaps just sick—Emelyan lies on his deathbed and confesses the theft of the breeches to a sympathetic Astafy.
Complicating this story, however, is the narratological structure. Why must Dostoevsky employ the framing story with Astafy speaking to the narrator? Granted, the narrator has just been deprived of an overcoat by a wandering thief, but might the story not be told without this device?
In order to read Dostoevsky in this case, we should consider the character of the narrator for a moment. This is a significantly isolated man, holed up in his home office, rarely speaking with anyone. He confesses to having no meaningful conversation with his housekeeper for six years. He describes himself, upon first meeting Astafy as follows: “I lead as a rule a very lonely hermit’s existence. I have scarcely any friends; I hardly ever go anywhere. As I had spent ten years never coming out of my shell, I had, of course, grown used to solitude.”
The rationale for Astafy telling his story in response to the theft of the overcoat is obvious, but why did Dostoevsky need this narrative frame? I would suggest that this story is not about an honest thief. Emelyan is not the true focus of the story. Instead, the narrator is the character most changed in the course of these pages. Let me explain.
At the outset, as noted, our narrator is a hermit. Upon admitting Astafy to his life, he breaks with his old habits and makes a connection, however tentative, with another human being. This represents a first step to full humanity, yet it’s not enough. How remarkable is it for a man to love his friends? That’s nothing remarkable at all. But loving an enemy is significant. (I seem to have read this sort of thing before.)
The narrator’s initial response to the theft of his overcoat is surprisingly restrained. In fact, it is Astafy who seems the more concerned about the crime. It is he, despite his advanced age, who runs after the thief. It is he who continues to bring up the topic and express anger. Yet then it is Astafy who tells the story of his experience with Emelyan. In the course of those pages, Astafy fully humanizes the weaker man, Emelyan, so that in the end, while the reader and the narrator do not condone the thief’s conduct, we see that conduct as the action of a frail vessel, fatally marked by sin.
A moment ago, I suggested that the narrator is a changed figure by the end of the story, but is there evidence for such a claim? The fact of his narration is, I would argue, such evidence. I would compare this to the biblical book of Philemon. Paul sends a runaway slave, Onesimus, back to his owner, Philemon, along with a letter. In the letter, Paul implores Philemon to treat Onesimus as brother in Christ. What evidence do we have that Philemon heeded Paul’s advice? I believe that the survival of the letter suggests that course. Similarly, we should not expect the narrator to tell such a tale if he found it to be nonsense.
The basic plot is simple. Astafy, a lodger in the home of a reluctant landlord tells a second-hand tale about an honest thief. This thief, Emelyan, also a lodger of sorts, had stolen riding breaches from Astafy, his benefactor. Emelyan denies the crime vehemently, yet his actions proclaim his guilt more clearly than would a confession. Eventually, apparently sick with his sense of guilt—or perhaps just sick—Emelyan lies on his deathbed and confesses the theft of the breeches to a sympathetic Astafy.
Complicating this story, however, is the narratological structure. Why must Dostoevsky employ the framing story with Astafy speaking to the narrator? Granted, the narrator has just been deprived of an overcoat by a wandering thief, but might the story not be told without this device?
In order to read Dostoevsky in this case, we should consider the character of the narrator for a moment. This is a significantly isolated man, holed up in his home office, rarely speaking with anyone. He confesses to having no meaningful conversation with his housekeeper for six years. He describes himself, upon first meeting Astafy as follows: “I lead as a rule a very lonely hermit’s existence. I have scarcely any friends; I hardly ever go anywhere. As I had spent ten years never coming out of my shell, I had, of course, grown used to solitude.”
The rationale for Astafy telling his story in response to the theft of the overcoat is obvious, but why did Dostoevsky need this narrative frame? I would suggest that this story is not about an honest thief. Emelyan is not the true focus of the story. Instead, the narrator is the character most changed in the course of these pages. Let me explain.
At the outset, as noted, our narrator is a hermit. Upon admitting Astafy to his life, he breaks with his old habits and makes a connection, however tentative, with another human being. This represents a first step to full humanity, yet it’s not enough. How remarkable is it for a man to love his friends? That’s nothing remarkable at all. But loving an enemy is significant. (I seem to have read this sort of thing before.)
The narrator’s initial response to the theft of his overcoat is surprisingly restrained. In fact, it is Astafy who seems the more concerned about the crime. It is he, despite his advanced age, who runs after the thief. It is he who continues to bring up the topic and express anger. Yet then it is Astafy who tells the story of his experience with Emelyan. In the course of those pages, Astafy fully humanizes the weaker man, Emelyan, so that in the end, while the reader and the narrator do not condone the thief’s conduct, we see that conduct as the action of a frail vessel, fatally marked by sin.
A moment ago, I suggested that the narrator is a changed figure by the end of the story, but is there evidence for such a claim? The fact of his narration is, I would argue, such evidence. I would compare this to the biblical book of Philemon. Paul sends a runaway slave, Onesimus, back to his owner, Philemon, along with a letter. In the letter, Paul implores Philemon to treat Onesimus as brother in Christ. What evidence do we have that Philemon heeded Paul’s advice? I believe that the survival of the letter suggests that course. Similarly, we should not expect the narrator to tell such a tale if he found it to be nonsense.
G.K. Chesterton—The Blue Cross
Chesterton’s Father Brown, while no Sherlock Holmes, stands as one of the significant figures in detective fiction. Frankly, I’d argue that no detective fiction is “great literature,” whatever that means, but it is enjoyed by millions of people. I suppose enjoyment constitutes greatness in one sense.
Without doing a bit more research, I can’t say whether “The Blue Cross” is the first of Chesterton’s invocations of the detective-priest. Regardless, this story does not have the typical structure of a detective tale.
In the midst of this ungreat literature, I find several points of interest for the Christian reader:
First, Brown stands in a noble crossroads for the educated believer, straddling the way of faith and of reason. Is intellect is powerful, yet it does not preclude his belief. His belief is profound, yet it does not compromise his intellect. I believe that the Christian is called to stand at just such a place.
Second, the great secular detective, Valentin, on whom ninety percent of this story dwells, exists solely in the realm of intellect and reason. While Valentin’s powers are significant and lead him toward the consummation of the case, he finds himself beaten to the case’s solution by the more rounded Brown.
Finally, the revelation of Brown toward the end of the story performs a powerful reversal. All through the story, the smaller priest has been portrayed as a hapless lamb, about to be sheared by the wily Flambeau, yet in the end, it is he who does the shearing. Father Brown here stands as a sort of Christ figure, a man who in the limited vision of the world seems mildly annoying and largely worthless, yet, when seen fully, in the largest context, is found to be incredibly more powerful and competent than initially suspected.
So, great literature or not, Chesterton’s story offers something of worth to the willing reader.
Without doing a bit more research, I can’t say whether “The Blue Cross” is the first of Chesterton’s invocations of the detective-priest. Regardless, this story does not have the typical structure of a detective tale.
In the midst of this ungreat literature, I find several points of interest for the Christian reader:
First, Brown stands in a noble crossroads for the educated believer, straddling the way of faith and of reason. Is intellect is powerful, yet it does not preclude his belief. His belief is profound, yet it does not compromise his intellect. I believe that the Christian is called to stand at just such a place.
Second, the great secular detective, Valentin, on whom ninety percent of this story dwells, exists solely in the realm of intellect and reason. While Valentin’s powers are significant and lead him toward the consummation of the case, he finds himself beaten to the case’s solution by the more rounded Brown.
Finally, the revelation of Brown toward the end of the story performs a powerful reversal. All through the story, the smaller priest has been portrayed as a hapless lamb, about to be sheared by the wily Flambeau, yet in the end, it is he who does the shearing. Father Brown here stands as a sort of Christ figure, a man who in the limited vision of the world seems mildly annoying and largely worthless, yet, when seen fully, in the largest context, is found to be incredibly more powerful and competent than initially suspected.
So, great literature or not, Chesterton’s story offers something of worth to the willing reader.
Eyes to See
I recently purchased a new collection of short stories, Eyes to See, edited by Bret Lott (Thomas Nelson: Nashville, 2008). My first reaction upon scanning over the table of contents was to be disappointed. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but once I noticed a couple of familiar titles—“A Good Man is Hard to Find” prominent among them—I felt as if I had just bought the same thing in a different package. However, having dropped a good chunk of money on the volume, I needed to at least pretend to read it. Once I got inside the front cover, I continued through story after story, only skipping over Flannery O’Connor. Therefore, it seems reasonable to give some of these stories a bit of attention in these postings. By this point, I can recommend the investment in the book.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
The Minister’s Black Veil—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Few stories in American literature have been given the scrutiny of this one by Hawthorne. Researchers will find very little trouble in gathering dozens upon dozens of interpretations upon this story. What is perhaps most intriguing is the lengths that various critics will go to in order to strip this story of its most obvious interpretation.
First, let’s briefly summarize the story. The tale opens on a Sunday with morning services about to begin. All seems normal until Rev. Hooper exits the rectory to preach the service, inexplicably wearing a double fold of black crepe over the upper half of his face. The appearance of the minister greatly disturbs his parishioners. After a funeral and a wedding that day, Rev. Hooper meets with his fiancée, Elizabeth. When he refuses to set the veil aside for her, she breaks off the engagement although remaining quite devoted to him.
Years pass by as Hooper maintains the black veil. He becomes a more effective preacher during these years although remaining an enigma to his flock. Finally, as he lies on his deathbed, another minister, Rev. Clark, urges him to finally remove the veil. Hooper refuses, aided by Elizabeth, and dies covered by the black cloth.
In order to understand this story, one must begin and end the interpretation—or at least its heart—with the veil. Why does Hooper wear the veil? Is he hiding something or hiding from something? Alternately, is the veil a tool for concealment or for signification. The most obvious interpretation, and the one that most of the congregation apparently assume to be true, is that Hooper has committed some horrible sin and wears the veil in order to hide his face in shame. Edgar Allan Poe theorized that Hooper had committed a sexual sin with the young woman whose funeral he performs that first day. While such is a possibility, it, I believe, takes the story to a too-literal level. On the other hand, the veil might be a tool to shield Hooper’s eyes from other people.
Looking at the alternate scheme of understanding the veil, we might wonder if Hooper wears to veil to cover something up or to reveal something. Perhaps the veil indicates his awareness of sin. If so, then we might profitably ask whether the sin signified is his own or someone else’s?
Some readers have picked up on a Biblical usage of veils. In II Corinthians 3:13, Paul contrasts the boldness of the believer with Moses, who veiled himself in Exodus 34 after meeting with God on Sinai. As Moses descended from his meetings with God, the glory would gradually fade away from his face. Moses delivered God’s message to the people with an uncovered, radiant face, and then covered his face until the next meeting. As tantalizing as this reference is, one might find it difficult to connect Hooper’s view of the veil with this Mosaic veiling. It seems clear in Hawthorne’s story that the key to the veil is sin. The key to the veil in the Moses story is the glory and radiance of God. These seem to be two wholly different things.
In fact, though, these two things are not nearly as separate as they might appear at first blush. Moses veiled his face in order to hide the contrast between his radiant, God-drenched face and a merely human face. The key to understanding sin in its Biblical form is to see it as separation from God, a deviation from holiness.
Hooper’s veil, whatever its origin, has the effect of emphasizing man’s lack of holiness and separation from God. This is the sort of emphasis that runs through all of Paul’s writings. In fact, this is the realization that emerges in Paul’s Damascus Road experience. Paul, convinced of his righteousness, travels toward Damascus in order to expose the failings of others. Upon encountering Christ on the road, Paul’s eyes are blinded—a sort of veiling—yet his self-perception is opened. He sees himself as a sinful man, hopeless but for the salvation offered through Christ Jesus. We only know these things, of course, because Paul has related them, either directly or by way of Luke. Recall that his fellow travelers could not hear distinct words during the event.
Does Hooper experience his own Damascus Road event? Hawthorne, by his ambiguity, ensures that readers will not know without assistance from Hooper, and the minister is not willing to testify of whatever experience has placed the veil on his face.
What places the veil on Hooper’s face? That is a cause that we will never know. Perhaps Hawthorne intends this ambiguity to allow the reader to interpret it through his own lens. I am reminded here of the many reactions I have witnessed to Paul’s II Corinthians 12 account of his thorn in the flesh. Since Paul leaves the thorn extremely ambiguous, many readers have interpreted it according to their own weaknesses.
In the end, Hawthorne’s story stands as a latter-day account of the Puritan view of man’s sinfulness and need for God. Any interpretation that leaves this aspect out of “The Minister’s Black Veil” is hiding something—or perhaps hiding from something.
First, let’s briefly summarize the story. The tale opens on a Sunday with morning services about to begin. All seems normal until Rev. Hooper exits the rectory to preach the service, inexplicably wearing a double fold of black crepe over the upper half of his face. The appearance of the minister greatly disturbs his parishioners. After a funeral and a wedding that day, Rev. Hooper meets with his fiancée, Elizabeth. When he refuses to set the veil aside for her, she breaks off the engagement although remaining quite devoted to him.
Years pass by as Hooper maintains the black veil. He becomes a more effective preacher during these years although remaining an enigma to his flock. Finally, as he lies on his deathbed, another minister, Rev. Clark, urges him to finally remove the veil. Hooper refuses, aided by Elizabeth, and dies covered by the black cloth.
In order to understand this story, one must begin and end the interpretation—or at least its heart—with the veil. Why does Hooper wear the veil? Is he hiding something or hiding from something? Alternately, is the veil a tool for concealment or for signification. The most obvious interpretation, and the one that most of the congregation apparently assume to be true, is that Hooper has committed some horrible sin and wears the veil in order to hide his face in shame. Edgar Allan Poe theorized that Hooper had committed a sexual sin with the young woman whose funeral he performs that first day. While such is a possibility, it, I believe, takes the story to a too-literal level. On the other hand, the veil might be a tool to shield Hooper’s eyes from other people.
Looking at the alternate scheme of understanding the veil, we might wonder if Hooper wears to veil to cover something up or to reveal something. Perhaps the veil indicates his awareness of sin. If so, then we might profitably ask whether the sin signified is his own or someone else’s?
Some readers have picked up on a Biblical usage of veils. In II Corinthians 3:13, Paul contrasts the boldness of the believer with Moses, who veiled himself in Exodus 34 after meeting with God on Sinai. As Moses descended from his meetings with God, the glory would gradually fade away from his face. Moses delivered God’s message to the people with an uncovered, radiant face, and then covered his face until the next meeting. As tantalizing as this reference is, one might find it difficult to connect Hooper’s view of the veil with this Mosaic veiling. It seems clear in Hawthorne’s story that the key to the veil is sin. The key to the veil in the Moses story is the glory and radiance of God. These seem to be two wholly different things.
In fact, though, these two things are not nearly as separate as they might appear at first blush. Moses veiled his face in order to hide the contrast between his radiant, God-drenched face and a merely human face. The key to understanding sin in its Biblical form is to see it as separation from God, a deviation from holiness.
Hooper’s veil, whatever its origin, has the effect of emphasizing man’s lack of holiness and separation from God. This is the sort of emphasis that runs through all of Paul’s writings. In fact, this is the realization that emerges in Paul’s Damascus Road experience. Paul, convinced of his righteousness, travels toward Damascus in order to expose the failings of others. Upon encountering Christ on the road, Paul’s eyes are blinded—a sort of veiling—yet his self-perception is opened. He sees himself as a sinful man, hopeless but for the salvation offered through Christ Jesus. We only know these things, of course, because Paul has related them, either directly or by way of Luke. Recall that his fellow travelers could not hear distinct words during the event.
Does Hooper experience his own Damascus Road event? Hawthorne, by his ambiguity, ensures that readers will not know without assistance from Hooper, and the minister is not willing to testify of whatever experience has placed the veil on his face.
What places the veil on Hooper’s face? That is a cause that we will never know. Perhaps Hawthorne intends this ambiguity to allow the reader to interpret it through his own lens. I am reminded here of the many reactions I have witnessed to Paul’s II Corinthians 12 account of his thorn in the flesh. Since Paul leaves the thorn extremely ambiguous, many readers have interpreted it according to their own weaknesses.
In the end, Hawthorne’s story stands as a latter-day account of the Puritan view of man’s sinfulness and need for God. Any interpretation that leaves this aspect out of “The Minister’s Black Veil” is hiding something—or perhaps hiding from something.
Self-Reliance—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Few thinkers have been as significant in forming the American way of thought as has Emerson. Look beneath the surface of the can-do American spirit, and you’ll find a subterranean river of Emerson flowing along, carrying both commerce and social thought. For the Christian reader, a quick look at just one of Emerson’s essays, “Self-Reliance,” will provide ample evidence that this man’s influence has not been one that has taken our people in the direction of holiness. In fact, one mid-sized quotation should make the case quite convincingly.
“On my saying, ‘What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?’ my friend suggested,--‘But these impulses may be from below, not from above.’ I replied, ‘They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.’ No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it.”
What nonsense! And it brings us to my biggest complaint against Emerson aside from his wholly secular outlook. Many critics will note and laud Emerson’s “aphoristic” style. In other words, his writing tends to sound like a collection of witty and wise sayings. Read through some of his essays and you will stumble upon various phrases that you’ve heard before. Essentially, Emerson worked in sound bites in an era long before electronic communication made sound bites important. This aphoristic style helps to explain the popularity of the writer; however, it also stands as one of his greatest weaknesses. Rather than taking statement and thoroughly working through it, exploring it, testing it, and weighing it in the balance, Emerson simple lays a claim on the table and moves on to the next, often resorting solely to his own force of personality as evidence for his assertion.
In short, Emerson quite demonstrably commits the very transgression that the secularists accuse believers of committing: believing things on faith and without any corroboration.
Why, in Emerson’s thought, is “No law sacred to me but that of my nature”? He offers no evidence, no argument. It is so, apparently, simply because he states it. It seems correct to Emerson; thus, since his inborn law is the only relevant law for him, it must be true. Such is, of course, an example of circular reasoning that would be dismissed as unrealistically contrived were we to place it in logic textbook, but for Emerson, such thinking has ensured nearly two centuries of importance.
Would Emerson then not applaud the actions of a serial killer who simple follows his own nature? If not, why? Perhaps he would argue that the serial killer is not indeed following his own nature, but if that is the case, then how can he know? How can he know that his own nature is not in some way perverted.
Later in the essay, Emerson trumpets his view of God, a pantheistic being that is in and among all. While he uses some of the terminology of orthodoxy, he changes those things meanings to make them conform to his inward-dwelling God. Let us consider his thoughts on prayer:
“Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good.”
That all sounds quite lovely, but what, precisely, does it mean? We learn as we continue the same passage.
“But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness.”
Therefore, if I pray for my children’s health, I am being mean and thieving. If I pray, as instructed by Jesus himself, for “our daily bread,” I am supposing dualism. But of course I do suppose dualism. I suppose that God is God and that man is man. These two are not the same. To suppose otherwise is would require a good bit of evidence that Emerson simply does not offer. The universe, in Emerson’s view, is a unified and interconnected thing, with the mind of God and the mind of humans linked in and among all things, simply because Emerson says so. A page or so later, he declares “men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.” Emerson’s own creed, however, he sets up as healthy and sound. Why? Again, it’s simply because he declares this to be the case.
Emerson’s writings stand as a sort of secular scripture, espousing views that Christians will find largely objectionable. His greatest strength is in the powerful voice with which he shares his ideas; his greatest weakness lies in his assumption that this powerful voice is a sufficient force to prove his positions.
“On my saying, ‘What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?’ my friend suggested,--‘But these impulses may be from below, not from above.’ I replied, ‘They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.’ No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it.”
What nonsense! And it brings us to my biggest complaint against Emerson aside from his wholly secular outlook. Many critics will note and laud Emerson’s “aphoristic” style. In other words, his writing tends to sound like a collection of witty and wise sayings. Read through some of his essays and you will stumble upon various phrases that you’ve heard before. Essentially, Emerson worked in sound bites in an era long before electronic communication made sound bites important. This aphoristic style helps to explain the popularity of the writer; however, it also stands as one of his greatest weaknesses. Rather than taking statement and thoroughly working through it, exploring it, testing it, and weighing it in the balance, Emerson simple lays a claim on the table and moves on to the next, often resorting solely to his own force of personality as evidence for his assertion.
In short, Emerson quite demonstrably commits the very transgression that the secularists accuse believers of committing: believing things on faith and without any corroboration.
Why, in Emerson’s thought, is “No law sacred to me but that of my nature”? He offers no evidence, no argument. It is so, apparently, simply because he states it. It seems correct to Emerson; thus, since his inborn law is the only relevant law for him, it must be true. Such is, of course, an example of circular reasoning that would be dismissed as unrealistically contrived were we to place it in logic textbook, but for Emerson, such thinking has ensured nearly two centuries of importance.
Would Emerson then not applaud the actions of a serial killer who simple follows his own nature? If not, why? Perhaps he would argue that the serial killer is not indeed following his own nature, but if that is the case, then how can he know? How can he know that his own nature is not in some way perverted.
Later in the essay, Emerson trumpets his view of God, a pantheistic being that is in and among all. While he uses some of the terminology of orthodoxy, he changes those things meanings to make them conform to his inward-dwelling God. Let us consider his thoughts on prayer:
“Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good.”
That all sounds quite lovely, but what, precisely, does it mean? We learn as we continue the same passage.
“But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness.”
Therefore, if I pray for my children’s health, I am being mean and thieving. If I pray, as instructed by Jesus himself, for “our daily bread,” I am supposing dualism. But of course I do suppose dualism. I suppose that God is God and that man is man. These two are not the same. To suppose otherwise is would require a good bit of evidence that Emerson simply does not offer. The universe, in Emerson’s view, is a unified and interconnected thing, with the mind of God and the mind of humans linked in and among all things, simply because Emerson says so. A page or so later, he declares “men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.” Emerson’s own creed, however, he sets up as healthy and sound. Why? Again, it’s simply because he declares this to be the case.
Emerson’s writings stand as a sort of secular scripture, espousing views that Christians will find largely objectionable. His greatest strength is in the powerful voice with which he shares his ideas; his greatest weakness lies in his assumption that this powerful voice is a sufficient force to prove his positions.
A World Lost—Wendell Berry
In this 1996 novel, Berry once again explores the relatively mundane life of a rural community in Kentucky, a community very much like the one in which he and his family have lived for generations. These novels demonstrate the profundity of the commonplace when people live lives connected to place and community.
In A World Lost, Berry presents a sort of faux memoir as the narrator, Andrew Catlett, considers the murder of an uncle of the same name. Even though a good deal more drama would seem to attach to a tale of murder, there is nothing of the suspense novel in this volume. We learn early on that Uncle Andrew has been killed and who the killer is. While the motive of the assailant, Carp Harmon, remains ambiguous to the end, even young Andy’s search for that knowledge does not provide any actual sense of conflict.
Instead of drawing his novel’s energy from the forward momentum of plot and revelation, Berry allows interest to grow by accretion as the varied and long-developing effects of the life and death of Uncle Andrew play out through the various branches of the Catlett family.
While Berry draws this story out over 151 pages, he, I believe, overplays the matter by a good twenty pages. Significant stretches of the story drag rather painfully. However, the fact that he can maintain interest for as long as he does testifies to his powerful ear and eye.
This novel, focused on the rather disparate life and unsurprisingly violent end of a black sheep of a family, brings to mind the account of Paul Maclean in “A River Runs through It.” In both cases, an inexplicable but not unexpected violent death places a permanent mark on a family. While the death of Paul Maclean does not take place until the close of Norman Maclean’s novella and that of Andrew Catlett happens at the outset of Berry’s, it remains largely separate from but inextricably linked to all of the other events of the book.
In both tales, two brothers take quite different routes, evoking Cain and Abel (or Seth); Abraham and Lot; Jacob and Esau; and Joseph and his ten elder brothers. Despite not being brothers, the similarity with Abraham and Lot is perhaps the most illuminating here. When it becomes clear that their wealth and servants have become too great for them to remain together, Abraham and Lot agree to separate. Given the choice of directions, Lot looks toward the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, while Abraham remains a rural man. Decided rural in outlook, Wheeler Catlett, the narrator’s father, is a lawyer and a very solid, upright citizen. Most significant in Berry’s worldview, Wheeler, despite his profession, remains at heart a farmer. Andrew, on the other hand, even when he moves back to his home town and tends a pair of farms owned by the family, maintains a good measure of the urban sensitivity he has developed in his years away.
Like Norman Maclean’s narrator agonizing over the troubles of Paul, Wheeler Catlett can never release the memory of his brother nor absolve himself of all responsibility in his brother’s death.
For the Christian reader, themes of election, free will, and the pervasiveness of sin drench the reading of A World Lost. Uncle Andrew Catlett demonstrates time and again his inability to govern his actions, his apparent predisposition to a dissolute and self-destructive life. Yet his death comes from what may very well be an act of random violence. Carp Harmon’s motive for shooting Andrew remains cloaked in mystery. Such, in Berry’s world and as in the world of Job, is life. Things happen, not always for clear reasons. Sometimes human folly leads to a downfall, but other difficulties arise apparently from nowhere. The question, for Berry and for the Christian reader, is not why things occur but how these events, once they have occurred will play out across time.
In A World Lost, Berry presents a sort of faux memoir as the narrator, Andrew Catlett, considers the murder of an uncle of the same name. Even though a good deal more drama would seem to attach to a tale of murder, there is nothing of the suspense novel in this volume. We learn early on that Uncle Andrew has been killed and who the killer is. While the motive of the assailant, Carp Harmon, remains ambiguous to the end, even young Andy’s search for that knowledge does not provide any actual sense of conflict.
Instead of drawing his novel’s energy from the forward momentum of plot and revelation, Berry allows interest to grow by accretion as the varied and long-developing effects of the life and death of Uncle Andrew play out through the various branches of the Catlett family.
While Berry draws this story out over 151 pages, he, I believe, overplays the matter by a good twenty pages. Significant stretches of the story drag rather painfully. However, the fact that he can maintain interest for as long as he does testifies to his powerful ear and eye.
This novel, focused on the rather disparate life and unsurprisingly violent end of a black sheep of a family, brings to mind the account of Paul Maclean in “A River Runs through It.” In both cases, an inexplicable but not unexpected violent death places a permanent mark on a family. While the death of Paul Maclean does not take place until the close of Norman Maclean’s novella and that of Andrew Catlett happens at the outset of Berry’s, it remains largely separate from but inextricably linked to all of the other events of the book.
In both tales, two brothers take quite different routes, evoking Cain and Abel (or Seth); Abraham and Lot; Jacob and Esau; and Joseph and his ten elder brothers. Despite not being brothers, the similarity with Abraham and Lot is perhaps the most illuminating here. When it becomes clear that their wealth and servants have become too great for them to remain together, Abraham and Lot agree to separate. Given the choice of directions, Lot looks toward the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, while Abraham remains a rural man. Decided rural in outlook, Wheeler Catlett, the narrator’s father, is a lawyer and a very solid, upright citizen. Most significant in Berry’s worldview, Wheeler, despite his profession, remains at heart a farmer. Andrew, on the other hand, even when he moves back to his home town and tends a pair of farms owned by the family, maintains a good measure of the urban sensitivity he has developed in his years away.
Like Norman Maclean’s narrator agonizing over the troubles of Paul, Wheeler Catlett can never release the memory of his brother nor absolve himself of all responsibility in his brother’s death.
For the Christian reader, themes of election, free will, and the pervasiveness of sin drench the reading of A World Lost. Uncle Andrew Catlett demonstrates time and again his inability to govern his actions, his apparent predisposition to a dissolute and self-destructive life. Yet his death comes from what may very well be an act of random violence. Carp Harmon’s motive for shooting Andrew remains cloaked in mystery. Such, in Berry’s world and as in the world of Job, is life. Things happen, not always for clear reasons. Sometimes human folly leads to a downfall, but other difficulties arise apparently from nowhere. The question, for Berry and for the Christian reader, is not why things occur but how these events, once they have occurred will play out across time.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
William Blake--The Early Works
This is very much a work in progress, so don't take what I'm about to say too seriously, unless I wind up seeming really brilliant, in which case this is exactly what I meant.
In the fashion that way leads onto way, I found myself amidst William Blake this afternoon. Having not read Blake in a very long time, I decided to spend a bit of time in his neighborhood, beginning with the earliest works:
The simpler of these works, the earlier one, is the more difficult to reconcile with a Christian worldview.
Here's an argument that we hear from a lot of secular people. In an effort to avoid seeming isolationist or intolerant, they'll argue that all religions are basically the same. They'll claim that all religions take people to the same place. The distinctions, they insist, come not from any essential difference but from various people looking at the same goal from a different vantage point. To those people, I'd have to politely say, "Rubbish."
More specifically, as we read Blake's words here, I notice that he's finding the source of true religion not in a transcendent God but in a human genius. No Christian can read these words and feel comforted.
The second of Blakes works, the 1789 There is No Natural Religion, is not quite so clear. Let's look over its few words.
In the fashion that way leads onto way, I found myself amidst William Blake this afternoon. Having not read Blake in a very long time, I decided to spend a bit of time in his neighborhood, beginning with the earliest works:
- All Religions are One (1788), and
- There is No Natural Religion (1789).
The simpler of these works, the earlier one, is the more difficult to reconcile with a Christian worldview.
The Voice of one crying in the WildernessThe Argument. As the true method of
knowledge is experiment, the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which
experiences. This faculty I treat of.
Principle I. That the Poetic Genius is
the true Man, and that the body or outward form of Man is derived from the
Poetic Genius. Likewise that the forms of all things are derived from their
Genius, which by the Ancients was call'd an Angel & Spirit & Demon.
Principle II. As all men are alike in outward form, So (and with the same
infinite variety) all are alike in the Poetic Genius.
Principle III. No man
can think, write or speak from his heart, but he must intend truth. thus all
sects of Philosophy are from the Poetic Genius adapted to the weaknesses of
every individual.
Principle IV. As none by travelling over known lands can
find out the unknown, So from already acquired knowledge Man could not acquire
more; therefore an universal Poetic genius exists.
Principle V. The
Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nation's different reception of
the Poetic Genius, which is every where call'd the Spirit of Prophecy.
Principle VI. The Jewish & Christian Testaments are An original
derivation from the Poetic Genius. This is necessary from the confined nature of
bodily sensation.
Principle VII. As all men are alike (tho' infinitely
various), So all Religions , &, as all similars, have one source. The true
Man is the source, he being the Poetic Genius.
Here's an argument that we hear from a lot of secular people. In an effort to avoid seeming isolationist or intolerant, they'll argue that all religions are basically the same. They'll claim that all religions take people to the same place. The distinctions, they insist, come not from any essential difference but from various people looking at the same goal from a different vantage point. To those people, I'd have to politely say, "Rubbish."
More specifically, as we read Blake's words here, I notice that he's finding the source of true religion not in a transcendent God but in a human genius. No Christian can read these words and feel comforted.
The second of Blakes works, the 1789 There is No Natural Religion, is not quite so clear. Let's look over its few words.
The Argument. Man has no notion of moral fitness but from Education.
Naturally
he is only a natural organ subject to Sense.
I. Man cannot
naturally perceive but through his natural or bodily organs.
II. Man by his
reasoning power can only compare & judge of what he has already perceiv'd.
III. From a perception of only 3 senses or 3 elements none could deduce a
fourth or
fifth.
IV. None could have other than natural or organic
thoughts if he had none but organic perceptions.
V. Man's desires are
limited by his perceptions; none can desire what he has not perceiv'd.
VI. The desires & perceptions of man, untaught by anything but organs of
sense, must be limited to objects of sense.
(b)
I. Man's perceptions are not bound by organs of perception; he
perceives more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover.
II. Reason, or
the ratio of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we
know more.
III. [This proposition is missing.]
IV. The bounded is
loathed by its possessor. the same dull round, even of the universe, would soon
become a mill with complicated wheels.
V. If the many become the same as the
few when possess'd, More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul; less than All
cannot satisfy Man.
VI. If any could desire what he is incapable of
possessing, despair must be his eternal lot.
VII. The desire of Man being
infinite, the possession is Infinite & himself Infinite. Conclusion. If it
were not for the Poetic or Prophetic Character the Philosophic &
Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things, and stand still, unable
to do other than repeat the same dull round over again.Application. He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God. He who
sees the Ratio only sees himself only. Therefore God becomes as we are,
that we may be as he is.
Here we have a lot of confusing words, hardly the sort of thing that Blake will give us next in the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. In fact, if this were all that Blake had left us, we'd ignore these words. But since Blake is an important English poet, we can't simply dismiss him, regardless of how bizarre his theology or philosophy might seem.
However, before we write William Blake off as a complete nut-case, I would suggest that we might be able to read here a more orthodox thinker than we saw in the previous work. Look at that final sentence: "God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is." Before you start letting all of that Poetic Genius nonsense from the year before bother you, imagine this statement as describing the Incarnation. Indeed, man cannot by his own powers effect things beyond the physical realm. Only when God became man did man manage to attain to holiness and salvation. This is Christianity.
I'm not saying that this was Blake's intention. Blake's theology is troubling enough that we should never read him without a healthy bit of skepticism and caution. But when we read these sentences, we can wonder if an understanding of Christ, albeit a twisted one, might not have been lurking in his thought.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Rip Van Winkle--Washington Irving
There's probably no character in American Literature, excluding those of Mark Twain, better known than Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle, yet he's also singularly misunderstood. Show most people an image of a hillbilly-ish character, sporting a long beard, asleep under a tree, and many of them, perhaps most of them will identify him as Rip, but what do they know about Irving's story.
To my mind, the most interesting thing about this short story is not that Rip Van Winkle wandered off into the mountains, met spirits of some sort, slept for twenty years, and then came home. That's the surface level of the tale, but it's not what made Irving's literary reputation. Unfortunately, in our visual culture, the original tale of Rip has been drowned in its own plot. After all, how do you portray his story on screen without simply telling the tale as it is related.
The problem with these portrayals is that they miss out on the vagaries of narration. Let me explain. First of all, who is the narrator of Rip Van Winkle? How does the story move from the events that actually happened to our own minds? In a film version, we perceive directly. We see it happen. There's not much room for ambiguity in viewer's mind. Yes, sometimes film-makers will play with reality and withhold information from us, but largely we see what is.
Not so in Washington Irving's story. Notice that the story is not a typical first- or third-person account. Instead, we get the events filtered between the time they happened and the time we read them. The story is told to us by a narrator, presumably Washington Irving, but since the narrator is clearly making some of this up--for example, there is no Diedrich Knickerbocker--I would suggest that the story comes by way of Washington Irving the writer and then his literary creation, "Washington Irving" the narrator, who in turn claims to have taken information from one Knickerbocker. Knickerbocker apparently gathered his information from the townspeople who knew Rip (although DK claims to have met Rip as well). The townspeople gathered their information from Rip who experienced the events firsthand. Thus our narration comes to us in this sort of progression:
Start with the epigraph, by William Cartwright, especially the third line: "Truth is a thing that ever I will keep." Then plunge into the first section, a sort of editorial addition by "Washington Irving," which insists on the "scrupulous accuracy" of Knickerbocker's accounts. Reading the second paragraph of the story, one encounters three affirmations of Knickerbocker's accuracy in a single sentence. Methinks the narrator doth protest too much.
At the close of the story, "Irving" adds an editorial note supposedly from Knickerbocker. There again, we are greeted with a series of insistences on the truthfulness of the whole affair. After all, Knickerbocker points out, he heard it straight from Rip Van Winkle's mouth.
If that's not enough to make us doubt the truth of the story, read the last paragraph before that concluding note: "He [Rip] used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr. Doolittle's hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on some points every time he told it, which was, doubtless, owing to his having so recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have related." Clearly, if Irving was not trying to infuse doubt about the trustworthy nature of this story, he included a lot of very odd and unproductive extras.
If Rip did make the story up, what was he doing during this twenty year period? Let me suggest the following:
What is uniquely Christian about this story? Nothing really, but there are lessons for the Christian reader to draw, most notably about the unreliable nature of the human heart and the deceptions and self-deceptions that progress out of that heart. The mind will believe many things that it should not believe, often convincing itself to believe what one can scarcely imagine to be true. A skeptic might say that this is what the Christian does in believing the account of the Bible. Obviously since some people believe the Bible and some believe the Book of Mormon and some believe the Koran and some believe other things, some of these people, these people walking in absolute certainty, must be mistaken. How do we know that it is not us? How do we know that we are not Rip Van Winkle's dupes?
I don't get the sense that Washington Irving was a mean-spirited writer dedicated to humiliating and lampooning the credulous people who believed Rip Van Winkle's story. However, I do read him as somebody who wanted us to question the veracity of our sources and the trustworthiness of our own minds at every opportunity. If what we follow is indeed the Truth, we can do much worse than to heed Irving's admonitions.
To my mind, the most interesting thing about this short story is not that Rip Van Winkle wandered off into the mountains, met spirits of some sort, slept for twenty years, and then came home. That's the surface level of the tale, but it's not what made Irving's literary reputation. Unfortunately, in our visual culture, the original tale of Rip has been drowned in its own plot. After all, how do you portray his story on screen without simply telling the tale as it is related.
The problem with these portrayals is that they miss out on the vagaries of narration. Let me explain. First of all, who is the narrator of Rip Van Winkle? How does the story move from the events that actually happened to our own minds? In a film version, we perceive directly. We see it happen. There's not much room for ambiguity in viewer's mind. Yes, sometimes film-makers will play with reality and withhold information from us, but largely we see what is.
Not so in Washington Irving's story. Notice that the story is not a typical first- or third-person account. Instead, we get the events filtered between the time they happened and the time we read them. The story is told to us by a narrator, presumably Washington Irving, but since the narrator is clearly making some of this up--for example, there is no Diedrich Knickerbocker--I would suggest that the story comes by way of Washington Irving the writer and then his literary creation, "Washington Irving" the narrator, who in turn claims to have taken information from one Knickerbocker. Knickerbocker apparently gathered his information from the townspeople who knew Rip (although DK claims to have met Rip as well). The townspeople gathered their information from Rip who experienced the events firsthand. Thus our narration comes to us in this sort of progression:
1. Events experienced by
2. Rip, who told them to the
3. Townspeople, who shared with
4. Knickerbocker, who wrote and was read by
5. "Washington Irving," who is a literary creation of
6. Washington Irving, who wrote a account for
7. You.
Start with the epigraph, by William Cartwright, especially the third line: "Truth is a thing that ever I will keep." Then plunge into the first section, a sort of editorial addition by "Washington Irving," which insists on the "scrupulous accuracy" of Knickerbocker's accounts. Reading the second paragraph of the story, one encounters three affirmations of Knickerbocker's accuracy in a single sentence. Methinks the narrator doth protest too much.
At the close of the story, "Irving" adds an editorial note supposedly from Knickerbocker. There again, we are greeted with a series of insistences on the truthfulness of the whole affair. After all, Knickerbocker points out, he heard it straight from Rip Van Winkle's mouth.
If that's not enough to make us doubt the truth of the story, read the last paragraph before that concluding note: "He [Rip] used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr. Doolittle's hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on some points every time he told it, which was, doubtless, owing to his having so recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have related." Clearly, if Irving was not trying to infuse doubt about the trustworthy nature of this story, he included a lot of very odd and unproductive extras.
If Rip did make the story up, what was he doing during this twenty year period? Let me suggest the following:
Wandering in the mountains one day, Rip grumbled about his life. Tired of his
wife and her demands, he determined not to head home. Instead he got far enough
away from his village to live as he liked, undiscovered, and passed those two
decades. Only as he started to move into old age did Rip begin to think of home
again. Perhaps driven by a desire to see his children, perhaps because of guilt,
perhaps because he had no where else to go, Rip returned to the village.
However, he knew that he couldn't simply stroll into town and laugh off a
twenty-year absence. He would instead tell a tale sure to excite wonder and
(hopefully) belief in his neighbors. He told that tale, perhaps eventually
starting to believe it himself.
What is uniquely Christian about this story? Nothing really, but there are lessons for the Christian reader to draw, most notably about the unreliable nature of the human heart and the deceptions and self-deceptions that progress out of that heart. The mind will believe many things that it should not believe, often convincing itself to believe what one can scarcely imagine to be true. A skeptic might say that this is what the Christian does in believing the account of the Bible. Obviously since some people believe the Bible and some believe the Book of Mormon and some believe the Koran and some believe other things, some of these people, these people walking in absolute certainty, must be mistaken. How do we know that it is not us? How do we know that we are not Rip Van Winkle's dupes?
I don't get the sense that Washington Irving was a mean-spirited writer dedicated to humiliating and lampooning the credulous people who believed Rip Van Winkle's story. However, I do read him as somebody who wanted us to question the veracity of our sources and the trustworthiness of our own minds at every opportunity. If what we follow is indeed the Truth, we can do much worse than to heed Irving's admonitions.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Movie--The World, The Flesh and the Devil
It's not my intention to post a lot of entries regarding films here, but I burned away a couple hours this morning watching this film on TMC and found myself with some lingering thoughts. The World, The Flesh and the Devil feels like a take on I Am Legend although it hit theaters 48 years earlier in 1959. In the older film, we have a lone man, Ralph Burton, played by Harry Belafonte, surviving technological holocaust and living a peculiar life in Manhattan. Eventually he runs into Sarah Crandall, played by Inger Stevens, who prances around town looking awfully fresh and lovely despite all the carnage that has gone before. In time, this pair is joined by Ben Thacker (Mel Ferrer), and we all know where this is going. The World, the Flesh and the Devil has no hordes of light-fearing zombies to keep at bay. No, the real problem is how do two men deal with one woman. The writers tried to make this an enlightened race film, but that pretense seemed pretty feeble. When you're the only two (or three) people on earth for all practical purposes, then race becomes a fairly irrelevant matter right away. It all gets very primal as the story reaches its crescendo. Evil Ben--or maybe he's just misunderstood--grabs a rifle and starts shooting at Ralph. Ralph gets his own rifle and shoots back. They sprint all over Manhattan, magically moving from the U.N. headquarters to the financial district in just seconds. But they had to go to the U.N., as Ralph finds himself standing in front of the scripture quotation about beating swords into plowshares from Isaiah 2:4. A statue with that theme had been given to the U.N. by the Soviet Union in 1959, so the theme was fresh, I suppose.
In front of those words, Ralph bravely tosses down his rifle, dashes to Wall Street (several miles) and confronts the still-armed Ben. After one wild shot, Ben cannot dispatch his rival, eventually collapsing and saying, "If you'd been scared, then I could have done it." As the movie closes, Ralph and Sarah wind up together, joining hands and then calling Ben to join them. The trio then strolls up the deserted canyons of lower Manhattan with the words "The Beginning"--get it? It's not "The End"--superimposed over them.
The word that jumps into my mind at the conclusion of this film is "facile." This is "the beginning," eh? What's going to happen next? Are the love triangle problems going to magically disappear? Will Ben and Ralph share Sarah? And before that, there's the facile aspect of Ben throwing his rifle down. Yes, the Bible does prophesy a time when people will beat swords into plowshares, but there's another passage, Joel 3:10, that reverses that process. There are times, it seems, when violence is the only answer. When a person is firing a deer rifle in your direction would be such a time. Frankly, it would have served Harry Belafonte's character right if Ben had just blown him away.
If I were to draw a larger conclusion from this film, it is that valuable literary productions are not reductive. They embrace the messiness, the paradoxes, the contradictions of human life. Once the bullets started flying in this production, all subtlety and nuance went out the window, leaving us with something treacly and soon to be forgotten.
In front of those words, Ralph bravely tosses down his rifle, dashes to Wall Street (several miles) and confronts the still-armed Ben. After one wild shot, Ben cannot dispatch his rival, eventually collapsing and saying, "If you'd been scared, then I could have done it." As the movie closes, Ralph and Sarah wind up together, joining hands and then calling Ben to join them. The trio then strolls up the deserted canyons of lower Manhattan with the words "The Beginning"--get it? It's not "The End"--superimposed over them.
The word that jumps into my mind at the conclusion of this film is "facile." This is "the beginning," eh? What's going to happen next? Are the love triangle problems going to magically disappear? Will Ben and Ralph share Sarah? And before that, there's the facile aspect of Ben throwing his rifle down. Yes, the Bible does prophesy a time when people will beat swords into plowshares, but there's another passage, Joel 3:10, that reverses that process. There are times, it seems, when violence is the only answer. When a person is firing a deer rifle in your direction would be such a time. Frankly, it would have served Harry Belafonte's character right if Ben had just blown him away.
If I were to draw a larger conclusion from this film, it is that valuable literary productions are not reductive. They embrace the messiness, the paradoxes, the contradictions of human life. Once the bullets started flying in this production, all subtlety and nuance went out the window, leaving us with something treacly and soon to be forgotten.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
The Memory of Old Jack--Wendell Berry
This may be a peculiar novel to have as my first entry in this blog, but it is what I've been reading. Therefore, it's what you get.
Wendell Berry has become one of my favorite contemporary writers in recent weeks, as I've dipped into his essays, poems, and now this novel. Berry, a one-time English professor at the University of Kentucky, is distinguished by his embrace of a mindful agricultural life. What sort of a person abandons the cushy world of academic life, especially at a fairly prestigious university, to farm the Kentucky hill country with a team of horses?
My understanding of Berry's novels is that they all revolve around the same fictitious Kentucky town, Port Royal, and the same interlocking cluster of characters. Having seen some of the other titles, Jayber Crow and Hannah Coulter, and having been introduced to these characters in the pages of the current novel, I have a sense of Berry's approach.
Although Wendell Berry's Christianity is vital to his identity and to his thought, this novel would not fit onto the shelves of many Christian bookstores, which is one of the things I feel recommends it as a worthy read. In this book, Berry presents a very appealing portrait of rural life without romanticizing that life. Old Jack's life is hard, but he wouldn't trade that life for anything. Similarly, Berry presents married life as a virtue while detailing Old Jack's largely disappointing marriage. You could not say that the love between Jack and Ruth Beechum did not die because it really never lived. Nevertheless, they remained married and largely loyal to each other until her death. Berry describes Jack's adultery with a local widow in a way that allows us to understand it without condoning it. I would contrast this portrayal with Kate Chopin's rather bloodless portrayal of a dissolving marriage and adultery in The Awakening. In Chopin's novel, there is no reason for Edna Pontellier to abandon her husband. In Old Jack, there is every reason for Jack to abandon Ruth (and from Ruth's point of view, every reason for her to abandon him), yet Jack and Ruth remain together functionally if not emotionally, riding out their disappointment and making the best of things. Jack possesses far more reason for his straying than does Edna, and he seems to consider the matter much more fully.
This book's title has at least two meanings. In one sense, the title reflects the organizational plan that Berry employs. Old Jack, in his 90s, is the senior sage of Port Royal. The book tracks through the last two days of Jack's life, peppered with lengthy flashbacks that convey the steps and missteps that brought this man to this point. As admirable a character as Jack seems in the minds of his neighbors, his life is hardly a steady march to triumph. In fact, Jack's life contains failings in romance, fidelity, business, and friendship. In short, Jack is a sinful man. He's no paragon of virtue, unless that virtue is hard work. Yet he stands, in the minds of the people of Port Royal, as an exemplar of human life. Human life, you see, regardless of what anybody says to the contrary, involves muddling through, making mistakes, and not always having everything turn out all right. Had Jannete Oke written Old Jack's story, she would have had Ruth eventually come around to recognize Jack's good qualities. She'd have had Jack take great pains to become the man Ruth wanted him to be. Neither of these things happened, because that's not how real people generally behave, and in the end, only a warm handclasp showed that Ruth still held some genuine love for Jack. There's no deathbed proclamation of regret or desire.
In Berry's eyes, life is beautiful and worthwhile not when all the plot elements line up to create a satisfying climax. It's worthwhile when people struggle on through it, regardless of the bad things that come along.
Berry spends a good bit of time in this novel--and perhaps comes closest to damaging the artistic product--preaching his view of two kinds of life: city vs. country, mercantile vs. agricultural, consumption vs. production. Ruth does not fall on Berry's side of those dichotomies, believing that "no place may be sufficient to itself, but must lead to another place, and that all places must finally lead to money; that a man's work must lead not to the health of his family and the respect of his neighbors but to the market place" (65). Those who subscribe to such thinking, cannot wait to get out of Port Royal and on to bigger things. For them, forty acres must yield to eighty acres and beyond. This reminds me of Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres. The memory of Old Jack is ultimately then the memory of his dedication to his land and the people on the land around his. Toward the novel's close, Jack speaks to his protege, the son of his mentor Ben, about the value of the land: "That's all you've got, Mat. It's your only choice. It's all you can have; whatever you try to gain somewhere else, you'll lose here. . . . And it's enough. It's more than another."
Whenever I read Berry, I find myself thinking of Matthew 6:33: "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you." Of course, I tend to come back to that verse in just about anything I read. Jack Beechum does not lead a charmed life. His gal doesn't come around to his way of thinking in the end. He doesn't come around to hers. His only child, a daughter, winds up living a life of affluence and respectability that Jack cannot respect. He experiences financial setbacks that leave him far less materially successful than he might have been. He experiences the same moral failing that largely undid King David. Yet Jack, to some degree, seeks the kingdom of God--not within the walls of the church but within his own heart--and finds that like the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, he has all that he needs.
Wendell Berry has become one of my favorite contemporary writers in recent weeks, as I've dipped into his essays, poems, and now this novel. Berry, a one-time English professor at the University of Kentucky, is distinguished by his embrace of a mindful agricultural life. What sort of a person abandons the cushy world of academic life, especially at a fairly prestigious university, to farm the Kentucky hill country with a team of horses?
My understanding of Berry's novels is that they all revolve around the same fictitious Kentucky town, Port Royal, and the same interlocking cluster of characters. Having seen some of the other titles, Jayber Crow and Hannah Coulter, and having been introduced to these characters in the pages of the current novel, I have a sense of Berry's approach.
Although Wendell Berry's Christianity is vital to his identity and to his thought, this novel would not fit onto the shelves of many Christian bookstores, which is one of the things I feel recommends it as a worthy read. In this book, Berry presents a very appealing portrait of rural life without romanticizing that life. Old Jack's life is hard, but he wouldn't trade that life for anything. Similarly, Berry presents married life as a virtue while detailing Old Jack's largely disappointing marriage. You could not say that the love between Jack and Ruth Beechum did not die because it really never lived. Nevertheless, they remained married and largely loyal to each other until her death. Berry describes Jack's adultery with a local widow in a way that allows us to understand it without condoning it. I would contrast this portrayal with Kate Chopin's rather bloodless portrayal of a dissolving marriage and adultery in The Awakening. In Chopin's novel, there is no reason for Edna Pontellier to abandon her husband. In Old Jack, there is every reason for Jack to abandon Ruth (and from Ruth's point of view, every reason for her to abandon him), yet Jack and Ruth remain together functionally if not emotionally, riding out their disappointment and making the best of things. Jack possesses far more reason for his straying than does Edna, and he seems to consider the matter much more fully.
This book's title has at least two meanings. In one sense, the title reflects the organizational plan that Berry employs. Old Jack, in his 90s, is the senior sage of Port Royal. The book tracks through the last two days of Jack's life, peppered with lengthy flashbacks that convey the steps and missteps that brought this man to this point. As admirable a character as Jack seems in the minds of his neighbors, his life is hardly a steady march to triumph. In fact, Jack's life contains failings in romance, fidelity, business, and friendship. In short, Jack is a sinful man. He's no paragon of virtue, unless that virtue is hard work. Yet he stands, in the minds of the people of Port Royal, as an exemplar of human life. Human life, you see, regardless of what anybody says to the contrary, involves muddling through, making mistakes, and not always having everything turn out all right. Had Jannete Oke written Old Jack's story, she would have had Ruth eventually come around to recognize Jack's good qualities. She'd have had Jack take great pains to become the man Ruth wanted him to be. Neither of these things happened, because that's not how real people generally behave, and in the end, only a warm handclasp showed that Ruth still held some genuine love for Jack. There's no deathbed proclamation of regret or desire.
In Berry's eyes, life is beautiful and worthwhile not when all the plot elements line up to create a satisfying climax. It's worthwhile when people struggle on through it, regardless of the bad things that come along.
Berry spends a good bit of time in this novel--and perhaps comes closest to damaging the artistic product--preaching his view of two kinds of life: city vs. country, mercantile vs. agricultural, consumption vs. production. Ruth does not fall on Berry's side of those dichotomies, believing that "no place may be sufficient to itself, but must lead to another place, and that all places must finally lead to money; that a man's work must lead not to the health of his family and the respect of his neighbors but to the market place" (65). Those who subscribe to such thinking, cannot wait to get out of Port Royal and on to bigger things. For them, forty acres must yield to eighty acres and beyond. This reminds me of Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres. The memory of Old Jack is ultimately then the memory of his dedication to his land and the people on the land around his. Toward the novel's close, Jack speaks to his protege, the son of his mentor Ben, about the value of the land: "That's all you've got, Mat. It's your only choice. It's all you can have; whatever you try to gain somewhere else, you'll lose here. . . . And it's enough. It's more than another."
Whenever I read Berry, I find myself thinking of Matthew 6:33: "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you." Of course, I tend to come back to that verse in just about anything I read. Jack Beechum does not lead a charmed life. His gal doesn't come around to his way of thinking in the end. He doesn't come around to hers. His only child, a daughter, winds up living a life of affluence and respectability that Jack cannot respect. He experiences financial setbacks that leave him far less materially successful than he might have been. He experiences the same moral failing that largely undid King David. Yet Jack, to some degree, seeks the kingdom of God--not within the walls of the church but within his own heart--and finds that like the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, he has all that he needs.
My Heart is Stirred by a Noble Theme
In the 45th Psalm, the sons of Korah begin their praise of the king like this:
My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the king; my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer.
The Psalmist here sings in praise not just of the king of Israel but of the King of Israel, the Lord God. He extolls the virtues of the man, the king, while at the same time suggesting the limitations of man that only God can transcend. All the while, this author, inspired by God but also blessed by God with a human gift for words, fires the human imagination, attempting to convey the unconveyable, to transcend the limitations of our means of perception, and to connect a reader, bounded in time and space, with the Master, indeed the Creator of all that is, was, or will ever be.
I mention these things because if we look at Psalm 45 aside from its status as Scripture, we see the same sorts of things at work that we find in many great works of literature. Humans, for centuries, have used literature, art crafted not in marble or paint but in words, to convey the subtleties of human understanding. These authors have been Christians, Buddhists, pagans, and atheists. They have worked in genres such as poetry, fiction, and drama. They have inspired and provoked readers across the ages. Their work, ultimately, explores the constant quest of all thinking people to understand the question: What does it mean to be human?
In these postings, I do not hope to answer that question. That question, of course, cannot truly be answered. It can simply be asked. In fact, I would suggest that part of what it means to be fully human is to ask that question, to seek for an answer. As a Christian, I claim to hold an answer to the question of human meaning. However, I don't believe that Christians should consider the answer that they have in Christ to be an all-encompassing answer. It is a permanent answer and a most reassuring one, but it does not explain everything. What it does is provide the Christian with the liberty and assurance to not require absolute answers on absolutely everything.
What you will find as I post in coming days is a series of Christian readings of various literary texts. Whether I'm reading someone relatively obscure or a household name, overtly Christian texts or defiantly anti-Christian ones, I will share my thoughts and analyses, hopefully providing other Christian students of literature with fresh ideas and approaches.
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