"I Dare You to Move..."

“But she cannot help feeling that she has been betrayed irreparably by the disunion between her way of living and her feeling of what life should be, and at times she is almost contented to rest in this sense of grievance as a private store of consolation.” These words of Katherine Anne Porter in her short story “Flowering Judas” spoke to some ache inside me. Modern poets and writers recognized this ache and often tried to capture some piece of what we as humankind are missing. Porter’s words remind me of Eliot’s “The Wasteland,” that “mixing of memory and desire” in the “cruel month of April.” We seem ever navigating the dream of April—the promise of bloom and the stark reality of the nakedness of winter. In “Flowering Judas,” Laura speaks of a homelessness, the sense of being a wanderer without a physical or spiritual home. She is caught up in the throes of revolution, probably drawn to the ideas of progress and freedom and being involved in a bigger cause. Her disillusionment is founded in the discrepancy between the reality of the ideals of revolution and the gritty way revolution often manifests itself in the hands of self-serving men. She aches in the chasm between how things should be and how they really are. Unlike other eras of literature where art became a way to escape the ugly real or glorify the beautiful, the modern writers stared at the emptiness and called it countless names, examining this quiet despair under the microscope of metaphor. Postmodern writers still sense this need for meaning and the tension between how it is and how it should be. The contemporary band Switchfoot beautifully describes this ache for more in their song, “Meant to Live”:

Fumbling his confidence and wondering why the world has passed him by
Hoping that he’s bent for more than arguments and failed attempts to fly
We were meant to live for so much more.
Have we lost ourselves?
Somewhere we live inside; somewhere we live inside
We were meant to live for so much more
Maybe we’ve been living with our eyes half open
Maybe we’re bent and broken
We were meant to live for so much more.
Have we lost ourselves?
We want more than this world’s got to offer
We want more than the wars of our fathers
Everything inside screams for second life

Laura’s dilemma also reminds me of Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Prufrock is stuck in an empty succession of comings and goings, all the while sensing there is something more for which to live. I believe Laura would greatly identify with Prufrock’s rather bleak statement: “For I have known them all already, known them all—have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” Laura too has measured out her life with coffee spoons, with pills given to ease someone’s pain, with secret messages and half truths, with compromises and nights of listening to putting on a pleasant face while Braggioni poorly strums his instrument. What I find tragic about Laura and Prufrock is not the ache they feel for more. Modernists beautifully described this hollowness that numbly begs to be filled. This ache of modernism, of a people who have seen senseless death and felt certainty crumble in world wars, seems an inevitable part of the human condition. But Laura and Prufrock both stay stuck in their emptiness. Rather than pushing them into a pursuit of the real and meaningful, the hollow is allowed to grow. The yawning emptiness dims the light in their eyes. Laura often thinks of how she should leave this place, this revolution, this go-between position with no glory and all hardship. Yet she never runs. Does she dare disturb the universe? The band Switchfoot also wrote a song called “Dare You to Move” that I would love to sing to Laura in the hopes that she will finally run.

I dare you to move; I dare you to move
I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor
I dare you to move; I dare you to move like today never happened before
Welcome to the fallout; welcome to resistance
The tension is here between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be

“Denying everything, she may walk anywhere in safety, she looks at everything without amazement.” Laura has numbed herself to the potentials both of pain and of wonder. Modern writers seem for the most part devoid of wonder. Perhaps they were rebelling against the exaggerated wonder and awe of the Romantics and transcendentalists. But in making literature spare and pared down, I think the modern writers somewhat overlooked the elements of life that cannot be explained in reasonable, short sentences. Though their styles were certainly a product of the world situation and an artistic statement, I personally find many of the early modern writers too “bare bones.” They aimed to present life “as it really is,” in all its raw pain and fragmentation and displacement. But I believe in doing so they neglected other elements just as real and as much a part of life. Some things in life are straightforward and easily described. But the average human being must often resort to metaphor, to analogy, to descriptive language to try to wrap one’s mind around elements and moments in life that cannot be shaved away into telegraphic sentences. Often the smallest moments, such as the sun’s first tentative peeking each new morning, require sentence after sentence to capture and still fall short.

I also found Richard Wright’s story, “The Man Who Was Almost a Man,” intriguing. I found the main character, Dave, to be more complicated than simply an adolescent desiring to move through a rite of passage. This is more than a coming of age story or an initiation narrative. Although shooting the mule was an accident on Dave’s part, I think he is showing signs of a darker inner process. His preoccupation with the gun seems rooted in a desire for power. Wright would have been interested in this as the product of a sick society mistreating and misguiding black males in a destructive way. When he holds the gun, something almost primal in Dave surfaces. “In the gray light of dawn he held it loosely, feeling a sense of power. Could kill a man with a gun like this. Kill anybody, black or white. And if he were holding the gun in his hand, nobody could run over him; they would have to respect him.” I wonder whether this thinking is at the root of many acts of violence, an attempt to gain power and respect while feeling safe from the consequences.

Pianos and Peaches: Jazz and Life with Hughes and Eliot

I find Langston Hughes’ poetry moving and rhythmically brilliant. I sense the influence of jazz music in many of the syncopations and in the short lines followed by the long swelling lines that pour forth with little hesitation. “The Weary Blues” reminded me of a summer I lived in New Orleans. Something about Hughes’ poem captured the spirit of this music with exquisite vividness. I could hear this weary blues player making “the poor piano moan with melody.” One musky night, I squeezed into the dim, hot atmosphere of Preservation Hall. For two hours, I experienced jazz music rather than simply listened to it.

“Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway…
He did a lazy sway…
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.”

Five men who played jazz like an extension of their souls gave me something that night at Preservation Hall that I will not forget and cannot even contain in an alphabet of letters with no movement or sound. At times I would close my eyes and listen to the interplay, the subtle and easy dialoging amongst the instruments that flowed freely and spontaneously. For the most part, I kept my eyes open and fixed upon the musicians. Watching the creation of jazz, the syncopated and risky and relaxed creation of souls put to music, was even more breathtaking than the sound of it. The men closed their eyes as they played, old African American men whose instruments wore crevices on their fingers and whose fingers wore crevices on their instruments. I could not tell whether they were playing their trumpets and saxophones or whether the instruments were playing them.

I absolutely loved “Song for a Dark Girl.” Though the poem was published in 1927, I wonder whether Hughes was alluding to a time of slavery in the South pre-Civil War. He uses the phrase “Way Down South in Dixie” as a sort of refrain to open each of the three stanzas. The second line of each stanza seems to be the pouring forth of a kind of lament—either (break the heart of me) or (Bruised body high in air). The poem’s narrator grieves over the death of his lover, hung in a tree. In the second stanza, he says:
I asked the white Lord Jesus
What was the use of prayer.
The poem is rife with religious imagery. The adjective “white” as a descriptive for Jesus is ironic in many ways and reflective of middle class America’s warped perspective. Historically, Jesus was far from the good looking, blue eyed white man we see in Hollywood depictions. Jesus was of Jewish descent and likely had a dark complexion with Middle Eastern features. Yet Jesus has become commercialized into a handsome white American, when in reality, his life and his appearance were considerably different than that false standard. The grieved lover of the poem speaks of his lover’s “bruised body high in air,” which alludes to the bruised and broken body of Jesus on the cross, paraded high in the air for all to see and mock. In the final stanza, the narrator says:
Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)
Love is a naked shadow
On a gnarled and naked tree.
This final stanza also reflects the fate of Jesus on the cross. Historically Jesus hung naked, as soldiers were casting lots for his clothing. Nakedness was another element of the humiliation involved in Roman crucifixion. Jesus hung upon a cross, which was likely made of rough wood fashioned from a tree. Jesus is referred to as God’s expression of love, or Love itself. The parallels between this innocent lover and Jesus are beautiful, moving, and effectively crafted.

On a different note, I remember reading T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in high school and deconstructing the various literary devices. This time upon reading the poem, I was most intrigued by the recurrent theme of the extraordinarily significant hidden within the mundane and the sense of fear in confronting the really real. Eliot speaks of Prufrock:

“For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

Measuring out a life in coffee spoons becomes a sad and modern examination of the sterile and measured exercise life had become for many people. Throughout the poem, Eliot keeps building up to the burning question… “Do I dare disturb the universe?” Interlaced with this question is mention of trivial matters, such as teas and cakes and the women talking of Michelangelo.
“Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?”
In a world on the brink of World War I, were people willing to ask the difficult questions? Can one question the meaning of life and whether one has choices within what can feel like a meaningless universe after taking tea and cakes? Or do we let the chance slip by? Prufrock’s burning question about the universe diminishes by the end of the poem, because he cannot bring himself to examine the really real.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

We must dare to eat a peach. Maybe we should all eat peaches at Preservation Hall.

"I can't convince myself that I am..."--The Awakening

There is so much to respond to within The Awakening that I hardly know where to start. I agree with the comments of countless critics about the regionalism and accurate depiction of lazy, hospitable Southern life Kate Chopin portrays. She mentions shady gardens and cats napping in sun-streaks and stiff winds from the Gulf. Her style creates a multi-sensory experience for any reader, whether seasoned in Southern summers or imagining the idle, hot days. I think Chopin does a nice job at the beginning of the novel of sneaking in Robert and Edna’s romance. Because Robert has a reputation for spending time with married women, at first I did not suspect a budding romance by any means. Chopin beautifully timed Edna’s awakening in such a way that it seemed neither rushed nor stagnant. Thus Edna’s awakening to herself dawned on me at much the same time it dawned on her. One of the first hints of Edna’s awakening—what separates her from other women on Grand Isle—is her nature itself. Chopin says of Edna: “At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life—that outward existence which conforms, the inner life which questions” (35). Perhaps it is her very reserve, her internal contemplative nature that makes her more likely to let the lines between inner and outer blur. Though she begins to do “whatever she wants,” Edna’s actions still seem like an externalization of her former inward action—“the inner life which questions.” She wants to paint but is unsure of her talent. Her decision to paint seems more of a question of herself, about herself, that is externally exhibited rather than an outward act of defiance to be noticed by society. Moving out of her house into the “pigeon house” seems more of a question to herself about whether she can make a comfortable home and feel more alive in a different setting, rather than a defiant message to society. She does not seek to change life for everyone; her awakening is much more about her internal processes being externalized, about answering her own questions about who she is.

I find Chopin’s ending a fascinating decision on the part of the author. The suicide is somewhat unexpected, though the reasons behind it are foreshadowed earlier in a conversation between Edna and Madame Ratignolle. Essentially, she realizes that to do the best thing for her children would be to deny every glimmer of awakened light she has realized. She seems to answer her own final question: “Can I live as I wish?” with a resounding “No, so I will not live at all.” This martyrdom for self almost sets up Edna to act as a tragic hero. She dies for her ideals, though she has no intention of influencing anyone else. She will not live against what she has formed as her own principles. A tragic hero often seems destined or doomed to die at the end. Chopin hints at this tragic end: “She had abandoned herself to Fate, and awaited the consequences with indifference” (127). By the end of the novel, it appears that Edna almost has no choice but to let the consequences decide her Fate. Throughout the novel, others point to Edna’s tragic flaw as her impulsivity—her propensity to “act without a certain amount of reflection which is necessary in this life” (119). Yet somehow, Chopin constructs Edna’s actions in such a way that they do not necessarily look reckless from an impulsive standpoint. When she states a conclusion, such as the decision to move to the “pigeon house,” I got the sense that she had unconsciously ruminated over the matter for weeks and announced the decision suddenly. I wonder whether Chopin would classify Edna’s fatal or tragic flaw as something more like “independence” or inability to act a part.

I find the relationship between Edna and Mademoiselle Reisz very interesting. Edna seems freed by Mme. Reisz’s distaste for “popular society” and proper conventions. The older woman is disliked, and being disliked seems to offer her a freedom to do as she pleases that I think Edna finds enviable. Mme. Reisz notices as Edna begins to grow in vitality throughout the novel; her complexion and outer appearance mirrors the same awakening her soul is undergoing. Chopin spends little time on developing Mr. Pontellier, which I would suppose is intentional. The lack of characterization devoted to Edna’s husband makes Chopin’s point even more shocking. If Mr. Pontellier had been well characterized and extremely dislikable with numerous shocking qualities, Edna’s story would not have been as disagreeable or socially abhorrent at the time. But because Mr. Pontellier is somewhat vague, he can serve as a type for all husbands who are fairly good fellows who view their wives as possessions of a sort. Suddenly Edna’s story becomes infinitely more threatening to society. If a woman like Edna can move away from and essentially “unmarry” an ordinary man like Mr. Pontellier, then scarcely any marriage might appear safe from such a scandal. I would think Edna’s ultimate choice of herself over her children would be even more shocking to society. At some level, a woman’s ability to bear children seems to have played a larger role in determining her societal value than her ability as a wife. Or at least, the two roles were inherently tied together.

I love what Edna says about herself: “One of these days,” she said, “I’m going to pull myself together for a while and think—try to determine what character of a woman I am; for, candidly, I don’t know. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex. But some way I can’t convince myself that I am. I must think about it” (105).