With vampires being all the rage in books, films, and television these days, I thought I would post a piece I wrote last year for class on the demonizing of women's sexuality.
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Spare the Mother, Kill the Whore: The Demonizing of Women’s Sexuality in “I Am Legend” and Dracula
At a glance, Richard Matheson’s “I Am Legend” and Bram Stoker’s Dracula have nothing in common except mention of the stereotyped ways to kill a vampire. Matheson references Stoker’s story and characters, which to an unseeing eye, underscores how different the two writers’ styles are. For the close reader, however, Matheson leaves a clue that he has borrowed more from Stoker than merely garlic and stakes. One of the greatest thematic overlaps between Matheson and Stoker is the aggressive attack of female sexuality. In both “I Am Legend” and Dracula, sexual women are necessarily evil and must be destroyed. This demonizing of sexuality in women demonstrates how little the values of the hegemony had changed with regard to women from the Victorian era to the mid 1950s and shows the ideal role as the chaste, pure mother.
The first half of “I Am Legend” is littered with references to the female “vampires” that surround Robert Neville’s home on a nightly basis. Every night since the women noticed Neville, they “had started striking vile postures in order to entice him out of the house” (Matheson 7). Neville compares the women to “lewd puppets” (7) and is infuriated by the women’s actions. What seems to distress Neville most is that he cannot control his desire for these women. He is not opposed necessarily to their sexuality, but is opposed to their having more control over his reaction than he seems to have. As Neville thinks about “the lustful, bloodthirsty, naked women flaunting their hot bodies at him” (Matheson 22) he simultaneously reminds himself that they’re not hot because he won’t allow himself to think of them that way. He finds the response of his body to these monstrous women to be “an insult to a man” (Matheson 8). It is not the idea of women possessing sexuality, but rather the idea of their holding power in sexual situations that is threatening to his role as a man.
It can be no accident that when Neville goes on vampire killing sprees, he always seems to find the women in their bedrooms. It is also not an accident that during one such moment, Matheson juxtaposes the question of why Neville always experiments on women with the thought of raping the women (49-50). In much the same way a rapist might, Neville is purging his anger at these women by enacting violence on their bodies. No, he does not force sex on them, because to his mind that would be a weakness in himself, but he saves his most aggressive physical tortures and sadistic experiments to punish the women for their blatant sexuality. These acts also reestablish Neville’s role as the dominant person in the interaction.
The one woman in “I Am Legend” that finds redemption is Ruth. Ruth, unlike Neville’s lewd puppets, has retained her feminine modesty. When she met Neville and noticed “her exposed breast, she reached down and held up the torn material of her dress” (Matheson 113). This act of decency and behavior appropriate to a woman in the 1950s leads Neville to trust Ruth more than the others. At some level, Neville recognizes that he is being deceived by Ruth even as they are talking in his home. Ruth is sitting on the couch and part of her leg is exposed which Neville classifies as “a typical feminine gesture… an artificial movement” (Matheson 130). It is because of this doubt and recognition that Neville feels he must test the woman and if he finds she is one of the vampires, she (and her potential for aggressive sexuality) must be destroyed.
In the end Ruth is saved from Neville’s torture of women not by her cunning, but by being a pure mother figure. Rather than seduce Neville, she holds him and comforts him as a mother would. Even once he is captured and imprisoned, she is seen “patting perspiration from his brow, touching his lips with a cool, wet cloth” (Matheson 154). By now, it is also known that Ruth is not like the other vampire women because she has been given a drug that keeps her more human. It is her lack of obscenity that allows her to maintain her humanity and her caring mother image that keeps her from being destroyed. “I Am Legend” takes directly from Dracula this idea the powerful female sexuality must be destroyed while the purity of the mother figure must be preserved.
Bram Stoker first exposes us to women in Dracula by introducing three young women who come upon Jonathan Harker in Dracula’s castle. The women are described, much like Matheson’s women, as having a “deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive” (Stoker 42). The scene peaks as Jonathan is laying passive on the bed feeling one of the women’s teeth pushing at his throat and he waits in a “languorous ecstasy” for the woman to penetrate him (Stoker 43). It is no surprise that when Jonathan realizes these women have had such sexual power over him he feels emasculated and overcome with horror.
Next, Stoker presents us with Lucy. Lucy is presented as a young girl with wild thoughts perhaps inappropriate for her time. She once kids that there is no reason a woman should not be able to take three husbands. Lucy is punished for pushing the boundary of what a Victorian woman should be and as she becomes more and more vampiric, she is also described in increasing sexually appealing terms. Her voluptuousness and red lips become more apparent as does her inherent evil. In the final scene when Lucy is destroyed, it is by her fiancé’s hand and is described in overtly sexual terms. Arthur is seen penetrating Lucy with a stake “deeper and deeper… whilst blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it” (Stoker 192). Meanwhile, Lucy’s body, still sexualized in its dying moments, is seen “writhing and quivering” (Stoker 192). Once the men had killed Lucy’s body and removed the demonic power over her soul, it is key that her image is seen as having restored “unequalled sweetness and purity” (Stoker 192).
Just as in the story Matheson presents, Stoker’s tale incorporates one woman who must be saved rather than destroyed because her image as a pure mother figure. Mina Harker is seen as the devoted wife who utilizes all her knowledge, time, and skills to benefit her husband. When Jonathan is recovering from great trauma and illness, Mina helps nurse him back to health and takes great care to protect him from things she fears would set him back in his recovery. She understands that to be a Victorian woman means to sacrifice one’s own feelings and tend to the needs of the man, much as a mother does with her children. In Mina’s case, even at her most ill and frightened, she puts on a mask of cheerfulness while serving the men tea. She notes in her own journal, “I did what I could to brighten them up, and I suppose the effort did me good, for I forgot how tired I was” (Stoker 228).
There are constant references to the purity and upstanding character of Mina and it is doubly worth noting that even at her most ill, Mina never receives blood from any of the other men as Lucy did. The only fluid exchange Mina participates in is forced upon her by Dracula and she is so horrified by this metaphorical rape, she believes herself to now be “unclean” (Stoker 259) and questions what she has done wrong to deserve such a fate. Clearly, the reader cannot blame this one sexualized act on Mina since she had no choice in the matter and her subsequent actions show her constantly trying to reclaim the purity that was stolen from her. Mina pushes forward, trying to care for and support the men in their quest to kill Dracula all the while reinforcing her desire to remain pure by making them all promise to kill her if she shows herself beyond salvation.
As Robert Neville in “I Am Legend” was angered by the prospect of sexually forward women, so too were the men in Stoker’s Dracula. The sexual aggression of female vampires leads them all to be destroyed while the passive, nearly absent, sexuality of Ruth and Mina allows them to remain alive. The mother-like qualities of these two women shows them as the perfect archetype of the loving, supportive, pure female so valued by men in the Victorian age and the 1950s alike. Both women are given motherly roles in the book to underscore the fact that unlike the other demonized women, they are true to their expected station. In fact, both Ruth and Mina are literally mothers as we know Ruth had two children and the final pages of Dracula mention Mina having given birth to a son.
In the end, all is righted in the world of both stories when only the sexually submissive females remain. Every instance of vampiric, demonized sexuality seen in a woman has led to her violent destruction. In Dracula, the original corrupting force has also been killed so that no more women may be robbed of their purity and the men may maintain their dominance. Similarly, “I Am Legend” closes with the knowledge that in the new society, there is a drug that can prevent people from being so thoroughly infected with this vampire’s disease that they become like the women on Neville’s lawn every night. There is a sense that with the death of the whore and the preservation of the mother, the world is once again a safe place to inhabit.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Making up for lost time with Fight Club
It's been a very long time since I have posted here. I know that, and I'm sorry. To make up for it, here is a *very* long paper that I just finished writing. There are some things I still plan to add and some editing that will surely need to happen, but I love it so far, and thus, I post it for your reading pleasure...
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Contemporary Genius or Masculine Fluff?: Examining Fight Club Through the Lens of Four Critical Styles
Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is not known for being a great literary work, but yet it is showing up on a growing number of syllabi for literature and English classes at American universities. From contemporary literature classes to courses on men and masculinity and even philosophy courses, Fight Club is carving out a space in the world of academia. Reading the novel and understanding the vast number of critical theories that can be applied to it easily demonstrates just one of the reasons why the novel is so useful in an academic setting. Using psychoanalytic criticism, feminist theory, New Criticism, and Deconstruction theory to analyze the text demonstrates only a small segment of what Palahniuk’s work is capable of. When considering modern texts to incorporate into the classics that have long been associated with academic settings, it is important to evaluate the flexibility of the work and Fight Club certainly shows itself to be a top contender.
As a novel about “a generation of men raised by women” (Palahniuk 50), Fight Club is ideally suited for psychoanalytic analysis. The narrator of the novel tells us that he knew his father for only six years and that Tyler Durden never knew his father. The narrator identifies that without his father’s guidance which he so desperately wanted, he was unclear of what to do with his life and how to progress into adulthood. “I’m a thirty-year-old boy, and I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer I need,” (Palahniuk 51) he tells us. According to Jacques Lacan, the father is the first authority figure that the child recognizes and represents not only “Law”, but also allows the child to move beyond constant gratification seeking toward an understanding of the limitations and requirements of the real world. This movement from the “pleasure principle” to the “reality principle” is an important development stage according to this theory. Lacan also argues that “identifying with the father now [during early childhood] makes it possible for the [male] child to take on a masculine role and makes it aware for the first time of various forms of insti-tutionalised law” (Carter 943-56). Similarly, in his synopsis of Freudian psychoanalysis, Terry Eagleton states that the male child comes to identify with his father as a representation of the role he will occupy later in life. This place as authority and powerful head of household is what the male child understands will be his when he matures and so he is able to accept that while he is not the patriarch now, he will be when he occupies the role of the father. The child “is thus introduced into the symbolic role of manhood” (Eagleton 155).
When a generation of men is lacking father figures to learn the role of manhood from, they must find someone or something else to substitute in that role. For the narrator in Fight Club and most of the other space monkeys of Project Mayhem, Tyler Durden was their substitute for the initial God-like power that a father should have held. The problem with this is that Tyler never had a father figure either, so it is unclear how accurate his views of manhood, masculinity, and authority really are. His complete lack of father, and thus, lack of Law, explains Tyler’s drive toward anarchy and his disregard for rules and authority figures.
Due in large part to his tendency toward destruction and anarchy, a popular analysis of the text reads Tyler Durden as representative of the Freudian id while the narrator is representative of the ego. In this sense, the narrator enforces the reality principle while Tyler is a reflection of the pleasure principle. Before Tyler’s appearance, the narrator lives in his filing cabinet apartment, works in his office cubicle, and keeps all of his desires for pleasure to a manageable and socially acceptable level. He has, in fact, gone so far as to substitute an urge for IKEA furniture for a sexual urge. As a perfect example of the ego redirecting the impulses of the id, we read “the people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue” (Palahniuk 43). The narrator does an excellent job of living his clean, boring life and keeping himself under control, “however, because he suffers physical symptoms that have an impact on his mental welfare (insomnia), the power of his ego becomes limited. So, the powerful horse that is the id slips its reigns and leads the ego where it (id) wishes to go” (Price 7). This split in Fight Club can actually be read as a product of the narrator’s unresolved Oedipal complex which can cause neurosis or psychosis in which “the link between the ego and the external world is ruptured, and the unconscious begins to build up an alternative, delusional reality” (Eagleton 159). In this case, the delusional reality is Tyler Durden.
Perhaps more interesting is exploring the Oedipus complex as it relates not just to the narrator, but as it connects him to Tyler and Marla Singer. In this situation, the narrator represents the child – he is simultaneously a thirty-year-old boy and “six years old, again, and taking messages back and forth between [his] estranged parents” (Palahniuk 66). The narrator looks to Tyler as a father and, like a child, wants his approval and love. He identifies with Tyler as a male child is meant to identify with his father – he idolizes him, sees him as the ultimate authority, and bases his views of masculinity on this deified man. When Marla and Tyler begin having sex, the conflict begins for the narrator. He sulks: “How could I compete for Tyler’s attention. I am Joe’s Enraged, Inflamed Sense of Rejection” (Palahniuk 60).
Freud’s castration anxiety is clearly recognizable within the narrator as first, Tyler sees a dildo on Marla’s bed side table. This phallus on the table next to her bed is symbolic of her as the castrated mother. She is now recognizable as different, as not having an attached phallus the way that he (and thus, the narrator) does. After this visual symbol, on more than one occasion Marla references animal shelters “where even if someone loves you enough to save your life, they still castrate you” (Palahniuk 68) which highlights the castration anxiety of the child once it accepts that the mother does not have a penis and thus castration is a possibility and something that may be done to him by the father.
As a child who never had an opportunity to resolve his internal Oedipal conflict, it is crucial that the narrator find a way to resolve this triangular relationship. Though in most circumstances, the child must simply accept that he cannot be with his mother and thus transfers his love and sexual desires to other females while identifying with the father, in Fight Club, the narrator is able to have the woman who represents the mother. To resolve his Oedipal conflict, it is imperative that the narrator kill Tyler at the end of the novel. Only by doing so can he bring closure to this psychological interruption that has impacted his entire life and be able to claim the symbolic mother as a prize. Freud claims that “if the boy is unable successfully to overcome the Oedipus complex, he may be sexually incapacitated” (Eagleton 155) and thus, to be with Marla sexually as Tyler was and avoid fear of castration, Tyler must be permanently removed.
The search for masculine role models and identity also relates to a feminist analysis of Fight Club. Applying the theory of Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler, one can see the struggle that the novel’s characters face when it comes to defining masculinity and manhood. In Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, she famously says “one is not born but becomes a woman” (de Beauvoir 301). In the introduction to her book, de Beauvoir questions how one defines a woman and posits that one would never ask such a question like “what is a man?” because being a man is a privileged state and does not lend itself to questioning. She suggests that women must be questioned and defined because “they have no past, no history, no religion of their own” (de Beavoir xi), but this is true of the men in Fight Club as well. So, if it is true that with this as a condition that women are not born but must become women, then we can explore the possibility that men in Fight Club are not born, but must become men.
As demonstrated in the psychoanalytic analysis, Fight Club explores the lives of men who have been raised without fathers. This is true of more than just the predominant male figures in the novel like “Walter from Microsoft” for whom it is assumed “if his parents weren’t divorced, his father was never home” (Palahniuk 55). In homes without male role models to teach them how to become men, the characters of Fight Club must find ways to create this identity. They search for manhood in their jobs, the furniture, fight club, Tyler Durden, and through destruction.
Bob is perhaps the best example of a man who must become a man, because in his search for manhood, he essentially becomes a woman. Bob was a bodybuilder who took steroids and hormones in an effort to be bigger, stronger, and more manly but “raise the testosterone level too much, your body ups the estrogen to seek a balance” (Palahniuk 17). Trying to be too masculine backfires and turns the body feminine – it causes what the novel refers to as “bitch tits”. Bob is regularly seen in the early pages of the book as the most feminine character in the novel. He has “new sweating tits that hang enormous” (Palahniuk 16), has had his testicles removed due to cancer, and wraps the narrator in his warm, loving arms and holds him as he cries. This feminine, motherly image coupled with the name of the testicular cancer support group Bob is a member of (Remaining Men Together) suggests that he has lost his status as a man.
Fortunately, according to de Beauvoir, “a condition brought about at a certain time can be abolished at some other time” (de Beauvoir x). One of the arguments made be de Beauvoir as to why women remain the inessential Other is because women never actively work to change this condition though it is clear that a condition once created can be destroyed or changed. Though the fatherless men of fight club seem to represent an inessential Other, they seek a way to change this and find fight club. Once Bob discovers fight club he, like so many of the other nameless men in the novel, discovers how to “become a man”. The first time the narrator sees Bob after he has started attending fight club, Bob is smiling rather than crying and has his masculine, muscular physique back. The narrator notices that his “arms come out of his T-shirt sleeves quilted with muscle and so hard they shine” (Palahniuk 100). There is no mention now of Bob’s tits because though he “became a woman”, he was able to change this condition and become a man again.
In Judith Butler’s article “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex”, she clearly articulates why all of the men from Remaining Men Together have stopped coming to the support group and started attending fight club instead. The men there were all deeply wounded and found solace in one another because they had all been emasculated. Butler states, “the social constraints upon gender compliance and deviation are so great that most people feel deeply wounded if they are told that they are not really manly or womanly” (Butler 41). These men who have all had their testicles taken away have been made to feel not manly enough. They hold each other and cry – behaviors stereotypically associated with femininity – at the support group, but when they discover fight club, they are not these weak, crying men any more. Suddenly, they can be “a god for ten minutes” (Palahniuk 48-49). This same concept can be seen when the narrator is trying to devise a plan to stay awake all night and stay safe from Project Mayhem. Marla brings up two options that could help him both stay awake and in hiding, but they challenge his manliness and thus, he would rather protect his masculinity than stay alive. “I’m not cross-dressing, and I’m not putting pills up my ass,” (Palahniuk 182) he tells Marla.
Butler further posits in her book Gender Trouble that gender is a social construct and that as individuals we perform our gender. While the novel’s men are busy performing their gender through fight club and later Project Mayhem, it is important to look at the one female character in the novel to understand how she performs gender. Despite being the only character in the novel perceived as a woman, Marla Singer actually performs as far more masculine than feminine.
Marla is an outlaw. She chain smokes, does drugs, steals, jokes about abortion, and lies. She first appears at the testicular cancer support group which consists of “twenty men and only one woman” (Palahniuk 17). Marla never had testicles, and thus it is ironic that she should come to a testicular cancer group with these men, but as she is performing this masculinity, she is accepted in the circle. Despite the fact that “feminists are busily and happily disarticulating the phallus from the penis” (Findlay 470), the dildo on Marla’s table is also an example of her performing masculinity. The phallus is the ultimate symbol or masculinity and manhood so much so that as a female bodied person performing masculinity, Marla has to inform the man in the room that the dildo is “not a threat to [him]” (Palahniuk 61). The dildo had already been proven to make men uncomfortable when the narrator is coming through the airport and is informed that in the case of a vibrating dildo being found in a piece of luggage it is imperative that the staff never refer to a dildo as “your dildo” (Palahniuk 42). The reader is further told that if a vibrating dildo turns on it creates “an emergency situation” (Palahniuk 42).
Until the end of the novel, Marla continues to perform a masculine gender through her emotional distance. At the close of the novel when her actions have made it clear that she loves the narrator, she still insists “it’s not love or anything… but I think I like you” (Palahniuk 205). This lack of willingness to admit to emotion verbally is also a stereotypically masculine behavior and shows Marla’s gender performance as one that does not match her biology. As the only female bodied character that appears in the novel, it is still not clear based on Butler’s argument that one performs a socially constructed gender if the reader can label Marla Singer as Fight Club’s only woman.
This breakdown of gender roles and labels ties in as one of the many conflicts that can be pointed to in an analysis using Deconstruction theory. Jacques Derrida’s linguistically focused approach looks for binary oppositions. These pairs can be seen in everyday life and language and certainly in every text that we read. Things like good/evil, light/dark, singular/plural, masculine/feminine, etc. are common pairings that we use to define our world. As Derrida points out, one part of this pair cannot exist without the other because without both parts, we would have nothing to use as a reference point and could not fully comprehend either half. It is understood that in each of these pairings, one half is always seen as superior to the other. “A deconstructive reading of a text identifies the existence of such hierarchies, reverses them and ultimately demonstrates that neither of the pair of opposites in each case is superior to the other: they are inter-dependent” (Carter 1471-85).
Some of the largest oppositions that exist within Fight Club are salvation/destruction, individuality/conformity, masculine/feminine, life/death, and reality/perception. While the idea behind binary oppositions is that one half must, by default, be superior to the other, there are too many conflicts throughout the pages of Palahniuk’s novel for the reader to walk away with a clear sense of what the superior terms are. In his essay, “The Fiction of Self-destruction: Chuck Palahniuk, Closet Moralist”, Jesse Kavadlo argues that “beauty, hope, and romance remain Palahniuk’s central values throughout his seemingly ugly, existential, and nihilistic works” (Kavadlo 3). Kavadlo presents evidence that shows just a few of the ways that Palahniuk’s novel manages to break down its own arguments and ultimately leaves the reader without any understanding of what the point of the story was.
The reader understands that even the characters in Fight Club have an understanding of how oppositions work in Derrida’s theory. Marla herself explains that the reason she started coming to the support groups is that “there was no real sense of life because she had nothing to contrast it with” (Palahniuk 38). This basic principle underlies all of Deconstruction theory and must be understood before the breaking down of the oppositions can begin. In the case of this life/death opposition, it is impossible ultimately to understand which the novel is celebrating. Both Marla and the narrator attend the support groups trying to appreciate life more by being so close to death. When it comes to sex, “Marla said she wanted to get pregnant. Marla said she wanted to have Tyler’s abortion” (Palahniuk 59). These clear juxtapositions of life and death already confuse which of the two is superior. Being surrounded by death at the support groups provides the narrator with the ability to sleep peacefully, it provides Marla with a sense that she is not alone. Chloe, though seen as pathetic and unattractive due to her appearance of illness and death is still seen as a pure, positive character which makes death seem appealing emotionally even if not physically. Marla’s pregnancy/abortion statement is seen not as disturbing, but as hot. The idea of creating a life just to kill it is sexualized and seen as positive. When Bob is killed, the narrator is distraught by his death and tries to end Project Mayhem to prevent more deaths, but simultaneously sends the message that “in death we become heroes” (Palahniuk 178).
Similar conflicts exist when it comes to the novel’s arguments around individuality and conformity. In the opening pages of the novel, the narrator talks about his insomnia and how it makes everything “far way, a copy of a copy of a copy” (Palahniuk 21). When describing his apartment and his furnishings, the narrator waxes poetic about IKEA and using these products that everyone now owns as a way to express who he is as an individual. The problem is that “we all have the same Johanneshov armchair… we all have the same Rislampa/Har paper lamps” (Palahniuk 43). Enter fight club, Project Mayhem, and Tyler Durden.
Fight Club is meant to represent a place where the participants are free from the labels and restrictions placed on them by other people. “As long as you’re at fight club, you’re not how much money you’ve got in the bank. You’re not your job. You’re not your family, and you’re not who you tell yourself… you’re not your name… you’re not your problems… you’re not your age” (Palahniuk 143) is the message provided to the men who join fight club looking to escape these labels in search of some deeper meaning. Though in theory fight club and Project Mayhem exist as a way to rebel against the system, escape this social conformity, and provide a unique sense of belonging to something special, the members of Project Mayhem end up lacking in identity more than they were before they walked in the door. Project Mayhem takes away their name, their hair, their clothes, and their choice. The first two rules of Project Mayhem are “you don’t ask questions” (Palahniuk 122) and thus, just as in the rest of the world, members are asked to stop thinking and simply obey.
The sense of conformity that the members of Project Mayhem end up with is hidden only the slightest bit by their acts of anarchy, the attacks they make against politicians, and the subversive petty crimes they commit. It is almost comically obvious how they have traded one life with no identity for another however when the narrator boards a bus and tries to get away from his nightmare: “From the back of the bus, I can see maybe twenty people sitting between me and the driver. I count the backs of twenty heads. Twenty shaved heads” (Palahniuk 187). These men have traded IKEA for black pants, black t-shirts, and black socks. Aside from Bob, they have no names, and Bob has his name returned only in death. As Project Mayhem spreads around the country, Mark Pettus concisely explains the contradiction that occurs: “Project Mayhem succeeds not only in reproducing itself, but also in reproducing the dominant system it opposes” (Pettus 125).
When it comes to exploring the idea of destruction, Kavadlo explains that “even the trope of self-destruction self-destructs” (20). Though one of the major themes of the novel is self-destruction, it is only in the sense that we must self-destruct in order to survive. This poses a question ideally suited to the deconstructionist: how can we simultaneously self-destruct and self-improve? How can we save ourselves by destroying ourselves? Ultimately, this question is not answered in the novel. It is posited that “only after disaster can we be resurrected” (Palahniuk 70). If it is only in death, and thus after complete self-destruction, that we have names and become heroes, how can we then find salvation?
One important collapse in this argument is that at the end of the text, the destruction itself fails. There is no explosion. The building is not destroyed. The narrator shoots himself in an attempted murder/suicide that seems to destroy Tyler but keep the narrator alive. Though alive, the narrator is trapped in a hospital bed without the resolve to fight hard enough for his own salvation. His self-destruction failed, but his self-improvement also failed.
Worth noting is that at the end of the novel, the reader is still not sure which of the characters is real and which has been imagined. It is largely held that the narrator was there first, is the “real man”, and that Tyler Durden is his mental creation. However, it is important to realize that Tyler Durden has a name, and the narrator was never given one. Nearly everyone who encounters the narrator refers to him as Tyler Durden. Even when the two confront one another in the hotel room, they argue amongst themselves about which is the primary occupant of the body. As the narrator tells himself that Tyler is nothing more than his hallucination, Tyler counters with “fuck that shit… maybe you’re my schizophrenic hallucination” (Palahniuk 168). In Fight Club’s final pages, it is still left open to debate which of the two is laying in the hospital bed and will ultimately emerge as the “real” person. So many of the things cycling through the narrator’s mind still resemble Tyler’s language, people are still walking by calling him Mr. Durden and referring to his plan, and he says both that he died and that Tyler died. “Of course, when I pulled the trigger, I died. Liar. And Tyler died… Faker” (Palahniuk 207).
As the reader finishes the novel, it is clear that not only is this question not answered, but none of the key problems presented has been satisfactorily addressed. The reader is left with far more questions than answers and while it is possible to pull any number of messages from the story and the characters, a closer examination shows that there is no solid message. Everything that the reader is told is contradicted over and over, everything is questioned, nothing is answered. The only consistency that can be found in Fight Club when examined through the lens of Deconstruction is that in its quest for self-destruction, the novel practices self-destruction as well.
Despite this deconstructed interpretation, if one looks at Fight Club and focuses on the approach of New Criticism, it is also possible to highlight ways in which the text is a unified, complete whole. Many themes can be traced throughout the entire novel, the language and structure ties many threads together and can possibly answer some of the questions left open to interpretation by other theories. By examining the text closely, a reader can find meaning where things seemed ambiguous before.
As a minor example of this, consider Tyler’s first profession. He is a projector operator. He changes the reels of film during a movie to make the film appear seamless to the viewer. There are two dots that appear quickly near the end of a reel called “cigarette burns”. These dots serve as a warning – the first dot is a two minute warning and the second dot is the five second warning. An alarm rings to warn the projector that a change is coming up. The cigarette burns indicate that a change is coming. “Changeover. The movie goes on. Nobody in the audience has any idea” (Palahniuk 28). In the next chapter, we meet Marla who is more often than not smoking a cigarette. Marla shows up with her cigarette and the narrator, like the film projectionist, cannot find the distraction that he so desperately wants. Marla’s association with cigarettes ties her to the warning of the cigarette burns in the film reels – change is coming.
In case the reader misses this correlation the first time, the text provides another chance for us when Marla is sitting at the table “burning the inside of her arm with a clove cigarette” (Palahniuk 65). This symbol carries over to at least one other important scene between Tyler and the narrator. When Tyler burns his kiss into the back of the narrator’s hand it is with the warning, “you can cry, but every tear that lands in the lye flakes on your skin will burn a cigarette burn scar” (Palahniuk 76). Tyler’s words during this scene indicate that the act of accepting the pain of the chemical burn will bring about a change in the narrator, but it is this cigarette burn reference that solidifies the idea. It has been established that a cigarette burn is a warning of change. Something is about to change, the story will go on, and the reader won’t have any idea – unless they are paying very close attention and see the dots.
Another ongoing theme that can be traced throughout the novel is time. There are many references from the beginning to the end of the novel to time. The story begins en media res and from the third page of the novel, the first countdown begins – “we’re down to our last ten minutes” (Palahniuk 13). Two pages later, we are down to three minutes (it is certainly “we” because from page one, the narrator uses the second person “you” while telling his story). There are references to numbers of minutes throughout the novel, a reference to a specific time (Palahniuk 32), mentions of losing time due to lost sleep, and the phrase “for that moment” (Palahniuk 143) or similar words are used often. The concept of a moment becomes very important as time is traced through the pages of the novel.
There are frequent mentions of the past and the future. The men of Fight Club seem to be rebelling against history and attempting to build a better future. “The goal was to teach each man in the project that he had the power to control history… what Tyler says about being the crap and the slaves of history, that’s how I felt. I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I’d never have” (Palahniuk 123). The last page of the novel focuses on the goal of changing the future when someone whispers, “we’re going to break up civilization so we can make something better out of the world” (Palahniuk 208). None of this past/future dichotomy matters however, when the reader looks closer and understands that the real message presented is to live in the present.
When the narrator meets Tyler, he says something that is repeated many times throughout the text: “One minute was enough… a person had to work for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection” (Palahniuk 33). This is of focusing on the present moment is repeated during the chemical burn. Tyler constantly tries to bring the narrator back to that moment to focus on the pain – the pain that will change his life “because everything up to now is a story and everything after now is a story” (Palahniuk 75). If the past is a story and the future is a story, then we are best served living in the present moment. Without doing so, we may miss our minute of perfection.
The time theme is hit again when the narrator is put in a near death experience and asked what he will wish he had done before he died. There is another countdown as he moves closer to death, but the last number is never reached. This shows again that the future is not certain, and we must focus on where we are right now. Near the novel’s end, the reader is once again reminded of the moral of the story in case it had been overlooked previously: “everything you ever love will reject you or die. Everything you ever create will be thrown away. Everything you’re proud of will end up as trash… a moment is the most you could ever expect from perfection” (Palahniuk 201).
Fight Club also contains numerous religious references, which at first seem to serve multiple purposes, but closely traced, these references to God and religion allow the reader to answer the question of whether it is Tyler or the narrator who is the illusion. When the narrator first meets Tyler Durden, he is naked on a beach pulling pieces of driftwood across the sand and creating something. “What Tyler had created was the shadow of a giant hand, and Tyler was sitting in the palm of a perfection he’d made himself” (Palahniuk 173). This sets Tyler up as something more than human because he has the ability to create perfection. Shortly after, we see Tyler cast in the image of God as the narrator calls him for the first time and offers a prayer to him: “Oh, Tyler, please deliver me… please rescue me… deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete” (Palahniuk 46). Moving forward, the God references continue and are always linked to Tyler.
On page 72, as Tyler is making the narrator promise to never talk about him to Marla, the promise must be made three times. This references the Biblical story of Peter who denied Christ three times and then three times professed his love and loyalty after Jesus’ resurrection. Tyler also makes soap, a symbol or cleanliness and purity, and points out that “soap and human sacrifice go hand in hand” (Palahniuk 75). This relates to the idea of Jesus as a human sacrificed himself so that all other humans could be cleaned and purified. Tyler, like God, wants his followers to follow him with question and even says to the narrator “If I loved him, I’d trust him” (Palahniuk 89).
Pages 140-141 explore what is called “Tyler Durden dogma” and asks the reader to examine the human relationship to God. For the reader who may not have caught on yet, direct evidence is offered in the text to the equation of Tyler with God when the narrator reflects on the fact that everyone believes he is Tyler. We are now directly told, “to everybody there, I am Tyler Durden the Great and Powerful. God and father” (Palahniuk 199).
These references all culminate in the last chapter of the book where laying in a hospital bed is equated with being in heaven. “Everything in heaven is quiet… I can sleep in heaven” (Palahniuk 206) the narrator tells us. And at this point, the careful reader understands that this is, necessarily, the narrator and that Tyler Durden has been the product of his mind. Though the legend of Tyler Durden is so big it has reached “heaven” and people passing by are still referring to him as Mr. Durden, the person in the hospital now refers to the doctor as God and is, thus, still searching for this concept of God and father outside of himself. If this person were the God figure that Tyler Durden was, he would not refer to something outside of himself as God – Tyler is God. This one clue in the text demonstrates that the being in the hospital in the last chapter cannot be Tyler and solves the riddle of which character was the “real” person.
Though examining the novel through different critical lenses can reveal different questions, different evidence, and completely different answers, it is most important to understand that each of these interpretations is valid. The fact that Fight Club is so complex in the amount of analysis that one can do with each of these schools of theory indicates it is a work of literature worth exploring in an academic setting. While some of what the novel offers is obvious, there is more under the surface that can be quite challenging to find without a critical eye. Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club extends far beyond the existentialist, nihilistic fluff that so many dismiss it as and provides a depth that should be fully examined under as many different critical lenses as possible. By doing so with this and other contemporary texts, the concept of literature fit for academic use can expand and grow rather than stagnate with outdated, irrelevant works.
Works Cited:
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1999.
----. “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex”. Yale French Studies 72 (1986): 35-49. JSTOR. Web. 4 Sep 2011..
Carter, David. Literary Theory. Harpenden, Herts: Pocket Essentials, 2006. Kindle edition.
Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Kindle edition.
De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books, 1973.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology (From Part I). Criticism: The Major Statements. Ed.
Charles Kaplan. New York: St. Martin’s Press Inc, 1986. 590-605. Print.
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1983.
Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Freud: On Psychosexual Development." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. 1 Jan 2011. Purdue U. 3 Sep 2011..
Kavadlo, Jesse. “The Fiction of Self-Destruction: Chuck Palahniuk, Closet Moralist”. Stirrings Still 2.2 (2005): 3-24. Web. 2 Sep 2011..
Kennett, Paul. “Fight Club and the Dangers of Oedipal Obsession”. Stirrings Still 2.2 (2005): 3-24. Web. 2 Sep 2011..
Mark Pettus: "Terminal Simulation: 'Revolution' in Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club." HJEAS 4:2 (2000): 111-128.
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996.
Price, Marc. “The Fight for Self: The Language of the Unconscious in Fight Club”. The Cult: The Official Chuck Palahniuk Site. 31 Aug 2011. A Writer’s Cult, LLC. 3 Sep 2011..
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Contemporary Genius or Masculine Fluff?: Examining Fight Club Through the Lens of Four Critical Styles
Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is not known for being a great literary work, but yet it is showing up on a growing number of syllabi for literature and English classes at American universities. From contemporary literature classes to courses on men and masculinity and even philosophy courses, Fight Club is carving out a space in the world of academia. Reading the novel and understanding the vast number of critical theories that can be applied to it easily demonstrates just one of the reasons why the novel is so useful in an academic setting. Using psychoanalytic criticism, feminist theory, New Criticism, and Deconstruction theory to analyze the text demonstrates only a small segment of what Palahniuk’s work is capable of. When considering modern texts to incorporate into the classics that have long been associated with academic settings, it is important to evaluate the flexibility of the work and Fight Club certainly shows itself to be a top contender.
As a novel about “a generation of men raised by women” (Palahniuk 50), Fight Club is ideally suited for psychoanalytic analysis. The narrator of the novel tells us that he knew his father for only six years and that Tyler Durden never knew his father. The narrator identifies that without his father’s guidance which he so desperately wanted, he was unclear of what to do with his life and how to progress into adulthood. “I’m a thirty-year-old boy, and I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer I need,” (Palahniuk 51) he tells us. According to Jacques Lacan, the father is the first authority figure that the child recognizes and represents not only “Law”, but also allows the child to move beyond constant gratification seeking toward an understanding of the limitations and requirements of the real world. This movement from the “pleasure principle” to the “reality principle” is an important development stage according to this theory. Lacan also argues that “identifying with the father now [during early childhood] makes it possible for the [male] child to take on a masculine role and makes it aware for the first time of various forms of insti-tutionalised law” (Carter 943-56). Similarly, in his synopsis of Freudian psychoanalysis, Terry Eagleton states that the male child comes to identify with his father as a representation of the role he will occupy later in life. This place as authority and powerful head of household is what the male child understands will be his when he matures and so he is able to accept that while he is not the patriarch now, he will be when he occupies the role of the father. The child “is thus introduced into the symbolic role of manhood” (Eagleton 155).
When a generation of men is lacking father figures to learn the role of manhood from, they must find someone or something else to substitute in that role. For the narrator in Fight Club and most of the other space monkeys of Project Mayhem, Tyler Durden was their substitute for the initial God-like power that a father should have held. The problem with this is that Tyler never had a father figure either, so it is unclear how accurate his views of manhood, masculinity, and authority really are. His complete lack of father, and thus, lack of Law, explains Tyler’s drive toward anarchy and his disregard for rules and authority figures.
Due in large part to his tendency toward destruction and anarchy, a popular analysis of the text reads Tyler Durden as representative of the Freudian id while the narrator is representative of the ego. In this sense, the narrator enforces the reality principle while Tyler is a reflection of the pleasure principle. Before Tyler’s appearance, the narrator lives in his filing cabinet apartment, works in his office cubicle, and keeps all of his desires for pleasure to a manageable and socially acceptable level. He has, in fact, gone so far as to substitute an urge for IKEA furniture for a sexual urge. As a perfect example of the ego redirecting the impulses of the id, we read “the people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue” (Palahniuk 43). The narrator does an excellent job of living his clean, boring life and keeping himself under control, “however, because he suffers physical symptoms that have an impact on his mental welfare (insomnia), the power of his ego becomes limited. So, the powerful horse that is the id slips its reigns and leads the ego where it (id) wishes to go” (Price 7). This split in Fight Club can actually be read as a product of the narrator’s unresolved Oedipal complex which can cause neurosis or psychosis in which “the link between the ego and the external world is ruptured, and the unconscious begins to build up an alternative, delusional reality” (Eagleton 159). In this case, the delusional reality is Tyler Durden.
Perhaps more interesting is exploring the Oedipus complex as it relates not just to the narrator, but as it connects him to Tyler and Marla Singer. In this situation, the narrator represents the child – he is simultaneously a thirty-year-old boy and “six years old, again, and taking messages back and forth between [his] estranged parents” (Palahniuk 66). The narrator looks to Tyler as a father and, like a child, wants his approval and love. He identifies with Tyler as a male child is meant to identify with his father – he idolizes him, sees him as the ultimate authority, and bases his views of masculinity on this deified man. When Marla and Tyler begin having sex, the conflict begins for the narrator. He sulks: “How could I compete for Tyler’s attention. I am Joe’s Enraged, Inflamed Sense of Rejection” (Palahniuk 60).
Freud’s castration anxiety is clearly recognizable within the narrator as first, Tyler sees a dildo on Marla’s bed side table. This phallus on the table next to her bed is symbolic of her as the castrated mother. She is now recognizable as different, as not having an attached phallus the way that he (and thus, the narrator) does. After this visual symbol, on more than one occasion Marla references animal shelters “where even if someone loves you enough to save your life, they still castrate you” (Palahniuk 68) which highlights the castration anxiety of the child once it accepts that the mother does not have a penis and thus castration is a possibility and something that may be done to him by the father.
As a child who never had an opportunity to resolve his internal Oedipal conflict, it is crucial that the narrator find a way to resolve this triangular relationship. Though in most circumstances, the child must simply accept that he cannot be with his mother and thus transfers his love and sexual desires to other females while identifying with the father, in Fight Club, the narrator is able to have the woman who represents the mother. To resolve his Oedipal conflict, it is imperative that the narrator kill Tyler at the end of the novel. Only by doing so can he bring closure to this psychological interruption that has impacted his entire life and be able to claim the symbolic mother as a prize. Freud claims that “if the boy is unable successfully to overcome the Oedipus complex, he may be sexually incapacitated” (Eagleton 155) and thus, to be with Marla sexually as Tyler was and avoid fear of castration, Tyler must be permanently removed.
The search for masculine role models and identity also relates to a feminist analysis of Fight Club. Applying the theory of Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler, one can see the struggle that the novel’s characters face when it comes to defining masculinity and manhood. In Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, she famously says “one is not born but becomes a woman” (de Beauvoir 301). In the introduction to her book, de Beauvoir questions how one defines a woman and posits that one would never ask such a question like “what is a man?” because being a man is a privileged state and does not lend itself to questioning. She suggests that women must be questioned and defined because “they have no past, no history, no religion of their own” (de Beavoir xi), but this is true of the men in Fight Club as well. So, if it is true that with this as a condition that women are not born but must become women, then we can explore the possibility that men in Fight Club are not born, but must become men.
As demonstrated in the psychoanalytic analysis, Fight Club explores the lives of men who have been raised without fathers. This is true of more than just the predominant male figures in the novel like “Walter from Microsoft” for whom it is assumed “if his parents weren’t divorced, his father was never home” (Palahniuk 55). In homes without male role models to teach them how to become men, the characters of Fight Club must find ways to create this identity. They search for manhood in their jobs, the furniture, fight club, Tyler Durden, and through destruction.
Bob is perhaps the best example of a man who must become a man, because in his search for manhood, he essentially becomes a woman. Bob was a bodybuilder who took steroids and hormones in an effort to be bigger, stronger, and more manly but “raise the testosterone level too much, your body ups the estrogen to seek a balance” (Palahniuk 17). Trying to be too masculine backfires and turns the body feminine – it causes what the novel refers to as “bitch tits”. Bob is regularly seen in the early pages of the book as the most feminine character in the novel. He has “new sweating tits that hang enormous” (Palahniuk 16), has had his testicles removed due to cancer, and wraps the narrator in his warm, loving arms and holds him as he cries. This feminine, motherly image coupled with the name of the testicular cancer support group Bob is a member of (Remaining Men Together) suggests that he has lost his status as a man.
Fortunately, according to de Beauvoir, “a condition brought about at a certain time can be abolished at some other time” (de Beauvoir x). One of the arguments made be de Beauvoir as to why women remain the inessential Other is because women never actively work to change this condition though it is clear that a condition once created can be destroyed or changed. Though the fatherless men of fight club seem to represent an inessential Other, they seek a way to change this and find fight club. Once Bob discovers fight club he, like so many of the other nameless men in the novel, discovers how to “become a man”. The first time the narrator sees Bob after he has started attending fight club, Bob is smiling rather than crying and has his masculine, muscular physique back. The narrator notices that his “arms come out of his T-shirt sleeves quilted with muscle and so hard they shine” (Palahniuk 100). There is no mention now of Bob’s tits because though he “became a woman”, he was able to change this condition and become a man again.
In Judith Butler’s article “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex”, she clearly articulates why all of the men from Remaining Men Together have stopped coming to the support group and started attending fight club instead. The men there were all deeply wounded and found solace in one another because they had all been emasculated. Butler states, “the social constraints upon gender compliance and deviation are so great that most people feel deeply wounded if they are told that they are not really manly or womanly” (Butler 41). These men who have all had their testicles taken away have been made to feel not manly enough. They hold each other and cry – behaviors stereotypically associated with femininity – at the support group, but when they discover fight club, they are not these weak, crying men any more. Suddenly, they can be “a god for ten minutes” (Palahniuk 48-49). This same concept can be seen when the narrator is trying to devise a plan to stay awake all night and stay safe from Project Mayhem. Marla brings up two options that could help him both stay awake and in hiding, but they challenge his manliness and thus, he would rather protect his masculinity than stay alive. “I’m not cross-dressing, and I’m not putting pills up my ass,” (Palahniuk 182) he tells Marla.
Butler further posits in her book Gender Trouble that gender is a social construct and that as individuals we perform our gender. While the novel’s men are busy performing their gender through fight club and later Project Mayhem, it is important to look at the one female character in the novel to understand how she performs gender. Despite being the only character in the novel perceived as a woman, Marla Singer actually performs as far more masculine than feminine.
Marla is an outlaw. She chain smokes, does drugs, steals, jokes about abortion, and lies. She first appears at the testicular cancer support group which consists of “twenty men and only one woman” (Palahniuk 17). Marla never had testicles, and thus it is ironic that she should come to a testicular cancer group with these men, but as she is performing this masculinity, she is accepted in the circle. Despite the fact that “feminists are busily and happily disarticulating the phallus from the penis” (Findlay 470), the dildo on Marla’s table is also an example of her performing masculinity. The phallus is the ultimate symbol or masculinity and manhood so much so that as a female bodied person performing masculinity, Marla has to inform the man in the room that the dildo is “not a threat to [him]” (Palahniuk 61). The dildo had already been proven to make men uncomfortable when the narrator is coming through the airport and is informed that in the case of a vibrating dildo being found in a piece of luggage it is imperative that the staff never refer to a dildo as “your dildo” (Palahniuk 42). The reader is further told that if a vibrating dildo turns on it creates “an emergency situation” (Palahniuk 42).
Until the end of the novel, Marla continues to perform a masculine gender through her emotional distance. At the close of the novel when her actions have made it clear that she loves the narrator, she still insists “it’s not love or anything… but I think I like you” (Palahniuk 205). This lack of willingness to admit to emotion verbally is also a stereotypically masculine behavior and shows Marla’s gender performance as one that does not match her biology. As the only female bodied character that appears in the novel, it is still not clear based on Butler’s argument that one performs a socially constructed gender if the reader can label Marla Singer as Fight Club’s only woman.
This breakdown of gender roles and labels ties in as one of the many conflicts that can be pointed to in an analysis using Deconstruction theory. Jacques Derrida’s linguistically focused approach looks for binary oppositions. These pairs can be seen in everyday life and language and certainly in every text that we read. Things like good/evil, light/dark, singular/plural, masculine/feminine, etc. are common pairings that we use to define our world. As Derrida points out, one part of this pair cannot exist without the other because without both parts, we would have nothing to use as a reference point and could not fully comprehend either half. It is understood that in each of these pairings, one half is always seen as superior to the other. “A deconstructive reading of a text identifies the existence of such hierarchies, reverses them and ultimately demonstrates that neither of the pair of opposites in each case is superior to the other: they are inter-dependent” (Carter 1471-85).
Some of the largest oppositions that exist within Fight Club are salvation/destruction, individuality/conformity, masculine/feminine, life/death, and reality/perception. While the idea behind binary oppositions is that one half must, by default, be superior to the other, there are too many conflicts throughout the pages of Palahniuk’s novel for the reader to walk away with a clear sense of what the superior terms are. In his essay, “The Fiction of Self-destruction: Chuck Palahniuk, Closet Moralist”, Jesse Kavadlo argues that “beauty, hope, and romance remain Palahniuk’s central values throughout his seemingly ugly, existential, and nihilistic works” (Kavadlo 3). Kavadlo presents evidence that shows just a few of the ways that Palahniuk’s novel manages to break down its own arguments and ultimately leaves the reader without any understanding of what the point of the story was.
The reader understands that even the characters in Fight Club have an understanding of how oppositions work in Derrida’s theory. Marla herself explains that the reason she started coming to the support groups is that “there was no real sense of life because she had nothing to contrast it with” (Palahniuk 38). This basic principle underlies all of Deconstruction theory and must be understood before the breaking down of the oppositions can begin. In the case of this life/death opposition, it is impossible ultimately to understand which the novel is celebrating. Both Marla and the narrator attend the support groups trying to appreciate life more by being so close to death. When it comes to sex, “Marla said she wanted to get pregnant. Marla said she wanted to have Tyler’s abortion” (Palahniuk 59). These clear juxtapositions of life and death already confuse which of the two is superior. Being surrounded by death at the support groups provides the narrator with the ability to sleep peacefully, it provides Marla with a sense that she is not alone. Chloe, though seen as pathetic and unattractive due to her appearance of illness and death is still seen as a pure, positive character which makes death seem appealing emotionally even if not physically. Marla’s pregnancy/abortion statement is seen not as disturbing, but as hot. The idea of creating a life just to kill it is sexualized and seen as positive. When Bob is killed, the narrator is distraught by his death and tries to end Project Mayhem to prevent more deaths, but simultaneously sends the message that “in death we become heroes” (Palahniuk 178).
Similar conflicts exist when it comes to the novel’s arguments around individuality and conformity. In the opening pages of the novel, the narrator talks about his insomnia and how it makes everything “far way, a copy of a copy of a copy” (Palahniuk 21). When describing his apartment and his furnishings, the narrator waxes poetic about IKEA and using these products that everyone now owns as a way to express who he is as an individual. The problem is that “we all have the same Johanneshov armchair… we all have the same Rislampa/Har paper lamps” (Palahniuk 43). Enter fight club, Project Mayhem, and Tyler Durden.
Fight Club is meant to represent a place where the participants are free from the labels and restrictions placed on them by other people. “As long as you’re at fight club, you’re not how much money you’ve got in the bank. You’re not your job. You’re not your family, and you’re not who you tell yourself… you’re not your name… you’re not your problems… you’re not your age” (Palahniuk 143) is the message provided to the men who join fight club looking to escape these labels in search of some deeper meaning. Though in theory fight club and Project Mayhem exist as a way to rebel against the system, escape this social conformity, and provide a unique sense of belonging to something special, the members of Project Mayhem end up lacking in identity more than they were before they walked in the door. Project Mayhem takes away their name, their hair, their clothes, and their choice. The first two rules of Project Mayhem are “you don’t ask questions” (Palahniuk 122) and thus, just as in the rest of the world, members are asked to stop thinking and simply obey.
The sense of conformity that the members of Project Mayhem end up with is hidden only the slightest bit by their acts of anarchy, the attacks they make against politicians, and the subversive petty crimes they commit. It is almost comically obvious how they have traded one life with no identity for another however when the narrator boards a bus and tries to get away from his nightmare: “From the back of the bus, I can see maybe twenty people sitting between me and the driver. I count the backs of twenty heads. Twenty shaved heads” (Palahniuk 187). These men have traded IKEA for black pants, black t-shirts, and black socks. Aside from Bob, they have no names, and Bob has his name returned only in death. As Project Mayhem spreads around the country, Mark Pettus concisely explains the contradiction that occurs: “Project Mayhem succeeds not only in reproducing itself, but also in reproducing the dominant system it opposes” (Pettus 125).
When it comes to exploring the idea of destruction, Kavadlo explains that “even the trope of self-destruction self-destructs” (20). Though one of the major themes of the novel is self-destruction, it is only in the sense that we must self-destruct in order to survive. This poses a question ideally suited to the deconstructionist: how can we simultaneously self-destruct and self-improve? How can we save ourselves by destroying ourselves? Ultimately, this question is not answered in the novel. It is posited that “only after disaster can we be resurrected” (Palahniuk 70). If it is only in death, and thus after complete self-destruction, that we have names and become heroes, how can we then find salvation?
One important collapse in this argument is that at the end of the text, the destruction itself fails. There is no explosion. The building is not destroyed. The narrator shoots himself in an attempted murder/suicide that seems to destroy Tyler but keep the narrator alive. Though alive, the narrator is trapped in a hospital bed without the resolve to fight hard enough for his own salvation. His self-destruction failed, but his self-improvement also failed.
Worth noting is that at the end of the novel, the reader is still not sure which of the characters is real and which has been imagined. It is largely held that the narrator was there first, is the “real man”, and that Tyler Durden is his mental creation. However, it is important to realize that Tyler Durden has a name, and the narrator was never given one. Nearly everyone who encounters the narrator refers to him as Tyler Durden. Even when the two confront one another in the hotel room, they argue amongst themselves about which is the primary occupant of the body. As the narrator tells himself that Tyler is nothing more than his hallucination, Tyler counters with “fuck that shit… maybe you’re my schizophrenic hallucination” (Palahniuk 168). In Fight Club’s final pages, it is still left open to debate which of the two is laying in the hospital bed and will ultimately emerge as the “real” person. So many of the things cycling through the narrator’s mind still resemble Tyler’s language, people are still walking by calling him Mr. Durden and referring to his plan, and he says both that he died and that Tyler died. “Of course, when I pulled the trigger, I died. Liar. And Tyler died… Faker” (Palahniuk 207).
As the reader finishes the novel, it is clear that not only is this question not answered, but none of the key problems presented has been satisfactorily addressed. The reader is left with far more questions than answers and while it is possible to pull any number of messages from the story and the characters, a closer examination shows that there is no solid message. Everything that the reader is told is contradicted over and over, everything is questioned, nothing is answered. The only consistency that can be found in Fight Club when examined through the lens of Deconstruction is that in its quest for self-destruction, the novel practices self-destruction as well.
Despite this deconstructed interpretation, if one looks at Fight Club and focuses on the approach of New Criticism, it is also possible to highlight ways in which the text is a unified, complete whole. Many themes can be traced throughout the entire novel, the language and structure ties many threads together and can possibly answer some of the questions left open to interpretation by other theories. By examining the text closely, a reader can find meaning where things seemed ambiguous before.
As a minor example of this, consider Tyler’s first profession. He is a projector operator. He changes the reels of film during a movie to make the film appear seamless to the viewer. There are two dots that appear quickly near the end of a reel called “cigarette burns”. These dots serve as a warning – the first dot is a two minute warning and the second dot is the five second warning. An alarm rings to warn the projector that a change is coming up. The cigarette burns indicate that a change is coming. “Changeover. The movie goes on. Nobody in the audience has any idea” (Palahniuk 28). In the next chapter, we meet Marla who is more often than not smoking a cigarette. Marla shows up with her cigarette and the narrator, like the film projectionist, cannot find the distraction that he so desperately wants. Marla’s association with cigarettes ties her to the warning of the cigarette burns in the film reels – change is coming.
In case the reader misses this correlation the first time, the text provides another chance for us when Marla is sitting at the table “burning the inside of her arm with a clove cigarette” (Palahniuk 65). This symbol carries over to at least one other important scene between Tyler and the narrator. When Tyler burns his kiss into the back of the narrator’s hand it is with the warning, “you can cry, but every tear that lands in the lye flakes on your skin will burn a cigarette burn scar” (Palahniuk 76). Tyler’s words during this scene indicate that the act of accepting the pain of the chemical burn will bring about a change in the narrator, but it is this cigarette burn reference that solidifies the idea. It has been established that a cigarette burn is a warning of change. Something is about to change, the story will go on, and the reader won’t have any idea – unless they are paying very close attention and see the dots.
Another ongoing theme that can be traced throughout the novel is time. There are many references from the beginning to the end of the novel to time. The story begins en media res and from the third page of the novel, the first countdown begins – “we’re down to our last ten minutes” (Palahniuk 13). Two pages later, we are down to three minutes (it is certainly “we” because from page one, the narrator uses the second person “you” while telling his story). There are references to numbers of minutes throughout the novel, a reference to a specific time (Palahniuk 32), mentions of losing time due to lost sleep, and the phrase “for that moment” (Palahniuk 143) or similar words are used often. The concept of a moment becomes very important as time is traced through the pages of the novel.
There are frequent mentions of the past and the future. The men of Fight Club seem to be rebelling against history and attempting to build a better future. “The goal was to teach each man in the project that he had the power to control history… what Tyler says about being the crap and the slaves of history, that’s how I felt. I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I’d never have” (Palahniuk 123). The last page of the novel focuses on the goal of changing the future when someone whispers, “we’re going to break up civilization so we can make something better out of the world” (Palahniuk 208). None of this past/future dichotomy matters however, when the reader looks closer and understands that the real message presented is to live in the present.
When the narrator meets Tyler, he says something that is repeated many times throughout the text: “One minute was enough… a person had to work for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection” (Palahniuk 33). This is of focusing on the present moment is repeated during the chemical burn. Tyler constantly tries to bring the narrator back to that moment to focus on the pain – the pain that will change his life “because everything up to now is a story and everything after now is a story” (Palahniuk 75). If the past is a story and the future is a story, then we are best served living in the present moment. Without doing so, we may miss our minute of perfection.
The time theme is hit again when the narrator is put in a near death experience and asked what he will wish he had done before he died. There is another countdown as he moves closer to death, but the last number is never reached. This shows again that the future is not certain, and we must focus on where we are right now. Near the novel’s end, the reader is once again reminded of the moral of the story in case it had been overlooked previously: “everything you ever love will reject you or die. Everything you ever create will be thrown away. Everything you’re proud of will end up as trash… a moment is the most you could ever expect from perfection” (Palahniuk 201).
Fight Club also contains numerous religious references, which at first seem to serve multiple purposes, but closely traced, these references to God and religion allow the reader to answer the question of whether it is Tyler or the narrator who is the illusion. When the narrator first meets Tyler Durden, he is naked on a beach pulling pieces of driftwood across the sand and creating something. “What Tyler had created was the shadow of a giant hand, and Tyler was sitting in the palm of a perfection he’d made himself” (Palahniuk 173). This sets Tyler up as something more than human because he has the ability to create perfection. Shortly after, we see Tyler cast in the image of God as the narrator calls him for the first time and offers a prayer to him: “Oh, Tyler, please deliver me… please rescue me… deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete” (Palahniuk 46). Moving forward, the God references continue and are always linked to Tyler.
On page 72, as Tyler is making the narrator promise to never talk about him to Marla, the promise must be made three times. This references the Biblical story of Peter who denied Christ three times and then three times professed his love and loyalty after Jesus’ resurrection. Tyler also makes soap, a symbol or cleanliness and purity, and points out that “soap and human sacrifice go hand in hand” (Palahniuk 75). This relates to the idea of Jesus as a human sacrificed himself so that all other humans could be cleaned and purified. Tyler, like God, wants his followers to follow him with question and even says to the narrator “If I loved him, I’d trust him” (Palahniuk 89).
Pages 140-141 explore what is called “Tyler Durden dogma” and asks the reader to examine the human relationship to God. For the reader who may not have caught on yet, direct evidence is offered in the text to the equation of Tyler with God when the narrator reflects on the fact that everyone believes he is Tyler. We are now directly told, “to everybody there, I am Tyler Durden the Great and Powerful. God and father” (Palahniuk 199).
These references all culminate in the last chapter of the book where laying in a hospital bed is equated with being in heaven. “Everything in heaven is quiet… I can sleep in heaven” (Palahniuk 206) the narrator tells us. And at this point, the careful reader understands that this is, necessarily, the narrator and that Tyler Durden has been the product of his mind. Though the legend of Tyler Durden is so big it has reached “heaven” and people passing by are still referring to him as Mr. Durden, the person in the hospital now refers to the doctor as God and is, thus, still searching for this concept of God and father outside of himself. If this person were the God figure that Tyler Durden was, he would not refer to something outside of himself as God – Tyler is God. This one clue in the text demonstrates that the being in the hospital in the last chapter cannot be Tyler and solves the riddle of which character was the “real” person.
Though examining the novel through different critical lenses can reveal different questions, different evidence, and completely different answers, it is most important to understand that each of these interpretations is valid. The fact that Fight Club is so complex in the amount of analysis that one can do with each of these schools of theory indicates it is a work of literature worth exploring in an academic setting. While some of what the novel offers is obvious, there is more under the surface that can be quite challenging to find without a critical eye. Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club extends far beyond the existentialist, nihilistic fluff that so many dismiss it as and provides a depth that should be fully examined under as many different critical lenses as possible. By doing so with this and other contemporary texts, the concept of literature fit for academic use can expand and grow rather than stagnate with outdated, irrelevant works.
Works Cited:
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1999.
----. “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex”. Yale French Studies 72 (1986): 35-49. JSTOR. Web. 4 Sep 2011.
Carter, David. Literary Theory. Harpenden, Herts: Pocket Essentials, 2006. Kindle edition.
Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Kindle edition.
De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books, 1973.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology (From Part I). Criticism: The Major Statements. Ed.
Charles Kaplan. New York: St. Martin’s Press Inc, 1986. 590-605. Print.
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1983.
Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Freud: On Psychosexual Development." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. 1 Jan 2011. Purdue U. 3 Sep 2011.
Kavadlo, Jesse. “The Fiction of Self-Destruction: Chuck Palahniuk, Closet Moralist”. Stirrings Still 2.2 (2005): 3-24. Web. 2 Sep 2011.
Kennett, Paul. “Fight Club and the Dangers of Oedipal Obsession”. Stirrings Still 2.2 (2005): 3-24. Web. 2 Sep 2011.
Mark Pettus: "Terminal Simulation: 'Revolution' in Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club." HJEAS 4:2 (2000): 111-128.
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996.
Price, Marc. “The Fight for Self: The Language of the Unconscious in Fight Club”. The Cult: The Official Chuck Palahniuk Site. 31 Aug 2011. A Writer’s Cult, LLC. 3 Sep 2011.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Deconstructing the Deconstruction
Not terribly long ago, I wrote what I thought was a brilliant piece on David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly. The play is exquisitely written, and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in history, culture, gender, politics, and/or sexuality.
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Deconstructing the Deconstruction: An Examination of David Henry Hwang’s Failure to Adequately Deconstruct Cultural and Gender Stereotypes in M. Butterfly
David Henry Hwang refers to his play M. Butterfly as “a deconstructivist Madama Butterfly” (Hwang 86) but he is too close to his own writing to see he goes so far in his attempt to deconstruct the original story that he ultimately reinforces the very stereotypes he wishes to combat. Hwang’s inversion of roles in his story leaves the Oriental woman in a position of weakness and elevates the image of the original Butterfly’s Pinkerton to power. Despite failing to break down the predominate stereotypes he finds so infuriating Hwang does demonstrate to the reader that identities are not an essential component of a person but rather are a socially constructed performance. Hwang’s decision to present the reader with characters who choose to perform identities based in cultural and gender stereotypes, however, leads him to offer up a play that falls on its own sword rather than cutting down its enemies.
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Deconstructing the Deconstruction: An Examination of David Henry Hwang’s Failure to Adequately Deconstruct Cultural and Gender Stereotypes in M. Butterfly
David Henry Hwang refers to his play M. Butterfly as “a deconstructivist Madama Butterfly” (Hwang 86) but he is too close to his own writing to see he goes so far in his attempt to deconstruct the original story that he ultimately reinforces the very stereotypes he wishes to combat. Hwang’s inversion of roles in his story leaves the Oriental woman in a position of weakness and elevates the image of the original Butterfly’s Pinkerton to power. Despite failing to break down the predominate stereotypes he finds so infuriating Hwang does demonstrate to the reader that identities are not an essential component of a person but rather are a socially constructed performance. Hwang’s decision to present the reader with characters who choose to perform identities based in cultural and gender stereotypes, however, leads him to offer up a play that falls on its own sword rather than cutting down its enemies.
Early in Act One, Rene Gallimard establishes for the reader how the segment of his life discussed in this play is centered around Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. A synopsis of the original story is offered and a portion of it is acted out with Gallimard as Pinkerton. It quickly becomes clear that gender and cultural stereotypes intersect to create what is referred to as the West’s “international rape mentality towards the East” (Hwang 62). In short, the story is of a Western white man, Pinkerton, who seduces a beautiful Asian woman, marries her, and then abandons her when he becomes bored with her. The woman, Butterfly, is so desperate for the return of her husband and so ruined by her need to be with White culture that when she understands he will not return to her, she kills herself. Pinkerton, we are told, purchased his wife for the equivalent of sixty-six cents and knew before he married her that his plan was to use her and then leave her. He feels “[i]t’s true what they say about Oriental girls. They want to be treated badly” (Hwang 11).
Gallimard’s Western mentality shows when he first sees Song perform a piece from Madame Butterfly. Song acknowledges in a very forward, assertive manner that it is typical for a Western man to find beauty in such a story. After all, it is the story of “the submissive Oriental woman and the cruel white man” (Hwang 18). That one moment of seeing Song perform as the stereotype of a powerless, helpless creature is enough to entice Gallimard to pursue this woman. What he fails to notice is that despite the outward display of Song as a shy, fragile creature, it is really she who holds the power between them. Gallimard himself says “she keeps our meetings so short – perhaps fifteen, twenty minutes at most. So I am left each week with a thirst which is intensified” (Hwang 25). By showing Gallimard only what he wants to see and keeping herself shrouded in mystery, Song becomes the seducer in the relationship. These displays feed the existing stereotypes of Asian men and women as well as the way they are perceived by Western men. “If the Asian male is viewed as asexual, the Asian female is seen as all sexual, a perfect companion for the Western male who, perhaps subconsciously at least, desires a prefeminist ideal of womanhood, someone less independent and less assertive” (Dickey 274).
As the relationship between Song and Gallimard continues, Song uses her understanding of Western male thought to allow Gallimard to feel power over her, yet she is always in control. When he orders Song to strip in Act Two, Scene Six, Gallimard not only gives in to Song’s protests of modesty but ends the scene disgusted with himself and on the floor “crawling toward her like a worm” and apologizing (Hwang 47). By this time, the reader has already been let in on the secret that Song is really a man and thus every moment of their lives together is an act and is a chance for Song to further exploit the man she has wrapped around her finger. It is all too easy for this fantasy to continue because “in love with his own image of the Perfect Woman and therefore with himself as the Perfect Man, Gallimard reads signs of dissimulation… as proof of her essential ‘Oriental’ womanhood. In so doing, he guards his inner space of ‘real, masculine’ identity” (Kondo 17).
By now, the tale from Puccini’s story has obviously been turned upside down, and it is Song who disappears for months leaving Gallimard longing for her pathetically. To add insult to injury and to prove to Gallimard that he has been bested by what he assumed was a powerless woman, he is forced to watch Song transform into a man. Her traditional Asian wardrobe is replaced with a more Western suit and we see the new Song continuing to taunt Gallimard with the possibility of desire. Were the play to end here, Hwang would have succeeded in his deconstruction. It has been argued that “his work is an honest and heartfelt plea for all people to recognize the destructive nature of prevalent gender and cultural stereotypes” (Dickey 276). At the beginning of Act Three, Hwang has done this by showing the trouble the West is having in Vietnam thanks to Gallimard’s faulty assumptions, Gallimard himself in prison, and Song having been reprimanded for acting out the stereotypical Western fantasy a little too well. It is here that Hwang turns the tables again and recreates the very stereotypes he has spent two thirds of his work tearing down.
As “James Moy, one of the play’s more acute critics, observes… Hwang’s deconstruction fails because, in inverting the cultural position of the characters, Rene Gallimard and Song Liling, the tragedy inadequately displaces the very Orientalist stereotypes it seeks to dismantle” (Shin 181). Act Three ends with Song finally stripping in front of Gallimard, revealing the undeniable truth that he (Song) has always been a man simply acting as a woman. This revelation shows that the power arguably found in Hwang’s Oriental woman cannot exist. “The feminine is empowered here only when it is undressed to reveal an essentially masculine core. In the end, the double disrobing of Song Liling/Mr. Shin merely proves that the ideal woman is a fiction, and that power resides in the male” (Morris 8). Though Song seems to have had power all along, it is not until revealing an utter lack of womanhood that he takes on the role of Puccini’s Pinkerton and Gallimard is clearly the less powerful of the two. It would be easy to read this as the Oriental winning over the West and therefore tearing asunder the cultural stereotypes scattered throughout Hwang’s play until the final scene serves to prevent the reader from doing so.
“In the penultimate scene, where Gallimard dresses himself in silk kimono and draws his sword to his own breast, he realizes that he has become Butterfly” (Morris 12). Though Gallimard rejects Song in the end, it is for a fantasy that still exists in his head. As Gallimard describes to the reader his idealized view of the Orient, he is assisted into the traditional kimono and makeup which represents the submissive Asian woman he so wished to dominate. As the death song from Madame Butterfly plays in the background Gallimard, in a traditional seppuku position, plunges a knife deep into his body and falls dead. Song can be seen on stage calling “Butterfly? Butterfly?” (Hwang 69). This double subversion returns the reader to a place where the more Westernized, cruel man is searching for his helpless Asian woman. Though underneath the kimono and paint, the person dead on stage may be the Western man, he was not able to die without being transformed into the image of the Oriental female. Even when turning from a general post-structuralist reading of the play to a more feminist centered critique, the play fails to show the power of the female Hwang seemed to be trying to write. “M. Butterfly turns upon the masquerade, generally aligned with feminist and lesbian discussions of cultural subversion, which, by generating a distance between the woman and her image, installs her within the semiotic system as subject rather than object. But in the tragedy’s gay context, playing the woman does not prove liberatory, and the masquerade’s capacity for contestation is paralyzed” (Shin 179).
Because Hwang clearly succeeds in showing the reader an alternative to essentialist identity, his final scene more powerfully destroys his alleged intent of deconstructing cultural and gender stereotypes. Since Song performs an identity as modest, humble female and Gallimard performs an identity as powerful, dominant male it is significant that they both choose to perform different identities throughout the play. When Song transforms on stage into a man, it is both literally and metaphorically obvious that even this identity (which is closer to what one would consider his essential identity) is a conscious performance. At this same time, Gallimard stops performing a powerful identity when he crumbles to the floor before Song. Instead, he begins performing the role of the longing Butterfly, yet still as a man. The performance at the end shows Song creating an identity that aligns with Puccini’s Pinkerton while Gallimard literally creates an identity as Puccini’s Butterfly. This choice by the characters (and by Hwang) is significant because in a world of proven constructed identity, these characters could have created themselves in any image they desired. The conscious decision to model their final identity after the very destructive stereotypes Hwang claims to be subverting only serves to bring more attention to those stereotypes holding true. After all, regardless of who is behind the mask, on the surface, it is the same Asian woman killing herself rather than face shame at the hands of a man and it is the same man seeking something powerless to control.
By choosing to end his play in this manner, Hwang defeated his own intentions. Rather than providing a solid literary argument of how cultural and gender stereotypes are damaging and asking the reader to rethink our own assumptions about the world around us, the play closes by showing the reader that no matter how twisted the road is that leads from point A to point B, it will inevitably still end in the same place with the Westernized masculine as dominant and the Oriental feminine as submissive, or worse, dead. By folding the world in upon itself so many times, Hwang actually folded his argument in on itself as well and ultimately deconstructed his own attempt at deconstruction.
Works Cited
Dickey, Jerry R. “Myths of the East, Myths of the West: Shattering Racial and Gender Stereotypes in the Plays of David Henry Hwang”. Drama Criticism 23 (2004): 272-280.
Hwang, David Henry. M. Butterfly. New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc, 1998.
Kondo, Dorinne K. “M. Butterfly: Orientalism, Gender, and a Critique of Essentialist Identity”. Cultural Critique 16 (1990): 5-29.
Morris, Rosalind. “M. Butterfly: Transvestism and Cultural Cross-Dressing in the Critique of Empire”. Gender and Culture in Literature and Film East and West: Issues of Perception and Interpretation. Ed. Nitaya Masavisut, Larry E. Smith, and George Simson. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994. 40-59.
Shin, Andrew. “Projected Bodies in David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly and Golden Gate”. MELUS 27.1 (2002): 177-197.
Hwang, David Henry. M. Butterfly. New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc, 1998.
Kondo, Dorinne K. “M. Butterfly: Orientalism, Gender, and a Critique of Essentialist Identity”. Cultural Critique 16 (1990): 5-29.
Morris, Rosalind. “M. Butterfly: Transvestism and Cultural Cross-Dressing in the Critique of Empire”. Gender and Culture in Literature and Film East and West: Issues of Perception and Interpretation. Ed. Nitaya Masavisut, Larry E. Smith, and George Simson. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994. 40-59.
Shin, Andrew. “Projected Bodies in David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly and Golden Gate”. MELUS 27.1 (2002): 177-197.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
The Same Black Water as You
"Am I going to die? -- like this?" (3). This question pulls the reader along for 150 more pages as we too wish to know if Kelly Kelleher is going to die this way and how she has gotten herself into this position. By beginning the story near the end, Oates allows the reader to see the most honest version of Kelly’s character. As we move forward through a series of prolepses and analepses, our confusion parallels Kelly’s. The reader’s confusion about whether Kelly is dead or alive, going to be rescued or not, and where we really are in time at any given moment allows for a stronger identification with Kelly’s emotional states. As with many of Oates’ female characters, we experience hope, defeat, exhilaration, and fear with Kelly which allows the story to haunt our memories long after the book is over.
One of the first things Oates tells us about Kelly is that she has no voice with men. When faced with a situation that involves speaking up to men "you could not speak, there were no words" (5). This introduces us to Kelly’s dilemma, but the use of the second person is a stylistic bit of genius that pulls the reader even further into identification with Kelly. Since the story is written to reflect a common experience of young women as feeling free and powerful, yet ultimately finding themselves at the mercy of a male dominated society, it is important that the young female reader insert themselves quickly into this plot.
Oates pushes the reader through a twenty-six year life of tragedy wherein American society attempts to tell women that they are independent and powerful. "You love the life you’ve lived, you’re an American girl. You believe you have chosen it" (152). Kelly believes this too even as through her memories we see that the projections of her independence have been framed through what others allowed her to be. She is defined not by her accomplishments, but by who she is in relation to men. She is defined always as "somebody’s little girl" (45) and as something helplessly being acted upon: "I’ve made you want me, now I can’t refuse you" (115). Even the possibility of her death is described in a fashion that reads like a rape scene as Kelly understands that the illusion of her control is simply that - an illusion. She reflects on being "rendered incapable of screaming and… from the first instant of realizing herself out of control, the fate of her physical body out of control of her brain, she had had no coherent perception of what in fact was happening" (10).
Still, no matter how many times the story comes back to the present moment where Kelly is trying to keep her head above the thick, murky water, she persists in her youthful trust. She holds tightly to the idea of "Daddy’s authority" (52) and the interest of the Senator in her as being enough to save her. She ignores the way she has been used and clings to the hope that the very men who use her and fight to keep her secretly powerless will be the ones to save her. In her delusional state, Kelly continually imagines that the Senator will come back for her or she sees herself reaching up for her fathers arms. It is this misplaced trust in older men that has been her downfall and yet, she reaches to that place even in death. Perhaps this constant trust at our own expense is what it truly means to be an "American girl".
Though it is lost on Kelly, it is not lost on the reader that the Senator literally used Kelly’s body to push himself out of the car to safety. It is described so pitifully that even Kelly must acknowledge how her girlfriends would laugh at her: as she grabs at his foot in a desperate plea for help, he kicks her to make her let go, pushes off of her body to force himself up toward the surface of the water. She is left, still trapped in the car, clinging to his shoe as if the shoe itself might save her. This underscores the unspoken idea throughout Black Water that a man will use a woman to create more power for himself while creating the illusion that she has more power by allowing herself to be used.
Kelly falls prey constantly to the ideas thrust upon young American women by society. She believes that when something goes wrong, it is her fault and that love will save the day. Even as she is facing the possibility of dying in the dark alone, her thoughts drift toward this horrifying death being something perhaps she deserves, "as if to punish her for her behavior her performance as a self not herself" (48). She punishes herself for not speaking up sooner and questioning the Senator on being lost. Still, she believes everything will be ok if she trusts in love, because this is what she has been taught to believe. "Mommy, Daddy, hey I love you, you know that I hope, please don’t let me die I love you, okay" (119) changes to her offering to love the Senator in a last act of desperation. "She wasn’t in love but she would love him, if that would save her. She’d never loved any man… but she would love that man if it would save her" (152).
Despite Kelly’s inability to see her lack of power and independence in the situation, the reader can see it all the more clearly through the scope of the tragedy. It is a potent reminder then to young American women that we must not rely on others to save us; we must turn the idea of choosing our lives into a reality. The powerful connection with Kelly and her internal state allows the reader to understand how being an "American girl" is actually hegemonic code for withstanding the debasement of women. Oates provides both a memorable story and an important warning.
One of the first things Oates tells us about Kelly is that she has no voice with men. When faced with a situation that involves speaking up to men "you could not speak, there were no words" (5). This introduces us to Kelly’s dilemma, but the use of the second person is a stylistic bit of genius that pulls the reader even further into identification with Kelly. Since the story is written to reflect a common experience of young women as feeling free and powerful, yet ultimately finding themselves at the mercy of a male dominated society, it is important that the young female reader insert themselves quickly into this plot.
Oates pushes the reader through a twenty-six year life of tragedy wherein American society attempts to tell women that they are independent and powerful. "You love the life you’ve lived, you’re an American girl. You believe you have chosen it" (152). Kelly believes this too even as through her memories we see that the projections of her independence have been framed through what others allowed her to be. She is defined not by her accomplishments, but by who she is in relation to men. She is defined always as "somebody’s little girl" (45) and as something helplessly being acted upon: "I’ve made you want me, now I can’t refuse you" (115). Even the possibility of her death is described in a fashion that reads like a rape scene as Kelly understands that the illusion of her control is simply that - an illusion. She reflects on being "rendered incapable of screaming and… from the first instant of realizing herself out of control, the fate of her physical body out of control of her brain, she had had no coherent perception of what in fact was happening" (10).
Still, no matter how many times the story comes back to the present moment where Kelly is trying to keep her head above the thick, murky water, she persists in her youthful trust. She holds tightly to the idea of "Daddy’s authority" (52) and the interest of the Senator in her as being enough to save her. She ignores the way she has been used and clings to the hope that the very men who use her and fight to keep her secretly powerless will be the ones to save her. In her delusional state, Kelly continually imagines that the Senator will come back for her or she sees herself reaching up for her fathers arms. It is this misplaced trust in older men that has been her downfall and yet, she reaches to that place even in death. Perhaps this constant trust at our own expense is what it truly means to be an "American girl".
Though it is lost on Kelly, it is not lost on the reader that the Senator literally used Kelly’s body to push himself out of the car to safety. It is described so pitifully that even Kelly must acknowledge how her girlfriends would laugh at her: as she grabs at his foot in a desperate plea for help, he kicks her to make her let go, pushes off of her body to force himself up toward the surface of the water. She is left, still trapped in the car, clinging to his shoe as if the shoe itself might save her. This underscores the unspoken idea throughout Black Water that a man will use a woman to create more power for himself while creating the illusion that she has more power by allowing herself to be used.
Kelly falls prey constantly to the ideas thrust upon young American women by society. She believes that when something goes wrong, it is her fault and that love will save the day. Even as she is facing the possibility of dying in the dark alone, her thoughts drift toward this horrifying death being something perhaps she deserves, "as if to punish her for her behavior her performance as a self not herself" (48). She punishes herself for not speaking up sooner and questioning the Senator on being lost. Still, she believes everything will be ok if she trusts in love, because this is what she has been taught to believe. "Mommy, Daddy, hey I love you, you know that I hope, please don’t let me die I love you, okay" (119) changes to her offering to love the Senator in a last act of desperation. "She wasn’t in love but she would love him, if that would save her. She’d never loved any man… but she would love that man if it would save her" (152).
Despite Kelly’s inability to see her lack of power and independence in the situation, the reader can see it all the more clearly through the scope of the tragedy. It is a potent reminder then to young American women that we must not rely on others to save us; we must turn the idea of choosing our lives into a reality. The powerful connection with Kelly and her internal state allows the reader to understand how being an "American girl" is actually hegemonic code for withstanding the debasement of women. Oates provides both a memorable story and an important warning.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Making the system work for you
Though Teena Maguire is brutally raped by a gang of drug addled boys and is told by everyone around her that it must be her fault, she and her twelve year old daughter find a way to make the very system that betrayed them work for them. Rape: A Love Story shows in a series of subtle maneuvers how it is possible for a person with seemingly little power to influence circumstances around them in an effort to achieve great things. Through their actions, both intentional and accidental, Teena and Bethel lure officer Dromoor onto their side and use him as their tool of justice. Since Dromoor works for the male dominated justice system, the women are able to use his standing as the perfect cover for their revenge without having fingers point back to them accusingly. This proves an interesting plot twist as the rage and violence often portrayed against women by men is now being inflicted on men by another man at the will of a woman. Teena and Bethel prey on Dromoor in a way, taking advantage of his male need to play the white knight, but because of willingness to fill this role, both women love him. This disturbing tale is certainly not your typical love story, but it does show a love born out of necessity and circumstance... a love orchestrated by women who understand the very male attitudes that were turned brutally against them can be skillfully turned to work for them as well. Through this, Oates demonstrates that the social beliefs that turn women into victims are the very same ones that can be turned to make women strong, even if that cannot be voiced as loudly.
Aside from telling the story of Teena's rape, the beginning of the book sets up many important ideas for the reader. One of the first things Oates tells us about Dromoor (before we even know his name) is "he liked the idea of justice... putting-things-back-to-right he liked. Such abstractions as law, good conduct, valor in service, eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth" (7). The next important bit of information Oates conveys is about the correlation between life and luck. She writes, "How a life is decided. How a life is ended. Good luck, bad luck. Purely luck" (16) which begins to erode the concept of accountability. After all, is something is purely luck, than nobody is truly at fault for a thing gone wrong. In direct opposition to that is the argument that simply by her behavior or style of dress, Teena "had it coming. Asked for it" (19). While there cannot be an argument in which someone is to blame and yet nobody is to blame since it is only a matter of luck, this confused pattern of thought allows the rest of the story to make sense.
The first sign of weakness seen in women is the simple fact of their womanhood. By being feminine, enjoying her body, and exhibiting herself as a woman, Teena became a target. The rapists, their lawyer, and even the judge use the fact that Teena was wearing short shorts, high heels, and make-up to justify the argument that she provoked her attack. Since her daughter is female and related to her, she must have also been asking for it despite the fact that she is only twelve years old; "like mother, like daughter in that family" people think (22).
The next strike used against Teena and Bethel by the system is youth. Though Teena is thirty-five, she behaves in a more youthful manner. Bethie is of course not even a teenager, but yet her childhood has been stolen from her. Nevertheless, and despite the fact that she is old enough to have been the target of a violent sexual attack, it is argued that she is too young to reliably testify about what happened to her and her mother. "How can the child be sure? How can we believe her? How can a child of twelve swear? How can a child of twelve testify" (43)? These are the questions posed by a corrupt lawyer attempting to prove his rapist clients not guilty.
Related to youth is the idea of women as vulnerable and helpless. It was fairly obvious to the men at the scene of the crime that these two women would not be able to stop them from having their fun. These women, even coupled with their female lawyer would never have the power to stop them from getting away with any crime they chose to commit. After all, women have no power in this male dominated society and the entire court process seems like a way of reminding every woman in the courtroom of that fact.
These very points that serve to turn women into victims and objects are the points that work in their favor when it is time to seek their revenge. When Dromoor was called to the scene of the rape, "there was the girl dazed sitting on the grass, and Dromoor saw the look of her, the torn clothing, bloodied face, the way one of her arms hung wrongly, and he knew it must be rape" (35). From the moment he sees this young, vulnerable girl, he is drawn into their saga. He thinks about them, checks on Teena in the hospital, and even ensures that they have his phone number should they need him. Dromoor's male driven knight-in-shining-armor complex gets the best of him and the Maguire women are not above using it to their advantage.
When Dromoor attends the initial court case against the men who raped Teena, his sense of justice is brutally battered. He feels that the law as failed, and as a man who likes the idea of right, he feels compelled to help these women who seem too helpless to do anything for themselves against the powerful system. As Dromoor comes to their rescue more and more often, especially as he starts killing the rapists in a vigilante way, Teena and Bethel begin to love him because he allows them to feel safe again. This love is returned in a way because it allows Dromoor to feel needed and as if he is providing real justice. While the men who abused and raped Teena and her daughter took advantage of a perceived weakness in their victims, Teena and Bethel also take advantage of Dromoor's need to play the savior.
Although he is not a victim, Dromoor is certainly prey to feminine stereotypes that led Teena to be victimized. The parts of women that are exploited as weaknesses by the legal system and by the town are used as strengths to get a man on their side. Without Dromoor being drawn to the idea of female vulnerability and need, he would not have felt so compelled to come to their rescue. While it is not spoken that Bethel and Teena are intentionally playing into Dromoor's white knight complex, they both seem to act just a bit more needy when he is around; it is he they call when they are afraid; it is he who Bethel gives distressed eyes to while she is throwing the female lawyer out of their home.
Perhaps it is all coincidence within the plot of Oates' story, but nevertheless, the message exists: the things that appear to make women weak can easily be turned into strengths when framed in the right light.
Aside from telling the story of Teena's rape, the beginning of the book sets up many important ideas for the reader. One of the first things Oates tells us about Dromoor (before we even know his name) is "he liked the idea of justice... putting-things-back-to-right he liked. Such abstractions as law, good conduct, valor in service, eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth" (7). The next important bit of information Oates conveys is about the correlation between life and luck. She writes, "How a life is decided. How a life is ended. Good luck, bad luck. Purely luck" (16) which begins to erode the concept of accountability. After all, is something is purely luck, than nobody is truly at fault for a thing gone wrong. In direct opposition to that is the argument that simply by her behavior or style of dress, Teena "had it coming. Asked for it" (19). While there cannot be an argument in which someone is to blame and yet nobody is to blame since it is only a matter of luck, this confused pattern of thought allows the rest of the story to make sense.
The first sign of weakness seen in women is the simple fact of their womanhood. By being feminine, enjoying her body, and exhibiting herself as a woman, Teena became a target. The rapists, their lawyer, and even the judge use the fact that Teena was wearing short shorts, high heels, and make-up to justify the argument that she provoked her attack. Since her daughter is female and related to her, she must have also been asking for it despite the fact that she is only twelve years old; "like mother, like daughter in that family" people think (22).
The next strike used against Teena and Bethel by the system is youth. Though Teena is thirty-five, she behaves in a more youthful manner. Bethie is of course not even a teenager, but yet her childhood has been stolen from her. Nevertheless, and despite the fact that she is old enough to have been the target of a violent sexual attack, it is argued that she is too young to reliably testify about what happened to her and her mother. "How can the child be sure? How can we believe her? How can a child of twelve swear? How can a child of twelve testify" (43)? These are the questions posed by a corrupt lawyer attempting to prove his rapist clients not guilty.
Related to youth is the idea of women as vulnerable and helpless. It was fairly obvious to the men at the scene of the crime that these two women would not be able to stop them from having their fun. These women, even coupled with their female lawyer would never have the power to stop them from getting away with any crime they chose to commit. After all, women have no power in this male dominated society and the entire court process seems like a way of reminding every woman in the courtroom of that fact.
These very points that serve to turn women into victims and objects are the points that work in their favor when it is time to seek their revenge. When Dromoor was called to the scene of the rape, "there was the girl dazed sitting on the grass, and Dromoor saw the look of her, the torn clothing, bloodied face, the way one of her arms hung wrongly, and he knew it must be rape" (35). From the moment he sees this young, vulnerable girl, he is drawn into their saga. He thinks about them, checks on Teena in the hospital, and even ensures that they have his phone number should they need him. Dromoor's male driven knight-in-shining-armor complex gets the best of him and the Maguire women are not above using it to their advantage.
When Dromoor attends the initial court case against the men who raped Teena, his sense of justice is brutally battered. He feels that the law as failed, and as a man who likes the idea of right, he feels compelled to help these women who seem too helpless to do anything for themselves against the powerful system. As Dromoor comes to their rescue more and more often, especially as he starts killing the rapists in a vigilante way, Teena and Bethel begin to love him because he allows them to feel safe again. This love is returned in a way because it allows Dromoor to feel needed and as if he is providing real justice. While the men who abused and raped Teena and her daughter took advantage of a perceived weakness in their victims, Teena and Bethel also take advantage of Dromoor's need to play the savior.
Although he is not a victim, Dromoor is certainly prey to feminine stereotypes that led Teena to be victimized. The parts of women that are exploited as weaknesses by the legal system and by the town are used as strengths to get a man on their side. Without Dromoor being drawn to the idea of female vulnerability and need, he would not have felt so compelled to come to their rescue. While it is not spoken that Bethel and Teena are intentionally playing into Dromoor's white knight complex, they both seem to act just a bit more needy when he is around; it is he they call when they are afraid; it is he who Bethel gives distressed eyes to while she is throwing the female lawyer out of their home.
Perhaps it is all coincidence within the plot of Oates' story, but nevertheless, the message exists: the things that appear to make women weak can easily be turned into strengths when framed in the right light.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Loss of Light, Loss of Life
"... a figure of sorts in stone, aluminum, and bronze, displayed proudly in front of the school library: 'Solstice' was it's enigmatic name" (41)
The winter solstice occurs in December and brings with it the longest night. On this day, the sunlight hours are brief and we are submerged into a lengthy period of darkness. This time of year is associated for many with the beginning of a death/rebirth cycle. During the long nights of the winter months, there is traditionally more death, starvation, loss of energy, a general feeling of ennui, etc. The beautiful part of it though is that the world continues to turn and ultimately, the Earth comes through this dark time to face the bright sunny days of spring and summer again. Thus, from our darkest days, we are brought back into the light.
This symbolic look at the solstice provides some insight to the novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates. Solstice traces the darkest days of Monica Jensen and Sheila Trask. The two women seem to repeat their own solstice cycles throughout the novel. Monica has recently gone through an abortion, a divorce, and a complete mental breakdown; Sheila has recently lost her husband and not recovered from this staggering blow. The two seemingly come through these dark times and find their worlds revolving necessarily together.
For a brief period, Monica and Sheila both seem stable and content together. They bring to each other a needed friendship yet they have their outside passions: Monica has found passion in her teaching while Sheila finds passion in her art. Sheila begins her descent into darkness as Monica watches and tries to understand it. Sheila explains, "it [is] just December: the approach of the solstice: the malaise of relentlessly darkening days and relentlessly lengthening nights" (75). During this time, Sheila begins to slip away, until ultimately Monica is afraid her friend will kill herself. Sheila develops an obsession with the idea of death which is spoken in chapter nine of part two: "Always and forever mortality. Nothing else engages me, nothing else terrifies me..." (110). During this time, Sheila loses her passion for her work and has to create an alter ego (Sherrill Ann) as a way to survive these dark times and maintain some sense of passionate abandon in her life.
Monica seems to be the one in control during these dark times for Sheila, but the balance shifts slowly as the world keeps spinning. At Sheila's lowest point on Christmas as we believe she may kill herself, Monica is arguably at her best. This balance begins to shift immediately after the episode at Sheila's door, which is almost exactly the mid point of the book. It is here that the dark side of the Earth's surface begins to spin in Monica's direction.
As Sheila comes out of the dark and regains her ability to travel, to work, to care about things - Monica loses it in equal proportion. She loses her passion for her work and for her students. She loses interest in her friendship with Sheila and in her relationship with her coworkers. Much as Sheila became singularly obsessed with her work and slid into darkness, Monica's slide into darkness focuses on a singular obsession with Sheila. As the world of the novel rotates, Sheila is working again and moving closer toward her show opening. Though she still needs Monica to help her organize her life and prevent her descent back into darkness, it is clear that she is on her way back to the light as Monica is falling: "falling asleep, falling sick. Falling" (214).
As the solstice falls on Monica's life, it is Sheila who has to act as the stabilizing force. On the night of Monica's personal solstice - on the darkest night - Sheila calls an ambulance and rides with Monica to the hospital. There is no indication in the last line: "...we'll be friends for a long, long time... unless one of us dies" (224) of exactly what is to happen to Monica, but from the meaning of the solstice imagery, it can be hoped that she will recover and start her ascent into the light again as she did after her divorce.
As the loss of light during the solstice is explored as equivalent to a loss of life, it is worthwhile to look at another "curious phenomenon" (194). Just before her final plunge into illness and near death, Monica notices daffodils outside in the school yard and reflects on the fact "that when daffodils pass their prime their petals become paper-thin. The colorful centers remain (yellow, orangish-yellow) but the outer petals turn transparent" (194). Monica is certainly facing her transparent stage, but the image she has in her head shows a sense of life still within her core. It is fitting then that the daffodil is a symbol much like the solstice. It is a flower representative of renewed life after a dark and troubling time.
The combined power of these images and the last line spoken by Sheila serves as an indication that the two women will live on to get each other through these natural life cycles for years to come. They will have their ups and downs, and hopefully while one is suffering their internal solstice, they will have the supporting "sunlight" of the other. The entire novel serves as a reminder that our darkest days in life are best reflected upon as a time of solstice... it does not end in darkness, because the world continues to spin and will come close to the sun again. A momentary loss of light does not mean we are doomed to a loss of life, but rather that we must weather these hard times so that we can rise up again and find our passion and joy.
The winter solstice occurs in December and brings with it the longest night. On this day, the sunlight hours are brief and we are submerged into a lengthy period of darkness. This time of year is associated for many with the beginning of a death/rebirth cycle. During the long nights of the winter months, there is traditionally more death, starvation, loss of energy, a general feeling of ennui, etc. The beautiful part of it though is that the world continues to turn and ultimately, the Earth comes through this dark time to face the bright sunny days of spring and summer again. Thus, from our darkest days, we are brought back into the light.
This symbolic look at the solstice provides some insight to the novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates. Solstice traces the darkest days of Monica Jensen and Sheila Trask. The two women seem to repeat their own solstice cycles throughout the novel. Monica has recently gone through an abortion, a divorce, and a complete mental breakdown; Sheila has recently lost her husband and not recovered from this staggering blow. The two seemingly come through these dark times and find their worlds revolving necessarily together.
For a brief period, Monica and Sheila both seem stable and content together. They bring to each other a needed friendship yet they have their outside passions: Monica has found passion in her teaching while Sheila finds passion in her art. Sheila begins her descent into darkness as Monica watches and tries to understand it. Sheila explains, "it [is] just December: the approach of the solstice: the malaise of relentlessly darkening days and relentlessly lengthening nights" (75). During this time, Sheila begins to slip away, until ultimately Monica is afraid her friend will kill herself. Sheila develops an obsession with the idea of death which is spoken in chapter nine of part two: "Always and forever mortality. Nothing else engages me, nothing else terrifies me..." (110). During this time, Sheila loses her passion for her work and has to create an alter ego (Sherrill Ann) as a way to survive these dark times and maintain some sense of passionate abandon in her life.
Monica seems to be the one in control during these dark times for Sheila, but the balance shifts slowly as the world keeps spinning. At Sheila's lowest point on Christmas as we believe she may kill herself, Monica is arguably at her best. This balance begins to shift immediately after the episode at Sheila's door, which is almost exactly the mid point of the book. It is here that the dark side of the Earth's surface begins to spin in Monica's direction.
As Sheila comes out of the dark and regains her ability to travel, to work, to care about things - Monica loses it in equal proportion. She loses her passion for her work and for her students. She loses interest in her friendship with Sheila and in her relationship with her coworkers. Much as Sheila became singularly obsessed with her work and slid into darkness, Monica's slide into darkness focuses on a singular obsession with Sheila. As the world of the novel rotates, Sheila is working again and moving closer toward her show opening. Though she still needs Monica to help her organize her life and prevent her descent back into darkness, it is clear that she is on her way back to the light as Monica is falling: "falling asleep, falling sick. Falling" (214).
As the solstice falls on Monica's life, it is Sheila who has to act as the stabilizing force. On the night of Monica's personal solstice - on the darkest night - Sheila calls an ambulance and rides with Monica to the hospital. There is no indication in the last line: "...we'll be friends for a long, long time... unless one of us dies" (224) of exactly what is to happen to Monica, but from the meaning of the solstice imagery, it can be hoped that she will recover and start her ascent into the light again as she did after her divorce.
As the loss of light during the solstice is explored as equivalent to a loss of life, it is worthwhile to look at another "curious phenomenon" (194). Just before her final plunge into illness and near death, Monica notices daffodils outside in the school yard and reflects on the fact "that when daffodils pass their prime their petals become paper-thin. The colorful centers remain (yellow, orangish-yellow) but the outer petals turn transparent" (194). Monica is certainly facing her transparent stage, but the image she has in her head shows a sense of life still within her core. It is fitting then that the daffodil is a symbol much like the solstice. It is a flower representative of renewed life after a dark and troubling time.
The combined power of these images and the last line spoken by Sheila serves as an indication that the two women will live on to get each other through these natural life cycles for years to come. They will have their ups and downs, and hopefully while one is suffering their internal solstice, they will have the supporting "sunlight" of the other. The entire novel serves as a reminder that our darkest days in life are best reflected upon as a time of solstice... it does not end in darkness, because the world continues to spin and will come close to the sun again. A momentary loss of light does not mean we are doomed to a loss of life, but rather that we must weather these hard times so that we can rise up again and find our passion and joy.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Invention of Independent Identity
In Joyce Carol Oates' Do With Me What You Will, the characters seem to change very little over the course of five hundred plus pages. Though toward the end, there are some important shifts in the characters and their sense of identity, it is Ardis Carter who displays the most marked transformations during the novel. As a woman who sought independence at an early age, Ardis has spent her entire lifetime creating new identities for herself.
After chastising her daughter Elena for not being "normal", Ardis goes on to say how important it is to be independent. "When I was your age, I was totally independent. Of other people, of other people's ideas of me. I didn't give a damn for anybody", Ardis tells Elena bragging about her youth (88). This sense of independence gives Ardis the ability to do something that few people seem capable of; it gives her the ability to decide for herself who and what she will be. Ardis even tells Elena early on: "we're our own ideas, we make ourselves up; some women let men make them up... they're helpless to invent themselves... but not me, I'm nobody's idea but my own" (79).
Clearly, Ardis has ideas for new inventions regularly. She is seen as this nearly mythical creature - as someone who was never a child - by her ex-husband. She creates herself as the perfect, devoted creature for Mr. Karman until she gets what she wants from him. Ardis even changes her and Elena's last name and asks Elena to "guess how much they're worth - our lovely last names" (72). To Ardis, a name is an easy thing to change because it is only a label for her creation and her creation is simply a thing to help her get what she wants.
After arriving in Detroit and arranging a successful marriage for her daughter, Ardis thinks up a new creation named Marya Sharp. When Elena is introduced to Marya for the first time, she doesn't quite know how to react: "Elena looked at Marya Sharp's face and saw it shift slowly into the face of someone she knew" (138). Marya confirmed that she was Elena's mother and referred to the cosmetic surgery she had done, the name she'd "taken on" (139), and her new television show.
Not long after this meeting, Elena runs into a woman while out shopping who she is certain is her mother. "The woman smiled in recognition, happily" (152), but tells Elena she is mistaken. The woman introduces herself as Olivia Larkin and proceeds to tell an entire tale of how she has been repeatedly mistaken for Marya Sharp, how she and Elena have previously met, and how flattering it is to be mistaken for a woman like Marya. Meanwhile, Elena is certain this is her mother simply assuming one more creation.
Instances like this happen often for Elena because one could never be too certain what face or personality Ardis would put on from one day to the next. The whole thing was terribly confusing to Elena who sometimes "noticed a woman who resembled her mother" (382), but was afraid to say anything for fear of being mistaken. At other times, Elena did not see her mother at all and was later admonished for ignoring her mother when they had both been in the same place.
Ardis seems to be such a successful chameleon that these changes of persona and identity cease to come as a surprise. It is then, not surprising at all to discover Marya is engaged to be married to a gentlemen from London who Elena had never even heard of. It is less surprising that the marriage takes place secretly with Marya having already moved to London by the time Elena hears of it next. Marya has taken on a new identity of Mrs. Nigel Stock and is quite as committed to it as to any of her previous roles. She is determined that she "will make a permanent home... not just be a 'transplanted' American" (458).
Although it can be argued that all identity is nothing more than a surface performance, Ardis seems to be the queen of the stage. With an effortless grace, Ardis shifts from one identity to another in an attempt to get for herself whatever she most wants. She says in her farewell, "those of you who know me will understand what this kind of life will mean to me" (458), yet the only conclusion to draw from that is she means the type of life where nobody will know her at all and she is free to reinvent herself as often as she wishes in a new place. Ultimately, it seems as though this choice to invent and reinvent an independent identity is fulfilling to Ardis. Though she changes herself constantly, it seems to always be on her terms and her means seems to always bring about her desired end. Perhaps, Oates argues through this character we all should all strive to create an identity that makes us happy and fulfilled rather than allowing other people to define us through their eyes. A little power and control over ourselves and who we are clearly goes a long way to true freedom.
After chastising her daughter Elena for not being "normal", Ardis goes on to say how important it is to be independent. "When I was your age, I was totally independent. Of other people, of other people's ideas of me. I didn't give a damn for anybody", Ardis tells Elena bragging about her youth (88). This sense of independence gives Ardis the ability to do something that few people seem capable of; it gives her the ability to decide for herself who and what she will be. Ardis even tells Elena early on: "we're our own ideas, we make ourselves up; some women let men make them up... they're helpless to invent themselves... but not me, I'm nobody's idea but my own" (79).
Clearly, Ardis has ideas for new inventions regularly. She is seen as this nearly mythical creature - as someone who was never a child - by her ex-husband. She creates herself as the perfect, devoted creature for Mr. Karman until she gets what she wants from him. Ardis even changes her and Elena's last name and asks Elena to "guess how much they're worth - our lovely last names" (72). To Ardis, a name is an easy thing to change because it is only a label for her creation and her creation is simply a thing to help her get what she wants.
After arriving in Detroit and arranging a successful marriage for her daughter, Ardis thinks up a new creation named Marya Sharp. When Elena is introduced to Marya for the first time, she doesn't quite know how to react: "Elena looked at Marya Sharp's face and saw it shift slowly into the face of someone she knew" (138). Marya confirmed that she was Elena's mother and referred to the cosmetic surgery she had done, the name she'd "taken on" (139), and her new television show.
Not long after this meeting, Elena runs into a woman while out shopping who she is certain is her mother. "The woman smiled in recognition, happily" (152), but tells Elena she is mistaken. The woman introduces herself as Olivia Larkin and proceeds to tell an entire tale of how she has been repeatedly mistaken for Marya Sharp, how she and Elena have previously met, and how flattering it is to be mistaken for a woman like Marya. Meanwhile, Elena is certain this is her mother simply assuming one more creation.
Instances like this happen often for Elena because one could never be too certain what face or personality Ardis would put on from one day to the next. The whole thing was terribly confusing to Elena who sometimes "noticed a woman who resembled her mother" (382), but was afraid to say anything for fear of being mistaken. At other times, Elena did not see her mother at all and was later admonished for ignoring her mother when they had both been in the same place.
Ardis seems to be such a successful chameleon that these changes of persona and identity cease to come as a surprise. It is then, not surprising at all to discover Marya is engaged to be married to a gentlemen from London who Elena had never even heard of. It is less surprising that the marriage takes place secretly with Marya having already moved to London by the time Elena hears of it next. Marya has taken on a new identity of Mrs. Nigel Stock and is quite as committed to it as to any of her previous roles. She is determined that she "will make a permanent home... not just be a 'transplanted' American" (458).
Although it can be argued that all identity is nothing more than a surface performance, Ardis seems to be the queen of the stage. With an effortless grace, Ardis shifts from one identity to another in an attempt to get for herself whatever she most wants. She says in her farewell, "those of you who know me will understand what this kind of life will mean to me" (458), yet the only conclusion to draw from that is she means the type of life where nobody will know her at all and she is free to reinvent herself as often as she wishes in a new place. Ultimately, it seems as though this choice to invent and reinvent an independent identity is fulfilling to Ardis. Though she changes herself constantly, it seems to always be on her terms and her means seems to always bring about her desired end. Perhaps, Oates argues through this character we all should all strive to create an identity that makes us happy and fulfilled rather than allowing other people to define us through their eyes. A little power and control over ourselves and who we are clearly goes a long way to true freedom.
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