On the one hand, "The End" is much like the other stories in this first set. The narrator fits the pattern of at least slightly crazy, expelled, somehow deformed or defective (keeps talking about people being horrified when they see his skull), etc., etc. At the end of "The End," it seems that the character either commits suicide or dies naturally. Another thoroughly happy Beckett story about the misery of existence in a world where there is no meaning.
But I'm going to try to take a slightly different approach. Partly because I saw an alternate reading that I thought might be interesting and partly because I do get tired of analyzing the existential drone of horror, boredom and hopelessness. Instead of seeing "The End" as the tale of the last days of an individual who is far from healthy or sane, I thought it might be interesting to look at it as a story of his life as a whole.
Beckett begins, "They clothed me and gave me money." Eventually, after several readings, I asked, "So who gives us clothes and money." In my case, the first people to give me clothes and money were my parents. (Well, my grandparents may have beat them to the punch, ever so slightly, but you get the picture.) This led me to the initial thought behind the idea above – this isn't just about the narrators end-of-life, it is about his whole life. So, starting from this premise, where else does it lead us?
The narrator says that the money was "to get me started." This part is the story of a beginning. The next sentences talk about how the narrator will need to get more money when this is gone, and shoes and so forth, suggesting a child leaving home for the first time to make his way in the world.
Then Beckett tells us that, "The clothes… were not new, but the deceased must have been about my size." He has inherited his clothes from a dead man, much as he inherited his ancestry, his genes and environmental effects on his psyche from a man who "died" (to use the term in the Shakespearean, Much Ado About Nothing sense). It's also worth noting that the dead man was "about [his] size" but "a little shorter, a little thinner." Children are often about the same size as their parents unless there is a marked disparity in their parents' sizes. This is simple genetics. It is also worth noting that, historically, humans have become taller over the centuries as food supplies and other health factors have improved, so it would not be unusual for a child to be slightly taller than his father, but not so much so that he couldn't wear his father's clothes.
The narrator asks for his old clothes back, but the institutions warders have destroyed his clothes. He cannot go back to them. They are discarded much as a caul might be discarded, or the afterbirth. Much as it is impossible to literally return to the womb. The removal of the bed linens and breakdown and removal of the bed (79) also fit this pattern. Perhaps a better analogy for these discarded components is the amniotic fluid, which is lost at the beginning of the birth process (when the mother's water breaks).
The narrator also uses this juncture to mention that he wants a different hat, one he can pull down over his face because he "could not go about bare-headed, with [his] skull in the state it was" (79). Infants are born with soft spots in their skull to ease the birthing process. This deformity of the skull suggests this condition. In most children, these soft spots close as the skull matures, but some children have a condition that leaves the soft spots open for years or permanently. Perhaps the narrator is simply referring to the usual case, or perhaps he has an effective soft spot in his skull that lets in things he would rather keep out.
Not wishing to leave, the narrator draws out his time in the institution. He asks if he could stay if he could make himself useful (80). His warder, Mr. Weir, tells him he cannot be useful and must leave. In a similar way, a child takes from the mother's body and offers little in return beyond possibly a sense of emotional wellbeing. At a certain point, the charity of the mother's body must cease. The child must leave. It is not useful to the body anymore.
Still longing to linger, the narrator gets permission to wait in the vestibule of the institution until the rain ends or until six o'clock. Likewise, a child in a difficult birth seems to linger in the womb or in the birth canal. Finally, an intern tells him that, with the rain ended, he must leave, and exits the institution, born into the world.
The next image is walking through a garden in the beautiful post-rain light and seeing a child "stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, ask[ing] his mother how such a thing was possible" (81). This echoes the newborn's initial stretching, grasping motions. The doubtless amazement as it begins to process light that is unfiltered by the mother's body. The sensory rush that is the infant's first, direct observation of the new world, the new womb, in which it will live.
The mother's response is telling. "F--k off." Not only is the new world amazing, it is horrifying. Horrifying for its sensory overload. Horrifying for its dryness. Horrifying for its coldness. Horrifying for its silence – the absence of the steady sounds of the mother's body that the newborn has always known. Horrifying for its clamor of strange, sharp, loud, irregular, confusing noise. The child is effectively thrust into the world unprepared. It feels like it's mother has rejected it, told it to f--k off.
The narrator remembers he "[forgot to ask] Mr. Weir for a piece of bread." The newborn is suddenly without food. Everything it has needed was supplied by the mother directly. Now feeding is mediated by the mouth. It is soon hungry, looking for food, water. Even waste removal is more complicated. But there is no turning back. Departure is complete. There is no return to the mother's body. The child has been born.
29 September 2008
24 September 2008
ENG4013 - Sexual Difference & Queer
Dr. M spent a lot of time talking about Lacan's extensions of Freud's ideas on desire last week. A couple of general notes. While Freud says that the original desire is the mother's breast (though note that shouldn't be seen as precisely literal, just for the things that implies – warmth, comfort, food, etc. – so single fathers or bottle-feeding mothers, don't feel you can't meet that) Lacan says there is no original desire. Desire is part of what we are and is never satisfied. When desire is satisfied, we have no reason to live. On the whole, I thought Lacan was a bit out on a limb, sawing on the wrong side, but, hey, this way of thinking apparently makes some people feel better. As the title of a Steve Taylor song says, "Since I gave up hope, I feel a lot better." (The song is full of such irony.)
This week, we're reading the chapters "Sexual Difference" and "Queer." Questions to consider:
Sexual Difference
As best I can tell "essentialism" is B&R's way of saying "fundamentalism" while avoiding the religious connotations that have attached to that term. According to B&R, essentialization of gender says that there is essentially one form of sexual difference – the anatomical or biological difference between male and female. B&R contend that gender stereotypes are built on top of that essentalist view. They then launch into a discussion of phallocentrism and phallogocentrism, which doesn't mean quite what one might think. Basically, these come down to the idea of "patriarchy" which B&R equate with the idea that there is some "unity of meaning" or "certainty of origin" that some meanings are "legitmate" and others "illegitimate" and that the author (and author's intent) actually matter. So, basically, the reverse (which seems to be "feminism") says that text can mean whatever you want it to mean (as long as it doesn't offend the feminist critics). Somehow I detect a whiff of inconsistency here. As far as significance, it means you can read whatever "gender" you wish into a given text and that literary works are not inherently "feminist… masculinist or … sexist" – which seems to say that however you read a text in terms of gender, it's all in your head and you'll never be able to prove it right or wrong (and shouldn't beat people over the head if they don't agree with you).
Dr. M explained that deconstruction is about identifying a "hierarchy" or relationshp where one side of the relationship has privilege or power over the other, then inverting that hierarchy and transforming the relationship. He noted that it isn't enough to just reverse the relationship, you have to break some part of the underlying assumption of the relationship. So, last week we talked about the triangular relationship where A and C both desire B and therefore B becomes a powerless object with no desire. Deconstruction would require us to refigure the relationship so that B gained power without totally disempowering A and C.
B&R identify the hierarchy in "The Yellow Wallpaper" in terms of the male/female relationship expressed and focusing on the male=rational/female=irrational idea that is developed in following: "John is practical to the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures." They suggest that this can be read to present rationalism as a type of superstition (John's dismissive attitude toward anything that challenges his beliefs or doesn't fit into them, his "horror" of superstition as a superstitious fear of superstition). So, while John is supposedly a rational man, he is inconsistent because he responds irrationally to the irrational. (B&R say this section is "concerned with a suspension of the logic of non-contradiction.")
Butler criticizes "identify politics" (associating oneself with a group, typically a minority group of some kind) because it is (she says) a form of essentialism that constrains the subjects it seeks to liberate and disempowers them because they must subjugate themselves to it.
If you think some of that seems convoluted or contradictory, I'm with you. Dr. M will probably clarify some of it during class.
Meanwhile, onto the idea that gender identity is performative. Butler says that gender identity (sexuality) is not biological (which ought to go over well with anyone who wants to find a "gay gene" or claim they were "born gay"). Rather, she says, it is created by a person's actions. So if you act straight or gay or bisexual or whatever, you are that. She also says that gender identity is learned and imitated (copies others who follow the pattern) and that, because gender identity is based on actions, it is all a "drag act."
Heady stuff. Ironically, it seems to say that gender identity is a choice. The actions we choose determine us, not genes, overbearing mothers, weak fathers, or the bully who picked on us. Wow! Who'd've thunk I'd find a liberal post-existentialist literary critic arguing that people are responsible for their actions, not things outside their control.
This week, we're reading the chapters "Sexual Difference" and "Queer." Questions to consider:
Sexual Difference
- Explain what essentialism and essentialization of gender signify
- Explain the two step process of deconstruction described for "The Yellow Wallpaper" or Daniel Deronda.
- Explain Judith Butler's critique of "identity politics."
- Explain what Butler means when she says gender identity is performative.
As best I can tell "essentialism" is B&R's way of saying "fundamentalism" while avoiding the religious connotations that have attached to that term. According to B&R, essentialization of gender says that there is essentially one form of sexual difference – the anatomical or biological difference between male and female. B&R contend that gender stereotypes are built on top of that essentalist view. They then launch into a discussion of phallocentrism and phallogocentrism, which doesn't mean quite what one might think. Basically, these come down to the idea of "patriarchy" which B&R equate with the idea that there is some "unity of meaning" or "certainty of origin" that some meanings are "legitmate" and others "illegitimate" and that the author (and author's intent) actually matter. So, basically, the reverse (which seems to be "feminism") says that text can mean whatever you want it to mean (as long as it doesn't offend the feminist critics). Somehow I detect a whiff of inconsistency here. As far as significance, it means you can read whatever "gender" you wish into a given text and that literary works are not inherently "feminist… masculinist or … sexist" – which seems to say that however you read a text in terms of gender, it's all in your head and you'll never be able to prove it right or wrong (and shouldn't beat people over the head if they don't agree with you).
Dr. M explained that deconstruction is about identifying a "hierarchy" or relationshp where one side of the relationship has privilege or power over the other, then inverting that hierarchy and transforming the relationship. He noted that it isn't enough to just reverse the relationship, you have to break some part of the underlying assumption of the relationship. So, last week we talked about the triangular relationship where A and C both desire B and therefore B becomes a powerless object with no desire. Deconstruction would require us to refigure the relationship so that B gained power without totally disempowering A and C.
B&R identify the hierarchy in "The Yellow Wallpaper" in terms of the male/female relationship expressed and focusing on the male=rational/female=irrational idea that is developed in following: "John is practical to the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures." They suggest that this can be read to present rationalism as a type of superstition (John's dismissive attitude toward anything that challenges his beliefs or doesn't fit into them, his "horror" of superstition as a superstitious fear of superstition). So, while John is supposedly a rational man, he is inconsistent because he responds irrationally to the irrational. (B&R say this section is "concerned with a suspension of the logic of non-contradiction.")
Butler criticizes "identify politics" (associating oneself with a group, typically a minority group of some kind) because it is (she says) a form of essentialism that constrains the subjects it seeks to liberate and disempowers them because they must subjugate themselves to it.
If you think some of that seems convoluted or contradictory, I'm with you. Dr. M will probably clarify some of it during class.
Meanwhile, onto the idea that gender identity is performative. Butler says that gender identity (sexuality) is not biological (which ought to go over well with anyone who wants to find a "gay gene" or claim they were "born gay"). Rather, she says, it is created by a person's actions. So if you act straight or gay or bisexual or whatever, you are that. She also says that gender identity is learned and imitated (copies others who follow the pattern) and that, because gender identity is based on actions, it is all a "drag act."
Heady stuff. Ironically, it seems to say that gender identity is a choice. The actions we choose determine us, not genes, overbearing mothers, weak fathers, or the bully who picked on us. Wow! Who'd've thunk I'd find a liberal post-existentialist literary critic arguing that people are responsible for their actions, not things outside their control.
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 04: The Calmative
"The Calmative." What to say? That's a tough one. The story starts with narrator telling us he's dead and proceeds through a surreal description of a bizarre city and its surroundings. The first time through, I thought of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dream-quest of Unknown Kadath." I read this story all the way through a couple of times and restarted it twice more. It was, finally, on the fourth time through that I made a few connections that helped me find a way to understand what was happening in the story.
First, let's note a few images or themes that are found in the other Beckett short stories so far. The narrator has been kicked out of at least one place, probably several. He remembers his father both fondly and with some ambivalence. His father was a significant presence in his childhood. The narrator has a hat. He seems slightly less insane that a "normal" person in the world outside the text. Near the end of the story, the narrator tries to see the stars to fix his position, but cannot see or find the stars for which he is looking. The narrator senses a group of unseen people watching him. Thus this story and its narrator share several points in common with other stories we've read so far and their narrators.
But, as I said, making sense of this one was hard. In part, this was because the narrator seems more disconnected from present reality than the previous narrators. The text is more wandering and disjointed than previous stories. What finally began to bring it together was the section in the second paragraph when the narrator says he is telling the story in the past tense even though it is happening now. While this could be a construct to beguile the reader into sensing the immediacy of the story, it seems an unlikely device. Using present tense for the story would accomplish this more effectively. Instead, I concluded that the narrator is saying that, what he is describing as if it were past tense is what is currently happening in his mind.
Then I connected that with the "assassins" the narrator fears and from which he is escaping into his refuge (the mental construct of the city and all that happens there). I tied these back to the sentence in the first paragraph where he tells about dreading several things. He talks about "the red lapses of the heart" – pauses in his heartbeat of which he is painfully aware (In a story I once wrote, one character tells another about hearing his heart stop and that he'd never really heard it beating before, and had not been able not to hear it beating since, so this idea resonates for me.) – and "the tearings at the caecal walls" – the feeling of matter moving through his intestines. This implies he is intensely aware of his body, which suggests his external senses or mobility or both are compromised. He also talks about "the slow killings… in my skull," which echoes a line from "The Expelled" where the narrator says, "Memory is killing."
From this, I developed an image of a person who has been immobilized by some physical trauma such as stroke, heart attack or paralysis. This is reinforced by the image of the sky falling upon him and him falling and calling for help (both in the first paragraph). His death is a figurative death. He is living dead, waiting to actually die. Or is this "death" from existential meaninglessness?
With that premise, the confusing opening begins to make more sense (at least to me) and the rest of the story, cataloging his travel through the city and what he saw there, becomes a journal of a wounded man's imagining as he attempts to lose that physical awareness that plagues his waking. In many ways, this makes the story into "The Dream-quest of Unknown Kadath" with a different center of horror. Or maybe not so different. Lovecraft seemed to dwell on the horror of void – of isolation and emptiness, and that is roughly where Beckett seems to go with this story.
So the question becomes, how is this story a "calmative," a tranquilizer, mood stabilizer, anti-anxiety drug? The narrator tells how his father would read him a story (the same story every night) to calm him, and talks about the calming power of stories. They soothe the mind by distracting it from present problems. I think this is where Beckett meant the title to lead. The story is the narrator's attempt to distract himself – to stop thinking about the present horror of his existence.
A couple of other points to note. Near the end of the story, the narrator falls in the midst of a throng. This seems to tie back to "the day I fell" in the first paragraph, suggesting that his story ends with the catastrophic event that left him as he is. He also refers to the light he stepped in that "put out the stars." This seems to tie back to "the sky with all its lights" falling on him in the first paragraph.
In conclusion, I think that, if the narrator actually found this story calming, his daily existence must be horrific. Or, perhaps his life before was so horrible that the narrator finds no relief in recalling it and reliving his youth and must instead make up stories like this to fill the time.
First, let's note a few images or themes that are found in the other Beckett short stories so far. The narrator has been kicked out of at least one place, probably several. He remembers his father both fondly and with some ambivalence. His father was a significant presence in his childhood. The narrator has a hat. He seems slightly less insane that a "normal" person in the world outside the text. Near the end of the story, the narrator tries to see the stars to fix his position, but cannot see or find the stars for which he is looking. The narrator senses a group of unseen people watching him. Thus this story and its narrator share several points in common with other stories we've read so far and their narrators.
But, as I said, making sense of this one was hard. In part, this was because the narrator seems more disconnected from present reality than the previous narrators. The text is more wandering and disjointed than previous stories. What finally began to bring it together was the section in the second paragraph when the narrator says he is telling the story in the past tense even though it is happening now. While this could be a construct to beguile the reader into sensing the immediacy of the story, it seems an unlikely device. Using present tense for the story would accomplish this more effectively. Instead, I concluded that the narrator is saying that, what he is describing as if it were past tense is what is currently happening in his mind.
Then I connected that with the "assassins" the narrator fears and from which he is escaping into his refuge (the mental construct of the city and all that happens there). I tied these back to the sentence in the first paragraph where he tells about dreading several things. He talks about "the red lapses of the heart" – pauses in his heartbeat of which he is painfully aware (In a story I once wrote, one character tells another about hearing his heart stop and that he'd never really heard it beating before, and had not been able not to hear it beating since, so this idea resonates for me.) – and "the tearings at the caecal walls" – the feeling of matter moving through his intestines. This implies he is intensely aware of his body, which suggests his external senses or mobility or both are compromised. He also talks about "the slow killings… in my skull," which echoes a line from "The Expelled" where the narrator says, "Memory is killing."
From this, I developed an image of a person who has been immobilized by some physical trauma such as stroke, heart attack or paralysis. This is reinforced by the image of the sky falling upon him and him falling and calling for help (both in the first paragraph). His death is a figurative death. He is living dead, waiting to actually die. Or is this "death" from existential meaninglessness?
With that premise, the confusing opening begins to make more sense (at least to me) and the rest of the story, cataloging his travel through the city and what he saw there, becomes a journal of a wounded man's imagining as he attempts to lose that physical awareness that plagues his waking. In many ways, this makes the story into "The Dream-quest of Unknown Kadath" with a different center of horror. Or maybe not so different. Lovecraft seemed to dwell on the horror of void – of isolation and emptiness, and that is roughly where Beckett seems to go with this story.
So the question becomes, how is this story a "calmative," a tranquilizer, mood stabilizer, anti-anxiety drug? The narrator tells how his father would read him a story (the same story every night) to calm him, and talks about the calming power of stories. They soothe the mind by distracting it from present problems. I think this is where Beckett meant the title to lead. The story is the narrator's attempt to distract himself – to stop thinking about the present horror of his existence.
A couple of other points to note. Near the end of the story, the narrator falls in the midst of a throng. This seems to tie back to "the day I fell" in the first paragraph, suggesting that his story ends with the catastrophic event that left him as he is. He also refers to the light he stepped in that "put out the stars." This seems to tie back to "the sky with all its lights" falling on him in the first paragraph.
In conclusion, I think that, if the narrator actually found this story calming, his daily existence must be horrific. Or, perhaps his life before was so horrible that the narrator finds no relief in recalling it and reliving his youth and must instead make up stories like this to fill the time.
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 05: Endgame
I'm assigned to speak in class about the second half of Endgame, so I'm going to build the structure for that discussion here.
Throughout the play, Hamm wants "this" or "it" to end. Presumably, his existence. His caretaker, Clov, is in general agreement with him and also wants to leave him, but can't. Clov constantly drops lines that suggest his imminent departure.
On page 46, Hamm and Clov are discussing how Hamm will know that Clov has actually left him. Clov suggests that, when Hamm whistles for him and he doesn't come, it means Clov has gone. "But you might be merely dead in your kitchen," Hamm objects, which leads to this exchange.
CLOV: Well… sooner or later I'd start to stink.
HAMM: You stink already. The whole place stinks of corpses.
CLOV: The whole universe.
Hamm and Clov are living in a grave. The only question is whether the death they're concerned about is physical death or some other kind. Death of the mind? Death of the soul? Death of hope? Death of meaning? And is Beckett suggesting that, even absent these things, we go on existing. But the question becomes, what's the point? I think Beckett's stories and plays struggle with that very question.
Insistent that Clov find a way to let Hamm determine if he is either dead or gone. "An idea," he demands. "Have an idea," echoing Pozzo's demand of Lucky to "Think, pig! Think!" as if ordering someone to come up with an idea will produce it. Clov paces for a while, thinking, and complains that his legs hurt and,"Soon I won't be able to think any more." Hamm replies, "You won't be able to leave me." Apparently this is incentive enough because Clov resumes pacing and eventually comes up with (a totally ineffective) idea that Hamm eventually accepts.
The thing that struck me about this set of lines, besides the obvious parallels between Hamm/Clov and Pozzo/Lucky, was the implication that Clov is not eternally incapable of leaving Hamm, just isn't able to leave yet. In some ways, I wonder if Hamm, here and throughout the play, isn't pushing Clov towards a level of "maturity" that will allow him to leave. Maybe the thing Hamm wants to end is his relationship with Clov. Maybe the thing he wants is solitude – perhaps so he can end (which will surely happen without Clov), or perhaps just solitude.
On page 50, just before he starts the story (which he calls an "audition" and for which he requires an audience), Hamm says, "Something dripping in my head, ever since the fontanelles." The "something dripping" refers to page 18 where Hamm says he has a heart dripping in his head – not beating, dripping, meaning it is dead and bleeding.
Initially we might think this means Hamm is having or has had a stroke or some other kind of brain bleed. But here he says the dripping has been going on "ever since the fontanelles." The fontanelles are the soft spots in an infant's skull that eventually close as the child matures (though, it may be worth noting that there is a congenital defect that causes some children's anterior fontanelle to close late or never). This suggests that the dripping has been going on in Hamm's head since he was an infant, so a traditional stroke seems unlikely. Instead, it suggests that this problem, this bleeding of whatever sort (Blood? Ideas? Thought? Something else?) has been a permanent feature of Hamm's life.
Hamm tells the story of a man who came to him wanting food for his son and, in the course of it, says, "It was an extra-ordinarily bitter day… But considering it was Christmas Eve there was nothing… extra-ordinary about that. Seasonable weather, for once in a way." This mirrors a line from "First Love" where the narrator says, "It was December already, if not January, and the cold was seasonable…". Eventually , we suspect this might be the story of how he came to have Clov as he suggests that, instead of giving the man food, the man work for him. The man asks him to "take in the child."
Hamm stops the story, but resumes it later in the play on page 83, where the stage direction says, "Narrative tone." Hamm tells the man he should abandon the child. "You want him to bloom while you are withering?" Hamm asks, as if it is wrong. "Be there to solace your last million last moments?" Selfishness is the only motive he can imagine. "He doesn't realize, all he knows is hunger, and cold, and death to crown it all. But you! You ought to know what the earth is like, nowadays." Hamm suggests that watching his father's decline is worse that hunger, cold and death. Or maybe it's the hint of hope the man hopes Hamm will offer his son that is, in Hamm's mind, so terrible. Is he saying, "The evils of Pandora's jar have free reign, let us not also loose hope upon your son." Is he saying he prefers hopelessness?
Throughout this final monologue, Clov is standing silent, dressed to leave, watching Hamm. The play ends with Hamm thinking he is alone except for the bloody handkerchief he places over his face, but with Clov still watching him. In the end, Clov is prepared to leave, but hasn't.
Throughout the play, Hamm wants "this" or "it" to end. Presumably, his existence. His caretaker, Clov, is in general agreement with him and also wants to leave him, but can't. Clov constantly drops lines that suggest his imminent departure.
On page 46, Hamm and Clov are discussing how Hamm will know that Clov has actually left him. Clov suggests that, when Hamm whistles for him and he doesn't come, it means Clov has gone. "But you might be merely dead in your kitchen," Hamm objects, which leads to this exchange.
CLOV: Well… sooner or later I'd start to stink.
HAMM: You stink already. The whole place stinks of corpses.
CLOV: The whole universe.
Hamm and Clov are living in a grave. The only question is whether the death they're concerned about is physical death or some other kind. Death of the mind? Death of the soul? Death of hope? Death of meaning? And is Beckett suggesting that, even absent these things, we go on existing. But the question becomes, what's the point? I think Beckett's stories and plays struggle with that very question.
Insistent that Clov find a way to let Hamm determine if he is either dead or gone. "An idea," he demands. "Have an idea," echoing Pozzo's demand of Lucky to "Think, pig! Think!" as if ordering someone to come up with an idea will produce it. Clov paces for a while, thinking, and complains that his legs hurt and,"Soon I won't be able to think any more." Hamm replies, "You won't be able to leave me." Apparently this is incentive enough because Clov resumes pacing and eventually comes up with (a totally ineffective) idea that Hamm eventually accepts.
The thing that struck me about this set of lines, besides the obvious parallels between Hamm/Clov and Pozzo/Lucky, was the implication that Clov is not eternally incapable of leaving Hamm, just isn't able to leave yet. In some ways, I wonder if Hamm, here and throughout the play, isn't pushing Clov towards a level of "maturity" that will allow him to leave. Maybe the thing Hamm wants to end is his relationship with Clov. Maybe the thing he wants is solitude – perhaps so he can end (which will surely happen without Clov), or perhaps just solitude.
On page 50, just before he starts the story (which he calls an "audition" and for which he requires an audience), Hamm says, "Something dripping in my head, ever since the fontanelles." The "something dripping" refers to page 18 where Hamm says he has a heart dripping in his head – not beating, dripping, meaning it is dead and bleeding.
Initially we might think this means Hamm is having or has had a stroke or some other kind of brain bleed. But here he says the dripping has been going on "ever since the fontanelles." The fontanelles are the soft spots in an infant's skull that eventually close as the child matures (though, it may be worth noting that there is a congenital defect that causes some children's anterior fontanelle to close late or never). This suggests that the dripping has been going on in Hamm's head since he was an infant, so a traditional stroke seems unlikely. Instead, it suggests that this problem, this bleeding of whatever sort (Blood? Ideas? Thought? Something else?) has been a permanent feature of Hamm's life.
Hamm tells the story of a man who came to him wanting food for his son and, in the course of it, says, "It was an extra-ordinarily bitter day… But considering it was Christmas Eve there was nothing… extra-ordinary about that. Seasonable weather, for once in a way." This mirrors a line from "First Love" where the narrator says, "It was December already, if not January, and the cold was seasonable…". Eventually , we suspect this might be the story of how he came to have Clov as he suggests that, instead of giving the man food, the man work for him. The man asks him to "take in the child."
Hamm stops the story, but resumes it later in the play on page 83, where the stage direction says, "Narrative tone." Hamm tells the man he should abandon the child. "You want him to bloom while you are withering?" Hamm asks, as if it is wrong. "Be there to solace your last million last moments?" Selfishness is the only motive he can imagine. "He doesn't realize, all he knows is hunger, and cold, and death to crown it all. But you! You ought to know what the earth is like, nowadays." Hamm suggests that watching his father's decline is worse that hunger, cold and death. Or maybe it's the hint of hope the man hopes Hamm will offer his son that is, in Hamm's mind, so terrible. Is he saying, "The evils of Pandora's jar have free reign, let us not also loose hope upon your son." Is he saying he prefers hopelessness?
Throughout this final monologue, Clov is standing silent, dressed to leave, watching Hamm. The play ends with Hamm thinking he is alone except for the bloody handkerchief he places over his face, but with Clov still watching him. In the end, Clov is prepared to leave, but hasn't.
15 September 2008
ENG4013 - Desire
Last week, the B&R chapter was about narrative, but Dr. M forgot to give us questions. I'll follow up with notes from class later.
This week, the B&R chapter is about desire. Dr. M gave us the following questions to consider while reading.
Freud says desire is incompatible with satisfaction. B&R elaborate on this when they discuss Lacan's extensions of Freud. Freud's position seems to be based on his theory that desire is mobile -- that it shifts objects over time. Whenever we get what we want, we no longer want it (because we have it -- "want" may also mean "lack"), hence we no longer desire it. Desire moves on to another object.
I think the real-world application may be a little more subtle. Let's say we find an object that sates our current desire, but as time goes by, what was once "enough" will become boring. Desire shifts to want something more or different. Unless the object can change or innovate to follow our desire, we will move on to a new object that can. My modification of Freud would be that desire can be satisfied and generate a new desire that keeps the desirer and desired together until the desired no longer satisfies the desirer or can no longer change to satisfy the changed desire, at which point the desirer will search for a new object that satisfies the desire.
For example, consider this little story. A new book by Joe's favorite author is due out in six months. Joe really liked this author's previous books. Joe desires the book. He's all over it, reading about it online, looking at advance reviews, pre-ordering at his local bookstore (because he can't wait for shipping time from Amazon), standing in line at midnight to buy it. He rushes home and reads it through in one sitting. It's great.
So here's the question. How long before he reads it the second time? Or how long before he reads it the tenth time? Does he even read it ten times? Does he keep the book forever? Or does he sell it to his local used bookstore few months later? Computers, cars, cell phones, apartments, jobs, favorite restaurants and sexual partners are other examples that follow the same basic pattern. Unless a new desire spawns from the original desire, fulfillment of the desire will eventually lead to boredom and abandonment of the object.
The idea that desire is imitative is based on arguments by Sedgwick . She says that desire is always a triangular structure with two parties desiring the same object and imitating each other, even in rivalry. In other words, it isn't that either A or C desire B because B is desirable, it is because C desires B that A wants B.
Personally, I find this falling into the chicken-and-egg dilemma. B was born at some point in time. At some point, no one desired B. Someone has to desire B first, but by Sedgwick's argument, that can never happen because no one desires B and for someone to desire B, someone else must desire B first and that person, by definition of "first", cannot be basing their desire on some other person's desire because there is no one to imitate. From a literary perspective, however, we rarely come in at the beginning of time, so from a purely literary perspective it is not entirely unreasonable to suggest that desire-triangles roughly follow this pattern. I think Dr. M will need to explain this a little more and deal with the holes I see before I buy this.
Homosocial desire is desire for "people like me" – which is basically what "homosocial" means. This feeds into the imitative desire idea to some extent because it explains the significance of rivalry and the kinds of respect-for-rival or rival-as-friend relationships that can develop (at least in some literature, maybe even in real life). Sedgwick also notes that certain prototypically male enclaves, such as locker rooms and board rooms, are homosocial environments. It's important to note that this desire is for the association, not necessarily sexual – usually cannot be sexual and still truly be homosocial desire. The final conclusion of Sedgwick's argument is that, in the "triangular relationship" scenario, the important relationship is between the two men, not between either of the men and the woman, and the woman is just a "token of exchange" (object) to the two men.
Of course, it seems to me that Sedgwick ignores the literature that reverses the situation with two women fighting for a man. Also, how does this play out in homosexual literature where all three characters can the same gender? In other words, while I see the basic logic behind Sedgwick's (feminist) interpretation, I think she's letting her feminism lead her to express her conclusion in a sexist way. The more proper expression would be to suggest that the object of desire becomes exactly that, an object and a token of exchange between the two desirers, regardless of the characters' genders. Sedgwick's discussion also seems to ignore the case where the object of desire is not human. For example, if the desire is to win a race or to excel in school in which case there may be multiple rivals and the objectification of the object isn't necessarily bad. And, yes, there are plenty of stories out there where this is the case.
So, that wraps up the discussion of B&R's Desire chapter. I need to get back to Beckett and trying to figure out "The Calmative".
This week, the B&R chapter is about desire. Dr. M gave us the following questions to consider while reading.
- B&R cite Freud saying desire is incompatible with satisfaction. Explain why and how?
- B&R contend that desire is always imitative. How?
- B&R present Sedgwick's ideas about homosocial desire. Define and explain the significance and implications.
Freud says desire is incompatible with satisfaction. B&R elaborate on this when they discuss Lacan's extensions of Freud. Freud's position seems to be based on his theory that desire is mobile -- that it shifts objects over time. Whenever we get what we want, we no longer want it (because we have it -- "want" may also mean "lack"), hence we no longer desire it. Desire moves on to another object.
I think the real-world application may be a little more subtle. Let's say we find an object that sates our current desire, but as time goes by, what was once "enough" will become boring. Desire shifts to want something more or different. Unless the object can change or innovate to follow our desire, we will move on to a new object that can. My modification of Freud would be that desire can be satisfied and generate a new desire that keeps the desirer and desired together until the desired no longer satisfies the desirer or can no longer change to satisfy the changed desire, at which point the desirer will search for a new object that satisfies the desire.
For example, consider this little story. A new book by Joe's favorite author is due out in six months. Joe really liked this author's previous books. Joe desires the book. He's all over it, reading about it online, looking at advance reviews, pre-ordering at his local bookstore (because he can't wait for shipping time from Amazon), standing in line at midnight to buy it. He rushes home and reads it through in one sitting. It's great.
So here's the question. How long before he reads it the second time? Or how long before he reads it the tenth time? Does he even read it ten times? Does he keep the book forever? Or does he sell it to his local used bookstore few months later? Computers, cars, cell phones, apartments, jobs, favorite restaurants and sexual partners are other examples that follow the same basic pattern. Unless a new desire spawns from the original desire, fulfillment of the desire will eventually lead to boredom and abandonment of the object.
The idea that desire is imitative is based on arguments by Sedgwick . She says that desire is always a triangular structure with two parties desiring the same object and imitating each other, even in rivalry. In other words, it isn't that either A or C desire B because B is desirable, it is because C desires B that A wants B.
Personally, I find this falling into the chicken-and-egg dilemma. B was born at some point in time. At some point, no one desired B. Someone has to desire B first, but by Sedgwick's argument, that can never happen because no one desires B and for someone to desire B, someone else must desire B first and that person, by definition of "first", cannot be basing their desire on some other person's desire because there is no one to imitate. From a literary perspective, however, we rarely come in at the beginning of time, so from a purely literary perspective it is not entirely unreasonable to suggest that desire-triangles roughly follow this pattern. I think Dr. M will need to explain this a little more and deal with the holes I see before I buy this.
Homosocial desire is desire for "people like me" – which is basically what "homosocial" means. This feeds into the imitative desire idea to some extent because it explains the significance of rivalry and the kinds of respect-for-rival or rival-as-friend relationships that can develop (at least in some literature, maybe even in real life). Sedgwick also notes that certain prototypically male enclaves, such as locker rooms and board rooms, are homosocial environments. It's important to note that this desire is for the association, not necessarily sexual – usually cannot be sexual and still truly be homosocial desire. The final conclusion of Sedgwick's argument is that, in the "triangular relationship" scenario, the important relationship is between the two men, not between either of the men and the woman, and the woman is just a "token of exchange" (object) to the two men.
Of course, it seems to me that Sedgwick ignores the literature that reverses the situation with two women fighting for a man. Also, how does this play out in homosexual literature where all three characters can the same gender? In other words, while I see the basic logic behind Sedgwick's (feminist) interpretation, I think she's letting her feminism lead her to express her conclusion in a sexist way. The more proper expression would be to suggest that the object of desire becomes exactly that, an object and a token of exchange between the two desirers, regardless of the characters' genders. Sedgwick's discussion also seems to ignore the case where the object of desire is not human. For example, if the desire is to win a race or to excel in school in which case there may be multiple rivals and the objectification of the object isn't necessarily bad. And, yes, there are plenty of stories out there where this is the case.
So, that wraps up the discussion of B&R's Desire chapter. I need to get back to Beckett and trying to figure out "The Calmative".
09 September 2008
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 03: "The Expelled"
Beckett's short story "The Expelled" has much in common with "First Love", discussed in an earlier entry. Oh, sure, it isn't about love, real or imagined, like "First Love" is, but the similarities of images and events are striking.
Like "First Love", "The Expelled" is a first person narrative. The narrator in both stories is a homeless man. In the case of "First Love" the narrator has been homeless for a long time. In the case of "The Expelled" the narrator is recently homeless, though not for the first time. Both narrators focus on minute details that most people would consider insignificant – smells, the date of his father's death, the proper way to count steps on a staircase.
Both narrators suggest that they should have had some kind of inheritance from their fathers, and both suggest that the fact that they don't is the result of chicanery on the part of others. In "First Love", the narrator arguably should have had his father's house, but was evicted by some undefined others. In "The Expelled", the narrator hints that he should have received money from his father's estate, but didn't for some uncertain reason. The only money he has is from a woman whose name he has forgotten and whose connection he cannot explain. As I read this, I thought that perhaps Beckett is writing about Esau – who was either cheated out of his inheritance by his younger brother or sold it to him for a meal.
Likewise, both stories have similar "return to the womb" images. In both, the narrator ends up in a plain room (the room emptied of furniture in "First Love", the stable in "The Expelled"). He enters a smaller container within the room (the sofa against the wall; the cab). Some other nearby (the child crying; the horse staring) disturbs the narrator and he leaves abruptly by a constricted passage (the furniture-clogged hallway; the stable window). In "The Expelled", the birth image is even more explicit because the narrator leaves head first.
And let us not forget one other detail. Both narrators are jobless, not because they cannot work, but because they choose not to work. Both narrators talk about how they wish to stay in a room, isolated from the world, and have their food brought to them. In "First Love", the narrator achieves this state, to some extent, until the child drives him out. In "The Expelled", the narrator simply describes his ideal state and bemoans his poverty which "compels [him] to bestir [him]self." In neither case do either try to better their financial situation so they might, one day, achieve that blissful state of isolation they so desire.
This hunger for isolation reminds me of the phenomenon called "hikikomori" in Japan, a form of extreme social withdrawal. While the phenomenon isn't isolated to Japan, it seems to be concentrated there, with estimates ranging as high as a million people, or about 1% of the population, isolating themselves from society. Often, they are young and live with their parents. They shut themselves in their room and come out rarely if at all. Their parents may not see them for months or years at a time, leaving food at their door and collecting the empty plates later. (NYT Article, Wikipedia Article)
Western psychologists and psychiatrists suggest the behavior is just another form of extreme social withdrawal due to severe depression. Japanese researchers suggest the hikikmoroi cannot cope with the intense pressures for conformity within Japanese culture and so withdraw. These aren't the kids who hang out in Shibuya on the weekends in goth or loli-goth attire, primping and posing for the cameras – or any of the other zoku. They aren't integrated into the various otaku subcultures that have their own support groups in Akihabara and on Internet sites like Futaba (aka 2-chan). They're the people whose difference isn't so trendy or well defined or controllable. They feel truly isolated and carry that to a physical level. Some are bullied in school. Some withdraw due to poor grades. Some just can't deal with some aspect of life in general.
Beckett's narrators seem to be a hybrid of the two theories of hikikomori and neither. Both have some limited social interaction with others. They live or move outside of a room. They do not have the luxury of living the hikikomori lifestyle.
But they long to live it. They exhibit signs of depression or are in situations that typically lead to depression. They see themselves as different and isolated from others. They have little or no desire to socialize with other people, each displaying some degree of misanthropy, which is not part of the hikikomori makeup. They have some of the signs, but not the full manifestation.
So why does Beckett focus on these kinds of characters – at least in these first two short stories? I'll think on that as the semester progresses, though I'm not fond of them so far. That deserves a brief note. I am intensely drawn to damaged characters, but to damaged characters that are trying to mend their damage, not who want to revel in it.
Beckett's characters are damaged and revel in their damage, want it to be worse, or want to be dead. I prefer damaged characters who want to live, to fight, to change. I suspect Beckett didn't believe that healing is possible, or at least that it isn't worthwhile. And, I'm sure a deconstructionist critic would turn my whole preference upside down and say Beckett's characters aren't "damaged" for wanting to be more so, I am for wanting to be less so, and the only sane people are those in the asylum.
Like "First Love", "The Expelled" is a first person narrative. The narrator in both stories is a homeless man. In the case of "First Love" the narrator has been homeless for a long time. In the case of "The Expelled" the narrator is recently homeless, though not for the first time. Both narrators focus on minute details that most people would consider insignificant – smells, the date of his father's death, the proper way to count steps on a staircase.
Both narrators suggest that they should have had some kind of inheritance from their fathers, and both suggest that the fact that they don't is the result of chicanery on the part of others. In "First Love", the narrator arguably should have had his father's house, but was evicted by some undefined others. In "The Expelled", the narrator hints that he should have received money from his father's estate, but didn't for some uncertain reason. The only money he has is from a woman whose name he has forgotten and whose connection he cannot explain. As I read this, I thought that perhaps Beckett is writing about Esau – who was either cheated out of his inheritance by his younger brother or sold it to him for a meal.
Likewise, both stories have similar "return to the womb" images. In both, the narrator ends up in a plain room (the room emptied of furniture in "First Love", the stable in "The Expelled"). He enters a smaller container within the room (the sofa against the wall; the cab). Some other nearby (the child crying; the horse staring) disturbs the narrator and he leaves abruptly by a constricted passage (the furniture-clogged hallway; the stable window). In "The Expelled", the birth image is even more explicit because the narrator leaves head first.
And let us not forget one other detail. Both narrators are jobless, not because they cannot work, but because they choose not to work. Both narrators talk about how they wish to stay in a room, isolated from the world, and have their food brought to them. In "First Love", the narrator achieves this state, to some extent, until the child drives him out. In "The Expelled", the narrator simply describes his ideal state and bemoans his poverty which "compels [him] to bestir [him]self." In neither case do either try to better their financial situation so they might, one day, achieve that blissful state of isolation they so desire.
This hunger for isolation reminds me of the phenomenon called "hikikomori" in Japan, a form of extreme social withdrawal. While the phenomenon isn't isolated to Japan, it seems to be concentrated there, with estimates ranging as high as a million people, or about 1% of the population, isolating themselves from society. Often, they are young and live with their parents. They shut themselves in their room and come out rarely if at all. Their parents may not see them for months or years at a time, leaving food at their door and collecting the empty plates later. (NYT Article, Wikipedia Article)
Western psychologists and psychiatrists suggest the behavior is just another form of extreme social withdrawal due to severe depression. Japanese researchers suggest the hikikmoroi cannot cope with the intense pressures for conformity within Japanese culture and so withdraw. These aren't the kids who hang out in Shibuya on the weekends in goth or loli-goth attire, primping and posing for the cameras – or any of the other zoku. They aren't integrated into the various otaku subcultures that have their own support groups in Akihabara and on Internet sites like Futaba (aka 2-chan). They're the people whose difference isn't so trendy or well defined or controllable. They feel truly isolated and carry that to a physical level. Some are bullied in school. Some withdraw due to poor grades. Some just can't deal with some aspect of life in general.
Beckett's narrators seem to be a hybrid of the two theories of hikikomori and neither. Both have some limited social interaction with others. They live or move outside of a room. They do not have the luxury of living the hikikomori lifestyle.
But they long to live it. They exhibit signs of depression or are in situations that typically lead to depression. They see themselves as different and isolated from others. They have little or no desire to socialize with other people, each displaying some degree of misanthropy, which is not part of the hikikomori makeup. They have some of the signs, but not the full manifestation.
So why does Beckett focus on these kinds of characters – at least in these first two short stories? I'll think on that as the semester progresses, though I'm not fond of them so far. That deserves a brief note. I am intensely drawn to damaged characters, but to damaged characters that are trying to mend their damage, not who want to revel in it.
Beckett's characters are damaged and revel in their damage, want it to be worse, or want to be dead. I prefer damaged characters who want to live, to fight, to change. I suspect Beckett didn't believe that healing is possible, or at least that it isn't worthwhile. And, I'm sure a deconstructionist critic would turn my whole preference upside down and say Beckett's characters aren't "damaged" for wanting to be more so, I am for wanting to be less so, and the only sane people are those in the asylum.
05 September 2008
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 02 - Waiting for Godot
Our first Beckett play is Waiting for Godot. The subtitle on the edition we have is "A Tragicomedy in Two Acts", which is a reasonably effective description of the play. I found it both humorous and sad. Funny because there are some very good lines, especially Estragon's. Sad because it is a play about meaninglessness and hopelessness, and it is sad to think how many people end up in that state. Often, critics describe it as a play about nothing in which nothing happens, though that conclusion is ultimately incorrect.
In the first act, Estragon often plays the voice of existentialism. He opens the play with the line, "Nothing to be done," as he struggles to remove his boots. This effectively summarizes the position Estragon and Vladimir share, having suspended their lives as they wait for Godot's promised arrival, They wait for the order to move on to the next thing. Meanwhile, they are bored, killing time and squandering their lives. (Time is the stuff of which life is made, to paraphrase Ben Franklin.)
Estragon's second line, in response to Vladimir's "So there you are again," is "Am I?" This could be (likely is) a succinct statement of the existential dilemma. Is he there? Is he there again? (Has he ever been there before?) Existentialism says that he can never be certain. Another reading might see this as him asking if this is really a repetition. Since every moment is new, the past is gone, uncertain, malleable and tainted by limited perception, is it really again? Is he the same person who was there before? All these questions are embedded in these two words.
Estragon's third line wraps up his opening philosophical foray. Vladimir says, "I'm glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever." Estragon says, "Me too." So, "me too" which? Is he glad to be back? (Is this again?) Is he as glad to see Vladimir as Vladimir claims to be to see him? Or had he thought (hoped?) he was gone forever? I suspect it was the latter. His next line begins a section bemoaning the beating he suffers nightly from "them", the agony of his sore feet, the general misery of his life. Four pages later he has convinced Vladimir that the best thing they could do would be to hang themselves, if only they could be certain the flimsy tree limb wouldn't break and leave one of them alive and alone.
The depth of Estragon's misery and hopelessness is truly sad and is even more evident in the second act where his behavior sometimes borders on senile dementia. For example, at the beginning of the second act as he shouts for Vladimir to leave him alone and then bemoans the fact that he thought Vladimir had abandoned him. Later in the play, Vladimir sings him a lullaby and talks to him as a parent might a child afraid of the dark, or an adult child might an elderly parent suffering from dementia, Alzheimer's or some similar condition. Later still, debating what to do about the fallen Pozzo, Estragon tells Vladimir, "We should ask him for the bone first. Then if he refuses we'll leave him there." Selfish. Childish.
Even so Estragon does not abandon his philosopher role. Beset by intermittent mental decline he still manages the hit Vladimir with complexities like, "You see, you feel worse when I'm with you. I fell better alone too," driving home the sense of discomfort arising from the existentialist uncertainty of existence. After Vladimir wakes him from one of several naps, he complains, "Why will you never let me sleep? … I was dreaming I was happy," longing to return to a state not just of non-consciousness, but non-awareness of the meaninglessness and hopelessness of his existence.
Many critics, play-watchers and readers say Waiting for Godot is a play about nothing in which nothing happens. I beg to differ. Many things happen in the play. There are arguments and debates, witty exchanges, scenes of sadness and joy, fear and courage. The problem is not that nothing is happening in the play, but that the audience arrives with a (mistaken) notion of what is going to happen, what should happen, based on the title. Why should one expect a play called Waiting for Godot to include Godot's arrival? Would we expect Shakespeare's Waiting for the Tempest to overlap Shakespeare's The Tempest? If Waiting for Tam Lin detailed Tam Lin's arrival and what happened after, wouldn't it be better called Tam Lin (as, in fact, Pamela Dean called it, though she introduces him by a more modern version of his name first). Apparently some people do and feel cheated because the play never delivers on the "promise" the play's title never signed. The play is about waiting for Godot. A lot of waiting happens in the play. Estragon and Vladimir do constantly, burning massive amounts of energy and time while accomplishing nothing but waiting.
Finally, let's consider how the title is incorrect. Vladimir and Estragon are not actually waiting for someone named Godot. Instead, they are waiting for lightning. They stare at a fixed point searching for a blinding flash of lightning, stand in a single spot listening for a deafening peal of thunder to announce, "It's time for a change. Quit resting. Go, do 't and be fulfilled."
That shout never comes. Certainly not in the play, rarely for people in general.
Instead, announcement comes as a whisper. "Are you miserable? Are you alone? Are you hurting? Are you lost?" Estragon and Vladimir have misery, loneliness, pain and bewilderment four-of-a-kind in spades, each in different ways. To these sad, lonely seekers, the whisper beckons, "Come home. Be part of the family. Be healed. Be found." But, in the end, beset by a angelic boy who continually questions their memory of the past and their very existence and who devilishly eggs them on with promises of a great, loud, wonderful, unmissable sign that will never be delivered, they are unwilling to abandon their quest for the roaring wind, the shaking earth and the searing fire.
Thus, Vladimir and Estragon miss the quiet whisper that says everything they need to hear. "It's time for a change. Quit doing. Come, rest and be fulfilled."
In the first act, Estragon often plays the voice of existentialism. He opens the play with the line, "Nothing to be done," as he struggles to remove his boots. This effectively summarizes the position Estragon and Vladimir share, having suspended their lives as they wait for Godot's promised arrival, They wait for the order to move on to the next thing. Meanwhile, they are bored, killing time and squandering their lives. (Time is the stuff of which life is made, to paraphrase Ben Franklin.)
Estragon's second line, in response to Vladimir's "So there you are again," is "Am I?" This could be (likely is) a succinct statement of the existential dilemma. Is he there? Is he there again? (Has he ever been there before?) Existentialism says that he can never be certain. Another reading might see this as him asking if this is really a repetition. Since every moment is new, the past is gone, uncertain, malleable and tainted by limited perception, is it really again? Is he the same person who was there before? All these questions are embedded in these two words.
Estragon's third line wraps up his opening philosophical foray. Vladimir says, "I'm glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever." Estragon says, "Me too." So, "me too" which? Is he glad to be back? (Is this again?) Is he as glad to see Vladimir as Vladimir claims to be to see him? Or had he thought (hoped?) he was gone forever? I suspect it was the latter. His next line begins a section bemoaning the beating he suffers nightly from "them", the agony of his sore feet, the general misery of his life. Four pages later he has convinced Vladimir that the best thing they could do would be to hang themselves, if only they could be certain the flimsy tree limb wouldn't break and leave one of them alive and alone.
The depth of Estragon's misery and hopelessness is truly sad and is even more evident in the second act where his behavior sometimes borders on senile dementia. For example, at the beginning of the second act as he shouts for Vladimir to leave him alone and then bemoans the fact that he thought Vladimir had abandoned him. Later in the play, Vladimir sings him a lullaby and talks to him as a parent might a child afraid of the dark, or an adult child might an elderly parent suffering from dementia, Alzheimer's or some similar condition. Later still, debating what to do about the fallen Pozzo, Estragon tells Vladimir, "We should ask him for the bone first. Then if he refuses we'll leave him there." Selfish. Childish.
Even so Estragon does not abandon his philosopher role. Beset by intermittent mental decline he still manages the hit Vladimir with complexities like, "You see, you feel worse when I'm with you. I fell better alone too," driving home the sense of discomfort arising from the existentialist uncertainty of existence. After Vladimir wakes him from one of several naps, he complains, "Why will you never let me sleep? … I was dreaming I was happy," longing to return to a state not just of non-consciousness, but non-awareness of the meaninglessness and hopelessness of his existence.
Many critics, play-watchers and readers say Waiting for Godot is a play about nothing in which nothing happens. I beg to differ. Many things happen in the play. There are arguments and debates, witty exchanges, scenes of sadness and joy, fear and courage. The problem is not that nothing is happening in the play, but that the audience arrives with a (mistaken) notion of what is going to happen, what should happen, based on the title. Why should one expect a play called Waiting for Godot to include Godot's arrival? Would we expect Shakespeare's Waiting for the Tempest to overlap Shakespeare's The Tempest? If Waiting for Tam Lin detailed Tam Lin's arrival and what happened after, wouldn't it be better called Tam Lin (as, in fact, Pamela Dean called it, though she introduces him by a more modern version of his name first). Apparently some people do and feel cheated because the play never delivers on the "promise" the play's title never signed. The play is about waiting for Godot. A lot of waiting happens in the play. Estragon and Vladimir do constantly, burning massive amounts of energy and time while accomplishing nothing but waiting.
Finally, let's consider how the title is incorrect. Vladimir and Estragon are not actually waiting for someone named Godot. Instead, they are waiting for lightning. They stare at a fixed point searching for a blinding flash of lightning, stand in a single spot listening for a deafening peal of thunder to announce, "It's time for a change. Quit resting. Go, do 't and be fulfilled."
That shout never comes. Certainly not in the play, rarely for people in general.
Instead, announcement comes as a whisper. "Are you miserable? Are you alone? Are you hurting? Are you lost?" Estragon and Vladimir have misery, loneliness, pain and bewilderment four-of-a-kind in spades, each in different ways. To these sad, lonely seekers, the whisper beckons, "Come home. Be part of the family. Be healed. Be found." But, in the end, beset by a angelic boy who continually questions their memory of the past and their very existence and who devilishly eggs them on with promises of a great, loud, wonderful, unmissable sign that will never be delivered, they are unwilling to abandon their quest for the roaring wind, the shaking earth and the searing fire.
Thus, Vladimir and Estragon miss the quiet whisper that says everything they need to hear. "It's time for a change. Quit doing. Come, rest and be fulfilled."
03 September 2008
ENG4013 - The Text and The World - Update
So, basically I was in the ballpark with my understanding of Bennett and Royle's direction.
Dr. M started talking about semiotics, which helped clarify where B&R were coming from when they talk about language. The idea is that everything is based on systems of arbitrary signs and that signs only have meaning in relation to other signs, and that these signs are what make up "language" in the B&R sense.
To illustrate this, Dr. M talked about traffic lights. The colors of the lights (red, yellow and green) don't have any inherent meanings, only meanings we've agreed to accept (red = stop, yellow = slow down, green = go). Another culture or group of people might use blue to mean "slow down". Then, to illustrate that signs can be reinterpreted and given "heretical" or "different" meanings, he mentioned the joke about "yellow means 'go faster'". Then he extended this to other sign systems and said it was possible to have "heretical" readings of other signs. In the novel we're reading, "Alias Grace", he described how Grace's reading of class, gender and other "languages" of the mid-19th century was "heretical" because she did not accept the stereotypical interpretations (for example, that female servants were prone to promiscuity).
So, to the extent that we interpret everything in terms of signs and their relationship to other signs, that is, language, the world is always mediated by language.
The place were I still don't agree is the view that
The "fiction of immediacy" extends from this to say not only can we not reach beyond the text of the "alternate universe" of a piece of writing, but also to say that we cannot reach beyond the text of what we perceive (everything is based on signs, hence is language, hence is a text) to anything deeper or transcendent. In my view, this eventually has to say (relativist, poststructuralist, existential, whatever) that there is nothing outside what we perceive or will eventually be able to perceive or describe in language -- there is no transcendental (God, Truth, Reality), only realities and truths and maybe gods. This is also what Derrida meant by no "outside-text" in the B&R translation.
Finally, the idea that a text undermines the notion of the world... This seems to have two flavors. One, because one can apply a "heretical" reading to any text, that reading can revise, restate or bring about change in how others view the text, destabilizing the world. This kind of action is seen whenever social attitudes change (be that for better or worse). Second, because the world is perceived through text, they can't really be easily separated and the notion that there is something outside text is weakened.
While I understand all this intellectually and can probably apply the basic ideas within the space of literature (we can find different meanings in books, readings should attempt to be aware of the signs they implicitly reference, etc.), that doesn't mean I accept it as the way I want to live my life. Relativism taken to its logical end means there can be no judgment of right and wrong because everything is relative to the individual and the individual's perceptions and interpretations. When that happens there can be no crime. Rape, murder, cruelty to animals, flying planes into buildings, it's all good.
Dr. M started talking about semiotics, which helped clarify where B&R were coming from when they talk about language. The idea is that everything is based on systems of arbitrary signs and that signs only have meaning in relation to other signs, and that these signs are what make up "language" in the B&R sense.
To illustrate this, Dr. M talked about traffic lights. The colors of the lights (red, yellow and green) don't have any inherent meanings, only meanings we've agreed to accept (red = stop, yellow = slow down, green = go). Another culture or group of people might use blue to mean "slow down". Then, to illustrate that signs can be reinterpreted and given "heretical" or "different" meanings, he mentioned the joke about "yellow means 'go faster'". Then he extended this to other sign systems and said it was possible to have "heretical" readings of other signs. In the novel we're reading, "Alias Grace", he described how Grace's reading of class, gender and other "languages" of the mid-19th century was "heretical" because she did not accept the stereotypical interpretations (for example, that female servants were prone to promiscuity).
So, to the extent that we interpret everything in terms of signs and their relationship to other signs, that is, language, the world is always mediated by language.
The place were I still don't agree is the view that
The "fiction of immediacy" extends from this to say not only can we not reach beyond the text of the "alternate universe" of a piece of writing, but also to say that we cannot reach beyond the text of what we perceive (everything is based on signs, hence is language, hence is a text) to anything deeper or transcendent. In my view, this eventually has to say (relativist, poststructuralist, existential, whatever) that there is nothing outside what we perceive or will eventually be able to perceive or describe in language -- there is no transcendental (God, Truth, Reality), only realities and truths and maybe gods. This is also what Derrida meant by no "outside-text" in the B&R translation.
Finally, the idea that a text undermines the notion of the world... This seems to have two flavors. One, because one can apply a "heretical" reading to any text, that reading can revise, restate or bring about change in how others view the text, destabilizing the world. This kind of action is seen whenever social attitudes change (be that for better or worse). Second, because the world is perceived through text, they can't really be easily separated and the notion that there is something outside text is weakened.
While I understand all this intellectually and can probably apply the basic ideas within the space of literature (we can find different meanings in books, readings should attempt to be aware of the signs they implicitly reference, etc.), that doesn't mean I accept it as the way I want to live my life. Relativism taken to its logical end means there can be no judgment of right and wrong because everything is relative to the individual and the individual's perceptions and interpretations. When that happens there can be no crime. Rape, murder, cruelty to animals, flying planes into buildings, it's all good.
02 September 2008
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 01: "First Love"
Our first reading for Beckett class (LIT4934) is Beckett's short story, "First Love". The first thing that I noted is that it is (thankfully) a bit more readable than some of the earlier works found in our Beckett short story collection, though it is still dense, dense reading. Much of the text dwells on the narrator's misery and general displeasure with life, the universe and everything.
One of the passages that best expresses this idea is on page 31 in our anthology. The narrator is homeless (possibly a metaphor for being completely exposed to the cosmic horror of the total meaninglessness expounded by existentialism). He sleeps on a bench facing the canal. A woman has been coming to his bench for a few days and disturbing his isolation. On the evening in question, she has convinced him to stretch out on his bench with his feet in her lap and has begun stroking his ankles. This causes him to have an erection, "physically too," he says.
Let's restate "erection" as "arousal". She's aroused not only his body, but his mind, drawing him out of his isolated, "dispeopled kingdom" and undoing the "supineness in the mind" that was "what mattered" to him. The narrator describes this state of arousal as follows. "One is no longer oneself, on such occasions, and it is painful to be no longer oneself, even more painful if possible than when one is. For when one is one knows what to do to be less so, whereas when one is not one is any old one irredeemably."
This passage lays out a paradox. The narrator says that being himself, he at least knows how to be less himself so he can mitigate the pain of being, but in this aroused state of mind, he is less himself, but the pain is worse because he doesn't know how to mitigate it when he is not himself. Either state "being himself or not being himself" is utter misery. Unless he can find some alternate, quantum state that lets him be himself and not himself simultaneously, he will be miserable in whatever state his existence takes. Perhaps he was (or at least believed he was) holding himself in an indeterminate state before he became aroused. Perhaps being aroused collapsed the quantum function and he is now in a determined state instead of an indeterminate state.
"What goes by the name of love is banishment, with now and then a postcard from the homeland, such is my considered opinion, this evening." So says the narrator immediately after declaring his pain caused by the arousal of his mind from its earlier indeterminate state. He has been banished from his "dispeopled kingdom" and longs to go back. One might find this subtly ironic because Beckett left his homeland, Ireland, for France and remained most of the rest of his life there with only occasional visits to Ireland. He was self-banished, but seemed to prefer it. More to the point, love is banishment for the misanthrope, and there is little doubt the narrator is a misanthrope, preferring to keep company with the dead in graveyards than with the stinking living, isolated in his "dispeopled kingdom", describing the country's "scant population" as a major factor in it's "charm" (bottom p.33), saying the woman's name isn't important, changing it from Lulu to Anna midstream in the story.
As the story progresses, the narrator eventually moves into the woman's apartment, moving all the furniture out of one of the rooms, sleeping on a couch faced against a wall (probably a womb image since Beckett seemed to be fascinated with "return to the womb" psychology). They possibly have sex at some point, but the narrator doesn't seem to remember the details, saying his "night was most agitated. I woke next morning quite worn out, my clothes in disorder, the blanket likewise, and Anna beside me, naked naturally." After that, she brings his meals and he stays on the sofa facing the wall. Eventually he leaves her after she gives birth to a child she says is his, though she has been sleeping with many other men in the intervening time.
The narrator concludes, "I could have done with other love perhaps. But there it is, either you love or you don't." This is likely the crux of the story. Did the narrator really love Lulu/Anna? He says he did, but he also admits he has no basis for knowing what love is. Given how he treated her, how he wanted nothing to do with her, and how he expressed disgust with her, it seems unlikely that he did. One must first love himself before he can love someone else. One must first love.
One of the passages that best expresses this idea is on page 31 in our anthology. The narrator is homeless (possibly a metaphor for being completely exposed to the cosmic horror of the total meaninglessness expounded by existentialism). He sleeps on a bench facing the canal. A woman has been coming to his bench for a few days and disturbing his isolation. On the evening in question, she has convinced him to stretch out on his bench with his feet in her lap and has begun stroking his ankles. This causes him to have an erection, "physically too," he says.
Let's restate "erection" as "arousal". She's aroused not only his body, but his mind, drawing him out of his isolated, "dispeopled kingdom" and undoing the "supineness in the mind" that was "what mattered" to him. The narrator describes this state of arousal as follows. "One is no longer oneself, on such occasions, and it is painful to be no longer oneself, even more painful if possible than when one is. For when one is one knows what to do to be less so, whereas when one is not one is any old one irredeemably."
This passage lays out a paradox. The narrator says that being himself, he at least knows how to be less himself so he can mitigate the pain of being, but in this aroused state of mind, he is less himself, but the pain is worse because he doesn't know how to mitigate it when he is not himself. Either state "being himself or not being himself" is utter misery. Unless he can find some alternate, quantum state that lets him be himself and not himself simultaneously, he will be miserable in whatever state his existence takes. Perhaps he was (or at least believed he was) holding himself in an indeterminate state before he became aroused. Perhaps being aroused collapsed the quantum function and he is now in a determined state instead of an indeterminate state.
"What goes by the name of love is banishment, with now and then a postcard from the homeland, such is my considered opinion, this evening." So says the narrator immediately after declaring his pain caused by the arousal of his mind from its earlier indeterminate state. He has been banished from his "dispeopled kingdom" and longs to go back. One might find this subtly ironic because Beckett left his homeland, Ireland, for France and remained most of the rest of his life there with only occasional visits to Ireland. He was self-banished, but seemed to prefer it. More to the point, love is banishment for the misanthrope, and there is little doubt the narrator is a misanthrope, preferring to keep company with the dead in graveyards than with the stinking living, isolated in his "dispeopled kingdom", describing the country's "scant population" as a major factor in it's "charm" (bottom p.33), saying the woman's name isn't important, changing it from Lulu to Anna midstream in the story.
As the story progresses, the narrator eventually moves into the woman's apartment, moving all the furniture out of one of the rooms, sleeping on a couch faced against a wall (probably a womb image since Beckett seemed to be fascinated with "return to the womb" psychology). They possibly have sex at some point, but the narrator doesn't seem to remember the details, saying his "night was most agitated. I woke next morning quite worn out, my clothes in disorder, the blanket likewise, and Anna beside me, naked naturally." After that, she brings his meals and he stays on the sofa facing the wall. Eventually he leaves her after she gives birth to a child she says is his, though she has been sleeping with many other men in the intervening time.
The narrator concludes, "I could have done with other love perhaps. But there it is, either you love or you don't." This is likely the crux of the story. Did the narrator really love Lulu/Anna? He says he did, but he also admits he has no basis for knowing what love is. Given how he treated her, how he wanted nothing to do with her, and how he expressed disgust with her, it seems unlikely that he did. One must first love himself before he can love someone else. One must first love.
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