Tony Morrison's Writing/Song of Solomon

In Song of Solomon, we do not see Milkman experiencing typical struggles; he is from a very wealthy background, has been presented the only job he needs, and does not experience racism on a daily basis from what we understand.  Instead, he is haunted by the disturbing past of his parents and the legacy of his father which he cannot escape.  The sudden change in the plot arc of the novel in the second part is especially indicative of Morrison's free writing style.  Neither Milkman nor his parents are even particularly likable, as they are portrayed with a great deal of flaws.  Milkman is self-consumed, and childish in his lack of motivation, purpose, and respect for his family.  Macon and Ruth's past is riddled with traumatic events, with each side bringing the other's morality into question with accusations of murder and incest.

While reading novels by Tony Morrison, I've noticed that I rarely find myself contemplating the race of the main characters.  I think this can be attributed largely to Morrison's deep and subtle description and narration, which gets the reader to think primarily about how her story describes an aspect of the human experience instead of assigning a racial paradigm to it.  While this has its uses in protest novels and critical literature, which are explicitly serving a societal function, I believe the relative absence of this makes Morrison's writing unique and appealing.  For instance, in Mrs. Dalloway we do not stop and contemplate the whiteness of the protagonist, as novels concerning white characters are never expected to adhere to a certain mold.  I see Tony Morrison's work as an attempt to achieve that sort of mainstream acceptance for African-American literature as well.

Rochester and Antoinette

A question that we've been addressing over the course of the novel and explicitly in class today is who is the more sympathetic character: Rochester or Antionette.  And additionally, whose story are we reading?

I believe, like many others in the class, that Rhys is primarily concerned with Antoinette and her previously unexplored background, especially as it relates to her fate in Jane Eyre.  Antoinette's childhood is flushed out in great detail, not only recounting scarring events such as the burning of her home in Coulibri and her emotional falling out with Tia, but also her troubled origins.  As the daughter of a hated slave-owner and a mentally unstable (labeled insane by locals) mother, she is cursed to be a social outcast, treated with disgust by both upper-class whites and the former Jamaican slaves.  Antionette is strikingly perceptive, conveying much of her situation with few words.

(Antoinette and her mother)

"A frown came between her black eyebrows, deep - it might have been cut with a knife. I hated this frown and once I touched her forehead trying to smooth it. But she pushed me away, not roughly but calmly, coldly, without a word, as if she had decided once and for all that I was useless to her."

(Antoinette and Tia after the burning of Coulibri)

"I looked at her and I saw her face crumple up as she began to cry. We stared at each other, blood on my face, tears on hers. It was as if I saw myself. Like in a looking-glass."

Strife stemming from class and race dynamics remains a theme throughout the the novel, which makes it hard to imagine that Rhys was writing a story about Rochester, who serves to represent the external, white upper-class perception of Antionette more than anything else.  His background is detailed only in relevance to and to provide context for his relationship with Antoinette.  However, Rochester is not a simple character by any means, harboring his own insecurities and pain.  Rhys ultimately shows the damage that these class/racial dynamics have on both characters in the novel.

The Stranger and Richard Wright's Native Son

In last year's African-American Lit. class we read Native Son Richard Wright.  Besides its strong focus on the effects of a deeply racist and disadvantaging environment on a young black man, the novel also addresses naturalist vs. existentialist questions.  After a series of events, the protagonist, Bigger, accidentally kills a young white woman.  However instead of being overcome by guilt, he is almost elated, seeing it as an escape from his former life of irrelevance.

"He had murdered and created a new life for himself.  It was something that was all his own, and it was the first time in his life he had had anything that others could not take from him."

Both Bigger and Meursault evade their fate for as long as possible (Bigger physically evades his capture and Meursault is fearful and frantic in his cell), but neither character in interested in defending their innocence. Both characters simultaneously acknowledge their fate and express a newly found vigor for life, affirming their controversial ideas/actions. However, when comparing the two, it seems that Bigger is the more complex, but also the more understandable and human protagonist. While Wright and Camus each wrote novels concerning existentialist topics, Camus uses Meursault much more explicitly to convey his agenda to the reader. He is an especially reserved character, bearing little resemblance to most of humanity with his lack of ambition and self-reflection. After his first and last emotional outburst, he has an epiphany, finally understanding that his purpose is to create meaning in a meaningless world and life. It is certainly a well crafted representation of Camus's philosophy, but it has little regard for the individuality that such a character could have had; Meursault is unique only in his lack of motives for any of his actions. This is evident in Camus's treatment of the Arab as well, who is described especially briefly and never mentioned again in the deciding chapters. This is in strong contrast with Wright, who sought to use a naturalist argument to display the destruction of life that is wrought from a racist world, but respects the human value of his protagonist, allowing him to take ownership of his fate.

Gregor the Cockroach

I think the question of why Gregor was transformed into a cockroach specifically will probably never be answered in full.  At the same time, it seems likely that Kafka will only open up even more possible interpretations.  Obviously the novel couldn't have taken the same tone had Gregor become a big cuddly cat or dog, but of all the possible creatures, why a cockroach?
Other insects such as bees and butterflies are valued by humanity at least to some extent as pollinators or honey producers in the case of bees.  Cockroaches however produce nothing of use. They are pests.  Though Gregor provides quite substantially for his family as a human, he is similarly unappreciated by his family (specifically his father) and the higher-ups at the sales firm.  This situation could only get worse for him as a cockroach, as he actually does become useless.  Gregor seems relatively unperturbed about the logistics of life as a giant insect, but becoming irrelevant and completely dependent on his family is truly his worst nightmare.  He watches his father begin to transform as well, from a feeble and lazy old man to a strong and healthy worker, essentially stepping right up to replace Gregor.  Meanwhile, Gregor is more and more overtaken by "the cockroach".

Related to this are Kafka's reasons for writing The Metamorphosis, which some psychoanalysts have decided is autobiographical.  Kafka's father was a successful businessman who pressured him to be successful.  He was strict and domineering, and similarly to Gregor, Kafka obeyed, trying to meet the expectations of those around him. As Mr. Mitchell mentioned in class, Kafka didn't leave his home very often, and wrote feverishly all night.  After Gregor's transformation, both he and the author are isolated.  The cockroach can therefore also be interpreted as a mental and communicative barrier which Kafka felt prevented him from interacting with others.

Emotional Avoidance in Paris

I think a theme in this novel that reaches further and deeper than masculinity or post-war trauma is emotional avoidance.  Every character in The Sun Also Rises but Cohn hides and/or "protects" their emotions, especially when provoked or prodded.  The subculture that these characters belong to makes an attempt to separate the public and private spheres entirely, with any infringement meeting disgust if not outright resentment.  Yet the ironic jabs at each other's personal life, company, and beliefs are commonplace and vital to conversation.  Early in the novel, Jake and Brett seem to be poking fun when they question each other's dates (a prostitute and gay men respectively), but are they really?  We read an extended passage where Jake expresses his great anger at seeing Brett with these men, but by falling into this comfortable, supposedly ironic conversation, he avoids any conflict.  Bill attacks Cohn pretty relentlessly at times, but somehow makes Cohn look out of line and out of place when he gets almost violently angry.  Even though we know Bill strongly dislikes Cohn, their subculture of emotional avoidance lets him get away scot-free.
Although I know little of Hemingway's life, he may be making a statement about living a life drowned in excess and indulgence, namely that doing so only detaches oneself from true peace and emotional and mental acceptance.  Reading the novel in this light, Jake is made an even more tragic character; Brett is able to come to terms with or at least acknowledge her insecurities and weaknesses, Cohn escapes the situation entirely, but Jake makes no progress.  Even if his time spent in solitude has allowed him to come to a stable mindset, Jake is only made more emotionally distant and passive.  With no future, Jake is merely going through the motions of life.

Mrs. Dalloway and Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway is a novel that relies heavily, sometimes almost solely on its characters to construct a story.  Woolf has done this intentionally, citing the lack of meaningful, plot-independent characters in other novels, which she believes has caused English novels specifically to lose their value.  The Mezzanine and Mrs. Dalloway are therefore similar in that they are attempts to push the novel further, to something deemed more authentic.

I think both Nicholson Baker and Virginia Woolf encountered quite a bit of difficulty in creating their novels because of their determination to break from their respective archetypes.  Because of this, both writers used aspects of themselves to create authentic characters/narrators.  The Mezzanine is a much less personal novel because of its experimental nature; its purpose was to write a novel with a certain style from an abstract perspective.  Baker needed only to push his writing style a bit over the edge.  

Mrs. Dalloway, on the other hand, forced Woolf to flesh out the emotional and existential depth of her characters, inevitably resulting in a more personal novel.  This is especially true because of Virginia Woolf's struggle with mental illness.
Clarissa spends much of the novel considering questions of life and death and existential purpose.  Septimus is confused and lacks any hope or direction in his life, and eventually sees suicide as his sole option.  In this way, Clarissa could represent the intellectual side (perhaps literally as Woolf suffered from multiple-personality disorder) of Woolf, and Septimus the emotional side.  There are certainly times when Woolf seems to be speaking through Clarissa or the narrator, attacking the psychiatrists in a way that stems from personal experience and pain.  Given the fact that Septimus was later added when Woolf decided she wanted Clarissa to live, it's not too much of a stretch to claim that Woolf allowed a "part" of herself to commit suicide in catharsis for herself and Clarissa.

Mezzanine's Purpose

Despite some initial misgivings, I ended up enjoying the Mezzanine; Nicholson Baker's syntax and use of the "white background" was usually engaging, even when the "plot" itself was not.  I initially read the novel as I believe it was intended: to show the interesting and important aspects of what we think is mundane life in the modern world.  There's certainly a lot of evidence that this is what Baker was going for, and I think most of us started identifying with Howie to a certain extent.
But the more I thought about the Mezzanine, the more I started to think of it as an extreme satire.  Instead of Baker writing about the beauty to be found is 20th century life, he may be arguing that 20th century life has become so devoid of purpose, so alike to machines in an assembly line, that Howie and others are forced to contemplate more or less irrelevant topics, such as the evolution of straws, milk cartons, and light refraction in escalators.
Because of this, Howie loses some of his sanity (it seems too strong of a word, but it moves somewhere in that direction), going on for paragraphs about the rejuvenating properties of alcohol on neurons, and making engaging small talk with a coworker about smoke alarms.  Perhaps the most significant scene in the novel occurs when Howie is confronted with the philosopher who states that one should pursue and contemplate "big ideas" instead of the transient.  Howie has a very strong reaction to this, and instead of defending himself or at least contemplating, he simply rejects it out of hand.  The fact that the reader can or must identify with Howie at this point due to the novel's narration from the 1st and 2nd person perspectives only furthers the argument that we in modern society have lost sight of a destination or purpose.