Giving a Toss

Throughout the books we've read this year, one trait has connected every single one of our protagonists. Despite differences in race, class, gender, religion, or country of origin-- every single protagonist has demonstrated above average perceptiveness in the way that society operates. They all feel like outsiders to some extent, because of this perceptiveness. However, the actions they take to cope with the constraints of society define each of them, and make them unique.

The obvious example is, of course, the quintessential 20th century coming of age protagonist-- Holden Caulfield. Holden's obsession with youthful innocence and his disdain for the "phonies" of the adult world demonstrates his ability to see past all the societal bullshit, and finds himself unable to cope with the box society has trapped him in.

Esther Greenwood shares Holden's disdain for how society has limited her-- and mirrors him in her psychological downwards spiral throughout the events of the book. Both Esther's and Holden's inability to cope with the self imposed limits society had placed on itself result in both of them going down a path of self destruction. However, while Holden seems to have finally accepted the status quo by the end of his narrative, Esther's fate is left more ambiguous. 

Alternatively, Benji from Sag Harbor, sees how "everyone's faking it", but instead of rejecting society in turn, he chooses to embrace it. Unlike other protagonists, who completely withdraw from society, Benji is able to maintain some semblance of a social life, despite his acknowledgement that "everyone was faking it".

 Jason Taylor initially tries to fit in with society-- he tries to join the Spooks, act cool, etc. However, by the end of the book, Jason has realized he needs to follow his own path, and make "his insides match his outsides".

Stephan Dedalus escapes the limits of Ireland, and in doing so escapes the 'duty' of being forced to keep his work Ireland focused, and the already established status quo he was being forced into by staying.

Finally, Ruth completely removes herself from society-- by being presumed dead and living as a transient, she casts off the weight of societal responsibility.

The struggle to come to terms with one's place in society is core to the coming of age experience. It's understandable then, for this motif to be repeated universally across the genre. It's how the character's deal with their struggle that truly defines them.

Hobbits and the Argo

While going through blog posts, one of the authors mentioned something about Jason staying in his shire. Massive geek that I am, my first thoughts were to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, as The Shire was a prominent setting in both the LOTR trilogy, and in the Hobbit. Specifically, The Shire is the ancestral land of the hobbit people, and therefore the place of origin for the main protagonists of the series. 

I thought to myself, "is there actually a connection between LOTR and BSG? Or am I making a connection out of nothing?". Obviously there is a passing connection-- Jason mentions his Middle Earth poster on his wall, along with his enjoyment of the series. However, I wanted something more concrete. Then it hit me, the connection was through Jason's name-- Jason shares a name with the protagonist of Homer's The Odyssey (as pointed out by Madame Crommlynck). Both The Odyssey and LOTR are archetypal examples of the Hero's Journey narrative. In the Hero's Journey story structure, the protagonist has a defined goal, sets off to reach said goal, goes through many ordeals to reach their goal, and return changed forever. 

None of this happens to Jason. Jason has no defined goal to reach, no Cyclops to fight, no Mt. Doom to throw the ring into. Black Swan Green takes place almost entirely in Black Swan Green, and the events that Jason goes through just sort of happen to Jason. I think the passing references or comparisons to books in the Hero's Journey archetype is done to highlight just how different Jason's character arc is-- he stays in 'The Shire' for most of the book, but he still finds conflict and adventure; and at the end of the book, Jason leaves BSG changed forever. 

Housekeeping

Throughout Housekeeping, the differing approaches to 'keeping house' gives insights into their characters.

Throughout the course of the book, Lucille grows from a passive character like Ruth, to a self-determined character who begins to distance herself from her more flighty family. Lucille wishes to assimilate into conventional culture, a marked difference from Sylvie and Ruth, who desire to wander free. It is fitting then that Lucille moves into the home of the home economics teacher-- the teacher who's job it is to literally teach her students about good housekeeping.

Sylvie is a free spirited and flighty transient, who dislikes staying in one place. We see many instances of Sylvie's inability to keep house-- she leaves the windows open, she leaves things to dry in the yard and promptly forgets about it, etc. Throughout the book we see the once clean house degrade into a shell of its former self. In the last chapter, Sylvie uses a broom to help light the house on fire, using something meant to 'keep house' to instead destroy it.

When Sylvie tries to convince the court that she is fit to keep custody of Ruth however, she begins to clean up the house, faking her ability to keep house to seem normal. She seems almost like a different person, with Ruth saying "I had never imagined that Sylvie was capable of haste or urgency". Sylvie becomes paranoid that she's being watched, declaring loudly how well she and Ruth are doing.

Nazi Daddies and Jewish Mommies

Upon first reading Sylvia Plath's Daddy, as a person of Jewish heritage, I was mildly put off and irritated about her comparison of her relationships with her father and her ex husband to the treatment of the Jews during the Holocaust. I found it insensitive that a Christian woman without any immediate apparent connections to the Holocaust would go and compare herself to a Jew off to a concentration camp, and her father to Hitler. If this poem came out today, I'm fairly certain she would have received a large amount of criticism from social justice warriors and the like. 

Plath states that the poem is not meant to be autobiographical, instead describing

 "a girl with an Electra complex [whose] father died while she thought he was God. Her case is complicated by the fact that her father was also a Nazi and her mother very possibly part Jewish. In the daughter the two strains marry and paralyze each other – she has to act out the awful little allegory once over before she is free of it"
However, upon researching Plath's life and her parent's background more than in the biographical information in the copy of the Bell Jar we read, I found more direct connections from the poem to her life which better justified her usage of such controversial imagery in her poem.

Plath's father, Otto Plath, was born in Germany, and according to Plath, was a Nazi sympathizer that "heiled Hitler in the privacy of his home". Plath's mother, Aurelia Plath, had suspected (though not confirmed) Jewish heritage. Given this information, it's pretty freaking hard to argue that Daddy was not intended to be autobiographical to some extent.

Plath metaphorically eviscerating both her father and her estranged husband in the poem was a way for her to achieve the closure her subject craved in the poem. During the time she wrote Daddy, Plath was falling farther and farther into her depression, ultimately resulting in her suicide not that long after. With her deteriorating mental state, and her penchant for a sometimes over dramatic writing style, I imagine Plath felt that using the baggage associated with the Holocaust and its atrocities would make both her more sympathetic, and her father and ex husband irredeemably evil in the eyes of the reader. 

 That being said, upon reflecting on the greater context of her Holocaust metaphor, do I think it was justified? No, not really. Although the imagery of the Holocaust is immediately evocative and sure to catch the reader's attention, the fact that it's being used by Plath to compare her struggle to one of the largest atrocities in history on what is effectively a diss track, is just disrespectful to the victims of the Holocaust. I understand that Plath's family had connections to the Nazis, and there was a whole dynamic there. I understand it was her right to express herself as she saw fit. I just don't have to like the product of her expression. 

Why New York?

In both Catcher in the Rye and The Bell Jar, most of their plots take place in New York City. Coincidence? I think not!
During the 1950s, New York City had the largest population in the world, rising to prominence after WWII. This led to a massive economic and cultural boom, leading to new opportunities for aspiring artists, like Salinger and Plath. As both had lived in New York, they could have found the experience of living in New York impactful enough to place their characters in that setting.
 Placing their protagonists in the hustle and bustle of NYC also helps to highlight the loneliness the protagonists go through. Being alone is bad enough, but the feeling of being alone in such a massive and busy city is so much worse. Additionally, the relative proximity of different and iconic settings makes more of an impact to the reader-- Holden critiquing the Radio City Music Hall catches the reader more than him just critiquing another dance show without the context of cultural impact Radio City has made.
Or, the books could be set in NYC because Salinger was born in NYC, and lived there until he was sent off to boarding school; and The Bell Jar appears to be based off of the experiences Plath had when she went to work for Mademoiselle magazine in NYC for a month..

Daedalus or Icarus?

In Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, our protagonist Stephan Dedalus often compares himself to his namesake-- the Daedalus of Greek mythology. However, I feel like Stephan is more similar to Daedalus's son, Icarus.
The Daedalus of Greek myth was a skilled inventor who built the Labyrinth of Crete for King Minos to house the monstrous Minotaur. Once he had completed his work on the Labyrinth, Minos trapped Daedalus and his son, Icarus, inside. To escape, Daedalus fashioned both him and his son a pair of wings to fly out of the Labyrinth. However, Icarus's hubris got the better of him, and he flew too close to the sun, causing the bindings on his wings to melt. Icarus's wings fell apart and he fell to his death into the Icarian Sea.
What we see of Stephan's character throughout the story seems closer to Icarus's character than Daedalus's. Stephan is often prideful, demonstrated in his disdain for human interaction or companionship, during the early chapters. Icarus's mortal sin was pride as well, linking Dedalus more to Stephan than Daedalus.
Stephan aspires to be like Daedalus, wishing "to create proudly out of the freedom and power of his soul, as the great artificer whose name he bore". This kind of put Daedalus on a whole other playing field, similar to how a son would look up to his father or something (hint hint). 

Interestingly,  Stephan never mentions either Daedalus or Icarus by name. Icarus is never alluded to, while Daedalus is alluded to 3 times as the "great artificer". I think Stephan doesn't even want to think about the possibility that he could be closer to Icarus than Daedalus. 

E______ C______

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, our protagonist Stephan Daedalus briefly becomes infatuated with a girl he meets at a party, initially only referring to her as E____ C_____ in a poem he writes the day after. We eventually learn that her name is Emma, but that's just about all we learn about her. Instead of engaging in any meaningful conversation with Emma, Daedalus merely gawks at her throughout the night, sure that she is equally enamored with him.
Stephan quickly develops an attachment to Emma, within the time from seeing her at the party, and staring at her on the tram. He begins to think that they had met in a previous life, thinking he had "yielded to [her] a thousand times". Stephan has fantasies of grabbing her and kissing her, so certain she wanted him too. We see Stephan's fantasies of a moonlit romantic encounter in the section before, where he would yield to his 'Mercedes' and transform into the fearless and suave gentleman all teenage boys have wished to be at one point or another. As we see in the end of section two, Stephan keeps trying to make his Mercedes fantasy into a reality-- describing both his encounter with a prostitute, with Emma, and his imagined encounter with Mercedes with the same velvety and idealized tone. We see Stephan projecting his idealized vision of Mercedes onto Emma, filling in her personality character with an idealized 'dream girl'.
What really struck me about this passage was just how much of myself I saw in Stephan during it. While reading, I remembered all of the times I had pined for whomever I had 'fallen in love with' at that time. I remembered what it was like to become enamored with a person so quickly that you feel like it was destiny. Too scared to talk to them, I'd wait, sure they'd 'come to me when the time was right'. I think that since I've experienced a lot of what Stephan felt during the first two sections of part two, it helped humanize the character to me; and while not making him likable, made me more invested in him.
The fact that Joyce makes sure to show just how arrogantly Daedalus sees the world also made me enjoy the section more. I said that I've experienced what Daedalus felt, not that I was particularly proud of it. I think Joyce knew that this was a particularly 'cringey' time for people, so the fact he wrote it in such a tongue-in-cheek manner helps the reader to laugh at their younger selves.