Destructive Chaos from the Unknown

In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and in J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, men of substantial power journey into the midst of the unknown in order to pursue some ultimate objective. Both men are iron-willed idealists, yet both men know nothing of what awaits them on their quest and therefore unsuspectingly walk straight into the destruction of what they sought to attain. In their expeditions within the unknown, the two men create their own chaos that leads to the failure of all for which their journeys stood.
Mr. Kurtz entered the wilderness of the Belgian Congo with tremendous moral and spiritual ideals, yet on his quest to save the savages he was consumed by the perceived darkness of a strange land and an unfamiliar culture. Kurtz began his moral escapade solely with the grand idea of civilizing and saving an unknown people. The idealist was completely unprepared for the customs of the native people and was therefore easily took the god-like status that was given to him. Kurtz proceeded to use his god powers to enhance the decay of his once-elevated virtues; he thereby created his own chaos that led him to abandon his ideals and cry for the extermination of all ‘the brutes.’ The trader’s great cause therefore failed within the self-inflicted chaos of Kurtz’s quest.
Similarly, Colonel Joll embarked on a campaign of political and military might to purge a perceived barbarian threat, yet in the process of supposedly defending the empire’s frontier he destroys the Magistrate’s frontier town. Joll knows virtually nothing about the barbarians, for he understands neither their culture nor the land in which they live; his actions on the frontier are based completely on the contrived notion of a barbarian threat. While such a threat does not at first exist, Joll induces barbarian backlash upon the frontier settlement (destruction of the wheat crop by flooding) and even creates a situation in which fear and the ends to which it takes the village destroy a frontier that Joll was charged with defending. Chaos consumes the town as the villagers allow the Colonel, in the name of defense, to suspend rule by law, to begin a campaign of brutality against the barbarians, and to release a wild army of uncontrollable soldiers to essentially rape, plunder, and pillage the settlement. By this chaos Joll’s mission failed.
We journey through the unknown each and every day of our lives, and within that unknown we create our own chaos that confuses, confounds, and even destroys the goals that we pursue. Our original intentions, whether they be positive, as in the case of Kurtz, or negative, as in the case of Joll, are insignificant because, just as happened to these two men, the chaos with which we struggle radically compromises our quests. “The best laid plans of mice and men” often do go terribly wrong within the unknown-induced chaos of our lives. (483)

The Fog of Time in "Waiting For The Barbarians"

One of the most interesting stylistic aspects of J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting For The Barbarians is the persistent use of the present tense in the Magistrate’s narrative. While such a convention is certainly not unique in writing, it is nevertheless slightly out of the ordinary, and even rare in literature, to read a story that is happening as the narrator is recounting it. This stylistic facet gives the novel a very personal and in-the-moment feel that not only creates a link between the Magistrate and the reader (through which the desired philosophical ideas of the story are conveyed), but also implies the active passing of time. Within this temporal context, the reader is trapped with the Magistrate in a metaphysical fog of the unknown, for the story is actively developing and therefore unknown to neither the reader nor the narrator. While the novel does not explicitly cast any such active recognition of limited knowledge into the reader, the feeling of being trapped with a narrator who does not know what the future holds is inescapable. The uncertainty that is created is fitting for the world into which time is taking the Magistrate.
When taken together, the personal and the temporal aspects of the novel strengthen the presentation of the Magistrate’s dilemma: the onset of a dark period of tyranny, abuses, and general unease. The fog of the present adds to the development of this unease and leaves both the narrator and the reader looking into the horrors to come. (248)

A Brief Summary of “The Failure of Metaphysics”

“The Failure of Metaphysics” by Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan

~ Marlow assumes responsibility for Kurtz, a rejected and failed ‘other’ who becomes effectively a ‘twin’ or a ‘double.’ In this sense Marlow denies one of the underlying predicament of the modernist outlook: the separation of one man from another, of man from nature, and of language from the world. (See last point)

~ Marlow’s journey is characterized by a spiritual detachment that is rooted in a desire to truly understand the world around him. He is essentially searching for “lost vitality” and “the essential wholeness man has lost in the course of his material progress” in the context of the intellectual pessimism of modernism.

~ Marlow’s journey begins as a pilgrimage, but his skeptical and pessimistic discourse signals the collapse of metaphysics within his tale and therefore the rejection of the concept of the journey as a pilgrimage.

~ Any illuminating significance within the metaphysical concept of the journey as a pilgrimage is further atrophied by the perennial absence of any object that would present a positive meaning to ‘the heart of darkness’ in the text. Conrad’s presentation of the failure of language and his use of language in the text, with nebulous adjectives and abstract nouns, indicates this absence within the “ultimately undecipherable nature of reality.” Essentially, the metaphysical journey has the spiritual drive, but lacks the object with which to find meaning. (This again links to the pessimism of the modern style)

~ Kurtz was established at the beginning of Marlow’s journey as a symbol of great ideals; however, just like all the other characters that Marlow meets in his story, Kurtz is in actuality “a paragon of the blind omnivorous greed” the drove the conquest of Africa. Kurtz is dethroned as a “sham idol” as the “metaphysical aura is stripped off” and collapses.

~ Marlow, with his story telling, subverts the idea of authority by denying the power of the teller’s voice (“there was nothing behind me,” pg. 28). The metaphysical transcendence of the artist is therefore nullified.

~ Marlow assimilates Kurtz’s ‘Voice’ and ‘Word’ in order to redeem the ‘other’ and his ideals through himself.

The Destruction of a Family

The final section of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury brings the story full circle with a closing in which the Compson family has finally destroyed itself. The novel focuses on the decline and destruction of the family as carried out by the individual family members: by the final section Quentin (number one) committed suicide; Father drank himself to death; Caddy tarnished the family pride and drove a wedge into the family’s inner relationships; Roskus passed away; and T.P., Versh, and Froney presumably moved on to greater things in their lives. The remaining characters all find their own end on Easter Sunday, 1928: Mother resigns to her bedroom where she presumably gives up her life; Quentin (number two) runs away from home; Jason has his hoarded money, which is perhaps most prized possession, stolen from him and is humiliated by his inability to retrieve it; Luster is beaten down by Jason; Benjy is left with a flower, symbolic of a peaceful state, that has been broken; and Dilsey, the true matriarch of the family, experiences the saving power of Christ through the visiting preacher. Every family member and servant has either died or moved on from the family’s ‘curse,’ thereby completing the effect of that curse and completing the decline of the family. The portrayed order at the end of the novel is therefore the calm-after-the-storm tranquility and serenity that is left in the vacuum of the family’s final collapse. (241)

Faulkner's Artificial Chaos

The chaos that culminates in Quentin Compson’s suicide in William Faulkner’s The Sounds and the Fury has long been a subject of interest to scholars. The search for understanding of Quentin’s suicide drive (a quest that, taken in the context of the human experience, can only explore the thoughts and emotions linked with the suicidal reasoning) has led to several interpretations; however, these theories all contain fundamental problems regarding human emotional tendencies in relation to suicide. These issues originate with Faulkner’s artificial presentation of chaos within the Quentin section of the novel.
Traditional interpretations of Quentin’s instability point to the loss of the pure, beloved sister as the motive for suicide. Problems abound within this theory; the most disconcerting is the breach of experiential sensibility. Suicide emerges as an option within oneself due to some inner torment that pertains directly to the self. In the Quentin section of the novel, any link that would establish the necessary kind of inner disturbance is far too shallow; Quentin may truly care about his sister, but the reader never sees any indication of such dedication that is not within the interest of the family’s pride. Furthermore, the supposedly ‘obvious’ and ‘strong’ link between Quentin and Caddy is confusing at best due to the lack of any strong established bond between the two in the Benjy section. In fact, there is more evidence that the two children did not get along in their childhood; in the dominant memory of Damuddy’s death in the first section, Caddy and Quentin engage in several quarrels and even separate for much of the memory due to childhood bickering. Such confusion (which truly emerges when the two are suddenly depicted as very close in the second section) about Quentin and Caddy’s relationship gives way to the basic indication that, because he apparently only cares about his sister so much in the times that she does many questionable things, Quentin is merely watching out for the family’s name. In this context suicide is an overwhelming improbability due to the impersonality (in the sense of relation to the inner self) of the subject as it continually bothers Quentin. Even if Faulkner had meant for Quentin to loose faith in life because of Caddy’s impurity, his link to Quentin’s self is far too weak to justify the depicted end. Any intended suicidal reasoning centered around Caddy is therefore far too artificial to be considered a viable emotional course within Quentin’s experience.
May Cameron Brown of the Georgia Institute of Technology argues that Quentin is tormented by his memories of failures regarding his sister and his heritage and that Quentin, in order to escape the burden of those memories, must “defeat time by destroying himself.” This interpretation would satisfy the search for an inner link to Quentin’s self in the form of the haunting of memories and the apparent shame they produce and would provide an apparent drive for Quentin’s suicide. Brown, however, states that “[i]t is Quentin’s partial awareness of the emptiness of words and values which creates his despair and isolates him in a world of shadows.” Quentin’s inner strife would therefore appear to be subject to the outside world, which again leads to the confusing link between Caddy and Quentin and the implied impersonality of suicide. Quentin could easily feel depressed by Caddy’s lack of virtue or the failures with regards to heritage and tradition, yet to kill oneself over such impersonal subjects is a link that Faulkner does not fully develop. The author includes little detail of the emotions behind Quentin’s suicidal tendencies, and to make any such leap to killing oneself would invoke artificiality within the personal chaos. Brown concludes her essay by stating the following:

“Haunted by a past to which he is inadequate, dogged by a present he cannot face, and doomed to no future, Quentin, through his diction and general point of view—both what he speaks and what he thinks—dramatizes a modern yet universal sensibility”

Such a sensibility (which is best demonstrated with Quentin’s monologue about being and not being on page 170) is indeed a strong demonstration of the state of mind associated with suicide and is a powerful and quite real state of human existence when truly felt. However, despite Faulkner’s infusion of feeling in this demonstrated state of being, the feelings and inner turbulence behind such a condition, those which lead to and promote that condition, are precluded from the text, thereby eliminating the fundamental basis upon which the reader can link to Quentin in his final hours of life.
It may seem contrary to reason to believe that Faulkner does not give the reader enough information about Quentin’s inner self to relate to, let alone to interpret and to understand, his suicide, given that the section is written in stream-of-consciousness and is supposed to depict his thoughts. However, suicide falls within the emotional levels of human existence, an area Faulkner does not truly explore in The Sound and the Fury. He merely examines the thoughts and experiences of the characters and implies the emotions linked with those while ignoring the emotions that emerge from deep within the self, emotions that would include suicidal feelings. Suicide is of course a very complicated subject, yet it is one that must be explored in all its facets if it is to be presented in a study of the human experience. The stream-of-consciousness style of this section acts as a lens through which the deepest of emotions are filtered out as the thoughts that go through Quentin’s head become the sole indicator of his feelings. This loss of emotional resolution keeps the reader from understanding exactly how Quentin feels with respect to his experiencing of chaos, his interpretation of chaos, and his view of himself within that chaos, all sensibilities that would help the reader understand and relate to Quentin’s inner strife. It is because Faulkner does not examine how those deep emotions function that he introduces artificial chaos into the Quentin section and leaves the reader with a fragmented view of Quentin’s suicide. (1011)

Brown, May Cameron. “The Language of Chaos: Quentin Compson in The Sound and the
Fury.” American Literature. Duke UP. Jan. 1980: 544-553. JSTOR. Phoenix Country Day School Brewster Lib. 24 Oct. 2008 .

From Depression To Insanity

Literature is the way in which man talks about what it means to be human, and as such the struggles of the inner human experience are often central themes in meaningful writing. Whether the author examines the thoughts of a heartless man who seduces and destroys his secretary, the chaos within the upbringing of a problematic teenager, or the onset of personal progress and understanding, the questions of the human mind and soul are always among the most pressing stock issues within literature. Within Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” one finds such a tale of an inner battle with guilt, sadness, and depression; however, the story by no means falls into cliché. Gilman takes the concept of depression to its logical end: insanity, an end that may be hinted at in fiction but is rarely explored in its entirety. “The Yellow Wallpaper” therefore stands out as a provocative and shocking piece of literature that provides insight into the inner progression from depression to loss of sanity.
The story begins with the narrator in a state of depression, a state that could be remedied by human interaction and contact. Depression is impossible to completely cure, for life is a dynamic journey in which we struggle to keep up with our ever-changing surroundings and selves, but it is also easily alleviated by some kind of action, interaction, or communication. John, the narrator’s physician husband, refuses to acknowledge even the existence of an inner soul and, with such a flawed view, merely calls his wife’s state a “temporary nervous depression” in which she displays “hysterical tendencies.” He mistakenly believes that he can fix his wife with physical treatment; in actuality, his diagnosis and prescription merely drive his wife further into chaos. It is in this state of neglect and even emotional and spiritual abuse that the narrator slips into insanity via the yellow wallpaper that is her only means of occupying her mind.
Gilman illustrates a point that is not often truly understood within the human experience: that depression, when left unchecked as a product of severance from human spiritual interaction (interaction such as emotional or physical contact or such as the metaphysical process of writing) and of turbulence within one’s inner beliefs about oneself, develops into a state of mental instability that leads into insanity. Though this point in itself is of infinite consequence in the human experience, the story also points out the equally important fact that the narrator conducts her writing in a normal human style even while she looses her sanity. The transition from depression to insanity is therefore merely a slight shift upon the edge of the human soul that can happen without one’s being aware of its onset. Humans, as lost beings with broken souls, can easily slip into such a chaotic inner state; we may even already have lost our sanity to some extent.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” provides a truly unique insight into the collapse of the human mind, a collapse that could happen to anyone, yet it also stays away from following the overbeaten path of short fiction dealing with the consequences of the human mind and spirit. The story therefore not only teaches the reader of the consequences of inner chaos, but also of the power of literary individuality. The story’s piercing message would convey little meaning if it were not written in its different personal-journal style or if it were told without the complex metaphors and references to medicinal views of the day. “The Yellow Wallpaper” must be valued for both its important message about the fragile human soul and for its unique style that conveys that message so powerfully. (608)

To See Is To Feel

When viewed as a whole, Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” tells a provocative story of the main character’s strange yet meaningful experience of metaphorically learning to see life from the point of view of a blind man; however, the story also recounts the relationship between the main character’s wife and the blind man, Robert, from whom he learns to see. Half of the story is about the interactions between the wife and Robert, and when viewed as a tale about this connection, Carver’s short story offers much more insight into the concept of seeing. For both the wife and, at the end of the narrative, the main character, true sight becomes second to the sight of feeling.

The wife is set in the story as a sensitive person who has experienced a full array of feeling in life. She writes poems, and in such a context can be viewed as one in touch with her self and with her reactions to the situations life places her in. Therefore, Robert’s touching her face bore special significance, as did the loneliness of being a military wife that culminated in her attempted suicide. The wife, as one who went from love to solitude to near-death, is therefore a means to understand the individual who most needs the comfort of others in life. She needs someone to talk to as much as her blind employer needs someone to read to him.

Robert, therefore, becomes a key figure in her life as one to whom she can tell everything. He becomes essentially her best friend and her confidant. By such a close bond, the wife learns to express and understand her emotions and therefore learns to ‘see’ by feeling. Such metaphorical sight in which she can both be completely understood and completely understand her closest friend invariably provides the wife with happiness and stability.

Though her husband mocks her for this bond of sight, he, too, learns to see by feeling. The main character is in many ways stuck in the same situation that his wife was once trapped in; he has no friends, he works in a job he doesn’t like, and he is detached from life to the point that he feels jealousy when his wife speaks of Robert and his only source of pleasure is smoking pot late at night. Therefore, when Robert has him draw a cathedral, the real re-learning to see takes place on the emotional level. The main character experiences what his wife found in Robert—the ability to feel connected with another individual on a level that transcends physicality. By the end of the story, both he and his wife are brought into a better state of living by the connection of feelings in which one is able to truly see and understand oneself. Such a new state of sight is “like nothing else.” (474)

To Understand Understanding

Understanding is one of the most sought after states of human existence, and in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies” understanding becomes the story’s driving goal for Mr. Kapasi and Mrs. Das, characters who are both trapped in loveless marriages where the integral connection of faith and understanding has been lost. Within the story the multiple facets of the word ‘understanding’ are merged into one, and in such an all-encompassing frame Mrs. Das reaches a new state of self realization within the context of her family. Understanding is therefore a transformative experience in which the self attains a new state within the personal human experience.

At the beginning of the story, the only form of the word ‘understanding’ with which Mr. Kapasi is familiar is that used in the context of language. As an interpreter he has developed a view of the term that connotes translation and everyday physicality; the pains and problems of the doctor’s patients are presented to him to be understood and to be translated for the doctor to understand. Within his unfeeling marriage, there is no understanding in the spiritual or emotional sense between him and his wife; Mr. Kapasi has never experienced true understanding in this regard and therefore is “flattered” when Mrs. Das expresses an interest in his work that leads to a conversation establishing a level of understanding between the two lonely individuals. In response Mr. Kapasi develops another sense of the word in which the connection between a woman whom he now considers his friend entails the understanding with which two good friends could talk about their mutual interests and problems. This onset is underscored by Mr. Kapasi’s description of the sensation as similar to that of the moment in which he would finally read the words of a passage that he had translated, and through such feelings the meanings of understanding are linked. The recognition Mrs. Das grants to her tour guide begins a discourse that leads not only to Mr. Kapasi’s feeling of attachment, but also to a conversation that enables the interpreter to bring the lost Mrs. Das into a new sense of understanding.

Mrs. Das undoubtedly understands the metaphysical connotations of understanding, for she explains to Mr. Kapasi the origin of the connection between her and her husband and the supposed emotional attachment behind it. However, the strength of that connection wore away as Mrs. Das realized the loneliness of being locked in a marriage where all one can do is take care of the kids and tend to the home. With no good friends to talk to and the initial passionate love for her husband gone, Mrs. Das experiences a complete lack of conversational understanding which drives her to seek the help of Mr. Kapasi, the interpreter who overcomes barriers in language and therefore must be able to overcome barriers in the self. She searches for one who could show her understanding and “say the right thing” in response to her confession, yet finds one who instead offers her the chance to unconsciously re-understand herself. Mr. Kapasi perceives the position in which Mrs. Das is trapped, for he recognizes her as a woman “who had already fallen out of love with life,” yet he can only offer her the simple question of physical pain versus guilt. This is not the reply that Mrs. Das was looking for; however, such an unsatisfying response makes her leave Mr. Kapasi’s company and join her family. By doing so she sets into motion the harassment of her illegitimate son by monkeys, which unites the family for the first time in the text around the defense of one of their own.

At the end of the story, Mr. Kapasi views the Das family as one would want to view any family: together. Mrs. Das’ attempt at soliciting his understanding creates the opportunity in which she can overcome her guilt and start again by taking a more caring and proactive role within her family; the opportunity to do so was presented by Mr. Kapasi’s multiple views of understanding in which perception of physical pain and emotional distress are connected. By showing such a level of understanding, Mr. Kapasi gave Mrs. Das the chance at a truly transformative experience for the individual.

How does the title “Interpreter of Maladies” relate to the conclusion of the story?

To what extent is Mr. Kapasi one who has “fallen out of love with life”?

To what extent is the story about culture?

What is the difference between pain and guilt?

The Plot Against America and The Problems With America

This summer I read Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, and The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Pride and Prejudice was not nearly as tedious a read as I had originally anticipated; however, I was somewhat disappointed with Roth’s The Plot Against America. Having heard good reviews of the acclaimed author and being interested in the ‘what-if’ plot of the novel, I was led to believe that the book would be a riveting account of an “imaginative and utterly—terrifyingly—believable” nightmare scenario. I was, however, to an extent let down.

Roth’s tangential remarks throughout the work made reading the book more of a chore than a truly riveting experience. I was frustrated to find that the author would so readily go off on tangents about orphanages, his friend Earl’s parents, and movie-theater news reels. These miniature stories about the narrator’s life have little, if anything, to do with the plot and they convey neither meaningful ideas nor any thoughts of critical worth. In addition to rants on such random topics, Roth has an incredible propensity to begin a section describing one instance of importance and then to somehow end the section relating a story of some distant relation to the initial topic. Such a style leaves the plot behind and makes the reader wonder where they came from, what happened along the way, and where they are going. Even in his writing that relates to the plot, the author’s prose too frequently takes on the form of a rant with profuse use of long nonessential clauses that create their own void within which the reader becomes lost.

The story that drives The Plot Against America is well crafted and interesting, but the writer’s style shatters the chance that such an intellectually stimulating novel would have at becoming engaging. Tangents, rants, and convoluted streams of thought create a disconnected story that is difficult to follow. Nevertheless, Roth’s nightmare scenario, though not quite what I expected, was brilliant; instead of creating an American Holocaust, he crafted a story of fear and uncertainty which, in day-to-day life, can be the most terrifying reality of all.

Despite a solid core plot, the author’s methods of conveying his ideas are both enlightening and dissatisfying. The Plot Against America can be seen as a study of American-Jewish life, and in such a frame is an edifying read. The author’s narration enables the reader to see and understand the world through the perspective of the Roth family, with its own problems, concerns, and ideals, and certainly changes how one processes the events of the novel. However, even while speaking of America as unquestionably being his family’s home, the author portrays Jewish life in America as somewhat detached from standard Christian America. In the context of 1940s America, such a setting is perfectly understandable, but in modern society one would look to a contemporary study of the American Jew to also at least hint at the possibility of the realization of a less subdivided America. I say this as one who supports the tenants of multiculturalism but who at the same time hates arbitrary divisions and barriers imposed upon society by the improper and invented lines of ethnicity and race. Such classifications are the work of generalization and dehumanization of the individual that inevitably lead to the collectivism of Fascism and Communism. The individual must come first, but in the creation of a detached group is shelved.

Stylistic and ideological concerns aside, the novel creates an image of an anti-Semitic America that sadly was and still is mirrored in modern American society. Faced with an ignorant populace led into utterly disgusting and shameful ethnic violence, at least covertly, by a president of minimal values and abilities, the Roth family embodies the justifiable concerns of an American minority—concerns that still need to be attended to today.