Tag: essay

Playing the Outlaw

It is often assumed that outlaws—men and women who commit crimes and willfully dodge the long arm of the law—are not right. Something snapped in them, went wrong at some point in their lives. While a limited point of view, literature and film often bear out the same belief that outlaws have somehow broken away from the societal rules that govern the law-abiding majority. Perhaps they are on the run from the law because they prefer it. A lifestyle choice. One film and one short story in particular highlight these traits: Badlands, written and directed by Terrence Malick; and “The Man Who Knew Belle Starr,” by Richard Bausch. Both tales portray outlaw characters who dwell in mobile fantasy worlds built upon delusion and supported by companions who come to realize that they are not cut from the same unlawful cloth.

The stories of these outlaws and their partners unfold plain as day, but it is the mystery behind the obvious that makes them compelling narratives. The real stories and characters are discovered between the lines, in the words that go unsaid. It is not surprising, then, that both Malick and Bausch utilize minimalistic dialogue, sparse scenery, and narrators as spectators, to tell of characters whose pasts and motives remain uncertain or vaguely hinted, making them more compelling as mysteries and the legendary outlaws they strive to become. Linda Costanzo Cahir, author of Literature Into Film: Theory and Practical Approaches, writes of this artistic practice in her chapter titled “Short Stories into Film.” Put simply, she describes the three basic elements of short compositions: “brevity, single effect, and beauty” (188). Originally a concept developed by Edgar Allan Poe in “The Philosophy of Composition”, brevity is important to completing a story in one sitting, which in turn emphasizes the single effect of the story (188). The beauty is that which reveals “the excitement or pleasurable elevation of the soul” in the work (188).

A film that comes in at 1 hour and 33 minutes and a 19-page short story are both perfectly suited for this approach. A pair of late scenes—one from the film and one from the story—highlight the effectiveness of such brevity and to-the-point story-telling. In Badlands, Kit has driven and killed his way from the suburbs of South Dakota to the badlands of Montana with his girlfriend, Holly, in tow. They are driving across the prairie one evening, Kit talking to Holly, who is absorbed with a magazine and doesn’t pay attention. A straight-on shot from within the car shows them moving through a dark land with only their headlights to light the way, and even the dim lighting in the car interior is limited to Kit, the steering wheel, and Holly. They are lawless, lost. Beyond the honeymoon phase. As Holly puts it: “I made up my mind to never again tag around with the hell-bent type, no matter how in love with him I was” (Badlands). In the same scene, Holly reaches to change the radio dial but is swatted away by Kit. “Hey, don’t touch that,” he says. “Nat King Cole” (Badlands). The next two shots are, as David Laderman writes in Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie, “gloriously road movie-esque” (122). Kit and Holly slow dance on the prairie to Nat King Cole’s “A Blossom Fell”, lit only by the headlights of their car. Holly is confined by the whims of a bizarre outlaw as a light is literally shined upon everything that has occurred. In “The Man Who Knew Belle Starr,” Belle and her captive, McRae, are driving along an empty highway in the dark. “There were no other cars now, and not a glimmer of light anywhere beyond the headlights” (Bausch 127). They are heading toward an unspoken but clearly suspected conclusion: she is going to shoot and kill McRae. He is neither accomplice nor companion. The third-person narrator provides chilling and distant insight into McRae’s thoughts (does he live to tell the tale?) much the same way that Holly does with her voice-over. Unlike Holly, however, it is clear that McRae is afraid of—and unclear about—Belle’s motives. “Why are you doing this?” he asks. “You’ve got to tell me that before you do it” (Bausch 128). Later, when a tractor trailer provides cover for McRae to make his escape (similar to the helicopter assault that provides Holly with her escape cover), he falls over an embankment. Afraid, battered, and lost, McRae is trapped. He considers his life and his choices as many characters on journeys have done. Belle stands a short distance away, shining a light as she searches for her prey. She will not abandon McRae as readily as Kit left Holly.

Another strange quirk to the outlaw personalities in these stories is their arbitrary adherence to rule and order. The notion of honor among criminals is not new, but one gets the sense that neither outlaw in these stories has a true sense of lawful order. While staying in the mansion of a homeowner and housekeeper whom they’ve locked away in a storage room, Kit spends time “playing with the dictaphone” to record trite words of civic responsibility for some unknown audience (Badlands). There is a strong sense of irony in the scene as Kit lounges in a chair and stares into the camera, first in a close-up and then a medium shot. Is he serious, or is he joking? Perhaps, as Holly tells their captives: “… there’s something wrong with his bean” (Badlands). Belle’s reserved nature makes her seem timid or secretive, but as her indifference to murder is revealed she becomes far more sinister than she originally seemed. Later, when she and McRae are driving to run out the gas, she comments on the speeding motorists around them. “I think they ought to get tickets for speeding, that’s what I think. Sometimes I wish I were a policeman” (Bausch 124). It is again difficult to believe that someone as ruthless as Belle could be on the side of the law, but in her case there is a connection between her actions and words. Her murders before she meets McRae—all five of them—can be construed as acts of justice or vengeance against men who wrong women. The final killing of a dog “who must’ve got lost,” however, appears as unnecessary cruelty, and one must wonder if there is something wrong with her bean as well. Just as they play out the role out the outlaw, Kit and Belle may also be playing out other roles that suit their whims.

It is interesting that the creators of these works chose to portray their road outlaws through the eyes and voices of their partners in crime. Kit and Belle, with their strange, antisocial behavior and penchant for violence, appear to be the stars of the show. Each comments on that fact. After his capture, Kit grandstands in front of the police officers and national guard, offering them keepsakes from his pockets to commemorate his capture. As Laderman writes:

“This scene articulates the road movie’s spectacle-ization of the driver … where a stable, passive audience in the film admires the mobile rebel” (125).

Having lost Holly as his “passive audience,” Kit turns to his captors to claim his place as the star outlaw. Belle is never caught by authorities in “The Man Who Knew Belle Starr,” but she does make sure that McRae, who is forced along as a captive / mule, gives her her due respect as the famous Belle Starr. “Bang,” she tells him. “What’s my name?” (Bausch 120). They even have clear, memorable images. Kit with the denim jacket and jeans, white t-shirt, and flashy cowboy boots. Belle with her shawl—reminiscent of the Mexican sarape common in Western films—and low-cut sneakers. Their companions’ uniforms, on the other hand, are either changed regularly (as any American teenager would) or have so little bearing on the story that it isn’t mentioned.

But who are the partners in crime? Holly, a 15 year-old with an eye for men who look like movie stars; and twenty-something McRae, an ex-con who hasn’t spent time with a woman in four years and would have been interested in any woman who happened along his path. In the beginning, the roles are a 1-to-1 match. Both Kit and McRae are the young males, and thus the drivers. They are in control of their mobility and are the characters who initiate the relationships with their female counterparts. They also choose to leave behind their responsibilities and journey to new horizons. Holly remains a passenger and bystander to Kit’s homicides until her choice to separate near the end of Badlands, but a reversal occurs in “The Man Who Knew Belle Starr.” Belle, having revealed that she was hiding a pistol underneath the shawl, shoots and kills a cook who “made a nasty remark … about the hot dog” (Bausch 121). She instantly claims the power in the relationship, if only through the threat of violence. McRae, the ex-con with violent tendencies, is left stunned and unable to do anything but mutter, “Jesus.” From that point on he becomes Belle’s lackey, not as passive or indifferent as Holly, but also at far greater risk due to Belle’s inherent distrust of men. Her description of the “obscene goings-on” (Bausch 121) provides a strong hint that she is a victim of sexual abuse, now reclaiming her power from the men she meets on the road. Men like McRae. Further connections between Holly and McRae include the loss of the father as the trigger for the journey (albeit at the hands of the outlaw she accompanies, in Holly’s case) and the absence of a mother figure, further indicating that just as there are similarities between the outlaw killers, there are similarities between their willing and unwilling companions. Holly and McRae have lost everything and find more than they bargained for when they choose to associate with mysterious strangers.

Additionally, both McRae and Holly both reflect on the journeys they have undertaken. Holly, at the start of the film, notes she couldn’t have known that “what began in the alleys of back ways of this quiet town, would end in the badlands of Montana” (Badlands). The narrator at the end of the short story comments:

“McRae was gone, was someone far, far away, from ages ago—a man fresh out of prison, with the whole country to wander in and insurance money in his pocket, who had headed west with the idea that maybe his luck, at long last, had changed” (Bausch 130).

Kit and Belle may be the loudest voices in the room, but the real, relatable journeys occur through Holly and McRae.

Consider the identities of the outlaws. Kit—described by Holly as “handsomer than anybody I’d ever met. He looked just like James Dean” (Badlands)—is a walking, talking tribute to a teen idol. He embodies not only the looks, but the spirit portrayed by Dean in his famous movie role as rebellious teenager Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause (Laderman 118). This characterization is in turn derived from the story that forms the basis of the film. Real life serial killer Charles Starkweather, who modeled himself after Dean, went on a murder spree along with 14 year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate in December 1957 and January 1958 (“Charles Starkweather”). Similarly, Belle Starr takes her nom de guerre directly from the famous “Queen of the Oklahoma Outlaws” whose skill with a pistol and associations with outlaws such as Jesse James cemented her place among the legendary outlaws of the Old West (“Belle Starr”). Belle herself states the name is “so much better than Annie Oakley” (Bausch 120), indicating that the allure of the outlaw is the real guiding light.

Two young, enigmatic, and unstable outlaws whose existence is tied to their criminal exploits. Although richer in character than simple copy cats, Kit and Belle are nonetheless driven by their need to live up to the legendary status of their predecessors. They are like children playing pretend, lost in parallel universes in which they commit crimes and run from the law but are not fully connected to the real world in which they exist. They dwell on their secrets, their partners, and their inevitable epitaphs.

Works Cited

Badlands. Dir. Terrence Malick. Perf. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. Warner Bros., 1973.

Bausch, Richard. “The Man Who Knew Belle Starr.” The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction. Ed. Lex Williford and Michael Martone. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. 112-130.

“Belle Starr.” Wikipedia. 6 Apr. 2014. Wikimedia Foundation. 28 Apr. 2014 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Starr>

Cahir, Linda Costanzo. Literature into Film: Theory and Practical Approaches. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006.

“Charles Starkweather.” 29 Apr. 2014. Wikimedia Foundation. 29 Apr. 2014 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Starkweather>

Laderman, David. Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie. Austin: U of Texas P, 2002.

Playing the Outlaw

It is often assumed that outlaws—men and women who commit crimes and willfully dodge the long arm of the law—are not right. Something snapped in them, went wrong at some point in their lives. While a limited point of view, literature and film often bear out the same belief that outlaws have somehow broken away from the societal rules that govern the law-abiding majority. Perhaps they are on the run from the law because they prefer it. A lifestyle choice. One film and one short story in particular highlight these traits: Badlands, written and directed by Terrence Malick; and “The Man Who Knew Belle Starr,” by Richard Bausch. Both tales portray outlaw characters who dwell in mobile fantasy worlds built upon delusion and supported by companions who come to realize that they are not cut from the same unlawful cloth.

The stories of these outlaws and their partners unfold plain as day, but it is the mystery behind the obvious that makes them compelling narratives. The real stories and characters are discovered between the lines, in the words that go unsaid. It is not surprising, then, that both Malick and Bausch utilize minimalistic dialogue, sparse scenery, and narrators as spectators, to tell of characters whose pasts and motives remain uncertain or vaguely hinted, making them more compelling as mysteries and the legendary outlaws they strive to become. Linda Costanzo Cahir, author of Literature Into Film: Theory and Practical Approaches, writes of this artistic practice in her chapter titled “Short Stories into Film.” Put simply, she describes the three basic elements of short compositions: “brevity, single effect, and beauty” (188). Originally a concept developed by Edgar Allan Poe in “The Philosophy of Composition”, brevity is important to completing a story in one sitting, which in turn emphasizes the single effect of the story (188). The beauty is that which reveals “the excitement or pleasurable elevation of the soul” in the work (188).

A film that comes in at 1 hour and 33 minutes and a 19-page short story are both perfectly suited for this approach. A pair of late scenes—one from the film and one from the story—highlight the effectiveness of such brevity and to-the-point story-telling. In Badlands, Kit has driven and killed his way from the suburbs of South Dakota to the badlands of Montana with his girlfriend, Holly, in tow. They are driving across the prairie one evening, Kit talking to Holly, who is absorbed with a magazine and doesn’t pay attention. A straight-on shot from within the car shows them moving through a dark land with only their headlights to light the way, and even the dim lighting in the car interior is limited to Kit, the steering wheel, and Holly. They are lawless, lost. Beyond the honeymoon phase. As Holly puts it: “I made up my mind to never again tag around with the hell-bent type, no matter how in love with him I was” (Badlands). In the same scene, Holly reaches to change the radio dial but is swatted away by Kit. “Hey, don’t touch that,” he says. “Nat King Cole” (Badlands). The next two shots are, as David Laderman writes in Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie, “gloriously road movie-esque” (122). Kit and Holly slow dance on the prairie to Nat King Cole’s “A Blossom Fell”, lit only by the headlights of their car. Holly is confined by the whims of a bizarre outlaw as a light is literally shined upon everything that has occurred. In “The Man Who Knew Belle Starr,” Belle and her captive, McRae, are driving along an empty highway in the dark. “There were no other cars now, and not a glimmer of light anywhere beyond the headlights” (Bausch 127). They are heading toward an unspoken but clearly suspected conclusion: she is going to shoot and kill McRae. He is neither accomplice nor companion. The third-person narrator provides chilling and distant insight into McRae’s thoughts (does he live to tell the tale?) much the same way that Holly does with her voice-over. Unlike Holly, however, it is clear that McRae is afraid of—and unclear about—Belle’s motives. “Why are you doing this?” he asks. “You’ve got to tell me that before you do it” (Bausch 128). Later, when a tractor trailer provides cover for McRae to make his escape (similar to the helicopter assault that provides Holly with her escape cover), he falls over an embankment. Afraid, battered, and lost, McRae is trapped. He considers his life and his choices as many characters on journeys have done. Belle stands a short distance away, shining a light as she searches for her prey. She will not abandon McRae as readily as Kit left Holly.

Another strange quirk to the outlaw personalities in these stories is their arbitrary adherence to rule and order. The notion of honor among criminals is not new, but one gets the sense that neither outlaw in these stories has a true sense of lawful order. While staying in the mansion of a homeowner and housekeeper whom they’ve locked away in a storage room, Kit spends time “playing with the dictaphone” to record trite words of civic responsibility for some unknown audience (Badlands). There is a strong sense of irony in the scene as Kit lounges in a chair and stares into the camera, first in a close-up and then a medium shot. Is he serious, or is he joking? Perhaps, as Holly tells their captives: “… there’s something wrong with his bean” (Badlands). Belle’s reserved nature makes her seem timid or secretive, but as her indifference to murder is revealed she becomes far more sinister than she originally seemed. Later, when she and McRae are driving to run out the gas, she comments on the speeding motorists around them. “I think they ought to get tickets for speeding, that’s what I think. Sometimes I wish I were a policeman” (Bausch 124). It is again difficult to believe that someone as ruthless as Belle could be on the side of the law, but in her case there is a connection between her actions and words. Her murders before she meets McRae—all five of them—can be construed as acts of justice or vengeance against men who wrong women. The final killing of a dog “who must’ve got lost,” however, appears as unnecessary cruelty, and one must wonder if there is something wrong with her bean as well. Just as they play out the role out the outlaw, Kit and Belle may also be playing out other roles that suit their whims.

It is interesting that the creators of these works chose to portray their road outlaws through the eyes and voices of their partners in crime. Kit and Belle, with their strange, antisocial behavior and penchant for violence, appear to be the stars of the show. Each comments on that fact. After his capture, Kit grandstands in front of the police officers and national guard, offering them keepsakes from his pockets to commemorate his capture. As Laderman writes:

“This scene articulates the road movie’s spectacle-ization of the driver … where a stable, passive audience in the film admires the mobile rebel” (125).

Having lost Holly as his “passive audience,” Kit turns to his captors to claim his place as the star outlaw. Belle is never caught by authorities in “The Man Who Knew Belle Starr,” but she does make sure that McRae, who is forced along as a captive / mule, gives her her due respect as the famous Belle Starr. “Bang,” she tells him. “What’s my name?” (Bausch 120). They even have clear, memorable images. Kit with the denim jacket and jeans, white t-shirt, and flashy cowboy boots. Belle with her shawl—reminiscent of the Mexican sarape common in Western films—and low-cut sneakers. Their companions’ uniforms, on the other hand, are either changed regularly (as any American teenager would) or have so little bearing on the story that it isn’t mentioned.

But who are the partners in crime? Holly, a 15 year-old with an eye for men who look like movie stars; and twenty-something McRae, an ex-con who hasn’t spent time with a woman in four years and would have been interested in any woman who happened along his path. In the beginning, the roles are a 1-to-1 match. Both Kit and McRae are the young males, and thus the drivers. They are in control of their mobility and are the characters who initiate the relationships with their female counterparts. They also choose to leave behind their responsibilities and journey to new horizons. Holly remains a passenger and bystander to Kit’s homicides until her choice to separate near the end of Badlands, but a reversal occurs in “The Man Who Knew Belle Starr.” Belle, having revealed that she was hiding a pistol underneath the shawl, shoots and kills a cook who “made a nasty remark … about the hot dog” (Bausch 121). She instantly claims the power in the relationship, if only through the threat of violence. McRae, the ex-con with violent tendencies, is left stunned and unable to do anything but mutter, “Jesus.” From that point on he becomes Belle’s lackey, not as passive or indifferent as Holly, but also at far greater risk due to Belle’s inherent distrust of men. Her description of the “obscene goings-on” (Bausch 121) provides a strong hint that she is a victim of sexual abuse, now reclaiming her power from the men she meets on the road. Men like McRae. Further connections between Holly and McRae include the loss of the father as the trigger for the journey (albeit at the hands of the outlaw she accompanies, in Holly’s case) and the absence of a mother figure, further indicating that just as there are similarities between the outlaw killers, there are similarities between their willing and unwilling companions. Holly and McRae have lost everything and find more than they bargained for when they choose to associate with mysterious strangers.

Additionally, both McRae and Holly both reflect on the journeys they have undertaken. Holly, at the start of the film, notes she couldn’t have known that “what began in the alleys of back ways of this quiet town, would end in the badlands of Montana” (Badlands). The narrator at the end of the short story comments:

“McRae was gone, was someone far, far away, from ages ago—a man fresh out of prison, with the whole country to wander in and insurance money in his pocket, who had headed west with the idea that maybe his luck, at long last, had changed” (Bausch 130).

Kit and Belle may be the loudest voices in the room, but the real, relatable journeys occur through Holly and McRae.

Consider the identities of the outlaws. Kit—described by Holly as “handsomer than anybody I’d ever met. He looked just like James Dean” (Badlands)—is a walking, talking tribute to a teen idol. He embodies not only the looks, but the spirit portrayed by Dean in his famous movie role as rebellious teenager Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause (Laderman 118). This characterization is in turn derived from the story that forms the basis of the film. Real life serial killer Charles Starkweather, who modeled himself after Dean, went on a murder spree along with 14 year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate in December 1957 and January 1958 (“Charles Starkweather”). Similarly, Belle Starr takes her nom de guerre directly from the famous “Queen of the Oklahoma Outlaws” whose skill with a pistol and associations with outlaws such as Jesse James cemented her place among the legendary outlaws of the Old West (“Belle Starr”). Belle herself states the name is “so much better than Annie Oakley” (Bausch 120), indicating that the allure of the outlaw is the real guiding light.

Two young, enigmatic, and unstable outlaws whose existence is tied to their criminal exploits. Although richer in character than simple copy cats, Kit and Belle are nonetheless driven by their need to live up to the legendary status of their predecessors. They are like children playing pretend, lost in parallel universes in which they commit crimes and run from the law but are not fully connected to the real world in which they exist. They dwell on their secrets, their partners, and their inevitable epitaphs.

Works Cited

Badlands. Dir. Terrence Malick. Perf. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. Warner Bros., 1973.

Bausch, Richard. “The Man Who Knew Belle Starr.” The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction. Ed. Lex Williford and Michael Martone. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. 112-130.

“Belle Starr.” Wikipedia. 6 Apr. 2014. Wikimedia Foundation. 28 Apr. 2014 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Starr>

Cahir, Linda Costanzo. Literature into Film: Theory and Practical Approaches. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006.

“Charles Starkweather.” 29 Apr. 2014. Wikimedia Foundation. 29 Apr. 2014 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Starkweather>

Laderman, David. Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie. Austin: U of Texas P, 2002.

About

Jesus Christ, tumblr. You. I’m trying to wallow in self-pity here and you bombard me with posts that hit far too close to home. It doesn’t help that my project at work is about a man who’s tormented by dementia and memories of a dead girlfriend. It’s a blitz from all sides!

Can a man be left alone to brood over his dark thoughts, just for a little while, long enough to forget or numb the mind enough to get by?

“No,” (says the mind, but let’s pretend you said it).

I know.

I had an About Me page until a few days back. It had some info, little tidbits to satisfy basic curiosity. Stuff like a desire to get a motorcycle license or the fact that I work in video games. Small stuff, little things that might make the reader think, “Cool.” They were the things I wasn’t afraid to share. It’s part of a mask I’ve worn for a long, long time. Easy peezy. Impressing people is not that difficult, nor is charm. Charm can be learned, picked up through observation. It is the recourse of someone whose natural instinct is to observe and not interact: learn what sticks, imitate and own it, then pile it on, thick and syrup-like. It is most successful if all who are present are intoxicated, of course.

I employed that charm when I attempted to discuss heavy matters last night after many a bottle of Sierra and Anchor Steam, a car bomb, and I think there was a kamikaze. The folks around me heard, at least a little, and provided well-wishes and requests to “Relax, man. Relax,” because almost no one wants to hear these things. Most people just want to be happy, and I can’t blame them. Happiness is a very pleasant place. I like to be there myself.

Christopher McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp, spent two years wandering alone, experiencing and living and momentarily enjoying the company of others. I greatly admire this adventurous spirit, this willingness to leave behind a life that is full of pain and confusion. However, when on the verge of death from starvation at the end of his journey, he wrote the following (as portrayed in Into the Wild):

01

(via Things I Love)

I think about reality a lot. The reality of things I’ve done, those whom I’ve helped and the ones I’ve hurt. They seem unreal, some of my actions. Many things in life don’t seem real. Take, for instance, the universe. Things sometimes seem too coincidental, too poignant. They seem like they’re meant to happen. Is this wishful thinking, someone tweaking the matrix, what? Reality is real, isn’t it? It can’t be anything else.

I think about death a lot, too. It sounds depressing so I don’t make it a topic of conversation.

Are we real?

(It can’t be polite to constantly ask people if they’re real).

The spark that led to this bit of self-reflection is an experience with someone who has suddenly and unexpectedly become very important. I’ve been through it before, I knew how I might react, and yet you are reading this which means history has repeated itself. Whether I find the gall to reach out again remains to be seen. I’d like to think so (though Lord knows I don’t deserve reciprocation). I have, however, learned enough to know when certain thoughts and memories will last, and these will not shake loose. The old mainstays, lots of food and booze, will only serve to sharpen the feelings of these memories instead of dulling them as they might have once done. It is perhaps a case of maturation. I am avoiding the mainstays (last night and the occasional celebration notwithstanding), which I will take as a good sign.

There’s another tumblr post, this one a screenshot from a film (a very excellent film, mind you), that reminded me of the memories that do not slink away.

02

(via johari-window)

The memories are there. They will not shake loose.

(The universe will probably send me a glut of posts about alcoholism after all that).

I’m going to share a little story with you. My first instinct, before I decided to share the little story, was to make something up. Write about a guy in a city I’ve never been to who deals with his issues and finds a way to cope and becomes a better human being and yadda yadda yadda. Living in stories, conversing with fictional people. It’s what I do.

No one has ever heard this story. Here’s me, trying something different… something complicated.

03

(via a place that was once called Home)

It was the rare kind of bleak day in Los Angeles when the threat of rain loomed and everyone held their breaths, unsure of how to react. It was in the morning that my father, uncle, and I parked in front of the house next to the house on the corner. It was a single story, tan, stucco-coated townhouse with an additional room added to the rear, making it distinct from the rows of similarly constructed, if perhaps differently styled, tract homes. I later found old fumigation notices posted in the garage and attic that dated the house’s construction to 1944. I wondered about all the people that lived in the house before me. I wondered if the kids had ever dug a hole beneath the bushes in the front, or if they had ever felt sad and cried for seemingly no reason. I wondered if the moms cooked good food because they loved their kids, or if they had ever yelled after a long day of cleaning and cooking and dropping the kids off at baseball practice. I wondered if the dads had been good at fixing things and liked to play basketball. I wondered if they had been stern, impatient, and angry.

We met the previous owner that very morning. He was a great fat man with a beard and glasses, and he was all alone.

The property was surrounded by a great pink cinder block wall that added to the grandeur of the house. It is just as tall as I am now and only slightly higher than my father, but as a child it seemed like a great barrier against the world. No one could attack us. We played castle and pretended that armies stupid enough to attack were coming. They would never penetrate the defenses, the fools. The problem was that none of us, neither me nor my two brothers who are closest to my age, could climb it, so we could never see if there was anyone out there.

That first morning, the three of us walked the grounds. My father and uncle talked to the fat man for a while and I looked around. In the front yard was an enormous, perfectly straight pine tree that extended high into the sky and loomed over the front yard, shielding everything below against the rain that would never come. Now it is a trimmed, branchless shadow across the block, but back then it was wild, with branches extending out beyond our property and dropping their pine needles all across the front lawn and walkway, providing a soft pillow on which to wrestle and play tag, with the great tree as home base. It smelled of pine and although it was dry and the needles were prickly it was still a very welcome sight.

The pine tree’s companion was a thick palm tree that sat alongside the driveway on the left side of the property, standing as a knight watching over the universally respected invisible gate between the sidewalk and front lawn of all the houses. No neighborhood in South-Central was complete without palm trees and we were the ones to keep the tradition on our street, at least for a while. It seemed very old but always grew large green fronds, some of which grew so long that they could nearly touch the top of my father’s truck. The removal of the palm tree to make room for a wider driveway was the first of many losses.

When the men completed their talk we moved into the backyard and I followed along. We made our way toward the back where a single car garage stood, blocking the view of the backyard. It is there that my father began his massive collection of tools, wood, metals, bicycles, and other items that that he could never part with. My mother stored a few things in there as well but it took a while to get permission. Beyond the garage was a large patio deck constructed from richly lacquered brown oak that provided a respite from the sun and a place to sit in the summer, when it was too hot to walk around during the day. It was once barren and open, a fort builder’s dream, but years of hording and disinterest in having guests stop by for picnics and dinners led to the porch becoming another storage unit, filled with old and forgotten memories.

It was beyond the garage and beyond the back porch that it stood. It was like entering another world, some jungle paradise from the movies. The greatest forests in the Amazon could not rival it in my young mind. It was the great avocado tree, the once king of the land. Unlike the pine tree whose branches reached up and out or the palm tree that only grew anything at the top, the avocado tree grew everywhere and it grew down toward the ground. Its branches drooped, weighed down by leaves and great, big, swinging avocados, as large as the head of a four year old. Some were black and shriveled and others were green and shiny. The young ones were barely visible in comparison to those great orbs. If I picked a perfect one I could polish it against my shirt and see myself in its bumpy rind. That particular avocado tree had never been trimmed and it formed a pyramid of leaves that we could explore and tunnel through. Standing in its shadow was like standing in the shadow of a mighty temple, or of the God itself. It was our worship of the avocado tree, and unknown to us it would be the only time we could do so. My father promptly trimmed away the mess upon moving in and has never allowed the branches to grow that long again.

My father used to love to laugh. At parties, at events, at the movies, with his friends, with my uncles and aunts… he laughed. He told excellent jokes. His face turned red and he bellowed loudly, from his chest, with a slight mischievous rasp. The relationship between he and my mother deteriorated but even she could not help but laugh and kiss him when they were out in public. He was personable, adoring, and despite the fact that everyone really knew him they still loved him because that is when the rays of his good nature shined brightest.

I never did inherit his genuine charm. In retrospect, I do not think I cared to.
We still enjoyed the avocado tree, of course. It was part of our backyard world and everything could be enjoyed. We climbed it and ran around its trunk, passing by its single knothole of an eye each time, tagging the spot when we played tag or races. Our father built a swing using one of the low, thick branches, and we pushed it to the extremes that all boys push things into. We leapt from it, played jungle commander and climbed it, twirled around until we were busy. Things children do, most of which I’ve forgotten.

Once, my brother and I misbehaved. We had just returned from working the gardening route that my father worked on Saturdays. We pushed lawnmowers and raked leaves while most kids stayed in to watch cartoons and eat colorful cereal. We envied such activities, and learned the taste of bitterness early in life. The taste was that of dirt and it smelled like grass. The  equipment had been returned to the garage and we were using the last hours of the day to play, have some fun, and get dirty before we had to go in and take a shower. In the course of playing we did something we should not have been doing, whatever it was. It was bad enough, though, that my father got upset. The man preached a working life but sometimes it seemed like a hard day’s work affected him in the same way it affected us, leaving him bitter and temperamental.

He called us to him and made us stand together, side by side, as he pondered what to do. Punishment was a necessity. Children had to be taught how to behave, much like he had been taught, much like a pet. We most certainly feared the belt above all things and waited silently for him to swiftly deal his judgment and penalty, but he took longer than usual to decide. He seemed distant and deep in thought, which was uncharacteristic of a man who was always quick witted and made decisions faster than most people could speak a word. He finally walked away and returned with a bundle of brown nylon rope. He had settled on an old form of punishment that was common when he was a child. It was something we had been warned of many times when he regaled us with tales of the times his father had dealt cruel and brutal justice unto him. He was to walk us over to the avocado tree and tie us to its trunk, like pirates tied to a mast. My brother and I were unsure how to react at first, but as he guided us along by the shoulders the full weight of the punishment sunk in. We were to be bound, left immobile and at nature’s whim, until he decided we had learned a lesson.

We were raised to be loyal and do as we were told. It is a wonder that we did not end up in the military, particularly the oldest of us, who were brought up in the house of loyalty and order. We would have made perfect soldiers. At the time, however, as young children loyal to our father, we simply allowed ourselves to be led along and began to cry. Our cheeks and eyes turned red, our mouths contorted as we pleaded to be released. We would never cause trouble again!

“You should have thought of that before” we did whatever we did.

So we stood, each of us on one side of the avocado tree.  A chubby dark-haired boy and his skinny little pale brother, covered in dust and grass stains, wept and pleaded. He loosened the rope and used one end of it to lash us to the trunk of the avocado tree, walking around between the two of us until we had rope around us from chest to ankle. He placed the rest of the rope on a side of the tree farthest from us and secured it, then walked away.

We wept and called for forgiveness. There was no attempt to move or free ourselves. He walked by later with a beer in his hand to see how we were doing, and watched us. He grinned and watched us squirm. We cried and we cried, and he laughed and he laughed. We eventually freed ourselves when we realized that he had only loosely lashed us to the trunk. We avoided him until that evening when he walked into the bedroom where we sat watching television.

“Did you learn your lesson?”

I suppose we did.

My father once asked me, many years later: “You were scared of me?” His face was contorted, as if in bewilderment. His question was sincere like his every word and action.

“Of course,” I told him.

“Why?”

“You know why,” and he let it be.

It still stands, unlike the palm tree or much of what used to be a garden and is now converted into a bare concrete foundation. Years of pruning and trimming, in addition to the simple passage of time, have reduced what it once was. It now leans awkwardly toward the pink wall in the direction of the neighbor’s roof, almost as if it is reaching toward something else, something away from the property. Sap and other mysterious goo leaks from the dreary eye in the center, and the base of the trunk is coated a bright white from years of insecticides and powders and other protective measures meant to stave off infection and disease. Its wild, unwieldy canopy has been reduced to a polite gathering of leaves and twigs. And despite it all, the shadow of the avocado tree still cast its claws across the yard and the back porch. The shadow reaches out on those late summer days when the sun rises directly in the east and my father wakes up early to rake the leaves from beneath the tree, alone.

And that’s my little story.

A grain of sand has purpose. It clings to its kind and provides support for walkers, nutrients for eaters. Being tied to a tree, that had purpose. A malicious purpose, a lesson, humor, who knows what, but it had to be something. Writing this, it has a purpose. My purpose is to feel something and confront it, whatever it may be. If I was to surmise a purpose statement it would be this:

Give me self-realization or give me death.

(Hey, look. He is coping with his problems, trying to learn how to be a sensible man, a better person. He asked a question and decided it feels like something real).

About

Jesus Christ, tumblr. You. I’m trying to wallow in self-pity here and you bombard me with posts that hit far too close to home. It doesn’t help that my project at work is about a man who’s tormented by dementia and memories of a dead girlfriend. It’s a blitz from all sides!

Can a man be left alone to brood over his dark thoughts, just for a little while, long enough to forget or numb the mind enough to get by?

“No,” (says the mind, but let’s pretend you said it).

I know.

I had an About Me page until a few days back. It had some info, little tidbits to satisfy basic curiosity. Stuff like a desire to get a motorcycle license or the fact that I work in video games. Small stuff, little things that might make the reader think, “Cool.” They were the things I wasn’t afraid to share. It’s part of a mask I’ve worn for a long, long time. Easy peezy. Impressing people is not that difficult, nor is charm. Charm can be learned, picked up through observation. It is the recourse of someone whose natural instinct is to observe and not interact: learn what sticks, imitate and own it, then pile it on, thick and syrup-like. It is most successful if all who are present are intoxicated, of course.

I employed that charm when I attempted to discuss heavy matters last night after many a bottle of Sierra and Anchor Steam, a car bomb, and I think there was a kamikaze. The folks around me heard, at least a little, and provided well-wishes and requests to “Relax, man. Relax,” because almost no one wants to hear these things. Most people just want to be happy, and I can’t blame them. Happiness is a very pleasant place. I like to be there myself.

Christopher McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp, spent two years wandering alone, experiencing and living and momentarily enjoying the company of others. I greatly admire this adventurous spirit, this willingness to leave behind a life that is full of pain and confusion. However, when on the verge of death from starvation at the end of his journey, he wrote the following (as portrayed in Into the Wild):

01

(via Things I Love)

I think about reality a lot. The reality of things I’ve done, those whom I’ve helped and the ones I’ve hurt. They seem unreal, some of my actions. Many things in life don’t seem real. Take, for instance, the universe. Things sometimes seem too coincidental, too poignant. They seem like they’re meant to happen. Is this wishful thinking, someone tweaking the matrix, what? Reality is real, isn’t it? It can’t be anything else.

I think about death a lot, too. It sounds depressing so I don’t make it a topic of conversation.

Are we real?

(It can’t be polite to constantly ask people if they’re real).

The spark that led to this bit of self-reflection is an experience with someone who has suddenly and unexpectedly become very important. I’ve been through it before, I knew how I might react, and yet you are reading this which means history has repeated itself. Whether I find the gall to reach out again remains to be seen. I’d like to think so (though Lord knows I don’t deserve reciprocation). I have, however, learned enough to know when certain thoughts and memories will last, and these will not shake loose. The old mainstays, lots of food and booze, will only serve to sharpen the feelings of these memories instead of dulling them as they might have once done. It is perhaps a case of maturation. I am avoiding the mainstays (last night and the occasional celebration notwithstanding), which I will take as a good sign.

There’s another tumblr post, this one a screenshot from a film (a very excellent film, mind you), that reminded me of the memories that do not slink away.

02

(via johari-window)

The memories are there. They will not shake loose.

(The universe will probably send me a glut of posts about alcoholism after all that).

I’m going to share a little story with you. My first instinct, before I decided to share the little story, was to make something up. Write about a guy in a city I’ve never been to who deals with his issues and finds a way to cope and becomes a better human being and yadda yadda yadda. Living in stories, conversing with fictional people. It’s what I do.

No one has ever heard this story. Here’s me, trying something different… something complicated.

03

(via a place that was once called Home)

It was the rare kind of bleak day in Los Angeles when the threat of rain loomed and everyone held their breaths, unsure of how to react. It was in the morning that my father, uncle, and I parked in front of the house next to the house on the corner. It was a single story, tan, stucco-coated townhouse with an additional room added to the rear, making it distinct from the rows of similarly constructed, if perhaps differently styled, tract homes. I later found old fumigation notices posted in the garage and attic that dated the house’s construction to 1944. I wondered about all the people that lived in the house before me. I wondered if the kids had ever dug a hole beneath the bushes in the front, or if they had ever felt sad and cried for seemingly no reason. I wondered if the moms cooked good food because they loved their kids, or if they had ever yelled after a long day of cleaning and cooking and dropping the kids off at baseball practice. I wondered if the dads had been good at fixing things and liked to play basketball. I wondered if they had been stern, impatient, and angry.

We met the previous owner that very morning. He was a great fat man with a beard and glasses, and he was all alone.

The property was surrounded by a great pink cinder block wall that added to the grandeur of the house. It is just as tall as I am now and only slightly higher than my father, but as a child it seemed like a great barrier against the world. No one could attack us. We played castle and pretended that armies stupid enough to attack were coming. They would never penetrate the defenses, the fools. The problem was that none of us, neither me nor my two brothers who are closest to my age, could climb it, so we could never see if there was anyone out there.

That first morning, the three of us walked the grounds. My father and uncle talked to the fat man for a while and I looked around. In the front yard was an enormous, perfectly straight pine tree that extended high into the sky and loomed over the front yard, shielding everything below against the rain that would never come. Now it is a trimmed, branchless shadow across the block, but back then it was wild, with branches extending out beyond our property and dropping their pine needles all across the front lawn and walkway, providing a soft pillow on which to wrestle and play tag, with the great tree as home base. It smelled of pine and although it was dry and the needles were prickly it was still a very welcome sight.

The pine tree’s companion was a thick palm tree that sat alongside the driveway on the left side of the property, standing as a knight watching over the universally respected invisible gate between the sidewalk and front lawn of all the houses. No neighborhood in South-Central was complete without palm trees and we were the ones to keep the tradition on our street, at least for a while. It seemed very old but always grew large green fronds, some of which grew so long that they could nearly touch the top of my father’s truck. The removal of the palm tree to make room for a wider driveway was the first of many losses.

When the men completed their talk we moved into the backyard and I followed along. We made our way toward the back where a single car garage stood, blocking the view of the backyard. It is there that my father began his massive collection of tools, wood, metals, bicycles, and other items that that he could never part with. My mother stored a few things in there as well but it took a while to get permission. Beyond the garage was a large patio deck constructed from richly lacquered brown oak that provided a respite from the sun and a place to sit in the summer, when it was too hot to walk around during the day. It was once barren and open, a fort builder’s dream, but years of hording and disinterest in having guests stop by for picnics and dinners led to the porch becoming another storage unit, filled with old and forgotten memories.

It was beyond the garage and beyond the back porch that it stood. It was like entering another world, some jungle paradise from the movies. The greatest forests in the Amazon could not rival it in my young mind. It was the great avocado tree, the once king of the land. Unlike the pine tree whose branches reached up and out or the palm tree that only grew anything at the top, the avocado tree grew everywhere and it grew down toward the ground. Its branches drooped, weighed down by leaves and great, big, swinging avocados, as large as the head of a four year old. Some were black and shriveled and others were green and shiny. The young ones were barely visible in comparison to those great orbs. If I picked a perfect one I could polish it against my shirt and see myself in its bumpy rind. That particular avocado tree had never been trimmed and it formed a pyramid of leaves that we could explore and tunnel through. Standing in its shadow was like standing in the shadow of a mighty temple, or of the God itself. It was our worship of the avocado tree, and unknown to us it would be the only time we could do so. My father promptly trimmed away the mess upon moving in and has never allowed the branches to grow that long again.

My father used to love to laugh. At parties, at events, at the movies, with his friends, with my uncles and aunts… he laughed. He told excellent jokes. His face turned red and he bellowed loudly, from his chest, with a slight mischievous rasp. The relationship between he and my mother deteriorated but even she could not help but laugh and kiss him when they were out in public. He was personable, adoring, and despite the fact that everyone really knew him they still loved him because that is when the rays of his good nature shined brightest.

I never did inherit his genuine charm. In retrospect, I do not think I cared to.
We still enjoyed the avocado tree, of course. It was part of our backyard world and everything could be enjoyed. We climbed it and ran around its trunk, passing by its single knothole of an eye each time, tagging the spot when we played tag or races. Our father built a swing using one of the low, thick branches, and we pushed it to the extremes that all boys push things into. We leapt from it, played jungle commander and climbed it, twirled around until we were busy. Things children do, most of which I’ve forgotten.

Once, my brother and I misbehaved. We had just returned from working the gardening route that my father worked on Saturdays. We pushed lawnmowers and raked leaves while most kids stayed in to watch cartoons and eat colorful cereal. We envied such activities, and learned the taste of bitterness early in life. The taste was that of dirt and it smelled like grass. The  equipment had been returned to the garage and we were using the last hours of the day to play, have some fun, and get dirty before we had to go in and take a shower. In the course of playing we did something we should not have been doing, whatever it was. It was bad enough, though, that my father got upset. The man preached a working life but sometimes it seemed like a hard day’s work affected him in the same way it affected us, leaving him bitter and temperamental.

He called us to him and made us stand together, side by side, as he pondered what to do. Punishment was a necessity. Children had to be taught how to behave, much like he had been taught, much like a pet. We most certainly feared the belt above all things and waited silently for him to swiftly deal his judgment and penalty, but he took longer than usual to decide. He seemed distant and deep in thought, which was uncharacteristic of a man who was always quick witted and made decisions faster than most people could speak a word. He finally walked away and returned with a bundle of brown nylon rope. He had settled on an old form of punishment that was common when he was a child. It was something we had been warned of many times when he regaled us with tales of the times his father had dealt cruel and brutal justice unto him. He was to walk us over to the avocado tree and tie us to its trunk, like pirates tied to a mast. My brother and I were unsure how to react at first, but as he guided us along by the shoulders the full weight of the punishment sunk in. We were to be bound, left immobile and at nature’s whim, until he decided we had learned a lesson.

We were raised to be loyal and do as we were told. It is a wonder that we did not end up in the military, particularly the oldest of us, who were brought up in the house of loyalty and order. We would have made perfect soldiers. At the time, however, as young children loyal to our father, we simply allowed ourselves to be led along and began to cry. Our cheeks and eyes turned red, our mouths contorted as we pleaded to be released. We would never cause trouble again!

“You should have thought of that before” we did whatever we did.

So we stood, each of us on one side of the avocado tree.  A chubby dark-haired boy and his skinny little pale brother, covered in dust and grass stains, wept and pleaded. He loosened the rope and used one end of it to lash us to the trunk of the avocado tree, walking around between the two of us until we had rope around us from chest to ankle. He placed the rest of the rope on a side of the tree farthest from us and secured it, then walked away.

We wept and called for forgiveness. There was no attempt to move or free ourselves. He walked by later with a beer in his hand to see how we were doing, and watched us. He grinned and watched us squirm. We cried and we cried, and he laughed and he laughed. We eventually freed ourselves when we realized that he had only loosely lashed us to the trunk. We avoided him until that evening when he walked into the bedroom where we sat watching television.

“Did you learn your lesson?”

I suppose we did.

My father once asked me, many years later: “You were scared of me?” His face was contorted, as if in bewilderment. His question was sincere like his every word and action.

“Of course,” I told him.

“Why?”

“You know why,” and he let it be.

It still stands, unlike the palm tree or much of what used to be a garden and is now converted into a bare concrete foundation. Years of pruning and trimming, in addition to the simple passage of time, have reduced what it once was. It now leans awkwardly toward the pink wall in the direction of the neighbor’s roof, almost as if it is reaching toward something else, something away from the property. Sap and other mysterious goo leaks from the dreary eye in the center, and the base of the trunk is coated a bright white from years of insecticides and powders and other protective measures meant to stave off infection and disease. Its wild, unwieldy canopy has been reduced to a polite gathering of leaves and twigs. And despite it all, the shadow of the avocado tree still cast its claws across the yard and the back porch. The shadow reaches out on those late summer days when the sun rises directly in the east and my father wakes up early to rake the leaves from beneath the tree, alone.

And that’s my little story.

A grain of sand has purpose. It clings to its kind and provides support for walkers, nutrients for eaters. Being tied to a tree, that had purpose. A malicious purpose, a lesson, humor, who knows what, but it had to be something. Writing this, it has a purpose. My purpose is to feel something and confront it, whatever it may be. If I was to surmise a purpose statement it would be this:

Give me self-realization or give me death.

(Hey, look. He is coping with his problems, trying to learn how to be a sensible man, a better person. He asked a question and decided it feels like something real).

Women’s Literature, on: Individualism

Historically,
women were oppressed as the “lesser sex” (depending on the
culture) and as such many were forced into positions of subservience
where they could not express themselves as independent individuals.
Whether it be a need to express love, biographical experience, a
fictional tale, or even something as simple (or complicated) as love,
it was difficult to do so without the aid of a family or rank that
allowed women to become educated enough to learn to read and write.
For many of these women authors it then became a need to not only
express themselves through writing but to also express the need to be
fully realized individuals.

One
common argument regarding the “weak” nature of women’s wills
and the reason they are dependent on men is the creation story and
Eve’s acceptance of the forbidden fruit.  Many people refute that
it was not just Eve who fell from grace but Adam as well, for as
Aemilia Lanyer wrote in her volume of poetry, Salve
Deus Rex Judaeorum (published 1611):

Your
fault being greater, why should you disdain

Our
being your equals, free from tyranny?

If
one weak woman simply did offend,

This
sin of yours hath no excuse nor end. (85 – 89)

Lanyer
used biblical reference (a common theme of Western literature during
that time) to make her point because religion played a vital role in
Western literature of the period, and it is possible Lanyer used such
language to gain respect, as it was important to recognize that which
is important to society in general.  Anne Bradstreet, another
outspoken author of the period, wrote “Men can do best, and women
know it well; / Preeminence in each, and all is yours, / Yet grant
some small acknowledgement of ours” (40 – 43), in which she
proposes that while men clearly are the superiors in society it is
only fair to acknowledge that women are at the very least capable of
the same literary accomplishments.  Other women authors of the period
include Dorothy Leigh and Elizabeth Brooke Jocelin who, although not
as quick to put down men, were also proponents of an education and
equality for their children regardless of sex.

As
time passed and more women were granted access to an education and a
means to express their ideas the writings became more diverse and
expressive of the desire to become independent individuals.  Mary
Leapor, a middle-class working woman who wrote from the point of view
of a common worker in at least one of her works, wrote that “…
men are vexed to find a Nymph so Wise” (30).  Indeed, for men to
accept a woman as an independent and equally intelligent person was a
bold proposal, especially for men of middle- or lower-class who were
less educated and worldly and clung to the old ways more than
educated men did.

Of
course the cause for individualism was not advocated just for women,
but for all people.  Hannah More’s “The Black Slave Trade”, an
anti-slavery piece, uses the “cause” she pleads to “sanctify”
her work, which advocates “And Liberty, in you a hallow’d flame,
/ Burns, unextinguish’d, in his breast the same” (133 – 134).
Once again equality comes to the forefront.  For all people, even
slaves, to be considered equal is to recognize them as individuals.
More later wrote a satirical piece called “The White Slave Trade”
in which she claims that English women are held prisoner by the
fashions that they are forced to bear, using terms such as
“inhumanity” and “impolicy” to describe the practice of
raising daughters to be eventual good wives and mothers, and nothing
more.  When some women other than educated white women began to write
they, too, expressed their disdain for the practices that kept people
in a subservient level.  Mary Prince described such practices,
although they were dictated and not told, when describing her life as
a former slave.  Towards the end of her memoir she states: “I am
often vexed, and I feel great sorrow when I hear some people in this
country say, that the slaves do not need better usage, and do not
want to be free.  They believe the foreign people, who deceive them,
and say slaves are happy.  I say, Not so” (437).   That such a
statement was allowed to be published, by a woman of African descent
no less, shows women and all people began to gain more individual
recognition towards the end of the eighteenth century.

Women
writers began to get published more frequently in the nineteenth
century, and with the influx of new literature came cultural and
philosophical change.  One notable yet sometimes overlooked
philosophical work is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
In the novel the monster struggles to understand itself as an
individual being, at first tied to its creator but learning to be
independent through experience and its own observations of the world
around it.  After observing a family of cottagers reading out loud
near a place it was living, the creature comments “The words
induced me to turn towards myself.” (589).  The creature began to
attain independent thought by becoming in a sense more educated.
Later, the creature tells of the Arab mother of one of the cottagers,
Safie, who instructed the daughter to “aspire to higher powers of
intellect and an independence of spirit forbidden to the female
followers of Muhammad.”  Shelley’s commentary on a woman’s
subservient status in Muslim society certainly stands out in a
narrative where a monster tells of the process through which it
attained self awareness and intelligence.

It
was arguably in the twentieth century that women writers came out in
full force to deal with individualism as ideas of feminism, sexual
and racial equality, and civil rights began to play a prominent role
in society and world politics.  Joyce Carol Oates’ “Nairobi”
demonstrates the loss of individualism in modern society.  In the
story Ginny, a middle class shop girl, is taken out to purchase new
clothes so that she can attend a social gathering with the man buying
her the new clothes.  At one point the man, Oliver, asks her if she
wants to keep her old shoes, and after quickly stating “Of course”
she changes her mind and says “No, the hell with them” (1681).
During the course of the evening Ginny is instructed not to speak too
much (or rather exactly how to behave), and is then sent home at the
end of the evening with only her new clothes and a bland cordial
sentiment.  Reflecting on the evening, the narrator states that “All
she had really lost, in a sense, was her own pair of shoes” (1684).
Ginny’s loss of her shoes, which she intended to keep before
quickly changing her mind, represent Ginny’s loss of individuality
after allowing Oliver to control her as he did, if only for a few
hours.  Oates’ portrayal of such a loss through a seemingly
inconsequential object serves to highlight just how important one’s
individuality truly is.

While
many authors since the advent of the written word have tackled the
subject of individuality (attainment, preservation, or loss of),
women authors have the unique perspective of being in positions of
subservience until recently in recorded history.  The points of view
they bring to the collective table help not only to broaden the
understanding of individuality but the importance of it.

Works Cited

Bradstreet, Anne.  “The Tenth Muse Lately
Sprung Up in America.”  Women’s
Worlds: The McGraw Hill Anthology of Women’s Writing.
Ed. Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa
Schnell, Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2008.  90-91.

Lanyer, Aemilia.  “Eve’s Apology in Defence
of Women.”  Women’s Worlds: The
McGraw Hill Anthology of Women’s Writing.
Ed. Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa
Schnell, Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2008.  58-60.

Leapor, Mary.  “An Essay on Woman.”
Women’s Worlds: The McGraw Hill
Anthology of Women’s Writing.  Ed.
Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa Schnell,
Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY: McGraw-Hill,
2008.  255-257

More, Hannah.  “The Black Slave Trade.”
Women’s Worlds: The McGraw Hill
Anthology of Women’s Writing.  Ed.
Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa Schnell,
Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY: McGraw-Hill,
2008.  288-296.

Oates, Joyce Carol.  “Nairobi.”  Women’s
Worlds: The McGraw Hill Anthology of Women’s Writing.
Ed. Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa
Schnell, Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2008.
1678-1684.

Prince, Mary.  “The History of Mary Prince, a
West Indian Slave.”  Women’s
Worlds: The McGraw Hill Anthology of Women’s Writing.
Ed. Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa
Schnell, Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2008.  419-438.

Shelley, Mary.  “The Monster’s Narrative”
from Frankenstein.
Women’s Worlds: The McGraw Hill
Anthology of Women’s Writing.  Ed.
Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa Schnell,
Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY: McGraw-Hill,
2008.  579-606.

Women’s Literature, on: Individualism

Historically,
women were oppressed as the “lesser sex” (depending on the
culture) and as such many were forced into positions of subservience
where they could not express themselves as independent individuals.
Whether it be a need to express love, biographical experience, a
fictional tale, or even something as simple (or complicated) as love,
it was difficult to do so without the aid of a family or rank that
allowed women to become educated enough to learn to read and write.
For many of these women authors it then became a need to not only
express themselves through writing but to also express the need to be
fully realized individuals.

One
common argument regarding the “weak” nature of women’s wills
and the reason they are dependent on men is the creation story and
Eve’s acceptance of the forbidden fruit.  Many people refute that
it was not just Eve who fell from grace but Adam as well, for as
Aemilia Lanyer wrote in her volume of poetry, Salve
Deus Rex Judaeorum (published 1611):

Your
fault being greater, why should you disdain

Our
being your equals, free from tyranny?

If
one weak woman simply did offend,

This
sin of yours hath no excuse nor end. (85 – 89)

Lanyer
used biblical reference (a common theme of Western literature during
that time) to make her point because religion played a vital role in
Western literature of the period, and it is possible Lanyer used such
language to gain respect, as it was important to recognize that which
is important to society in general.  Anne Bradstreet, another
outspoken author of the period, wrote “Men can do best, and women
know it well; / Preeminence in each, and all is yours, / Yet grant
some small acknowledgement of ours” (40 – 43), in which she
proposes that while men clearly are the superiors in society it is
only fair to acknowledge that women are at the very least capable of
the same literary accomplishments.  Other women authors of the period
include Dorothy Leigh and Elizabeth Brooke Jocelin who, although not
as quick to put down men, were also proponents of an education and
equality for their children regardless of sex.

As
time passed and more women were granted access to an education and a
means to express their ideas the writings became more diverse and
expressive of the desire to become independent individuals.  Mary
Leapor, a middle-class working woman who wrote from the point of view
of a common worker in at least one of her works, wrote that “…
men are vexed to find a Nymph so Wise” (30).  Indeed, for men to
accept a woman as an independent and equally intelligent person was a
bold proposal, especially for men of middle- or lower-class who were
less educated and worldly and clung to the old ways more than
educated men did.

Of
course the cause for individualism was not advocated just for women,
but for all people.  Hannah More’s “The Black Slave Trade”, an
anti-slavery piece, uses the “cause” she pleads to “sanctify”
her work, which advocates “And Liberty, in you a hallow’d flame,
/ Burns, unextinguish’d, in his breast the same” (133 – 134).
Once again equality comes to the forefront.  For all people, even
slaves, to be considered equal is to recognize them as individuals.
More later wrote a satirical piece called “The White Slave Trade”
in which she claims that English women are held prisoner by the
fashions that they are forced to bear, using terms such as
“inhumanity” and “impolicy” to describe the practice of
raising daughters to be eventual good wives and mothers, and nothing
more.  When some women other than educated white women began to write
they, too, expressed their disdain for the practices that kept people
in a subservient level.  Mary Prince described such practices,
although they were dictated and not told, when describing her life as
a former slave.  Towards the end of her memoir she states: “I am
often vexed, and I feel great sorrow when I hear some people in this
country say, that the slaves do not need better usage, and do not
want to be free.  They believe the foreign people, who deceive them,
and say slaves are happy.  I say, Not so” (437).   That such a
statement was allowed to be published, by a woman of African descent
no less, shows women and all people began to gain more individual
recognition towards the end of the eighteenth century.

Women
writers began to get published more frequently in the nineteenth
century, and with the influx of new literature came cultural and
philosophical change.  One notable yet sometimes overlooked
philosophical work is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
In the novel the monster struggles to understand itself as an
individual being, at first tied to its creator but learning to be
independent through experience and its own observations of the world
around it.  After observing a family of cottagers reading out loud
near a place it was living, the creature comments “The words
induced me to turn towards myself.” (589).  The creature began to
attain independent thought by becoming in a sense more educated.
Later, the creature tells of the Arab mother of one of the cottagers,
Safie, who instructed the daughter to “aspire to higher powers of
intellect and an independence of spirit forbidden to the female
followers of Muhammad.”  Shelley’s commentary on a woman’s
subservient status in Muslim society certainly stands out in a
narrative where a monster tells of the process through which it
attained self awareness and intelligence.

It
was arguably in the twentieth century that women writers came out in
full force to deal with individualism as ideas of feminism, sexual
and racial equality, and civil rights began to play a prominent role
in society and world politics.  Joyce Carol Oates’ “Nairobi”
demonstrates the loss of individualism in modern society.  In the
story Ginny, a middle class shop girl, is taken out to purchase new
clothes so that she can attend a social gathering with the man buying
her the new clothes.  At one point the man, Oliver, asks her if she
wants to keep her old shoes, and after quickly stating “Of course”
she changes her mind and says “No, the hell with them” (1681).
During the course of the evening Ginny is instructed not to speak too
much (or rather exactly how to behave), and is then sent home at the
end of the evening with only her new clothes and a bland cordial
sentiment.  Reflecting on the evening, the narrator states that “All
she had really lost, in a sense, was her own pair of shoes” (1684).
Ginny’s loss of her shoes, which she intended to keep before
quickly changing her mind, represent Ginny’s loss of individuality
after allowing Oliver to control her as he did, if only for a few
hours.  Oates’ portrayal of such a loss through a seemingly
inconsequential object serves to highlight just how important one’s
individuality truly is.

While
many authors since the advent of the written word have tackled the
subject of individuality (attainment, preservation, or loss of),
women authors have the unique perspective of being in positions of
subservience until recently in recorded history.  The points of view
they bring to the collective table help not only to broaden the
understanding of individuality but the importance of it.

Works Cited

Bradstreet, Anne.  “The Tenth Muse Lately
Sprung Up in America.”  Women’s
Worlds: The McGraw Hill Anthology of Women’s Writing.
Ed. Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa
Schnell, Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2008.  90-91.

Lanyer, Aemilia.  “Eve’s Apology in Defence
of Women.”  Women’s Worlds: The
McGraw Hill Anthology of Women’s Writing.
Ed. Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa
Schnell, Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2008.  58-60.

Leapor, Mary.  “An Essay on Woman.”
Women’s Worlds: The McGraw Hill
Anthology of Women’s Writing.  Ed.
Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa Schnell,
Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY: McGraw-Hill,
2008.  255-257

More, Hannah.  “The Black Slave Trade.”
Women’s Worlds: The McGraw Hill
Anthology of Women’s Writing.  Ed.
Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa Schnell,
Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY: McGraw-Hill,
2008.  288-296.

Oates, Joyce Carol.  “Nairobi.”  Women’s
Worlds: The McGraw Hill Anthology of Women’s Writing.
Ed. Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa
Schnell, Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2008.
1678-1684.

Prince, Mary.  “The History of Mary Prince, a
West Indian Slave.”  Women’s
Worlds: The McGraw Hill Anthology of Women’s Writing.
Ed. Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa
Schnell, Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2008.  419-438.

Shelley, Mary.  “The Monster’s Narrative”
from Frankenstein.
Women’s Worlds: The McGraw Hill
Anthology of Women’s Writing.  Ed.
Robyn Warhol-Down, Diane Price Herndl, Mary Lou Kete, Lisa Schnell,
Rashmi Varma, Beth Kowaleski Wallace.  New York, NY: McGraw-Hill,
2008.  579-606.

Living the Lie in Ibsen’s “A Doll House”

Henrik
Ibsen’s “A Doll House” presents a woman, Nora, who has been
under the proverbial thumb her entire life; that of her father’s
and then later when she comes to marry Torvald Helmer, a man who
comes to take the place of the paternal authority figure in her life.
Both are men who did not truly love her but were only in love with
the idea of a beautiful girl or woman that belonged to them.  And
likewise Nora is not in love with the man she married, but with the
idea of pleasing a man who held such control over her.  She does not
immediately recognize this since she is filling the role of
submissive housewife that is expected of her.  In a sense all
characters in “A Doll House,” not just Nora and Torvald, are
living lies whether they realize it or not.

Nora’s
love for Torvald, or what she perceives to be love for him, is the
overwhelming element throughout the play.  From the beginning Nora is
presented as a subservient and submissive person who caters to her
husband’s every whim and allows him to treat her as a child, or
pet.  The names he uses, such as “little lark” and “little
squirrel,” are pet names, typically used when one speaks to a child
or someone who does not command respect equal to that of an adult.
Nora however never displays any resentment towards this behavior and
in fact seems to take joy when Torvald refers to her with those
terms.  They can certainly be terms of endearment, however the
connotation they carry are not meant to be viewed in a positive
light.  This can be viewed as Nora’s oblivious view of her
relationship to Torvald, which she comes to realize at the end of Act
III when she says “You don’t understand me, and I have never
understood you either–before tonight” (Ibsen III).  Nora’s
“happiness” in her marriage, then, is more like blissful
ignorance as she does all she can to please her husband but does not
stop to take stock of herself and what matters to her.

Later,
Nora lies not once but twice about her eating macaroons, which
Torvald does not like as he believes it harms her teeth.  She lies to
him when he directly asks her if she has been eating macaroons, then
the second time to Doctor Rank when he asks her where she got them,
telling him Kristine brought them.  Ibsen shows that Nora’s
relationship with Torvald is in such a bad state that she resorts to
covering up even the most innocent lies.  These are only the tip of
the iceberg as Nora then reveals to Kristine, in a fit of defensive
pride against Kristine’s accusation that Nora is a child, that Nora
was in fact responsible for saving her husband’s life when she
borrowed money to take him on a recuperative trip to Italy.  She
declines to tell Torvald and instead pays the debt in secret from her
allowance.  As she says, “how painful and humiliating it
would be for Torvald, with his manly independence, to know that he
owed me anything!” (Ibsen I).  It is her fear of hurting Torvald’s
pride and not love that prevents her from telling him the truth about
the loan.  Ibsen’s belief was that women, as
people, should be treated equally, and if they are not treated
equally then there can be no love, at least not the romantic love a
man and woman feel for one another (Freedman 92).

Nora
initially believes she loves Torvald the way he is, along with the
lifestyle he has practically chosen for her.  Torvald likewise feels
that he loves Nora for who she is and that the love is genuine and
pure, when he in fact loves her for the part she plays for his
benefit (“Torvald Helmer”).  He does not realize that the love he
feels is false as we come to realize in the play’s course of
events.  Torvald is following the typical male gender role of the
time as a controlling husband.  At the mid point of Act I, Nora asks
Torvald if he would consider giving a job to Kristine.  He is
hesitant, since he believes that a woman’s place is in the home.
Later, after Krogstad has paid Nora a visit in Act I, Torvald
comments on his belief regarding forgery and how it affects the home:
“Almost everyone who has gone to the bad early in life has
had a deceitful mother.”  Nora asks him why he says only the mother
is responsible, clearly shaken by Krogstad’s threat to reveal her
own lie regarding the loan and forgery, and he responds: “It seems
most commonly to be the mother’s influence, though naturally a bad
father’s would have the same result” (Ibsen Act I), the latter part
meant to apply to Krogstad to whom he was referring.  Although
Torvald appears to be a good and honest man it is revealed that he in
fact harbors his own secrets and denials regarding his wife, and in
fact his very view on his own life.  Further into Act II Doctor Rank
comments on Torvald’s ability to handle serious news: “Helmer
with his sensitivity has such a sharp distaste for anything ugly”
(Ibsen).  It is almost as if Torvald is unable to handle life as a
serious matter outside of his own selfish ambitions.  He simply
desires beauty and wealth and a happy home, as he tells Nora on
numerous occasions.  Torvald is perhaps the one character that does
not fully learn what it means to be truthful and therefore more
satisfied with one’s life as he is left alone in his house at the
end of the play.

Although
Nora and Torvald’s relationship is the key display of living in a
marital lie, there are other examples to be found.  During Kristine
and Nora’s initial conversation upon Kristine’s arrival, she
explains to Nora that she married not out of love but out of
necessity, as she “was justified in refusing his offer”
(Ibsen I).  Her mother was ill and two younger brothers needed to be
cared for, and so she married a man she did not love.  In the end she
was left alone with no children and penniless when her husband’s
business went under, forced to work various odd jobs in order to
support her brothers and mother for three more years.  The irony is
that Kristine was in love with Krogstad before she married Mr. Linde,
and only now after returning to the town does she admit to him that
she loves him and wants to marry him.  When he questions her
intentions and wonders if she is doing it to help Nora, Kristine
tells him, “when you’ve sold yourself once for someone else, you
never do it again” (Ibsen I).  She sold herself into a lie, a sham
marriage, once, and now she is hoping to Krogstad in the hopes of
finding something real.  

Hidden
desire is also revealed as Nora attempts to coyly entice Doctor Rank
to convince Torvald to keep Krogstad in his position at the bank.
After he has revealed that he will die soon, a fact he wants kept
from Torvald until after his death, Nora speaks playfully with Doctor
Rank, using deception and feminine wiles to subtly get her way with
Doctor Rank.  Even as she faces certain doom (doom to her in any
case), Nora continues to use the only skills available to her which
are lies and deception.  After speaking with him and showing the
doctor the stockings she had purchased, Doctor Rank is unable to
contain himself.  He admits, truthfully, to Nora that he loves her
and has been in love with her for a long while, and only because of
the friendship with Torvald has he been unable to admit the truth to
her.  When faced with this truth Nora recoils and decides she wants
nothing to do with Doctor Rank.  Although it is an unpleasant
experience for Nora she is once again faced with another instance of
hidden secrets and lies.  It is around this time that she begins to
feel overwhelmed by the weight of the secret loan she borrowed in
order to pay for her family’s trip to Italy, Krogstad’s threat to
blackmail her in order to secure his position at the bank, and the
ongoing doubt in her mind about whether or not she should even remain
in the household; perhaps, she believes, it would be best to kill
herself to spare her husband the shame and trouble of dealing with
all of the lies.  When faced with such hidden secrets Nora can only
think of her husband who she believes is a good and honorable man.

In
the cavalcade of deeply personal and selfish lies that are presented
throughout the play is the foremost among them and the critical
problem for Nora as the play’s protagonist: Krogstad’s threat to
blackmail her if she does not help him secure her position in the
bank.  Krogstad reveals through this threat that he initially lost
his reputation in the community when he became a forger several years
before the play takes place, and Torvald himself calls out Torvald’s
rather unsavory reputation as a valid reason not to allow the man to
remain in his position at the bank (although he later reveals the
truth that he felt Krogstad was simply not showing him enough
respect).  As a result it becomes very difficult for Krogstad to
maintain his position at the bank which he needs in order to maintain
his family, although as he states in Act II that for the last year
and a half he has “not had a hand in anything dishonourable, amid
all the time I have been struggling in most restricted circumstances”
(Ibsen II).  He uses his past when he appeals to Nora, who herself
was guilty of forgery when she signed her father’s name to get the
loan, and although he is attempting to live as an honest man he still
not above blackmailing someone to retain his livelihood.

With
all this lying and deception present throughout the first two acts we
learn that all of the characters are in a sense miserable though it
does not appear so on the surface.  Nora is in a sham marriage which
she is blissfully unaware of; Torvald treats his wife as a doll,
treating her as a helpless child that needs his constant attention
when she is more than capable of taking care of herself as a grown
human being; Kristine reveals that she lived a lie in order to marry
for money, albeit with questionably good reason, then was forced to
work difficult jobs to sustain herself and family when the man she
married died and left her with nothing; Krogstad is still suffering
from his forgery accusation years before and uses blackmail to
attempt to keep his job; and even the poorly Doctor Rank who is great
friends with Torvald and Nora reveals that he is sick with a disease
that he prefers to keep secret from Torvald and has been harboring a
deep desire for Nora that he decides to reveal before his death.  In
Act III all the characters come to a type of acceptance about the
truth of things (either true love such as with Krogstad and Kristine,
or death with no secrets as with Doctor Rank), but no one more so
than Nora.  All these characters are meant to be compared and
contrasted to Nora’s own struggle with the truth behind the lies
because out of all the characters in the play she is the one who
learns the most about the nature of truth and what it means to be
true not only with everyone around her but with herself as well.
Although she departs from Torvald’s household with a door slam and
on serious terms Nora takes a vital step towards her emotional growth
and ultimate happiness as a human being.

Works Cited

Fjelde, Rolf.  Ibsen:
Four Major Plays Volume I.  New
York: New American Library, 2006.  vvii-xxxiii.

Freedman, Estelle.  The
Essential Feminist Reader.  New
York: Modern Library, 2007.  92-98.

Ibsen, Henrik.  “A Doll House.”  Living
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
Ed. John C. Brereton.  New York: Longman, 2007.  1562-1611.

Jackson, Stevi.  Women’s
Studies: Essential Readings.  New
York: New York University Press, 1993.

“Torvald Helmer.”  SparkNotes: A Doll’s House: Henrik
Ibsen.  New York: Spark Publishing, 2002.
10.

Yalom, Marian.  A
History of the Wife.  New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 2002.

Living the Lie in Ibsen’s “A Doll House”

Henrik
Ibsen’s “A Doll House” presents a woman, Nora, who has been
under the proverbial thumb her entire life; that of her father’s
and then later when she comes to marry Torvald Helmer, a man who
comes to take the place of the paternal authority figure in her life.
Both are men who did not truly love her but were only in love with
the idea of a beautiful girl or woman that belonged to them.  And
likewise Nora is not in love with the man she married, but with the
idea of pleasing a man who held such control over her.  She does not
immediately recognize this since she is filling the role of
submissive housewife that is expected of her.  In a sense all
characters in “A Doll House,” not just Nora and Torvald, are
living lies whether they realize it or not.

Nora’s
love for Torvald, or what she perceives to be love for him, is the
overwhelming element throughout the play.  From the beginning Nora is
presented as a subservient and submissive person who caters to her
husband’s every whim and allows him to treat her as a child, or
pet.  The names he uses, such as “little lark” and “little
squirrel,” are pet names, typically used when one speaks to a child
or someone who does not command respect equal to that of an adult.
Nora however never displays any resentment towards this behavior and
in fact seems to take joy when Torvald refers to her with those
terms.  They can certainly be terms of endearment, however the
connotation they carry are not meant to be viewed in a positive
light.  This can be viewed as Nora’s oblivious view of her
relationship to Torvald, which she comes to realize at the end of Act
III when she says “You don’t understand me, and I have never
understood you either–before tonight” (Ibsen III).  Nora’s
“happiness” in her marriage, then, is more like blissful
ignorance as she does all she can to please her husband but does not
stop to take stock of herself and what matters to her.

Later,
Nora lies not once but twice about her eating macaroons, which
Torvald does not like as he believes it harms her teeth.  She lies to
him when he directly asks her if she has been eating macaroons, then
the second time to Doctor Rank when he asks her where she got them,
telling him Kristine brought them.  Ibsen shows that Nora’s
relationship with Torvald is in such a bad state that she resorts to
covering up even the most innocent lies.  These are only the tip of
the iceberg as Nora then reveals to Kristine, in a fit of defensive
pride against Kristine’s accusation that Nora is a child, that Nora
was in fact responsible for saving her husband’s life when she
borrowed money to take him on a recuperative trip to Italy.  She
declines to tell Torvald and instead pays the debt in secret from her
allowance.  As she says, “how painful and humiliating it
would be for Torvald, with his manly independence, to know that he
owed me anything!” (Ibsen I).  It is her fear of hurting Torvald’s
pride and not love that prevents her from telling him the truth about
the loan.  Ibsen’s belief was that women, as
people, should be treated equally, and if they are not treated
equally then there can be no love, at least not the romantic love a
man and woman feel for one another (Freedman 92).

Nora
initially believes she loves Torvald the way he is, along with the
lifestyle he has practically chosen for her.  Torvald likewise feels
that he loves Nora for who she is and that the love is genuine and
pure, when he in fact loves her for the part she plays for his
benefit (“Torvald Helmer”).  He does not realize that the love he
feels is false as we come to realize in the play’s course of
events.  Torvald is following the typical male gender role of the
time as a controlling husband.  At the mid point of Act I, Nora asks
Torvald if he would consider giving a job to Kristine.  He is
hesitant, since he believes that a woman’s place is in the home.
Later, after Krogstad has paid Nora a visit in Act I, Torvald
comments on his belief regarding forgery and how it affects the home:
“Almost everyone who has gone to the bad early in life has
had a deceitful mother.”  Nora asks him why he says only the mother
is responsible, clearly shaken by Krogstad’s threat to reveal her
own lie regarding the loan and forgery, and he responds: “It seems
most commonly to be the mother’s influence, though naturally a bad
father’s would have the same result” (Ibsen Act I), the latter part
meant to apply to Krogstad to whom he was referring.  Although
Torvald appears to be a good and honest man it is revealed that he in
fact harbors his own secrets and denials regarding his wife, and in
fact his very view on his own life.  Further into Act II Doctor Rank
comments on Torvald’s ability to handle serious news: “Helmer
with his sensitivity has such a sharp distaste for anything ugly”
(Ibsen).  It is almost as if Torvald is unable to handle life as a
serious matter outside of his own selfish ambitions.  He simply
desires beauty and wealth and a happy home, as he tells Nora on
numerous occasions.  Torvald is perhaps the one character that does
not fully learn what it means to be truthful and therefore more
satisfied with one’s life as he is left alone in his house at the
end of the play.

Although
Nora and Torvald’s relationship is the key display of living in a
marital lie, there are other examples to be found.  During Kristine
and Nora’s initial conversation upon Kristine’s arrival, she
explains to Nora that she married not out of love but out of
necessity, as she “was justified in refusing his offer”
(Ibsen I).  Her mother was ill and two younger brothers needed to be
cared for, and so she married a man she did not love.  In the end she
was left alone with no children and penniless when her husband’s
business went under, forced to work various odd jobs in order to
support her brothers and mother for three more years.  The irony is
that Kristine was in love with Krogstad before she married Mr. Linde,
and only now after returning to the town does she admit to him that
she loves him and wants to marry him.  When he questions her
intentions and wonders if she is doing it to help Nora, Kristine
tells him, “when you’ve sold yourself once for someone else, you
never do it again” (Ibsen I).  She sold herself into a lie, a sham
marriage, once, and now she is hoping to Krogstad in the hopes of
finding something real.  

Hidden
desire is also revealed as Nora attempts to coyly entice Doctor Rank
to convince Torvald to keep Krogstad in his position at the bank.
After he has revealed that he will die soon, a fact he wants kept
from Torvald until after his death, Nora speaks playfully with Doctor
Rank, using deception and feminine wiles to subtly get her way with
Doctor Rank.  Even as she faces certain doom (doom to her in any
case), Nora continues to use the only skills available to her which
are lies and deception.  After speaking with him and showing the
doctor the stockings she had purchased, Doctor Rank is unable to
contain himself.  He admits, truthfully, to Nora that he loves her
and has been in love with her for a long while, and only because of
the friendship with Torvald has he been unable to admit the truth to
her.  When faced with this truth Nora recoils and decides she wants
nothing to do with Doctor Rank.  Although it is an unpleasant
experience for Nora she is once again faced with another instance of
hidden secrets and lies.  It is around this time that she begins to
feel overwhelmed by the weight of the secret loan she borrowed in
order to pay for her family’s trip to Italy, Krogstad’s threat to
blackmail her in order to secure his position at the bank, and the
ongoing doubt in her mind about whether or not she should even remain
in the household; perhaps, she believes, it would be best to kill
herself to spare her husband the shame and trouble of dealing with
all of the lies.  When faced with such hidden secrets Nora can only
think of her husband who she believes is a good and honorable man.

In
the cavalcade of deeply personal and selfish lies that are presented
throughout the play is the foremost among them and the critical
problem for Nora as the play’s protagonist: Krogstad’s threat to
blackmail her if she does not help him secure her position in the
bank.  Krogstad reveals through this threat that he initially lost
his reputation in the community when he became a forger several years
before the play takes place, and Torvald himself calls out Torvald’s
rather unsavory reputation as a valid reason not to allow the man to
remain in his position at the bank (although he later reveals the
truth that he felt Krogstad was simply not showing him enough
respect).  As a result it becomes very difficult for Krogstad to
maintain his position at the bank which he needs in order to maintain
his family, although as he states in Act II that for the last year
and a half he has “not had a hand in anything dishonourable, amid
all the time I have been struggling in most restricted circumstances”
(Ibsen II).  He uses his past when he appeals to Nora, who herself
was guilty of forgery when she signed her father’s name to get the
loan, and although he is attempting to live as an honest man he still
not above blackmailing someone to retain his livelihood.

With
all this lying and deception present throughout the first two acts we
learn that all of the characters are in a sense miserable though it
does not appear so on the surface.  Nora is in a sham marriage which
she is blissfully unaware of; Torvald treats his wife as a doll,
treating her as a helpless child that needs his constant attention
when she is more than capable of taking care of herself as a grown
human being; Kristine reveals that she lived a lie in order to marry
for money, albeit with questionably good reason, then was forced to
work difficult jobs to sustain herself and family when the man she
married died and left her with nothing; Krogstad is still suffering
from his forgery accusation years before and uses blackmail to
attempt to keep his job; and even the poorly Doctor Rank who is great
friends with Torvald and Nora reveals that he is sick with a disease
that he prefers to keep secret from Torvald and has been harboring a
deep desire for Nora that he decides to reveal before his death.  In
Act III all the characters come to a type of acceptance about the
truth of things (either true love such as with Krogstad and Kristine,
or death with no secrets as with Doctor Rank), but no one more so
than Nora.  All these characters are meant to be compared and
contrasted to Nora’s own struggle with the truth behind the lies
because out of all the characters in the play she is the one who
learns the most about the nature of truth and what it means to be
true not only with everyone around her but with herself as well.
Although she departs from Torvald’s household with a door slam and
on serious terms Nora takes a vital step towards her emotional growth
and ultimate happiness as a human being.

Works Cited

Fjelde, Rolf.  Ibsen:
Four Major Plays Volume I.  New
York: New American Library, 2006.  vvii-xxxiii.

Freedman, Estelle.  The
Essential Feminist Reader.  New
York: Modern Library, 2007.  92-98.

Ibsen, Henrik.  “A Doll House.”  Living
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
Ed. John C. Brereton.  New York: Longman, 2007.  1562-1611.

Jackson, Stevi.  Women’s
Studies: Essential Readings.  New
York: New York University Press, 1993.

“Torvald Helmer.”  SparkNotes: A Doll’s House: Henrik
Ibsen.  New York: Spark Publishing, 2002.
10.

Yalom, Marian.  A
History of the Wife.  New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 2002.

The Indecisiveness’ the Thing

Shakespeare’s
“Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” portrays a man who confronts great
challenges in his long and troubled quest to avenge his father’s
death.  However, it is undoubtedly Hamlet’s own choices stemming
from his indecisive nature that create the biggest hurdles in his
plans for vengeance.  There are many reasons for Hamlet’s
indecision throughout the play, most of which come from a lack of
opportunity, too much analysis and thought, issue with depression and
melancholy, issues with his mother and Oedipal feelings towards her,
and finally doubt both in the ghost that set him upon the quest in
the first place and his own motives.


From the onset of the first scene with Hamlet we find him accompanied
by other characters nearly all the time, and ironically the only
character Hamlet does not find himself alone with is Laertes, the
very man who would wound and lead him to his death in the final
scene.  As such, Hamlet has less opportunities to act out his revenge
because he is not free to wander about alone, and is forced to plot
an elaborate plan to first find out if Claudius is indeed guilty
(doubt being another factor in his indecisiveness, covered later in
this paper), then to actually kill Claudius, which ends up happening
more as a result of actions that were beyond his control than his own
clandestine scheming.  Of course as anyone who knows the story of
Hamlet is aware, he was actually presented with the one opportunity
to kill Claudius at the end of Act III, scene iii, when he comes upon
Claudius in the middle of prayer.  He decides, at the last moment,
not to kill Claudius when he has the perfect opportunity to do so.
As Hamlet states, “O, this is hire and salary, not revenge”
(Shakespeare 1507).  He
tells himself that to kill Claudius during his prayer would send him
to heaven, which is a mercy that Hamlet’s father did not get when
he was killed in his sleep.  Of course the ultimate irony in the
scene is that Claudius was not praying sincerely, and had Hamlet
killed him Claudius would not have gone to heaven: “My words fly
up, my thoughts remain below: / Words without thoughts never to
heaven go” (Shakespeare 1507).

If
there is one thing Hamlet does not lack it’s introspective
analysis.  All of “Hamlet” can be considered one long internal
monologue, even if Hamlet technically only has six soliloquies in
which he speaks to himself.  It is to the point where one could
consider Hamlet to be much too self-critical.  He simply thinks too
much.  In Act 2, scene ii, Hamlet states to Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, “there is nothing either good or bad but thinking
makes it so” (Shakespeare 1477).  So, even Hamlet himself remarks
on the notion that too much thinking can amplify an emotion or
situation beyond the simplicity of what it really is.  That Hamlet
should see this flaw in himself and yet continue to perpetuate it is
somewhat odd, but then many of Hamlet’s actions seemed in contrast
to his goal of getting revenge.  Another aspect of his goal that
Hamlet considers is the fact that he has to kill a man.  When
considering conscience Hamlet remarks:

Thus
conscience does make cowards of us all,

And
thus the native hue of resolution

Is
sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And
enterprises of great pitch and moment

With
this regard their currents turn awry

And
lose the name of action (Shakespeare 1490).

Too much thought,
then, could be viewed as a result of the conscience, and all momentum
gained in the initial flurry of decidedness is lost when the
conscience comes into play and consequences are considered.  Thinking
too much about what he is striving to do leads Hamlet to question if
the delays in his plan are caused by “Bestial oblivion” or by
“some craven scruple / Of thinking too precisely on the event . .
.” (Shakespeare 1520).  He begins to wonder if, perhaps, thinking
too much about what he has to do is causing him to have second
thoughts.  Once again Hamlet himself tells the viewer or reader that
he is having difficulty remaining resolute in his plan to kill
Claudius.

Considering
the internal conflict in Hamlet it is perhaps not surprising that he
should feel depression, causing him to ponder his thoughts and
actions from a resigned point of view and lead to more indecision and
hesitation.  Hamlet’s depressed mood is established from the first
scene, when Claudius urges Hamlet to snap out of his mourning, which
he terms “obstinate condolement” and “unmanly” (Shakespeare
1451).  Hamlet soliloquizes, “But break my heart, for I must hold
my tongue” (Shakespeare 1453).  Hamlet wants to speak truths and
let it be known how he feels, however he holds himself back and is
thus driven further into his depressed mood by his reluctance to
speak openly about his emotions.  Hamlet’s shifts in mood, which
appear to those around him as madness, would have been symptoms of
one of the so-called humors known as melancholy (Hunt 125).  The term
“melancholia,” in Shakespeare’s time, encompassed a variety of
psychological ailments including depression and schizophrenia, and
Hamlet is even known in literature as the “Melancholy Dane”
(“Melancholia”).  Given Hamlet’s state of mind after the loss
of his father, the duty required of him, and his uncle’s marriage
to his mother, Hamlet could very well have been suffering from
serious depression beyond the scope of mere emotional sadness, and
those in a state of depression are anything but sure of themselves.


The relation between Hamlet and Gertrude, his mother, plays an
important role both in the hatred for Claudius and Hamlet’s
indecision and careful planning, for as the ghost warned him, “nor
let thy soul contrive / Against thy mother aught.  Leave her to
heaven…” (Shakespeare 1464).  Gertrude
becomes greatly concerned for Hamlet as his initial mourning over the
death of his father extends into depression and perceived madness,
particularly by the time of the play within a play that takes place
in Act III.  Likewise, Hamlet’s feelings towards and about his
mother are strong throughout the play.  The relationship is
established during the court scene in Act I, scene ii, when Gertrude
tells Hamlet, “Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off, / And let
thine eye look like a friend on Denmark” (Shakespeare 1450).  A
loving request, certainly, but Hamlet’s reproachful response later
in the scene is somewhat less endearing: “Seems, madam! nay it is;
I know not ‘seems’” (Shakespeare 1450).  This establishes that
something certainly is rotten in the state of Denmark for Hamlet to
speak to his mother in such a way.  After the ghost has warned Hamlet
not to bother his mother he becomes more aggressive regarding her
relationship with Claudius.  One rather large point in Hamlet’s
disdain for Claudius is the fact that he married his mother so soon
after his father died, and in fact he makes frequent references to
how little time has passed between King Hamlet’s death and
Gertrude’s remarriage, the first instance being at the court in
scene ii: “O, God, a beast, that wants discourse of reason, / Would
have mourn’d longer–married with my uncle, / … Within a month…”
(Shakespeare 1452).  Indeed it would seem that upon the marriage to
Claudius, Gertrude became inseparable from him in Hamlet’s eyes.
He refers to Claudius as “dear mother” since “man and wife is
one flesh” (Shakespeare 1518).  Claudius essentially takes the role
of Hamlet’s father;  in terms of the classic Oedipal complex it
means that the son, on some unconscious level, wishes to kill the
father in order to be with the mother (Hunt 138).  Killing Claudius
would clear the path to Gertrude’s bed, and the feelings roused
within Hamlet as a result cause him great frustration that he takes
out on both Gertrude and his lover Ophelia, declaring to the latter
in Act III, scene ii, “Or, if thou wilt needs / marry, marry a
fool; for wise men know well enough / what monsters you make of them”
(Shakespeare 1491).  Following Polonius’ murder, Hamlet becomes
more obsessed with the physical aspects of Gertrude’s marriage to
Claudius, and becomes abusive until the ghost appears to remind
Hamlet of his promise not to hurt his mother; “O, step between her
and her fighting soul! / Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works. /
Speak to her, Hamlet” (Shakespeare 1511).  Hamlet calms down, but
not before demanding that she promise to not sleep in the same bed as
Claudius.


That scene brings up what is perhaps the driving force behind
Hamlet’s indecision in Acts I and II: the ghost.  The wandering
spirit of his deceased father, doomed to wander the Earth in
purgatory as a result of being murdered before he could absolved for
his sins.  He begins by believing the ghost in Act I when he states
that “this vision here, / It is an honest Ghost” (Shakespeare
1466).  However, he soon begins to question the validity of the
ghost’s request for vengeance.  As he remarks in the second
soliloquy when considering that the ghost of his father may be the
devil tricking him, “Out of my weakness and my melancholy, / As he
is very potent with such spirits, / Abuses me to damn me…”
(Shakespeare 1487).  He finally tests the ghost’s claims regarding
Claudius in Act III when Hamlet tells Horatio that Claudius’
reaction to the Mousetrap will reveal if “It is a damnèd Ghost
that we have seen” (Shakespeare 1495).  When Claudius calls for the
lights and leaves during the play, Hamlet confidently tells Horatio,
“I’ll take the Ghost’s word for a thousand pound”
(Shakespeare 1501).  His doubt over the ghost’s claim regarding
Claudius is finally settled, allowing for some resolve in an
otherwise tremulous psyche.


While there are indeed many reasons that might explain Hamlet’s
indecisiveness it is ultimately Hamlet’s doubt in himself and his
ambitious motives that hold him back.  In Act III, Hamlet tells
Ophelia that although he is moderately virtuous, “yet I could
accuse me of such things that it were better / my mother had not
borne me: I am very proud, / revengeful, ambitious…” (Shakespeare
1491).  Hamlet knows full well that he is not infallible; he is no
saint in the sordid affairs that occur within the walls of Elsinore
after his arrival.  In Act III, Hamlet tells Rosencrantz that his
“distemper” is because “I lack advancement” (Shakespeare
1503), meaning that while Claudius occupies the throne, Hamlet
cannot.  He ponders the possibility that he is jealous of the fact
that Claudius took the throne when it should have rightfully been
passed on to Hamlet after the death of his father.  Hamlet tells
Horatio that Claudius had “Popped in between th’election and my
hopes” (Shakespeare 1544), indicating that Hamlet had anticipated
being chosen by the people to succeed his father.  This would of
course also sow seeds of distrust both in his own ability to lead as
he believed he would have been voted into the royal office, and in
his ability to separate the goal of vengeance for his father’s
death from his own ambitions for the crown.  Hamlet is left to doubt
himself until the end of the play when he says with dying breath
after watching Gertrude, Claudius, and Laertes die: “Heaven make
thee free of it! I follow thee,” and to Horatio, “But let it be.
Horatio, I am dead…” (Shakespeare 1552).

Hamlet
the Indecisive.  There is perhaps no title that sums up the character
of Hamlet better, and indeed describes why the play takes as many
turns as it does throughout the path to vengeance (literary and
dramatic plot devices not withstanding).  Hamlet was of course in a
very stressed state of mind and thus did have reason to consider his
choices carefully and ponder his true intentions, but there is no
doubt that such indecision is what led Hamlet down the twisted path
which leads to not only Claudius’ death but that of himself and
several others.  One cannot help but wonder if more decisive action
would have led to a quick vengeance and less drama (no pun intended)
for the Prince of Denmark.

Works Cited

Hunt, Marvin W.  Looking
for Hamlet.  New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007.

“Melancholia.”  Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.  1
Apr 2008, 00:31 UTC.  Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.  5 May 2008.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Melancholia&oldid=202431586>.

Shakespeare, William.  “Hamlet, Prince of
Denmark.”  Living Literature: An
Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
Ed. John C. Brereton.  New York: Longman, 2007.  1443-1554.

The Indecisiveness’ the Thing

Shakespeare’s
“Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” portrays a man who confronts great
challenges in his long and troubled quest to avenge his father’s
death.  However, it is undoubtedly Hamlet’s own choices stemming
from his indecisive nature that create the biggest hurdles in his
plans for vengeance.  There are many reasons for Hamlet’s
indecision throughout the play, most of which come from a lack of
opportunity, too much analysis and thought, issue with depression and
melancholy, issues with his mother and Oedipal feelings towards her,
and finally doubt both in the ghost that set him upon the quest in
the first place and his own motives.


From the onset of the first scene with Hamlet we find him accompanied
by other characters nearly all the time, and ironically the only
character Hamlet does not find himself alone with is Laertes, the
very man who would wound and lead him to his death in the final
scene.  As such, Hamlet has less opportunities to act out his revenge
because he is not free to wander about alone, and is forced to plot
an elaborate plan to first find out if Claudius is indeed guilty
(doubt being another factor in his indecisiveness, covered later in
this paper), then to actually kill Claudius, which ends up happening
more as a result of actions that were beyond his control than his own
clandestine scheming.  Of course as anyone who knows the story of
Hamlet is aware, he was actually presented with the one opportunity
to kill Claudius at the end of Act III, scene iii, when he comes upon
Claudius in the middle of prayer.  He decides, at the last moment,
not to kill Claudius when he has the perfect opportunity to do so.
As Hamlet states, “O, this is hire and salary, not revenge”
(Shakespeare 1507).  He
tells himself that to kill Claudius during his prayer would send him
to heaven, which is a mercy that Hamlet’s father did not get when
he was killed in his sleep.  Of course the ultimate irony in the
scene is that Claudius was not praying sincerely, and had Hamlet
killed him Claudius would not have gone to heaven: “My words fly
up, my thoughts remain below: / Words without thoughts never to
heaven go” (Shakespeare 1507).

If
there is one thing Hamlet does not lack it’s introspective
analysis.  All of “Hamlet” can be considered one long internal
monologue, even if Hamlet technically only has six soliloquies in
which he speaks to himself.  It is to the point where one could
consider Hamlet to be much too self-critical.  He simply thinks too
much.  In Act 2, scene ii, Hamlet states to Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, “there is nothing either good or bad but thinking
makes it so” (Shakespeare 1477).  So, even Hamlet himself remarks
on the notion that too much thinking can amplify an emotion or
situation beyond the simplicity of what it really is.  That Hamlet
should see this flaw in himself and yet continue to perpetuate it is
somewhat odd, but then many of Hamlet’s actions seemed in contrast
to his goal of getting revenge.  Another aspect of his goal that
Hamlet considers is the fact that he has to kill a man.  When
considering conscience Hamlet remarks:

Thus
conscience does make cowards of us all,

And
thus the native hue of resolution

Is
sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And
enterprises of great pitch and moment

With
this regard their currents turn awry

And
lose the name of action (Shakespeare 1490).

Too much thought,
then, could be viewed as a result of the conscience, and all momentum
gained in the initial flurry of decidedness is lost when the
conscience comes into play and consequences are considered.  Thinking
too much about what he is striving to do leads Hamlet to question if
the delays in his plan are caused by “Bestial oblivion” or by
“some craven scruple / Of thinking too precisely on the event . .
.” (Shakespeare 1520).  He begins to wonder if, perhaps, thinking
too much about what he has to do is causing him to have second
thoughts.  Once again Hamlet himself tells the viewer or reader that
he is having difficulty remaining resolute in his plan to kill
Claudius.

Considering
the internal conflict in Hamlet it is perhaps not surprising that he
should feel depression, causing him to ponder his thoughts and
actions from a resigned point of view and lead to more indecision and
hesitation.  Hamlet’s depressed mood is established from the first
scene, when Claudius urges Hamlet to snap out of his mourning, which
he terms “obstinate condolement” and “unmanly” (Shakespeare
1451).  Hamlet soliloquizes, “But break my heart, for I must hold
my tongue” (Shakespeare 1453).  Hamlet wants to speak truths and
let it be known how he feels, however he holds himself back and is
thus driven further into his depressed mood by his reluctance to
speak openly about his emotions.  Hamlet’s shifts in mood, which
appear to those around him as madness, would have been symptoms of
one of the so-called humors known as melancholy (Hunt 125).  The term
“melancholia,” in Shakespeare’s time, encompassed a variety of
psychological ailments including depression and schizophrenia, and
Hamlet is even known in literature as the “Melancholy Dane”
(“Melancholia”).  Given Hamlet’s state of mind after the loss
of his father, the duty required of him, and his uncle’s marriage
to his mother, Hamlet could very well have been suffering from
serious depression beyond the scope of mere emotional sadness, and
those in a state of depression are anything but sure of themselves.


The relation between Hamlet and Gertrude, his mother, plays an
important role both in the hatred for Claudius and Hamlet’s
indecision and careful planning, for as the ghost warned him, “nor
let thy soul contrive / Against thy mother aught.  Leave her to
heaven…” (Shakespeare 1464).  Gertrude
becomes greatly concerned for Hamlet as his initial mourning over the
death of his father extends into depression and perceived madness,
particularly by the time of the play within a play that takes place
in Act III.  Likewise, Hamlet’s feelings towards and about his
mother are strong throughout the play.  The relationship is
established during the court scene in Act I, scene ii, when Gertrude
tells Hamlet, “Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off, / And let
thine eye look like a friend on Denmark” (Shakespeare 1450).  A
loving request, certainly, but Hamlet’s reproachful response later
in the scene is somewhat less endearing: “Seems, madam! nay it is;
I know not ‘seems’” (Shakespeare 1450).  This establishes that
something certainly is rotten in the state of Denmark for Hamlet to
speak to his mother in such a way.  After the ghost has warned Hamlet
not to bother his mother he becomes more aggressive regarding her
relationship with Claudius.  One rather large point in Hamlet’s
disdain for Claudius is the fact that he married his mother so soon
after his father died, and in fact he makes frequent references to
how little time has passed between King Hamlet’s death and
Gertrude’s remarriage, the first instance being at the court in
scene ii: “O, God, a beast, that wants discourse of reason, / Would
have mourn’d longer–married with my uncle, / … Within a month…”
(Shakespeare 1452).  Indeed it would seem that upon the marriage to
Claudius, Gertrude became inseparable from him in Hamlet’s eyes.
He refers to Claudius as “dear mother” since “man and wife is
one flesh” (Shakespeare 1518).  Claudius essentially takes the role
of Hamlet’s father;  in terms of the classic Oedipal complex it
means that the son, on some unconscious level, wishes to kill the
father in order to be with the mother (Hunt 138).  Killing Claudius
would clear the path to Gertrude’s bed, and the feelings roused
within Hamlet as a result cause him great frustration that he takes
out on both Gertrude and his lover Ophelia, declaring to the latter
in Act III, scene ii, “Or, if thou wilt needs / marry, marry a
fool; for wise men know well enough / what monsters you make of them”
(Shakespeare 1491).  Following Polonius’ murder, Hamlet becomes
more obsessed with the physical aspects of Gertrude’s marriage to
Claudius, and becomes abusive until the ghost appears to remind
Hamlet of his promise not to hurt his mother; “O, step between her
and her fighting soul! / Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works. /
Speak to her, Hamlet” (Shakespeare 1511).  Hamlet calms down, but
not before demanding that she promise to not sleep in the same bed as
Claudius.


That scene brings up what is perhaps the driving force behind
Hamlet’s indecision in Acts I and II: the ghost.  The wandering
spirit of his deceased father, doomed to wander the Earth in
purgatory as a result of being murdered before he could absolved for
his sins.  He begins by believing the ghost in Act I when he states
that “this vision here, / It is an honest Ghost” (Shakespeare
1466).  However, he soon begins to question the validity of the
ghost’s request for vengeance.  As he remarks in the second
soliloquy when considering that the ghost of his father may be the
devil tricking him, “Out of my weakness and my melancholy, / As he
is very potent with such spirits, / Abuses me to damn me…”
(Shakespeare 1487).  He finally tests the ghost’s claims regarding
Claudius in Act III when Hamlet tells Horatio that Claudius’
reaction to the Mousetrap will reveal if “It is a damnèd Ghost
that we have seen” (Shakespeare 1495).  When Claudius calls for the
lights and leaves during the play, Hamlet confidently tells Horatio,
“I’ll take the Ghost’s word for a thousand pound”
(Shakespeare 1501).  His doubt over the ghost’s claim regarding
Claudius is finally settled, allowing for some resolve in an
otherwise tremulous psyche.


While there are indeed many reasons that might explain Hamlet’s
indecisiveness it is ultimately Hamlet’s doubt in himself and his
ambitious motives that hold him back.  In Act III, Hamlet tells
Ophelia that although he is moderately virtuous, “yet I could
accuse me of such things that it were better / my mother had not
borne me: I am very proud, / revengeful, ambitious…” (Shakespeare
1491).  Hamlet knows full well that he is not infallible; he is no
saint in the sordid affairs that occur within the walls of Elsinore
after his arrival.  In Act III, Hamlet tells Rosencrantz that his
“distemper” is because “I lack advancement” (Shakespeare
1503), meaning that while Claudius occupies the throne, Hamlet
cannot.  He ponders the possibility that he is jealous of the fact
that Claudius took the throne when it should have rightfully been
passed on to Hamlet after the death of his father.  Hamlet tells
Horatio that Claudius had “Popped in between th’election and my
hopes” (Shakespeare 1544), indicating that Hamlet had anticipated
being chosen by the people to succeed his father.  This would of
course also sow seeds of distrust both in his own ability to lead as
he believed he would have been voted into the royal office, and in
his ability to separate the goal of vengeance for his father’s
death from his own ambitions for the crown.  Hamlet is left to doubt
himself until the end of the play when he says with dying breath
after watching Gertrude, Claudius, and Laertes die: “Heaven make
thee free of it! I follow thee,” and to Horatio, “But let it be.
Horatio, I am dead…” (Shakespeare 1552).

Hamlet
the Indecisive.  There is perhaps no title that sums up the character
of Hamlet better, and indeed describes why the play takes as many
turns as it does throughout the path to vengeance (literary and
dramatic plot devices not withstanding).  Hamlet was of course in a
very stressed state of mind and thus did have reason to consider his
choices carefully and ponder his true intentions, but there is no
doubt that such indecision is what led Hamlet down the twisted path
which leads to not only Claudius’ death but that of himself and
several others.  One cannot help but wonder if more decisive action
would have led to a quick vengeance and less drama (no pun intended)
for the Prince of Denmark.

Works Cited

Hunt, Marvin W.  Looking
for Hamlet.  New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007.

“Melancholia.”  Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.  1
Apr 2008, 00:31 UTC.  Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.  5 May 2008.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Melancholia&oldid=202431586>.

Shakespeare, William.  “Hamlet, Prince of
Denmark.”  Living Literature: An
Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
Ed. John C. Brereton.  New York: Longman, 2007.  1443-1554.