Book #17: The Art of War

Book #17: The Art of War by Sun Tzu (translated by Lin Wusun)

March 27, 2013


When I was in my undergraduate days, I used to love watching reruns of the show Gilmore Girls with my roommates (sometimes playing beer drinking games for the duration of hour). I was a big fan of the show; some days when I'm not subbing, I still watch an episode, but I've basically seen them all at this point. I've gotten into Amy Sherman-Palladino's newest show (on ABC Family), Bunheads, which basically has the same fast-paced and often silly humor of my old favorite, with some of the same acting talent (such as Kelly Bishop, who is fabulous, and Liza Weil, who is outrageous). It doesn't get as much promotion as certain other shows on the channel, but I've gotten to be a fan and will be looking forward to next season.

Okay, what was my point here? So on both of the shows, characters often make references to things in culture: popular culture, celebrities, literature. It's usually pretty smart humor. Both of the shows made similar references to The Art of War, in somewhat similar situations. On Gilmore Girls, main character Rory (here's how big of a fan of the show I am: that's what I named my dog), when having a confrontation with a bullying classmate who was messing with her and Weil's character, states that she's read The Art of War, to indicate that she knows how to deal with her. On Bunheads, Sasha's part in The Nutcracker is being threatened by a psychotic "ringer" ballerina, and Sasha tells her that she's read The Art of War. (Okay, seriously, that episode is completely amazing...seriously, watch it sometime).

Therefore, I had it in my head that this book would reveal some profound method of handling opponents. I guess that for its time, it did. After all, it was first written more than 2000 years ago. According to the introduction of the text, this was a time of turmoil in China, so warfare was common. Sun Tzu was a highly honored commander at this time. In this text, he introduces ideas about strategy that were highly relevant in his time, but the principals of which can still be applied to "warfare" (or really, any sort of competition) today.

I can basically sum up the important messages that I take away from the book with the following:

-Know your "enemy." Be able to anticipate how he/she/they will act or move next. This is the reason why, for example, football coaches and teams watch footage of their opponents. They get a feel for their moves, so that they're better able to call their own plays. Also...
-Make sure that they cannot anticipate your next move. Be stealthy; catch them by surprise.
-Know yourself, so that you're able to be aware of your tendencies, your weaknesses, and you can compensate for these and still have the upper-hand.
-Always act calmly. Sun Tzu refers to commanders acting by strategy, not out of emotion (which, of course, rarely ever works out) to ensure victory, and respect from their troops. The chapters on commanding of troops applied most to my life, I guess, because I could see how a lot of that would apply to teachers gaining respect from their students (ie, not being too lenient, always acting fairly and consistently, caring genuinely about them, rewarding them appropriately)
-Think before you act. That's a life lesson for everyone. Be aware of your surroundings. Don't act if it could be you in danger or negative consequence of some sort. Weigh the pros and cons of every action.
-When faced with a dangerous situation and no way out...fight for your life.
-Be prepared. Anticipate your needs.

I think that basically sums up the important life lessons to draw away from the text (and the book itself was much shorter than I imagined...according to the introduction, only about 6000 characters in the ancient Chinese it which it was written). There were certainly many details that were no longer applicable to warfare of any kind, but those bigger lessons, about poise and preparedness and intelligent action, will always be relevant. A lot of those things almost seemed too obvious as I was reading them, but I'm sure that this sort of organized thinking and logic was fairly innovative for its time. Again, according to the introduction, this text came out around the same time that Confucius and other Chinese philosophers were first influencing society. This is ancient stuff here, older than the New Testament. I personally think it's pretty amazing that this book is being read and translated and studied to this very day.

However, I don't feel like I'd be any more prepared to take on any bitches who try to get up in my grill.

This is apparently an image of Sun Tzu. I studied Chinese history very, very briefly on a study abroad trip there (and Tibet) in my undergrad days. In those three weeks, we barely scratched the surface, its history is so rich. Damn, in American public schools we can't even properly get through less than 500 years of history, and the Chinese have thousands of years to cover.

My Rory. She knows nothing of the art of war, but she is a scrappy little shit.

Book #16: The Namesake

Book #16: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

March 21, 2013


I read Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, as part of a course on multicultural literature during my undergraduate days. A common theme in her writing involves children of Indian immigrants, and assimilation into American culture, which is, to say the least, quite different from the culture of India. I've always been a little fascinated by Indian culture. There is a surprisingly large population of Indian and Middle Eastern people in my small Midwestern city, and when I used to teach swimming lessons in high school, I taught some little kids whose mothers came on the pool deck in absolutely gorgeous saris. I thought some of the younger mothers were the most beautiful women I'd ever seen (the picture of Lahiri on the back flap of this book shows her to be really beautiful as well, with huge, piercing eyes). The Indian children were cute, too, and I seem to recall that they gave me less problems than some of the other kids (not to stereotype, that's just how I remember it). I quite imagined that these women, so traditionally dressed (just as Ashima, one of the main characters, is described in the book), kept within their own little community of Indian immigrants (I wasn't familiar with terms like 'Bengali' at that point), as I saw them do on the pool deck, in their own way resisting assimilation as much as possible.

That's basically how Ashima and her husband Ashoke cope with life in America. Ashoke had already been a student at MIT when their marriage was arranged, and she returned with him. The story follows Ashima, and the lives of her husband and their only son, until Ashima leaves to stay with her brother in Calcutta a few years after her husband's death. Ashima never really imagined spending her life in America, and it took her a long time to even find some sense of belonging there. It was her husband's near-death experience, years before they met, that led them to a strange new country, and that also gave their son his accidental name.

Names are another big theme in this book. Names are purposeful; everyone is given their name for some reason, even if it's as simply as their parents liking it for some reason. There's a story behind the strange spelling of my first name (though with some digging, I've found that it's a more common spelling in the UK...not that my parents are British). Though their son was named "accidentally" (according to tradition, they were going to wait for a letter from Ashima's grandmother, with her name for the baby in it, which never arrived before she died), his name had a real meaning. He wasn't just named for one of his father's favorite authors, Nikolai V. Gogol (though he "only" read English translations, he didn't seem to feel like this was cheating), but for the circumstances that saved his life after a horrific train wreck. Ashoke had been reading "The Overcoat" (which I reread this afternoon after completing the book) when the train crashed, and when rescuers were searching for survivors in the wreckage, he'd been able to get their attention by waving a page of the book, thus being rescued, and ultimately surviving.

Ashoke had met a man on the train, who had advised him to travel far and wide, to see the world and go west, specifically to America. Ashoke had shaken the man off at the time, claiming to be content in the world as it was presented in his beloved books. But knowing that the man had died without getting to go to England again, that he perhaps would not have died if he had not given in to his wife's demands to return to India, affected him; thus, he transferred to the U.S., and spent the rest of his life there. He has what would be considered a successful life there. He has a nice home in suburban Massachusetts, and a job as a professor of engineering at a local university. But he and his wife live between their two worlds, clinging to their Bengali friends throughout New England, getting together with them as often as possible and dragging along their Americanized children.

Gogol and his sister Sonia (her real name Sonja) aren't bad kids in the least, but they rebel a bit against their parents. The story mostly follows Gogol, as well as his parents, as he comes into his own between two cultures, in a way. His American friends aren't interested in his Indian culture, though it is so much a part of him; every few years, he goes and spends months in India (a remember the same thing happening with a kid in middle school, who left in the middle of 7th grade and wasn't back from India until the next school year). He goes to college at Yale to put some distance between himself and his parents. He even changes his name, resenting how strange it is. I can't help but wonder how "strange" he would think a Bengali name would be if he'd had to grow up with it among his American classmates, but it makes it even stranger (in his view) that his first name is Russian...and a surname, at that. He's also humiliated in high school literature class, when his teacher gives a lecture on Gogol, revealing the author to have been a disturbed fellow.

I read some Gogol in another undergraduate course (the same one in which I was exposed to the poetry of Baudelaire), "The Overcoat" being one story that we focused on in class. I had written a paper on the story, and one point that I'd focused on was the main character's name. Akaky Akakyevich can be taken from its Greek roots to mean something like "innocence" or "guilelessness," which would be appropriate to describe the character, who really is just an innocent, pathetic sort of creature. According to Wikipedia, when his name is pronounced correctly in Russian, it kinda sounds like their word for "poop," which, again, would be appropriate for a guy who gets shit on all of his life. Ashoke was fascinated by story, because it is just such a senselessly tragic story, about this guy who has a pathetic job, who saves for months just to have this nice new coat made for him, and its stolen off his back on a cold Russian night, and he later dies from getting a fever in the wintry streets. And nobody wants to help this guy! It's just too pathetic, and yet it says so much about the state of the world, even today.

I haven't read many other Russian authors, but Ashoke, as a young and literate man, loved them. His grandfather was a professor of Russian literature, or something like that. But Ashoke still grew up in poverty (it doesn't seem that Ashima suffered quite the hardships that he did), and the luxuries of life in America offer him some relief, though he is still very watchful of even the smallest signs of wastefulness. This is something that causes a divide between himself and his son, who, like many Americans, has a collection of things that he gets no use out of (books he doesn't read, records that don't catch his interest). I was frustrated that Ashoke had not tried to share the real story of Gogol's name with his son when he was still a teenager, before Gogol had the chance to change his name. I think he underestimated his son's ability to understand the significance of it.

But Gogol does change his name, to the Bengali Nikhil, the "good name" that his parents had wanted him to start using when he started kindergarten. But at that young age, Gogol only knew himself as Gogol, and wouldn't go along with it. Besides, it was the name on his birth certificate, the name that his parents had put down, because they had to put down something before they left the hospital. This new name gives him confidence. From there, his life as a young adult seems pretty ordinary. He becomes an architect, and he dates American girls. He has two serious relationships, and those are pretty ordinary, too...except that he never introduces one to his parents, and the other, he feels embarrassed the couple of times that she is around them. He and his serious girlfriend Maxine, a pretentious, wealthy Upper East Side girl who has moved back in with her parents and stays with "Nick" in her swank private floor, break up after his father's death. After Ashoke has a sudden heart attack while living briefly in Ohio for a research grant or something, Gogol feels guilty for separating himself from his family, and spends as much time with his sister and mother as possible.

Now, Gogol does not go so far into his mourning in the book that he shaves his head after his father's death (which, if I remember right, Gogol in the film version does, as depicted by Kal Penn), but he doesn't back away from his parents' culture so much. He even takes his mother's suggestion to look up an old family friend, a young woman around his age. He and Moushumi, with their shared childhood experiences, quickly fall in the love and marry, but their hasty union proves disastrous. In the end, Gogol is successful in his work, but he now wonders if he'll ever find someone to marry for life, to have a family with. His sister is going to marry a man who is not Bengali, and they seem happily in love, and Ashima is happy for them (though they will be having their wedding in India to please her). Ashima, widowed for a few years, is going home, and feels some regret at leaving the life she has built in America behind, though she'll return annually to see her children.

Besides Ashoke's early near-death experience, the events and circumstances of the lives of the Ganguli family are not in any way extraordinary. Lahiri wrote a story about realistic, likable but flawed (read: real) people. She presented a point-of-view that is important for her, one that, I imagine, has had an effect on her own life, and is certainly not one that is represented in today's mainstream culture. I mean, the US has a substantial population of people from India, but they're one underrepresented minority group. Besides Kal Penn (best known as Kumar from those very silly movies...again, NPH is hysterical), the only other American actor of Indian descent that I can think of is Aziz Ansari, the really loud comedian. Um, Gus is dating a woman of Indian descent (by way of England, like Moushumi in the book) on Psych. Is he still dating her? I've missed the last couple of episodes.

Anyway, my point is, though the characters in this story were fairly average people, I really enjoyed this book. Maybe for the fact that they were just ordinary people, and that Lahiri wrote so intimately about their lives, about their fears (like for Ashima, of losing touch with her ever-shrinking family in India, or for Gogol, who seems to fear the negative effects that his name would have on his life, as unclear as they are to him), and their desires, but mostly in just the details of their day-to-day existence. The details that Lahiri gives about her characters carefully illustrate not just what they look like, but who they are. She does the same thing with their surroundings, particularly their homes or personal working spaces. And, of course, their names.

It's pointed out a couple of times in the book that Ashima and Ashoke never address each other by their names. The reader isn't told what names they use for each other, their private pet names I guess you could say, which makes these names all the more powerful. Ashima and Ashoke, after being forced to name their son officially before learning her grandmother's choice, reflect on how naming in their culture is so different from America, and are frustrated when no one understands the concept of pet names and good names. For them, Gogol was supposed to be the pet name, and it becomes a family joke of sorts that their son carries it for life. But the story of how he got it, with his father's survival of the train wreck...it's a hell of a story, making it a hell of a significant name, which Gogol reflects on in the end. He will, forevermore, be known as Nikhil, the name that was supposed to be his good name all along, but he is sad that the people who call him "Gogol" are so few and far between. It is not until it is too late that Gogol realizes the real meaning of his name. But there is hope, of course: he is still fairly young, though divorced, and can still find a wife and have children, and perhaps pass the name and its significance on.

Jhumpa Lahiri. Apparently, "Jhumpa" is her "pet name." She hasn't published any other novels, but I may add her other short story collection to my list.

Harold and Kumar. You know, Kumar is a little bit like Gogol in some ways. He, too, is the son of immigrants, and is being pressured by his father, a doctor, to follow in his footsteps. But Kumar, very Americanized, would rather hang out with his non-Indian friends and get stoned. In that way, he's much more typical than the Ivy League-educated Gogol.

Book #15: Wuthering Heights

Book #15: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

March 14, 2013


After reading up a bit (via Wikipedia, mainly) about the Brontë sisters, I have found that Wuthering Heights was Emily's only novel. She, like her siblings, died fairly young. Well, I'd say that she made her one book count, because she really told one hell of a story. It's clear to me why it's a classic of English literature. I found the story to be entertaining, and the characters to be complex and interesting, if not altogether likable.

The story centers around Heathcliff (that is his given name, and he goes by only this), who was found as an abandoned orphan in Liverpool by Mr. Earnshaw, a country gentleman who takes the boy home and raises him alongside his own children, Hindley and Catherine. This is not uncharacteristic of the man, as he had also taken the young Ellen Dean (known as Nelly or Mrs. Dean, though I have no idea who the hell Mr. Dean is supposed to be...am I missing something here?) under his wing. She is the main narrator of the story, as she tells Heathcliff and the Earnshaw and Linton's story to Mr. Lockwood, the first narrator of the story. The story isn't really about him at all; all that's really known of him is that he is a young gentleman, who, on a whim, rented out Thrushcross Grange from Mr. Heathcliff, in order to get away from his hard-partying lifestyle, I think. Or maybe to escape a heartbreak...I was still kind of getting used to Brontë's writing style at that point, so I may have missed some details that were mentioned in passing. It doesn't really matter.

Anyway, Lockwood makes his way up to Wuthering Heights, the old country house at which Heathcliff resides with his widowed daughter-in-law, a very lovely but cold young woman, and a young farmhand named Hareton Earnshaw, who is not entirely friendly himself. Heathcliff is an imposing and unwelcoming man, and Lockwood, though not desiring to spend much time with his landlord, becomes fascinated by the unhappy household, especially after finding a few scrawled diary entries from a young woman named Catherine Earnshaw.

As Lockwood is laid up from an illness (I've commented on this before, but I'll say it again: English people of certain means really spent a lot of time on their asses back in the day), Nelly entertains him with the story of Heathcliff and the others. Though Heathcliff was raised beside the Earnshaw children, and was close with young Catherine, he was ill-treated by an older Hindley, and to some extent by Nelly herself (though it seems, throughout the book, that she is the only person in whom Heathcliff feels comfortable confiding). Catherine herself is a brat, as described by Nelly, though it would seem by my point-of-view that she was merely high-spirited, but over-indulged by her widower father. Hindley, home from school and newly wed, takes over Wuthering Heights, and proceeds to treat Heathcliff like a servant, keeping him separated from Catherine as much as possible.

Catherine, though "wild" and willful, eventually comes under the influence of the Linton family, who live at Thrushcross Grange. She never quite loses her ill manners, but when she is around Edgar Linton, she is better behaved. Even after he gets a glimpse at her temper (after she'd had an argument with Heathcliff; their sexual and emotional tension was to the breaking point, as  he was very jealous of her relationship with Linton and she certainly knew it), he desires to marry her. Now, as told from Nelly's perspective, it's clear that Catherine shares Heathcliff's feelings. Their feelings for each other are passionate; if they lived in more contemporary times, they would have run away together. But Catherine was from a respectable (if isolated...they were painfully isolated in their country manors) family, and Heathcliff literally had no name, nothing. To her, the only practical thing to do was to marry Linton.

At some point, Heathcliff goes off and makes a bunch of money. Nelly can never explain how this happened, and it is disappointing not to have found that part out. But he comes back and takes up residence at Wuthering Heights with the now-widower Hindley, who has gambled and drank away all of his money, and Hindley's neglected young son Hareton. As Heathcliff haunts Catherine's home, to the chagrin of her husband, Isabella Linton falls in love with him. You see, she interprets his brooding manner and devotion to Catherine to speak of his romantic heart (Catherine, who knows what a scoundrel he is, and perhaps this is the reason why she could not be with him, laughs at this and warns her off). I bet there are some fans of this book who might even take the same view...I can only imagine the plethora of fan fiction stories out there, written about some lady or another, from the story or imagined anew, who warms Heathcliff's icy heart.

I call bullshit on that one. Heathcliff comes from a strange, somewhat tragic, background, to be sure, but he's an asshole. Certainly, he had his pride abused by a child...so the bullied kid grows up to be a bully of children, it would seem. Though he does attack Hindley  while he's still  living (through his dirty dealings and financing the mortgage on Wuthering Heights and the land surrounding), he doesn't dare go after Edgar Linton until he's lying on his death bed (years after Catherine died in childbirth, bearing her namesake). He exacts his revenge against his enemies on the children, Hareton and Catherine themselves, and to some extent his own children through Isabella, the weakling Linton. He tricks young Catherine into marrying his spoiled, sickly son in order to have access to Thrushcross Grange, a finer property than Wuthering Heights. And once Edgar Linton is dead, what does Heathcliff do? He rents it out, rather than lording over his triumph.

Some triumph. It's more like misery loves company. Heathcliff is a miserable man, and he creates a miserable household. Poor young Catherine, who had been isolated herself but fairly happy as a child, is miserable in her new home, and is physically abused by Heathcliff (and to some extent by Hareton, her own cousin, though they become very friendly later on). Yeah, Catherine keeps it on both sides of the family, as she goes from marrying one cousin to the other (an improved Hareton and she are engaged at the end of the book). But they're much better suited for each other, as Hareton grows more gentle under her influence and education, and he can check her brief but violent tempers. 

Hareton was the most tragic character through much of the book. He came to love and trust Heathcliff, his guardian, though he was emotionally neglected, and was left uneducated and made to work on the farm. Heathcliff revealed to Nelly, in one of his wicked monologues, that he'd planned it this way on purpose, giving Hareton the same treatment that the boy's father had given to him. Really spiteful, especially considering that Hareton was his own beloved's flesh and blood. Bullying his own son and his daughter-in-law as well...but none of it brought him any joy. 

So really, I see Heathcliff as nothing more than a villian in this book, and I was glad when he died at the end. At the very least, he was finally happy, to be laid to rest beside his Catherine (even as her husband lay on the other side of her). The people around Wuthering Heights claimed that Heathcliff and Catherine's spirits haunted the area, and even the level-headed Nelly somewhat believed it. The household was happier after this, when Lockwood came to visit them briefly after some time away, and the couple were planning to move to Thrushcross Grange, leaving the bitter old servant Joseph, a classic Christian hypocrite) behind to tend to the abandoned (haunted?) Wuthering Heights.

I had heard this book described as being "violent," but I was surprised by the uncouth conduct of the characters. People nowadays often think back on those Victorian-era English times as being a time of proper society and manners and social hierarchies and all that stuff. But the characters in this book were basically English country bumpkins (with some money). I think I was expecting something more like a Jane Austen novel, but this story was much darker, though there was some glimmer of hope at the end. This book was surprising, in a good way.

Heath Ledger (RIP). I read once that he was named after the character Heathcliff. Uh, seriously? I take that to mean that his parents took the view that the character was some sort of brooding romantic hero. Once again, bullshit IMO.

A drawing of Emily Brontë, done by her sister Charlotte, who was also a writer (I've read Jane Eyre, which is pretty dark like Wuthering Heights). All of the family had artistic inclinations; the brother was an artist, too, and sister Anne published a couple of novels, in addition to the book of poems that the sisters had published together under their (male) pen names.

Book #14: Maus

Book #14: Maus by Art Spiegelman

March 1, 2013


Just so there's no confusion, I'll just point out that I read "The Complete" Maus, consisting of two parts that were originally published separately. It's one book that has been on my "to read" list, but I bumped it up because I will be teaching this book as part of a long-term sub assignment, starting sometime in April. The library (the small library annex in the mall was moved to a larger location nearby) didn't have a copy available, so I got it from the teacher I will be subbing for. Both parts took Art Spiegelman approximately 13 years to work on, from gathering the information (mainly through interviews with his father, which are depicted in the story) to drawing out each panel and writing it all out. It took me less than five hours to finish. As I went, I jotted down some vague notes to help me work out some lesson plans (I'm such a nerdy teacher, I seriously love making lesson plans, so I guess it's a good thing that I'll be in a consistent classroom for about six weeks), but that did not deter the pace of my reading. Plus, it was just difficult to put down.

So Maus is pretty famous, which is putting it quite lightly, I know. Maybe I just haven't been paying much attention, but I don't know that graphic novels, in general, have become really popular or legitimate until quite recently. There are other graphic novels on my "to-read" list, and I feel like they were published in the last ten years or so. Part one of the text, "My Father Bleeds History," was published in the late 70's or early 80's, Part two ("And Here My Troubles Began") coming out about a decade later. It won the Pulitzer Prize. I think it would be safe to say that this is an innovative text in the graphic novel genre.

Maus is a memoir of the author's father's experiences as a Jew in World War II, from the war lines to the ghettos to Auschwitz itself. But it is just as much a story about "Artie's" relationship with his father. Vladek Spiegelman is a difficult man to get along with. In his old age, he suffers from many health problems: very poor eyesight (one eye is glass), diabetes, and he often requires an oxygen tank. He has bad circulation. He takes many pills each day (which he obsessively counts out). And he's very moody. His wife Mala (another Holocaust survivor whom he married after Anja, Artie's mother who survived the war with him, committed suicide) can hardly stand him, even running off at one point to Florida, only to reunite (reluctantly) after Vladek follows her there and becomes ill. Artie frequently becomes exasperated with his father, especially when he asks him to do some sort of home repair project (Artie, an artist, always resisted doing those sorts of things around the house, afraid that his father was constantly judging him). And though Francoise, Artie's wife, tries to be patient with Vladek, she becomes irritated with him when he makes racist comments about a black hitchhiker whom she gives a ride to.

I'm fascinated by Vladek, and I really appreciate the fact that the author chose to include so much personal information about his father's later life, interwoven between his stories of the Holocaust. At one point in the book, a character (I can't remember who) makes a comment that there are already a lot of Holocaust stories out there. Certainly, there are, and some of them are definitely worth reading, but I don't feel like there's been so much about the life of survivors (and their children) after the Holocaust. Francoise hypothesizes that her father-in-law's behavior is due to trauma that he suffered in the concentration camps, and while Artie agrees with her to some extent, he also notes that he's met other survivors, friends of his parents, and they didn't seem to behave as he did. In the end, it doesn't seem like Artie is able to truly understand why his father acts and thinks the way that he does, but he does appreciate his experiences. See, he proves that by including all of that about their shaky relationship; if he'd just wanted to make his story about his father's experience in the Holocaust, he easily could have done that, and the book probably would have been just as successful. All of that information really shaped his parents as "characters"; they are real, and he portrayed them as such.

Well, except for the fact that all of the people were drawn as animals. It breaks down basically like this: the Jewish people were mice, the Germans cats, the Polish people were pigs, Americans are dogs, French people are frogs (ha! Love it!)...although he did make his wife a mouse instead of a frog, including in the story a scene of them arguing about the matter. When Vladek and Anja were trying to go incognito through the unfriendly Polish streets, they were portrayed as mice wearing pig masks. The only time in the story that the author breaks this is in one scene in Part II, when he is describing his feelings of being overwhelmed by the success of Part I. At one point, the characters were all people, but were wearing their respective animal masks (Artie, of course, a mouse).

I could speculate about why the author chose the animals that he did for each. It seems kind of obvious, I guess. The Germans as cats, the Jews as mice, because the Germans were ruthlessly going after them. The Polish people as pigs may seem harsh, but though Vladek and his father encountered a few friendly Poles, most of them were ready to betray Jewish people to the Germans. Americans as dogs, I guess because they came in and ended the war, rescuing many survivors (as has been portrayed in other Holocaust literature as well). French as frogs is obvious and hilarious. At one point as I was thinking about the distinctions, though, I wondered why the author would do this. I mean, aren't we all one people? But then, the Germans definitely didn't believe that; they classified and made distinctions between different "types" of people, different "species," if you will, and ranked them (cats at the top, mice at the bottom, of course). Oh, there's also a Gypsy character who is portrayed as some kind of bug, I think a butterfly or perhaps just a fly, I had a hard time telling. Butterflies would make sense, as they are beautiful, but would be hunted by cats. So Spiegelman's symbolism makes sense to me...plus, the mice just look so cute in their little clothes (although not throughout the entire book).

I would love to know more about Anja, the author's mother. He did as well; the mention of her diaries, kept after the war, is a motif in both parts. At first, his father (a hoarder of sorts) claims that he is unable to find them; then he says that he burned them up after his wife's suicide. Artie is furious, even calling his father a "murderer." Anja is a strong presence in Part I, but not so much in Part II, since she and her husband were separated at Auschwitz, and the story is following Vladek. In the story, Artie seems bitter that he cannot tell his mother's story as well...I wonder if that bitterness lasted?

Still, she is prominent in the first part. Her ongoing mental illness is clear even before the war started, with her collection of pills for her "nerves" and her post-partum breakdown after Richieu's birth (Artie's older brother, who did not survive the war; Artie was born after the war and grew up an only child) and her subsequent institutionalization. Then, of course, she committed suicide, more than two decades after surviving the war. One would think that she had already seen the worst of it, that life in America could only be a vast improvement. Well...since, of course, there's not much prominent literature out there about post-Holocaust life for survivors, people outside of the situation (myself included) don't understand that it's more complicated than that. I guess one might think that Anja, and others like her, suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but again, her mental illness goes back further. It seems too that Artie inherited this from her, as he at one point was institutionalized himself.

While the actual experiences that Vladek had in the concentration camps are not very much unlike other Holocaust stories that I have read, Spiegelman's drawings bring a new dimension to this portrayal. The details and depictions seem so genuine; it's clear that the author really took his time, made sure that he told the story through his father's eyes as much as possible. There's no more succinct way to put it: Maus is a masterpiece. It is both the story of the experiences of millions of people, and the story of one family. This book is essential; it's no wonder that it won the Pulitzer Prize.

Vladek Spiegelman, in a photo taken not long after the war. It is one of the few actual photographs in the text. He sent this to his wife Anja, having it taken at a souvenir stand. Kind of a dark souvenir, I think, but I also can't help but note that Vladek was a good-looking man. I mean, it's pointed out in the text that he was handsome, but damn.

I'm not sure if this was an alternative title page for the text by Spiegelman himself, or if it was fan-generated. The mice in the book aren't quite as long-faced, and their eyes are darker.

Book #13: Atonement

Book #13: Atonement by Ian McEwan

February 28, 2013


Until I got to the "twist" at the end of the book, I felt kind of annoyed, even pissed off, throughout most of it. The plot centers around a day of events at a country home in England, which lead to 13-year-old Briony Tallis, an aspiring writer and quite a naive young girl, accusing Robbie Turner, the son of a family servant and her father's beneficiary, of raping her cousin Lola. The rest of the story centers around the consequences of that day for three of the characters: Robbie and Briony themselves, and Cecilia, Briony much-older sister and Robbie's lover (at least, their relationship had only just started when everything went down). Now, I wasn't so much upset at Briony for what she did; after all, she was a pretty sheltered kid, she didn't understand the things that had happened, and, as she recalls five years after the event, she had not acted out of malice. Indeed, she felt that she'd been doing the right thing. What made me mad was the way that Cecilia and Robbie were so unwilling to forgive Briony. See, I felt that their coldness toward her was undeserved. Even after she goes to them and begs them to allow her to make things right, they still view her in contempt. Poor Briony; though McEwan's descriptions of her at the beginning of the book are not entirely flattering (she was very set in her ways, and had to have everything just so, neat and tidy, and any little disturbance in her world sent her into a turmoil), I felt sympathetic toward her.

I'll explain the twist at the end after a more thorough description of the book. The structure of it is very interesting, and definitely worth noting. The beginning of the book (approximately the first half of it) all takes place over the course of that one summer day in 1935. Talk of war is brewing (of course, history tells us that World War II did not begin until 1939), but none of the characters have been directly affected by it yet. It will affect them all, in the end. But on this day, there is a lot of activity in the house. There are more people there than usual; in addition to young Briony and her constantly-ailing mother Emily (whom the children do not even address as "Mother" or "Mum," calling her by name, due to her lame mothering skills) and her constantly absent father (who, it is briefly noted, is having an affair in London, claiming that his work in the government keeps him), Briony's older sister Cecilia is home from college, recently graduated. Robbie has graduated as well. Their perspectives in this part of the story center around the growing sexual tension between them, which comes to a head that very day.

The Tallis home is also hosting the Quincey children, young ginger cousins. Lola, 15, is haughty and manipulative, though she is ultimately a victim in the strange situation. Her twin brothers, Pierrot and Jackson, are young and rambunctious, but they mean well. They are probably even more pitiable than Briony herself. They are torn up over the impending divorce of their selfish parents, their sister is mean to them, and they are far away from home. Being red-haired, British twins, I thought of the Weasley twins from the Harry Potter series. Besides them, the eldest Tallis child, Leon (the darling of the family) and his friend Paul Marshall, who at first seems to be just a drab guy who owns a company that makes disgusting candy bars, but who turns out to be kind of a shady guy.

With all these people around the place, and so much going on, nobody could possibly know the whole story. At times, the reader is given glimpses of Emily's perspective (as she lies in bed, fighting off an impeding, or perhaps imagined, migraine), and that of Lola or Betty the cook, but otherwise the story is mostly told through Briony, Cecilia, or Robbie...at least, that's what the reader is lead to believe. But with the two presiding adults in the house, Emily and Cecilia, distracted by their own troubles, it's no wonder that they had no idea what was going on with the kids. That the twins were distressed, or that Briony was upset about her little play, which she'd planned on her cousins performing in her brother's honor, in ruins...or that Lola was being attacked and raped by Paul Marshall. So really, if anything, I would blame Emily, and perhaps even Cecilia, for what happened (and of course, Marshall himself, as the rapist). But not Briony.

Cecilia and Robbie's affair was only beginning on that ill-fated day, when it was cut short by these events. You see, the sexual tension between them had been building for years. When they were both in school, they did not socialize with one another, supposedly on account of their shaky social standing. But that day, after their fight over the broken vase by the fountain (during which Cecilia stripped to her underwear and bra and went to fish out the broken piece...as Briony watched from an upstairs bedroom), and the very sexual letter that Robbie "accidently" sent to Cecilia (yeah, I would definitely call that one a Freudian slip) through Briony (who read the letter, and was shocked and confused by the use of the word "cunt"), the two of them came very close to consummating their relationship in the library. They were in the process of fucking against the shelves, or just starting, when Briony walked in on them.

Cecilia should have talked to her sister. Briony thought she'd walked in on Robbie attempting to rape her sister, after reading the note and dubbing him a "maniac." But Cecilia, embarrassed or annoyed at the interruption, would not talk about it. Again, in this case, I would lay some blame on Cecilia for not setting her sister straight, for not explaining that she and Robbie were really in love, or whatever. Anyway, she and Robbie would not get the chance to consummate their relationship officially for a few more years.

At dinner (where scratches are visible on both Marshall and Lola, hinting at an earlier attack), it is discovered that the troubled twins have run off, and all of the party (save Emily) take off to the dark grounds to find them. Briony, wishing to avoid Robbie in case he wants to take out his frustration on her, comes upon her cousin Lola being raped by a man whose face she does not clearly see. In her mind, it is logical to assume that it was Robbie, and Lola does not contradict her story. Robbie is arrested at dawn (after returning with the lost children), and he is only freed from prison when he agrees to go and fight with the war.

The story jumps ahead five years for the remainder. First, there is a relatively short section about some of Robbie's experiences in the war as he and two officers are crossing through France, headed for the coast as the British troops retreat. He reflects a bit on his bitterness toward Briony, and how he believed that she acted out of jealousy and anger...you see, she'd had a crush on him when she was young, perhaps 10 or 11, and he thought that this had prompted her to lie and get him arrested and charged for the crime of raping Lola. He and Cecilia, who has cut herself off from her family, are still together. She is a nurse in London, having realized that the "degree" issued to her as a literature major is worth absolutely nothing (especially due to the fact that she is a woman). He dreams of them being together again, and at the end of his section, he makes it safely to the coast. The ending drastically changed my perspective of this section, for sure.

Next, back in London, 18-year-old Briony has decided to skip college and become a nurse herself, following in her sister's footsteps, though they have not spoken since she sent Robbie to prison. She is still passionate about her writing, though a story that she'd written about the events of that fateful day in 1935 failed to get published. One day, after getting a day off from the hospital at which she's been working hard to care for the influx of injured soldiers, she journeys through the city, first to the private wedding of Lola and Marshall, then to her sister's apartment, where she confronts both Cecilia and Robbie for the first time in years, and promises to do what she can to "atone" for what she has done to them. She has carried her guilt for years, which is very sad to me. I don't feel that she deserved to beat herself up over it so much, nor did she deserve her sister or Robbie derision. When she parts from them, though, there is hope. They have given her instructions for how to help them, which she plans to enthusiastically carry out.

Then, the twist.

The entire story, up to the final 20 pages, was the final draft of that first failed story, written by Briony. Therefore, all other perspectives were merely imagined. She was able to recreate Robbie's experiences from correspondence with a prisoner and with an army officer, and through the letters written back and forth between Cecilia and Robbie themselves, housed in a war museum. Because Robbie and Cecilia did not survive the war. They both died in 1940; Robbie got some kind of infection or disease that soldiers in war are prone to, and Cecilia died when her hospital was bombed. Briony never did see them again after that day in 1935; her reunion with them was imagined. Lola and Marshall's wedding was not, and in those final 20 pages, told in the first person from 77-year-old Briony's perspective, she actually sees the aged couple one more time, noting that though Marshall looks withered, Lola is still vibrant as she approaches 80. Briony wishes for them both to die, so that she can publish her book with their real names in it. She needs to do it for her own atonement, though she acknowledges at the end that she may die before it is carried out.

So in the end, Briony really did not make amends for the "crime" she committed, unwittingly, as a child. It cannot be said how much of her sister and almost-brother-in-law's contempt of her was real or imagined. That kind of lessened the tension for me, thinking that some of that coldness must have come from Briony's own guilty imagination. In the end, though she really had not been able to "take back" her "crime," she seemed to be at peace with the new ending that she had created for the people that she cared about and had hurt. She felt that, as long as the manuscript of her story existed, they would live happily forever, in love. Though some might argue that she had never been able to properly atone for what she'd done, she seemed at peace with it in the end, as she also began to accept the fact that she mind was starting to go to dementia. But she created a world that fit with what she really wanted, through her stories, just as she'd always done. She created a world in which she'd been forgiven, which was good enough for her.

A group of nurses, circa WWII. Briony describes her experiences as a nurse in training. They are unsung heroes of the war, risking their own safety (and often their lives, as was the case with Cecilia) to work in what were essentially giant Nazi bomb targets.

The Weasley twins from the famous Harry Potter films. They sure were lovable characters; shame that one of them was (spoiler alert, in case you're years behind) killed in the last one.

Book #12: On the Road

Book #12: On the Road by Jack Kerouac

February 10, 2013


This particular book has been one that I've intended to read for a long time. It's such an integrated part of our culture that I've always been familiar with the basic premise, and I was fascinated by the idea of jumping in the car (or better, hitchhiking!) and seeing the country. On the Road is the fictionalized stories of Kerouac's travels around the continent, from about 1947 to 1950. The narrator of the story is Sal Paradise, who represents Kerouac himself. He is a young writer, and he is quite aimless. But the story isn't so much about him as about Dean Moriarty, a fictionalized version of Neal Cassady. Prior to reading this book, I had no idea who this person was, but I found the character of Dean so interesting that I looked up some information on him. More on that in a bit.

I will admit that I'm somewhat disappointed  not to know more about Sal. I mean, even if the author didn't want to lay out his life story in this book, he could have given more on the background of Sal, his character. When Sal isn't tramping around the country, he stays with his aunt in New York City. How did he end up with his aunt? This isn't really explained. We know that Sal's father is dead (perhaps his mother, too, but I don't remember this being mentioned as a certainty). As a writer, Sal isn't exactly rolling in wealth, but during the time of his nonconsecutive travels he does have some success with a published book. We also know that Sal spent some time in the Navy, and he gets some money from his GI bill. He's a student while in New York...don't know if he graduates or not, though. That's really about the extent that we have on Sal's background. Throughout the story, he is much more interested in sharing Dean's story, and it's certainly a fascinating one to tell.

Dean is insane. He constantly makes wild plans, and usually follows through on them. If he's not chattering away at a mile a minute, sharing his wisdom with listeners who can't understand his ramblings, he's silent and swaying and taking in life with a silly smile. But he's not happy. He's constantly running...not really away from something, but toward something, but he doesn't seem to be able to identify what IT is. He takes the metaphor of life as being a road quite seriously, and he is convinced that he will find something better than ever in the next physical destination. He's pretty young at the start of the book, very early 20's (compared to Sal's mid-to-late 20's), and by the end of the book he's on his third marriage, living with his second wife (from whom he is legally divorced) in San Francisco while his current wife is in New York. At one point, he laments the fact that he's such a shoddy father; he doesn't hold down a constant job, and he doesn't even stick around long enough to take care of his children or wives properly. But he's too busy trying to find IT, and at the end of the book, it is uncertain what IT is.

As much of a scoundrel as Dean is, I found him fascinating, so I read up on Neal Cassady (ie, I looked him up on good old Wikipedia). He was basically just the same as Dean is described in the book, a rambler who can easily make friends (but doesn't easily keep them, with his shiftless ways). He wasn't famous for anything except being himself, and he is considered to be an American legend. This book is not the only one that depicts Cassady; he's supposed to be the inspiration behind the main character in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (haven't read it...yet, but I do love the film, featuring Jack Nicholson in one of his greatest roles of all time); he's mentioned in Allen Ginsberg's famous poem "Howl" (who is depicted in On the Road as the equally fascinating Carlo Marx); and, he is featured in Hunter S. Thompson's nonfictional Hell's Angels. And that is not the extent of it! Also, Cassady spent time living with the Grateful Dead, and the band payed homage to him in the song The Other One (I am ashamed to admit that I am not familiar with this particular song; I grew up listening to a lot of it, since my old man is a neo-hippie Dead Head himself, and I grew to appreciate the music; I'm listening to an 18-minute live version of this as I write this, featuring an appropriately insane drum solo at the beginning). Cassady was not published himself during his lifetime, but his memoirs and letters were published posthumously.

But I believe that On the Road is an essential American novel not only because of its depiction of this legendary man, but also because of Kerouac's beautiful descriptions of the various American landscapes (and Mexico, too, near the end). Kerouac's writing style can be a little erratic at times, either because he's trying to capture the frantic, drug-induced lifestyle that Sal lived, or maybe because he was tripping balls when he wrote the book himself. Either way, he's descriptions of American cities and countryside are poetic. But it cannot be ignored that Sal, for all his bumming around, is spoiled. I was most annoyed at the section in the book where he takes up with a single mother, a Mexican woman living in squalor in California. Sal and this woman meet in LA, and she takes him to her hometown, a dusty little place where most of the people are farm workers living in tents. He romanticizes this lifestyle, even becoming a poorly paid cotton-picker himself, and for the short time he is there, he throws himself wholeheartedly into the role of family man. But when he grows tired of it, and when he gets his next check from his aunt, he takes off, back to his real life. Meanwhile, the woman he supposedly loved and her child are stuck in the same place. They will never have the opportunity to travel and see America the way that Sal has; they may not have much of a chance to go anywhere.

I was also very annoyed when Sal thought that he "wanted to be a Negro" (the book takes place in the '40s, when such a term was acceptable). He described the black people that he encounters as being carefree, joyful, and he longed to be like them. Clearly, he was either completely ignorant to the treatment of the entire race, or he was choosing to ignore it. Either way, this thought struck me as being a really stupid statement by a privileged white man. However, with the whole "beat" scene that he and his friends are into, the races are often mixed, and Sal would probably have only had the chance to mingle with black people in such a setting, where whiskey and wine are flowing and jazz horns are blowing.

As a matter of fact, this book is considered to be a very important one from the "beat generation," and Cassady and Kerouac and Ginsberg are considered to be icons of that generation. The famous hippies of a decade or two later clearly came from this; in the book, Dean is really into sitting around and having all-night conversations in an attempt to unravel the secrets of life (though Sal finds the conversations between Dean and Carlo to be rambling and aimless). These guys are not really into material possessions, carrying on the road with them just enough to get by (and sometimes not even that much). They smoke pot (they call it 'tea') and do other drugs. They appreciate nature, and other cultures and people (though Dean's blatant homophobia had me irked, especially when he seemed to "dig" everyone else so much), if only for the shallow differences that they view in them. Though Dean had a far from privileged childhood, he still seems like an ignorant white boy when traveling in Mexico, marveling at the novelty of the dark, quiet, calm people there and their poverty-stricken lives.

Anyway, for some reason, the beat generation today is not viewed in the same light as the hippie generation. People still love hippies, and honestly, if the characters in the book really are supposed to represent these important figures of the beat generation, I can see why. Sal and his friends are constantly seeking their "kicks"; when it comes down to it, they're just looking for fun and adventure. At least it seemed like the hippies stood for something, peace on earth and all that. Maybe it's because, during the hippie generation, there was a war on, while in this book Sal only makes a couple of mentions of World War II. Jazz isn't nearly as popular today as rock and roll (I myself prefer the latter, though I do like a dose of jazz every once in a while). The beat generation is all but completely dead; the hippies live and roll on.

Though I view the characters' ignorance and hedonism with disgust, I do envy their adventures. Just to walk out onto the highway, stick out your thumb, and go wherever destiny guides you...that's real freedom right there. That doesn't happen much anymore; hitchhiking is illegal in most places in America, and people are afraid to pick anyone up. I've had the fantasy of dropping everything, packing up a few clothes and my dog, and pulling a Chris McCandless (except without the starving-to-death-in-the-wilderness part, of course), but I'm too tied down with my responsibilities to my family and school and career, which are all very important to me. But then I think of the fate that Neal Cassady suffered, dying young (at age 41) in Mexico, never having really settled down, and probably never finding IT. He had freedom, but it came at a price, I think.

(To the right) The recently-famous homeless hitch-hiker Kai, who got a ride from a crazy guy who attacked some people. Kai, carrying a hatchet,  sprang into action and took the guy down. This is the face of the typical American hitchhiker today. I am certain that Dean would have "dug" him .

(To the left) Silhouette of a jazz band. Sal and his friends were crazy about jazz music (they called it "bop," and it took me longer than I'm proud of to figure out exactly what they were referring to). 

Book #11: Native Son

Book #11: Native Son by Richard Wright

February 1, 2013


The connections between this book and my last entry are coincidental. Native Son also takes place in Chicago, only a few decades later (at the start of World War II, but before the bombing of Pearl Harbor). This book also depicts the Communist (Socialist, Communist, I've always lumped those two together) Party in Chicago. Sinclair's optimistic predictions about the growth of the Party (through the eyes of Jurgis) have not been realized, though they do have some influence in city politics. Mostly, they are viewed negatively by the public, but there are still influential and educated people who are active within it. The book is a little bit about that, but mostly, it is about the violence, fear, and hatred that are the products of hundreds of years of oppression, separation, and misunderstanding. Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of the novel, is certainly a product of his environment, as his lawyer attempts to argue in court.

I'll back up a bit. I've read some of Richard Wright's work before, and have found it to be poignant, so I was eager to read one of his best-known full-length works (besides Black Boy, his autobiography). One story that always stood out to me was "Big Boy Leaves Home" from the collection Uncle Tom's Children. In the story, a group of young black boys in a rural area are enjoying a day in the sun, when a white woman sees them swimming naked on her property. Jim Crow south had many rules (in fact, the first story in the same collection is titled "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow," recounting various points in the author's life when he has encountered hostile racism and the legal power that whites had been granted over him), and many of these were created around this fear that black men were these sexual deviants who wanted to rape white women (or, perhaps the white men felt inadequate around potential competition). Even though Big Boy and his friends are just kids in school, the woman freaks out and her husband (or father) comes running with his gun, shooting at the kids without asking questions. Two of the boys are shot dead, and Big Boy and Bobo try to defend their lives. Big Boy gets the gun and shoots the man, and he and Bobo run for their lives. Big Boy witnesses Bobo being lynched, but he successfully gets away and is shipped to Chicago with the help of a family friend. Yet even though Chicago is in the North, it is no haven against racism, as Native Son illustrates.

Bigger Thomas is a 20-year-old who lives in a room (basically a studio apartment, but think smaller) with his mother, and younger brother and sister. Bigger isn't a likable character throughout the course of the book. He is rude to his family; he contemplates a robbery with his friends (though ultimately "wimps out"); he carries a knife and gun and isn't afraid to pull them out at times. His friends describe him as having a hot temper. But Bigger has dreams. Near the beginning of the book, he and his friend watch an airplane writing an advertisement overhead, and he remarks that he would want to fly planes. But he knows that, as a black man (with a criminal record, not that it made a difference at that time), he'd never be allowed to fly. He lives in the cramp, overpriced South Side of Chicago, an area designated for black citizens by the wealthy real estate company owners.

Bigger, through a relief program (think: welfare), gets a private job for one such wealthy real estate owner, Henry Dalton. Dalton has a big house, a nice but practical car, a cook, and a personal maid for his blind wife. He gives a lot of money to "Negroes" through charities, and certainly isn't shy about sharing this information with a disinterested Bigger when he comes for his interview. Bigger knows that he's getting a comparatively sweet deal at the Daltons, who offer him his own private room, meals, and a personal weekly allowance in addition to the pay that would go directly to his struggling mother. Bigger is even "trusted" to begin working that very night, by driving Dalton's college-aged daughter Mary to a school event.

Mary, Bigger sees from the start, is "wild." She is a "Communist sympathizer," and Bigger, uncomfortable with the way that she and her Communist boyfriend Jan talk to him (making attempts to treat him as an "equal," when all of his life, any white person not treating him with hostility was trying to trick him in some way). He drinks with them, and the alcohol only makes him more uncomfortable, not less. Bigger feels angry toward these people, and though his inner anger is violent, it doesn't seem like he would unleash it on them.

But then, Bigger is in a terrible situation. He has to drag Mary, too drunk to walk, to her bedroom. He almost gets caught in there by her mother, who stumbles in (not seeing him, of course). To understand the situation, one has to understand that if Mrs. Dalton were not blind, or if she knew he were there, she would have screamed. Though the Daltons seem like fairly reasonable people (though, it would seem, they attempt to cleanse themselves of their racial guilt in some unreasonable ways), it would have still looked like a situation that, in the minds of almost all white people at that time, would have been a nightmare. In fact, Bigger had kissed the drunken Mary...no harm in that. But at that time period, if drunken Mary had said something about it to her mother, he certainly would have been in more than a little bit of trouble.

So Bigger attempts to quiet Mary by shoving her pillow over her face. But then, he goes too far...and kills her. The irony of it is, as Bigger is reflecting on all of this as he attempts to cover his tracks, then as he is on the run, now that the situation is completely out of control, he now feels that he has more control over his destiny than he ever has in his life. At least, he feels this way until he is caught. The violence that he inflicts (mostly on Bessie, his girlfriend whom he intentionally kills later that night) gives him a false sense of control. Had he only killed her, he wouldn't have been hunted down in such a way as he was. But since he had killed a white woman, and the daughter of a wealthy and well-respected member of the community at that, he was a piece of shit, and mobs gathered and called for him to be lynched.

Though Bigger tried to pin the crime on Jan, Mary's Communist boyfriend, by claiming that he'd accompanied the girl to her room that night and by signing the fake ransom note with a communist symbol, Jan and his Communist friends wish to help him, and he is assigned a Jewish lawyer who is active in the Party. Max seems like the only person who tries to understand Bigger as a person, while the newspapers and prosecutors and mobs of angry white people keep calling him a "ape," "subhuman," depicting him as a violent rapist (though, admittedly, he did rape Bessie before killing her...she had said "no" as he had her in the abandoned building in which they were hiding). His crimes were monstrous, but he was charged and put to death for the wrong reasons. He deserved his fate, to be sure...however, as I followed his continued bad moves throughout the first two parts of the book, I found myself grappling with the same questions that Max presented in the third part.

Max isn't just trying to save Bigger's life. He feels  pretty certain that he won't even be able to do that. The state's attorney accuses Max of taking on the case to draw attention to the Party, and I think he is right about that. The Party is attempting to reach out to the black community, but because most white people have regarded "reds" as being bad, they don't have a great reputation on the South Side. Bigger is afraid of the Communist ideas that Jan presents to him over dinner...not because of the message, but simply for the fact that he is a "red," and Bigger is afraid of being associated with a "red," a group that he believes is even more looked down upon than black people. Max does seem to be sincerely sympathetic to the plight of the black community in the United States, and he takes on the fight in hopes of drawing attention to the fact that oppression and separation breeds hate, fear, and violence.

The question is, does that justify Bigger's actions? I don't think anyone would make that argument, but it does make them more understandable. Even though Max's arguments (which go on for pages and pages...I thought, enough already, until I had a look through the back of the book and saw how much of Max's, or rather Wright's, message was edited by publishers for so long) seem logical, the state attorney's racist tirade against Bigger is much better received. He is sentenced to death, and though he is able to find some sense of purpose in his death, Max doesn't seem so hopeful.

Less people deny the long-lasting effects of racism on individuals and communities. Hell, it's not like racism has ended or anything. But the stereotypes still prevail; "black men are violent," yet so many people don't bother to look at the root of the problem. Plus, so many people don't realize that media accounts are often biased, and that the US legal system is still infamously racist. Young white boys from "good families" (middle-class families) get away with the same things that send young black boys to detention centers, or worse. Certainly, our country has come a long way since Native Son was published in 1940. Our president is mixed-race. But anyone who would say that racism no longer exists is a willfully blind fool.

Now, here's something that struck me in this book. Max tells Bigger that the reason why the people in the mobs are so angry at him is because of the fact that he is a product of a racist and oppressive society...and they don't want to feel guilty about that. So the guilt, which they feel helpless to control, turns to rage, and they want nothing more than to get him out of their sight, out of their society, out of their world. I had never imagined that guilt itself would be the fuel of that rage. For me, feelings of guilt cause me to want to take action to make amends, to make things right...which I guess is what the Communists are attempting to do in the book. That's what the Daltons attempted to do as well, in their own misguided way. For guilt to manifest itself into violent rage...that's an idea that I never would have considered. I guess that Max, by trying to shove the truth into everyone's faces at the trial, was attempting to get people to own up to it and take responsibility. But his words fell on deaf ears.

Bigger Thomas is not a likable character. He is stubborn, moody, and he seems pretty selfish. He acts in a way that seems dangerously foolish, even before the situation with Mary. He is not dumb (though everyone attempts to depict him that way; the police and reporters cannot in any way fathom that no one else was "in on" Mary's murder), and he is not lazy, though it may be easy to see him that way at the start. He is a young man who has lost hope. He sees no point to his life. As with Kevin Katchadourian, he feels trapped and lashes out in violence. But he does not bask in the fame that it brings him...he is mortified by the descriptions of his crimes (some inaccurate) and the breaking down of his character into nothing more than an "ape," an animal. In the end, though he may still not be a likable person, he is understandable, even though he reflects that he feels that no one, not even Max, can understand him.

(on the left) South Side Chicago. These run-down flats are probably similar to the place where Bigger and his family lived. They had to pay more for rent than white people who lived in similar squalid conditions.

(Above)  One of the best-known images of Richard Wright. Though his works have always been considered controversial, Native Son was a best-seller in its time.