Sag Harbor et al.: Family as a Powerful Force

Throughout this semester, every book we have read has had an examination of the meaning of family and its importance in the characters' lives.

There is a very powerful dinner table scene in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in which Stephen watches his parents, aunt, uncle, and family friend argue about a major political figure's actions. Uncle Charles and Stephen's father, whom he always obeys and he trusts to the highest degree, are arguing that the political figure did nothing wrong and it is very sad that he died. However, Dante, whom Stephen also respects and sees to be correct on every matter, especially religion, is saying that the political figure defied the Catholic Church and is a disgrace religiously. The argument gets very heated and ends with Dante getting up and leaving the table because she is so infuriated. It makes Stephen question the notion of a unified family and he realizes that his perception of a perfect family is not really true.

In Catcher in the Rye, Holden keeps telling the reader how much he wants to talk to his sister Phoebe, but it is either too late to call her or he can't find her. Eventually, he is falling farther and farther in a downward spiral, and when he seems to just about hit the bottom, he goes home and visits Phoebe in her room late at night. She asks him lots of probing questions, and it makes him think about himself. the next day, he goes to the zoo with Phoebe and just talking with her and spending time with her seems to improve his health and mood. We don't get a lot of information about the rest of the family, but Phoebe is a very positive figure in Holden's life.

As a stark contrast to how positive Catcher in the Rye was about family, The Bell Jar is not. Esther is very opposed to, possibly even terrified of, the idea of being a mother and having a family. She dislikes her own mother, especially when she is being the most loving, and when she sees Dodo Conway walking outside her window with six (almost seven) children, she never wants to have kids. We know that she does end up having children because she says at one point that her baby is playing years later with an object mentioned in the story. However, this negative view of motherhood and family is a very strong force at this point in her life.

One of the main themes of Housekeeping seems to be family dynamics and the role of family in Ruth's life as she is growing up. The story is based around Ruth's aunt Sylvie, and the first chapter of the book is devoted to the backstory of her family. Also, Lucille, Ruth's sister, is an important character in the book, as Lucille and Ruth were very close at first and they split ways over the course of the book.The depiction of Ruth's family is neither strongly positive nor negative, but I think this may be because Ruth is a very neutral narrator, not imposing any of her feelings onto the reader. However, Ruth is tied very closely to Sylvie in the final chapters, and Ruth is melancholy after Lucille moves out and leaves her life entirely. This neutral portrayal of family is interesting when compared to the other novels we have read this semester.

I'm not sure that his family was a positive force in his life in the beginning, but the crumbling and splitting of the family definitely is a very negative experience for Jason in Black Swan Green. He struggles when his parents argue at the table, with his sister Julia being his only ally. It is weird for him when she moves out of the house for college (I can relate) and it is really hard for him when he learns that his parents are splitting and he will have to move.

In Sag Harbor, Benji and his brother Reggie are almost twins and, just like Ruth and Lucille, they split apart at the beginning of high school. They are still very close, but they are not as similar as they were before. Benji and Reggie spend most days of the summer with the house to themselves, but their parents come out for the weekends. This creates an odd family dynamic. Their father drinks a lot and has a short temper, so on Saturdays, Benji, Reggie, and their mom are tip-toeing around, trying not to be the one to set off the ticking bomb that is the dad's temper. This leads Reggie to avoid even being home on the weekends, doubling up his shifts at Burger King. There is a lot of tension in the family, but at the same time, they follow a daily and weekly routine that is very consistent. At one point, Benji describes his workplace and colleagues as comparing the group to a family, saying "you didn't ask too many questions" (143).

The depictions of family throughout the semester are all very different, but all serve an important part of the protagonists' lives, especially in their development and coming of age. It shows how much family life and feelings of relationships with other people can vary from person to person.

Semester Project: Lucille Looking Back

For the creative semester project, I decided to take the perspective of Lucille regretting not saving Ruth 17 years into the future. Lucille is a successful adult in society and wishes she could have allowed Ruth to have the same. I stuck to the reality of the book, even if Lucille's level of knowledge or her opinions are different from Ruth's.

Here is a link if you would like to look at it: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XUFyW5leTQCOySLP-SFhQzyMz3WcHBgTgZpnWB6dr3Q/edit?usp=sharing

Black Swan Green: Julia as Jason's Rock

Julia is the only stable part of Jason's home life throughout Black Swan Green, and even though Jason dislikes her at the beginning of the book, he comes to realize that they are really allies. In Relatives, Jason is being embarrassed at the dinner table when Helena brings up the poetry award he won. Their cousin Alex starts teasing Jason about it, so Julia stands up for Jason and insults Alex back. Jason is startled by this help from Julia, and thinks, "I could've kissed Julia out of sheer gratitude. Almost."

In Rocks, Julia and Jason seem to ally with each other during their parents' fighting. After one of their parents' big fights, it is revealed to us that Jason and Julia have their own system for ranking fights and they have bonded, even as their parents' relationship is starting to crumble. Jason also looks up to Julia as a voice of reason and power in Rocks. For example, in one section, Julia asks their dad what a Pyrrhic victory is even though she knows the answer because she is trying to make a point to her dad about the fights he is having with their mom. Even though Julia's position as a voice of reason is very prominent is Rocks, Jason looks up to Julia for information and as a role model throughout the novel. Jason often recounts things she has said as truth and he often is impressed with Julia's ability to stand up for truth and what she believes in.

In the last few chapters, Julia's position has crystallized as a role model and voice of reason for Jason. She has gone to college, and he misses her a lot. In Disco, Julia convinces Jason to go to the disco and she instructs him on what to wear and how to get ready. He listens diligently as only a younger sibling listens to advice from an older sibling they have a lot of respect for (I know this dynamic). In January Man (the one at the end), she is home for winter break and to help Jason and their mom move to Cheltenham. She comforts Jason and offers inspiring words to give him hope in this difficult time for Jason. Jason's relationship with Julia solidifies just as their parents' gets rocky (pun somewhat intended), and this is not only unexpected, but also much needed for Jason.

Housekeeping: The Fingerbone Lake as a Powerful Symbol

The lake is a symbol of nature's power in Housekeeping. Nature has power over everything, no matter how hard people try to keep it out. The best example of this is when the lake floods in the spring. It fills houses, furniture, everything. Ruth's house is on the top of the hill and it still is significantly filled with water on the first floor when the lake floods. The town is totally dominated by the flood until the water dissipates, and then the town returns to normal. Even though the Fingerbone's residents value housekeeping and safety in the home, when the flood comes, all of that is lost.

The lake is a symbol of transience as well. It changes with the seasons, freezing in the winter and flooding in the spring. Additionally, when Ruth and Sylvie spend a night out on the lake, they observe the day turning into night and back into day again. the lake drifts them away from the shore and they have to paddle back again. These images of transience are subtle, but they show the lake's power to change itself and change everything around it.

The lake also is also the place where Ruth's grandfather and mother died. In the first chapter, we learn about Ruth's grandfather's death when the train he was on fell off the bridge into the lake, described as "like a weasel sliding off a rock" (6). Ruth's mother also fell into the lake, but she seemed to have driven off the cliff intentionally. This knowledge taints everything having to do with the lake afterwards with a feeling of danger. Even when Ruth and Lucille are ice skating on the frozen lake, the deaths caused by the lake loom over everything.

The long bridge over the lake is also a powerful symbol in the novel. It too holds the image of Ruth's grandfather's death, and it is the only way in or out of Fingerbone. When Ruth and Lucille are first skipping school, they wander down to the lake and witness Sylvie walking on top of the bridge. She says she had always wanted to know what it was like up there, but the girls are uneasy with seeing her walking so high above the water on a thin train bridge.  Everyone coming and going takes the bridge by train. Therefore, when Ruth and Sylvie walk across the bridge at the end of the book, they are doing so to intentionally leave Fingerbone behind.

The Bell Jar: the Bell Jar

In the Bell Jar, Esther is plagued by depression. She describes it as being under a bell jar, where she is looking at the world through distorting glass and it is stifling her, limiting her air to only that which fits under the bell jar. The bell jar analogy seems to fit how she feels in multiple ways, from the distortion when she looks outside to the limited air inside to the observation of her from people outside the bell jar. We often see a distorted version of reality when Esther looks outside the bell jar from within. One example of this is the description of her own voice as "the hollow voice" or just "a voice." It takes a second to realize she is talking about what she is saying, not someone else in her head or next to her. The level of disconnect between reality, her own actions, and her awareness seems to suggest the distortion of her perception of reality even before she acknowledges it herself.

When she is stuck under the bell jar, Esther also feels like the constraint of it is suffocating her, and restricting her abilities to do other things. In chapter 15, she says that under the bell jar, she is "stewing in [her] own sour air." She cannot even breathe the air of the world outside the bell jar, much less live in it. This suffocation also causes her to lose the ability to do some things she had taken for granted, such as reading, writing, sleeping, and eating. It is not possible that she literally didn't sleep or eat for three weeks straight, but the idea that she feels as if she did not is significant of the fact that the bell jar is suffocating her.

The last way in which the bell jar metaphor is perfect in describing how she feels is when she is being observed and questioned by doctors. they walk into her room and look down upon her as if she is just being evaluated for research and not actually helped in her recovery process, and Doctors Gordon and Nolan seem to use her as a test subject for their ideas and practices. Esther often wonders if what they are asking is a trap to see if she gets caught be answering in a certain way. Esther is bothered by the dullness and grayness of the medicinal procedure, so when the doctors observe her it unnerves her and adds to her worries. The bell jar around her is lifted off the ground after she recovers, with help from the electroshock therapy. However, it will never truly go away, but will continue to hang above the ground, threatening to clatter back down to earth and surround her again in a distorting, suffocating jar for observation.

Comparison: Narrators in The Catcher in the Rye, The Bell Jar

The Catcher in the Rye had a narrator unlike the ones we find in most literature. What is most surprising about Holden Caulfield is that he tells us what is going on around him, along with some commentary. Despite his heavily opinionated comments to us, we somehow trust Holden as a narrator. As we discussed in class, he is an almost seducing narrator because of his world weariness and the way that he assures us that he knows the truth, but also assumes we know what he means. These factors add up to make us wholeheartedly trust Holden without a second thought.

When I first started reading the Bell Jar, I was startled again. The narrator starts by contemplating electrocution. That was not what I was expecting. Esther Greenwood is a very different narrator from Holden, but is also divergent from the norm. She is also prone to digression, but she is much more blunt and says what is on her mind more freely. Esther is more willing to jump around in time, following her thoughts instead of her actions in chronological order. However, we are still very trusting of Esther as a narrator because of her bluntness. We don't question her honesty because her tone and language suggest that we can expect accuracy from her.

One interesting similarity between Holden and Esther is that both narrators are speaking from the future. They are ahead of the time they are telling us about, recalling memories to tell the story. It makes the trust of the narrator precarious, but does not topple it altogether, because the story they are telling is an important part of each narrator's life, so they should remember it well. Additionally, each narrator is on a downward spiral in the section of their life that we are exposed to. They are both heading toward or at a rock bottom point from which they will have to recover. I am curious to see how Esther's fall manifests itself and if we will see the recovery.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Peer View

Never throughout the book does Stephen seem to fit in with his peers. He is always a little apart, usually brooding to himself about something that makes him feel superior to them. But he did not always feel superior to his peers. At the beginning of the book, he felt apart form his peers, but not superior. Things they did confused him, they made fun of him, and he often felt as if they were socially superior to him. However, by the end of Chapter 1, he starts to feel like he might fit in with his classmates when they lift him up for getting justice for his unfair punishment. But evemn then, we see his apart from the group as they play cricket and he stands on a hill brooding, which sets a precedent for the following chapters.

In Chapter 2, Stephen doesn't really interact with his peers much at all. He has a few interactions with Heron and his friends, but he seems distant even in those. As we discussed in class, the hot word of Chapter 2 is "brooding." Stephen seems to spend the entire chapter brooding about something or another.

In Chapter 3, we start to see Stephen's feeling of superiority. In this section, he sees himself as intellectually higher than his peers. He acknowledges his place as the top in the class and relishes that feeling. when he contemplates his soul, he thinks of his sinfulness as skipping the level priests and challenging God himself. "A certain pride, a certain awe, withheld him from offering to God even one prayer at night, though he knew it was in God’s power to take away his life while he slept and hurl his soul hellward ere he could beg for mercy." Stephen uses similar words as in Paradise Lost when Satan is "hurld headlong flaming" out of Heaven.

In Chapter 4, Stephen's superiority takes the form of religiosity. He seems to separate himself from his peers in order to figure out how to comprehend and accept God's love, a task which he is ultimately unsuccessful at.

In Chapter 5, there is a character change in Stephen. He begins to spend time with peers in friends and have good discussions with them. In the end, however, he still sacrifices friendship for his artistic vision.

Stephen's lack of consistent and quality relationships with his peers is reflective of his individualist nature and of the fact that he cannot wrap his mind around the concept of love.