The Ancestors

The final phrase of Angry Black White Boy is incredibly ambiguous: "Burleigh pulled the trigger, and Macon joined his ancestors." Though the statement could go in any number of directions, it definitely brings us back to the Fleet Walker/Cap Anson situation and makes us question which one Macon is more closely associated with. The prologues about Walker and Anson at the beginning of each section help set a historical backdrop for Macon's actions in each book. In the first two books, we are introduced to a sort of binary with Fleet Walker and Cap Anson. As Anson's direct descendent, Macon is determined to not live up to him and wants to make amends for what Anson did to the black community. In his attempts to counteract Anson's actions, Macon goes through all of his efforts to be "down" and be accepted by black people. Therefore, is he trying to be like Walker? Early in the book, Macon describes himself as "blacker than each and every one of these..." (123) at the Black Student Union. However, there is a huge problem that prevents Macon from being able to really be like Fleet Walker: he isn't black, so no matter how hard he tries to be unlike Cap Anson, he cannot take on a Fleet Walker role. So is there another option for Macon?

We are given an interesting third character leading up to the final book, entitled "Race," and that is Red Donner. Donner is white, but he ends up dying in place of Walker, as he distracts the mob by smearing greasepaint on his face and letting them chase after him. Donner provides an interesting sort of third party approach to Macon's dilemma of how to address the issue of race.

Therefore, when we get to the climax of the novel, we can wonder, who are Macon's "ancestors"? Does he end up acting as a true descendant of Cap Anson, or could he have been a martyr for the cause like Red Donner? Honestly, the last part of the book doesn't really help us much with this question. The ending of Macon's story lines up in many ways with both Anson and Donner. First of all, Macon simply walks away from the riots in New York and flees to the south, which is eerily similar to how Cap Anson walks off the field when Walker hits a home run: they both flee from the cause. However, Macon is fleeing because he feels that he has caused more harm to black people than good, while Anson walks away because he is angry that a black person has accomplished something big (a home run). Both retreat to a situation where white supremacy can take control: Macon flees to the south, while Anson has segregated baseball.

However, the situation becomes even more complicated when it comes to Macon’s death, as it lines up pretty closely with Red Donner’s. When Donner was killed, “The mob caught him first of all and didn’t check too hard to make sure he was the man they wanted, or maybe they didn’t care…” (p. 275). Similarly, Burleigh threatens Macon and Leo with violence, because he wants to give them "equal treatment under the law," so Macon in a way is suffering in the way Donner suffered: he is seen as a race traitor. As Burleigh says, Macon "ain't been white for a long time," (334) reaffirming his race traitor status, and which could hint at Donner taking on the appearance of a black man. In Macon's final moments, Burleigh says he will be a martyr for the cause, which may be true due to the evidence I mentioned before. However, Macon says "no" at the last second, and then he "joined his ancestors," perpetuating the ambiguity of Macon's situation through the end of the book. 

Jack's "Return to Normal"

Though much of Jack's story aligns nicely with Joseph Campbell's model for the hero's journey, his unique situation does not lend itself to a clear "return to normal" or "master of two worlds" resolution at the end. For most of Jack's time in Outside, he thinks that the solution to his problems would be to go back and live in Room again, but also be allowed to go Outside every once in a while. Since this is clearly not plausible (for any number of reasons) and not at all a solution to any of Ma's problems, Donoghue finds other ways to try to resolve Jack's situation and give him a more realistic return to normal.

Jack was plunged twice into the unknown to set off his hero's journey: first when he leaves Room to enter Outside, and second, when Ma was in the hospital and he had to face Outside without her. Therefore, when Ma returns, Jack has some return to normal, because he is used to being with her 24/7, and now he gets to be with her again, and just the two of them get to live together in the Independent Living. One could even say that he is the master of two worlds in that he is capable of functioning with and without Ma (though he is still very reluctant to leave her). Despite being reunited with Ma and "master of two worlds" in that respect, Jack still really needs some closure with Room, because it is still his world in a sense, and he cannot really become master of it until he moves on from it.

Therefore, Jack really becomes "master of two worlds" in the last few pages of the book. When he finally gets to go back in Room, Jack is shocked at how unfamiliar it is to him:
"We step in Door and it's all wrong. Smaller than Room and emptier and it smells weird. (...) Nothing says anything to me. 'I don't think this is it,' I whisper to Ma." (319)
In the process of comparing everything in Outside to Room, Jack's view of Room had been glorified in his mind, and when he got back, he realized that it might not have been the amazing place he remembered it to be. In addition, by seeing Room in the context of Outside, Jack can also view Room from Ma's perspective. Jack also becomes a master of two worlds in this sense as well, in that he has mastered both his and Ma's perspectives towards Room, which was pretty much the one main conflict between the two of them when assimilating into Outside.

By seeing Room from Ma's point of view, Jack is able to really leave it in his past, further ensuring that he is the "master of two worlds," despite not being able to return to his normal life in Room. In the second to last line, Jack says, "It's like a crater, a hole where something happened," (321), showing that he doesn't expect anything else to happen there in the future. In addition, by willingly saying good-bye to everything in Room, we can see that he is now okay with leaving it behind, because he gets to do it on his own terms. Though Jack does not get to return to his ordinary world like some of the more traditional heroes, he still becomes "master of two worlds" in his own way: by being able to live with or without Ma, by understanding both his and Ma's points of view towards Room, and by willingly leaving Room behind.

Jack's Tiny World

One of the first things to catch my attention when I started reading this book was how everything in Jack's world was proper nouns. Jack doesn't sleep in a wardrobe, he sleeps in Wardrobe. He doesn't throw things away in the trash can, he throws them Trash, and so on. At first I thought this was just because Jack was a five year old who wasn't able to speak very coherently yet, but I don't think this is the case. Proper nouns are used for people or places that are one-of-a-kind; they refer to very specific items. It took a while for it to occur to me that everything in Room is one-of-a-kind to Jack. He has no need to use the articles "a," "an," or "the," because he has no need to specify one object from a group of them. Meanwhile, when Ma is talking, she often does specify a trash can or the door or the toilet.

Since Jack's entire world is Room, he and Ma have a lot of trouble seeing eye to eye when it comes to Outside and what is real and what isn't. In particular, since Room is Jack's whole world, he is extremely attached to it and takes it very personally when he realizes that Ma does not see it the way he does. For Ma, everything in Room is a reminder of her horrible situation that she doesn't have control over, but Jack is the one aspect of Room that isn't tainted and that Old Nick doesn't have control over. However, Jack cannot make that distinction between himself and the rest of Room; he cannot see himself as separated from it. Room is all he knows and the only thing that he knows he is a part of. Therefore, he gets very upset when Ma calls Room "stinky" and when Ma is so eager to get Outside and leave Room behind:

"'Why don't you like being in Room with me?'

(...) 'I always like being with you.'

'But you said it was tiny and stinky.'

'Oh, Jack.' She says nothing for a minute. 'Yeah, I'd rather be outside, but with you'

'I like it here, with you.'" (85)

Jack can't understand how he is separate from Room, as he is from Ma's perspective. This is further evidenced by the exchange between Ma and Jack at the end of the chapter "Dying," as Jack wants to go to Bed in Room, but Ma says they won't be going back and Jack starts bawling. Jack is deeply upset by the idea of sleeping anywhere other than Bed, as he knows nothing other than Bed. Though most children do tend to get attached to material things, they live in a world where they can establish strong connections and roots with other people. All that Jack has connections with are the things in Room, and therefore taking those things away from him is almost like taking a friend away. While we and Ma can't really see what makes the trash can in Room so special, Jack cannot imagine how anything else could live up to Trash. All he has left is Ma, and he is probably already feeling distant from her, as she seems eager to get away from everything he knows, so his closest relationship even seems to be strained.

Heaven vs. Earth

In A Lesson Before Dying, religion becomes a huge issue as the plot develops, as Miss Emma and Reverend Ambrose are desperately trying to save Jefferson's soul as much as they want him to become a man. Grant and Rev. Ambrose are supposed to work together to help Jefferson in both a spiritual and worldly sense. However, Grant seems to feel some sense of competition with Reverend Ambrose. He recognizes that his goal of making Jefferson a man and Rev. Ambrose's goal of saving Jefferson's soul are often at odds. This bitterness between Grant and Rev. Ambrose is exacerbated by the fact that Grant is hardly religious and wants nothing to do with religion, which is a point of contention between Grant and Ms. Emma, Tante Lou, and Rev. Ambrose.

However, I started to see some irony in this sort of rivalry between Grant and Rev. Ambrose, as I realized that there are some really strong parallels between what Grant is asking Jefferson to do and Jesus. This became glaringly obvious to me in chapter 28, when Grant and Jefferson are discussing religion. The most striking moment to me was:

"'Who make people kill people, Mr. Wiggins?'
'They killed His Son, Jefferson.'
'And He never said a mumbling word.'
'That's what they say.'
'That's how I want to go Mr. Wiggins. Not a mumbling word (p. 223).'"

Neither Jefferson (as far as we know) nor Jesus were criminals, but they were both put to death anyway. Jesus's life could have seemed futile, just like Jefferson's, as they both knew that they were going to be killed. Jesus went to his death without any protests, letting people's ridiculing comments roll off his back, which also exemplifies Grant's description of a hero in the day room ("(a hero) is above other men (...) He would do anything for people he loves, because he knows it would make their lives better (p. 191)"). He even asks God to forgive the people killing him, because they don't know what they are doing. The idea that "they don't know what they are doing" reminds me a bit of the myth, or, in Grant's words, "an old lie that people believe in," that he describes to Jefferson in the day room about how white people believe that they are better than black people.

What's really interesting to me, though is how Jefferson looks up to and wants to be like Jesus the man, not Jesus the spiritual figure. Jesus's story is just as much about heaven as it is about earth, and to Christians, Jesus is God and human, but Jefferson and Grant only seem to be concerned with Jesus as a human at the moment. Grant and Jefferson are not even sure if they believe in heaven, though Grant believes in God. We find out pretty early on in the book that Miss Emma wants Reverend Ambrose and Grant to work together, which Grant seems to think is not going to work, but as the plot has developed, it seems to me that Grant and Rev. Ambrose's tasks are not as mutually exclusive as they seem.

A Dark Comedy

One of the essential theme of As I Lay Dying and that sets the tone of the story is the constant feeling that the characters are lonely and out-of-place. I first thought about this when we saw the country vs. town motif, as the Bundrens stick out like a sore thumb when they go into town. Just looking at Moseley's description of the family as they are in Mottson shows how they must seem like bizarre country folks coming on a trip to the big city: 

"It must have been like a piece of rotten cheese coming into an ant-hill, in that ramshackle wagon that Albert said folks were scared would fall into pieces before they could get it to town, with that homemade box and another fellow with a broken leg lying on a quilt on top of it, and the father and a little boy on the seat and the marshal trying to make them get out of town."

As I looked back though, it became more clear that the Bundrens weren't just country folks who were out of place in town, they are out of place even when they are at home in the country, judging by the way Tull, Cora, Samson, Armstid, and their wives talk about them. They don't understand Anse's determination to get to Jefferson (Rachel and Lula see it as an "outrage"), and their outside perspectives reveal to us how ridiculous the Bundrens are.

If I was only presented with these outside views of the Bundren family, I would be quick to say that the tone of the book is comedic, and it is poking fun at this eccentric, out-of-place family. However, the majority of the book is narrated by members of the Bundren family, which gives us their inside perspectives. Getting to know them individually reveals how they each have a reason to be isolated even within their own family, which makes them seem not just quirky and out-of-place, but alone, putting a darker spin on the tone of the story: As we get to know the family from the inside, we find out that Dewey Dell is the lone female, pregnant, and has no one to talk to. Vardaman is the youngest child by almost 10 years, disturbed by his mother's death, and is desperately in need of a parental figure to guide him, but no one fills that role for him. Jewel has a different father than all of the other children, and Darl has some form of omniscient powers/may be crazy. Even Cash seems isolated in a way, as he goes through a great amount of pain, but doesn't bother anyone with it.

Having both internal and external views of the Bundrens highlights the much-discussed issue in class: are the members of the Bundren family comically out of place in their surroundings or hopelessly alone even in the midst of their own family? Is this the story of an eccentric family making a spectacle while trying to bury their mother or a desperate every-man-for-himself struggle to solve individual problems? I honestly don't know. My best reasoning is that Faulkner juxtapositioned these many different perspectives to create a dark yet comedic tone for the book. My reaction while reading most of this story was “I feel bad laughing” because the characters were truly absurd, but the narrative structure of the book helped me get inside their heads so it was evident how alone they all were.

O Telemachus, Where Art Thou?

Though it was a great movie, one of the things that baffled me about O Brother, Where Art Thou? was that there wasn’t a clear parallel to Telemachus. Everett’s daughters, known as the Wharvey gals, ensure that the McGill family has a similar structure to the family in The Odyssey, but the girls do almost nothing to further the plot besides inform their father of their mother’s suitor. To further contrast Telemachus, they have no desire to get rid of the suitor and are hardly excited to see their father again (though, like Telemachus, they hardly believe their father is alive, but, unlike Telemachus, it is because they have been told outright that their father has been hit by a train). They mostly just parrot what their mother says and do very little to help Everett. This leaves a bit of a gap in the story, if it is supposed to parallel The Odyssey: there are no clear connections to the Telemachiad books, and there’s not a clear father/son reunion parallel followed by the two of them banding together for the great slaughter in the hall.

Unfortunately, I have yet to identify a single character who alone fills in the Telemachus role in the movie. There are different elements of Telemachus’ character, however, that different people in the movie embody. I mentioned before how the Wharvey gals fit into the literal role of the children of Everett. For the “slaughter in the hall” (where the Soggy Bottom Boys reveal themselves), there is a group of four men that could parallel the four-man alliance in The Odyssey of Odysseus, Telemachus, the cowherd, and the swineherd. I see Delmar as the Telemachus in this situation, because he is the closest and has been sort of guided the most by Everett at this point.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of the movie, there is no character equivalent of Telemachus who goes on his own little journey of his own, though there are allusions in the film to first four books of The Odyssey. The initial hospitality of Pete’s cousin Walsh somewhat parallel’s that which Nestor and Menelaus show Telemachus, though Telemachus stays much longer at Menelaus’ palace, and neither Nestor nor Menelaus betray him. Still, Walsh’s son plays a similar role to Pisistratus, particularly as he is helping the men get away. The image of Telemachus “vaulting onto the splendid chariot” (3.549) of Pisistratus and traveling as fast as they could go across the country is actually quite similar to that when Everett and crew get into the car and are driven off rapidly by Walsh’s son. Another parallel arises when the men insist that Walsh’s son go back to his father, like how Telemachus has Pisistratus drop him off at his ship and then go back to Nestor when they leave the palace of Menelaus.

All in all, I was a bit frustrated by the lack of a clear Telemachus figure in the movie, so it was interesting to try to put together the bits and pieces of Telemachus' character that are kind of scattered throughout O Brother. What do you all think? For a while, I was leaning towards Tommy the guitar guy as the closest character to Telemachus, but didn't have too much reason to stick with that idea. Do you think he's a more compelling parallel to Telemachus? Am I missing any other references or clues about a Telemachus character in the movie?

That One Scene with the Dog

Though it only takes up about a page and a half in The Odyssey, the story of Argos the dog is a truly touching one. It not only is a homecoming vignette that contributes to the more domestic aspects of Odysseus's journey and makes the reader a bit emotional, but it also provides some interesting comparisons for the other characters that Odysseus meets in disguise as he tests their loyalty. Argos seems to be the one character who has no ulterior motives (for lack of a better term) for staying loyal to Odysseus, as he is a simple creature who is also man’s best friend.

To give an example of one of these comparisons, we can look at the loyal swineherd, Eumaeus. He is loyal to Odysseus in that he carries on life as though he is waiting for him to come home and still sort of mourns his disappearance, as “the heart inside [him] breaks when anyone mentions [his] dear master” (14. 195). However, he has no doubt in his mind that Odysseus is lost forever, which he tells Odysseus (in disguise) many times. So Eumaeus seems to be staying loyal to Odysseus partly because he is still grieving the loss of his master, probably partly because he is a good person who wants to stay on the “good” side, but also probably for the sake of Penelope and Telemachus, to whom he is still loyal to. After all, the reunion between Telemachus and Eumaeus is described as that of one between a father and son. Meanwhile, however, Argos displays true loyalty, as he is over twenty years old and is literally staying alive just so he can catch a glimpse of his master before he lets himself die, as he has no other reason for living.

Penelope and Telemachus are also loyal characters, but they too have their doubts and other reasons for waiting for Odysseus. Telemachus has never met his father, so he probably does not really miss him much as a person. Rather, he wants his father to come back and get rid of all the suitors who are exploiting his hospitality and competing to marry his mother: “He could almost see his magnificent father, here…/in the mind’s eye – if only he might drop from the clouds/ and drive these suitors all in a rout throughout the halls/ and regain his pride of place and rule his own domains!” (1. 134-137) In addition, Telemachus still has many doubts that his father will return, even after Athena tells him so and takes him on his journey. He doesn’t even believe Odysseus at first when he reveals himself to Telemachus.

Anyway, I know it seems a bit cliche to use the dog as the epitome of loyalty, and it may be a bit excessive to write an entire blog post about him, but I thought that the scene with Argos was so touching because he had the most straightforward reasons for waiting for Odysseus, which brings into light some of the other characters’ motives. In addition, it proves this classic homecoming-man-meets-his-dog scene is really timeless, and I found it amusing that the Greeks from thousands of years ago would be touched by this kind of classic reunion just as much as we are.