Manhood

I was recently invited to a friend's son's 16th birthday party. Each guest was supposed to bring 2 or 3 stories that have shaped their own idea of what it means to be a man. This was all I could come up with. [I know it's a bit off-topic for this blog, but if you really want I could probably manufacture some kind of connection to a text I've been reading... The uneasy masculinity of Robin Hood, perhaps?]

My central idea is this: If one never sets one's definition of masculinity down in concrete/precise terms, it allows one to keep loose, vague ideas (without any actual reference) all gathered under the heading "masculinity": sports ability, being alluring to the opposite sex, strength, drinking, knowing a few sexist jokes--but not telling them too often, toughness (high pain tolerance), knowledge of machines (or at least an interest in them and a feigned knowledge of them)...Basically all the cliches that are associated with masculinity. And of course they work because they're cliches.

So what does it really mean to be a man? Who knows, but the loose aggregation of these (and other) qualities allows me to always define myself safely within the masculine (and cast questioning glances at those that don't seem "manly" enough--I'm looking at you, Bieber).

For example, I may think being bald reflects negatively on masculinity...unless my hair starts to thin, and then I recast my definition of manliness so as not to exclude myself. Or maybe it's sexual prowess...until the first time I don't get an erection when I want to, and so I redefine myself within the boundaries again.

So all the exercises in defining masculinity... in my opinion it's kind of b.s. (maybe that's too harsh...a fool's errand, perhaps?) I am relatively newly married, so staying committed to my wife/family is pretty high up on my current scale of manhood, but who's to say that won't get redefined in 20 years if my marriage tanks? And the sick thing is that I can even use the future (and obviously hypothetical) circumstances of my divorce to reassert my masculinity within that event ("No b**** treats me like that!")

People are awfully good at shifting things around so that they manage to keep themselves in the center. And I am sure if I had to define masculinity it would be no different. But it occurs to me that our own (tiring) work at defining and re-defining ourselves is a problem that we have not always had.

Walter J. Ong in Orality and Literacy mentions that a 36-year-old illiterate peasant (who came from an orally-based culture) was asked what sort of a person he was.

[He] responded with touching and humane directness: "What can I say about my own heart? How can I talk about my own character? Ask others; they can tell you about me. I myself can't say anything."

Ong concludes, "Judgement [in a primary oral culture] bears in on the individual from outside, not from within."

Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" and Shyamalan's "The Village": Cultures and Chaos

Sorry to harp on Achebe, but he's been on my mind a lot recently. My class finished the book some time ago (beginning Jas. Baldwin's "Go Tell It on the Mountain" next), but recently we decided to watch M. Night. Shyamalan's "The Village" and compare the two.

I don't want to summarize the Shyamalan film here, but in a broad, structural sense, it works as a kind of opposite reflection of Achebe's work.

Things Fall Apart starts out by depicting pre-colonial Ibo culture. Within this culture there are questions that people ask themselves that concern contradictions or uncomfortable aspects of Ibo society (for example, the killing of innocent children as mentioned in the earlier post).

But there are other questions that the Ibo don't even know how to frame until another cultural system (Christianity/colonialism) is placed next to their own as a kind of frame of reference. A person can question specific elements of the system (even if he realizes that there are no satisfying answers); but he can not question (or doubt) the system itself. Until, of course, he is shown another system.

This is the genius of Achebe. And this is what he so detested in Conrad's lop-sided view of Africa. And the movement from simple (one system: Ibo culture) to complex (two systems: Ibo culture and Christian/colonial culture) is the path Achebe's novel takes.

"The Village" offers an interesting departure from this path, while affirming the same epistemological truth concerning how self-consciousness is a prerequisite for doubt (you must be conscious of your own consciousness in order to doubt it; and you can only allow doubt to color a perspective when it is no longer the perspective, but merely a perspective).

Shyamalan's villagers appear to exist in a society that is much like the Ibo society. No one questions where the village leaders of Umuofia are when the egwugwu hold court in chapter 10. Nobody seems to notice how similarly some of the leaders and egwugwu walk (except for the narrator). So, too, when "Those We Do Not Speak Of" enter the town, none of the villagers notice that certain town elders are absent from the chaos. (The viewer doesn't even know to look for it the first time through the film.)

But Shamalayan's departure (and his plot twist at the end of the film) is actually a reversal of Achebe's path. We are no longer moving from simple to complex; we are now moving from complex to simple. It turns out the eponymous village is anachronistic. It is not simple; it is "simplified" (in the etymological sense of being made simple).

Shyamalan's village elders turned away from the complexities of modern society (illustrated by the flashback where they tell anecdotes--apparently in a grief therapy session--recalling acts of pointless violence). Leaving modern society, they attempted to create a simpler one. And the choice that the protagonist (blind Ivy Walker) has to make in the end is whether or not to re-introduce complexity into the lives of the villagers, whether or not to give them the chance to be doubters.

Literary Criticism and Cadavers

It occurred to me today (as a friend was mentioning that he always resented literary criticism's tendency to butcher the text it analyses) that literary criticism is a lot like dissecting a cadaver. The (unintentional but necessary) mutilation of a body is used to develop skills that will be later used to keep bodies functioning normally and intact.

The goal is integration, a healthy body. If you don't ever progress beyond dissecting, the skill will never be productive.

Achebe's Work of Redemption: Things Fall Apart

In 1975, Chinua Achebe famously stirred up the Canon of English Literature by criticizing one of its seminal texts, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. In "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness," Achebe accuses Conrad of reducing Africans to caricatures, sub-humans devoid of speech (and dignity):

Africa as setting and backdrop which eliminates the African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril. Can nobody see the preposterous and perverse arrogance in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind? But that is not even the point. The real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world. And the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it cannot.

This upset a lot of liberal-minded people (who saw Conrad as critiquing the very imperialist perspective that Achebe suggested he was the product of). But my post does not really concern this debate. It just starts there.

Achebe himself was a novelist, writing Things Fall Apart in 1958, years before he famously criticized Conrad. The novel, written in English and set in what is now Nigeria in the last decade of the 1800s (maybe early 1900s...I don't remember if it ever says), is concerned with providing a fuller picture of African culture (specifically the Ibo tribe/people). The religion, law, ritual, values--the entire Ibo society, which is centered on orality--is presented for a good hundred pages before the white men first appear.

The passage I want to focus my attention on is the final two paragraphs of chapter 16, as Christianity is introduced to Umuofia and the surrounding villages (to mixed reviews). Okonkwo is the book's protagonist.

The missionary...went on to talk about the Holy Trinity. At the end of it Okonkwo was fully convinced that the man was mad. He shrugged his shoulders and went away to tap his afternoon palm-wine.
But there was a young lad who had been captivated. His name was Nwoye, Okonkwo's first son. It was not the mad logic of the Trinity that captivated him. He did not understand it. It was the poetry of the new religion, something felt in the marrow. The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted his young soul--the question of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed. He felt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul. The words of the hymn were like the drops of frozen rain melting on the dry palate of the panting earth. Nwoye's callow mind was greatly puzzled.

[NOTE: The question that haunts Nwoye regarding the "twins crying in the bush" refers to the Ibo custom of exposing twins in the forest outside of the village. Ikemefuna was a boy that came to live in Okonkwo's household. He was sent as part of a peace offering after a man from Ikemefuna's tribe killed a woman from Okonkwo's tribe. He became like a brother to Nwoye until it was decided by the village Oracle (three years after his arrival) that he should be killed by the men of the village.]

As the novel progresses, we see Christianity portrayed in both positive and negative light. It is there at its worst: just another facet in the imperialistic gem. Rev. James Smith is the character that illustrates this kind of Christianity: proud, rash, narrow-minded, and provocative (even destructive). On the other side is Mr. Brown, the first white missionary to Umuofia. He attempts (with mixed successes) to win converts by getting to know the people (and their way of life) rather than blindly imposing his religion on the tribe.

So, too, the native converts can be seen a couple of ways. It is the weak and powerless that are the most eager converts: the people excluded from taking titles in the tribe, and outcasts. In short, the people with the most to gain. (I Corinthians 1:26-31 is an interesting text to read against this.) Because of this, the arrival of Christianity is of no concern to the existing religion because it only attracts the undesirable elements of Ibo society. But with Nwoye's interest in the religion, Achebe gives Christianity a weight that cannot be easily overlooked, dismissed, or reduced. Something he recognized Conrad never gave to Africa.

In sum, Achebe's entire book can be seen as an attempt at redeeming Africa. Not redemption in the religious sense of gaining eternal salvation, but redemption in its original sense of re-valuing, buying back. Because he sees Africa as a thing (and a people) that have been misunderstood and misrepresented by colonial powers (even into the late-20th century), Achebe is in the envious position of showing these same powers the value that they missed. (This congenital misunderstanding continues to the very end of the book, which I won't ruin for you. However, I will say that the ending perfectly illustrates the cultural lacuna between the Ibo and English with the planned English retelling of Okonkwo's story.)

Finally, to tell this story of redemption, it is necessary that Achebe writes in the language of the Colonizer. I think this decision is at the heart of redemption. Redemption bridges gaps. It communicates what was not previously understood (or was misunderstood) in a perfectly understandable manner.

"You have heard that it was said..."

"But I tell you..."

Flannery O'Connor. Naked.

In the world of the English major, there is a famous (and fairly old) debate regarding whether or not to allow the author of a work special critical preference when discussing said author's work. That is to say, if the author claims to have written a work with a specific intention (or from a specific perspective), should it matter to a reader? Generally, literary critics prefer to see the author as just another critic, and allow him/her no special preference. And, long story short, they have good reason for doing so. [For more regarding this debate, Google "wimsatt beardsley intentional fallacy."]

While most critics do not privilege the author's perspective, others find it helpful (though not necessary) if the reader is wanting to understand the work sympathetically. The author wrote this text for some reason, or so the idea goes, and it should be possible (even beneficial) to keep this in mind as we try to make sense of the work. Of course, we should also keep in mind the fact that the author may have various reasons to keep the secret of their literary offspring's origins covered up. And they will curse you with the ferocity of old Noah if you stumble across it and tell others what you saw.

I guess what I'm saying is, leave now if you don't want to see Flannery O'Connor naked. (And yes, I really just wrote that hoping someone, someday Googles "Flannery O'Connor naked.")

Recently I have been re-reading several of Flannery O'Connor's short stories for a Grammar/Composition class that I teach. We were getting ready to discuss "A Good Man is Hard to Find," the oft-anthologized story of the family vacation gone horribly wrong, when I revisited O'Connor's discussion of the work. (The following quotes are taken from Flannery O'Connor's "On Her Own Work," in Mystery and Manners.)

I often ask myself what makes a story work, and what makes it hold up as a story, and I have decided that it is probably some action, some gesture of a character that is unlike any other in the story, one which indicates where the real heart of the story lies. This would have to be an action or a gesture which was both totally right and totally unexpected; it would have to be one that was both in character and beyond character; it would have to suggest both the world and eternity. The action or gesture I'm talking about would have to be on the anagogical level, that is, the level which has to do with the Divine life and our participation in it. It would be a gesture that transcended any neat allegory that might have been intended or any pat moral categories a reader could make. It would be a gesture which somehow made contact with mystery.
[...]
This story has been called grotesque, but I prefer to call it literal. A good story is literal in the same sense that a child's drawing is literal. When a child draws, he doesn't intend to distort but to set down exactly what he sees, and as his gaze is direct, he sees the lines that create motion. Now the lines of motion that interest the writer are usually invisible. They are lines of spiritual motion. And in this story you should be on the lookout for such things as the action of grace in the Grandmother's soul, and not for the dead bodies.

Admittedly, there are all sorts of ways to read O'Connor's works. O'Connor, herself, was canny enough to admit as much. But I think her description of the possibility of anagogical readings within her own work is something that I, quite frankly, want to steal and use for myself. Use it not just on O'Connor's works, but on anything I read that seems to admit this perspective. The working title for this post was "Flannery O'Connor Was Here," because I don't know if anything I write about the possibilities of "Christian readings" (whatever that means) will come close to the lucidity and power of the O'Connor passages cited above. But I think we're really saying the same thing (or at least suggesting that such readings are possible and beneficial).

I've been wrestling with intention throughout this piece, so let me close with a few comments of my own regarding O'Connor's use of violence.

When you read several of her short stories back-to-back, I think it inevitably dawns on you that O'Connor is really only writing one story. The characters and settings and even levels of violence change, but the moment (or moments) of grace are all rendered in a strikingly similar way. My 9th-grade class even pointed this out. But when I asked this class what the point of re-telling this story was, they hesitated. They weren't sure what I wanted, and they weren't sure what they knew. So I asked it again in a different way. "What is the point of these acts of violence and moments of grace repeated over and over? Who benefits from it?" (I mean, these fictional characters do, of course, but they're fictional.)

In the same text cited above, O'Connor gives her readers an explanation of why she was writing scenes of such disruptive violence:

I suppose the reasons for the use of so much violence in modern fiction will differ with each writer who uses it, but in my own stories I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. Their heads are so hard that almost nothing else will do the work. This idea, that reality is something to which we must be returned at considered cost, is one which is seldom understood by the casual reader, but it is one which is implicit in the Christian view of the world.

In short, O'Connor uses violence because it suits her fictional aims and her spiritual perspective. And while it benefits her fictive characters that are in need of grace, it's main purpose is to suggest to the reader that such grace is possible.

It is usually hard to remember (and impossible to recreate) the emotions you experience the first time you read something. A friend of mine once told me he yelled "NO!" and threw Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude across the room when he finished reading it the first time, as though it were possessed. But unless your reading is marked by something so memorable as this, time passes and you tend to forget, or remember imperfectly. That said, I still feel like reading O'Connor is disruptive for most first-time readers, as I remember (imperfectly) it being for me. (I chose the word "disruptive" intentionally before. There is the sense of a violent breaking loaded into the word from its Latin root and Old English cognate.)

Which leads me to the answer I gave to my 9th-grade class: O'Connor's stories seem to enact in the reader's mind (dare we say soul) the very violence they depict on the page.

So the disruptive violence that happens on the page in order to bring grace to a needy character is mirrored by the disruption that the reader experiences (and doesn't know what to do with at first). I think the disruption in the reader is caused by difficulty interpreting the gesture that we can't quite account for, the one that "makes contact with mystery."

For what it's worth, O'Connor admits in various places that I am not the only reader who has stumbled over these moments of disruption (or ambiguity) in her stories. You can read about at least one of them (and get the full context of the O'Connor quotes littered throughout this post) here. Note the first few paragraphs, especially (concerning the confusion surrounding the Grandmother's character).

Of course I realize that even if you admit that reading O'Connor brings disruption to the reader, it does not necessarily bring grace. But that doesn't mean she isn't trying.

Community and Sin in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

The sure mark of an unliterary man is that he considers "I've read it already" to be a conclusive argument against reading a work.

C. S. Lewis An Experiment in Criticism

I recently re-read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for what has to be the dozenth time. It's one of those (rare?) works that people who have little or no interest in medieval literature can take up and immediately enjoy (the recent Simon Armitage translation is recommended--it is both readable and poetic). For those of you that aren't familiar with what is quite possibly the finest romance ever written in the English language, I will outline the plot. Those already familiar with the work may wish to skip past this summary...

Camelot. New Year's Day. King Arthur and company are feasting when an axe-wielding Green Knight (not just green in armor, but skin, hair, beard--even horse) interrupts the party and challenges any of the knights to a "game." Gawain accepts and finds that the Green Knight has a beheading game in mind. Gawain gets one swing at the knight's head (with the Green Knight's own axe), and he will receive a return stroke in one year, at the Green Knight's chapel. Gawain obliges, and the Green Knight walks over, picks up his severed head, and tells Gawain to meet him in a year to be repaid before riding off.

Gawain, the model of chivalry, sets out on the first of November in search of the Green Chapel. He is no closer to finding the elusive chapel when he comes across a castle on Christmas Eve. He is welcomed, and soon discovers that the Green Chapel is only a couple miles away.

Gawain stays at the castle for a couple days, feasting and resting. Three days before his reunion with the Green Knight, the Host of the castle proposes another "game," this time a game of exchange. The Host will hunt each day and present his winnings to Gawain, and Gawain will stay in the castle and present to the Host anything he has "won."

The next morning, the Host sets off with his hunting party, which succeeds in taking a great number of deer. Back at the castle, Gawain is awakened by the Host's wife, who enters his bedchamber and attempts to seduce him (in no uncertain terms). A conflict between courtesy and chastity presents a problem for Gawain. The lady outranks him socially. He cannot offend her. Yet he cannot obey her demands and offend his host... Gawain delicately evades her advances, but the lady won't leave until she gets a kiss.

That evening, the Host presents the spoils of the hunt to Gawain, and Gawain gives the Host the kiss he's won.

Second day, the scenes are repeated. The Host successfully hunts a boar. Gawain successfully evades the advances of the Host's wife and is given two kisses at the end of their meeting, which he repays his Host.

Third day (New Year's Eve), the Host takes a fox. Gawain gets three kisses, but the lady wants a love gift from her captive knight. Gawain has nothing suitable to give, so she instead offers him a green girdle that has magical powers to keep its wearer safe from death. Only one condition: Gawain is to say nothing of this gift to her husband.

That night, Gawain repays the three kisses, but says nothing of the girdle.

On New Year's Day, Gawain is conveyed to the Green Chapel where meets the Green Knight. Long story short, Gawain discovers that the Host is the Green Knight and the exchange game has been set up as a test of his chivalry. Gawain is shamed by his lie, but the Host is quick to forgive what he considers a minor indiscretion. He presents Gawain with the girdle (which has no magical properties, it turns out), and Gawain decides to wear it over his shoulder as a reminder of his guilt.

Gawain then returns to Camelot and tells the story to Arthur's court.

Now up until the last time I read this, I never really noticed the ending as much other than a perfunctory denouement. But now I see that it contains an aspect of the Christian response to sin that is (in my opinion) often overlooked or forgotten. When the courtiers of Camelot hear Gawain's story, they respond ambiguously: first, with laughter (quite a different response than Gawain, who reddens in shame at the retelling); and second, by all deciding to wear the green girdle over their shoulder as a symbol of their "brotherhood" with Gawain.

I'll admit the initial laughter is somewhat problematic. At first it seems like the court is incapable of empathizing with Gawain. And it's pretty clear from the text that Gawain is a lot more upset by his failure than either the Green Knight or the court of Camelot. But maybe that's as it should be.

What I want to focus on here is the decision by the community to share in Gawain's guilt. The token that Gawain adopts for himself becomes the way in which all of Camelot's courtiers are identified. Thus, Gawain's sin is not seen as a personal failing, but as a shortcoming shared by all. It's as if Hester Prynne had walked into Boston one day with the red "A" stitched to her clothing and everyone in town, realizing they were equally responsible for her sin, responded by fashioning and wearing a red "A" of their own.

But (you may ask) how can they be--how can I be--equally responsible? This is impossible, bordering on heretical.

Remember especially that you cannot be the judge of anyone. For there can be no judge of a criminal on earth until the judge knows that he, too, is a criminal, exactly the same as the one who stands before him, and that he is perhaps most guilty of all for the crime of the one standing before him. When he understands this, then he will be able to be a judge. However mad that may seem it is true. For if I myself were righteous, perhaps there would be no criminal standing before me now.

This from the wise (if opaque) Father Zosimas in Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, (italics mine).

As a Christian, I have always had a view of sin that is, for lack of a better word, selfish. That is to say, it is much easier (and more comfortable) for me to keep my sins between me and God. (I cannot tell you how lucky I was to be born Protestant and escape the embarrassment of the Catholic confessional chamber; I much prefer to live in space carved out by the words of the old country song: "The Lord knows I'm drinkin' / And drinkin' ain't right / But me and the good Lord / Gonna have us a good talk / Later tonight.")

This is an uneasy subject. And I have no idea how I'm supposed to end something I don't even fully understand. But I do know sin is supposed to make me uneasy. I'm pretty sure I have that part right, at least.

Pride and Prejudice and St. Isaac

For a job, I teach literature (medieval and modern). For fun, I was recently reading Scott Cairns' book The End of Suffering with a few friends. It happened that I came across one of the many St. Isaac of Syria quotes during a reading for book club just as I was finishing up teaching Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Blessed is the person who knows his own weakness, because awareness of this becomes for him the foundation and the beginning of all that is good and beautiful.

A couple days before I read this quote, one of my students (I teach at a private Christian school) had asked me why there was so little Christianity evident in Austen's novel. Of course there's the parson, Mr. Collins, but if he is a Christian he is intended a thoroughly ironic one, remarking on one occasion to Mr. Bennett that the death of Lydia would have been a blessing compared to her elopement. I asked the student to wait until we finished the book and then bring up this question again.

When the question came up a few days later, I began by sharing the Isaac quote with the class. I asked them if there were any characters in this book that illustrated (positively or negatively) this quote. It didn't take too long for the answers to come. In many ways, I had stumbled onto what still seems to be a very helpful way of looking at Miss Austen's work--or at least many of her characters.

I will attempt to keep this brief.

Two characters in the novel illustrate St. Isaac's quote perfectly. Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy are each made painfully aware of their weaknesses (prejudice and pride, respectively) in what is the turning point of the novel (at least for our--and St. Isaac's--purpose): Darcy's proposal and his letter to Elizabeth (in Volume II, chapters XI and XII).

Elizabeth and Darcy are not the only characters that are confronted with their own weakness. (Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, Mr. Collins, Lydia, Lady Catherine, Wickham, and many others all have rather glaring faults; though whether or not they are as aware of them as the reader is, I leave to you to work out.) But Lizzy and Darcy are the only characters that feel the full weight of this awareness. That is, instead of justifying their actions--which is certainly my preferred response when I am criticized--they become genuinely humbled by this painful realization. And, just as Isaac predicts, this awareness marks the point that their lives actually are able to receive the good and beautiful things that follow later in the novel.

Returning to the question of just how "Christian" Miss Austen's book is (again, a fairly common concern for the parents/students where I teach), I want to suggest here that this is a completely backwards question for a Christian to be asking of a novel/novelist.

Let me put it this way. I think we create problems for ourselves when we expect the writer to put a sufficient amount of "Christianity" into his or her work. We then accept or reject specific books based on whether or not they conform to (or reinforce) our own idea of what Christianity is. This seems in many respects a pointless exercise. (As a side note, this overt "injection" of Christian morality into a plot is what makes many of the popular Christian novels so distasteful to Christian readers like myself. It smacks of sanctimony, and I am sanctimonious enough as it is without having it modeled for me as a virtue in the books I choose to read.)

Instead, I think the role of a Christian reader is to be able to actively see Christianity (that is to say, Christ) in the text itself. In this way, our approach to literature mirrors what should be our approach to people. In Matthew 25:31-46 we are challenged to see Christ in the people we meet everyday. If we can't do this, it is quite clearly a problem that we will be held responsible for.

How lucky we are to be able to practice this with the books we read.