Meaning Please

As the young mind -insatiable and self-centered- often ponders on matters which are of little true preoccupation to it, I often find myself thinking of motherhood (which brings forth unnecessary consternation, I might add.) After the first few pages of The Awakening the reader comprehends with clarity how the Southern-Creole late 19^th century society works. The characters in the book are aware, too, of the ways in which society (the machine) works. There is order. The point of rupture in the story comes when character Edna Pontellier questions and wishes no longer to be another piece in the apparatus. She encounters conflict as in every situation where there is alteration to the norm. Somehow, Edna knew what she was getting into. Somehow, she expected adversity and did so courageously. But what happens when you live in a society without order, exempt of expectation, unbearably uncertain?

The modern woman (and here I make a very bold generalization) has no more a definite role in society. It is true that sexism, along with racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, regionalism, and other thousand types of irrational hate persist in humanity, yet somehow hate is no longer as central to society as in previous years. What is left? The Modern Woman: A woman with the world at her feet, her only obstacle being her own initiative. A woman with a myriad of options for lifestyle. “Success!” One might think. “Finally, after all those years of struggle, no more external pressures, no more blocks!”

I, the modern woman, nevertheless can’t help feeling a little lost. My ingratitude somehow translates in confusion, and my confusion into stillness.

The big difference between Edna Pontellier and a woman in my position is people expected something from her; there was a correct path for Edna. Today, success in an infinitely subjective concept. Edna had it easy. Society had clear, unlabored expectations of her. Today a woman could be a cook, a lawyer, a doctor, an artisan, an errant, a nun, an artist, a bum, have children, not have children, adopt, get married, have a divorce, get married again, not marry at all, be a lesbian, be a man and it would all be ok.

So, when I read a book like The Awakening and think about how to apply Edna’s teachings in my life, I simply can’t because I’m not repressed in any way.

Edna Pontelliers do not exist in the 21^st century. Fighting for something requires an obstacle. This is why I felt a tremendous disappointment upon finishing the book, because I, naively, expected some kind of awakening for myself. Sadly, (Happily?) today there exists no place where no woman has swum before. I concluded that the book is obsolete if one seeks inspiration from it.  One might look at it as cute little window into the past, as one looks at a Neolithic tool display at a museum and is surprised by the unexpected  technological advances from such “primitive” creatures.

I have this recurring dream where I’m running and there’s an annoying pebble inside my shoe. It makes running painful and frustrating. The thing is I knew that, earlier, I had put the pebble inside my shoe.  Is the pebble necessary? Why does life without the pebble seem empty and aimless?

A Chat with Text

Perhaps one of the most exceptional qualities of a Shakespeare play is its malleability. It is a though the characters of the play are just the framework of a performance involving the player’s circumstance.  This quality makes the character and the actor inseparable, hence making each performance intentionally unique (unlike plays like “Waiting for Godot” where it is crucial that the actor sticks faithfully to the script).

This American Life’s “218: Act V” podcast spoke about the powerful bilateral relationship between actor and character in Hamlet performed by individuals whose lives are alone worthy of a playwright.  It seemed as though the personal stories of each actor fed the character played. The actor, instead of disembodying from its own circumstance, utilized its personal experience to deliver his performance. The prisoners needed not to pretend, and instead they spoke to themselves. In turn resulted a performance separated only from real life by the unnatural Shakespearean language.

After experiencing this kind of catharsis (perhaps the most genuine ever to be experienced) I wonder about the rest of “Hamlet” performances, and about acting itself. When staging a play, the actors have the daunting task of making their performance feel as veracious as possible. At any given time, if the task is delivered successfully, the audience might lose their sense of circumstance and become lost in the play. However, in the end, the closed curtains remind us of the inevitable falseness of it all.  Written words have not that problem. Literature embraces the lie as part of its nature. However, in the case of the prisoners staging Hamlet there is a rupture between the lie and the truth. The lie, pretending to be true, is actually true.

In the case of one prisoner playing Laertes, he fully embraces the role in his personal life. Even before becoming familiar with the character, he was already carrying out the role of Laertes. The opportunity of performing gave him the chance to repeat his actions, which now are redundant, as he is just acting like himself. “I am Laertes.” He said repeatedly.

I have never encountered such a powerful relationship with a text. It makes me think that there is a possibility of us feeding on the character and the character feeding on us. Literature is only what we choose to make of it. Its meaning depending only in the individual reading it. The prisoners performing “Hamlet” are the best example of conversation with the text, something we must procure if interested in the valuable interpretation of literature. 

A Pair of Ragged Claws

What if Hamlet hadn’t died or killed? What if Hamlet- old and alive- made by thought one part wise yet three parts coward, had instead sat to watch the yellow fog fall asleep every soft October night of his life, with the excuse that there will be time? Had Shakespeare not chosen to make the final scene of his play resemble more a works day at a slaughterhouse more than anything else, Hamlet could have well turned out to be J. Alfred Prufrock.

It is true that both characters are eternally conflicted by thought.  Both verbalize their concern: Hamlet by the way of soliloquies and Prufrock in an afflicted stream of consciousness. Perhaps they are unaware of the ruthless irony found in their prolonged consideration of prolonged consideration.  Perhaps not. “Whether it be Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on the event” (Act 4 Sc.4) or “a perfume from a dress that makes me [him] so digress” it is thought which they hold responsible for their inactivity.

Hamlet is young, Prufrock old. This marks a big difference in their stances, for Hamlet reprimands himself for his passivity, while Prufrock has let go hope and does not look back with anger, rather with gloom. Fear, nevertheless, is a shared cause of their stasis. J. Alfred asks himself “Do I dare disturb the universe?”  and Hamlet “To be or not to be?” The thought of trouble, life, action, is too intimidating. They both ask themselves if it (to take arms against a sea of troubles) is worthy after all. Life is too painful, disappointments too abundant. Hamlet desires relief from decisions (to die, to sleep) because he dares not to think of the consequences. Prufrock, as an eventual Hamlet, simply surrenders. Both men see their shameful figures as shadows in a wall, and they regret.

 But in short, they were afraid. 

Scuse Me

When speaking of colonialism, irony comes naturally. The song “Great Nations of Europe” by Randy Newman mixes elements of irony with explicit facts to ridicule colonialism in the 16^th century. Newman refers to the colonialists as “the great nations of Europe”, which becomes an ironic designation when he says what they did. For example,

 “Hide your wives and daughter; hide the groceries too.

The great nations of Europe comin through.”

or

“Columbus sailed for India found Salvador instead.
He shook hands with some Indians and soon they all were dead.
They got tb and typhoid and athletes foot, diphtheria and the flu
'scuse me great nations comin through.”

Here we see a discrepancy between the expectation and the actual situation. We would expect a positive consequence from “the great nations comin through” and instead we get fear and death.

Another example of the use of irony in this song is,

“Balboa found the Pacific, and on the trail one day,
he met some friendly Indians whom the Church told him were gay,
soooooooooooooo
he had them torn apart by dogs on religious grounds they say
the great nations of Europe were quite holy in their way.”

The tension here lies on what is said and what is meant. Clearly the great nations of Europe weren’t “quite holy in their way” if they had the Indians torn apart by dogs for being gay. The sarcastic phrase adds spice to the wholeness of the song.
On the other hand, there are some lines completely lacking of irony, which doesn’t make them less ridiculous.  For example,

“The Grand Canary Islands first land to which they came
they conquered all the canaries there which gave the land its name
there were natives there called guanches, guanches by the score
bullet's, disease the Portuguese, they weren't there any more.”

These lines are explicit to the border of redundancy. The progression of events is completely true, which comes to show that often history needs not the aid of imagination to make it ridiculous.

Overall, the song is a simplification of the horrible results of colonialism; one might say the facts speak for themselves. Therefore, although it is not an accurate representation of the colonies, it serves to express criticism and make them relevant to modern times. 

Damn Women

Perhaps one of the more concise and accurate depictions of Nurse Ratchet in the novel comes in the words of Mr. Harding.

“She’s impregnable herself, and with the element of time working for her she eventually gets inside everyone. That’s why the hospital regards her as its top nurse and grants her so much authority; she’s a master at forcing the trembling libido out into the open—”

The use of the word ‘impregnable’ overall illustrates Nurse Ratchet’s ethos and is vital in the portrayal of women in the novel.

According to the online Oxford Dictionary ‘impregnable’ means strong enough to resist or withstand attack; not to be takenby force, unconquerable: an impregnable fort.

or

not to be overcome or overthrown: an impregnable argument.

The word is the direct antonym of ‘pregnable’ which -to state the obvious- means.

capable of being taken or won by force: a pregnable fortress.

open to attack; assailable: a pregnable argument.

Both words come from the old French word “prenable” equivalent to “pren” or “prendre”  which in turn means to seize or take over.

Nurse Ratchet’s impregnability is an effect of her passive-aggressive attitude which in turn “forc[es] the trembling libido out into the open”. She will always win because people lose their control faculties around her (while she, astutely, keeps them) and therefore end up being the irrational ones.

As Nurse Ratchet is the dominant feminine figure of the novel, the portrayal of women in the book almost falls entirely on her descriptions. In a medical (more likely vernacular medicine) context ‘impregnable’ means not being able to get pregnant. This connotation of the word adds an interesting characteristic to the depiction of women in the book, precisely because it removes them from their foremost quality as women, which is being able to give birth. Therefore, women in the novel are depicted as sterile, hollow hearted, cold, passive-aggressive, creatures, ironically bearing enormous breasts, upholding their rule by the means of careful psychological scrutiny and manipulation on its inferiors. A woman sans everything that makes up a woman, but not androgynous because gender is important in order to have a generalization, a figure to hate. Same case applies with the black boys.

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest has been overly criticized for being sexist and racist, which is not far from the truth. But the novel’s  bigoted attitude is just a reflection of our own society which loves to have a specific target. It is not women or black people specifically the novel accuses, they could be perfectly replaced by Chinese and Martians. The point here is to criticize how entire categories are targeted, be them gender, nationality, race… The negative portrayal of women is not to be taken literally but rather as critique of the demonization and hasty generalizations society makes on people. 

Mommy, why is there fog on the TV?

Among the wide range of interpretations allowed by One Flew over Cuckoo’s Nest is to view the ward and its happenings as an extended metaphor for a political scenario, more specifically, United States politics. In the metaphorical context, the fog would represent media and mass manipulation phenomenon, meaning the attempt from authority to silence and distract the people from important matters by manipulating and censoring media. This is a phenomenon better explained by the work of the American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, historian, political critic, and activist Noam Chomsky. Chomsky’s study of mass and media manipulation directly relates with several passages of the book dealing with the topic of fog. In fact, it brings light upon them by further explaining the causes and effects of “fog” in our society.

The roles of the characters in the book’s political metaphor are clear: Nurse Ratchet exemplifies the various figures of oppressive authority, while the patients are its subjects, the people, or as Chomsky ironically refers to them, “the bewildered herd”. In page 112, Chief Bromden talks about the presence of fog in a situation different than the ward.

“Whenever intelligence figured there might be a bombing attack, or if the generals had something secret they wanted to pull-out if sight, hid so good that even the spies on the base couldn’t see what went on- they fogged the field.”

 It’s clear that fog’s first and foremost purpose is to hide whatever facts the authority feels shouldn’t be known by the common. In the next quote, Chomsky explains how media (or fog) is used by the controlling powers to fulfill the previously mentioned purposes:

"Remember that the media have two basic functions. One is to indoctrinate the elites, to make sure they have the right ideas and know how to serve power. In fact, typically the elites are the most indoctrinated segment of a society, because they are the ones who are exposed to the most propaganda and actually take part in the decision-making process. For them you have the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and so on. But there’s also a mass media, whose main function is just to get rid of the rest of the population—to marginalize and eliminate them, so they don’t interfere with decision-making. And the press that’s designed for that purpose isn’t the New York Times and the Washington Post, it’s sitcoms on television, and the National Enquirer, and sex and violence, and babies with three heads, and football, all that kind of stuff."

When surrounded by fog, the Chief feels lost, yet “safe from the enemy, but … awfully alone.”(pg.113)  which is exactly the effect fog aims for. As Chomsky puts it “The purpose of those media is just to dull people's brains.”

In his study “10 Strategies of Manipulation Bythe Media” Chomsky further explains the methods of media manipulation that in his own words

“turn them [the public] into passive obedient consumers who don’t try to get out of their way, [and] pay attention basically to what [are] called the superficial things of life like fashionable consumption; trap [the public] into consumerism, isolate them from one another, atomized, control their beliefs.”

One of the methods for numbing patients in the ward is Electro Shock Therapy. For Chief Bromden it gets increasingly difficult to remove himself from “the bewildered herd” as the fog permanently surrounds him and he receives more EST treatment.

“…they kept making the fog thicker and thicker, and it seemed to me that, no matter how hard I tried, two or three times a month I found myself with that door opening in front of me to the acid smell of sparks and ozone. In spite of all I could do, it was getting tough to keep from getting lost.” (pg.114)  

The fog, ultimately, and sadly, works -“Being lost isn’t so bad.”- (pg.114) Chomsky says,

“I think there's a good reason why the propaganda system works that way. It recognizes that the public will not support the actual policies. Therefore, it's important to prevent any knowledge or understanding of them.”

After all, and like we saw in the ward, authority can and will convince people of their own stupidity, of their incapability of understanding important subjects. Just as many of the patients are “volunteers” and therefore convinced of their own insanity, we see a great majority of the public, unaware of their position in society, ignoring and delegating to others what directly concerns them.

History has showed us that there will always come a McMurphy, and in account, the fog will get thicker, but choosing to get lost in it is a matter of personal determinacy. In the words of Noam Chomsky:   

            

“The issue is ... whether we want to live in a free society or whether we want to live under what amounts to a form of self-imposed totalitarianism, with the bewildered herd marginalized, directed elsewhere, terrified, screaming patriotic slogans, fearing for their lives and admiring with awe the leader who saved them from destruction, while the educated masses goose-step on command and repeat the slogans they're supposed to repeat and the society deteriorates at home. We end up serving as a mercenary enforcer state, hoping that others are going to pay us to smash up the world. Those are the choices That's the choice that you have to face. The answer to those questions is very much in the hands of people like you and me.”

Picturesque Speech

Overall, “Waiting for Godot” could be considered an easy read because of its short and rhythmic dialogues. If one doesn’t stop to consider much what the characters are actually saying, then the play could be well read in one seating. However, there is one part of the play that disturbs that sort of easiness. Lucky’s dense and incoherent speech completely breaks the mood of the reader, and it is possible that all the mumbling and non-sense distract the reader. I personally skimmed through the long speech finding it unbearable to read. It’s another story when it is performed.

In the 2001 movie of “Waiting for Godot” the prolific interpretation of Lucky’s speech helps the viewer understand further the meaning of the words. In addition to that, shot sizes and camera angles aid the viewer and deepen the meaning of the dialogue.

The scene starts with an extreme wide shot, showing us all the character aligned and a good view of the background. At this moment, it is important to focus on the initial reaction of all the characters to Lucky’s action, hence the use of extreme wide shot and frontal, eye-level camera angles.

As Lucky starts his speech, the shot shrinks to wide-shot focusing more on the character. The somewhat low camera angle denotes superiority to the now thoughtful Lucky. His pose is very virtuous making him look magnanimous. The curious Vladimir and Estragon approach cautiously. The tree is visible in the shot. 

As Lucky’s speech progresses, the camera shot subtly zooms on Lucky. He is the center of attention; the medium-shot size forces the viewer to focus solely on Lucky, his facial expressions, and dialogue. At this, all distractions have been removed and we are to fully submit to Lucky’s incoherent rhetoric.  

The speech continues and it progressively becomes more passionate and incoherent. The camera now zooms out to show the reaction of Pozzo, who clearly finds his servant’s speech unbearable. The camera slowly moves circularly to show the panoramic, perhaps in tune with Lucky’s now circular speech.

The shot shrinks again now showing a desperate Vladimir attempting to stop Lucky. Lucky is higher in altitude, and Vladimir lower, showing he is helpless and frustrated while the solemn Lucky continues. The tree is always visible.

Lucky’s speech finally ends when Vladimir removes his hat, and he collapses and falls face down to the ground. The extreme wide shot works to show how everyone reacts to the event. Lucky is diminished, while Vladimir is higher than all and holding the hat. The road’s curve is imminent and gives off an impression of eternity, because we don’t see the road going anywhere.