Sexuality as a Fleeting Connection Between Alison and Bruce

 Sexuality as a Fleeting Connection Between Alison and Bruce

In Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Alison explicitly contrasts her own sexuality to that of her father. While she and Bruce didn’t have a close relationship during his lifetime, they have one crucial trait in common, their sexuality, which causes a confusing connection that Alison has to navigate after her father’s death. Alison describes her relationship with her father Bruce as distant, recalling feeling like nothing but a piece of furniture or an extra set of hands for his constant renovations on their house. Throughout her childhood, she illustrates her father as uncaring and cold, never feeling comfortable enough for any physical affection or open enough to confide in. She illustrates her family as completely separate, each in their own spaces, working on their own projects, only coming together when absolutely necessary; she describes that “the more gratification we found in our own geniuses, the more isolated we grew” (Bechdel 134). Despite the fact that Alison felt so disconnected to her father during her childhood, once she became a young adult, their relationship took a slight turn. 

Once Bruce realizes that they have similar interests in literature, he takes it as an opportunity to connect with her––granted, this connection is slightly odd, with him playing more of a teacher figure than a father figure, but still, a connection nonetheless––and begins to share and discuss his favorite books with her. Bruce ends up using his new role as a provider of literature for Alison as a way to reach out to her; when he gives her Collette’s autobiography to read, she wonders if this choice was intentional. She later asks Bruce if he “knew what [he was] doing” by having her read this autobiography, to which he responds “I didn’t really. It was just a guess. I guess there was some kind of… identification” (Bechdel 220). By bringing up this book, Alison sparks one of the most honest conversations we see her have with Bruce about his life. Literature plays a big role in connecting Alison and Burce, and their connection through literature drives most of their connection through sexuality.  

The moment that Alison is told about her Father’s affairs with men, it is initially a shock, but later leads her to be more open with her father. When Helen tells Alison about her father’s sexuality, it is in reaction to Alison’s own coming out, directly linking the two; if Alison had never come out, she might not have ever been told about her father’s sexuality during his lifetime. Despite the fact that his sexuality is such a shame in his life, Bruce is surprisingly open with Alison about his sexuality, and it ends up bringing the two together in an unexpected way. When Alison comes out to her parents, she is doing so with the assumption that they wouldn’t understand, because they’ve never had to go through what she’s going through, but in reality, her father has gone through something very similar. While Alison is juggling with the idea of living as an out gay person––with her mother advising against it––Bruce admits that “There’ve been a few times I thought I might have preferred to take a stand” (Bechdel 211). Bruce clearly handled the issue of his sexuality very differently than Alison, but he has a better sense of what she’s going through than what Alison had originally assumed, and is able to give advice and opinions based on his own lived experiences. Alison had always felt like she had nothing to connect with her father about, and had felt like her father wanted nothing to do with her life or her interests, but when she comes out to him, it opens a door for a connection that she never knew existed. The biggest shame in Bruce’s life becomes one of the core things that connects him to his daughter. 

Throughout the novel, Alison contrasts the way she handled her sexuality with the way her father did, and explicitly compares them to each other. She compares old pictures of her father to pictures of her at the same age, wondering if he was feeling the same way that she was, wondering how similar their experiences were. This is a very confusing thing for Alison to contemplate, wondering how her father’s experiences compared to her own, and having to look back on his life without him, wondering what the truth is behind each picture he took and each letter he wrote. Alison and Bruce have more in common than Alison knew for a majority of her lifetime, but the trait that connects them is one that Bruce spent his entire life trying to hide, leaving Alison little to nothing to go off of while trying to retrospectively search for a connection between them. Bruce’s story is one of a million “what if’s,” and with Bruce dead, Alison has no choice but to guess what her father’s story was, and what it could have been. After a lifetime of trying to find a connection with her father, once she finally (and very unexpectedly) finds one, it turns out to be his deepest shame, and something he would never openly live out.

The Perpetual Threat of The Bell Jar

 The Perpetual Threat of The Bell Jar

After Esther has received all of her shock treatments, and has been essentially “cured” of her depression, she describes the metaphorical bell jar that had been trapping her finally being lifted. She describes a feeling of breathing fresh air and being able to see the world without the distorted lens of the bell jar. At the end of the book, the bell jar is still lifted, and Esther is finally able to begin imagining her future again, starting where she left off after the mental breakdown she describes as a “six month lapse” (Plath 236). Esther seems to be planning to go back to business as usual; she will go back to school, continue her streak of academic achievement, and reach the accomplishments she’s been working for her whole life. There is one line, though, that sticks out through all of this seemingly hopeful description of the future that has now been opened back up to her. Esther isn’t actually sure about her future, and how realistic all of these plans are for her. As she describes it, “How did I know that someday––at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere––the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?” (Plath 241). This sentence leaves the reader sharing some of Esther’s doubts about the viability of her future. It establishes the fact that the bell jar isn’t gone, and it won’t ever be, but it is only “[hanging], suspended, a few feet above [her] head” (Plath 214). The way that Sylvia Plath chooses to describe the bell jar leaves room for speculation on whether or not someone can ever truly be free of the distortions of the bell jar. 

This theme of the perpetually looming bell jar is consistent with Plath’s poetry, most notably her poem Lady Lazarus. In Lady Lazarus, Plath details her descent back into depression and suicidal ideation: “I am only thirty. / And like a cat I have nine times to die. / What a trash / To annihilate each decade” (Plath). Plath describes her depression as repeating every ten years, and writes Lady Lazarus as if she is conscious of its return. She asserts that “Dying / Is an art, like everything else. / I do it exceptionally well,” and that, “Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air.” (Plath). In Lady Lazarus, Plath describes the same phenomenon that Esther was afraid of. The bell jar, for Plath, never really went away, and as it looms over her, she can recognize it and predict the effect it will have on her. Tragically, she assumes that this cycle will continue, and she will survive this next attempt, just like she survived her last one. Even if you can predict the bell jar falling, you can’t predict the effect it will have on you, and the things you will do while it is over you. 

Plath leaves the ending of The Bell Jar up to the reader’s interpretation; while Esther is doing better after her treatment, she still describes the bell jar looming over her and the memories of the things she’s gone through staying with her forever. In her fiction as well as her poetry, Plath describes the bell jar and its distortions as something that can never truly be cured, and will continue to loom over the people affected by it.

Holden Caulfield, Master of Deflection

 Holden Caulfield, Master of Deflection

The most memorable characteristic about Holden Caulfield is that he complains about almost everything. He is the character that created the stereotype of “teenage angst,” simply because of the sheer amount of time he spends detailing his elaborate complaints with almost every person, social setting, or societal norm that he comes across. What struck me about the things that he complains about, though, is how he makes sure to carefully avoid all of the truly traumatic things that he has experienced. The thing that I found most shocking about Holden’s account of waking up to Mr. Antolini patting his head is that he admits that this kind of “perverty” thing has happened to him “about twenty times since [he] was a kid” (Sallinger 193). This isn’t necessarily a surprising admission, considering that Holden has been in all-boys prep schools for his entire education, but what is surprising is that he has never once brought it up before as one of the many things he finds institutionally messed up about the prep school environment. He instead chooses to focus on how little authority these teachers have over him and how often they try to give him lectures, making a joke of the teachers to avoid talking about the actual bad things they've done. 

This isn’t the only time that Holden glosses over something truly traumatic to talk about something less important. He briefly mentions James Castle, the boy at Elkton Hills that, while getting beat up by other students, chose to jump out of the window to his own death instead of taking back his comment that another student was “conceited” (Sallinger 170). Holden mentions this surprisingly late in the book, considering the fact that he has spent the last 170 pages talking about how terribly mean boys at these prep schools can be. While Holden mentions the more petty things that these boys have done, like their secret fraternities that don’t admit boys who are “too pimply,” and their general mistreatment of women, he chooses to wait to mention the time that this bullying directly led to a boy’s death. He doesn’t describe this event as tragic or traumatic, though, instead choosing to see it as heroic and noble, setting James Castle as some sort of martyr for a good cause. In reality, James Castle’s story is not heroic at all, it’s just tragic. There is nothing heroic about being beat up so badly that the best option is to fall to your own death; but Holden doesn’t see it that way. 

Holden can’t grasp the gravity of some of his experiences. He doesn’t acknowledge that predatory older teachers are dangerous, not just another annoying thing that he “can’t stand.” He doesn’t choose to see James Castle as a tragic suicide at the hands of the abusive and dangerous nature of the all-boys schools he attends, choosing instead to view him as an iconic hero who stuck to his morals until his final breaths. Holden’s grievances with his world are not trivial; he might present them that way, his main problem with the system that he has grown up in being the amount of “phonies” that he has surrounded himself with, but the problems that he attempts to gloss over should actually be taken much more seriously. He might present his issues with boys his age as being annoyed with their phony antics and their elitist attitudes, but under that is a valid criticism that being a person who strays away from this norm can be very dangerous, and, as we’ve seen with Holden and James Castle, choosing not to conform to these norms can lead you to be a target for extreme violence at the hands of your peers. He might act like his only grievance with teachers is that they try too hard to demonstrate their authority over you, but under this is a reality that an alarming amount of adults in Holden’s life seem to have used their authority to take advantage of him. Holden actively glosses over the more real and traumatic experiences he has had with the institutions he is a part of, choosing instead to focus on surface level complaints with the way people act and dress, chalking it all up to a general sense of “phoniness” emanating from the people surrounding him.

On Sethe's Notion of Live vs. Death

On Sethe's Notion of Life vs. Death

One of the themes that I found the most interesting in Beloved was Sethe’s notion that dying or going crazy can be a more favorable fate than staying alive. While Sethe is escaping slavery––separated from her children, with no idea where her husband is, and six months pregnant with another one of her children––she almost gives up. She almost lays there and lets herself die, but “the thought of herself stretched out dead while the little antelope lived on--an hour? a day? a day and a night?––in her lifeless body grieved her so” and made her keep going despite what her body wanted so badly to do––give up (Morrison 37-38). During her escape from slavery, the only things keeping Sethe alive are her children; the thought of Denver, the little antelope in her stomach, dying with her, or her three kids who went ahead of her not having access to her milk. 

When Paul D. tells Sethe about Halle’s experience being forced to watch her assault and how he was last seen smearing butter all over his face,  She laments about how “other people went crazy, why couldn't she? Other people's brains stopped, turned around and went on to something new, which is what must have happened to Halle” (Morrison 83). She begins to fantasize about herself and her husband going crazy together,  and “how sweet that would have been: the two of them back by the milk shed, squatting by the churn, smashing cold, lumpy butter into their faces with not a care in the world” (Morrison 83-84). Yet again, Sethe is viewing an objectively terrible fate as more desirable than the one that she is cursed to––staying alive and sane. To Sethe, the life that she is forced to live––first her life as a slave, and later her life as a woman shunned by her community and viewed as a monster––is harder to bear than the thought of death. 

Sethe’s reaction to seeing Schoolteacher’s hat in her yard is a hard one to understand. Sethe is in a position that no person today could possibly relate to, and she is forced to make an impossible decision.The fact that Sethe’s reaction is impossible to understand also makes it impossible to judge or condone, but it can be more easily understood when considering her notions about death in comparison to life as a slave, especially after Schoolteacher’s arrival to Sweethome. Sethe has concluded time and time again that death is an easier fate than life as a slave under Schoolteacher, and with that logic, it becomes easier to understand why she views her actions as justified and necessary. Sethe holds her position that she did the safest thing for her children, and while that might seem like an oxymoronic position to hold––one that argues that dying is “safer” than staying alive––it stays completely consistent with what Sethe has wished for herself in the past. If it wasn’t for her children, Sethe would very likely have let herself die while she was escaping slavery. In that moment dying seemed like a much easier and less painful decision than staying alive, and when faced with that decision once more–– to stay alive and become a slave or die and never live through slavery again––she comes to the conclusion that death will be a “safer” option for her children, a conclusion that she wholeheartedly believes is correct, because when faced with that same decision during her own lifetime, she has come to the realization that in some situations dying is easier and safer than staying alive. 

The Stranger: A Critique Of The Judicial System

 The Stranger: A Critique Of The Judicial System

By Ruby Mitchell

Meursault did not deserve to die. This is the mindset that I was in as I finished reading The Stranger, and I believe that this was Camus’ intention. Throughout the novel, Meursault is portrayed as a morally questionable character, often choosing to withhold judgment in times when judgment is completely necessary, and refusing to form solid opinions on people that the average person would disapprove of. Despite this moral ambiguity, Meursault is not a completely bad person, and Camus doesn’t try to depict him as such. Before the murder he commits, nothing about Meursault’s moral ambiguity ever actually strays into the territory of him being morally bad or corrupt in any way, he is only ever portrayed as neutral. The prosecutor in Meursault’s murder trial takes complete advantage of this moral ambiguity, and uses it to paint Meursault as a morally-vapid monster who is a threat to our society. The court focuses more on Meursault’s morality than his crime, choosing to talk more about the treatment of his mom and his response to her death than the events of the murder that he committed. To the court, the actual crime he committed is insignificant. The victim’s sister is never brought up to testify against Meursault––even though she logically should be one of the main witnesses for the prosecution’s case––and the man who Meursault offered a cigarette to at his mother’s vigil is brought up instead. Clearly this case is not about the crime itself, not about providing justice for the victim, it is really Meursault’s morality that is on trial. 

The real crime that Meursault commits that leads to his death is his inability to play the court’s game. The mistake that Meursault makes in court is being too honest: he doesn’t have a motive, he doesn’t admit to feeling remorse, and he attempts to blame the murder on the sun. All of these explanations are true, but none of them fit what he is expected to say. As readers, we get a better view into Meursault’s thoughts and reasonings, and with that better perspective we get a more nuanced outlook on his crime and his overall moral character. While his reaction to his mom’s death might seem cold, the reader gets the added context of his weird, slightly rocky relationship with her. Later in the novel, we even get a concrete explanation of the way he went about understanding his mothers death: “Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her” (Camus 122). In this passage, we get our first glimpse of Meursault actually engaging with his mother’s death with any emotion other than indifference, and the emotion we see is one of gratitude. He feels that she must have been ready to die, and that is a good, beautiful thing. He doesn’t lack any care for his mother’s death, he just has a less negative view of death than the average person, which hinders his ability to grieve in the way that he’s expected to. The court doesn’t paint him this way, though. Instead, the court paints Meursault as an unloving son who cares more about smoking cigarettes and meeting new women than “properly” mourning his mother’s death. The court fabricates a bastardization of Meursault’s relationship with his mom, successfully painting him as a monster in the eyes of the jury. 

The court also chooses to focus on Meursault’s lack of remorse for having committed the murder more than the fact that he committed it in the first place. This portrayal of Meursault is more true to his seemingly emotionless character, though the court still manages to change it to fit into their narrative that he is some sort of monster. Meursault himself agrees that he feels no remorse for this murder, acknowledging that “I couldn't help admitting that he was right. I didn't feel much remorse for what I'd done,” and later going on to clarify that “I had never been able to truly feel remorse for anything” (Camus 100). While this lack of remorse, or lack of care, for the crime that he committed does seem heartless, it’s not very hard to believe when considering the rest of Meursault’s character. Meursault might not be able to feel much remorse, but we don’t get solid evidence that he is able to feel any other type of emotion either. Meursault is apathetic when his girlfriend confesses her love to him and asks to marry him, reacts very calmly to his arrest and questioning, and doesn’t even seem to have any discernible reaction to being told that he was to be executed. While Meursault’s lack of remorse actually stems from an inability to truly feel any emotion, the court uses it to paint him as a careless criminal who kills without thinking twice about it, and uses that characterization to justify his execution. 

Meursault is sentenced to be publicly killed “in the name of the French people,” which cements the fact that his trial was unjust and not properly executed (Camus 107). Meursault committed no crime against “the French people.” If anything, he committed a crime against the Arab people, but this colonial court would never have viewed that as a heinous enough crime to deserve the death penalty. The only crime that Meursault committed against the French people was mystifying them with his constant honesty and refusal to play into the games of the court. Meursault confused the court, and the prosecutor was able to take that confusion and spin it into terror and hatred, prompting the jury to come to the conclusion that Meursault deserved to die. Camus spends the entire novel establishing Meursault’s point of view and the rationale behind all of his actions. He then places us in a court full of people who are uninterested in understanding Meursault’s point of view or rationale, with this lack of understanding eventually leading to his death. Camus uses The Stranger to parody the unjust and superficial nature of the colonial Algerian judicial system, painting it as a system that disregards the testimony of the victim’s family, makes harsh and life-ending judgments based on evidence that fails to paint the whole picture, and punishes a man more for his social shortcomings than the crime that he committed. 

Works Cited

Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Translated by Matthew Ward, Vintage International, 1989.

What Makes Jake So Special?

 What Makes Jake So Special?

By Ruby Mitchell

Brett’s relationship with Jake, in contrast to all of her other relationships with men, is by far the most driven by love and respect. Brett shows an immense amount of love towards Jake, and clearly respects him more than she does any other man she knows. Brett can’t even seem to stand her own fiancée, and she is constantly coming to Jake to complain about her various love interests, lamenting how annoying and “badly behaved” they are. Jake is the man Brett always comes back to at the end of the day, the only man who doesn’t seem to annoy her, the only man she ever truly confesses she loves (while she says that she loves Romero, this love is very short lived once they go to Madrid together, and we never really see her tell Mike that she loves him, only that he is “her sort of thing”), but coincidentally, Jake is also the only man that she can never be with. Brett’s go-to seems to be sleeping with a man and discarding him, usually leaving him obsessed with her, which she finds unbearable. Considering this trajectory and Bretts inability to stay loyal to a man, especially after she’s slept with him, the natural assumption would be that she would want nothing to do with Jake. Jake has nothing to offer Brett––he is literally unable to sleep with her, and they both admit that because of that they would never be able to be together. So why does Brett always come back to Jake? He has nothing to offer her that the other men in her life don’t also have, so what makes him so special to her? I argue that the only thing that sets Jake aside from the other men in Brett’s life, and the only thing that makes her so enamored with him, is the fact that she can’t sleep with him. Coincidentally, this is the one thing keeping them from ever truly being together, but the fact that they can never truly be together is what keeps Brett coming back to Jake.

Jake has a superiority complex about himself compared to the men that Brett sleeps with. He views himself as more secure than the rest of her partners, who have all been ruined by her dismissive attitudes towards them. Though Jake prefers to view himself as above all of Brett’s other partners, he willingly admits that he would be “as big of an ass as Cohn,” responding to Brett’s assertion that he “wouldn’t behave badly” (Hemingway 185). Though Brett might assume that Jake would be much more “well behaved” than the rest of her partners, Jake understands that if he were in the position of her other partners, he would embarrass himself just as much. Whether Jake would openly admit it or not, his injury has served as a blessing in disguise for his relationship with Brett. If it weren’t for Jake’s injury, he and Brett would likely have slept together, Brett would have treated him the same as she treats every other man she sleeps with, and Jake would have become obsessed with her, and she would have left him. Jake’s inability to ever have a real relationship with Brett serves as a safety net for the heartbreak of her being with other people. Jake can’t possibly be hurt by her promiscuity because it can’t affect him; he doesn’t have a reason to care, because there was never a possibility of them being together in the first place. Because of this, Jake will never have the opportunity to make an ass of himself over Brett’s love life, and Brett will go on assuming that he is perfect, “well behaved,” and will never embarrass himself over losing his chance to be with her, because that chance never existed for him in the first place. 

Works Cited

Hemingway, Ernest, The Sun Also Rises, New York: Scribner, 2006.

Mourning Clarissa Parry

Mourning Clarissa Parry

By Ruby Mitchell

When Clarissa Dalloway refers to herself as “being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa anymore; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway,” it sets the tone for the slightly melancholic, deeply sentimental thoughts she will be having throughout the rest of the novel (Woolf 10). In this passage, Clarissa is mourning the loss of her individual identity, and contemplating the person who she has become: a person who’s life and identity exist in relation to her husband. She seems unsatisfied or unhappy in some way with this identity she has to live with every day–one that she doesn’t necessarily identify with. The question of Clarissa’s happiness is an underlying theme throughout Mrs. Dalloway, and is even brought up explicitly by Peter Walsh, when he directly asks her: “are you happy, Clarissa?” (Woolf 46). This very emotionally charged conversation shades the rest of this novel with the question: is Clarissa Dalloway happy? As Peter questions Clarissa’s happiness, he begins to expand by specifically asking her whether her husband, Richard, is making her happy. I find it interesting that the question of Clarissa Dalloway’s happiness was always intertwined with her love interests, with the assumption that she isn’t satisfied with her current marriage. The question is always about who she would have been happiest marrying, or whether she has made the right choice about who to marry, but I believe the root of Clarissa’s unhappiness and dissatisfaction is not her marriage, but rather the loss of the person she could have become had she stayed single. 

For someone who thinks back to their past as much as Clarissa does, it's hard not to get caught up on what could have been. During her time at Burton, Clarissa describes herself staying up late, reading philosophy, and discussing ways that she could change the world. Contrasting this to her current day self, who “knew nothing; no language; no history; [and] scarcely read a book now, except memoirs in bed,” it's clear that Clarissa feels like she wasted the potential she had to be some sort of intellectual (Woolf 8). She struggles with feeling out of place in the world of her husband’s job in politics, feeling like she can’t add anything of substance to the conversations, and getting slightly insecure and offended when she isn’t invited to events with him, assuming she is being excluded because people don’t find her interesting enough. Clarissa is constantly trying to justify her current life and get away from the “perfect housewife” narrative that Peter Walsh placed on her, and she feels insecure about having lived up to his expectations of what she would become. 

Peter Walsh openly claims that Clarissa has wasted her potential by marrying Richard, and I believe Clarissa subconsciously agrees with him. But I don’t think the solution to this problem would be to marry Peter; she would not be happier with him, she would just feel trapped playing a different character, an extension of him rather than Richard. The root of Clarissa’s dissatisfaction with her life is not a problem with who she married, but rather a problem with getting married in general. Once she got married to Richard, her life and reputation became partly dictated by him, and this would hold true for a marriage to Peter. The day Clarissa Parry got married, and became Clarissa Dalloway, she lost a little piece of herself. This is the thing she finds so comforting about looking back on her past, and this is the thing she misses about her life before marriage. She does not wish she married someone different, and she’s not necessarily dissatisfied with her current marriage, but being a married woman, whose identity is intertwined with her husband’s, she has to mourn the loss of the person she was, and the person she could have become had she stayed Clarissa Parry.

Works Cited

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Harcourt, 2005.