There have always been what are called 'outsiders' in the world's society. Not only do these people appear in the physical world, but they appear in the literary world as well. These societal discards are products of trauma of some kind, disillusionment, indifference for popular opinion, or even under-development. The following novels are but a sliver of what the magnitude of counter-culture and outcasts have on this world.
The main characters in all of the idealistic novels including Catcher In
The Rye; Indian Country; Number Forty-Four, The Mysterious Stranger; "Bartleby
the Scrivener", On The Road, and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest; are
distanced people who truly do not know where they are going in life. Kerouac
was an outsider, as were J. D. Salinger, Samuel Clemens, Ken Kesey, and Herman
Melville.
Kerouac, Salinger, and Kesey all fall into the category of postmodern-neo-romanticism;
even though they are in a different point in time than their predecessors,
Clemens and Melville, they still can be compared to each other. Kerouac associated
himself with Melville's "Bartleby The Scrivener" when being assessed
for the military during World War II. Bartleby had coined the phrase of near-silent
protest "I would prefer not to :"
I was telling them that 'I would prefer not to' go to war, that I was some
kind of nut. But man, that was not it, that was not it at all. What I was
really saying to them was that 'I would prefer not to' suffer the indignity
of having some little monster with a couple of bars on his shoulders clog
up my beautiful brain with sawdust from his ugly brain… they wouldn't
listen. They kept trying to catch me off guard to prove to themselves that
I was a slacker.
Melville also related himself to his own work "Bartleby The Scrivener",
in that his refusals are based upon free will, and just like Bartleby, he
is exceedingly willful: he refuses to follow along with every other author
of the time period. He refuses to copy other people's style-or, he "would
prefer not to' copy others. Just like Bartleby, he made this choice because
he lived in a time period where every author was copying the style of another
author, until stories became redundant.
Kerouac also related himself to Melville's work Moby Dick, by calling himself
the "checker on the Beat jargon [when he] talks as if [he] were Captain
Ahab stomping around on the deck of the Pequod…[But he's] been walking
the deck of the Pequod all [his] life-But seen no White Whale-just a few flounders
." Then of course, logic would give him a peg leg made of flounder bone.
* * *
Samuel Clemens has written a novel of humour and nihilism called Number Forty-Four,
The Mysterious Stranger. In its tone, Number Forty-Four, The Mysterious Stranger
is light, mocking, even happy just when its message is most nasty. Talk about
romantic… its so Melville of him to do that. Melville had a style that
would include the attitude of 'insult to injury,' like how the narrator in
Bartleby almost sympathizes with Bartleby when he is canning him. Clemens's
vision of human life in Number Forty-Four, The Mysterious Stranger was just
as demonic, nihilistic, and enigmatic as "Bartleby The Scrivener"
was. This is one of the stories of evil and emptiness at the core of life;
and both Melville and Clemens "eclipsed in their depth and range of vision
on the same theme ."
The scene of Number Forty-Four, The Mysterious Stranger was Austria in 1590;
the town was "Jackassville." In it was a character named Father
Adolph, who was held in more respect because "he had absolutely no fear
of the Devil. " He mocked him in fact, and actually met him face to face
and defied him. The Devil-is a handsome boy with a "winning face "
and pleasant voice. After winning over a few children, he later introduces
himself as Satan, nephew and the namesake of the man not responsible for the
Fall. This boy can read minds and with this theme of satanic enchantment-Satan
also answers the unasked questions of the children.
"Have I seen him? Millions of times. From the time that I was a little
child, a thousand years old I was his second favorite among the nursery angels
of our blood and lineage… from that time until the Fall, eight thousand
years, measured as you count time ."
But which "Him" is Clemens referring to, even while he is careful
not to use the customary capitalization-God or the Devil?
Satan first shows himself as a little boy, with psychic abilities. Additionally,
even though he has no experience with the job he has, he can read the minds
of his colleagues to find out exactly what it is he has to do to succeed.
Satan also comes in many other forms, including: a nineteenth-century black
slave, a magician, and a Barnum & Bailey Circus clown, all of which have
significance to the story's meaning and plot line of being an outsider. A
body of a young boy was an easy medium to sucker a family to take him into
a home and feed him. From there, the black slave form was used to earn the
master's approval by making himself look like a fool (nineteenth-century culture
was quite unlike twenty-first century culture). The magician was another character
in Number Forty-Four, The Mysterious Stranger, who was far from mystical;
however whenever something fantastic happened, he took all the credit. So
whenever Satan would pull a miraculous feat, it would amplify the magician's
status. Satan took a liking to this situation. Satan started to morph himself
into the magician and pull pranks and wreak havoc and cause trouble, for only
a reason such as to "increase his reputation," so that the real
magician could pick up the aftermath. The form of the clown was only to cheer
up his friends in times of need by making himself the bamboozler.
Clemens has brought the literary world an entire situation that proves the
Devil brings out the worst in people. Satan duped the town's High Priest into
burning his own mother at the stake. Satan makes duplicates of all the workers
at the printing shop to increase the sinful sloth factor-except that the duplicates
only helped labor for a little while, until the Originals started realizing
their own personalities, and discovering what everyone else already knew about
them-that the Originals were stupid for giving others a job that they would
refuse to do themselves; an ironic lesson in ethics.
Self-realization can be either a benefit or a hazard; in this case, if it
were a benefit it would not make much of a story. The duplicate of August,
the narrator, falls in love with August's dream girl. Only that August's dream
girl does not want August, she wants his duplicate; Satan's only suggestion
to August is to kill them both. His justification? Satan rationalizes murder
by saying that they are going to die sooner or later, therefore the question
of when is inconsequential.
The children are horrified at juvenile Satan as he squeezes the life out of
a man-while proclaiming that "We cannot do wrong; neither have we any
disposition to do it, for we do not know what it is." Now that is absurd.
In the story, another priest Father Peter is helped by Satan, at the childrens'
urging, and in Satan's most satanic manner, by discovering eleven hundred
ducats which will rescue him from his worldly troubles-and lead to his further
persecution. Gold and money, is used as a symbol of human disaster by Clemens,
as an end to human society.
With Father Peter's mysterious "redemption" comes the fact that
the whole village is gossiping about the mysterious money; and the town Astrologer
emerges in the story as Father Peter's persecutor by declaring the money was
stolen from him, and Peter is subsequently put in jail-to be executed.
Clemens had many years of darkness in his life, moreover he might have thought
that the glorious triumphs of Huck Finn were a dream, illusions if you will,
compared to the hellish black nightmare of reality. Clemens, like Melville,
questioned all the false semblances of success, wealth, love and even his
own happiness. Clemens has created his own humorous character ironically named
Satan-as the Great Prankster; and laughter as the only salvation for mess
of man's anti-directional life-this was Clemens's final decision. And that
is why Number Forty-Four, The Mysterious Stranger and ""Bartleby
The Scrivener"" are so very special among the great stories of America
which deal with the problem of human existence.
* * *
Jack Kerouac's novel On The Road shows us that life itself, is a journey through
self-realization, in a pattern interrupted only by under the influence hallucinatory
"trips" in places, with people one would never see again, prostitutes
and land sharks-who recede into ghosts of alcoholic memory. Here in this book
with its simple title, by a young man with a barely pronounceable name, is
the World, the one I had lost when my youth slipped out of my fingers and
into my illness. On The Road was the narrative of someone I imagined as not
much older than myself, and so much like myself that-he was me! It was not
like through reading this book that for a brief moment, I became him, I already
was him, and out engaging my place in this vanished World, experiencing ever
new cities, new guilt-free sexual adventures, the pleasures of wonderful friends,
jazz and art.
But there was something else about the ironically named narrator, Sal Paradise,
which made me identify with him, something in the sad feeling of the narrative
that has finally made its foundation. That speaker was everlastingly in hunt
for American genuineness, and it was always somewhere else. He, like myself,
came from a place that was distressing. For him as for me, the road to America
suggested an inspirational journey toward an indescribable reality that was
somehow our lost inheritance. Therefore we must speed up, the book seemed
to stay in a mysterious key, to find ourselves no more genuine, and no more
at home. Because of its youthful enthusiasm, and my own, I was not so aware
then of that sorry subtext in On The Road.
When I had finished the novel I started showing it to the friends I had made
on my own American voyage through life, the underachievers and inept teen-age
car thieves and spineless younger brothers of successful people. And it turned
out that they too came from hopelessly fake places, they too "dreamed
of an infinity of willing, large hearted, well-read women and parties and
big-city action, a world of jazz and girls and weed in which they would be
unwontedly at home and welcome ." They were alcoholics too, and they
were looking for the road and they also loved Kerouac's novel. Therefore,
what dreams of high times to come we projected on that endless chain of hateful,
gorgeous sunsets on the high planes of New Mexico, thanks to Kerouac.
Kerouac could not have known, as the author who was then 35, that in his never-ending
blueprint, we had already come to the Road, and were already on it, that many
of us would come to look back on our ramblings as the most of freedom and
authenticity we would ever know.
This novel is told through the ultimate outsider's point of view-the near
vagrant. Only an Okie could even compare to the societal rejection that Paradise/Kerouac
had experienced.
On The Road is a unique American novel for its time. It has come to symbolize
for many an entire generation of disaffected young Americans . One can focus
on numerous issues when addressing the novel, but the two primary reasons
which make the book uniquely American are its frantic Romantic search for
the great American hero (and ecstasy in general), and Kerouac's "Spontaneous
Prose" method of writing.
On The Road is an autobiographical first-person book written in 1951 and based
on Kerouac's experiences of the late 1940's. At the time, America was undergoing
drastic changes and the sense of sterility brought on by a mechanized Cold
War era society resulted in a feeling of existential dislocation for many.
Numerous Americans began to experience a sense of purposelessness and the
air was rife with disillusionment. Kerouac was one of these restless postwar
young people and he longed for...something. A new kind of hero? A return to
a Romantic tradition and simpler days? When Kerouac met Neal Cassady, he knew
Cassady was the kind of hero he had been seeking. Eventually, as Robert Hipkiss
notes, "Kerouac began to see Neal as an 'archetypal American Man' "…and,
when Kerouac created Dean Moriarty out of Neal, "he created a new symbol
of flaming American youth, the American hero of the Beat Generation ."
Indeed, as Kerouac argues, "Dean Moriarty is the most singular hero of
the road America has ever had. "
Mixing the individualism of the freeborn American with that great present-day
extension of this freedom, the motorcar, he extends himself literally across
the continent in all directions .
Dean and Kerouac's alter ego, Sal, represent the characterization of the Rebel.
And while representative of the rebellious James Dean-like figures of literature,
they are perhaps even more representative of '50s youth culture in their endless
searches. For what? The quest is left open for debate. Tim Hunt suggests that
Kerouac could be searching for several things in On The Road: a father (or
brother) figure, the chance to regain lost joy, or a type of revelation .
Hipkiss contends that Neal's speeding dashes down the road are as much flights
of panic, the fear of never making it, the fear of losing all the life he
ever had, as they are quests for ecstasy, which is itself an escape from fear
and the frustrations of desire .
But Kerouac's search for a type of identity in an era of increasing conformity
sparked rebelliousness On The Road-style and encouraged many to, as Tim Leary
would put it several years later, "tune in, turn on, and drop out."
As Kerouac's searches for the great American hero and ecstasy in general made
On The Road unique, so too does his style of writing. Kerouac's "search
for ecstasy naturally led to the exploration of jazz," an art form purely
American, and both this search and this form of music manifested itself in
Kerouac's method of "Spontaneous Prose." Jazz, and the jazz artist
heroes, are born rebels to Kerouac, and they live the kind of frantic orgiastic
experience (through their music as well as their lifestyles) sought by Dean
and Sal: The be hatted tenorman was blowing at the peak of a wonderfully satisfactory
free idea, a rising and falling riff that went from 'EE-yah!' to a crazier
'EE-de-lee-yah!' and lasted along to the rolling crash of butt-scarred drums
hammered by a big brutal Negro… Uproars of music and the tenorman had
it and everybody knew he had it… They were all urging that tenorman to
hold it and keep it with cries and wild eyes, and he was raising himself from
a crouch and going down again with his horn, looping it up in a clear cry
above the fervor.
Kerouac writes spontaneously, without stopping and with little concern for
syntax and grammar as though he were a Miles Davis-inspired solo man . We
see a similar method in current Expressivist based composition, popularized
by Peter Elbow, but the inspiration differs slightly. While Elbow advocates
utilizing certain exorcises such as writing without stopping for specific
time periods, Kerouac actually adheres to a type of structure. He bases this
structure, as Lee Bartlett observes, on "jazz and bop, in the sense of
a, say, tenorman drawing a breath, and blowing a phrase on his saxophone,
till he runs out of breath, and when he does, his sentence, his statement's
been made . " In his jazz-inspired style, Kerouac's "sentences are
long, constantly shifting between narrative and observation, moving freely
from the present to the past then back again. " Bartlett goes further:
because Kerouac makes no attempt to separate himself from
his narrator, his association becomes truly spontaneous in
the Wordsworthian sense, a rushing forth of a mind caught,
like the jazzman's, between surface "melody" and archaic
resonance, between world as fact and world as meaning.
Another element of Kerouac's style which makes On The Road a truly unique
American novel is Kerouac's use of conversational American prose. Before this
novel, several authors had attempted to write in the voice of "the common
man," but quite often were unable to pull it off successfully because
their view of the common man usually seemed limited to the common educated
man (Wadsworth, Coleridge, perhaps Salinger, et cetera) . With Kerouac's use
of his method of "Spontaneous Prose" and its natural association
with jazz, he and the Beats, as Hipkiss states, "carried forward the
hipster interest in jazz and the bop refusal to verbalize in standard, coherent
form. ". New expressions invoked terms such as "digging," "blowing,"
"cat," and many others. The language in the novel was truly the
language of the new American it represented.
On The Road is certainly the unique American novel of the twentieth century,
but does it fit in fully with '50s era issues and elements? The novel, like
many post-World War II novels, is confessional and written in first person.
The characters in the novel are representative of one of the three major type
of post-War character: The Rebel. The novel is representative of an entire
generation in its search for...something: a hero maybe, perhaps a national
identity.
On The Road has been compared favorably with several other important American
works, most notably One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, The Catcher In The Rye,
Number Forty-Four, The Mysterious Stranger, and "Bartleby The Scrivener."
Is the book ultimately a view, or representation a generation? Criticisms
abound, one of which holds that Sal, the narrator, is too (romantically) naive
. In fact, as Hunt points out, "a careful examination of On The Road
shows that Kerouac deliberately exploits the naiveness of his narrator ",
utilizing it for thematic purposes. Hipkiss deconstructs his own criticism
of the novel that in Dean and Sal's very passion for "digging" jazz,
the road, and the ecstasy of life, they ironically "do not really successfully
'dig' the life they so briefly come in contact with On The Road, "when
he admits, "except for their unwillingness to take the time to experience
what they pass through, they do have a predisposition to 'dig,' in that their
attitude toward life is very accepting... ." In their very efforts to
diminish the literary value of On The Road, the critics resort to complaining
at the honor of its uniqueness.
The most important element, however, which makes On The Road an integral member
of the '50s era law and culture, is the fact that the conflict and issues
within the novel are not resolved with the ending. This could be viewed by
some as being critical, but as George Dardess writes, "the absence of
resolution need not deny fictional closure. It can substitute closure of a
different kind, one appropriate to the narrated experience" . The characters
in the novel are representative of living people and, as such, they are further
representative of the very real fact that life is one continuous state of
fluctuating, fluid attainment. An open ending is appropriate for On The Road
because it is an expression of the reality of uncertainty, which pervaded
society in the 1950's and which Kerouac himself suffered from. Dardess notes
that the book begins with Sal's constructions of boundaries in the first chapter
"it ends with his discarding them.... The book moves from hierarchy to
openness, from the limitation of possibilities to their expansion ."
Kerouac's hero is more of an anti-hero than anything. He is "quintessentially
the lost, the wasted soul, the victim ... of the American dream as it has
been realized by the abundant, comfortable, middle class ." However,
Kerouac's On The Road rates as a strongly affirmative novel. Sal's decision
to make no choice is indicative, as Dardess elaborates, of the idea that:
the test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas
in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One
should...be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to
make them otherwise... On The Road is an example of such a test's being taken
-- and passed…
* * *
J.D. Salinger's Catcher In The Rye is a somewhat sober approach to self-realization.
Holden Caulfield, Salinger's main character, is a boy searching for himself
in a journey through Manhattan. This story is told through a flashback from
a mental institution, where Holden Caulfield had experienced a mental breakdown.
It is not Holden Caulfield who should be examined for a sickness of the mind,
but the world in which he sojourned and found himself an alien. Holden Caulfield
is "a compound of urban intelligence, juvenile contempt, and immaturity
."
Not even sophisticated thinking will easily link Salinger to Kerouac in expressing
the suspicion that Holden Caulfield's lack of meaningful rebellion is indicative
of a decline in American authenticity. In either the higher level of Salinger
or the Bohemian level of Kerouac, both Catcher In The Rye and On The Road,
we find that the main characters are bailed out before fully engaging their
own experience and the consequences.
In the novels One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Kesey and The Catcher In
The Rye by Salinger, the main characters come from different backgrounds but
both are quite similar. Both are very watchful in the way they handle everyday
life. Both Caulfield and McMurphy also have constant conflicts with the Establishment.
One way they differ is the way they see women. Their actions also proves to
be different in terms of passive/aggressive behavior. The differences and
similarities give another dimension to the understanding of the novels.
Both Caulfield and McMurphy are very critical of to their surroundings. Caulfield
is constantly observing his surroundings with an utmost disdain; "[He]
saw something that drove [him] crazy. Somebody'd written 'Fuck you' on the
wall. . . [He] kept wanting to kill whoever'd written it " (Catcher p.201).
Caulfield focuses a significant amount of time on the way other people behave
in life; he asks Sally if she'd like to go out with him to a matinee. She
responds to him "…Grand." That one gets him really annoyed:
"Grand. If there's one word I hate, it's grand. It's so phony ."
McMurphy watches his surroundings closely when he encounters Miss Ratched,
the ward nurse. He openly defies her rule at every corner when she is in plain
sight. He knows that "there is not a man among [them] that doesn't think
it, that doesn't feel the way [McMurphy] does about her. . . feel it down
in their scared soul ." His discontent with her turns into a sort of
a game: testing her limits until "She comes apart at those neat little
seams. "
Both Caulfield and McMurphy have problems with the Establishment. Caulfield
goes against the custom of everyone going to the school football games, he
doesn't go to the big game. "The game with Saxon Hall was supposed to
be a very big deal around Pencey. It was the last game of the year, and you
were supposed to commit suicide if old Pencey didn't win ." Caulfield
also goes against the grain by failing four out of five subjects. Caulfield
talks to his history teacher before he leaves; the teacher who "flunked
[him] because [he] knew absolutely nothing. "
McMurphy has problems with Miss Ratched, who represents the Establishment.
He sees "her sitting in the center of this web of wires like a watchful
robot. " He doesn't realize that the length of time he spends on the
ward is completely up to the woman he has been trying to malign. "[Miss
Ratched has] weeks, or months, or even years if need be. Keep in mind that
Mr. McMurphy is committed. The length of time he spends in [that] hospital
is entirely up to [them] ". His humor never ceases, and neither does
her harshness. For work assignments, she gives him latrine duty. "He
went to her office and knocked on that window of hers and personally thanked
her for the honor, and told her he'd think of her every time he swabbed out
a urinal. "
Caulfield and McMurphy both have an issue with women. Caulfield sees women
as the innocent victims. He seats himself in the hotel lobby and sits in on
the crowd and traffic. He realizes that every one of these girls that he sees,
that at some point something bad will happen to them. He really takes an interest
in them though: "Girls sitting and standing around waiting for their
dates to show up. Girls with their legs crossed, girls with their legs not
crossed . . .In a way it was sort of depressing, too, because you kept wondering
what would happen to all of them, I mean. You figured most of them would marry
dopey guys… "
McMurphy sees two types of women in his trip through the asylum: the Bitch
(Ratched), and the Slut (Candy: McMurphy's stripper friend). There is a crude
representation of women in the story. Every man on that ward was, in one way
or another, put there because of a woman. McMurphy had been put there because
of a fifteen year old girl whom had claimed had been seventeen, whom he had
sexual relations with. Harding: McMurphy's acute friend, had been put there
because his wife thought he was going nuts. Sefelt: another Acute, wont take
his Dilantin: anti-seizure medicine because "He worries about what he
looks like and how women think he's ugly… " Billy "buh-buh"
Bibbit's mother is an old friend of Ratcheds. Billy's mom won't let him have
relations with other women and is too overprotective of her kid. "Billy
was talking about looking for a wife and going to college someday. His mother
tickled him with the fluff and laughed at such foolishness. " Women are
the ultimate emasculators; they will not let men be men.
Both Caulfield and McMurphy have their different ways of behaving towards
others. Caulfield is more on the passive side. He discusses how if he had
ever found the person who stole his coat and gloves "right away then,
the guy would know for sure [he] was not going to take a sock at him. "
McMurphy openly admits that he "Likes to fight and fuh-pardon [the] ladies…
overzealous with [his] sexual relations. " When Miss Ratched finally
corners him with a patients death and tries to blame it on him, he leaps from
his chair and into action. Lunging for her chest and throat, he tears her
uniform off her chest. "He gave a cry… a sound of cornered-animal
fear and hate and surrender and defiance ."
Caulfield and McMurphy are very much alike, but very different too. They think
the same, hold the Establishment in the same view, they both at one point
end up in an asylum, and that's about it. Mostly, they are different from
one another. They hold women in a different view, their behavior towards others
is different, and their personality is like North and South. Caulfield keeps
things bottled inside while McMurphy is the classic "Loudmouthed fighting
Irishman." They take separate paths in their end: Caulfield finally comes
home after his adventure and somehow gets put in a mental institution. So
maybe where Caulfield's adventure ends, McMurphy's begins. However, McMurphy
loses his battle with Miss Ratched `receives an ill-fated lobotomy, and dies.
* * *
Philip Caputo wrote his book Indian Country, to show the abuses that Vietnam
had ingrained into the minds of common infantry soldiers, and what happened
when they came home, and how a part of those soldiers never came home from
that war. Philip Caputo relates to Kerouac, portraying a part of himself as
a soldier in his works. Few men love America as both Kerouac and Philip Caputo;
and in this love there is no room for criticism.
Both Christian Starkmann and Holden Caulfield are veterans to societal rejection.
Each of these men are strangers in a society that does not want them. In their
journeys of experience and strength, both tackle the loss of brotherhood,
although in different ways. Resentment is moreover a presiding issue for both
Starkmann and Caulfield: in that each one has the susceptibility to bile against
his surrounding characters.
Starkmann and Caulfield both contend with being strangers. Starkmann is illustrated
as being the big man in a little city, and so the only man in town he "does
not have to look up to, [LaChance], " Starkmann feels the need to start
a fight with him. In contrast, Caulfield is the little man in the Big Apple.
Caulfield escapes his confinements of prep school life, to New York City,
to a place where he knows just about nobody. However, in comparison to Starkmann
both of them turn in on themselves to get away from their strictured environment.
Holden is hated for leaving his fencing team's equipment on the subway, whereas
Starkmann is hated in his small town for starting bar fights and pulling guns
on people for no apparent reason.
Both men experience the loss of brotherhood in one-way or another. Starkmann,
after a long and lonesome time without the comfort of his dead war buddies,
begins to imagine them just as they were before they were killed, and carries
on conversations with them in just the same way as when they were alive…because
they were the embodiments of the only brotherhood he ever knew. Caulfield
on the other hand loses his brother, Allie at a very young age… and in
turn goes about smashing car windows and permanently damages his hand, out
of the emotions of loss for his brother. Both Starkmann and Caulfield have
very deep feelings for their loved ones, but ignore them to mourn over the
ones the have lost.
Resentment against their compatriots are Starkmann's and Caulfield's downfall.
Both have issues against women in particular. Caulfield is rejected by his
close friend Jane after he whispers in her ear. Starkmann, on the extra, is
put off by June, but this is because June is pissed off because she is trapped
by Starkmann's own hatred for people in general, and her own ignorance of
his veteranship from Vietnam. Equally, Starkmann and Caulfield have qualms
against family related women above all. Starkmann's wife, June makes an intervention
on him after Starkmann goes off the deep end and nearly blows up the house,
and in turn sends him to a mental institution. In turn Caulfield's sister,
Phoebe, makes an intervention on him after Caulfield leaves school early and
tours New York City without telling anyone. Caulfield neglects to specify
at the end of his narrative why he, like Starkmann, went to a mental institution,
but it is clear that it was Phoebe's intercession that sent him there. Both
Starkmann and Caulfield have their justified pangs against others, but not
with their own side of the street immaculate, obviously.
Both McMurphy and Starkmann deal with being rejects of society. In their confinements
from society, they deal with seering authority, and the repercussions are
similar; both create havoc in their own lives as a result of their own sanity;
and both lead organized aggressive maneuvers against their authorities.
Simultaneously, McMurphy and Starkmann deal with omnipotent influences. McMurphy
transacts with Miss Ratched, or Big Nurse, thus representing the establishment.
McMurphy openly defies Big Nurse at every turn, as it can be plainly seen,
a characters personality directly reflects ones past history. McMurphy is
a gambler, a card player-its what he does, its what he lives for-and so, it
would only make sense for him to test his table limit of the Ward by pushing
the boundaries of what is accessible. Starkmann too does what he knows to
deal with his authorities. Starkmann is a war veteran, he knows how to kill
people, and be overly wary until he thinks himself into insanity; that is
just how his world works-so once again it only seems right when Starkmann
goes to bars fully strapped with so many concealed weapons that would make
Rambo jealous, and start drunken fights with his bosses and powers that be
and try to kill them.
Both McMurphy and Starkmann create disaster and disorder in their own lives.
McMurphy's antics around the ward give him a name of the ward troublemaker,
kind of like how every village needs an idiot. Unfortunately, he neglects
to realize how much power Big Nurse really has, especially when "[Miss
Ratched has] weeks, or months, or even years if need be. Keep in mind that
Mr. McMurphy is committed. The length of time he spends in [that] hospital
is entirely up to [her]. " However, Starkmann does not exhibit the kind
of hilarity that McMurphy does. Indeed, it is sure genius on the part of Caputo
to name this character "Christian Stark Man" because that is exactly
what he is-a socially conflicted ex-preacher whom has a bleak, desolate, barren,
austere and the like, ambiance to him. Starkmann has a horrid drinking problem,
once again genius on the part of Caputo to have his character chug "Early
Times" because that is exactly what Starkmann fears, is the past to join
up with him. And while he under the influence of his Early Times, he experiences
Vietnam Flashbacks, and tries to kill his bosses while on the job -which makes
a lot of sense, in terms of unethical logic.
* * *
All of these novels speak about either counter-culture, or common outcasts.
Some of them come to grow from it, and some die from it. But these novels
have so much to offer the public, so much that it is a tragedy that some of
these books are now out of print. The learning experience from these books
is incredible.
I can relate my own experience to each and every one of the main characters
in the preceding novels-especially Holden Caulfield. Holden is not an unpopular
person. He decides to isolate himself by declaring that everyone beside himself
is a "phony". He wants to be close to someone, but he does not know
how to communicate with people. Even though he thinks most people are "phonies"
or "slobs," he still looks for and finds something good about everyone.
Holden openly admits that he is "The most terrific liar you ever saw
in your life. " Holden also eludes Spencer when he asks Holden about
what he would do in his place and was faced with failing a kid. Holden just
responds with what Spencer wants to hear, which is basically lying to him.
His means of lying is somewhat peculiar; he lies when he could just as easily
tell the truth. "If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine even,
and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera.
" Though it is clear he is a liar, the bulk of his lies are dished out
for the purpose of not hurting peoples' feelings. When Holden is talking to
Spencer about life being a game Spencer says "Life is a game, boy. Life
is a game that one plays according to the rules... " Holden then lies
to him and says "yes sir, I know it is. " Had he said no, then god
knows how Spencer would have reacted. Holden hopes to avoid confrontation.
I am the worst liar in the history of the world. Though unlike Holden, when
I lie you know I'm lying because there is a ten-mile-wide smirk on my face
that I can't get rid of. My reasons for lying are very similar to Holden's:
I don't like confrontation either. When Holden hopes to elude Spencer by telling
him he's going to the gym, I get shivers of recognition of situations with
my mom. When my mom says something like "did you do your homework,"
or "did you bring in the groceries" if I hadn't, I'll say that I
had, so I could avoid an imagined redhot fireball being blown on me. Then
I run downstairs or run up to the car and do it like I am supposed to…unlike
Holden.
Holden is immature. He talks about a boy at Pencey named Edgar Marsalla, and
how he lit off a huge fart in the middle of a speech. "Edgar Marsalla,
laid this terrific fart. It was a very crude thing to do, in the chapel and
all, but it was also quite amusing. " This is a classic sign of immaturity.
Holden then tries to get Marsalla to fart again when he's getting in trouble.
That is something an eight-year-old will do, not a sixteen-year-old (unless
of course he goes to Skyline). His immaturity could be a sign of insecurity:
his subconscious trying to cover fears and hates with a false personality.
Like Holden, I also am immature. Sometimes it's uncontrollable: somebody will
say something that any normal human being would find stupid and childish…
I think it's funny as hell. However, other times I can be serious, though
it is a rare occasion. When it does happen, I am usually at home with nobody
is around. But what's weird is that I was more mature last year than I am
this year. That feels strange. Immaturity sucks, nobody likes an immature
dork: they are sent out of the social twist as an outcast. Holden is an outcast,
and look where he ends up-the nut house.
I aspire to be more like Starkmann. This man was pulled from the edge of the
cliffs of darkness to find help and love more than he would ever know. My
recent life has been a lot about outside help. Hard living constitutes hard
standing, meaning that for such a long time of putting on such a rigid face,
behind it was a struggling soul-desperate for relief. AA helps those failed
seekers; the natural street freaks that have nowhere else to go but up…
and for Indian Country I am thankful, because it is a book for which anyone
of my standing can directly relate.
Bibliography
Aldridge, John I. The Society of Three Novels, In search of Heresy. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1956. Maintains quarrelsome for the reader, but debates the suffering
of Holden Caulfield.
Baender, Paul. What is Man? And Other Philosophical Writings. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. An in depth look at the art of Twain, and his impact on society.
Bartlett, Lee, ed. The Beats: Essays in Criticism. Jefferson, C.: McFarland, 1981.
Bartlett, Lee. "The Diomycin Vision of Kerouac." Bartlett 115-26.
Caputo, Philip. Indian Country. New York: HarperCollins Publishing Press, 1987.
Challis, Chris. Quest for Kerouac. London: Faber & Faber, 1984. Account of university professor, who has written several academic theses on Kerouac, in an effort to evoke again the atmosphere of the United States in the 1950s.
Charters, Ann, ed. The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America. Detroit: Gale, 1984. The basic indispensable guide to the Beat Generation.
Dardess, George. "The Delicate Dynamics of Friendship: Reconsideration of Kerouac's On The Road."
French, Warren G., J.D. Salinger. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1963. The complete analysis of Salinger's life and work with secondary criticism.
Geismar, Maxwell. Mark Twain: An American Prophet. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970. A tribute to Mark Twain, stresses Twain's role as a social prophet, and documents it with timely reverence.
Hipkiss, Robert A. Jack Kerouac: Prophet of The New Romanticism. Lawrence Regents Press of Kansas, 1976. Compares Kerouac to J.D. Salinger, convincing book that calls attention to a second romantic period in America.
Hunt, Tim. Kerouac's Crooked Road: Development of a Fiction. Hamden, Conn.; Archon Books, 1981. Critical study on Kerouac's writings, this book concentrates on the development of the work that became On The Road. Traces the relationship also of the book to the American tradition of Melville and Mark Twain.
Jarvis, Charles E. Visions Of Kerouac. Lowell, Mass.: Ithaca Press, 1973. An account by a close friend of Kerouac's home town of Lowell, Massachusetts. A somewhat naive account of Kerouac's life and works, but invaluable for its "from the horse's mouth" information.
Kerouac, Jack. On The Road. New York: Penguin Press, 1951. The Huckleberry Finn of The Twentieth Century
Nyren, Dorothy. A Library Of Literary Criticism. New York: Ungar, 1961. Contains excerpts from nine reviews and criticisms of and from Salinger.
Salinger, J.D.. The Catcher In The Rye. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1951.
SL 2001 Copyright.
