Milkman's Leg in Song of Solomon

 In Song of Solomon, one of the most striking and important physical descriptions of Milkman is that one of his legs is shorter than the other. Milkman makes the discovery about himself at the age of 14 and it quickly becomes one of his most important characteristics. Shortly before the first section of the novel concludes, Milkman (now an adult), looks in the mirror following a verbal beatdown from his sister and notices that his legs are now the same length. 

I think that Milkman’s abnormal condition with his leg is a symbol for his immaturity and lack of connection to the black community. When we first hear about Milkman’s leg situation, the novel notes that the abnormality made him resonate deeply with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Milkman’s connection with FDR continues throughout the novel, such as a scene where he raises FDR as an example of an admirable white man while in a conversation with Guitar about the Seven Days. Throughout the first part of the novel, Milkman lives his life as a manchild living his life with no purpose. When issues of race, such as Emmett Till’s story, are brought up at the barbershop, he feels no connection to the topic or concern. 

Milkman noticing that his legs are finally the same length at the end of the first section signifies his transition away from the immaturity which has characterized him so far, and a connection to the black community which he has avoided for so long in the novel. In the second section, Milkman finally learns to appreciate his family’s personal history and develops a deeper understanding for his parents, a stark contrast to the first section of the novel in which his disconnect from his father and his abnormal leg causes him to identify himself with white public figures. 

The Stranger as a Response to Kierkegaard

 The Stranger is a novel filled with existentialist themes informed by the personal philosophy of its author, Albert Camus. I’ve done a lot of reading into existentialism in the past (not actual books mostly just random Wikipedia and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles), and in many ways I think The Stranger can be read as Albert Camus’s personal response to existentialist philosophers before him. 

One of the first examples that came to mind when I thought about existentialism was Soren Kierkegaard, who is often considered the first (and arguably most important) existentialist philosopher. Though Meursault’s tirade against the chaplain and irate rejection of salvation establishes a dichotomy in the novel between religion and existentialism, it’s important to note that existentialism and a belief in God are not in any way incompatible. Kierkegaard wrote extensively about Christianity and emphasized the role of individuality and existentialism within faith. 

Thinking a lot about how Kierkegaard’s view of God differed from Camus’s, I believe that The Stranger’s characterization of Meursault is a direct critique and response to  Kierkegaard’s philosophy. Kierkegaard is most famous for his magnum opus Fear and Trembling, which focuses on how faith and ethics influenced Abraham’s decision to sacrifice his son Isaac. Forgive me as I poorly attempt to summarize it in this blog post.  

One of Kierkegaard’s most influential ideas in Fear and Trembling was his division of life into three stages: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Within The Stranger, these three stages manifest in various ways through the central characters:

1. “The aesthetic is the realm of sensory experience and pleasures. The aesthetic life is defined by pleasures, and to live the aesthetic life to the fullest one must seek to maximize those pleasure.” To me, the aesthetic stage is most obviously characterized by Meursault. Throughout the novel, Meursault fails to develop a sense of morality, and instead lives his life obsessed with obtaining sensory pleasures. In the first part of the novel, Meursault holds neither personal goals nor a substantive meaning to his life; instead his existence is characterized by a need to experience pleasure. Meursault does not develop any conventional emotional goals, and instead fixates on sensory experiences like smoking cigarettes, eating food, admiring the beauty of the sky, or having sex. 

2. “The ethical life serves the purpose of allowing diverse people to coexist in harmony and causes individuals to act for the good of society. The ethical person considers the effect his or her actions will have on others and gives more weight to promoting social welfare than to achieving personal gain.” The ethical life in The Stranger is embodied by the regular citizens of Algiers. But more than anything else, the jury at Meursault’s trial embodies the idea of ethical life to the extreme. The testimony at Meursault’s trial focuses not on the effect that Meursault’s crime had on the murder, but how his existence provided a threat to the societal structure upholding the French colonies. The trial hyperfixates not on ways Meursault is harmful, but ways in which he is different: not crying at his mother’s death, showing emotional callousness by smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee at her funeral, and defying standards by starting a sexual relationship with Marie in the days following are all ways in which Meursault’s refusal to abide by society’s conventions threatens the ideas held by adherents to the ethical life. 

3. “Kierkegaard considers the religious life to be the highest plane of existence… In the religious life, one is ruled by total faith in God. One can never be truly free, and this causes boredom, anxiety, and despair. True faith doesn’t lead to freedom, but it relieves the psychological effects of human existence.” The religious life is embodied by the chaplain near the end of the novel, who believes that a belief in God will save Meursault’s life and give his existence meaning. The chaplain could be seen as living the most fulfilled life out of all characters in The Stranger according to Kierkegaard’s framework.

Another one of the most important ideas in Fear and Trembling is the Knight of Infinite Resignation. In the book, Abraham is ascribed the title for his seemingly absurd sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham sacrifices his son and thus sacrifices what is most important to him out of an undying personal faith to God. There is obviously much more Kierkegaard says about this, but for the sake of trying not to make an already long blog post longer, this idea stood out to me a lot when thinking about Meursault. First of all, why is Meursault not a Knight of Infinite Resignation? Meursault’s crime on the beach is completely absurd just like Abraham’s actions in sacrificing his son, both are completed with a jarringly little amount of hesitation, and both Meursault and Abraham are ready to sacrifice what is most valuable to them (in Meursault's case, his life). The possible parallels between Meursault and the archetypal Knight of Infinite Resignation give us a further look into how Camus’s philosophy differs from Kierkegaard’s: Abraham, the embodiment of the religious stage, commits his sacrifice out of a devotion to God, while Meursault, the embodiment of the aesthetic, shoots the Arab out of an unquestioned devotion to his impulses. These similarities indirectly critique the blind faith that existentialist philosophers before Camus placed in God by comparing Meursault’s crime (one which seems to be pretty stupid) to Abraham’s sacrifice on God’s command. To an atheist, the claim that God instructed you to commit a crime could appear just as absurd and meaningless as Meursault’s ramblings about the sun appear to readers of The Stranger.

What's Jake's problem with Robert Cohn?

     When I first read the opening chapter of The Sun Also Rises, I was quite a bit confused. The first chapter of the novel is seemingly detached from the rest of the novel. When reading the first chapter in isolation, one would assume that the rest of the novel would revolve around Robert Cohn. Despite this oddity, I love the way the novel starts out: rather than give us a traditional introduction to each character and their background, Jake Barnes's biting tirade against Robert Cohn reveals a great deal about his status as a narrator and the setting of the novel.

From the very start of the novel, Jake makes note of the fact that Robert Cohn was Jewish, and subsequently uses that fact to belittle and insult him. Barnes insists that Cohn picked up boxing to deal with his feelings of “inferiority and shyness” as a Jew. He goes on to diminish Cohn’s achievements as a boxer, criticize his ambitions as a writer, and extensively mock his previous relationships. As the perfect foil to Jake, Robert Cohn’s descriptions highlight Jake’s weaknesses and insecurities. This could explain the fixation that Jake (and other characters) have on Cohn being Jewish. While Robert is able to channel his insecurities over his background into a successful boxing career, Jake has no such positive outlet. Similarly, Jake is deeply disturbed and angered by various minorities throughout The Sun Also Rises. From the very first chapters of the novel, we see Jake disgusted at the gay men that Lady Brett Ashley is surrounded by. Later on, Jake is deeply upset at the black drummer that Brett seems to be friends with. Jake parallels his own struggles with his injury which rendered him impotent (which damages his relationship with Brett) to the minority status of these men, which subsequently angers him: while these minorities are experiencing relative acceptance in the progressive setting of Paris, he is completely unable to overcome his injury: he feels estranged from society due to the fact that he can’t have sex and has to internalize this disability instead of seeking support from others.

Why does Jake mock Cohn’s boxing career so much? Jake is an avid follower of bullfighting, a grandiose display of masculinity, and is infatuated by Pedro Romero due to his prowess. Despite this, he feels nothing but contempt towards Robert’s boxing career even though Cohn is a champion in his own right. The two sports revolve around combat and have something admirable in their brutality. Jake reaches the cynical conclusion that Cohn’s boxing career is motivated by a deep insecurity over his identity, yet makes none of these assumptions about Pedro Romero: he just sees him as a stud. The key difference between Jake’s admiration for bullfighting and his seeming contempt for boxing can be explained by his jealousy of Robert. 

The novel makes repeated references to the fact that Robert wasn’t part of the war: fundamentally, I think Robert Cohn serves as a cruel reminder to what Jake could have been if he hadn’t been in the war. His hopes of romance and heroism are likely similar to what Jake experienced before the war, before his injury distorted his amorous ambitions into the meaningless hedonism which dominates his life in Paris. This could also be why Robert is the only sober character in the novel: while it might make him appear somewhat weird to the reader at first, he is the only character that doesn’t rely on alcohol as an escape from his wartime trauma. Similarly, Robert’s lack of humor is due to the fact that he doesn’t need to use irony as a coping mechanism in the way that other characters do. 

While Robert still has his shortcomings as a character (he seems a little bit annoying) the cruel depiction that he gets in the first chapter seems to be mostly informed by Jake’s own cynicism, jealousy, and self-doubt.

The Prime Minister in Mrs. Dalloway

     In a book filled with complex characters, memorable sequences, and elaborate relationships, one of my favorite aspects of Mrs. Dalloway is Virginia Woolf’s subtle and ironic criticisms of English society following World War I. All the discussions we had about Woolf satirizing the ineffective therapy during this period and expectations of masculinity stuck with me, but one of the more underrated symbols in the novel to me is the Prime Minister.

In Mrs. Dalloway, all the hype surrounding the Prime Minister contrasted with his ultimately disappointing presence seems to be a broader metaphor for a lack of hope for the English government and nation following World War I. 

Throughout the book, the ordinary citizens of London assign an almost godlike status to the Prime Minister. When a car in the street first backfires while Clarissa is buying flowers, onlookers excitedly speculate that the person in the vehicle is the “Queen, Prince, or Prime Minister” (Woolf 10). The fact that even being in proximity with the Prime Minister is exhilarating for so many regular people is a commentary on how much hope such a large political figure instills in the English people, still recovering from the atrocities of the first World War. The most prominent example of this is Septimus Smith. Smith, irreversibly damaged by his experiences in the war and his PTSD, holds speaking to the Prime Minister as his ultimate goal. Septimus, a man who feels alienated and misunderstood everyday thinks that espousing his personal philosophy to the Prime Minister will salvage his life: “‘To the Prime Minister,’ the voices which rustled above his head replied. The supreme secret must be told to the Cabinet; first that trees are alive; next there is no crime; next love, universal love” (Woolf 48). 

The novel’s portions about Septimus’s goal of speaking to the prime minister serve as cruel irony in critique of how ineffective politicians truly are. When we finally meet the Prime Minister at Clarissa’s party near the end of the novel, he is nothing close to the grandiose figure that the English people hope that he is: “He looked so ordinary. You might have stood him behind a counter and bought biscuits—poor chap, all rigged up in gold lace” (Woolf 123).  Furthermore, the servants in Clarissa’s house are neither optimistic nor mesmerized by the Prime Minister in the way we see other residents of London. This could perhaps be due to their experience with politicians, such as Richard Dalloway and Hugh Whitbread, and a decisive understanding of how ineffectual these men really are. There is an extremely sad contrast between Septimus’s views of the Prime Minister, and how the Prime Minister truly is. This juxtaposition is a way in which Virginia Woolf criticizes multiple aspects of the world around her: blind faith that the English people placed in politicians following the war, and the ineffective conservatism that failed to provide solutions for veterans like Septimus Smith. Further, the timid appearance and demeanor of the Prime Minister could serve as a metaphor for England’s wounded national identity following the brutality of the first World War. Through shedding light on the reality of English life, Virginia Woolf could be insisting that the only path of recovery for England after the war would come not from politicians, but the people themselves. 

Free Will in The Mezzanine

  In The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker, among the most memorable sections is the end of the novel in which Howie reads Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. Almost immediately after picking up the book, Howie is horrified at the Stoic philosophy present within it, specifically its references to life as “trivial” and “transient.” Like we discussed in class, I think a lot of this makes sense due to how The Mezzanine focuses on minute details of various technologies, and tangents that are probably meaningless in the grand scheme of things. When thinking further about the tenets of Stoicism not included in the initial quote that shocks Howie, I think many more of them are unaligned with Howie’s worldview and lifestyle.

     One of the central principles of Stoicism that came to my mind when thinking about The Mezzanine is the acceptance that many things are out of your control. The Stoic view that human life is bounded by the laws of nature and the Gods almost seems to directly contradict ideas of free will. When reading through The Mezzanine, Howie struck me as someone who absolutely wanted to be in control of his destiny. Throughout the novel, Howie continuously scrutinizes the smallest, least impactful of decisions that he makes in order to remind himself that he is in control of his life. The novel is set off by Howie’s decision to buy cookies and milk, a decision which he justifies in immense detail. Throughout the novel, Howie revels in a sort of childlike freedom that he is able to experience even through the smallest of actions. For example, on page 4 Howie extensively digresses about having one hand free at all times so he can slap “the top of a green mailmen-only mailbox” (Baker 4). Additionally, Howie’s obsession over different, unconventional methods of tying his shoes shows that he takes deep pleasure in doing completely standard things in his own way. 

Though it’s moreso a connection I made, I wouldn’t completely rule out the possibility that Howie has contemplated things like this. He clearly takes a deep interest in philosophy evidenced by the fact that he is reading Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations in the first place. One can also figure this out by the fact that he makes references to John Locke, Baruch Spinoza and Wittgenstein, or the fact that Immanuel Kant is included on the list of his most frequent thoughts per year (Baker 58). The idea that Howie has thought about free will, a common subject in the works of all of these philosophers, is pretty plausible to me. The way that Howie lives his life, obsessing over miniscule occurrences and treating the most pointless of decisions with the utmost importance implies to me that he would be threatened by Stoicism’s insistence that we aren’t completely free. It’s for the fascination over the most trifling choices that Howie has perhaps the most interesting, and liberating life philosophy I’ve ever encountered.