In Book X of the Republic, Plato states: “all poetical imitations are ruinous to the understanding of the hearers, and that the knowledge of their true nature is the only anidote to them.” Plato believed that imitation of sensible objects removed the poet, and the observer, from truth and reality by inspiring the emotions of pity and fear. Plato argued that philosophical knowledge is far superior that the mere imitative nature of art.

Plato begins his discussion with the notion that “things are made for our use in accordance with the idea…and no artificer makes the ideas themselves: how could he?” This person is a maker of appearances (painter) and particulars (carpenter) only, not reality, or universals. He continues by saying “that there is one who is the maker of all works of all other workmen”; this is God. The former of the three is the imitator of the true form created by the latter, and he is thrice removed from the idea; the truth. There is another dimension to this: the object imitated, let’s say in a painting, is an imitation of an appearance, not reality; therefore, the painter, or artist in general, is “a long way off the truth.”

No artist can know the depth and scope of everything (virtue/vice, divine shapes, etc.) because they are “creating” at such a level far removed from reality. Before imitation there must be knowledge: “a poet cannot compose well unless he knows his subject, and that he who has not this knowledge can never be a poet.” Mind should be the artist and the body the medium. This knowledge lies in universals — in the forms; therefore, an artist must have a knowledge of the universals before he/she can attempt to sow them into a particular. This leads to another distinction: true art is rational while partaking of intelligence, while pseudo art is an inaccurate, emotional distraction.

The true artist is concerned with realities, not imitations. Plato asks: “Do you suppose that if a person were able to make the original as well as the image, he would seriously devote himself to the image making branch?” The answer is obviously no. “Instead of being the author of encomiums, he [the artist] would prefer to be the theme of them…that would be the source of much greater honor and profit.” Homer is used as an example of an imitator who left behind no practical proof that he was in possession of the truth, just appearances only. He knew not how things were used or made; therefore, he was not in possession of truth.

Without the true knowledge of what it is the artist is imitating, he/she will also be unable to judge whether or not their imitation is ontologically good or bad; or, more importantly, morally good or bad. Plato expounds that poetry can even hurt the good by bringing forward emotions that would usually be suppressed by the rationality of the intellect. “Now can we be right in praising and admiring another [the tragic hero] who is doing that which any one of us would abominate and be ashamed of in his own person?” One who is properly “restrained by reason” is above deigning to the emotions of pity and fear. Plato feels that we must rise above these petty emotions or they will control our state.

While Plato acknowledges the brilliance of Homer, he vociferously denies him a place in the state unless “she [poetry] make a defense of herself…and show herself useful to States and to human life.” Plato concludes that the only acceptable poetry are “hymns to the gods and praises of famous men,” for all other poetry cannot be “regarded seriously as attaining to the truth.” Therefore, anyone who seeks the truth must not indulge in picayune, emotional poetry, but must reach for the true Idea of Beauty found at the end of the ladder.

I still have some work to do to this site, the HumX, and to Big Jelly, but I’m pretty pleased with my migrations. Drupal served me well for a long time, but WordPress seems to be much more advanced — at least for my purposes. Yes, WP has its quirks, but in the big picture, it is just a better platform. Besides, it seems to have many more professional designers working for it.

In The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov’s Satanic incarnation, Woland, takes on this role. At one point, he sounds very similar to Goethe’s Mephistopheles when he states: “Think, now: where would your good be if there were no evil, and what would the world look like without shadow?” (348). Similarly, Mephistopheles states — in answer to Faust’s furtive who are you? – “A humble part of that great power / Which always means evil, always does good” (ll. 1119-20). Evil becomes, then, an integral part of God’s universal design, perhaps put best by Goethe’s Lord himself:

There’s a great irony here: at the center of Christianity and how I’ve observed it working here in the States is a duty to abolish all evil. There seems to be an intolerance among many that cannot – will not — hear of anything but what they consider orthodox, like the respect that a president should be given, or the belief in values in the face of everything. Perhaps they are correct, but the fun part is seeing their reaction to the light. The light, in this case, is that which is uncomfortable, different, contrary. While there are those that suggest that the devil stand for negation — and in some sense, this must be true — but he also needs to be seen as a necessary component for allowing humanity to strive for excellence. The evil in this view, then, is laziness and apathy. I would also add complacency and self-righteousness.

The devil has a lot of work to do.

1. Birth Myth — magical, divine conception; born through and by unusual circumstances (like a virgin birth); exposed to nature (like Achilles dip in the Styx) or a conflict with nature.
2. Child Hero — urge to realize himself through useful exploits; demons, monsters, authority challenged.
3. Education — apprenticeship or preparation; hero’s withdrawal from society to discover his identity or potential (internal quest); sometimes there is a teacher or guide.
4. Trial and Quest — essence of life, immortality, home, etc.; suffering always accompanies the hero — usually the death of a friend or loved one
5. Death / Scapegoat — literal or metaphorical death; underworld experience and resurrection; often there is a dominant presence of a woman; promise of a new life; sacrifice of a king (Phoenix) who must avoid becoming a tyrant; positive and negative; the hero accepts the responsibility so that the individual members of the society do not have to.
6. Descent — to the underworld; returns to the earth for more education; rite of passage; night journey and retrieval of parts of the self; pilgrimage to see lost family.
7. Resurrection and Rebirth — apotheosis; a freedom, unity, and transcendence of humanity, time, and space; the hero loses himself to find himself.

Lord Rank, in his essay “The Myth of the Birth of the Hero,” states that many ancient cultures ostensibly share similar legends about the birth and education of their national heroes. This fact in itself does not seem too fascinating, but seeing that these civilized nations probably had no contact or sharing of cultural ideas, Lord Rank speculates on the reasons why these fledgling nations all have these stories. He suggests three likely explanations:

1. The existence of elemental ideas, or a Jungian-like collective unconsciousness on the scale of all of humanity in which humans share similar ideas at similar stages in their development. Therefore, they produce similar stories based on these elemental ideas.
2. The existence of an original community that developed in a favorable locality and eventually spread producing diverse social orders that kept the kernels of their foundational myths intact.
3. Migration and borrowing of stories developed by a particular civilization to others that adopt them as their own. These stories are passed through an oral tradition in commerce and traffic or through early literary influences.

While these theories may or may not be correct, Rank writes that none address the origin of the birth of the hero.

For in my heart and soul I know this well:
the day will come when sacred Troy must die, [. . .]
That is nothing, nothing beside your agony
when some brazen Argive hales you off in tears,
wrenching away your day of light and freedom!
–Hector to Andromache, the Iliad, VI.396-97, 405-07

Book VI of Homer’s Iliad shows the contention in the heart of Hector, Ilium’s champion, but also a husband and new father: he is torn between his responsibilities as a hero to his people and as a the head of the household. Like so many soldiers going off to battle today, Hector is a new father who must risk his life to maintain his people’s way of life. Hector knows that Troy is doomed, but he must do his duty as champion and prince, even though it means the enslavement of his wife and child. In Hector’s plight, we see what is perhaps the utmost position of humanity in war: to lose does not mean just the death of the hero, but his death precipitates the death of the society that he protects.

At least one characteristic of the hero in the Iliad is his resolve to meet fate bravely. Hector communicates this belief to Andromache, before returning to the battlefield:

Like Oedipus’ anagnoresis, Hector’s position is much the same: while we cannot avoid our fate, we can decide how we’ll meet it. Our actions are our responsibility, even though, as Achilles muses in Book IX, death will claim us all: “The same honor waits / for the coward and the brave. They both go down to Death” (IX.386-87). In fact, while Hector and Achilles both seem to be considering death — under the extreme circumstances of war, what else would one think about? — they both approach it differently.

Hector is a family man, but he is a champion first. Even though his status as the son of Priam and Hecuba is a factor, his pride affects his position, and stokes his responsibility to his people: “I would die of shame to face the men of Troy / and the Trojan women trailing their long robes / if I would shrink from battle now, a coward” (VI.389-91). Hector is concerned about his place — and his perceived place — as champion; he must not let his people down. He even admonishes his brother Paris for not doing his duty, for languishing in his room instead of fighting. Yet, in this resolve — a resolve that will be put to the test in Book XXII — Hector’s responsibility will also win him glory and renown.

Achilles, on the other hand, questions the validity of this position. Since breaking with Agamemnon and the rest of the Achaeans, Achilles has obviously had some time to think about life. In Book IX, Agamemnon’s forces have been beaten back nearly to the ships and an embassy of heros is sent to Achilles to attempt to win him back to the battle, while Achilles sulks by his ships. After being surrounded by death, Achilles considers whether or not he should accept his responsibility as a hero. After all, he has two choices:

Achilles has decided to choose the latter course; he is determined to set sail the next morning, having lost faith in the leadership and subsequently lost faith is his hero’s pride and glory. The champion of the Greeks even advises the others to flee, since defeat seems nigh (IX.507). It’s only after Patroclus’ death that Achilles is reminded of his duties to king and country, though he is motivated by that rage begun by Agamemnon and stoked to its full fury by Hector, and does his duty, establishing his fame, but cutting his life short.

Hector does his duty for his people, but Andromache’s lament for Hector and their son in Book XXII shows how duty to country is not always compatible to duty to one’s family. Yet, the death of the family is a microcosm of the reality of the Trojans: their culture, as it is now, is doomed. Hector’s death means the inevitable defeat of Troy.

What was the purpose, children, for which I reared you? –Medea (l. 1003)

While I have always been aware of the iconoclasm of Euripides’ Medea, I was struck even more by it this read through and the moral implications of the play’s status as a tragedy. Is Medea a tragedy? While it does contain many aspects of an Aristotelean tragedy, it seems to lack — at least for me — any semblance of anagnorisis, the tragic hero’s understanding and acceptance of his/her tragic flaw and a greater wisdom that comes from that understanding. Medea does leave the audience with a sense of pity and terror, even perhaps more than Oedipus Rex in its unnaturalness, if that’s possible. Euripides’ play seems to suggest that in order for the patriarchy to understand its inherent double standards, one must strike it at its very center: those who would continue its tradition.

Like Sophocles, Euripides was a product of a new Athens: an intellectual revolution that sought to rid citizens’ minds of superstition and fear of the gods and emphasize humanity’s ability to reason critically: replacing prophecy with confidence in the power of human thought. Reason became the new intellectual standard that tried to displace fear and emotion: rely on your own power to reason rather than an unwarranted apprehension of the universe. Euripides, like Sophocles, was skeptical of this trend, and his plays highlighted his doubts in humanity’s ability to make sense out of even itself.

Medea stands at the center of Euripides’ doubts: reason above emotion takes the form of a mother killing her own children, perhaps an even greater taboo than Oedipus’ incest. While the latter was unaware of his crime, Medea commits hers with a cold, rational efficiency: a dramatized disorder that shocks in its attack on the most sacred laws of society. How can one have faith in the human ability to reason when killing one’s own children seems like a reasonable outcome? Not only does Medea challenge the Athenian intellectual paradigm shift, but it also comments on traditional established canons, like marriage, women, revenge, violence — with patriarchy at the center.

The main theme that struck me reading Medea this time around is its attack on patriarchy: Medea incites the subversive behavior of women against those that keep them oppressed, and those that stand in her way suffer her wrath. For instance, during the exposition of Medea and Jason’s past, we find out that during their visit to Pelius — Jason’s half-uncle and usurper of Iolcos — Medea convinces Pelius’ daughters to cut him up into little pieces. We are not privy to the intricacies of this convincing, but the outcome is the death of the father at the hands of his own daughters, a potent example of one of Medea‘s central themes. Medea’s relation with her own father, Aietes, was also turbulent even before the arrival of Jason. Her defiance of Aietes precipitated the death of his son — Medea’s own brother — so that Jason could escape. With the death of the son, the father had no heir, and the patriarchal tradition was disrupted.

Medea’s current audience is the women of Corinth who are also victims of the system that is turning Medea out into the cold: Jason seems to be casting her away like one would a used tissue. I’m not sure we can dismiss Jason’s motivations so quickly, but I cannot cover those here. What we do see of Jason is that he appears very rational and cold, responding to Medea’s complaints offensively, as if she is being too emotional and irrational, fitting nicely into a gender stereotype. Kreon is not so dismissive of Medea, but she manages to finagle a day out of him which ends up costing him his life and the life of his daughter. Medea proves that she can be as cold and calculating as a man, but not without wavering several times before the plot is brought to fruition. Her plot is conceived, nourished, and instigated in front of the Chorus, but Medea has them on her side: they never utter a word of Medea’s plan to anyone. This subversive act allows Medea to kill her children, the princess, and Kreon in order to precipitate the “best way to wound my husband” (l. 801). Her vengeance is bloody and final, leaving Jason alone and pathetic at the play’s end as she jets off on granddad’s chariot to join Aigeus in Athens.

While it might be easy to portray Medea as a heartless monster, she does have moments of doubt and indecision, but they never last long. She, too, is a product of a patriarchal system that has provided a semblance of a conscience, yet she is able to overcome this conditioning when the oppression become too severe. While we might disagree with her actions, like the Chorus finally does, we must try to understand why she takes the path she chooses. To dismiss her as purely evil would be as ridiculous as suggesting that terrorists who attack our country are themselves demons sent from hell with no further motivation than to cause the destruction of our citizens and values. It’s much easier to label as evil than to take a look at how that evil came to exist in the first place.

Is Medea a tragedy in the classical sense of the word? Well, perhaps the tragic hero is society itself, for it is the one damaged by the actions of those who maintain it. I think Medea does see her flaw by the play’s end, but she seems to think her actions necessary to save her children from a system that would make them into Jason’s. I’m reminded of Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Sethe would rather kill her daughter than have her taken back into slavery. Perhaps Medea loved too much, and like Sethe, her trials are only just beginning?

Near the play’s climax, while the emperor Saturninus and his new wife Tamora feast on Chiron and Demetrius pies, Titus poses this rhetorical question to the emperor: “Was it well done of rash Virginius– / To slay his daughter with his own right hand / Because she was enforced, stained, deflowered?” (5.3.36-38). To which the emperor replies, probably from rote, as if, like an Our Father, he has known the answer his whole life: “It was, Andronicus” (5.3.37). This dramatic irony is lost on Saturninus, as Lavinia approaches Titus, like the knowing lamb to the slaughter. Titus prolongs the inevitable by asking the emperor why the daughter must die, to which a ready-made answer is thoughtlessly provided: “Because the girl should not survive her shame, / And by her presence still renew his sorrows” (5.3.41-42). As if Titus was awaiting the sanction of the emperor, father kills daughter in front of his guests.

This action brings immediate shock from Saturninus: “What hast thou done, unnatural and unkind?” (5.3.48). The irony should not be lost on viewers, but is, I would argue, by the very fact of the spectacle of a father killing his only daughter on stage, or in the case of Julie Taymor’s 1999 film, on the screen. Greek tragedies made a point of not presenting the tragedy’s brutality on stage so that the audience is not distracted by the literal horror of the act, and they can think about the implications of their pity and terror. Elizabethan theatre, however, showed as much gore as possible, reveling in the creative sophistication of the theatre and perhaps losing some of the consideration of the events to the spectacle. We are more akin to the Elizabethans than the Athenians, methinks, especially with film. It might be argued that the very fact of the genre itself suggests entertainment, rather than promotes contemplation. So Titus snapping Lavinia’s neck does not allow us to contemplate what might be the central lesson of Titus Andronicus and perhaps the subject of Titus’ own anagnoresis.

Like Rome itself, Titus does everything deliberately, wearing his intentions on his sleeve. His devotion to Rome is unquestionable, and his duty upholds its laws and traditions absolutely, without flinching, like a proud Roman general. This selfless sense of duty is the Roman virtue of pietas first exemplified by the founder of the empire, Virgil’s Aeneas. Titus exemplifies pietas in his commitment to the ideals of Rome, and its this very devotion to the state that is his hamartia, or tragic flaw. The Romans do not dissemble, but arrogantly and deliberately say what they mean, and do what they say.

Indeed, one of the very reasons why Tamora is so disliked is her ability to dissemble. Like Shakespeare’s best Machiavells, Tamora acts on her advice to the newly crowned Saturninus: “Dissemble all your griefs and discontents” until you can “find a day to massacre them all” (1.1.444 and 451). In fact, I would argue that Titus is only able to get the upper hand by learning the act of deception from the Goth Queen. After the pain of losing the favor of the crown, the slaying of Mutius by his own hand, the raping and maiming of Lavinia, and the execution of Quintus and Martius, Titus seems to have lost his mind; even Marcus comments: “Alas, poor man! Grief has so wrought on him / He takes false shadows for true substances” (3.2.79-80). Even 3.2 seems to suggest to the audience that that this once great general has indeed fallen so low that his mind is incapable of coping. However, once Titus achieves a direction for his revenge, he is able to act again, but this time as Tamora would, and not a Roman general.

After Lavinia is able to disclose the crimes of Chiron and Demetrius, Titus begins to arise from his nadir. Even young Lucius says he’ll deliver a message “with my dagger in their bosoms, grandsire” (4.1.120). Yet, Titus is finished with being the Roman general, and now acts like a guerilla: “No, boy, not so. I’ll teach thee another course” (4.1.121). In a “wilderness of tigers,” one must be equally ferocious to survive (3.1.54). Titus’ mind is still sharp, but he distracts Saturninus and the goths (and perhaps the audience) with more ranting in 4.3. Yet, this unusual scene has its purpose: Titus is able to lure Tamora and her sons into his web, and he feels as bad about draining their blood as a spider would a fly’s.

Titus’ killing of Lavinia should promote questions, but only ends up shocking. It seems to be Titus’ final break with the laws and traditions of Rome, a reversal of the Titus at the beginning of the play who unquestionably supported the state. Lavinia as sacrificial lamb seems an egregious symbol, and I’m still not sure that Titus can be forgiven for this, but like Medea seems to reason, it has to be done to end the tyranny of oppressive ideologies. Indeed, one could also argue that Titus, in killing Tamora, allows Lucius to kill Saturninus and take the throne of Rome: a victory for the Andronici. Therefore, Titus’ blasphemy maintains the orthodoxy. What kind of king will Lucius make? Amnesty for Aaron? Nope. It seems that Lucius may just pick up where Saturninus left off, which posits the most disturbing question: can Rome be reformed?

I like Taymor’s end: the young Lucius takes Aaron and Tamora’s baby out of the coliseum and presumably away from it stifling traditions. Perhaps the lesson is that a corrupt system does not allow for internal change. No matter how much Titus tried to get the upper hand, he, in the end, is still a Roman. In order not to be a Roman, perhaps one must leave Rome. Shakespeare’s play leaves this ending open as well. We never do find out what happens to Aaron’s baby. It seems realistically, that its brains would be bashed out on the wall in front of its father. I guess there’s only too much spectacle Romans, Elizabethans, or we can take in one sitting.

The American romantics, for simplicity’s sake, can be divided into two camps: the optimists and the pessimists. Of the former group, Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitmanare the most famous, while the latter group consists of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville. The romantics saw the universe as split between the order and disorder, and the human mind illustrates this split by providing the battleground between the rational and the irrational. The optimistic romantics sought the truth through a transcendental union of the rational and the irrational forming a harmony, a peace, and perhaps an experience of God. The pessimistic school see only disharmony, contradiction, and terror in this dichotomous split of the human psyche. Despite their respective conclusions, the romantics all felt a profound need for harmony, the need for spirituality (Reason combined with imagination and intuition could lead one to feel God), and the need to establish one’s harmony or oneness with the universe without losing a sense of individualism. While the Transcendentalists might have found success in their attempts, Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville seem only to see disharmony and confusion where the optimists see harmony and truth.

Poe seems to suggest that the only truth to be gleaned in this world is through the actions of others; there is no truth in nature, only dark things that might contain kernels of truth if one penetrates the surface seeming of our lives. If there is a truth for Poe, it exists under the surface, yet this is where madness, isolation, perversity, chaos, and death also lie. In order to try to find the truth, the seeker must risk the darkest aspects of the universe. Poe often emphasizes the irony of madness: therational world hides any notions of truth, while the more insane or perverse a character seems, the closer he or she is to the truth. Poe also uses the motif of mirrors to characterize the nature of a split universe — that the human soul is cut off from the universe by its own “understanding” based in reason. Humans are in a sense buried alive, for the body contains the essence of humanity, but it is not the human. The human mind, therefore, is limited by the extent of life in the body. Poe desperately wanted the me to live eternally, but saw it as fragile and finite as its bodily container. Humans are trapped between death and time, between the pit and the pendulum, so this knowledge inspires horror, disharmony, and chaos.

In “The Cask of Amontillado,” Poe’s characters are running out of time: Montresor, meaning “my treasure” (sounds like Gollum, no?), and Fortunato, “fortunate one,” both head toward certain death — the former seems to be on his death bed, while the latter is fifty-years dead, now just the contents of the cask that Montresor shares with the invisible you, probably a friend — perhaps a priest — but definitely the complicit reader. Not a confession that looks for forgiveness, Montresor’s narrative seems to seek a sanction, maybe some sympathy, but definitely the admiration of his reader. The social veneer of propriety is broken — probably as Montresor lies dying — since he has nothing left to lose; his family motto “nemo me impune lacessit” (no one provokes me with impunity) has been maintained, so his motivation to confess seems to stem from pride, not remorse (Sipiora 242). He’s kept his treasure close to his heart for fifty years, and it’s now time to share.

Montressor’s treasure is his cask of Amontillado. The cask is the literal story, but it is also his secret: the one that trapped Fortunato fifty years hence and the one that now fascinates us. We, like Fortunato, are being lead to death, yet we can take comfort in the fact that we’re just reading a story, right? The cask probably also symbolizes the “insult” Montresor received from Fortunato — the latter probably showed him up by identifying a brand of Merlot before Montresor did at the local wine club, or something equally as trivial. Poe’s play mirrors a split view of the universe full of contradictions: the horror of being buried alive is mixed with the humor of a drunken fool walking arm-in-arm with death to the grave. Death gives the fool plenty of ways out, but keeps him on the hook by appealing to his human vanity and the promise of a prize: the Amontillado. Indeed, Fortunato gets his prize, yet the draught is not what he expects. When is it ever?

How is Fortunato the fortunate one? Perhaps Poe suggests that by remaining the fool — or at least drunk — that we can have fun even with death. Yes, death will win in the end, but perhaps a bit of naïveté as we’re led toward the grave will at least allow us to have a bit of fun. Yet, like Poe’s split universe, this interpretation cannot stand without its mirror: by being a drunk fool, Fortunato is anything but fortunate. His state, perhaps a metaphor for the notion of the body blinding the soul, allows him to be buried alive by Montresor. If Fortunato had his wits about him, he could have read the numerous clues that bespoke his doom. Do we know so well the nature of Montresor’s soul? Well, I cannot be truthful with impunity. In pace requiescat!

What’s healthy about restrictive ideas? What ideas do we maintain that restrict our freedoms? Would we be better off without these ideas? Indeed, many of our society’s beliefs are maintained for both moral and practical reasons: a society cannot grow or function with people taking anything they want, having sex with whomever they want, or killing anyone they want. We often have as the foundation of these laws religious moral tenants that help to justify and sanction their continued observance. Yet, while we would all probably agree with the commandment “you should not kill,” do we really, as a society, think of this directive as an absolute? Are their times when killing is justified? Stealing? Rape?

While I cannot think of any reason why the latter could ever be justified (though I know it has been in our history), I certainly could see where stealing could be necessary, and of course our country loves to kill — just see our continued use of capital punishment and our president’s love for military action in Iraq. One thing we need to ask when looking at these rules is just who benefits from their continued observance and who is hurt. I’m sure most of us would agree that most of us benefit from not killing one another, but what about the woman who has been abused for decades by her husband? Could we at least understand her motivations in wanting to end her suffering? If we cannot condone her actions, can we at least sympathize with her plight, or do we remain callously resolute behind the law?

Feminist critics examine the social structures that bring order to our lives, often challenging them when they seem outdated or not representative of society as a whole. When certain members of society benefit from social institutions and traditions, perhaps it’s time that those ideas are re-examined, revised, or overthrown. The feminist literary critic will look at how these structures are represented within a society’s cultural expressions, like literature, in an effort to come to terms with traditional values and the inequalities those values might precipitate. Favorite areas of inquiry are patriarchal traditions that seem to favor white, western, affluent, heterosexual men over anyone else. Along these lines, Silko and Chopin, writing nearly a century apart, examine feminist concerns about myth, marriage, and responsibility.

The protagonist of Silko’s “Yellow Woman” is trapped between several worlds: modern western society versus Native American culture; responsible wife versus desiring woman; tradition versus reality; superstition versus education; and so on. I don’t mean to suggest that the story breaks neatly into these dichotomies, but much of the protagonist’s confusion flows like a river through these ideas, carrying her along like fallen leaf. Nature seems to help toward her healing: it’s absence of imposed order allows her to wander and change, rather than directs her to conform and stagnate. She is a wayward wife who leaves her duties and responsibilities to her family to follow her desires. She shows that she is a sexual creature still, despite the institutions of motherhood and wifehood, and expresses that sexuality with Silva, if only for a couple of days.

Silva uses the narrative myth of the yellow woman and the ka’tsina spirit who abducts her. This myth — the one that her old grandfather loved to tell — sanctions a vacation for the married woman in Pueblo culture, but this ancient story cannot overcome the conditioning of a modern, Western education where women do not shirk their responsibilities to their families and husbands to run off with a stud for the weekend. Perhaps the Pueblo myth was pragmatic in that it allowed for this occasional escape with the understanding that the yellow woman would return revitalized; Western society allows no such sexual release in the bonds of its social institutions, where women (and men) seem to be each other’s property, rather than autonomous human beings. Indeed, Silko seems to suggest that much of the corruption stems from Western capitalism: see the portrait of the white, male landowner: “The rancher was fat, and sweat began to soak through his white cowboy shirt and the wet cloth stuck to the thick rolls of belly fat . . . he smelled rancid” (Sipiora 192).

This conflict also exists in our protagonist: she is aware of her transgression against society, but she allows herself to be carried away: she both is and is not the yellow woman. She continually thinks, “I am not the Yellow Woman. Because she is from out of time past and I live now and I’ve been to school and there are highways and pickup trucks that Yellow Woman never saw” (189). She is caught between the power of the narrative of the Yellow Woman and that of the cultural imperialism of the West. Her leaving does hot seem to bother her family as much as it bothers Silko’s western readers. Since the Pueblo myth of the yellow woman is alien to us, we seem to have an easier time just brushing it off as a story — something that should not be considered an excuse against one’s responsibilities and promises. Yet, Silko is implicitly asking us to question our own mythologies that allow us to understand the world: marriage, gender, love, devotion. Aren’t these also stories that we made up and continue to support through our unquestioning loyalty?

These very stories are what Chopin takes to task in “The Story of an Hour.” Louise Mallard reacts with a joy when she finds out her husband has been killed. We have not evidence that Louise has been mistreated in any way, yet her joy waxes as she considers her life without him: “free, free, free!” (Sipiora 200). She seems to have never considered or even questioned that there was a life outside of the social bonds of marriage. Only through the reality of her husband’s death is she even able to realize that her life has been oppressive and stifling: “There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature” (200). Both men and women are victims of these social myths, oppressed (perhaps not equally) by the will of the community. It’s almost as if the majority of married people are miserable, and, since they have to be, they want everyone else to be equally as miserable. Many jump on this misery bandwagon without even thinking about it.

Is Louise callous? Indeed, when her reaction is looked at in terms of comme il faut. However, critical examinations are rarely ever comfortable; however they are necessary if life is to be meaningful. Good thing Louise dies when her husband returns unharmed; she would never be able to go back now. Yes, this kind of delving is the most uncomfortable because it requires us to examine those stories that we hold most dear, those taught to us by our fathers, but instead of dismissing them outright — “Yellow Woman is a slut!” — we should look at why they make us uncomfortable. Are our stories any better?

I have finished re-reading, again, what is arguably F. Scott Fitzgerald’s best short story, “Babylon Revisited.” It merges the past with the present as Charlie Wales returns to Paris to try and recapture his life literally by taking custody of his daughter Honoria, and figuratively by exploring the Paris of his prodigal past that still lives in his memory if not in reality. As Charlie looks back, he is concomitantly forced to look inward at his character and come to terms with bitter experiences that continue to haunt his life. Charlie has returned to Babylon to inquire and probe: is he a bad father and husband, or just the victim of bad luck?

The story begins like an epic: in medias res. We are thrown into the Ritz bar and into the middle of a conversation. Uncertainty and confusion mark the beginning; the first word is a coordinating conjunction, but we are missing he first part of the sentence: “‘And where’s Mr. Campbell?’ Charlie asked” (6). Also, we hear about Mr. Campbell, but he is never to appear in the story. This beginning is no beginning at all, but an episode in the life of Charlie Wales. As readers, it takes a bit more effort to get our bearing, as if we are attempting to glean meaning from a conversation overheard in a bar, which we very much are.

Why is Charlie at the Ritz bar — a place that we soon learn symbolizes Charlie’s dubious past of excessiveness and extravagance? Yet, Charlie finds that the Ritz is not how he remembers it: “He was not really disappointed to find Paris so empty. But the stillness of the Ritz bar was so strange and portentous” (6). The “really” suggests that he indeed is disappointed, just as “But” at the beginning of the next sentence calls into question the sentence that preceded it. Charlie is disappointed that the current reality of Paris does not match the reality of his memory. Charlie’s time away has changed his perspective, but has it changed his character?

Charlie’s present downfall occurs at the outset of “Babylon Revisited.” Ostensibly as an offhanded inquiry — something that we all might do while visiting a place where we grew up — Charlie writes down his brother-in-law’s address for Duncan Schaeffer, a figure from his past that he probably doesn’t have much of a desire to see, but habit seems to guide his actions devoid of any forethought about possible consequences. Indeed, we see that much of Charlie’s actions in this story are habitual, perhaps containing a desire to relive a past that is as irretrievably last as his dead wife Helen. He knows the Ritz bar as if he grew up there: “When he turned into the bar he travelled the twenty feet of green carpet with his eyes fixed straight ahead by old habit” (6). He continues to run on old habit throughout the course of chapter one as he tours his old haunts and even picks up a prostitute at the close of the chapter. He seems to have no conscious intentions, but seems to be working on a sort of autopilot.

He even errs at one point by calling attention to his visit to the Ritz bar in the company of Lincoln and Marion, his daughter’s current guardians and former in-laws, the latter the sister of his dead wife. He realizes his mistake and repeats what seems to be his mantra: “I only take one drink every afternoon, and I’ve had that” (8). Again, almost a product of habit or wishful thinking, his seemingly rational decision to have a daily drink so that the notion of abstinence does not overwhelm him appears to be a sound idea, but it’s also a further indication of his thoughtless living by rote, or perhaps chance.

Chance seems to play a role in this story as well, again emphasized by the story’s opening: at one point Charlie rolls the dice with Alix for his drink. The dice symbolize the element of chance that seems to be out of Charlie’s control. Is Charlie ultimately the victim of chance and bad luck, or does his character again lead to his downfall, the prolonged limbo of the story’s end?

The story ends much as it begins, in a conditional state, one of uncertainty and tentativeness. And, true to Charlie’s character, it ends literally where it began, in the Ritz bar. Perhaps the bar also symbolizes that desire in Charlie’s life that he keeps coming back to, but that keeps him repeating the same errors? Can home be looked at this way? Home is a place of comfort, but it also keeps us stupid. Growth seems unlikely under shelter and comfort, especially in a place where mistakes don’t seem that egregious. Coming home, in this case Charlie’s coming back to Paris, represents his effort to reclaim part of his past, but he gets more than he expected. His habits led to, if not caused, the death of his first wife — again something that can be interpreted as bad luck — and could do so again to his daughter. Are we, like Charlie, doomed to repeat that which experience has made us, or can we escape the persistence of home?

Fitzgerald never answers this question, and we will always have a figurative home: “He would come back some day; they couldn’t make him pay forever” (19). Yet, we must ask ourselves: when Charlie does come back, is he also coming back to his true self. Can he ever reconcile the present with the past? Can any of us?