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LITR 4332 American Minority Literature Model Assignments Research Project Submissions 2013 research essay |
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Tara L. Lawrence
April 18, 2013
The Fall and The Quest: Narratives Told
Through the Child's Perspective in American Minority Literature
"The fall" and "the quest" are themes that
appear consistently throughout human experience, narrative and literature. These
themes and their repetition through human storytelling are something that
psychologist C.G. Jung described as archetypes. Jung states, "the contents of
the collective unconscious . . . are known as archetypes" (Jung 4 ch.1). The
collective unconscious was something Jung believed to be common to all humans,
the archetypes contained within the collective unconscious a reference for all
human experience. Just as the archetypal roles of the hero, the mother, the
child and the trickster are repeated throughout the human narrative, so are
these archetypal situations. Although the motif of "the fall" is seen well
before biblical times, most members of western civilization first associate "the
fall" with the creation story in the
Bible. In Genesis, Adam and Eve eat fruit from the tree of knowledge, an act
forbidden by God. This act leads Adam and Eve to gain the knowledge of good and
evil; they are changed from a state of innocence to experience and are thus
fallen. The fall from innocence to experience becomes a basis for many works of
literature, from John Milton's epic poem,
Paradise Lost and Romantic poet, William Blake's
Songs of Innocence and Experience, to
more modern works such as, Albert Camus'
The Fall. "The quest" like "the fall" is found in many works of art,
literature and oral narrative throughout the human era. The most familiar form
of "the quest" is known as the hero's quest. The hero's quest, in common with
the "the fall," is a type of narrative seen in the
Bible, in the stories of Moses, Noah
and Christ; it is also present throughout the history of human storytelling,
from, Hercules in Greek Mythology, to the more modern and popular, Harry Potter.
The age-old, archetypal themes of "the fall" and "the quest" are also
present in the canon of American minority literature and are often told from the
perspective of a child.
By relating the ideas of "the fall" and "the
quest" in minority literature, through the archetypal role of the child or
adolescent, a new level of understanding in minority literature emerges. In the
dominant culture's tales featuring "the fall" and "the quest," the characters,
falling or embarking, chose their own fate; Eve chose to eat the apple and
Hercules chose to complete the "twelve labors." Conversely, African-Americans,
Native-Americans and Mexican-Americans fell through no fault of their own and
were forced upon quests they never consented to; the minority concept of forced
participation becomes mingled with archetypal themes of "the fall" and "the
quest." Forced participation and its counterpart concept, being voiceless and
choiceless, are not the only themes from the minority experience to become
entangled with the timeworn themes of "the fall" and "the quest"; echoes from
the different minority iterations of "The American Dream," are also present. The
addition of forced participation and dream variations to "the fall" and "the
quest" add depth to the narratives of minority
literature, bringing them outside the realm of archetypal situations. By telling
these stories through the perspective of childhood, they once again begin to
enter the realm of something archetypal, and become relatable to all humanity.
Themes common to both minority literature and childhood/adolescence, such as,
isolation, self-hatred and shame, again become something all humans can connect
to, instead of something that can be set aside as a strictly minority experience
by the Anglo reader. All children inevitably fall as they lose their innocence
and gain experience; this inevitable fall may also be considered a quest, a
quest to become an adult self, to become an individual. By nature of life,
anyone reading the narratives of minority literature will be familiar with these
themes through their own experiences. This essay will examine the themes of "the
fall" and "the quest" through the perspective of childhood in the novels,
Sula and
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison,
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich and
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya.
Although different in many ways, these books all reinforce the themes of either,
"the fall" or "the quest," through the eyes of the young. In these novels, the
themes of "the fall" and "the quest," mingled with forced participation and
dream variations, are best explored by youthful protagonists because the reader
is better able to understand, empathize and accept the forced, fallen and
questing minority narrative through the universally familiar eyes of childhood.
In Toni Morrison's novels,
Sula and
The Bluest Eye, the themes of "the
fall," forced participation, self- loathing and shame can be found throughout
their pages. The characters in the novels are seen at different stages in their
lives, from the innocence and inexperience of childhood, to the bloom of fresh
knowledge in adolescence, and finally to the jaded knowledge of adulthood. Nell
and Sula are the main characters in the novel,
Sula; their lives are followed in the
book, from childhood through adulthood. Nell and Sula meet in childhood and form
the kind of fast friendship that only children can. The two girls continue this
easy friendship until a accidental tragedy occurs. This tragedy, mirroring "the
fall," awakes Nell and Sula to the realities of the world, a world full of pain
and knowledge. The beginning of the chapter where "the fall" occurs, begins:
"the summer came. A summer limp with the weight of blossomed things. Heavy
sunflowers weeping over fences; iris curling and browning at the edges far away
from their purple hearts" (Morrison 49). It seems no coincidence, that this
chapter opens at the beginning of summer; summer is symbolic of adulthood and
the tragedy that occurs begins the painful transformation of child to adult for
both Nell and Sula. The words Morrison uses in this passage underlie the burden
that knowledge can be; the imagery reinforcing the death of innocence and
the weight of experience. Nell and Sula
will spend the rest of the novel grappling with their respective falls and their
easy friendship will dissipate into hatred. A hatred that blooms, in part, from
Sula's refusal to participate in the expected path of the African-American
woman. The transition from childhood to adulthood is something that all humans,
who live past childhood, will endure. This human commonality, makes both Nell's
and Sula's experiences accessible to all people. The theme of "the fall" is also
present in Toni Morrison's novel, The
Bluest Eye. The difference in the two novels being: "the fall" becomes more
omnipresent in The Bluest Eye and the
themes of forced participation/being voiceless and choiceless, self-hatred and
isolation become more clear.
From the beginning of
The Bluest Eye there is a sense of
sadness and foreboding. This is a tale that, for all the beauty of its prose,
shows characters that were fallen from their beginning. No characters typify
this more than the Breedloves, particularly the father, Cholly, and his
daughter, Pecola. As a newborn, Cholly is abandoned by his mother; "when Cholly
was four days old, his mother wrapped him in two blankets and placed him on a
junk heap by the railroad" (Morrison 132). Cholly is rescued by his great aunt
and it is a favor she never lets him forget; she constantly reminds him of where
he came from and how lucky he is that she took him in. Cholly lives his
childhood fallen. He has been told over and over again, that he is nothing more
than a piece of garbage, laid on a junk heap. Cholly's life has parallels with
the African slave; Cholly did not ask to be born, abandoned or saved, just as
the slave never asked to be brought to America and abused;
like the slaves Cholly will also suffer
debilitating humiliation at the hands of Anglos for the rest of his life.
Cholly's lack of choice and forced participation in a painful life lead him to
be and absent, sometimes abusive, father. Cholly's undoing and the height of his
abuse occurs when he rapes his daughter, Pecola.
Pecola is a sad girl, unloved by a mother that prefers her white charges to her own children and a father that scarcely acknowledges her existence until he rapes her. Pecola's life, like Cholly's, is fallen from the start. In her essay, "Not So Fast, Dick and Jane: Reimagining Childhood and Nation in 'The Bluest Eye,'" Debra Werrlein describes Morrison's depiction of Pecola's childhood as; "a wrenching narrative of childhood without innocence." Pecola's childhood holds no innocence because she already possesses the knowledge of shame, hurt and feelings of unwantedness that do not usually manifest until a person is much older. Pecola's self-loathing is something she learns from her mother, who is also afflicted by this malignant disease of the heart. Pecola and Mrs. Breedlove have both bought into the dominant culture's messages that black is ugly and white is beautiful. Pecola even prays every night for the blue eyes that she believes will finally make her pretty; "fervently for a year she had prayed. . .she was not without hope. To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a long, long time" (Morrison 46). Pecola's self-hatred and yearning to be something she is not, are feelings that are identifiable to many adolescents. Again, Morrison masterfully weaves the archetypal and universal "fall" with the minority concepts of being voiceless/choiceless, isolation, self-hatred and desire to emulate the dominant culture's ideas of beauty, to create a story that resonates even with those who are unfamiliar with minority literature and its concepts.
The idea of making minority concepts accessible to
all audiences through the universal human experiences of childhood and "the
fall" is also accomplished by Louise Erdrich's,
Love Medicine. Erdrich's character,
Lipsha Morrisey, begins his life much like Cholly Breedlove, but
consistent with the Native-American
"dream" variation of loss and survival, Lipsha's outcome is much different.
Lipsha's childhood was not always an easy
one, he often struggled with feelings of hurt and resentment brought about by
his abandonment and is tormented with words of alienation by his older
half-brother, whom the reader knows is Lipsha's brother, but Lipsha does not.
Lipsha's alienation and resentment eventually lead him off the reservation in a
"quest" to find out about himself and the parents who abandoned him. Through his
quest, Lipsha come to terms with the hardships in his life and realizes, that
perhaps, the life he was given was the best one for him. In the closing pages of
the novel, on the road to home, Lipsha thinks, "there is good in what she did
for me. . .the son that she acknowledged suffered more than Lipsha Morrisey did.
. .I was lucky she turned me over to Grandma Kashpaw" (Erdrich 333). As
highlighted in this passage, Lipsha has learned to not only accept the bad that
has happened in his life, but to forgive those who wronged him and thrive. In
her essay, "Erdrich's Love Medicine," Susan Farrell discusses Lipsha's return
home after his quest in terms of loss and survival. Ms. Farrell writes, "Lipsha's
return to the reservation at the end of the novel. . .is a conscious effort to
nurture and preserve his community. Neither an act of acquiescence nor of giving
in, but a[n] . . . attempt at survival, Lipsha's return home makes the best of
circumstances as they exist for contemporary American Indians."
Farrell connects Lipsha's story to the larger story of all native
peoples; his survival, indicative of the survival of all Native-Americans,
despite the constant feelings of loss and hardship that surround them. Farrell's
assertions are consistent with the idea of using archetypal situations and then
applying those situations throughout a character's story arch with the intent of
making elusive minority concepts familiar to all readers. In this way Lipsha's
story becomes allegorical to lives of all Native peoples and the
archetypal fall and quest become a device through which the non-native reader
can easily follow the Native-American
story of loss and survival. Lipsha's quest for identity parallels Antonio
Marez's in Rudolfo Anaya's novel, Bless
Me, Ultima; Antonio's quest also shares similar implications, in relating
the Mexican-American dream variation, of "a frontier people," to a varied
audience.
Antonio Marez, the young protagonist of
Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima,
enjoys a much more stable and traditional childhood than any of the other
characters previously discussed in this essay. Like the stories of all children,
Tony's is one of the transformation from innocence to experience, but "the fall"
is the less important archetypal situation in this novel. Tony's quest for
identity between the three cultures that surround him, is of greater importance
and mirrors the Mexican-American theme of "a frontier people." From the
beginning of Bless Me, Ultima, Tony
is faced with the decision of becoming either, his mother's priest or his
father's vaquero; this decision becomes increasingly complex when Antonio
discovers a third alternative, the mystical world of his Grande, Ultima.
Antonio's three choices are symbolic of
the competing cultural influences that Mexican-Americans must navigate
everyday: the priest a symbol of Anglo traditions, the vaquero symbolic of the
Mestizo and Ultima's mysticism symbolic of Mexico's native peoples. Anaya
reinforces the importance of these three competing cultural influences by
consistently repeating the number three throughout the novel; Tony has three
brothers and he witnesses three deaths. By the end of the novel, in his struggle
to navigate these three cultures Antonio turns to his father for guidance.
Tony's father advises, "every generation. . .is a part of his past. He cannot
escape it, but he can reform the old materials, make something new—" (Anaya
247). Antonio's father's words awaken Tony to the possibility, that maybe, as a
product of these three historical cultures, he doesn't have to chose. Instead he
may "reform" the three cultures stirring inside him into something new. Anaya
brilliantly leads all readers through the uniquely Mexican-American experience
of being "a frontier people," through Antonio's archetypal quest of
individuation. The archetypal quest resonating with anyone who has ever
experienced the youthful need to label and understand exactly who and what you
are.
Inherent to Jung's concept of archetypes, is
the fact that archetypes, are common to all humanity. They are roles and
situations that are understood by each of us; touchstones that guide us through
life. In telling minority stories through the universal archetypes of "the fall,
"the quest" and childhood, these stories begin to resonate in the soul of all
humanity and cross-cultural understanding is ignited. By the use of universally
understood themes, these four novels transcend the genre of "minority
literature" and become merely literature, beautiful literature for all humanity.
Works Cited
Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless
Me, Ultima. New York: Grand Central Publishing-Hachette Book Group USA,
1994. Print.
Erdrich, Louise. Love
Medicine. New York: Harper Perennial. 2009. Print.
Farrell, Susan. "Erdrich's Love Medicine"
Explicator 56. 2. (1998) 109-12.
Electronic.
Jung, C.G. The
Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. TR. R.F.C. Hull. New York:
Princeton University Press. 1969. Print.
Morrison, Toni. The
Bluest Eye. New York. Vintage Books-Random House Inc. 2007. Print.
Morrison, Toni. Sula.
New York. Vintage Books-Random House Inc. 2004. Print.
Werrlein, Debra. "Not So Fast, Dick and Jane: Reimagining Childhood and Nation in "The Bluest Eye" Melus 30. 4. (2005): 53-72. Print.
