The Crying of Lot 49: Filling the God Shaped Hole

                Both Thomas Pynchon and Wallace Steven's works comment on the human need to find religion or meaning. This is not circumscribed to God on High, or karmic destiny. I’m referring to what philosophers now call ‘a God-shaped hole’, originally coined in the seventeenth century by Blaise Pascal. This term describes the spiritual vacuum inside every human being that yearns to be filled. Many people argue that the religious impulse, a deep-seated need to find a more profound meaning to existence, went hand in hand with the birth of human kind. Some scientists produced research to show that the human brain is predisposed or hard-wired for belief in God. British academics at Bristol University found that during the process of evolution, people with religious tendencies benefited from their beliefs (possibly by working in groups to ensure the future of their community?). As consequence, ‘supernatural beliefs’ became hard-wired into our brains from birth, leaving us receptive to the claims of religious organizations.

                With the Enlightenment and Scientific/Industrial Revolutions came a change in the definition. Theorists now believe that ‘God-Shaped Hole’ describes the consciousness where God has always been, but may be replaced with other things. For example, people find meaning in not only religion but poetry, art, and sports. God is no longer the go-to distraction for human beings. Other substances can ease our anxiety about mortality and answer cosmic questions. Stevens and Pynchon’s writings epitomize the post-modern search for meaning in a world where religion is not the only solution. Both The Idea of Order at Key West and The Crying of Lot 49 fill the God-Shaped hole with tools of modernity: poetry and drugs.

                As discussed in class, Wallace Steven’s poem centers on the speaker’s desire to order his chaotic, ostensibly meaningless world. In the opening stanza, Stevens distinguishes between the mind and external reality, as well as the singer and the sea. There is a sense that the woman’s song becomes wholly other; a divine incarnation of the eternal ineffable: “… and yet its mimic motion/ Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,/ That was not ours although we understood,/ Inhuman, of the veritable ocean” (4-7). He later goes on to say that the woman’s voice can represent not merely sound, but the universe as a whole: “But it was more than that,/ More than even her voice, and ours, among/ The meaningless plunging of water and the wind,/ Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped/ On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres/ Of sky and sea” (28-33). Like Brahmin, the woman sings the world into reality. She orders the chaos of the sea and wind into a conceivable whole which the speaker appreciates. He desperately needed to understand reality, and her song is a form of accommodation. As his apostrophe in the final stanza shows: “Oh! Blessed rage for order…/ The maker’s rage to order words of the sea, / Words of the fragrant portals…/ And of ourselves and of our origins, / In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds”. The narrator fills his God-shaped hole with the woman’s song and reconstructs a world of his own reality from the chaos of the “water (that) never formed to mind or voice” (2).

                Thomas Pynchon’s characters have a similar need to give life meaning and ease chaotic angst. Oedipa Maas fills her need for God with drugs, not song. She finds herself alone and alienated from her culture, attempts to uncover the mystery of the Tristero drug. She wants to turn the mystery of Tristero into a “constellation”, which is a façade of true order. This desire demonstrates that she is indeed looking for meaning, for a systemized view of the universe. Unlike the speaker in Steven’s poem, Oedipa never reconciles meaning with the enigmatic Tristeri. In fact, drugs play the Shiva role in Lot 49, destroying rather than creating. Tristero ultimately ruins Oedipa’s marriage; her hallucinations and detachment from reality produce chaos and isolation, rather than order and meaning. Oedipa’s never came to terms with her human condition. Perhaps this is a lesson to all that drugs will never fill the God-shaped hole.

Some Conservative Christians Believe Filling Your God-Shaped Hole with
Anything but Jesus is Heresy

Bailey's Cafe: Hell is Repetition

Bailey’s Café: Hell is Repetition

Dante's 9 Circles of Hell

                Dr. Hobby mentioned in class today that Gloria Naylor’s second novel, Linden Hills, is loosely based on Dante’s Inferno. Though I knew this when I read the Jesse Belle chapter in Bailey’s Café, I was nonetheless impressed. Naylor’s intertextual reference to the Inferno creates layers of meaning and develops characters.  In the chapter we are introduced to Jesse Bell: the down and out junkie whom Eve saves from addiction. Eve visited Jesse in jail and told her “if she’s sick of wallowing in her own shit” to come find her. Jesse’s punishment at Eve’s boardinghouse alludes to the Inferno with haunting transparency.

Liars in the 8th Circle

                Jesse was addicted to heroin before moving into Eve’s house. The moment she takes Jesse in, Eve tells her that they are in Hell. This first reference alone does not connote Dante. However, as the narrative progresses the allusions are discernible. As in the Inferno, Jesse’s Hell is repetition. Sinners are punished with a perverted form of the sins themselves. In Dante contrapasso is pervasive throughout the text: sorcerers’ heads are twisted backwards; liars converse with mud and slime; and Satan devolves into a grotesque caricature of Evil. The sinner eternally suffers their sin. (Had Jesse been in the Inferno, she likely would have been placed in the third circle of Hell. Here, Dante places the gluttons {or heroin addicts} who forever wallow in fetid garbage).

                Eve does not go full-Dante on Jesse, but her methods are contrapasso in nature. She forces the junkie to quit cold turkey. The experience was so horrific that Jesse describes it as this: “Imagine feeling that your body gets slammed into the same wall again and again. Red-hot bricks one time. Blocks of ice the next. Image it going on for four straight days” (Naylor 139). The subtle reference to repetition in this description of withdraw is amplified in the ensuing narrative. Once Jesse was completely clean, Eve knew the desire to use was still there. So instead of threatening expulsion or criminal charges, Eve gives Jesse just what she wants: Heroin on a silver platter (literally). The velvet case holding crystal droppers and sterling syringes was Eve’s way of exploiting Jesse’s sin. And it worked; Jesse was spoon fed China White for four days (the exact duration of her withdrawal). But to quote Ray Liotta in Blow: “When you’re up it’s never as good as it seems, and when you’re down you never think you’ll be up again.”

                 After those ethereal days Eve cut off the mainline and Jesse suffered an even worse withdraw than before. She described the second one to Bailey, saying: “I sincerely prayed for death” (Naylor 141).  Eve inflicted a punishment fit for Dante’s sinners. She used Jesse’s evil against her, condemning the junkie to yet another slow death brought on by her own doing. After Jesse becomes healthy Eve offers her another dose on a Golden platter, saying: “Remember where we are”. The contrapasso of Eve’s boarding house mirrors that in Dante’s Hell. The intertextuality adds sophistication to both Naylor’s text and characters.

Sometimes You're Flush Quote

"Sometimes you're flush and sometimes you're bust, and when you're up, it's never as good as it seems, and when you're down, you never think you'll be up again, but life goes on."

Blow

Woman Warrior- The Obsolete Question of Genre

                Maxine Hong Kingston has received criticism for the factual liberties she took in recounting her life experiences in The Woman Warrior. Numerous scholars dismiss The Woman Warrior as a work of fiction clumsily disguised as a memoir. For instance, Benjamin Tong describes The Woman Warrior as “fiction passing for autobiography”, and Jeffery Chan accuses Kingston of “distributing an obvious fiction for fact”. While it is true that Woman Warrior violates traditional conventions of the memoir genre, this in no way undermines Kingston’s novel. Rather, the factual liberties serve to construct a narrative which contains greater meaning than a mere string of life experiences ever could.

                                Kingston herself admits that Woman Warrior does not follow the template of a traditional autobiography. By breaking conventional genre boundaries, Kingston empowers herself and tells greater truths about women’s toil and Chinese identity. Her fabricated narrative better intimates her struggles, experiences, and strengths than the David Copperfield model ever could. Critics who argue that The Woman Warrior should not be labeled as autobiography are erroneously reading the novel. The point is not exaggerations, but the reason behind them; constructed narratives serve to create an accurate depiction of Kingston’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Kingston recognizes that language has more power than facts to create an artful whole that embodies her coming-of-age struggle to find balance and voice.

                Myopic criticism of constructed narratives muddles Religious Studies academia as well. Last semester I studied the similarities amongst female Pentecostal preachers’ autobiographies from the early 1970s.  It was clear that, like Kingston, these women took liberties with their factual experiences for the sake of meaning. The Preachers’ life stories were patterned with the same narrative structure and ordering. All the women endured trying childhoods; all the women were ostracized adolescence; and all the women experienced an ineffable pull towards God. Critics cite these uncanny similarities when arguing that fabrications have no worth in Religious Studies. However, like Kingston’s exaggerations, these Calling-tales have significant meaning in that they empower the women’s words, and thus their value as vessels for God. It is pointless to question the veracity of the narratives. Instead, one may winnow out the True function of these religious narrative myths, and grasp the higher meaning which only crafted language can conjure.

Warrior Woman- Elements of Totem Religion

Chinese Dragon Totems

               
                The Confucian elements in The Woman Warrior are distinct: community trumps individual needs, religious hierarchy dictates family roles, and women are to obey relationship roles. Despite the clear Confucian sway there are undertones of ancestral worship and animal reverence.

                Emile Durkheim said that Totem worship is the origin of all religion.  A totem is any animal or object which reflects the community and its sacred connection to God. It represents not only deities, but also ancestors. In totemic cultures, equal emphasis is placed upon veneration for the eternal divine and for diseased ancestors. Animal totems act as both vertical and horizontal axis mundis: they connect an individual with both God on high and the ghosts around him. This demonstrates the Totemic principle that the sacred soul is a piece of a whole, not an island unto itself. In traditional practice, it was believed that one could utilize the power of his totem in times of need. Durkheim’s description of ancestral totem worship is found in the “Shaman” chapter of The Woman Warrior.

                In this section, Kingston retells a humorous anecdote about her mother’s experiences in college. While studying, the women in the dormitory hear a mysterious noise coming from a room believed to haunted. Her mother readily volunteers to investigate, claiming she has no fear of ghosts. Having found no apparition, mother tells the girls: “There’s nothing to be afraid of in the whole dormitory, including the ghost room. I checked there too” (Kingston 67). Kingston’s commentary on this scene reveals traces of totemic superstition: “My mother may not have been afraid, but she would be a dragoness (“my totem, your totem”) During danger she fanned out her dragon claws and riffled her red sequin scales and unfolded her coiling green  stripes” (Kingston 67). This statement shows that Kingston’s ancestors worshiped a dragon totem. Her mother clearly values the power of dragons to help her in times of need.

                And such a time would arise within minutes of mother’s triumph. Returning to the ghost room she finds a hostile Fox spirit, unseen before. She threatens the spirit, “When morning comes, only one of us will control this room, and Ghost, that one will be me. I will be marching its length and width; I will be dancing, not creeping like you… Do you know what gift I will bring you? I’ll get fire, Ghost!” (Kingston 70). She galvanizes her roommates, who assist her in burning the spirit using alcohol and oil. With the help of her family’s dragon totem, Kingston’s mother was able to defeat the violent Sitting Ghost. But this ghost was just the first of many hostile manifestations of evil ghosts. Throughout the remaining conflict, her mom relies on her totem to help fight the myriad Ghosts which ceaselessly attack her village. In these cases, her mother vanquishes the monsters by eating them alive. The undertones of totemic religion are subtle, but important in The Woman Warrior.

Durkheim

Animism, Ancestors, and Totemism 101

Modern Interpretation of Totemism 

Woman Warrior-Elements of Confucianism

CONFUCIAN ANALECTS QUOTES

"The Superior Man is all-embracing and not partial. The inferior man is partial and not all-embracing."

"The Five Relationships are applied to three thousand offenses, but none of them is greater than that of being un-xiao. Those who coerce their lords have no regard for superiors; those who reject the Sages have no regard for law; those who reject xiao have no regard for parents. That is the road to great chaos.”

"Disorder is not sent down by Heaven, it is produced by women."

"Those who cannot be taught, cannot be instructed. These are women and eunuchs."

"A woman should look on her husband as if he were Heaven itself, and never weary of thinking how she may yield to him."

SCHOLAR XIAO MA ON THE ANALECTS

 "Women always have been fighting for a way out of the Confucian shadows."

THE WOMAN WARRIOR QUOTE

"You must not tell anyone," my mother said, "what I am about to tell you. In China your father had a sister who killed herself. She jumped into the family well. We say that your father has all brothers because it is as if she had never been born." 

Modern Confucian Chinese Women

                Confucianism is an ancient Chinese religion which emphasizes restoring traditional morality. Confucius lived in late 6^th century when war was rampant and sin was everywhere. He believed in the innate goodness of human beings. However, like John Locke, Confucius believed that his violent culture was corrupting society, and could only be fixed from the inside out. Thus, Confucius stressed a return to ancient values of community. Stressing the worth of collective over individual happiness is a key feature of Confucianism. It informs believers’ fundamental basic morality and world view.

                Xiao, or filial piety, is a central Confucianism component, and is seen as the substance of society.  It refers to a type of familial devotion unlike any found in Western communities. Xiao includes within it a hierarchy of the five principle relationships which comprise Confucian societies. It was believed that if each individual submitted to his or her stipulated role, then society would operate harmoniously. Thus, that which is good for humanity dictates proper conduct for individuals. In this relationship system, women are subordinate: submissive to fathers, husbands, brothers, and the collective community.

                Confucianism is an ever present ideology in The Woman Warrior, especially the “No Name Woman” story. This tale describes the horrific death of Kingston’s aunt, and reflects the Confucian value which subverts women’s individual freedom for the sake of community.  The villagers savagely attacked No Name for bearing a bastard child long after husband’s departure. They believed her selfish actions brought disgrace to the community as a whole, which would breed social discord: “The frightened villagers, who depended on one another to maintain the real, went to my aunt to show her a person, physical representation of the break she had made in the ‘roundness’” (Kingston 12).  No Name’s behavior opposed the prescribed role of traditional Confucian women. She did not put communal values or Confucian teachings above her personal prerogative. Such an ostensibly wayward woman disgraced Kingston’s village, and they disciplined her selfishness.  “The villagers punished her for acting as if she could have a private life, secret and apart from them” (Kingston 13). From our Western view this attack is barbarous and unwarranted. But from the Confucian lens which sees only the whole, No Name’s betrayal was unforgivable: “After the villagers left… the family broke their silence and cursed her….’Death is coming. Look what you’ve done. You’ve killed us. Ghost!’” (Kingston 14). But in evil hour No Name plucked, she ate: And the community as a whole felt the wound; one which would fester and sore unless sutured with Confucian-style vengeance.

Modern Chinese Exhibition of Xiao Value

Cat's Cradle- The Cult of Foma

        

Nothing in This Blog is True    

  Basic Bokononism:

• Based on foma, which are harmless untruths.
• If used correctly, in fact, foma can be useful and beneficial to society.
• Lies comprise the religious foundation of Bokononism.
• One who believes and adheres to these lies will have peace of mind and a good life.
• The main creed of Bokononism is be a good person.

                I am proud to declare that I am a Bokononist. When one asks how can I adhere to a religion based on lies, I respond with: “Doesn’t everyone live their life according to lies in some shape or form?”. To trace my logic I will first detail the ideology which forms my world view. I believe religion is that which gives life meaning. It could be God or science; Bokonon or Ice-9. Anything that informs one’s values and perception is religion. I believe relationships are the foundation of my personal world view. Every interaction I have with someone will slightly change the way I see reality. These relationships, be them fleeting or forever, are an important part of my religion.

                Bokononism is based on harmless fomas. Relationships, too, are based on lies to a certain extent. Whether these lies are knowingly invented or innocently overlooked is meaningless because all relationships are based on subjective experiences. This veil of subjectivity brings with it a communication gap too immense to bridge. Thus any conversation I have with another human being will be interpreted in a different way than I intended. Since it is not what I meant, it is an untruth. Foma is innately at the heart of all relationships. Since my religion is based on relationships, which are based on foma, I am clearly a Bokonist. And in the end, what really matters besides doing good unto others?

The Sunset Limited- White and Prufrock as the Lamentable Modern Men

Is it Perfume From a Dress That Makes Me So Digress?

Professor White and J. Alfred Prufrock Lament Modernity's Failings

T.S. Eliot

Cormac McCarthy

T. S. Eliot and Cormac McCarthy examine the tortured psyche of the modern man through poetic and dramatic lenses. The characters have fine differences in detail and experience, but overall White and Prufrock are archetypes of the Lamentable Modern Man. Both men are overeducated, eloquent, neurotic, and emotionally stilted. Together, McCarthy’s nihilistic professor and Eliot’s balding pessimist represent a trope of literary art.

Both White and Prufrock are introduced during a decisive point in their lives when they must “force (their) moment into its crisis” .For Prufrock this means taking a leap of faith and accepting his reality (Kierkegaard, Class Notes). And reality for Eliot’s Lamentable Modern Mancenters around a dull and mediocre life filled with feelings of inadequacy and fears of making decisions. Unable to seize opportunity or take risks (especially with women), Prufrock lives in a world where yesterday was the same as today and today will be the same as tomorrow. The hell of repetition. Prufrock has seen it all, yet has nothing. Throughout the play he rambles: “And I have known them all…” And he has. But what does he have to show for it but loneliness and gloom?

McCarthy’sLamentable Modern Man is wrought with similar feelings of alienation and nihilism. White is a humanities professor so overwhelmed with irremediable depression that his leap of faith intersects with the Sunset Limited. Overeducated, White has come to believe that the experience of happiness is “contrary to the human condition” and that the pursuit of happiness is therefore futile. Like Prufrock, White has seen it all. Now he must ask himself, “would it have been worth white?” White experiences a moment of crisis just as Prufrock does. However, instead of ending on a daydream about sea-girls, White condemns himself to death. McCarthy’s Lamentable Modern Man could not accept reality. Both Prufrock and the Professor epitomize the negative side-effects of modernity; disillusionment, loneliness, and nihilism.

Excerpt from T.S. Eliot's The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!	75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?	80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,	85
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,	90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—	95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,	100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:	105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.” . . . . . . . .	110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,	115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …	120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.	125

Link to Entire Prufrock Poem

The Sunset Limited- An Atypical Coming-Of-Age Play

Christmas is Not What it Used to Be:

The Coming-of-Age Morality of White and Black in The Sunset Limited

                The Sunset Limited is a story about the discrepancy between what people want and what they get. It follows the conversation between two men as they describe their lives, experiences, and world views. First, White is a nihilistic and suspicious scholar whose education has led him to be disillusioned with America’s hypocritical values. The second man, Black, is a pious and poor working man guided by Faith. This piece focuses solely on a single conversation, and in it we learn much of the character’s pasts and views. White has already experienced his epiphany and Black is on his way to having his.  It is interesting to note, too, that in both cases education is at the root of disenchantment.

                White is an armchair professor who has spent his whole life learning, yet has nothing of value to show for it. No friends, no family; White is utterly alone and in despair. His lifetime of education has turned him into a dreary cynic with no beliefs or passions. Though the reader does not witness White’s disillusionment, it is clear from his dialogue that he has experienced a change in his morality and beliefs. When Black asks him what he values, White responds with: “Probably I don’t believe in a lot of things that I used to believe in” (McCarthy 24). This statement reveals a change in character; the professor used to have values which he no longer adheres to. “The things I believed in don’t exist anymore. It’s foolish to pretend they do” (McCarthy 27). And education is the root cause of White’s (albeit negative) coming-of-age: “”It’s what education does. It makes things personal (26)… I’ve been driven to finally face the truth. The more one knows the unhappy one is likely to be" (McCarthy 81). The Sunset Limited chronicles White’s growing anger at society and descent into despair. He wasn’t always the suicidal cynic portrayed to the reader. But now he knows everything, and feels nothing. Whereas White’s coming-of-age occurs before the action of the novel, it can be surmised that Black’s epiphany will occur after the ending lines.

                In the beginning of the story, Black steadfastly preaches his Christian beliefs. It is significant that the first personal story he discloses to White is his Calling: “And I’m laying there and I hear this voice. Just as clear. Couldn’t have been no clearer. And this voice says: If it was not for the grace of God you would not be here” (McCarthy 49). Black is a religious man with true Christian beliefs. At least at the start of the play he is. As his conversation with the Professor advances, Black listens to profound scholarly critiques of his religion and reality. He asks White to detail his beliefs on the power of education, and his response inspires Black’s first waves of religious doubt: “No… It’s the first thing in that book there. The Garden of Eden. Knowledge as destructive to the spirit. Destructive to goodness… It gives people the unhealthy illusion that they can outwit the devil” (McCarthy 111). This scholarly critique plants the seed of disillusionment within Black’s moral ground.  He has now begun to grow into a nihilistic, pessimistic stalk that is the modern man. His Faith has been poisoned by the virulent, yet factual argument proposed by the Professor. After White storms out of the tenement, Black collapses on the floor and expresses his religious doubts as he pleads for God to give him a sign: “That’s all right. If you never speak again you know I’ll keep your word. You know I will…. Is that okay? Is that okay?” (McCarthy 143).  Losing his faith, Black is left in a silent room alone with his disillusionment. The professor’s eloquent argument inspired an epiphany which will lead to Black’s subsequent change.

                The Sunset Limited shows the effect and cause of disillusionment, and consequent evolving world view of Black and White. The professor demonstrates a character who is already embittered by society, and workingman represents a character on his way to such disillusionment. Both experience jaunting life experiences: White has lost his passion, and black has lost his Faith. Like J. Alfred Prufrock, the men will be forced to bite of the manner with a smile, and come to terms with their newly devolved sense of reality. But would it have been worthwhile? Worthwhile for these men who now posses knowledge, but lack conviction. The Sunset Limited is a play about what men want, and what they get. They want truth (Truth?), and instead they receive disillusionment.

Famous Quotes Related to Disillusionment

"Wisdom comes by disillusionment"

George Santayana

"IT is only a step from boredom to disillusionment, which leads naturally to self-pity, which in turn ends in chaos."

Manly Hall

"Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us ever day, but it changes and withers at a touch."

Joseph Priestley

"The longer you stay in one place, the greater your changes of disillusionment."

Art Spander

"The novel is born of disillusionment; the poem, of despair."

Jose Bergamin

"I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all."

J. D. Salinger (Holden Caulfield)