Psychology of Robbe Grillet's Writing in Jealousy

 

   

    Critics of Robbe Grillet point out that his mode of storytelling fixates on the listing of things seen, in an objective, non-allegorical, “definitive interrogation of the object”.  Barthe describes his Grillet's style as “man’s direct experience of what surrounds him without his being able to shield himself with a psychology, a metaphysic, or a psychoanalytic method in his combat with the objective world he discovers”.  Bruce Morrisette explained that there was an “absence of any psychological analysis”, “a rejection of introspection, interior monologues or thoughts”.  While this is true in the strictest sense, Grillet does a marvelous job of positioning the reader behind the narrator’s eyes. By explaining what the narrator is looking at, whether in real time or in memory, Grillet allows the reader to fill in any blanks psychologically for the character.  As the reader looks at what the narrator looks at, he can’t help himself but ask why is the narrator looking at that? What is the purpose of describing that object? Is what the narrator describing even real? By answering the questions that are raised, the reader is able to deduce the thoughts, actions, and emotional state of the narrator.  

For example, the narrator starts out by describing his house and the movements of A (presumably his wife).  She has something in her hands, but the narrator isn’t sure what it is but infers that it is “probably…a sheet of paper”.  He is only able to surmise that it is probably a sheet of paper because he notices a sheet of paper later in the narration that gives him suspicion.  So we can tell that this narration is not “Now” as is indicated in the beginning paragraph, but a recreation in his memory.  

Later having drinks with Franck, the neighbor, A... leans over to listen to Franck, but the narrator can’t distinguish what is said and decides that Franck is “probably thanking her”.  It is as if the narrator is simply trying to come up with the most plausible, most benign exchange he can think of.   There are a number of instances where the narrator is clearly trying to rebuild scenes, thinking through details which might give him clues about…something.  “Memory succeeds…in reconstituting several movements of her right hand and her lips…which might be considered significant…which, on reflection, does not prove beyond a doubt that she tasted the soup today.  Now the boy clears away the plates.  It then becomes impossible to check again the stain in A…’s plate--or their absence, if she has not served herself.”  

This passage not only points out the inconsistencies and ambiguities of memory, but also brings up the motif of stains that are presented throughout the story. There are some marks left on a sheet of writing paper, oil stains left by Franck’s car, even the glow of Franck's shirt in the dying light of dusk standing out against the dark wall, but of primary interest is the stain left by a centipede Franck smashed on the wall one night at dinner.  The details of this incident is told over and over in detail, although it happened “at the beginning of the month, perhaps the month before, or later.”  Each time the incident is recalled, more incriminating evidence is revealed.  The first time, the narrator says “A…seems to be breathing a little faster, but this may be an illusion.  Her left hand gradually closes over her knife…The hand with the tapering fingers has clenched around the knife handle”.  Another time, he amends “The hand with the tapering fingers has clenched into a fist on the white cloth.”  Then, “The hand with tapering fingers has clenched into a fist on the white cloth.  The five widespaced fingers have closed over the palm with such force that they have pulled the cloth with them”, the creases of which spread out until they touch Franck’s hand where he rests it next to a “knife blade [which] has left on the cloth a tiny, dark, elongated, sinuous stain surround by more tenuous marks” before Franck's hand rises to push down a suspicious letter in his shirt pocket.  Finally, the incident is recalled in a different setting altogether, being in the bedroom not the dining room: “he comes back toward the bed…The hand with the tapering fingers has clenched into a fist on the white sheet.  The five widespread fingers have drawn the cloth with them…” The narrator may only be describing what he remembers, but it clear that his memory reflects his psychology: the incident of the centipede killing goes from incidental to incriminating.

Even the description of the stain reveals the narrator’s state of mind:  “the outline seems indelible.  It has no relief, none of the thickness of a dried stain which would come off if scratched at with a fingernail.  It looks more like brown ink impregnating the surface layer of the paint.”  “It has no relief” describes the nature of stain but also reflects the attitude of the narrator: he, too, has no relief from the thoughts that keep running through his mind.  The ink “impregnating” the surface once again reveals that the narrator feels there is something sexual going on.  

 The killing of the centipede becomes the focus of the narrator, but its precise significance eludes us.  Is the centipede the affair, the stain on an otherwise serviceable relationship?  Or is the centipede the narrator, causing consternation in A and quickly dispatched without mercy by Franck?  Or does the killing of the centipede symbolize the way Franck can meet the needs of A, swift and sure, while the narrator simply sits and watches?  Each reader, perhaps, gives a different interpretation and hence the story's meaning and impact changes with each reader.

As significant as the descriptions of these stains are in the story, the efforts the narrator goes through to eradicate them is just as telling.  Some stains are simple to erase, just adjusting the angle of perspective--“It is easy to make this spot disappear thanks to the flaws in the rough window”, while others require real effort, such as the removal of the centipede stain that requires an eraser and a razor: “There now remains only a vaguely outlined paler area, without any apparent depression of the surface, which might pass for an insignificant defect in the finish, at worst.”  One can’t help but wonder if the narrator is thinking of using some sort of tool to extirpate the interloper in his marriage.  “The precision for the tool permits the area exposed to its effect to be carefully determined.”   How can the narrator remove these thoughts, the apparent treachery and all that it entails, and restore his relationship to what it was before, to make this all “insignificant”, “without any apparent depression”?  At one point the narrator describes a car crash with Franck inside, the “car immediately bursts into flames…It is the sound the centipede makes”.  This “observation”, another memory that is apparently only imagined, is probably one of the closest clues we get to the true feelings of the narrator. 

Interestingly, it is not the centipede stain that is so hard to erase but marks left on the blue paper.  This is tangible evidence that she has written to Franck something secret, something that she has not shared with the narrator, that she has orchestrated a miscommunication with the servant to maneuver the narrator out of the room so she could deliver it to Franck, and that Franck then tried to hide in his shirt pocket.  It is this interchange more than any other that causes the narrator to then rethink all that has gone before and after.  The remaining evidence, the “two short pen strokes” appear to resist both the eraser and the razor, “doubtless because they were made too heavily.  Unless a new word, skillfully arranged to cover up these two unnecessary strokes, replaces the old one on the page, the traces of black ink will still be visible there.”  What is that new word?  What will replace the suspicion, jealousy, and uncertainty? 

Another way that the author allows us to glimpse inside the thoughts of the narrator is to follow his observations.  As he waits for his wife to come home that fateful night when she and Franck had “car trouble” and had to spend the night, the narrator reflects more on the sounds of things around him, the insects and animals “shrill and short”, the kerosene lamp “it’s sound  plainative, high pitched, somewhat nasal”, and most tellingly, the sound of trucks that rumble by : “it is moving just as fast as the preceding one, which for a moment might cause it to be confused with a touring car…”  All the while the narrator observes that “A…should have been back long since” and reasons they might be delayed from “engine trouble” to “driver’s fatigue”.  As the reader reads the descriptions of all these sounds, he can feel the how intently the narrator is listening for his wife’s return, his anxiety as he waits in vain. 

As the night progresses, the description turns to A’s bedroom and the content of her drawers, as though the narrator is looking for something, some evidence perhaps of the infidelity he imagines when “the light suddenly goes out”.  In the absence of the light, the abrupt cessation of the kerosene’s hissing, the narrator seems overcome by the darkness and silence: “the faintest movements become impracticable”.  Even his ability to measure, or describe becomes hindered in the “total darkness”.  Not only can the reader discern the apparent depression and despair of the narrator in that moment, but the reader can also see that the incessant descriptions, of the rows of banana trees in the plantation, the shadow length of the columns, the explication of insect behavior, all of it is a means of distraction for the narrator as he attempts not to see what he thinks he sees:  his wife falling in love with another man. 

Grillot’s style does more than experiment with the style of narration.  The entire act of taking reflection, motivation, even the ubiquitous “I” from the story reveals the feeling of powerlessness the narrator has about what is happening.  He is reduced to simply a bystander, peering through the blinds as it were, grasping at memories and trying to piece together the story from snippets of conversations and moments of observations.  He is like the workmen in the plantation surrounding the termite-ridden logs, looking at the problem from all the angles, and yet remaining motionless.  Are his observations true?  What was it that he did see?  What does all of it mean?  He constantly questions himself--”it may…be false, entirely made up,...or even imaginary”.  

Grillet has not removed psychology from his story, rather he has left the precise motivations, anxieties, and conclusions up to the reader to puzzle out using the narrator’s account to provide the clues.  Using vocabulary, time shifting, and motifs the reader is able to not only deduce what happened but what the narrator’s feelings are, and empathize with him as if the reader were the narrator himself, inside his brain, re-living all of the true, false, imaginary observations.  Grillet does not tell us the psychology of his narrator, he allows the reader to live it with him.

For Your Eyes Only: What the Eyes Tell Us in 'As I Lay Dying"

    William Faulkner used this quote from the Odyssey as inspiration for the title of his book As I Lay Dying: “As I lay dying the woman with the dog’s eyes would not close my eyes for me as I descended into Hades”   The speaker in the Odyssey is bitter because he would rather not see and experience the sights on the way to hell.  As I Lay Dying too has myriad of eyes open and watching as Addie dies and then as her body is taken to her home-town of Jefferson to be buried.  Each chapter, with its multitude of characters, watching and looking, sees what is before them in different angles, different perspectives, different motivations.  From the portentous eye of the sun to the fish’s eye covered with dust, this novel is full of watchful eyes and eyes that are blinded by greed, fear, and pain.  Indeed, Addie must have been in her own hell if she could see the foolishness and selfishness of her family during their pilgrimage.

Anse, the father of the family, is perhaps the worst offender.  His unwise decisions coupled with his unrelenting complaints and unreasonable obstinance causes the devastation of the remaining members of the family.  Anse often bemoans that he has no luck, and that life has dealt him a hard blow, but it is also known that he does nothing that makes him sweat, leaving the hard work to others.  A man who doesn’t work is hardly a man in the place and time he grew up in, underlining Addie’s observation that “then he died.  He did not know he was dead.”  His eyes are described as “burnt-out cinder” as if any life that was in him has also fled. His inaction and inability to reason, to have compassion or to adjust to circumstances--characteristics of being fully human-- becomes the family’s greatest downfall.  But Anse’s main problem is only seeing what he wants to see.  He is described as being “constantly surprised to see his wife in bed” as if he carried an image of her alive and healthy in his head, and couldn’t accept the reality of her sickness.  He also refused to meet Jewel’s eyes as he reveals the negotiation for a new pack of mules resulted in the trade of Jewel’s horses, as if by not witnessing the anger in Jewel’s reaction he could pretend it was alright.

Addie’s eyes are described as “steam” or  “lamps blaring up just before the oll is gone’.  They reflect that she is dying, and that her will to live is also fading away--”all her failing life appears to drain into her eyes, urgent, irremediable.”  She has lived a life where expediency was the driving force.   She was a school teacher not because she loved the children or learning, but simply because that was how she could make a living.  She married Anse only because she knew he would have her. She took the preacher as a lover without shame or remorse because she desired him, and when he called it off, she went back to Anse and became his dutiful wife because there was no other option.  “I gave Anse the children.  I did not ask for them.  I did not even ask him for what he could have given me: not-Anse.  That was my duty to him, to not ask that, and that duty I fulfilled.”  Although Addie describes Anse as dead, she too, has lived her life without the passion and fulfillment that would make one truly alive.  “My father said that the reason for living is getting ready to stay dead.  I know at last what he meant…”  After her fling with the pastor, Addie has simply lived so that she can die without Anse’s reproach.  And her stipulation that she be buried in Jefferson becomes the revenge on him that she could not exact in her lifetime.

Cash becomes the pragmatic character in the novel.  Even his name speaks of the practicalities of life.  His main concern is getting the coffin built and doing it correctly.  He makes the coffin on the bevel simply because that is the way of “animal magnetism”, the way the “earth sinks down” and the “natural” way of things.  Once the body is in the coffin, his priority is to get the body balanced.  His worries go unheeded, and as a result, the coffin spills out of the wagon as they try to ford the stream.  Just before they cross, Cash and Darl exchange a look--”looks that plunge unimpeded through one another’s eyes and into the ultimate secret place where for an instant Cash and Darl crouch flagrant and unabashed in all the old terror and the old forboding, alert and secret and without shame.” This is perhaps the only time in the novel when Darl has an accomplice, where they acknowledge the danger and futility of their mission.  They seem to read each other’s minds and Cash feels the burden of being pragmatic in a fantastic situation.  Why hasn’t he foreseen this disaster?  He should have come out and got a “sight on it”, prepared the road and wagon for this eventuality.   Cash becomes the casualty of the river crossing and ends up unconscious. His eyes from this point on are only occasionally opened as if he cannot behold the increasingly unreasonable actions of his family.   His role from this point on is to simply endure all that follows.  

Jewel’s eyes are described often as “pale”, “hard”, and “wrong”:  “his face and eyes were two colors of wood, the wrong one pale and the wrong one dark.”  It makes his eyes appear inhuman like wood, plates, or marbles.  Coupled with the intensity of his glares, the shortness and abruptness of this speech, and the quickness of his temper, Jewel is presented as a formidable presence.  He seems to have a strong dislike of his family, refusing to ride with them, and often not responding when they speak to him.  Yet he is also the one to save Addie again and again--when she falls in the water, and from the fire Darl sets in the barn.  He has worked and sacrificed for his horse but ultimately gives it up to buy a team of mules to replace the ones drowned in the fire.  Out of all the members of the family, Jewel shows the most dedication for his mother.  Indeed, Addie had prophesied this when she said “ He will save me from the water and from the fire.  Even though I have laid down my life, he will save me.”  

If Jewel acts with blind devotion, Darl is cursed with seeing too much.  He can surmise that this trip will ruin his family, that the best thing would be to let Addie go--by water, by fire--than to continue on this trip that will cost Cash his leg, Jewel his horse, and Dewey Dell her dignity.  His eyes are described as looking as though the “land dug out of his skull and the holes filled with distance beyond the land”.  He seems to float just outside of reality, with an ability to discern what is happening around him without actually being there, such as when he describes the death of Addie while he and Jewel are on the road.  Unlike Jewel, whose eyes look wrong, it is Darl’s look that is wrong.  He “can’t see eye to eye with most folks”, “It’s like he had got into the inside of you, someway.  Like somehow you was looking at yourself and your doings outen his eyes.”  It is a heavy load to carry, and although setting fire to the barn was a logical solution to the problem of their journey, his family elects to have him committed--perhaps to keep them out of financial obligations towards the farmer, or perhaps because they cannot stand to see themselves reflected in his discerning eyes.  

Dewey Dell, particularly, can not stand to see herself through Darl’s eyes.  Somehow Darl has surmised that Dewey Dell is carrying Lafe’s baby.  She is determined to solve this problem with a pharmacist in town and Lafe’s money.  It is the consequence of a choice made for her by chance--she would only go into the woods with Lafe if her bag were full, and Lafe filled it for her, so she had no choice.  While Jewel’s eyes are pale, her’s are dark, but just as hard.  She often turns her head and refuses to look at things, her sole purpose driving her on, while she seems to only give a passing regard to what else is going on around her.  Her looks are “blank” and “repudiant”, and she herself describes herself as blind to things that happen around  her :“I could not see”.  Her fear and worry has pin-pointed her focus to her one need, and everything else becomes ancillary to it.  

Vardaman’s eyes are described as “round” and “big-eyed”.  He is the youngest of the family, and although he sees everything, he often cannot understand the cause and effect.  He knows his fish was alive, and now it is dead, and they eat it for supper.  He also understands his mother is dead, but cannot understand how she died.  Could she also not breathe? Is there a connection between the doctor and her death, for when he came she died.  If the doctor leaves now will she live?  Throughout the trip, Vardaman becomes a non-judgemental witness to the scenes around him, and only the reader can discern the import of what he sees. 

Neighbors and witnesses along the way fill in the gaps, often describing the trip and the players as foolish, obstinate, and queer.  People try to help, or to talk them out of their plans, but most go unheeded.  As readers we become yet another witness to this tragedy and our judgements and experiences to add yet another layer to the tale.  

What Faulkner has done is more than simply describe a funeral trek.  By abandoning an omniscient narrator he surrenders an authoritative pronouncement on his characters.  The myriad of open eyes looking and seeing from their own point of view, through their own lenses, brings a sort of reflective quality to the picture.  We can collect the pieces and fit them together in what we think is the right order, and get a general idea of the overall narrative, but there are still gaps that the reader must fill in with their own knowledge.  Ironically, by creating such a multi-faceted look, the picture itself becomes somewhat fragmented and instead of getting a definitive idea of what happened, each piece both fills in gaps and obscures other parts.  It is as though Faulkner is pointing out that what we witness is both what happened and what we perceive as having happened.  Each look is tainted with each character’s motivations, experiences, and prejudices.  The dog-eyed woman may not allow us to close our eyes, but it is clear that there is more than one way to not see what is before us, and that what we think we see may not be what others see.  

Looking at Race: A Reflection After Reading "Between the World and Me"

  Ta-Nahisi Coates writes about what it is like to be black in America in Between the World and Me.  He does so while recounting his own life, raised in a black neighborhood in Baltimore, going to Howard, moving to New York, and then, finally, freeing himself from the "Dream" altogether,  as he puts it, by living in another country entirely.

 While I read, I admit I had flashes of insights of what it must be like to really be black, or at least what it must be like to be Coates, and not just project my own assumptions and limited knowledge onto an entire race.   I felt like there were moments of true insight into why the heritage of slavery still reverberates today; how the racist acts of a few (ok, many) especially law enforcement, impinge on the freedom of every black boy with a hoodie or a stereo; and how fear can turn to hatred of those "who call themselves white".

Growing up in a predominately (like 99%) white school, in a predominately white city in a predominately white state, I grew up without thinking or wondering what it must be like to be black.  This isn't to say I didn't hear racism from time to time, even from my own grandparents, and slightly less overtly, from my own parents.  But being the educated person I thought I was, I dismissed these off-handed comments as ignorance and clung to the belief that we--all of us, black, white, yellow, whatever--we're all the same.

I marched to the state capitol to protest that Martin Luther King Day was not yet a holiday in my state. When, as an adult, we moved East and then South, I had plenty of black acquaintances and friends and never thought anything about the color of their skin.  When my daughter pointed out her friend Kate in kindergarten, she described her as "the one with the pink coat", not the one with the dark skin. So there were times I felt unnecessarily penalized in Coates book for being a person "who believed they were white"

Coates talks a lot about being fearful. "When I was your age the only people I knew were black, and all of them were powerfully, adamantly, dangerously afraid.  I had seen this fear all my young life, though I had not always recognized it as such."  Coates goes on to blame this fear on the building up of the Dream."I have seen the dream all my life.  It is perfect houses with nice lawns.  It is Memorial Day cookouts, block associations, and driveways.  The Dream is treehouses and the Cub Scouts...And for so long I wanted to escape into the dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket.  But this has never been an option because the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies"."Our current politics tell you that should you fall victim to such an assault and lose your body, it somehow must be your fault.  Trayvon Martin's hoodie got him killed.  Jordan Davis's loud music did the same...Without its own justifications, the Dream would collapse upon itself."

He quotes John C. Calhoun, a senator during the Civil War, "' The two great divisions of society are not the rich and poor, but white and black....And all the former, the poor as well as the rich belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals'.  And there it is" Coates goes on to conclude,"the right to break the black body as the meaning of their sacred equality.  And that right has always given them meaning, has always meant that there was someone down in the valley because a mountain is not a mountain if there is nothing below.  You and I, my son, are that 'below'....There is no them without you, and without the right to break you they must necessarily fall from the mountain, lose their divinity, and tumble out of the Dream.  And then they would have to determine how to build their suburbs on something other than human bones, how to angle their jails toward something other than a human stockyard, how to erect a democracy independent of cannibalism."

 I will admit that those words stung, and I want them so much not to be true.  But it did make me look harder at my own experiences and perceptions.  The first black guy I got to know was at a leadership conference I attended in high school.  He was from Maryland.  He was tall, walked with a swagger, and man, could he dance!  I enjoyed our long talks, not only because our lives were so different (not because he was black so much as because he came from a city whose population was greater than the population of my entire states), but because I liked the rhythm of his words, his lingo that I didn't quite understand, and the emotion that seemed to ooze from him.  I enjoyed his pick up lines, but I never really took them seriously; I didn't like him like that.  Was it because he was black, because we were too different?  Or was it because we knew each other a week, were in high school and we had a continent between us?

So then I think, if I were alone at night, on a strange street, and I encountered a black man with a hoodie, would I be wary?  Well, of course.  Because then I picture the same scenario, only with a white guy in a hoodie.  Am I wary?  Of course.  But, actually, if I am honest, I am even more wary of the white guy.  Why would that be? I wondered.   Is it because I have never had a harrowing or violent experience with a black guy? Most black teens I meet are respectful, helpful. They say "yes, ma'am" and some don't even look me directly in the eye.  I always thought it was because they were raised "right",in the "Southern tradition".  But maybe it is because Coates is right, and black boys are always fearful around whites, and somehow I've picked up on this.  Maybe I know  subconsciously that the black guy in the hoodie on that street is just as reluctant to engage with a white woman.   But a white guy, who has no legacy of injustices, who instead has a legacy of a certain amount of entitlement, could be much more dangerous.  So because in my pretend scenario, in my minds eye, I am more afraid of a white guy than a black one, does that make me part of institutionalized racism?

After reading Coates, I had to admit I have seen some of the institutionalized racism he talks about. "All my life," he says, "I'd heard people tell their black boys and black girls to 'be twice as good', which is to say 'accept half as much'".  As a volunteer in the public schools, I witnessed at least three white teachers who were seemingly exasperated with a student who was without exception black.  There seemed to be a level of vitriol that was unexpected to me, and seemed to be incongruous with how the teacher behaved with the rest of the class.   I always tried to give the teacher the benefit of the doubt--perhaps that child really did try a person's patience--but it always left me a little unsettled.  Why was the "troublesome" student always black?  How would I react  as a teacher? I wondered.  In my minds eye I thought I would be kind and compassionate, probably even extra lenient with that little black kid.  After all, he probably didn't have a dad and the mom was working two jobs and there are older brothers in gangs and baby sisters to take care if at home and...I stopped myself.  Why would assume any of that?  There was a whole gaggle of black kids living in my suburban neighborhood with two parents and a good home life.  Perhaps I am just as guilty as everyone else for stereo-typing, for buying into preconceived notions that have no basis.

Still, I argue with myself, I think there are a lot of favorable stereo-types about black people that I buy into and envy.  Their hair is amazing...all those spring loaded curls, with a seemingly inexhaustible option of weaves and wigs and braids to change things up.  And then, if a guy, opts not to mess with hair at all, a black guy can pull off bald no matter how young and a black bald guy always looks good.  It is not so universal for white guys....look around. Then it seems that every shape and size of a black woman is desirable in the black community.  Some find Haley Berry beautiful, but just as many seem to want a big booty.  So I see a body confidence in black women that I don't see in white women who seem to all want to look like the same impossible skinny blond Barbie doll. And there is a camaraderie in the black community that is harder to find among whites.  A stranger is instantly a "brother" or a "sister".   Perhaps it is a familiarity born from shared griefs but it is a familiarity nonetheless.

I am sure that Coates would dismiss my positive observations.  Call them trite and perhaps even find them offensive.  What is good hair, and fellowship when you are are being routinely pulled over because of the color of your skin? Probably he would use it as another example of a "person who believe themselves to be white" trivializing the real issue, burying their head in "the Dream."

Which leads me to my real issue with race issues.  As a "white" person, I feel completely helpless at
talking about race.  Everything I say or think is wrong or offensive, ignorant or trivial.  I read book after book, essay after essay about the damage someone of my coloring did to someone of their coloring, and for this I must hang my head in shame every day.  I cannot talk about my questions, or disagree with a point of view, or even have a point of view or even imagine what it must be like because, I am repeatedly told, someone of my complexion cannot understand alienation, fear, being wrongly accused,, being mistreated, being underprivileged, or being ignorant of how certain social politics work.  We too, fear for our children and are outraged when they are mistreated. So we can, maybe, slightly, understand your fear, Mr. Coates, and become outraged with you for the injustices that are done to children everywhere, especially from people who should protect them.

Is there social and political injustices?  Yes, unfortunately.  And I am glad for the insight Coates has revealed in this memoir.  It reminds me that we may never be able to completely understand another's point of view, because we all been shaped by different circumstances.  But we can seek to understand each other.  And then find some common ground.  Because regardless of our heritage, we are all human.  How do we regain our humanity?

Ambition vs. Acceptance

Ambition. It sounds like a good quality. It's the drive we have to try to better our current situation. That's good; that's desirable--in most cases even admirable. But sometimes, usually in retrospect, we realize that in order to better ourselves, there was something sacrificed in the process.

When Pizarro went to conquer a new land in the Americas, he was the archetype of ambition. He came from humble beginnings, and in Spain at that time, it was almost impossible to overcome the station one was born into. Unless. Unless one was willing to strike out in the newly discovered Americas and conquer lands for and in behalf of Spain.

Pizarro gambled everything he had and all the respect he had gained so far in order to acquire the Peruvian lands the Incas claimed. The gamble paid off: he became wealthy, received titles and fame, and became the de facto ruler of Peru--everything an illegitimate child from the poor region of Spain could have ever hoped for. In the process, he annihilated thousands of Incas, including 3 of their chiefs, and stripped the land of all the gold and silver he could find. In the end, Pizarro himself would be killed by ambitious men looking to gain honor and glory themselves.

Perhaps that is too strong a case. Most people would say, "Sure, I want to get ahead, but I certainly wouldn't kill anybody. Or steal their stuff. I have my limits." But what about the guy who works long hours to get ahead, and leaves their families to eat dinners alone without him? Or what about the athlete who taunts his opponent and then, sometimes literally, crushes him? If getting a good deal on a house means taking advantage of someone who has to sell in a market that has suddenly tanked, well, that's just life, isn't it? And if you have to crawl into bed with people with low morals to get elected, well, it wouldn't be the first time.

Still, what is the alternative? Accepting the way your life is, without pining for more, can also be a good and desirable trait. Admirable, even. These are the people in a perpetual state of calm where trials and tribulations are peacefully accepted as part of life. Instead of yearning for things they cannot have, they make the best with what they have. And yet these are also the people who get stepped on, abused, and forgotten.

The Incas were by no means calm and peaceable people. They had conquered most of what is now Peru and parts of Chile and Ecuador only three generations before the Spaniards appeared. However, they didn't react when the Spaniards showed up, and instead did everything the Spaniards asked. They gave them gold and silver, women and food, thinking that if they just endured these hairy men from a strange land, they would eventually go away. It wasn't until it was too late that they started to rebel and revolt against these foreigners who were unilaterally cruel and untrustworthy.

Again, we might say, "Well, I would never stand for someone to take advantage of me time and again like that, without putting up a fight." But what about the guy who stays at a job that asks for all of his time and effort without paying enough to feed his family? Or the athlete who throws in the towel and gives up before the contest is over? If we get laid off of a job, do we try to make it by just on unemployment, hoping the economy will just turn around? And is it right to sit back and let others shoulder the responsibility for the PTA, the work committee, the local co-op, when we reap all the benefits?

I'm not sure what the answer is, where the fine line is drawn between the two and which virtue is better. Although they are mutually exclusive states, perhaps it is all about the timing. Learning when to fight, and when to stop. As they say, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Why I Run

I run because there is a monster in my brain.
It resides in the corner of my brain where I keep a list of all the things I have to do.
Most days, as I go about my business, I feel it rustle and bump around, but it is only a minor annoyance. Other days, it roars to life with a vegence. Through it's eyes I see the pile of magazines on the hearth that need to be filed or recycled, the dishes in the sink that need to be washed. There is paint peeling in the hallway that needs to be scraped and repainted. The kids need to learn to clean their rooms better. I should make a chore chart. Their clothes need to be gone through and expunged, that would make it easier. I need to shop for dinner. I need to organize the storage room. Really, someone should take that pile of giveaways to the curb. Why can't I remember to bring the recycling bags with me into the store? Then I wouldn't have to deal with these plastic bags everywhere. I need to get a dr. appointment for my son. Does he need a hearing test? We need to work on multiplication facts. I should read to them at night. Do I have a 3 month supply of food in case of a pandemic? I should organize this better so I know what I have. I should call that lady about whether she needs help while her husband is away...
And so it goes. With each added item, the monster grows longer and fatter. It's a giant grub with green tentacles that reach into each lobe of my brain, squeezing out all thought and function until I have to consciously tell myself to breathe.
That is when I try not to think and pull out lycra instead. I squeeze into it, lace up my running shoes, and shove in my earphones. I run and run and run until the only thing I can concentrate on is the rythm of my feet, in time with the music. I run until I don't have to concentrate on breathing anymore, it wheezes out of me in a desperate reflex to keep me alive.
The pounding seems to lull the monster to sleep, and when I'm done--soaking and heaving, my brain seems hollow and quiet.
Taking a shower, a tiny tentacle tentatively searches. The monster is not dead, but the tentacle in manageable: The most important priority somehow sifted to the top.
I'll methodically lop off the tentacles as they appear, until the monster multiplies unchecked again. Then I will lace up my shoes, and run again.

"Beach" Reads

Picking books at random off of my list of 200+ books-to-read, I seem to have a predilection for picking books about whaling and the frozen seas at both ends of the pole. Either that, or there are a lot of books chasing Moby Dick.

When I read Moby Dick, I didn't understand why it was a classic. It seemed to be more of a field guide to whales, with a story of a personal vendetta against an anthropomorphized whale thrown in. Looking back now, especially after reading several books about the same subject, I realize that Melville captured the seas and the wonder and mystique of the giant leviathan better than any author yet.

Indeed, there is something about the whaling profession that made climbing into a ship and setting sail for the outer limits of the known world, hunting beasts larger than the largest of ancient dinosaurs more like space travel. A whole new world of icy poles, endless days, and monstrous bears was opened up. For a writer, is there a setting with more potential? These three books dwell on the survival of man in these extreme latitudes.
Georgiana Harding tells the story of Thomas Cave, a whaler who took a bet to spend the winter alone on an island off of Greenland. In a land of endless snow and ice, in never-ending night, the landscape becomes a blank slate where the panorama of the mind takes over. Cave's ghosts of his past visit him in his solitude, yet his inward struggle for acceptance, for peace, seem elusive. When the ship retrieves him at last they find a man aged and withdrawn. He seems to have acquired a gift for helping men dispel their "demons", yet his reluctance to intermingle with humankind betrays his inability to dispel his own phantoms. The kernel of wisdom Cave receives from this experience seems to be "there are some places that man should not be" and "the only evil that exists is the evil that man brings with him".

That lesson is better learned in The Terror by Dan Simmons. It is based on a real ship that set sail in 1845 looking for the Northwest passage and was locked in the ice for 3 years. There were no survivors, so Simmons imagines a rich and thrilling existence for the doomed men as they battle the elements and a horrifyingly intelligent white bear (sound familiar?). Yet what really dooms the men is the greediness of the company that provided the ships with defective canned goods and the lust for power and revenge among the men. Despite the gloomy material, Simmons lines his novel with hope. Unlike in Moby Dick, acceptance ultimitely becomes the antidote to revenge and leads to new life rather than death.

Perhaps the most intriguing of the three is the non-fiction book Island of the Lost by Joan Druett. It chronicles the tales of two ships that wreck on a small island near the South Pole. Through the industry and skill of the first mate of one ship, the entire crew of that ship were able to survive almost an entire year before they were rescued. Another ship wrecked on the opposite side of the island. However, as if to add credence to Simmons novel, this crew self-destructs with greed, lust, and slothfulness. Only one man survived. Its a thrilling contrast, all the more because it's true.

As the winter wears (seemingly interminably) on, I will continue to plow through my book list, but perhaps I'll read something sunnier next time. My reviews of these books are at goodreads.