Breakthrough Writer: Back in the World Lessons

Links for Parallelism

Part One: 3 Traps of Life As They Are Embodied in the Story's Characters

Trap One: Hopeless Despair: The doctor who wouldn't let go of his divorce pain and walked around an empty house.

In a similar trap, Charlie feels like a nonentity, a cipher, a nobody. He is looking for a sense of place, purpose, distinction, and belonging. He is looking for hope yet he feels like an outsider, a young man whose writing aspirations evidence a life of futility and vanity. As a result, he is overcome by the paralysis of self-pity. His hope lies in his passion and hunger for literature and writing in general. By the story's end, he identifies with the ship moving through the fog, an act of faith and desire kept alive.

Trap Two: Vainglorious Pride: A woman died because she wouldn't take off her body-length mink coat in Buenos Aries, an an outdoor bazaar.

Hipsters say "we're educated, hip, cosmopolitans, not like those close-minded provencial tribalists," and in doing so these hipsters become the very tribalists they claim to despise.

Pride always results in blindness.

Audrey and George, the two illicit lovers embody pride and vanity. They feel morally and spiritually superior to the man they’ve betrayed, Truman. They are in fact blinded by their vanity, which is ironic in the context of Miguel whose passions make him blind.

Audrey and George think they're better educated than most; they think they're special; as a result, they are blind to their vanity.

Trap Three: Self-Satisfied Mediocrity and Complacency: The couple in Torrance who have separate TVs and pills and fast-food refuse on their porch.

Truman is a man who evidences a lack of curiosity regarding anything beyond his small circle of interest; he shows a certain philistinism (disdain for arts) and is so lax and self-satisfied with his current station in life that he is blind to the fact that his wife Audrey his having an affair with his “friend” George.

Part Two. Thematic Elements

Fog is pervasive in the story. Fog appears to represent blindness, a struggle to see.

All the characters are blind in some fashion or other and this blindess brings them to one of Life's 3 Traps. Like a typical college student, Charlie is blind to his identity, his niche, his sense of belonging; Audrey and George are blind to their vanity that makes them repulsive and obnoxious; Truman is blind to his complacency that stagnates him and makes him fail to see his wife is venturing into adulterous waters; Miguel is blinded by fanatical love.

Irony

Story’s irony is that in the midst of all this blindness and fog there is hope: All the characters are starting their lives over. A new start suggests rebirth and the possibility of seeing things again.

Jahiliyya, this is the Arabic term for a long, protracted period of ignorance, the dark ages, if you will. Every character is stuck in the Jahiliyya, as we all are at one period in our lives.

Charlie is blind to his own life but he becomes the Third Eye of the love triangle, witnessing in an almost voyeuristic fashion the sad truth that Truman is about to confront.

Final paragraph shows a lobster flailing its pincers, perhaps a sign of desire. Perhaps our “salvation” is staying hungry, keeping our passion, as a sort of antidote from complacency and vanity and despair.

Part Three. Class Activity for Reviewing Irony in the Stories and Developing Your Thesis

Explain specific, distinguishing characteristics for irony for the following stories and then develop a thesis that allows you to put ALL the distinguishing characteristics for your research paper:

"Rich Brother" (example: The more assured Pete is in his identity as the "rich brother" the more he remains blind to his essential weakness: He is an emotional cripple, incapable of change, incapable of maturity and humility, and incapable of freeing himself from his sick addiction to playing the role of Mother to his brother Donald.)

"The Missing Person"

"Say Yes"

"Desert Breakdown, 1968"

"Our Story Begins"

Review of Essay Assignment

In a 6-page research paper, use no fewer than 3 stories from the book to write an extended definition of the word irony. You must chronicle an ironic experience you had in a personal narrative for the first 2 pages.

Some thesis statements to avoid:

Wolff's stories are rich in irony.

Irony really hits the characters with a wallop.

I really like all the irony in Wolff's stories.

We learned that irony is part of seeing the world in a new way and that once you see irony, really see it, you can't go back to your pre-ironic existence.

I feel better about myself now that I learned the definition of irony and have decided to change my major.

Understanding irony in Wolff's stories really opens your eyes to life's deeper truths and now that I've read this book I'm a better person. Thank you, McMahon.

Understanding irony makes me feel special, like I'm a member of an elite club, but the downside is now I feel lonely because so few people understand life the way I do. McMahon, you ruined my life.

I've studied irony in McMahon's class and read all the stories but now I'm more confused about irony more than ever and will probably drop McMahon's class and take 1A from another instructor.

Irony is not really that big of a deal. I see it everywhere. I don't see why McMahon has to make a big production of it. Frankly, I'm bored with the subject of irony and am ready to give up on McMahon.

Studying irony makes you a better person so spend a lot of time studying it and you'll see how much better your life is.

I don't believe in irony. It doesn't exist. It's just a cynical attitude McMahon has about life and he's trying to infect us with his cynical attitude. I resent him and I resent the class. At the end of the semester I'm filing a complaint.

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"Rich Brother": Symbiosis and Irony

Review of Irony

McMahon's definition:

Irony is a reversal of expectations that penetrate through our typical superficial grasp of reality so that we can comprehend life's often grotesque contradictions, which defy tragedy, comedy, pathos, laughter, tears, etc. Irony creates a sort of mystical detachment, a Third Eye looking wryly at life's bitter-sweet paradoxes.

Research Links for Irony

3 Common Uses of Irony

Definitions of Irony

3 Types of Irony and What Irony Is Not

Irony of the Story's Title

Pete is not rich at all. He is impoverished and emaciated by an ongoing sibling rivalry with his brother that has evolved into a symbiosis, a mutual dependence, rendering both brothers morally bankrupt.

Pete is also poor in another regard: He cannot change. He is a centripetal character (circle goes inward) as opposed to a centrifugal character (circle goes outward).

Irony in the Story

Pete is rich but he's poor in many ways.

Rich hates his brother Donald for stealing Mom's attention and ends up having to be Donald's mother.

Pete thinks he hates Donald's dependence on him, but in reality Pete is dependent on Donald's dependence on him. He is so poor that he has little else to fill his void.

Donald hates Pete for being strong than him but Donald makes himself weaker to be dependent on Rich and Donald knows this dependence torments Rich. In other words, Donald bites his nose to spite his face.

Donald sees himself as a generous person but in reality he only "shares" his brother's money.

Part Two. Lexicon

1. Decrepitude (weakened, broken down, the condition of both brothers)

2. hubris "Grow up. Buy a Mercedes."

3. braggadocio

4. culpability

5. symbiosis: two people who have developed a sick mutual dependence on the other until they become emotional cripples.

6. passive-aggressive: showing your anger in cowardly, back-handed, insidious ways.

7. scapegoat

8. sibling rivalry

9. stagnation

10. status quo

11. spite—an impulse for revenge that hurts you more than the person you hate.

12. Insanity— doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (Albert Einstein)

13. centrifugal

14. centripetal

Part Three. Pete’s 6 Moral Flaws

1. He worships money, seeing it as a solution for everything.

2. He suffers from a brand of obnoxious smug pride rooted in his wealth. (“Grow up and get a Mercedes.”) In fact, Pete is not rich at all as evidenced by the story’s ironic title “The Rich Brother.” Pete in fact is anything but “rich.” He is impoverished by his condition of helplessness and moral decrepitude. Pete covers his flaws with a pose of hubris and braggadocio.

3. He sees things only at face value without digging deeper because he is afraid of what he will find.

4. He is afraid to confront his culpability for the past, namely, his role in hating on his brother Donald through his rivalry and blind ambition.

5. Pete is a liar to his brother and to himself. For example on page 197 he lies about his dreams, claiming he only dreams about sex and money when in fact he is haunted by guilt for the sins he once committed against Donald. On 199 and 200 we find that Pete tried to kill his brother after an operation because he was jealous of the way his mother doted on Donald. Ironically, now it’s Pete who dotes on Donald and in doing so he assures that he keeps Donald crippled, which is to his advantage, or so he seeks.

6. He is afraid to confront his current role as Donald’s “mother,” which is ironic since he in a way attempted to steal Donald’s mother from him. In other words, Pete is dependent on Donald being dependent on him. What we have here, then, are two brothers trapped in a snake grip of hatred from which they can never let go. In psychology this is called “symbiosis.”

Part Four. Donald’s 6 Moral Flaws.

1. Driven by spite and cowardice, Donald sabotages his own life in order to make Pete bail him out again and again and again. This is Donald’s cowardly and passive-aggressive way of punishing Pete for what he did to him during childhood. Donald embodies the saying, “Bite my nose to spite your face.”

2. He uses religion to judge others while ignoring his own egregious flaws. In other words, Donald is a pompous ass.

3. Donald is stuck in a life of stagnation though he deludes himself with clichés that he is “breaking his pattern” (192)

4. Donald is stuck on a sense of lugubrious identity known as “victimization.” He is both overcome by spite and self-pity. As a result of seeing himself as a victim, he has reached a point of no return in which he is both undateable and unemployable.

5. As long as Donald can scapegoat Pete for all his problems, he never has to grow up and take accountability for his own actions.

6. Donald is big on generosity but only with his brother’s money, not his own.

Part Five. The 7 Qualities of Symbiosis

1. Two weak people merge to hide and reinforce their flaws.

2. Two people become mutually dependent on the other in order to stop changing, growing, maturing, and fulfilling their potential.

3. Two people use each other as a crutch and an excuse for their stagnation in life.

4. One person gets stronger and stronger or so he thinks while the other gets weaker and weaker. In truth, both get weaker and weaker because bother are more and more dependent on the other.

5. Two people stay together, not because of love, but because of weakness, hatred, and fear.

6. In a symbiosis, both people are blind or fail to admit how dependent they are on the other. On page 201 we see that Pete has a dream about Donald in which Pete is blind.

7. To use a psychological cliché, both parties of the symbiosis are called “enablers,” that is they perpetuate each other’s dysfunctions.

Defining Irony for Your Thesis

"The Missing Person" and "The Rich Brother" affirm that irony is ______________ evidenced by __________, _____________, ______________, and ___________________.

inverted forms of self-discovery

symbiotic stagnation to fill the void

impoverishment through substitution

law of spite

Irony is part of the Third Eye that explains the title “Back in the World”: Irony brings us back into the world from our intoxicating illusions.

To go "back in the world" means to leave one's delusions and re-connect with reality, often a shocking experience.

Often a crisis makes us go back in the world. Sometimes the back in the world is sudden like an epiphany or a brilliant vision. Other times, it is gradual.

We see a photo of ourselves and realize we've gained weight.

Our wife tape-records our sleeping and we realize we have a lethal case of snoring.

Our credit card is taken from a merchant and we realize we have self-destructive spending habits.

Large men with scary dogs show up at our house demanding money and we realize we have a gambling problem.

You see a video of a news report of you,a skeletal girl, being taken on a stretcher to a hospital and you realize you have an eating disorder.

Women no longer return your calls and you realize your life as a Pompous Ass Playboy have caught up with you.

You see your wife having animated and engaging conversation with other people, both men and women, and this conversation has far more depth and energy than exists when you talk to her and you realize you need to get stop watching ESPN and start paying attention to your wife.

You make a hyped-up production about leaving Cleveland to play basketball for the Miami Heat and now most everyone in the world wants to see you fail. You overplayed your popularity card and it backfired.

Out of sibling rivalry and jealousy, you tried to kill your brother when he was little and even though your whole life is committed to hiding your guilt and sense of failure by being filthy rich, you realize your are forever responsible for the damage you've done to him and you must forever share his burdens.

Seeing the irony behind a situation is another way of going back into the world.

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Back in the World Lesson #1: “The Missing Person” Updated for Spring 2012

Part One.

Essay 4:

In a 6-page research paper, use no fewer than 3 stories from the book to write an extended definition of the word irony.

In your first two pages, write a personal narrative in which you chronicle a profound, richly-developed irony.

Than write your single-sentence definition of irony, which will be your thesis modelled similarly to this:

As we can see in my personal narrative, irony is ________________ evidenced by __________, ____________, __________, _____________, and _________________.

For 4 pages, your body paragraphs will correspond to the components you use to fill in the above blanks. Your conclusion will be one sentence, a brief, dramatic restatement of your thesis. Your final page, your Works Cited page, will show the sources you used from Back in the World, from my blog, from interviews, or from other helpful sources you find. Your Works Cited page and manuscript must conform to MLA format. Be sure to make your own catchy, creative title.

If you want to use another structure, that is fine. The above is merely a suggestion.

“The Missing Person” by Tobias Wolff

Part Two: Lexicon

1. Sloth posing as a Christian 19: a lot of lazy people claim an interest in religion when they've run out of options.

2. Jerry the mountebank, a professional hustler, a charlatan. It's ironic that Leo has to go through the act of being a charlatan in order to become more real than he was as someone "pursuing religion."

3. Mendacity, the art of lying and BS.

4. Duplicity, the art of being two-faced, showing one face to hide the real one and one's real motives.

5. Obsequiousness, the art of butt-kissing, an essential component of the mountebank.

6. Sobriquet, nickname, “Slim” 31

7. Jerry’s B.S. is intoxicating and contagious 32, 33

8. Certain lies are indomitable juggernauts 35 and 49 (can’t put the genie back in the bottle): Once Leo becomes Slim, he cannot become his old self again.

9. Sagacity; Leo’s thoughts show wisdom on page 43. He becomes more self-aware, more street smart.

Why irony is an important part of going back into the world

Irony is a quality that requires maturity and wisdom and is so complicated it requires a guide. It's the ability to have insight and go past the common and superficial assumptions most people have when they respond to certain situations.

Irony is the ability to the see the complexity of an occurrence and thus not overreact to it as "good" or "bad."

A person who has a "sense of irony" has wisdom and tends to be more even keeled, avoiding emotional ups and downs. Additionally, a person with a sense of irony has a wry sense of humor, which is neither cynical or overly optimistic, but a strange mix of both.

Irony is, specifically, being able to see certain contradictions when others cannot see these contradictions.

There is no single definition of irony, but here is one that is applicable to Wolff's short story collection:

Irony is a reversal of expectations born from hidden contradictions in a person's character.

Leo goes on a journey in which the more he sees his life contradictions, the more he matures and emerges from his false self to his real self. The missing person is no more.

Part Three: Types of Irony

1. Plot Irony: A reversal that results in the opposite of our expectations like a car death after wearing seatbelt. This is one of the most common forms of irony.

A vegetarian becomes a world-famous butcher.

In all romantic comedies, the potential lovers hate each other at the beginning of the film.

In 10cc's famous song, "I'm Not in Love," the persona tries to convince himself, and the woman, that he is not in love but the more he says this mantra the more he reveals that he is helplessly in love.

A man hates academia and education and he becomes a professor.

A woman grows up hating dogs, then falls in love with them only to discover that she has developed a dog allergy.

2. Serendipitous Irony: The more we deviate from our original plan, the better the outcome. A botched play on the athletic field becomes a huge score.

3. Faustian Irony: The more we think we’re rising and succeeding in life, the more we are actually falling as we become crushed under the weight of our own vanity, which blinds us and leaves us vulnerable to failure.

4. Idle Irony: The better our life becomes the more we are compelled by boredom to sabotage our happiness. In other words people often cause problems that don’t really exist. And soon they create very real problems out of nothing.

5. Pathological Irony: Man shoots foot off to get rid of a wart.

6. Sarcastic Irony: Saying one thing and meaning an other.

7. Satanic Irony: A greedy man enjoys a long, healthy life while his innocent victims die cruel deaths and their lives are short. This type of irony refutes notions of justice.

8. Narcissistic Irony: searchers for the self lose their selves while people who don’t think about their selves find their selves. Someone goes into therapy and becomes even crazier. Or the example of Stalingrad in which the selfish die and the helpful live.

9. Jungian Irony: The more extreme we develop a facet of our personality the more extreme we develop its opposite. The macho man is also becoming more and more of a baby.

10. Materialistic Irony: You buy an expensive fur coat but the weather is forever hot so you can’t wear it like the old lady in Buenos Aires.

You fight tooth and claw to get rich, your business partner murders you, and your wife and children are left without the provider whose millions are hidden in bank accounts, which the wife cannot access.

11. Short-sighted irony: You workout to impress a girl but she’s turned off by big muscles. You were looking at what you want, not at what she wants. A woman overdressed and wears too much make-up and men are terrified of her.

12. Ironic Irony: You try to be ironic because you think it’s cool but you come across as a fake and as a poser.

13. Corruptive Irony: The more we get our hands dirty in the mess of life, the more pure we become; the more we stay away from the filth, the more contaminated we become by our lack of involvement, which is a form of narcissism. This is the major theme of the story “The Missing Person.” Leo finds love and redemption while working as a hustler in Las Vegas. “It’s all right. I’m here.” These are the final words and show that he’s not the missing person anymore.

14. Bureacratic Irony: A chef wears hair net but has long beard with dried filth in it. We pay attention to rules but forget common sense.

Irony in "The Missing Person"

Leo joins a religious order to find love and he finds scorn and hate.

Leo develops a reputation as a killer and earns the respect from the nuns who formerly hated him.

Leo goes to Vegas and finds love.

Leo joins a religious order, not to find God or his soul, but run away from responsibilities.

Leo joins a religious order to find an easy job and instead finds drudgery and disrespect.

Leo becomes corrupt and in doing so he finds purification and evolution.

Example of a Successful Introduction, Transition, and Thesis

Overflowing with a rare, unexpected sense of confidence, my armpits felt powder dry and my stomach calm as I sat in Olivetto's Italian restaurant and impressed Diana Mandalay with my little cocktail napkin doodles of goofy looking cavemen. Diana smiled at my crazed cartoon characters and laughed, almost to the point of her falling out of her chair. After she recovered herself, she gazed at me with a glowing face and desirous eyes, and it occurred to me that the date, now forty minutes without a glitch, was going along perfectly, and I regretted that I didn’t have a camera crew following my every step so that someday if I should ever become a grandfather I could show this perfect date to my grandchildren and give them a memento of their wizened patriarch’s dating insouciance.

Shortly after, our waitress arrived with our steamed mussels and started flirting with me. Right in front of Diana, the sultry waitress looked down at my cartoon drawing of a caveman and said she liked her men primitive. Then without trying to be discreet she wrote her phone number on her writing pad and handed me the slip of paper, all before Diana’s jealous gaze.

After the svelte waitress scurried off somewhere, I told Diana that while the waitress’ advances were flattering, they were, under the circumstances, inappropriate and affecting a prudish expression of admonishment at our waitress when she returned, I asked for our bill and announced that we would be leaving immediately.

The date was not over, not by a long shot. Berkeley's Ashby Avenue and College Boulevard afford a richness of shopping and gave me the opportunity to show off my cosmopolitan tastes. I purchased fine men’s apparel made only of the highest quality silks, cotton blends, and cashmere. I bought exotic, hard-to-find spices for my pantry. I purchased attractive ceramic bakeware for my savory, homemade breads, muffins and biscuits. I presented myself as a man of formidable domestic and culinary talents, not to be found in most male troglodytes.

You should have seen the self-assured smile I enjoyed as we walked back to Olivetto’s where Diana’s Audi was parked on the street. I was resolved already to not kiss her. Don’t be needy, I thought, by presuming a first-date kiss. Instead, make her hungry for the kiss later, at a time not yet announced. I was going to play it cool after all. And knowing that I would not kiss her, I had no pressure on me. I felt light, strong and free.

But Diana, you see, had other plans. Standing ten feet from her car, she embraced me, told me she had a good time, and planted a firm kiss on my lips. She then reared her head back a few inches and studied my face, perhaps to gauge the impression her kiss had left on me.

It was at this stage that my perfect date came to an end, for without warning, to either me or Diana, I did something that was so asinine and so insane that no mortal could have anticipated it. With my face just inches from hers and while still feeling the tingle of her passionate kiss, I let out a huge caveman scream. The scream was unmistakably visceral and seemed to roar from some primitive part of my soul with a pitch and volume of such unmistakable power that I could easily imagine the scream shattering the glass of nearby car and merchant windows. I could tell from Diana’s shocked expression that she did not at first register what I had done. But I could see in the periphery of my vision that onlookers had heard me and they were rushing away from the scene, one woman comforting a baby crying in its carriage, before I unleashed another caveman-like paroxysm. Only after what felt like several minutes did Diana seem to comprehend that I had just screamed in her face and very slowly she inched backward toward her Audi, got inside and, nodding sheepishly at me, drove off.

It should be noted here that that would be the last time I would ever see Diana, for apparently so disturbing was my caveman scream that it was reported to me later from reliable sources that she moved to another country where she changed her name and disguised herself with oversized sunglasses and head-covering scarves.

What a "back in the world" moment it was to realize I can't be too cool because whenever I get cool there is this taunter inside me who shoots me down. And there's the irony: On a date in which I was Mr. Cool, my romantic objectives were undermined by my Inner Caveman, which seemed to derive nourishment from the very coolness that was supposed to impress Diana.

Indeed, we see these same contradictory dynamics of irony in Tobias Wolff's Back in the World in which characters tumble to the wrestling mat engaged in a vicious struggle with their opposite selves evidenced by _____________, _____________, ________________, and _____________.

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"Say Yes" Lesson Updated for Spring 2012

Research Links for "Say Yes"

Analysis of "Say Yes" in PDF

Short Story Text

Racism Or One Night in Marriage

Tobias Wolff Reads "Say Yes"

Husband's Surface over Depth

Lying Down the Psychological Groundwork for Back in the World by Tobias Wolff

Part I Review of the different types of irony as they are evidenced in the stories

1. Naïveté or innocence like the wife in “Say Yes” or Krystal in “Desert Breakdown." Innocence is lost when the wives gain their Third Eye and realize they are better off alone, free from the symbiotic unhealthy dependence they have on their husbands.

The irony is that the weak role played by the woman hides the fact that the women are far stronger than the men.

In marriage, there is often a power struggle over the following:

spending money

spending time

deciding on relationships, family, friends

thinking about issues (who's right?)

assigning responsibilities

asserting control (don't do stuff behind my back)

What I've found is that over the years women have evolved to cater a man's ego while allowing the man to THINK he's in control when actually the woman is in control.

I remember a married woman told me how she gets her husband to take her out to dinner.

Another irony is that men are often full of bluster, a condition that hides their intractable Inner Baby.

Another irony in both stories is that the "weaker" wife is actually more sane than the husband and less dependent on him than he is on her even though he thinks she needs him. Men are expert at inverting reality. What's up is down and what's down is up.

2. Egotistical blindness that results in a refusal of accountability, self-introspection and creates an inflamed sense of entitlement in Mark like Peter and Donald in “The Rich Brother.”

The irony is that both Mark, Donald and Peter's sense of entitlement leaves them morally bankrupt and deprived of the power to change.

3. Narcissism, which results in delusions of grandeur like Mark in “Desert Breakdown.” This sense of grandeur is a facade feebly hiding that Mark's parents who "gave him everything" didn't give him what he really needed: guidance, structure, and discipline. Lacking those essential qualities, he is helpless, a cripple and deep down he resents his parents for not giving him what he really needed.

And this points to another irony: Mark's parents festooned him with gifts and bailed him out over and over, giving their son everything he wanted, but they didn't give their son WHAT HE NEEDED.

The irony is that the greater Mark's grandeur, the more he is accelerating toward his destruction.

4. Misguided good intentions—perhaps the wife in “Say Yes” thought she could “reform” her husband. But really she spoiled him and babied him (and seems to do so in a semi-comatose autopilot) like Mark's parents spoiled him.

In fact, the wife has been spoiling and enabling her husband, but his racist comments opened a window to his soul from which it appears she is forever repelled. This makes sense because a person cannot comptartmentalize or isolate his racism from other facets of his personality. The racism, which is part of his bull-headed ignorant, stubborn attitude, bleeds through everything he does.

5. Misguided ambition—Leo in the “Missing Person” aspires to a “spiritual life” for which he has no aptitude. The more he tries to be spiritual, the more he finds he is a man of the material world and there lies the irony.

Another irony: Leo is more real when he is his created persona Slim.

6. Unconscious fear—Leo withdrawals into the church because of his fear of women, heartbreak, intimacy and in a general sense a fear of the world. In many ways the story “The Missing Person” is about the power of corruption for transforming our lives for the better—if we react to corruption in a way that makes us stronger, not weaker. To borrow a clichéd quote from Nietzsche, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

7. Wishful thinking—it’s human nature to want to believe that things aren’t as bad as we suspect they are. Perhaps this is the case of the wife in “Say Yes” and Krystal in “Desert Breakdown.”

8. Oversimplistic view of the world that causes us to look at the surface without peeling the outer layer and seeing the complexities, contradictions, paradoxes, and enigmas that lie underneath. Peter is guilty of not seeing his own contradictions that make him addicted to playing the Mother role to his brother.

9. Having parents, a spouse, a boyfriend, a girlfriend or other enablers who bail us out every time we sink so that we develop a false sense of security and feel free to pursue our delusions with impunity like Mark in “Desert Breakdown.”

10. Money can give us a false sense of security and invincibility so that we can assert our most destructive, grotesque aspects of our personality and think we can get away with it—like Peter in “The Rich Brother.”

Part II: “Back in the World” Moments in which you're ability to see the irony of your situation becomes your Third Eye:

Hopefully, all of us will have a “back in the world” moment, that defining instance in which we take our heads out of our proverbial butts and see reality for what it really is:

1. You wake up one morning and realize your boyfriend or girlfriend is the devil and you can’t believe you spent all these months, maybe even years, jumping through hoops to stay in the relationship.

2. You wake up one morning and realize you need to move out of your parents’ house. They provide love, security, and support, but you're dying.

3. A fat guy got the lap band procedure, got skinny but he has acid reflux and bad breath.

4. A woman planned her divorce before she got married.

5. A personal trainer makes a good living charging clients who never build the motivation to exercise and eat a healthy diet.

The Back in the World Moment in "Say Yes"

The husband's refusal to say yes in regards to marrying his wife if she were black makes the wife go back into the world in several ways.

One. The husband's reliance and dependence on cultural bias as a way of belonging to his tribe remains unquestioned and reveals him as an emotional child who lacks the independence of mind and courage to question why he thinks the way he does. In other words, he behaves blindly and stubbornly in all things and this puts a larger question at work for the wife: What is the meaning of my marriage?

Two. The wife suddenly needs to know: Are me and my husband playing empty roles? Are we playing house? Is our life merely a facade?

Three. The wife suddenly sees something hideous about her marriage: Oh my God. We live as a couple but it's all fake. We don't really know one another. We've been sleepwalking through life, going through the motions with our heads up our butts. I'm simply his "white" wife, an illusion.

Four. This marriage has no real intimacy or understanding. It's simply a domestic hell and I've acclimated to it successfully until now because I've been blind to its real status and substance.

Five. If my husband can't see me as a person and not a "white wife," then he doesn't love me for the real me but loves me as a superficial add-on, a trophy, a prop for his ideal image. How do I face him when I see my marriage for the farce that it is?

Five. The veil of my phony marriage has been lifted. The toothpaste is out of the tube and I can't put it back. What do I do now? I may be capable of change, but is my husband?

Six. The wife is revolted or disgusted by her husband. There's no going back. The marriage is over. We all have a Disgusting Experience that cuts off a relationship. I had one that I'll call the Snuggles Incident.

Seven. When it comes to race, thinking people realize that race is not a biological fact. Rather, race is 3 things:

1. It's a social construction.

2. It's random.

3. It's based on perception, not reality.

If the husband in the story received a letter telling him his wife has 10% African blood, what would he do? What if the letter stated she had 5%? What's his "cut-off" line? There isn't one. It's arbitrary.

The Need for Parallel Structure in Your Thesis and All Your Writing

Examples of Faulty Sentence Structure

The wife's back in the world moment consists of seeing her husband's racism, identifying his ignorance of who she really is, and to see his stubborn refusal to change.

"to see" should be replaced with "seeing"

To repair her marriage, the couple would be well advised to confront their sleepwalking existence, to acknowledge that they have been living not as one but as strangers in the same house, admitting they have not been listening enough to one another.

Replace "admitting" with "to admit"

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Lesson Plan for "Desert Breakdown, 1968" Updated Spring 2012

Part One. Lexicon:

1. cipher, a nonentity, a nobody; a cipher like Mark is a narcissist whose self-esteem is GREATER than who he really is.

According to David Brooks' The Social Animal, most people suffer a disparity between their inflated self-esteem and their low competence and talent.

Irony: People with low self-esteem often are more competent and conscientious. This is probably because the term "low self-esteem" really means something else entirely: conscientious, having a moral conscience.

Another irony: A society like America that is obsessed with high self-esteem discourages the development of morality. In other words, America is a narcissistic culture hiding behind the robes of "self-esteem."

2. entitlement: I deserve good things in life without having to struggle to become worthy of those good things. Why should I have to work my butt off to get good crap? People should just love me for who I am. And this "love" should translate into me getting the stuff I want when I want it, which is now.

Entitlement is a form of self-crippling because you need character, toughness, discipline, and structured routine to achieve greatness.

In contrast, Mark is dependent on being bailed out by his parents to the point of being an entitled cripple. Thus we can conclude that parents who spoil their children cripple them and that the children unconsciously know this and resent their parents. Indeed, then, people do resent the hands that feed them.

Another irony: Unconditional generosity results in resentment from the benefactor of the generosity. Mark has no boundaries, no accountability, the adolescent dream of freedom, yet he is a slave to his immaturity, selfishness, spite, and rancor.

3. Audacity: stupid or inappropriate bold action; shameless boldness

4. Audacious, the adjective form of the noun audacity.

5. Thanatos, choosing death over life 137; perhaps Mark wants to die to spite his parents and to escape the unbearable truth that he has no talent and is doomed to failure.

6. Asinine, foolish 143

7. Hedonism; defining the ultimate form of happiness as the pleasure principle, a sort of religion whereby bodily pleasures are the supreme experience. At the root of hedonism is the desire to escape the self by losing oneself through self-abandonment. Often this self-abandonment is reckless and self-destructive. The bad boy rocker can pull off a binge of self-abandonment but not the anal accountant.

8. Acedia, depression from having no focus in life; your energy is sapped from you in the absence of a life purpose; I see a lot of acedia with potheads and alcoholics.

9. Nihilism, a sense that nothing matters for you or anything in this world; you’re beyond caring; a nihilist says, “I don’t give a damn about anything.” Or “It’s all B.S.”

10. Pushing the envelope (both husbands from "Say Yes" and "Desert Breakdown, 1968," push their wives to extremes until the wives have a "back in the world" moment) The irony is that people stay in their private hell because it's not hellish enough. Hell has to get really bad before we want to make our escape. In the absence of a hellish relationship, many people resign themselves to a slow, agonizing, low-simmering death.

Part Two. Mark’s Misguided Definition of Freedom Leads to Moral Dissolution

1. No boundaries, anything goes.

2. Self-indulgence; the self-indulgent man isn’t happy

3. Loyalty only to selfish whims, no accountability to anyone else, including one’s family

4. Make up reality as you go along to suit your needs and to justify your heinous actions

5. No accountability to anyone so that you’re free to piss away your life on nonsense.

6. To pursue one’s hedonistic vision of happiness.

7. The myth of Hakuna Matata

8. Use your money to get away with your most base impulses. Think of Arnold S and Maria Shriver. Arnold used big money to pay-off mistresses to keep silent but a love child for ten years finally emerged. Money can only keep secrets for so long.

Part Three. The Results of Misguided Freedom

1. immaturity

2. loneliness, lack of connection

3. a lack of focus, a wayward soul

4. moral dissolution, nihilism, despair, a lack of meaning, nothing matters anymore.

5. Your life will vacillate between self-pitying despair and bombastic grandeur. Think of Mark's Apex Fantasy: Being famous and humiliating his parents. His hatred of his parents parallels Donald's hatred of Peter.

Part Four. A More Accurate, Healthy Definition of Freedom

1. The discipline to do what it’s in your best interests.

2. Structured time that gives you increased responsibilities. The result is greater and greater maturity and fortitude.

3. Accountability to others, which strengthens your connections to others. Happiness is how connected we are to others.

Part Five. The Results of Real Freedom

1. Productivity

2. Maturity

3. High esteem in community

4. Connection to others

Wives and Husband in Wolff's Short Story Collection: What women discover or how they "go back into the world"

1. Crazy is the new normal

2. Auto pilot and passive acceptance

3. Husband pushes the envelope and shatters auto pilot

4. Wives resolved to self-sufficiency and control of their own destiny

Sample Thesis: The “back in the world” moments in Tobias Wolff’s short story collection can be characterized by people who must endure arduous suffering as they confront the hideous consequences of their inflated self-esteem (Leo, Mark, Peter); as they take accountability for their past misdeeds (Peter, Krystal); as they recognize the woeful deficiencies of people they thought they could rely upon (Leo with the church and Krystal with Mark); and as they find themselves only because their deluded schemes backfire and force them to confront their true nature (Leo turning into Slim)

Mark has no back in the world experience.

Krystal however does. What is it?

Oh my God. All of Mark's talk about being a singer, an entertainer, etc., is complete B.S. In fact, I am married to a louse, a cipher, a hideous, emotionally-arrested pig-man whom I must escape to improve the chances of a better life for my baby and me.

Review Irony

Writing an extended definition of irony

Example:

Irony is a form of wisdom that allows us to see contradictions, reversal of expectations, pathological reactions (overreactions in which we become the Master of Our Own Disaster so that our "cure" is worse than our disease), and the conflict between our awareness and a literary character's lack of awareness (this tension creating dramatic irony).

Consider these components:

One. Jungian Psychology, the Shadow, or the Anti-Self, a reaction to our facade. Pete's facade of an assured rich man is shattered by his Shadow, an emotional cripple addicted to playing the role of Donald's mother.

Or look at Leo's Shadow, a reaction to his facade as the isolated pious religious man. His Shadow creates Slim, a worldly hustler.

Two. The Inverted Hakuna Matata (life with no worries). The more Pete and Mark pursue the Hakuna Matata, the more they suffer moral and spiritual dissolution or breakdown (hence the story's title "Desert Breakdown").

Three. The Extremes of Hell Produce Hope: In "Desert Breakdown" and "Say Yes" the doormat wives find hope and the courage to change, leaving their husbands, when their husbands' morally obnoxious behavior becomes extreme enough so that the wives can no longer see their marriage as "normal."

McMahon's Approach to Writing a Thesis About Irony

Tobias Wolff's stories illuminate irony in many compelling, profound ways. Some include the irony of false wealth in "The Rich Brother"; the irony of self-knowledge in "The Missing Person"; the irony of marital power in "Desert Breakdown, 1968" and "Say Yes," and the irony of pride and blindness in "Our Story Begins."

Say Yes Lesson

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"The Rich Brother" Lesson Updated for Spring 2011

Quiz:

In 600 words, contrast Mark's spiritual and moral dissolution ("Desert Breakdown, 1968") with Leo's emotional and spiritual evolution ("The Missing Person").

Explain the title “Back in the World”