Lexicon of Terms Pertinent to the Story
1. Nostalgia: inflating the glory of the past with distorted, sentimental memories
2. Fixation: Being stuck on nostalgia so you can't move forward with your life.
3. Juvenile hedonism: never growing up but staying in the "life is all about pleasure" phase
4. Boom and Bust Society: A society living on extremes, bubbles inflating until they burst; extreme emotional and financial ups and downs; a sort of collective bipolar disorder.
5. Animus: Deep gut-filled hostility toward someone like the way Marion Peters feels about Charlie
6. Demure: Keep your emotions to yourself; don't put them on the table even as someone shows you animus be polite and dumure. This is Charlie's strategy.
7. Precipice: Behind him, Charles' ghosts of the past haunt him and seem to want to pull him back to his juvenile ways; in front of him, an abyss of the unknown with his daughter Honoria. Thus, Charles stands on the precipice. He can jump or he can turn back. Or if the metaphor is bad, the abyss represents him free-falling into the abyss of his past ways and he must turn to a more mature way of life in order to care for his daughter.
8. The 5 Motifs of Fiction:
One. Establish a home (which is what Charles wants by taking his daughter)
Two. Going on a journey.
Three. A battle or contest (Charles vs. Marion): Charles must prove that he can stay sober.
Four. Enduring suffering (Charles must endure penance to redeem himself and prove his worthiness of being a father)
Five. An obsession that results in consummation; we become consumed by our obsession whether it be love, revenge, greed, etc. Charles must not be consumed by his past, his nostalgia.
9. Tumultuous relationship: rocky, inflammed passions, extreme love and hate; alcohol; infidelity; Charles locked his wife out of the house after a drunken fight in which his wife Helen kissed a guy named Webb. Enraged, Charles locked the door not knowing his wife would die in a snow storm as she begged to be let inside the house.
10. Self-righteous self-certitude: Marion's spite and resentment toward Charles has made her addicted to her own sense of moral superiority.
11. Open-ended story: No clear conclusion or resolution. We're left with more questions: Will Charlie reunite with his daughter? Will he find redemption? Is his life over, squandered on juvenile hedonism?
Major Themes in the Story
Bingeing and excess: A false sense of success and the sudden rush of wealth propels us to a life of self-abandonment and self-indulgence, a condition that always results in solipsism and disconnection from others.
Rising is falling and falling is rising: False success gives us a delusion of invincibility, causing us to act in foolish, reckless ways. There is always a suicidal urge, metaphorical or not, in this false rising. We unconsciously want the death of our demonic self that has taken control of us.
Wealth is an intoxicant, a drug. It is also a truth serum. It brings out the true self, for good or bad.
You can never erase the past. Its demons will haunt you and singe your garments.
You can never completely destroy your urge for the old life.
Helpful links for maintaining consistent pronouns in paragraphs and other pronoun questions
Review of Fragments and Run-Ons
Grammar and Spell Check:
While Neddy Merrill is an incorrigible drunk doomed to a life of solipsism; Charlie Wales is a quasi-reformed alcoholic who in spite of attempts to gain custody of his daughter must suffer the ignominy brought on. When the ghosts of his past arrive at Charlie’s sister-in-law’s house and serve as a reminder to Charles drunken splurges. Encouraged in part by his need to celebrate the bull market that propelled him into a life of easy wealth. Only to be lost during the Great Depression. We do get the sense that Charlie may limit his drink to just one a day, however, Neddy Merrill seems on track to soak his brain with alcohol until his dying days. Both Neddy and Charlie’s pathology can be traced to there reaction to the existential vacuum. Although, Charlie’s meaning may be traced to getting his daughter back; he wavers between a life of joyless hedonism and contrite reform.
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