Essay #3 Options for Essay Due 4-25-17
Choose One of the Following:
One. In the context of Caleb Crain's essay, "The Case Against Democracy," support, defend, or complicate the argument that an uninformed public lacking adequate critical thinking skills cannot support a democracy as we tend to idealize democracies but rather, at best, maintains a democracy so flawed many would argue that it cannot be called a democracy at all, but rather some grotesque sub-version of a democracy.
Two. Support, defend, or complicate the assertion that the unstoppable presence of trolls on Twitter has made being on Twitter, for many, an exercise so embedded in futility that deleting one's Twitter account is probably the best option. Consult Lindy West's "I've left Twitter," Joel Stein's "How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet," Kathy Sierra's "Why the Trolls Will Always Win," Andrew Marantz's and "The Shameful Trolling of Leslie Jones." And the following YouTube Video:
Three. Support or refute the contention that when you consider the radical deficits resulting from use of Facebook or any similar social media site you are morally and intellectually compelled to delete your account and instead focus on doing what Cal Newport calls "Deep Work." Consult Cal Newport's Study Hacks Blog on Deep Work, Newport's YouTube video on Deep Work, Frank Bruni's "How Facebook Warps Our Worlds," Matthew Warner's "The Real Reason to Quit Facebook," and Kim Lachance Shandow's "6 Reasons to Delete Your Facebook Account Right Now."
Four. In the context of Ta-Nehisi Coates' essay, "The Case for Reparations," defend, refute, or complicate that America is morally obligated to exact qualified African-Americans reparations for America's crime of an ongoing kleptocracy, which includes slavery, Jim Crow, and their ongoing legacy today.
Five. Develop an analytical thesis that shows how Jordan Peeles' movie Get Out builds on Ta-Nehisi Coates' notion of American kleptocracy.
Six. Support, refute, or complicate the argument that recycling is a liberal white middle class religion that speaks more to Kool-Aid-drinking tribalism than it does improving the Earth. Consult John Tierney's "The Reign of Recycling," Michael Crichton's "Environmentalism is a Religion," and Stephen Asma's "Green Guilt."
Seven. Support, refute, or complicate the argument that radical changes in the job market over the next 20 years due to robots and high-tech will compel country's to provide their citizens with a Universal Basic Income. Consult the following:
Universal Basic Income: Side Effect of the Tech Revolution?
The Progressive Case for Replacing the Welfare State with Basic Income
Why Universal Basic Income Is a Terrible Idea
Arguments Against Universal Basic Income (UBI)
One. A dependent society is a dysfunctional society.
Two. A lack of self-reliance diseases the soul and corrupts society.
Three. Acute dependence leads to totalitarianism and dehumanization. See The Giver.
Four. Acute dependence breaks down the family unit. Parents aren't responsible for their children; the government is.
Five. Being "off the grid" makes one chronically depressed, non-productive, and unemployable.
Eight. Develop a thesis that in the context of the documentary Merchants of Doubt addresses the question: Should we have faith that "reason and faith can defeat propaganda and falsehoods." Or is such a message optimistic bias rooted in delusion?
Nine: Develop an analytical thesis that in the context of Merchants of Doubt explains the fallacies behind spin and how these fallacies can be constructed to effectively cause doubt and confusion over the legitimate claims of science.
Ten: Support or refute A.V. Club critic Ignatity Vishnevestsky's claim that Merchant's of Doubt is a "toothless" documentary larded with "artless and gimmicky" film-making.
Consult for your Works Cited:
A.O. Scott's film review in the NYT.
Unit on The Meaning of Ambition
Essay Two for 150 Points (Life of Image Vs. Life of Substance)
Option One: To an audience of college students, write a persuasive essay that addresses the contention that "Bartleby, the Scrivener, "Winter Dreams" or "The Other Woman" illustrates the moral principles in David Brooks' online essay "The Moral Bucket List" or Kristen Dombek's online essay "Emptiness." And pertaining to "Emptiness," see "What Happens When We Decide Everyone Else Is a Narcissist."
"The Other Woman" (full text of the short story)
“The Other Woman” by Sherwood Anderson
One. What life changes are happening to the man that might explain his condition of demonic possession and general craziness?
The man has too much attention that he can’t deal with. He gets a job promotion, he wins a writing contest that becomes featured in the newspaper, and he’s about to marry a judge’s daughter. Everyone is congratulating him.
Some people have the moral foundation to handle lots of attention. The narrator is not one of these people. He's someone who becomes unhinged, an emotional wreck, an unstable disoriented soul grasping for straws.
When he goes to the theater, everyone recognizes him and surrounds him. We read, “He had never received so much attention before, and now a fever of expectancy took possession of him.”
This "fever" is the drunkenness and intoxication of The Chanel No.5 Moment, a self-destructive elixir for the narcissist.
In the above quote, the key word is “possession.” This story is about a man who is in many ways demonically possessed or unhinged. He has never enjoyed attention before. Once surrounded by gawking sycophants, he finds himself demonically possessed. He has no metacognition or self-awareness or irony to counteract the grandiosity of the experience.
One of the story's themes is the danger of getting attention. People can't handle attention. Check out ****** ******, Lindsay Lohan, and Johnny Manziel. Some people can't handle attention, and they go down a rabbit hole. That's what happens in this story.
Throughout the story, we read about the man’s growing disconnection from reality. A lot of his disconnection results from the man living too much inside his head. Many of the story’s passages show the man’s imaginary or fantasy world that he escapes in.
Whereas Dexter Green from "Winter Dreams" loses contact reality as he worships the Judy Jones God over a long period of time, the narrator from "The Other Woman" goes crazy in a more rapid manner.
In a key passage, we read:
As he explained when he told me of his experience, it was for him an altogether abnormal time. He felt like one floating in air. When he got into bed after seeing so many people and hearing so many words of praise his head whirled round and round. When he closed his eyes a crowd of people invaded his room. It seemed as though the minds of all the people of his city were centered on himself. The most absurd fancies took possession of him. He imagined himself riding in a carriage through the streets of a city. Windows were thrown open and people ran out at the doors of houses. "There he is. That's him," they shouted, and at the words a glad cry arose. The carriage drove into a street blocked with people. A hundred thousand pairs of eyes looked up at him. "There you are! What a fellow you have managed to make of yourself!" the eyes seemed to be saying.
Even though the man doesn’t realize it, the operating principle that animates his motivations is his desire for the Chanel No. 5 Moment, the attention bath of others that gives us false validation and makes us go crazy.
Attention Can Make You Go Crazy
As an example, my friend has a precocious, talented, beautiful daughter who at a young age, around 5, showed amazing talent for doing skits, singing, and dancing. Many people encouraged the father and mother to get their daughter into “show business,” but the parents refused.
The father explained to me that a child isn’t fully formed psychologically and that all the attention a child star receives makes the child go crazy. The father explained that he had observed many cases of this happening. The children grew up “messed up,” prone to various addictions, and in general treated other people badly as they showed low or non-existent levels of empathy and high levels of narcissism.
In other words, these children grew up to have a very high opinion of themselves but were disconnected from the human race.
Their disconnection made them anxious and their anxieties propelled them to find escape through various self-destructive behaviors, mostly addictions.
Very few of us can handle too much attention because the more attention we receive the less we control our ability to define ourselves on our own terms. We become beholden to the image that others impose on us even when this image is a fiction that is disconnected from our real selves.
Secondly, too much attention warps our self-image. We perceive ourselves as something totally different than who we really are. This creates confusion and cognitive dissonance. No one can live up to being a false god without falling hard.
Third, when we feel connected to “our fans,” the connection is not real; it’s in reality an obnoxious power play that leaves us disconnected and lonely.
Fourth, when we enjoy adulation, we feel that the world’s morality is not applicable to us. Because we’re special, we’re entitled to live outside the normal boundaries of morality. Having affairs, using other people, and manipulating others becomes “our right” in our state of obnoxious grandeur.
Fifth, when we enjoy the adulation of others, we are blind to the fact that even though we think we are rising in life, soaring the skies of success and looking down at the “little people who serve us,” in reality we are sinking. In fact, a wise man once said that when we think we are rising in life we are really falling, and when we think we are falling we are really rising.
Sixth, attention from others becomes a drug-like addiction, and like all addictions we adapt to a certain amount of the drug so that we have to keep upping the ante until we can’t get enough of our fix. In psychology, this is called the hedonic treadmill. We adapt to any type of pleasure until pleasure is impossible. As a result, we hit a wall and crash into despair.
Seven, we become a false god to others and ourselves. By its very nature, being a false god is a form of insanity.
This Craziness Is Not Limited to Full-Fledge Celebrities
We don’t have to be full-fledged celebrities to undergo this transformation into narcissistic, obnoxious craziness.
We can become mini celebrities on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other types of social media.
Once we become addicted to digital validation from “likes” and followers, we start the dark journey into the Broken Self, a needy pseudo-celebrity doomed to a life of anxiety, disconnection, and depression.
We can become Big Fish in a Little Pond, like a couple I used to know in Bakersfield.
The Danger of the Chanel No. 5 Moment
A term I use for the type of attention people crave is the “Chanel No. 5 Moment.”
A Chanel No. 5 Moment is an attention bath in which you are overcome with the ecstasy of being at the center of attention. This attention bath raises your adrenalin, your hormones, and your grandiosity resulting in an increased libido and increased virility. Perhaps most importantly, the Chanel No. 5 Moment magnifies pre-existing weaknesses—a tendency to be mean toward others, selfishness, greed, egotism, infidelity, insecurity, self-identity confusion.
In the case of the man in Sherwood Anderson’s short story “The Other Woman,” three things have happened that have given him more attention than he can handle, rendering him a crazed, demonic state.
One, he is getting married. People who are about to get married not only cannot handle the stress of the upcoming wedding and all that marriage entails, they cannot handle all the attention.
Two, the man is not only getting attention for marrying a judge’s daughter, he has just enjoyed a public job promotion that has earned the admiration of others.
If that’s not enough, he just won a writing contest that has elevated his stature even further.
The total sum of these three changes in the man’s life has made him unhinged: Intoxicated by all the attention he’s receiving, he does not know who he is. His passions are inflamed and he desires the craven affair with the book store owner’s wife, and he cannot reconcile this desire for his desire to be in a happy marriage with his innocent pure-hearted wife.
The above qualities could very well be in the man in our story; however, with his Chanel No. 5 Moment these qualities become more virulent, more intense, and he becomes his worst self in the most demonic sense. In fact, his behavior is that of a man possessed.
The Chanel No. 5 Moment Is Universal
Craving the Chanel No. 5 Moment--public approval at the expense of building true substance in one's inner self--is commonplace. As we read in a famous passage from French philosopher Blaise Pascal:
We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness, or generosity, or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence. We would rather separate them from ourselves to join them to it; and we would willingly be cowards in order to acquire the reputation of being brave. A great proof of the nothingness of our being, not to be satisfied with the one without the other, and to renounce the one for the other! For he would be infamous who would not die to preserve his honour.
Two. Explain the story’s opening, “I am in love with my wife.”
He blurts out this statement. It appears to have been produced from some kind of fear or guilt or both. He makes the announcement like a compulsion. He needs to convince himself that he loves his wife.
We can make a general principle that people who are desperate to convince themselves that they love something in fact do not have authentic love for the very thing they wish to love. They try to will this love, but their willfulness is in vain. "The heart wants what the heart wants," and there's nothing we can do to change this.
We see a man so terrified by his state of not knowing who he is and what his desires are that he must constantly remind himself that he loves his wife when the story’s evidence points to feelings toward his wife that are, at best, confused, ambiguous, and conflicted. He is Unhinged Man, terrified, conflicted, compulsive, and completely lacking in self-understanding. He needs to take a Critical Thinking class.
His conflicted feelings are further reinforced by the affair he has with the allegedly plain looking woman. However, we should be wary or skeptical of the man's description. He may be lying, either intentionally or unconsciously.
He is a man who tries to assert his will to be a good person and to live the romantic dream that society tells us to live, leading a moral married life, but he can't. We read in a key passage:
As would be natural under such circumstances, he tried to control his thoughts, but when he sat by the window and was wide awake a most unexpected and humiliating thing happened. The night was clear and fine. There was a moon. He wanted to dream of the woman who was to be his wife, to think out lines for noble poems or make plans that would affect his career. Much to his surprise his mind refused to do anything of the sort.
The man's mind does not obey his will. His real desires have a mind of their own that disregards the man's conscious desires and his attempt to conform to society's morality.
The inability to know oneself and the futility of one's free will in the face of unconscious desires and impulses characterize the dark philosophy of Modernism.
Modernism
In fact, the story is a prime example of Modernism. In one opening sentence, Sherwood Anderson introduces us to the themes of Modernism:
- We can’t know or understand ourselves or others. We are strangers to ourselves. We are impostors incapable of understanding our “real agenda.”
- We suffer from dualism or Left Hand-Right Hand Syndrome (the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand does and vice versa).
- There is no free will. Rather, we are ruled by unconscious psychological forces we cannot control. We are compulsive and as such we are slaves to our compulsions.
- Every plot point is an ironic reversal so that we feel we live in an “upside down world.”
- We suffer unresolved conflict between private desires and public duty.
“I am in love with my wife,” therefore, is a statement wrought with deception and desperation.
He WISHES he loved his wife, just like later in the story when we read, “He wanted to dream of the woman who was to be his wife . . .”
He wants to feel all the feelings he is SUPPOSED to feel for his wife, but he does not.
Perhaps he does not love his wife.
Or perhaps he loves her but not in a conventional way that would appease his conscience.
Or perhaps he feels repelled by her and everything she represents: domesticity, being a slave to conformity and image, sentimental notions of love are beyond his reach.
Or perhaps he loves her desperately as an antidote to the sin of adultery and chaos that stirs in his hedonistic self.
Or perhaps he obsesses over all the above possibilities but cannot pinpoint his emotions, as he remains a miserable slave to ambiguity and confusion.
Welcome to Modernism.
Three. What kinds of changes are taking place with the unnamed man?
He is overcome with a creative flurry of writing resulting in an award that results in minor celebrity. He enjoys the attention, like someone on Facebook enjoying a flurry of "likes" and other forms of self-validation to compensate for his unhinged self.
In a key passage, we read:
At a corner of the street where he lived there was a small cigar store and newspaper stand run by a fat man of forty and his wife, a small active woman with bright grey eyes. In the morning he stopped there to buy a paper before going down to the city. Sometimes he saw only the fat man, but often the man had disappeared and the woman waited on him. She was, as he assured me at least twenty times in telling me his tale, a very ordinary person with nothing special or notable about her, but for some reason he could not explain, being in her presence stirred him profoundly. During that week in the midst of his distraction she was the only person he knew who stood out clear and distinct in his mind. When he wanted so much to think noble thoughts he could think only of her. Before he knew what was happening his imagination had taken hold of the notion of having a love affair with the woman.
"I could not understand myself," he declared, in telling me the story. "At night, when the city was quiet and when I should have been asleep, I thought about her all the time. After two or three days of that sort of thing the consciousness of her got into my daytime thoughts. I was terribly muddled. When I went to see the woman who is now my wife I found that my love for her was in no way affected by my vagrant thoughts. There was but one woman in the world I wanted to live with and to be my comrade in undertaking to improve my own character and my position in the world, but for the moment, you see, I wanted this other woman to be in my arms. She had worked her way into my being. On all sides people were saying I was a big man who would do big things, and there I was. That evening when I went to the theatre I walked home because I knew I would be unable to sleep, and to satisfy the annoying impulse in myself I went and stood on the sidewalk before the tobacco shop. It was a two story building, and I knew the woman lived upstairs with her husband. For a long time I stood in the darkness with my body pressed against the wall of the building, and then I thought of the two of them up there and no doubt in bed together. That made me furious.
"Then I grew more furious with myself. I went home and got into bed, shaken with anger. There are certain books of verse and some prose writings that have always moved me deeply, and so I put several books on a table by my bed.
"The voices in the books were like the voices of the dead. I did not hear them. The printed words would not penetrate into my consciousness. I tried to think of the woman I loved, but her figure had also become something far away, something with which I for the moment seemed to have nothing to do. I rolled and tumbled about in the bed. It was a miserable experience.
But for all his validation and approval and in spite of his "Chanel No. 5" Moment, he is a tormented soul. He is having a "miserable experience." Worse, he is ignorant of who he is and what he really wants from life. He is lost in a murky swamp of moral ambiguity unlike his wife who has a singular vision of herself and she keeps her innocence and as such is blessed while he is a lost damned soul. He sees this and wants to cleave to his wife as if she were his savior, but he cannot rid himself of "the other woman," the other side of himself that rages on in spite of himself.
His elevated esteem in the eyes of others has a drug-like effect on him. Intoxicated, disoriented, he becomes unhinged. He reminds me of the character who becomes "drugged" after getting a new overcoat in the Gogol short story, "The Overcoat."
He is engaged to be married to a judge’s daughter. The the father is a judge points to a possible metaphor about the kind of world the man is entering: a world of judgment, right and wrong, black and white, moral and immoral. This crisply defined world appears to be incompatible with the gray, murky, morally ambiguous world of the storyteller.
He has also received a job promotion that affords him elevated status.
All three events point to a man who is in the public eye, a cause of much ego gratification, even intoxication, which he seems to enjoy.
But the downside of this public adulation is perhaps a sense of anxiety and pressure (added responsibilities) that causes him to have a sort of breakdown manifest in obsessive-compulsive behavior.
This period is described as an “abnormal time” in which he was “floating on air.” Could he perhaps be disoriented, even delirious?
For many, the spotlight feels claustrophobia and performance anxiety, causing those people to feel like caged animals who need an outlet.
His sense of anxiety is further reinforced by the knowledge that he begins to suffer insomnia. Sleep deprivation could push him toward insanity of some kind.
He appears to be a man unhinged, severed from any core self that would make him feel whole and calm. He is a contrast of his fiancé who evidences singularity of purpose and seems to know herself.
For many, the spotlight feels claustrophobia and performance anxiety, causing those people to feel like caged animals who need an outlet.
Perhaps the man seeks an outlet where he can “be himself,” whatever that may be.
Four. Speak to the man’s attraction to the shopkeeper’s wife.
We read about this compulsive obsession the storyteller has with an older woman with “bright gray eyes.”
The narrator tells us the storyteller assured him “at least twenty times” that she was a “very ordinary person with nothing special or notable about her.” But her presence “stirred him profoundly.”
Again, we are faced with ambiguity. We don’t know if the woman is truly plain looking or a stunning beauty since the storyteller has proven that he appears to say one thing when in fact he means the opposite.
But another interpretation is that she is indeed plain looking; however, the storyteller’s desperate state inexplicably draws him to her. We don’t know.
What’s clear is that as the man’s marriage looms near, with its implications of a conventional life of conformity and slave morality to society’s script, the man hungers for Another World, Los Otros, so that the shopkeeper’s wife becomes his most compelling reality.
We read, “During that week in the midst of his distraction she was the only person he knew who stood out clear and distinct in his mind. When he wanted to think noble thoughts, he could think only of her. Before he knew what was happening his imagination had taken hold of the notion of having a love affair with the woman.”
By “noble thoughts,” we can assume living a life of convention and purity when in fact the man is having doubts about enlisting or conscribing himself into such an imprisoned state.
There is an adage that marriage for a woman is the beginning of her life, but that marriage for a man is the death of his.
Perhaps the man is feeling an impending death and panic has set in.
His obsession with the shopkeeper’s woman reinforces the Modernist theme that we cannot understand others or ourselves. We read, “I could not understand myself,” as the storyteller vents his vexation about obsession with a plain looking older woman as he is presumably about to marry a young beauty.
As the man’s obsession with the other woman grows so does his torment, and we see a man being pulled apart into two opposing worlds, one of illicit passion and the other of domestic convention.
We read, “There was but one woman in the world I wanted to live with me and to be my comrade in undertaking to improve my own character and my position in the world, but for the moment, you see, I wanted this other woman to be in my arms. She had worked her way into my being. On all sides people were saying I was a big man who would do big things, and there I was.”
To be a “big man” and enjoy the high esteem and veneration of others, he feels compelled to live a life of marital convention in accordance with society’s script of what it means to be a big man.
The above speaks to man’s conflict with public duty, and his craving for public approval, and his private desires, which run contrary to society’s blueprint for success.
This conflict and the man’s attempt to suppress his private urges result in self-hatred. He grows more “furious” at himself. He tries to read pious literature to cleanse his naughty soul.
But attempts at finding morality through reading fail him. We read, “The voices in the books were like the voices of the dead. I did not hear them. The words printed on the lines would not penetrate into my consciousness. I tried to think of the woman I loved, but her figure had also become something far away, something with which I for the moment seemed to have nothing to do.”
Five. Is there evidence that the shopkeeper’s wife is a maternal figure?
We read that “She must have been ten years older than myself.” And that when he tried to put pennies on the glass counter, “the pennies made a rattling noise.”
Juxtaposing an older woman with a “rattling noise” could suggest a baby rattler in the presence of an All Comforting Mommy.
The anxiety and panic preceding a marriage, which to the man may feel like a prison sentence, may cause him to regress and seek a Mother Figure.
These feelings would be unconscious and would speak to Modernism’s worldview that we are creatures not of free agency or free will but creatures beholden to unconscious impulses.
Six. Describe the secret meeting with the shopkeeper’s wife.
He experiences Dionysian ecstasy and rapture, holding her, and connecting with her on this higher level than anything he has experienced before. We read, “I had forgotten everything in the world but just her.”
We are now introduced to a powerful conflict in the story, the struggle between Dionysian and Apollonian forces.
Dionysian refers to the overpowering force of ecstasy that, short lived, destroys everything in its wake. It is the Angelina Jolie of the Life Force.
Apollonian refers to nest building, domesticity, and monogamy. It is the Jennifer Aniston of the Life Force.
Our storyteller is caught between Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston.
Seven. What does the fiancé’s letter reveal about her?
She is pure of heart. She has a singularity of purpose, to marry, unlike her fiancé who is torn between Dionysian and Apollonian forces.
In a key passage, we read:
"It was on that morning, just the day before my marriage, that I got a long and very beautiful letter from my fiancee. During the night before she also had been unable to sleep and had got out of bed to write the letter. Everything she said in it was very sharp and real, but she herself, as a living thing, seemed to have receded into the distance. It seemed to me that she was like a bird, flying far away in distant skies, and that I was like a perplexed bare-footed boy standing in the dusty road before a farm house and looking at her receding figure. I wonder if you will understand what I mean?
"In regard to the letter. In it she, the awakening woman, poured out her heart. She of course knew nothing of life, but she was a woman. She lay, I suppose, in her bed feeling nervous and wrought up as I had been doing. She realized that a great change was about to take place in her life and was glad and afraid too. There she lay thinking of it all. Then she got out of bed and began talking to me on the bit of paper. She told me how afraid she was and how glad too. Like most young women she had heard things whispered. In the letter she was very sweet and fine. 'For a long time, after we are married, we will forget we are a man and woman,' she wrote. 'We will be human beings. You must remember that I am ignorant and often I will be very stupid. You must love me and be very patient and kind. When I know more, when after a long time you have taught me the way of life, I will try to repay you. I will love you tenderly and passionately. The possibility of that is in me or I would not want to marry at all. I am afraid but I am also happy. O, I am so glad our marriage time is near at hand!'
This is very disturbing, that this innocent woman is looking to her future husband as a mentor figure. He is in fact more lost than she is.
In addition, her purity of heart makes her fiancé feel guilty, but he want to feed off his future wife’s purity in the hopes that she will in turn purify him and cure him of his madness. But is he ever cured?
Remember, the story begins with him talking about her after their marriage and he compulsively blurts, “I am in love with my wife,” like a mantra that only a man who doesn’t love his wife would repeat in a vain attempt to cure his heart of his madness.
He reads the letter to gain strength from it, to find “resolve” to resist temptation, and his resolve fails him completely. We read, “The woman came at seven o’clock, and, as you may have guessed, I let her in and forgot the resolution I had made.”
Like a drug, the woman feeds his Dionysian appetites: “I felt very happy and strong.”
Eight. What does the man say about his feelings for the shopkeeper’s wife after she leaves his apartment?
He claims she left his mind, but we see evidence to the contrary.
In a series of bizarre statements full of contradictions, he says, “I am trying very hard to tell what happened to me. I am saying that I have not since that evening thought of the woman who came to my apartment. Now, to tell the facts of the case, that is not true.”
He then claims that his ecstatic experience with the shopkeeper’s wife gave him the strength to go through with his marriage. Further, his illicit affair gave him a “new faith in the outcome of our life together.”
Clearly, he is an unreliable narrator. The unreliable narrator is another striking feature of the Modernist Literature Movement.
Perhaps the most disturbing and fascinating passage from the story can be read here:
"Now you see clearly enough what a mess I was in. In my office, after I had read my fiancee's letter, I became at once very resolute and strong. I remember that I got out of my chair and walked about, proud of the fact that I was to be the husband of so noble a woman. Right away I felt concerning her as I had been feeling about myself before I found out what a weak thing I was. To be sure I took a strong resolution that I would not be weak. At nine that evening I had planned to run in to see my fiancee. 'I'm all right now,' I said to myself. 'The beauty of her character has saved me from myself. I will go home now and send the other woman away.' In the morning I had telephoned to my servant and told him that I did not want him to be at the apartment that evening and I now picked up the telephone to tell him to stay at home.
"Then a thought came to me. 'I will not want him there in any event,' I told myself. 'What will he think when he sees a woman coming in my place on the evening before the day I am to be married?' I put the telephone down and prepared to go home. 'If I want my servant out of the apartment it is because I do not want him to hear me talk with the woman. I cannot be rude to her. I will have to make some kind of an explanation,' I said to myself.
"The woman came at seven o'clock, and, as you may have guessed, I let her in and forgot the resolution I had made. It is likely I never had any intention of doing anything else. There was a bell on my door, but she did not ring, but knocked very softly. It seems to me that everything she did that evening was soft and quiet, but very determined and quick. Do I make myself clear? When she came I was standing just within the door where I had been standing and waiting for a half hour. My hands were trembling as they had trembled in the morning when her eyes looked at me and when I tried to put the pennies on the counter in the store. When I opened the door she stepped quickly in and I took her into my arms. We stood together in the darkness. My hands no longer trembled. I felt very happy and strong.
"Although I have tried to make everything clear I have not told you what the woman I married is like. I have emphasized, you see, the other woman. I make the blind statement that I love my wife, and to a man of your shrewdness that means nothing at all. To tell the truth, had I not started to speak of this matter I would feel more comfortable. It is inevitable that I give you the impression that I am in love with the tobacconist's wife. That's not true. To be sure I was very conscious of her all during the week before my marriage, but after she had come to me at my apartment she went entirely out of my mind.
"Am I telling the truth? I am trying very hard to tell what happened to me. I am saying that I have not since that evening thought of the woman who came to my apartment. Now, to tell the facts of the case, that is not true. On that evening I went to my fiancee at nine, as she had asked me to do in her letter. In a kind of way I cannot explain the other woman went with me. This is what I mean--you see I had been thinking that if anything happened between me and the tobacconist's wife I would not be able to go through with my marriage. 'It is one thing or the other with me,' I had said to myself.
"As a matter of fact I went to see my beloved on that evening filled with a new faith in the outcome of our life together. I am afraid I muddle this matter in trying to tell it. A moment ago I said the other woman, the tobacconist's wife, went with me. I do not mean she went in fact. What I am trying to say is that something of her faith in her own desires and her courage in seeing things through went with me. Is that clear to you? When I got to my fiancee's house there was a crowd of people standing about. Some were relatives from distant places I had not seen before. She looked up quickly when I came into the room. My face must have been radiant. I never saw her so moved. She thought her letter had affected me deeply, and of course it had. Up she jumped and ran to meet me. She was like a glad child. Right before the people who turned and looked inquiringly at us, she said the thing that was in her mind. 'O, I am so happy,' she cried. 'You have understood. We will be two human beings. We will not have to be husband and wife.'
Nine. How does the man fit in with the people at his fiancé’s party?
He feels disconnected, guilty, and alienated from their laughter. He is not a real member of their tribe. He’s just faking it.
He has a secret life. He reminds me of Dexter from the Showtime series, a man who can’t live in conventional society but who must exercise an alter ego to preserve his sanity, which at the same time threatens his sanity.
This double life creates a tension. We read, “What they would have thought had they known the truth (about the illicit affair) about me God only knows!”
Ten. What mantra of lies and self-deceit do we see in the aftermath of the marriage?
The man claims, “If you were to say that my marriage is not a happy one I could call you a liar and be speaking the absolute truth.”
In Modernism there is no absolute truth, only gray and moral ambiguity.
We read other mantras of self-delusion: “And now you see I am married and everything is all right. My marriage is to me a very beautiful fact.”
We see here that self-delusion has no limits. We should be afraid of ourselves, very, very afraid.
This pessimistic view of humans incapable of knowing the truth and being full of self-deception is part of Modernism, which rejected the idea that religion could bring us to the light and truth. That, too, is a form of self-deceit in the Modernistic worldview.
Essay Two for 150 Points (Life of Image Vs. Life of Substance)
Option One: To an audience of college students, write a persuasive essay that addresses the contention that "Bartleby, the Scrivener, "Winter Dreams" or "The Other Woman" illustrates the moral principles in David Brooks' online essay "The Moral Bucket List" or Kristen Dombek's online essay "Emptiness." And pertaining to "Emptiness," see "What Happens When We Decide Everyone Else Is a Narcissist."
Suggested Structure
Paragraph 1: Summarize Brooks' or Dombek's essay. 150 words.
Paragraph 2. Frame the debate of your argumentative thesis by asking how and why the story addresses the major ideas in Brooks' or Dombek's essay. Then answer your question with a thesis. 150 words.
Paragraphs 3-6: Supporting paragraphs: They support your thesis' mapping components. 125 words each for 500
Paragraph 7: Write your counterargument-rebuttal paragraph. 150 words.
Paragraph 8: Conclusion: Restate your thesis with emotion (pathos) and show its broader ramifications. 100 words (total is 1,050 words).
If you wish, you can analyze these fallen characters through the following essays as well:
"Emptiness" by Kristen Dombek
"Love People, Not Pleasure," by Arthur C. Brooks
"Ambition Explosion" by David Brooks
You might also consult Pascal's famous Pensees:
We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness, or generosity, or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence. We would rather separate them from ourselves to join them to it; and we would willingly be cowards in order to acquire the reputation of being brave. A great proof of the nothingness of our being, not to be satisfied with the one without the other, and to renounce the one for the other! For he would be infamous who would not die to preserve his honour.
"Winter Dreams" (easier PDF version to read)
Ideas in Kristen Dombek's essay "Emptiness" that you should focus on as you find comparisons in the narcissistic character of Dexter Green from "Winter Dreams":
Dexter Green is empty; he has no self. He only has an idea of what the successful self looks like to others, what Dombek calls "selfiness."
Dexter imitates an image of success at the expense of others whom he uses in the service of his grand performance.
Empty, loveless, and without any real connection to other human beings, Dexter focuses on all he knows: creating a "hologram of the superpowered self" or what elsewhere Dombek calls the "simulacrum of the superpowered self."
In other words, Dexter doesn't work on building a real life for himself. Rather, he becomes a curator of his fake life, which becomes a "reality" to himself and others. In doing this, he fulfills Pascal's insight that most people hate their real life but prefer to create an imaginary life for themselves and for others.
For Dexter Green, people are not people. They are tools to help him hone and chisel his successful image.
As a narcissist, Dexter disregards content, substance, morality, and integrity. He only worships one thing: the "hologram" of the Super Self. That is his "winter dream." He is smart enough to know that the "winter dream" is a destructive illusion, but he does not care, but he has invested too much of his life in this "winter dream" and this dream is all he knows.
Nothing embodies this "winter dream," this "hologram" of superior success, more than Judy Jones. The tragedy and farce of the story is that Judy Jones is a mediocrity, a cipher, a hoax, a complete illusion.
Dexter Green "gets played" by the very illusion that he worships above all else.
Sample Introduction That Transitions to a Thesis
In the age of social media, we curate our own lives. A curator is a guide who controls the message. He is the custodian of his own self-image. Indeed, in the age of social media we curate our own lives, often emphasizing that which makes us look successful and desirable and concealing that which makes puts us in a less flattering light. The danger of being our own curator is that we begin to believe in our own BS. For the last two decades, I’ve curated myself as an intellectual, one who passionately engages in my three loves, reading, writing, and piano playing, but I’ve recently had an awakening in which I realized that thousands of hours lazily spent on the Internet have compromised my intellectual life rendering me somewhat of a fraud to others and myself. My awakening is partly the result of four books: So Good They Can’t Ignore You and Deep Work by Cal Newport, The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, and Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter. I am not alone in realizing I’ve squandered thousands of hours engaging in mindless clicking before an Internet screen. My friend, who is far more brilliant than I am, described his wasted existence in the following email:
Like you, I got lost and wasted tens of thousands of hours on the internet. I'm wondering when I reached my 10,000 hours of internet mastery? If I started regular use around 1995, and I averaged at least a few hours a day (which increased over the years to a current and embarrassing 8+/day...my job allows me to spend half or so of the eight-hour shift on the internet, then I'm on a few hours at night), I'm guessing I achieved Internet Mastery by about 2000 or so. I've probably logged 50,000 hours or so by now...which means I could have mastered five different art forms by now. What a tragic waste.
My friend and I both agreed that we’re going to drastically cut down our Internet use and devote ourselves to “deep work,” defined by Cal Newport as prolonged periods of mental discomfort resulting from giving singular concentration to one’s craft. We can only make this change because our self-curated image as “intellectuals” has proven to be a false one in the face of our wasted Internet time. Hopefully, we will change and no longer be curators of a lie.
Sadly, the narrator in Sherwood Anderson's "The Other Woman" is an unhinged narcissist and a pathological liar because he embodies the recalcitrant characteristics discussed in Kristin Dombeck’s essay “Emptiness” evidenced by __________________________, ______________________________, ___________________________, and ____________________________________.
