Critical Thinker: Short Story Analysis

Updated for 2-11-16: "The Other Woman" and PEEL Paragraphs

English 1C Essay Options: The Best American Short Stories

You will have an in-class reading exam on the following material on March 8.

Your second typed essay is due on March 10.

Please write the Essay Option Number on top of your essay.

General Principle for Your Writing Assignment Options:

Using the principles of literary analysis for writing paragraphs and thesis statements, develop an argumentative, cause and effect analysis, or extended definition thesis that addresses one or more of the assigned short stories.

When we write literary analysis, we choose on a theme and then we take that theme and convert it into a specific thesis statement.

Option #1 for "The Other Woman": Developing a thesis for the theme of Modernism using cause and effect analysis

The Modernism evident in "The Other Woman" explains our unhinged condition resulting from _______________, __________________, __________________, and ____________________.

Two things you need to know to write the above thesis:

One. What does it mean to be unhinged? (compulsive, beholden to Dionysian forces with no Apollonian counterbalance, no self-knowledge, beholden to a fictitious grandiose self that makes one blind to one's real self, no metacognition; the self is divided so that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing and vice versa.)

Two. What are 4 major causes of the man's unhinged state in the story?

Essay Option #2 for "The Other Woman": The demands of marriage in the story using argumentation

Support or refute the notion that "The Other Woman" evidences that Universal Man's demands for a wife are impossible.

Thesis Template

In the powerful short story "The Other Woman," when we examine the man's needs for a woman, we see that those needs represent Universal Man, and that those needs are impossible, rendering most marriages doomed to misery, evidenced by __________________, __________________, ___________________, and ______________.

What You Need to Know

How are the man's needs in a woman both universal to most men, and how do those needs place impossible demands on women? Some of man's "needs" include trophy wife, Eros, Mom, upper class status and privilege, life coach, life manager, etc.

Essay Option #3 for "The Other Woman": How dualism makes us unhinged (dualism consists of the opposing forces that make the man a conflicted character) Using Extended Definition

In "The Other Woman," the dualism evident in the story reveals a man who has lost his sanity and is unhinged evidenced by ____________________, ____________________, _________________, and ___________________.

What You Need to Know

What is dualism? How does dualism manifest in the main character? In what 4 ways does the dualism show that the man is crazy?

Essay Option #4 for "You're Ugly ,Too" by Lorrie Moore using argumentation

In the context of the story, support, refute, or complicate the argument that for a single woman like Zoe there is a point in which the personality, adapting to being alone with its lack of demands for sacrifice, defies romance and intimacy. In other words, when it comes to relationships, a woman can adapt to her single state and this adaptation, or maladaptation, makes her reach The Point of No Return in which she becomes "undateable." Do you know any such women who compare to Zoe? What process have they gone through that makes it almost impossible for them to connect romantically?

Points to Consider

One. Zoe adapts to loneliness and the lifestyle of no compromise.

Two. Her standards for the type of man who can disrupt her lifestyle continue to elevate till she reaches The Point of No Return.

Three. Her adaptation to loneliness and male troglodytes hungry for the Heidi Myth causes her to develop a prickly facade of irony and cynicism that makes her off-putting and grotesque so that he repels not only the troglodytes but the qualified, good men as well.

Four. Educated men who would otherwise be part of her dating pool find themselves searching for the Heidi Archetype, the bovine, servile ignoramus, rather than an educated, autonomous woman.

Five. Lonely professional women such as Zoe find they are stagnant in a perpetual condition of intellectual pride alternated by bitter despair and this alternating cycle becomes a prison from which they can see no escape, thus defining their abject learned helplessness.

Essay Option #5 for Flannery O'Connor's "Greenleaf" using argumentation:

Support, refute, or complicate the argument that O'Connor's religious faith, which is so flagrant in the story, does not compromise but in fact strengthens her cautionary tale about the dangers of pride and how those of us mired in pride are a "damned lot" doomed to languish in our own private hell.

Essay Option #6 that compares "Where I'm Calling From" and "You're Ugly, Too" (using comparison and cause and effect analysis)

In a comparison-contrast essay, analyze the theme of maladaptive emotional wall-building, vulnerability, pride, and personal transformation in "Where I'm Calling From" and Lorrie Moore's "You're Ugly Too."

Essay Option #7 for "A Country Husband" using cause and effect analysis

Develop a thesis that shows how Cheever's "A Country Husband" is a scathing critique of the American Dream.

Another Essay Option #8 for "A Country Husband" using extended definition

Using Francis Weed as a model, develop an extended definition of he Man-Child (or you can use the Turkish word Muganda).

Essay Option #9 for "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" using cause and effect analysis

Develop a thesis that shows how the story is a critique of the Cult of Perpetual Adolescence. You can refer to Joseph Epstein’s “The Perpetual Adolescent” (available online) as a valuable resource to define your term.

Essay Option #10 for "Defender of the Faith" using cause and effect analysis

Develop a thesis that explains the following: Nathan Marx wants us to know that he is world-weary and life-hardened, a man who “has seen it all,” but in fact he has not: He is not prepared to face the insidious evil of the homunculus parasite, Sheldon Grossbart, that kills us gradually, slowly, incrementally, through a thousand cuts. How does this slow death occur?

Another Essay Option #11 for "Defender of the Faith" using cause and effect analysis

In the context of the story, develop a thesis that analyzes the connection between tribalism and entitlement and how this connection clashes with individual morality.

Common Thread That Runs Through Most of the Stories: When Coping Mechanisms Sour

The characters' coping mechanisms go askew and become maladapative to the point that they give birth to the Demon Homunculus, an alter ego that creates more problems than it solves.

We have adapted to potential starvation by overeating to build a fat reserve (back to our Paleo days), but now with abundance calories we are maladapted to the instinct to overeating.

Men have adapted to reproductive success by making themselves productive, strong, and powerful, traits that are proven to make men more successful in the realm of reproduction. However, the greedy man who's driven by blind ambition becomes an obnoxious narcissistic sociopath and as such he repels most women. His initial impulse to attract women has become maladaptive.

Many women feel compelled to conform to a beauty aesthetic promoted in television, the Internet, magazines, etc. However, when the compulsion to conform to this perceived beauty aesthetic leads to eating disorders, self-elected surgeries that make women look, in the words of Tina Fey, like hand puppets with smeared lipstick, their drive has become maladaptive.

One of my favorite themes is the coping mechanisms people develop to address a crisis, and how these coping mechanisms go out of control and become more of a poison that begins to consume their creators. For example, my wife knows of women who have been assaulted by men and their protection was to seclude themselves in their house with a ferocious dog and gain 100 pounds. Their method "worked," but eventually it became maladaptive because they became prisoners of their own methods for self-protection.

When we don't want to get emotionally hurt because we got "burned" from a past relationship, we throw banana peels in others' paths so they'll slip before they get too close to us. This banana peel throwing is an example of maladaptation.

We've adapted to Facebook, accepting compromised, easy friendships with low expectations. As a result of lowering our expectations in the realm of friendship, we have become maladapted to Facebook, writing half-baked thoughts, half-baked "shares," and half-baked commitments so that we have become half-baked people, zombies trolling on the Internet for false connection. Facebook and other social media have made us stupid and mindless.

Themes in the Stories

One. "The Other Woman" by Sherwood Anderson. Explore the theme of Modernism. One of the themes of modernism is that we are so self-centered (solipsistic) that we don't know ourselves (what makes us tick) or know others. Some modernist thought asserts we can know nothing. Such a belief is equivalent to nihilism.

Another important theme in "The Other Woman" is the conflict between the Dionysian and the Apollonian.

Two. "You're Ugly, Too" by Lorrie Moore: intellectual pride, cynicism, "the grotesque," misfit, belonging, professional women, consumerism, 3 Traps, settling.

Three. "Greenleaf" by Flannery O'Connor: intellectual pride, envy, scapegoating, "the grotesque," spiritual blindness, Point of No Return, grace, faith, having your __ handed to you on a stick as a prerequisite for personal transformation.

Four. "Where I'm Calling From" by Raymond Carver: The nature of Purgatory, recovery, addiction, habit, disease, having your _____ handed to you on a stick as a prerequisite for personal transformation, the battle between pride and humility.

Five. "The Country Husband" by John Cheever: The Man-Child, perpetual adolescence, private desire vs. public duty, obligation vs. pleasure, suburban conformity, keeping appearances, and ennui, death and consumerism.

Six. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates: popular culture, perpetual adolescence, Eros and Nihilism, freedom without boundaries, the Age of Aquarius, consumerism and the Chanel No.5 Moment as a form of derangement and moral dissolution.

Seven. "Defender of the Faith" by Philip Roth: The main conflict is loyalty to the tribe (Tribalism) vs. loyalty to moral duty.

"The Other Woman" (full text of the short story)

“The Other Woman” by Sherwood Anderson

One. 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.

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.

His conflicted feelings are further reinforced by the affair he has with the allegedly plain looking woman.

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 our 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.

Two. 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.

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.

Three. 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.”

Four. 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.

Five. 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.

Six. 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.

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.”

Seven. 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.

Eight. How does the man fit in 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!”

Nine. 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: The Best American Short Stories

Using the principles of literary analysis for writing paragraphs and thesis statements, develop an argumentative, cause and effect analysis, or extended definition thesis that addresses one or more of the assigned short stories.

When we write literary analysis, we choose on a theme and then we take that theme and convert it into a specific thesis statement.

Sample Approach for "The Other Woman": Developing a thesis for the theme of Modernism

The Modernism evident in "The Other Woman" explains our unhinged condition resulting from _______________, __________________, __________________, and ____________________.

Two things you need to know to write the above thesis:

One. What does it mean to be unhinged? (compulsive, beholden to Dionysian forces with no Apollonian counterbalance, no self-knowledge, beholden to a fictitious grandiose self that makes one blind to one's real self, no metacognition; the self is divided so that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing and vice versa.)

Two. What are 4 major causes of the man's unhinged state in the story?

Sample Approach for Studying Demands of Marriage in the Story

In the powerful short story "The Other Woman," when we examine the man's needs for a woman we see that those needs represent Universal Man and that those needs are impossible, rendering most marriages doomed to misery, evidenced by __________________, __________________, ___________________, and ______________.

What You Need to Know

How is the man's needs in a woman both universal to most men, and how do those needs place impossible demands on women? Some of man's "needs" include trophy wife, Eros, Mom, upper class status and privilege, life coach, life manager, etc.

Another Thesis Approach: How Dualism Makes Us Crazy (Dualism consists of the opposing forces that make the man a conflicted character)

In "The Other Woman," the dualism evident in the story reveals a man who has lost his sanity evidenced by ____________________, ____________________, _________________, and ___________________.

What You Need to Know

What is dualism? How does dualism manifest in the main character? In what 4 ways does the dualism show that the man is crazy?

Developing PEEL Paragraphs (PEEL equals Point, Evidence or Example, Elaboration or Explanation, and Links)

When writing a research paper, it’s very important in the evidence or example section to use a quote from the text.

Paragraph Example (I've underlined the links or transitions)

The essay "Green Guilt" makes a powerful argument that we must accept the afflictions of guilt and sin, whether that guilt be caused by religious or secular forces, in order that we survive and thrive in a cooperative society. As we read in Asma’s essay, “All this internalized self-loathing is the cost we pay for being civilized. In a very well organized society that protects the interests of many, we have to refrain from our natural instincts.” Indeed, our natural instincts, if left unchecked, would create a barbaric world where no kind of viable or even pleasing society could flourish. A second curse of selfish desires unbridled by a sense of guilt and sin would be the moral dissolution that would ensue as hordes of people would become numb to pleasures resulting in frustration and increased violence. We see evidence of such mayhem and grand displays of nihilism in hedonistic societies right before they crumble such as the Fall of Rome. Finally, let us not neglect to point out that a sense of sin can prompt us to be more disciplined so that we maximize the success of our personal goals rather than squandering our life on the foolish errands prompted by our unharnessed desires. To conclude, Asma convincingly shows us that it is in our best interests to repress our base passions by swallowing the Sin Pill in order to fulfill our potential as individuals and as a society.

Posted at 02:54 PM in Short Story Analysis | Permalink | Comments (0)

What Does It Mean to Become Unhinged in “Winter Dreams” and “The Overcoat?

What Does It Mean to Become Unhinged in “Winter Dreams” and “The Overcoat?

Your Writing Assignment

In a 1,000-word essay, develop an analytical thesis that explores the psychological state of being unhinged in the stories “Winter Dreams” by F. Scott Fitzgerald and “The Overcoat” by Nikolai Gogol. An analytical thesis should give insight into the causes and effects behind the characters’ state of being unhinged. You should refer to the two stories and a credible online source for your Works Cited page.

Introduction to Being Unhinged: We Are Our Own Worst Enemies

Few things matter more in this world than in learning how to not be our own worst enemies. We destroy ourselves through self-induced fears that can cause so much anxiety as to kill us more than the things we’re afraid of such as having a heart attack while going to the dentist or undergoing an angiogram. The procedures don’t kill us. Our fears do.

The second way we become our own worst enemy is by desiring things that are worthless or at least not as valuable as our overestimation of them. We sacrifice our time, money, and sanity for some Holy Grail that turns out to be something cheap and transitory, a fleeting desire for someone we put on a pedestal, a material acquisition that promises elevated social status, a desirable “lifestyle” that proves boring and empty.

We tend to blow things out of proportion, either in our fears or desires, because we crave drama. We crave drama because we’re bored. We’re bored because our lives our empty, and either we cannot accept the emptiness as an ok thing or we cannot accept the emptiness because we think there’s something more, some kind of higher purpose or meaning.

For some people, finding higher purpose or meaning is really important for getting them out of their selves, from freeing themselves from their self-centeredness and their nagging sense of anxious restlessness.

But other people don’t need a sense of higher purpose. They accept the meaninglessness of their lives with surprising tranquility and manage to live in the present and be engaged with their interests and stay connected to friends and family. For such people, a sense of connection and engagement with the present is the closest thing they have to “meaning.”

But most of us lack this peace of mind and tranquility to engage in life. Most of us have personal demons inside us that make us our own worst enemy. Most of us blow our fears and desires out of proportion. Most of us are compelled, against our notion of free will, to become unhinged, dislocated, and broken.

Most of us unhinge ourselves, hit rock bottom, then analyze how we unhinged ourselves, and then we spend the rest of our lives trying to repair ourselves, making ourselves “the project.” We read self-help books, we go into therapy, we go into counseling, we explore various religions, we attempt to connect with some group or purpose that is larger than ourselves.

Some of us feel “fixed.” Some of us, in spite of evidence to the contrary, convince ourselves that we’re “fixed,” and we want to share our “fixed self” with the world and the manner in which we “fixed” ourselves when in fact we are quite broken. Some of us get even more dislocated, broken, and lost than before we tried to fix ourselves.

Some of us, in a perverse way, enjoy being unhinged because we crave the drama of being broken and being dislocated, and this broken state of being is all we know.

For most of us, we don’t even know how we reached this broken state. Nor do we know we’re broken. Our broken state is our normal because it’s all we know. We don’t know, nor can we even imagine, what it would be like to not be broken.

Most of us lack the metacognition and self-awareness to even have this conversation with ourselves. Most of us are smart enough to have this conversation, but we don’t know how to begin. Or we’re too scared to explore this facet of our existence, preferring instead to live on the surface, to escape what we’re doing, to avoid our examining the motivations for our behavior.

However, it seems reasonable, beneficial even, to analyze our tendency to self-destruct, to become unhinged. It’s in our self-interest to study our self-destructive process, its causes and effects, with the hope that perhaps we could curtail this self-destruction.

Knowing our self-destructive ways is no guarantee that we will stop our self-destructive inclinations. They may persist in the presence of our keen self-awareness of them. But it would seem reasonable and in our self-interest to at least start the conversation about our self-destructiveness. It would seem reasonable that it’s better to know what makes us tick than to remain ignorant of our inner workings. So with that in mind, let us look at what it means to be unhinged.

Being Unhinged

When we study the psychological condition of being unhinged, we are talking about the state of being overcome by enormous fear and anxiety, being disconnected from our core self, losing our sense of self-possession, having no free will, being governed by compulsion, and being unable to engage and connect with the present.

Being unhinged, we live far too much “inside our head,” and lack the corrective communications we would have if were more connected to other people and able to listen to their warnings and admonishments.

When we live too much inside our head, we find that our unhinging is the result of exaggerated or disproportionate assessments that result in enormous fears and anxieties.

Unable to get outside our head, we become unhinged because we suffer from “demonic” possession. We are not talking about demonic possession in the religious sense; rather, we are talking about demonic possession in the obsessive sense. Something has possessed us, and we in turn have become obsessed with this thing that has gone deeply inside us.

Some example of things that obsess people who become unhinged:

Gambling, drinking, working out, anorexia, any addiction
Finding one’s “true love”
Vaulting ambition
Greed
Jealousy
Envy
Gluttony
Lust
Materialism like acquiring a Mercedes or a Rolex
Dreaming of the perfect life, with the perfect house, the perfect spouse, and the perfect image that conforms to everything you’ve heard is the perfect life
Vindication: proving to others that you were right all along
Revenge
Any attempt to substitute basic needs with false substitutes such eating a gallon of rocky road ice cream to fill the ache and emptiness of loneliness.
The quest for your Holy Grail even if the alleged grail is a mirage or a chimera
Creating the “perfect body” so people will love and admire you
Becoming a towering intellectual so people will be in awe of your daunting intellect
Creating some artistic vision
Fearing vaccinations or wheat products because you read on the Internet, without testing the credibility of your sources, that vaccinations and wheat products will “disease” and “kill” you
Any kind of paranoia derived from reading dubious Internet sources
Extreme pessimism
Extreme optimism

Often we would like to talk about the causes of being unhinged, but we become frustrated because our sense of being possessed and obsessed seems inexplicable. We say, “It just happened.”

But in fact, there are certain personalities that are more vulnerable to being unhinged:

Proud
Narcissistic
Self-pitying
Eccentric
Introverted
Depressed
Highly imaginative, creative people
Highly sensitive, fragile people
People with Asperger’s syndrome
People on the bipolar spectrum
People who feel “emotionally damaged” from some past trauma
People who are overwhelmed with past demons
People who are heartbroken over a lost love
People who are heartbroken over God and have lost their faith
People who are heartbroken with life and feel disappointed with this place people call Planet Earth, what for them is a living hell
People who are desperate for answers to the tormenting questions that plague their existence

Often in the condition of being unhinged, we are chasing a mirage that we wish to obtain in the future, we are disconnecting with our present through addictive and compulsive behavior, and we are in a state of anxiety from our frustration at not being able to possess our chimera or mirage.

We all become unhinged from time to time, but what separates an unhinged person from the rest of us is the frequency and chronic nature of being in the condition of being unhinged.

We can break down the condition of being unhinged in the following eight distinguishing characteristics.

One. The first characteristic is our delusional self that creates false justifications for irrational behavior. “This thing is so cheap I can’t afford NOT to buy it.” “By buying the Seiko SBDX017 for two thousand dollars, I’ll stop buying six-hundred-dollar watches every four months or so, so that over a five-year period, the two-thousand-dollar Seiko will save me seven thousand dollars. I can’t afford NOT to buy the Seiko.”

Two. The second characteristic is fear of facing our personal shortcomings, what amounts to having someone hand us our butt on a stick. The disparity between our self-image and our true self is too frightening for most of us to bear. We’d rather live with a flattering self-image. We’d rather believe we’re not wasting our lives on nonsense. We’re so desperate to avoid the truth of our personal shortcomings that we engage in diversionary behavior (avoiding the truth through various distractions and escapism) that makes us unhinged.

Three. Related to the second, the third characteristic is the intoxication that overcomes us when we become an image of mythology, celebrity, fame, or power to others so that we see ourselves, not for who we really are, but through the lens of those who worship our mythical self.

Four. The fourth characteristic of becoming unhinged is desire for some mirage or chimera that rips us apart from our powers of reason.

Five. The fifth characteristic of becoming unhinged is obsessive-compulsive behavior that compromises our sense of self-possession and free will.

Six. The sixth characteristic embodies all of the previous four, the state of disconnection, which causes intense anxiety and panic. We are desperate to not feel this disconnection, and we will resort to any extreme to not feel this anxiety. Our extreme behaviors exacerbate our condition, making us more anxious and feeling compelled to be even more extreme, thus creating a vicious cycle.

Seven. Not knowing one is unhinged is a key characteristic. In other words, the unhinged lacks the metacognition and self-awareness to recognize that he is unhinged.

Eight. The eighth and most striking characteristic is the enormous anxiety and fear that afflicts us and in turn makes us unhinged.

Posted at 07:47 AM in Short Story Analysis | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Winter Dreams" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"The Overcoat"

"The Overcoat" PDF Version

"Winter Dreams"

"Winter Dreams" (easier PDF version to read)

Study Questions for "Winter Dreams"

One. How does the story introduce social class anxieties into Dexter’s personality?

Dexter’s dad is “second best,” the owner of a second best grocery store, evidencing working class roots.

Dexter works as a caddie, a servant to the upper classes, and he finds this humiliating.

He reads the bleak weather as an omen of his doom while living in the underclass, working as a servile caddy for professional players and tastemakers, people who matter.

He feels irrelevant and irrelevance stirs resentment and depression in his veins.

He sees life as extremes, those who have and those who have not; the dreary Northern spring and the gorgeous fall.

He creates this false binary universe: We call this the All or Nothing Fallacy.

After the depression of spring, October brings him hope and November brings him “ecstatic triumph.”

We see Dexter’s vaulting ambition to get away from the lowly caddy job. He’s “too old” for it, he thinks, at 14.

Two. What compelled Dexter to hurry away from his caddy job?

An 11-year-old girl, Miss Jones, described as “beautifully ugly” and “who are destined after a few years to be inexpressibly lovely and bring no end of misery to a great number of men.”

Indeed, beauty can unhinge men and dislocate men from reality, as we shall see in the story.

But not just beauty—beauty combined with the aura of upper class money: This is the noxious cocktail that will undermine Dexter Green.

The girl addressed Dexter as “boy,” a sign of his lowly servitude, and this has an emasculating effect on him.

His sense of emasculating is further reinforced when the caddy-master shows up and says to Dexter, “What you standing there like a dummy for? Go pick up the young lady’s clubs.”

He quits from compulsion: “The enormity of his decision frightened him. He was a favorite caddy, and the thirty dollars a month he earned through the summer were not to be made elsewhere around the lake. But he had received a strong emotional shock, and his perturbation required a violent and immediate outlet.”

His perturbation is the great anxiety that makes him compulsive and unhinges him. He’s high-strung and compulsive.

We read a warning of his compulsive nature: “As so frequently would be the case in the future, Dexter was unconsciously dictated by his winter dreams.”

Three. We read a famous passage: "But do not get the impression, because his winter dreams happened to be concerned at first with musings on the rich, that there was anything shoddy in the boy. He wanted not association with glittering things and glittering people -- he wanted the glittering things themselves.” What does this passage mean?

Dexter believes he can, through hard work, embody “glitter,” that is to say the apotheosis of success. America is not a country; it’s a dream. America is “Winter Dreams,” the idea that we find personal fulfillment, meaning, and higher purpose through the attainment of “glitter.” It is this very sick idolatry that will undermine Dexter Green.

We also read that while he become successful in business, he suffered certain “denials,” and that the story is about one of those denials, and that would be the denial of acquiring Judy Jones, who for Dexter is the highest example (apotheosis) of “glitter,” of Dexter’s “Winter Dreams.”

Four. As we read about Dexter’s rise in the laundry industry and the rich patrons who frequent his establishments, we learn what about old and new money?

Old money has a certain aura, a certain “heritage,” and a snobbery attached to it. On the other hand, new money, the rags to riches story such as Dexter’s, has humble beginnings and class insecurity attached to it even as the person of new wealth amasses riches because in part he will always feel a bit like a fish out of water and he will always have memories of his poor beginnings. Moreover, he may not know all the codes and linguistic tics that the old rich use in their arsenal of being smugly rich. He may have some of his old caddy behaviors, which he thinks about when he returns to play golf at his old course—not as a caddy but as a man who’s “made it.”

We can surmise perhaps that Dexter is not just desperate to be rich but is desperate to have an identity of being rich, of not being looked down upon by those with old money, and his delusion is that winning the affections of old-money Judy Jones with all her intoxicating beauty is his ticket to happiness.

But much of his quest is in his own imagination. Therefore, his quest is an illusion or a chimera, and it is this chimera that will unhinge him.

Five. One of the brilliant things in this story is the way Fitzgerald quickly exposes Judy Jones’ personality at the golf course where she hits a golf ball into Mr. T.A. Hedrick’s abdomen. What do we learn about her in such a brief passage?

Judy Jones is self-centered, entitled, and used to not being accountable for anything. In other words, she is somewhat of a cipher and wastrel. She makes messes and expects others to clean them up. She can hurt others, but feel no empathy for her actions. In other words, she’s an empty-headed, repellant narcissist.

And here lies the story’s tragedy: Dexter Green has hinged is whole notion of happiness on going on a Love Quest for Judy Jones, a Narcissistic Cipher. His “winter dreams” are futile, delusional, and empty. They will bring him nothing but a handful of ashes and dust.

Another important observation from this scene is that Dexter watches the old-money golf players gawk and admire Judy Jones’ beauty, doing so with a certain misogyny and lasciviousness.

Their remarks make her all the more a compelling “trophy.” Dexter is diseased by the need to create an image through the amassing of trophies, what in Latin is called the libido ostentando. Dexter’s lust for ostentatiousness will blind him from the fundamental emptiness that defines his existence.

Six. After seeing the adult beauty Judy Jones at the golf course, Dexter goes on a night swim and hears piano that he associates with the correct life path he has taken: “The sound of the tune precipitated in him a sort of ecstasy and it was with that ecstasy he viewed what was happening to him now. It was a mood of intense appreciation, a sense that, for once, he was magnificently attuned to life and that everything about him was radiating a brightness and a glamour he might never know again.”

How does the above passage speak to The Trickster as part of Dexter’s Quest to find his Winter Dreams?

“Winter Dreams” is essentially a chimera story: A man quests for his chimera and is crushed by the emptiness of his dream. Therefore, a chimera can be called a Trickster. A Trickster is a character or an idea that carries us through the four levels of emotion: earthly, angelic, mystical, and demonic.

The Trickster must give us hope and promise of finding a land of milk and honey only to throw us down from the heavens and into the inferno of our own making.

Seven. In Part III, how do we see Dexter as a committed student of social class?

While Dexter asserts his superiority over the old-money rich due to his hard work ethic, he wants his children to grow up as old money, and Dexter wants to learn the codes of old money: casual dress, facial expressions (hauteur and superciliousness), and all the consumer secrets the old rich enjoy. The rich have a secret code of conduct that sets them apart from the rest, and Dexter wants to be an expert on this code.

Dexter must “keep to the set patterns” so that his peasant background will never be revealed and thus bring shame to him and his future family.

Further, he lies about his origins, tells the rich he’s from Keeble, not the working-class Black Bear Village.

Eight. Even though Judy Jones is a flirt and a shallow coquette, she inadvertently asks Dexter an existential question during their first dinner: “Who are you, anyhow?” How does her question touch on one of the story’s major themes?

As an American, Dexter believes he can re-invent himself anyway he wants. He is a chameleon, and he is free to dream himself into the kind of person he wants to be. The idea that we can become our dream is uniquely American.

The irony is that in many ways he doesn’t know who he is since his energies have created a façade to others and to himself.

In fact, his answer to Judy’s question is unwittingly true. He says, “I’m nobody. . . . My career is largely a matter of futures.” In fact, he only lives in the future, not the present, and this is part of his unhinged character: to be disconnected and disengaged from the present as he looks to the future when he will finally be worthy of achieving the American Dream. But he will never be worthy. His hope is a chimera that pushes him to constantly look ahead into the future and never in the present moment.

When he assures Judy he is not poor and she kisses him, her kisses arouse a “surfeit that would demand more surfeit.” In other words, his desires will always outrun his capacity to fulfill them, and Judy Jones is the embodiment of his excess desires or concupiscence.

What we have, then, is a mutually self-destructive symbiosis or interdependence. What’s scary is that that unhealthy symbiosis is the very foundation of Dexter’s “Winter Dreams.”

Nine. Much of the story chronicles Dexter’s addiction to Judy Jones like a junkie hooked on drugs. Explain.

We read, “Dexter surrendered himself to the most direct and unprincipled personality with which he had ever come into contact.”

The unhinged man is so needy and compulsive that he surrenders his self-interest to an unethical, morally bankrupt force in the name of his carnal and monetary idolatry.

He has no moral combat to save him from pursuing someone as unprincipled as Judy Jones.

We can further explore Dexter’s unhinging with Judy Jones by looking at her as a drug. She is less human to Dexter and more of a substance of his addiction. And in turn Judy Jones is addicted to the power she has over men by her power to intoxicate them. She in turn is addicted to seeing men addicted to her.

We see that Dexter is no needy for Judy Jones that he sacrifices his dignity and self-respect to pursue her. For example, he knows she loves other men in her shallow capricious way and that she sometimes “loves” in the same pathetic, superficial manner, and she even tells him so, but rather than be upset he accepts her imperfect, disloyal love. We read, for example, that after telling him that she was in love with another man earlier the same day as they lie in bed, he finds her words “beautiful and romantic.”

When she lies to him and says she did not kiss a man earlier the same day, Dexter knows she’s lying, but he’s okay with that because he is “glad that she has taken the time to lie to him.”

Because Judy Jones is aware that he has no standards of behavior that she must adhere to, she knows she can get away with anything. Deep down, she can’t love him because he lacks self-respect, but she herself lacks self-respect because if she had it, she would not be in a relationship with someone she doesn’t respect. Both of them are degraded in the relationship, a fact that neither wants to see. Both are unhinged in this manner.

As you read the story, you will see that the narrative has many parallels with drug addiction as it pertains to Dexter Green’s relationship with Judy Jones.

Over and over again, we see that Judy Jones, the consummate Trickster, sends Dexter into hell through neglect and infidelity, but then gives him just enough honey so he’ll come back to her. She does this to many men, not just Dexter. We read, “Whenever one showed signs of dropping out through long neglect, she granted him a brief honeyed hour, which encouraged him to tag along for a year or so longer.”

She is clearly a sick person and the men who become addicted to her are just as sickly. They live in a demimonde of no-respect and emptiness.

Like a drug addict, Dexter becomes unhinged and cannot be civil to others when she unexpectedly disappears at a social event. He panics and is overcome with anxiety that causes him to lose his polite facade.

We read that Judy Jones is not a self-possessed person in her compulsion to torture men: “Judy made these forays upon the helpless and defeated without malice, indeed half unconscious that there was anything mischievous in anything that she did.”

Even the “strong and the brilliant, “play her game and not their own.” She always has the upper hand.

Her beauty is her power, but as we shall see, using beauty for power and identity is a sure failure because beauty is transitory.

For example, I know a man who used to look like Paul McCartney, but as this celebrity wannabe aged, his face bloated and his distorted features no longer gave him the cachet he enjoyed in his youth. He now lives in his mother’s basement where he traipses around in a robe and eats Hot Pockets while trolling on the Internet.

But while her beauty is in its prime, she is Dexter’s drug, as we read: “The helpless ecstasy of losing himself with in her was opiate rather than tonic.”

When you think about the above line, many of us love the drama of a tormented obsession, and we therefore choose to stay entrapped in our torment because to lose that drama would force us to face the abyss or the existential vacuum that defines our empty existence.

In many ways, the story teaches us that we are our own worst enemy. Sadly, many of us “unhinge” ourselves from reality for lack of anything better to do.

Another way of looking at Dexter’s “Winter Dreams” is that he was feeding off the sick energy of desperation that Judy Jones created between her and her bevy of lovers.

Dexter knows he’s an addict, at least on an unconscious level. This makes him a divided soul: Part of him wants to escape his addiction to Judy Jones. He even gets engaged to another woman as a hopeful “cure” for his disease. Imagine getting engaged to someone you don’t love as a “cure” for a love addiction. That is a cogent sign of being unhinged.

His Judy Jones substitute is Irene Scheerer. Unlike Judy Jones who is described as a refined beauty, we read little of Irene’s physical charms except that she is “a little stout.”

We have to wonder if the world is full of Judy Jones archetypes that enchant men, leave them, and damage the men so that they can never love other women because these damaged men are forever fixated on their own personal “Judy Jones.” Perhaps we can call this the Angelina Jolie Factor: One look into her eyes and you’re permanently damaged, unhinged, and ready to abandon reality as you know it.

Even as he tries to love Irene, he keeps thinking about the manner in which Judy Jones beckons, torments, and insults him, and he is desperate to convince himself that he cannot pursue Judy Jones any longer. But as an unhinged man, as a man possessed by the IDEA of what Judy Jones represents—complete power, ecstasy, and abandonment—he finds his drug addiction incurable, and as such he hates himself and he hates Judy Jones—the very woman he cannot free himself from.

At night, he argues with himself about Judy Jones, going over a laundry list as to why she’d be a horrible wife. But that is the cortex in his brain. The limbic part of his brain, where emotion and reptilian desire reside, continue to rage a protest for acquiring Judy Jones.

He sees Judy Jones at a dance and he realizes that he had long ago been “hardened against jealousy.” He still wants her. He’s twenty-five, he has devoted 14 years to obsessing over Judy Jones, and he is about to marry Irene Scheerer.

About to get married to Irene, he still obsesses over Judy Jones, wondering if she still cares about him, and Irene is nothing but a backdrop to his life, “no more than a curtain spread behind him.” She will be part of a marital façade, but his demonic possession will still rage on.

Posted at 04:01 PM in Short Story Analysis | Permalink | Comments (0)

“Defender of the Faith” by Philip Roth

“Defender of the Faith” by Philip Roth

One. Why does the narrator Sargeant Nathan Marx say he is “fortunate enough” to travel “the weirdest paths without feeling a thing”?

He wants us to know that he is world-weary and life-hardened, a man who “has seen it all,” but in fact he has not: He is not prepared to face the insidious evil of the homunculus parasite, Sheldon Grossbart, that kills us gradually, slowly, incrementally, through a thousand cuts. This is the story’s theme.

Our downfall is often not an immediate catastrophe. Rather, our downfall gradually overtakes us such as consumerism: “How in the hell did I get here?”

Two. What is the theme of tribalism and entitlement?

We often gravitate toward those whom we perceive as belonging to our tribe in part because they invite feelings of favoritism and entitlement.

Such behavior is corrupt, sycophantic, narcissistic, and immoral.

We call this cronyism and nepotism.

Marx tries to repel Grossbart from crossing the line by demanding to be called “Sergeant,” but Grossbart gradually weakens him with his sycophantic whining.

In contrast to favoritism, the story presents us the moral code of the meritocracy, treating people on their merits alone. No one should get special treatment, “for the good or the bad.”

Fairness based on merits is a religious principle. To be a “defender of the faith,” as the title suggests, means to show fairness, not favoritism. Therefore, to give special rights to those who belong to our tribe is a compromise of our defense of our faith.

Captain Barrett is skeptical of Grossbart’s motivations: “Seems awful funny that suddenly the Lord is calling so loud in Private Grossman’s ear he’s just got to run to church.”

Lots of people would rather attend a religious service than clean their barracks. We can infer, then, that Grossbart is a fraud and a mountebank trying to take advantage of the fact that he and Marx are of the same religion.

Marx makes the fatal error of opening the door to Grossbart. Once he opens the door, by acquiescing to Grossbart’s request, the boundary between them is vanished, and now Marx is vulnerable to the demon homunculus.

An authority figure needs a healthy distance between him and his subordinates, as does an athlete between himself and his competition. Bob Gibson, star pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, never fraternized with the other National League players when they played together on the All-Star Team because he knew he would pitch against them in games that counted. He wanted his competition to be scared of him, not familiar and comfortable.

Keeping a distance between others in certain situations is necessary.

We call this the Respect Zone. Certain boundaries are not crossed. I don’t go into my doctor’s office, sit on his desk, and call him by his first name in front of the patients.

If I do, I’ve crossed the line. I’ve moved out of the Respect Zone and into the Familiarity Zone. I assume we’re familiar (perhaps we play tennis together) and I can be “chummy” with my doctor. But in doing so in front of his patients, I violate the Respect Zone by moving into the Familiarity Zone.

If I get too familiar with my doctor, not paying my bill because, after all, “we’re friends,” I’ve moved beyond the Familiarity Zone to the Take for Granted Zone, the zone that affords the least respect.

This is where our demon homunculus Grossbart is maneuvering by getting Marx to do the first favor.

Three. What evidence is there that Grossbart is not motivated by piety?

At the religious service, we read, “I thought I heard Grossbart cackle, ‘Let the goyim clean the floors!’”

Grossbart is gloating and wallowing in the juices of privilege and entitlement. He is revolting, an example of faith gone bad.

Marx has evidence that his actions are not defending the faith.

Four. Do the favors stop at prayer services in place of cleanup duty?

No, prayer services are followed by requests for kosher food. Grossbart’s mom calls a congressman to make a stink about the Jewish soldiers not having access to kosher food.

Grossbart lies and says the goyim or gentile food is making him throw up.

Army duty is being downgraded to “summer camp.”

The Captain is not amused. He says, “There’s a goddam war on, and he wants a silver platter!”

Then Grossbart and his fellow Jewish soldiers want to up the ante. Not only do they want special services and special kosher food, they want to make sure they’re given assurances that they’re not transferred to the battlefront in the Pacific.

The rationale is that they don’t want their parents to worry about them.

They want Marx to enable them to be spoiled children while the rest of the soldiers fight a real war.

Grossbart relies on pathological lying to get his way. First he says he throws up; then he changes the story so that it is Halpern who is throwing up. He can’t keep his stories straight. And he’s a whiner. We can conclude that this demon homunculus has become a disease to his unit.

In fact, Captain Barrett reveals that Grossbart is motivated by false piety. Barrett says to Grossbart, “When you were in high school, Sergeant Marx was killing Germans. Who does more for the Jews—you, by throwing up over a lousy piece of sausage, piece of first-cut meat, or Marx, by killing those Nazi bastards? If I was a Jew, Grossbart, I’d kiss the man’s feet. He’s a goddam hero, and he eats what we give him.”

The lies get worse. Marx figures out that Grossbart wrote the letter to the congressman. His mother and father barely read and write in English.

Marx realizes that people who use religion to manipulate others for their own selfish gain are vile, unctuous, hypocrites.

Five. How does Grossbart embody the BS Principle of Diminishing Returns?

Grossbart exerts more time and energy BS-ing than he’d have to do to perform his assigned duties and responsibilities; however, he is so blinded and tantalized by the false promise of entitlement that he becomes dependent on a BS lifestyle.

Grossbart is forging letters, communiqués, and other sycophantic documents to push his agenda. He is a complete parasite.

Six. After Grossbart lies low for a while, what kind of shenanigans does he create for Marx?

He gets alone with Marx in a dark movie theater and first asks for one favor; then he asks for two favors. He wants to know where the unit is going and if there’s a chance he could go back to New York.

He lies and says going back to the States will afford him an opportunity to have Passover dinner with his family.

Worse, Grossbart wants Marx to break the rules and let him go on leave during the basic training.

It’s at this point that we see the demon inside Grossbart. He points his finger and hisses at Marx for reading the congressman’s letter, which in fact he desired Marx to read because of the letter’s abject sycophantism directed toward Marx.

Grossbart is a man of multiple layers of BS.

Then when Marx denies Grossbart his favor, Grossman compares Marx to Hitler.

Grossbart’s fraud continues when he musters a self-righteous, tearful pose and proclaims his religion makes him different. We see narcissism and tribalism in his refusal to be like everyone else and cooperate in the war effort.

He accuses Marx of closing his heart to his own.

Marx breaks down and gives Grossbart the visitation pass.

Grossbart abuses the privilege and wants to take his friends. He’s like a little child.

Max breaks down again and lets all three go.

Seven. How does Grossbart push Marx over the edge?

He lies about the dinner with his Aunt. He buys Chinese food. Marx then discovers Grossbart pulled strings to get assigned to New Jersey. Marx must impede Grossbart’s manipulations, and he does so. He will now have to live with his conscience.

Posted at 08:00 PM in Short Story Analysis | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sherwood Anderson's "The Other Woman" and PEEL Paragraph Method

Common Thread That Runs Through Most of the Stories: When Coping Mechanisms Sour

The characters' coping mechanisms go askew and become maladapative to the point that they give birth to the Demon Homunculus, an alter ego that creates more problems than it solves.

One of my favorite themes is the coping mechanisms people develop to address a crisis, and how these coping mechanisms go out of control and become more of a poison that begins to consume their creators.

One. "The Other Woman" by Sherwood Anderson. Explore the theme of Modernism. One of the themes of modernism is that we are so self-centered (solipsistic) that we don't know ourselves (what makes us tick) or know others. Some modernist thought asserts we can know nothing. Such a belief is equivalent to nihilism.

Another important theme in "The Other Woman" is the conflict between the Dionysian and the Apollonian.

Two. "You're Ugly, Too" by Lorrie Moore: intellectual pride, cynicism, "the grotesque," misfit, belonging, professional women, consumerism, 3 Traps, settling.

Three. "Greenleaf" by Flannery O'Connor: intellectual pride, envy, scapegoating, "the grotesque," spiritual blindness, Point of No Return, grace, faith, having your __ handed to you on a stick as a presrequisite for personal transformation.

Four. "Where I'm Calling From" by Raymond Carver: The nature of Purgatory, recovery, addiction, habit, disease, having your _____ handed to you on a stick as a prerequisite for personal transformation, the battle between pride and humility.

Five. "The Country Husband" by John Cheever: The Man-Child, perpetual adolescence, private desire vs. public duty, obligation vs. pleasure, suburban conformity, keeping appearances, and ennui, death and consumerism.

Six. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates: popular culture, perpetual adolescence, Eros and Nihilism, freedom without boundaries, the Age of Aquarius, consumerism and the Chanel No.5 Moment as a form of derangement and moral dissolution.

Seven. "Defender of the Faith" by Philip Roth: The main conflict is loyalty to the tribe (Tribalism) vs. loyalty to moral duty.

"The Other Woman" (full text of the short story)

“The Other Woman” by Sherwood Anderson

One. 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.

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.

His conflicted feelings are further reinforced by the affair he has with the allegedly plain looking woman.

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 our 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.