English 1C Jeffrey McMahon
Lesson for “An Anxious Man” by James Lasdun
Student Who Objects to James Lasdun’s “Cheap Determinism”
Our Professor McMahon, gleefully presenting himself as the Prophet of Doom, has assigned us the dreary, defeatist short stories of James Lasdun, whose vision of humankind is saddled with a sad and sour brand of pessimism in which the characters, little more than nebbish waifs and socially inept sycophants, are victims of forces they cannot control.
McMahon is proud to taut Lasdun as a committed determinist, someone who rejects the notion that humans are free agents capable of making choices and taking responsibility for their actions. Rather, humans are, evidenced in Lasdun’s short stories, governed by determinism, which is to say they are helpless before the powers of their unconscious and their environmental upbringing.
I’m disappointed with McMahon’s choice of James Lasdun, for while I find some of Lasdun’s stories engaging and mildly entertaining, I find Lasdun’s brand of determinism cheap, predictable, and clichéd.
Once we realize that all of Lasdun’s characters are ciphers, weak, almost soulless creatures that conform to the whims of society—greed, lasciviousness, perpetual adolescence, Oedipal Complexes—to same some, we find ourselves bored in this noxious morass of predictable, trite, hackneyed short stories that end, predictably, with the character’s woeful, lugubrious demise.
It’s as if Lasdun is so determined to assert his pessimistic view of determinism that he purposely only uses weak characters for his nihilistic fiction. In this sense, his effete characters are empty pawns used to promote Lasdun’s cheap vision.
What could have been provocative short stories about the way responsible human beings are tested by temptation become thin fictions promoting clichés about “mankind’s helplessness in the face of forces he cannot control.”
Because McMahon has chosen Lasdun for our reading list, I assume McMahon is to some degree enamored with Lasdun’s cheap deterministic vision. McMahon would be well served to reconsider Lasdun’s collection as being worthy of his reading list and move on to something more challenging for his students. Next assignment, please.
McMahon Concedes to Some Points in the Above Passage, Especially the Limitations of James Lasdun’s Short Stories
Too Predictable: Lasdun's Characters Are All Beholden to the Irrational Mind
We all have an infinite capacity to be irrational, but some of us are more irrational than others. Why? Because some of us have more free will and more metacognition or self-awareness than others.
It's an over simplification to say we have absolute free will or are absolutely helpless to our Irrational Mind. Lasdun's characters show no free will in his stories, which makes them over simplistic in their determinism.
Free Will Scale
Free will or a lack of it is a matter of degree. A person who has a healthy lifestyle, full of daily exercise and healthy eating may not be completely free to curb the temptation to eat rich desserts, but this person has more freedom than inert, morbidly obese people who sit at the Internet while eating buckets of fried chicken and several cases of Hot Pockets throughout the day.
If I want to get out of bed on a day that I feel depressed, I can get up and slog through the day, but what about the 1,200-pound man on Oprah? He cannot get out of his bed.
There's a free will scale. While I’m tempted by chocolate cake, I’m higher on the free will scale than the unemployed guy my age who lives with his mother and is sitting in front of the Internet right now while eating a Hot Pocket.
Some people have a tiny degree free will. For example, take the characters in James Lasdun’s stories. They’re all absent free will. They're all waifs, ciphers, nebbish, socially inept outsiders. It’s as if Lasdun has only chosen one type of character to populate his stories in order that those characters, like pawns, can be used to project his pessimistic worldview.
All of James Lasdun’s characters lack metacognition or self-awareness and as such Lasdun’s fiction is somewhat limited and predictable. You know things are going to end badly. You know when you read Lasdun’s stories, you’re taking a drive to see some spectacle of human failure, some dumpster fire or other. Everything ends with a dumpster fire with Lasdun’s fiction.
Part Two. What Is Lasdun’s Dark Vision of the Human Condition?
One. Sincerity and moralizing are useless in penetrating the human heart and making us live moral lives. In Lasdun’s fictional world, we are too blind and self-deluded to embrace moral lessons. Abel should have known that adultery was the beginning of the end for him, but this seemingly normal man inverted morality so that he persuaded himself that to not have an affair would be to squander a golden opportunity and as such be equal to self-betrayal.
Two. In Lasdun’s universe, there are layers and layers of deceit and unconscious subterfuge that cannot be detected even by the most intelligent, earnest human beings. We seem to be hard-wired for self-deception. Take Martin from the “Half Sister.” He actually entertains the idea of marrying a monster-daughter as a way of elevating his existence because the monster’s parents are rich.
Three. Even the most “moral” people have weaknesses such as vanity that can render them seemingly helpless to forbidden desires. Again, Abel’s vanity, piqued by his friendship with the Billy Goat Stewart, makes him helpless to the temptation of adultery.
Four. People who portray themselves as helplessly innocent may be sincere while at the same time behave like manipulating sociopaths.
Five. Willful ignorance is a feeble attempt at control and always results in a loss of self-control. We see this loss of control with the tyrannical fathers in “Cleanness” and “Caterpillars.”
Six. There is a huge disparity between our self-image and who we really are. Our self-image is more flattering than the reality. Thus, we are delusional. Martin, Abel, and Stewart embody this principle.
Seven. We cannot comprehend other people's motives or our own when we hide behind a screen of moral truisms, image, and vanity. The father in “Cleanness” embodies this principle.
Eight. Failure to know who we really are (disrobed of our status and moralizing) will result in our demise. None of Lasdun’s characters know who they are. They are ciphers without any grounding. They are waifs subject to peer pressure, Groupthink (sacrificing their critical thinking skills to conform with the majority), and FOMO (fear of missing out on some chimera or other).
Nine. Free will is an illusion. "The heart wants what the heart wants." People in Lasdun’s stories don’t choose; rather, they are directed by their hard-wiring and environment.
Ten. The moralizing and status that hold up proper society are flimsy and precariously positioned so that these moral beams can be dislodged more easily than we think. Abel thinks he’s a decent man and at the beginning of the story he’s appalled at Stewart’s excessive lasciviousness and womanizing and by the end of the story Stewart is his role model.
Know the Four Types of Thesis and Know Which One Is Appropriate for Your Chosen Essay Assignment
Cause and Effect Thesis:
The characters in Lasdun's fiction are saddled by perpetual adolescence, which is the result of _______________, ______________, ________________, and __________________.
Argumentative Thesis
Abel has made the right decision to end his marriage because of the superior freedom afforded by the bachelor Stewart evidenced by ______, ________, __________, and _________.
Definition Thesis
What appear to be insurmountable obstacles in the characters' lives are really problems that can be solved if the characters free themselves from their learned helplessness, which is evidenced by __________, ___________, ____________, and ____________.
Claims of Worth Thesis
The most valuable lesson we learn from James Lasdun's stories is that metacognition is the number one facility that allows us to undergo a radical transformation, free ourselves of our mindless habits, and conquer the mental disease of narcissism.
Which thesis applies to today's assignment?
Essay Options That Pertain to “An Anxious Man”
Option One
Develop a thesis that answers the following question: How do characters in Lasdun's "love stories" reach the demonic state? (cause and effect thesis)
By "demonic" I mean several things:
They go mad.
They become irrational.
They become obsessed.
They lose contact with reality.
They become blind to their own self-destruction.
They lose sight of their meaningful connections and as a result they lose those connections.
They chase a pipe dream or a chimera and obliterate themselves in the process.
They become bitter at their wasted life and realize they've squandered their existence on a "crap dream." They're overcome, as a result, with self-hatred and remorse.
Consider, their madness as the result of the Faustian Bargain, settling, the dream of eternal adolescence, and the chimera for a comparison essay that includes at least 3 stories, "The Half Sister," "An Anxious Man," "The Natural Order," and "Peter Khan's Third Wife." Be sure your essay is 1,000 words and includes a Works Cited page with a minimum of 2 sources.
Option Two
Analyze the dream of eternal adolescence and its corruption of the soul by comparing this dream to "An Anxious Man," "The Natural Order" or "The Half Sister" and Joseph Epstein's essay "Perpetual Adolescence." (definition thesis)
By perpetual adolescence, we meaning the following:
Chasing Eros instead of maturing.
Chasing the ego's needs instead of maturing.
Adulating or worshipping the culture of youth while shunning wisdom.
Chasing the compulsivity of youth and never learning the self-control of maturity.
Chasing the hedonism of youth instead of finding connection and meaning.
Pursuing Dionysian impulses instead of Apollonian inclinations. Some say that all literature is about the conflict between Dionysian and Apollonian forces.
Be sure your essay is 1,000 words and includes a Works Cited page with a minimum of 2 sources.
Option Six
Analyze "An Anxious Man" in terms of the Faustian Bargain described in the essay "Love People, Not Pleasure," by Arthur C. Brooks. (definition thesis in which you show the distinguishing characteristics of the Faustian Bargain and show how they apply to "An Anxious Man")
Brooks points out that the pursuit of fame, wealth, and pleasure is a drug that masks our misery and by masking our misery it actually prolongs our suffering. Moreover, the pursuit of fame, wealth, and pleasure disconnects us from others and kills our empathy. In Brooks' words, we live, erroneously, by this principle: "Love things, not people." And there lies the Faustian Bargain, that in pursuing fame, wealth, and pleasure we find we cannot love people, including ourselves. We use others and ourselves to achieve fame, wealth, and pleasure. This Faustian Bargain applies to Joseph Nagel, the stock market addict from "An Anxious Man."
Option Seven
Analyze at least two stories as examples of the "emotional car crash" the characters have become because they either have no metacognition or the misapplication of metacognition. (cause and effect thesis)
Review MLA In-Text Citations
You need to do four things when you quote, paraphrase, or summarize from a text.
Step One: The first thing you need to do is introduce the material with a signal phrase. Use the templates:
Make sure to use a variety of signal phrases to introduce quotations and paraphrases.
Verbs in Signal Phrases
According to . . . (very common)
Ha Jin writes . . . (very common)
Panbin laments . . .
Dan rages . . .
Dan seethes . . .
Signal Phrase Templates
In the words of researchers Redelmeier and Tibshirani, “…”
As Matt Sundeen has noted, “…”
Patti Pena, mother of a child killed by a driver distracted by a cell phone, points out that “…”
“…” writes Christine Haughney, “…”
“…” claims wireless spokesperson Annette Jacobs.
Radio hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi offer a persuasive counterargument: “…”
Step Two: The quote, paraphrase, or summary you use.
Step Three: The parenthetical citation, which comes after the cited material.
Kwon points out that the Fourth Amendment does not give employees any protections from employers’ “unreasonable searches and seizures” (6).
In the cultural website One-Way Street, Richard Prouty observes that Lasdun's "men exist in a fixed point of the universe, but they have no agency" (para. 7).
Step Four: Analyze your cited material. The analysis should be of a greater length than the cited material. Show how the cited material supports your thesis.
Sample A Introduction and Thesis
I used to gleefully ridicule the gluttons who would eat countless platters of inedible slop at HomeTown Buffet, gorging until their bellies were so full their brains were drained of all nutritious blood supply rendering these overeaters brainless zombies.
But my mockery of these incontinent eaters was stopped in its tracks in the summer of 2003. My wife Carrie and I were walking back from the brunch buffet at the Sheraton Inn in Kauai where I had just ingested a 5,000-calorie breakfast of macadamia nut pancakes slathered with thick maple syrup, French toast made with Hawaiian sweet bread, turkey sausage patties, and scrambled eggs with melted cheddar, pecan-raisin cinnamon rolls, all washed down with several tall pitchers of freshly-squeezed orange juice.
With a self-complacent belch, I staggered up from the buffet and stumbled outside orienting myself to the sunlight. As I strutted my 259-pounds outside the buffet room and past a hotel window, I saw the reflection of a portly, unsightly gentleman, dressed in safari shorts and a turquoise tank top, which sported the striking image of the iconic sea turtle. This disheveled, unattractive man I gazed upon looked like the stereotype of a fat, shameless, overfed American.
I walked closer toward the bloated image of shame and disgust and I was overcome by the shock and anxiety that the reflection was not some other guy for whom I could judge with gleeful ridicule but was in fact me. Holy crap! I was that dude, the type of person that I had mocked and scorned all of my life.
This was a huge moment for me, what literary people might call an “epiphany,” and I was fortunate to have experienced it. Most people are denied, or deny themselves, such moments of clarity. It is my belief that something like 95% of the human race walk around Planet Earth with their heads up their butts and this is how they die—never knowing what the hell is really going on.
Indeed, the characters in Lasdun's fiction suffer a similar malady, what we might call the Irrational Mind evidenced by their denial of their shortcomings; their overwhelming passions that render them out of control; their gulf between who they think they are and who they really are; and the irresolvable conflict between their private desire and public duty.
A Contrarian Thesis That Argues People Are Not Helpless to the Irrational Mind but Rather Are Responsible for Their Actions
I am troubled by McMahon's emphasis on the Irrational Mind and how this mind renders us helpless and without free will. To the contrary, a close examination of the characters in Lasdun's stories purported to be helpless are actually in full power of their actions. Their self-destructive behavior could have been avoided but they made several wrong choices, not the least which were to choose to be in a place of temptation; to choose to lie about their weaknesses, rendering them more vulnerable to temptation; to choose to be willfully ignorant of dangerous behavior they had a history of committing; and to choose to coddle and nurture a forbidden emotion until it grew beyond their control.
“An Anxious Man”
- What evidences Joseph’s lack of control in the opening scene? What are at the root of his compulsive behavior? Is he perhaps addicted to the rush of high stakes, like a gambling addiction? Does he thrive on the drama to compensate for something that’s lacking in his life? He is the fool who stakes his happiness on the whims of Lady Fortuna as described by Boethius. Possible explanations for Joseph's stock market addiction include: he's running away from ennui; he's running away from his own emptiness; he has defined himself as someone who needs to be a certain financial level; otherwise he will be suffering from an affliction. But he has made himself too vulnerable and he is not what he needs to be a successful person: He is not self-possessed.
- How does page 4 set up Joseph’s sense of entitlement and discontent that never existed before? What does it mean to confuse necessity with desire? (see top of page 5) Studies show that wealth and a concern with money encourage privilege and degrade our powers of empathy.
- How might some describe Morton Dowell, described on page 5, as a Trickster or a Devil, a figure who stirs the malignancies within Joseph’s soul? Good salesmen never sell; they give us “opportunities.” He is a sort of pimp or drug dealer who entices by escorting us through the various levels of human emotion.
- What dichotomy of existence do we see in the story? Adrenaline World and Civilian World. The former eats the latter. In choosing the former, we embrace misery, panic, and anxiety because we prefer drama and its power to distract us from death and vapidity. See page 7 and 8. Does it not seem Joseph knows he’s made a deal with the devil yet can do nothing to stop himself? What does this say about free will? Once we get the wheels in motion, we can accelerate toward our demise with no opportunity to veer away from the danger.
- Explain how regret is the defining emotion of stock market investment. See page 8. You never invest enough; you never sell quickly enough; you sell too soon; your life is one of second-guessing yourself and regret and anger. You become bitter but you keep coming back for more and more of the stuff that poisons you. The irony is that this despair becomes an addiction.
- What does it mean to be “grounded”? What evidence is there that Joseph is not grounded? See page 18 among others. To be grounded means that we have the Third Eye, self-control, humility to learn from our mistakes, and developing strategies as solutions to problems rather than wallowing in the drama of our problems. All of the qualities come from a moral sense, so that when we say we are grounded we mean we have a moral center that directs our thoughts and actions.
Sample Thesis Statements
The tragedy of the Faustian Bargain is that once we are seduced by a false paradise, we submit our will to that sacrifice resulting in the Irrational Mind evidenced by _____________, ____________, _______________, and _______________.
Ennui and a lack of life purpose make us vulnerable to the Faustian Bargain in four ways, not the least of which is ____________, _______________, _____________, and ________________.
The characters in Lasdun's short story collection are woefully lacking in free will and are therefore slaves to the irrational mind evidenced by ________________, _______________, ______________, and __________________.
Class Activity
In a brief paragraph, describe a Trickster or Chimera you once knew (or currently know) and what made this Trickster/Chimera so powerful and seductive?
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