Good Evening Friends,
Last time we gave the merest summary of a thumbnail sketch of the tip of the iceberg of the philosophy of Slavoj Zizek. We shall go no further, but as promised, we shall try to apply what we discussed concerning his analysis of the nature of belief to love and criminology.
I said last time that my introduction to the ideas of Dr. Zizek made me modify my views on love. I am still reasonably confident in the ontological analysis I offered. I am just no longer as sanguine in the efficacy of trying to apply it across the board. In this way I think I have been incredibly naive and utopian.
I still think it is useful to know the difference between the In-Love and the In-Desire state. I still think that Love and Desire are as I had described them. I still subscribe to alternate analysis of the myth of Narcissus I had offered. But given the massive dislocations, devastations, and horrors most people of the world are subject to (i.e., famine, war, genocide, slavery, disproportionate felt impact of climate change, etc - and not all of these felt outside the United States),it must be mathematically impossible for every couple that comes together to have both members who are In-Love with the other.
Maybe its enough if at least one member of the couple is In-Love and the other is at least In-Desire; or maybe both can merely be In-Desire with one another, even as they both share the belief in love. Maybe its not so bad to be in love with being in love. I think, once again, we may find that the pragmatism of our ancestors had been built on a firmer foundation than we had thought.
On that note, let me pose this question which we shall return to in due time. This is a thought experiment in Existential ethics. Suppose a woman is married to a man. He is In-Love with her and she is In-Desire with him. For all intents and purposes they are "in love."
They are married for fifteen years, live in a lovely home, have fulfilling careers and have brought a pack of great kids into the world. They are very happy.
But the wife, let's call her Susan meets a man, at a convention of some sort or another, with whom she has an affair. Let's call the other man, Derek. They are In-Love. This is the real thing because they summon each other's "avatars," as we have discussed. Here is the question, and remember this is an exercise in Existential ethics: by having this affair with Derek, has Susan honored love or dishonored it? A related question: would she have been right to divorce her husband and marry Derek, if she became aware of her feelings for him, ideally before the two of them actually committed adultery?
I will come back to this matter. But next time I will talk a little about the application of the nature of belief to criminology when we consider the so-called sociopath and the nature of violence itself.
I will be using a simple formula: all violence is an act of greed, and greed always comes from fear. Therefore, all violence is driven by fear. Greed expresses itself in violence, of one kind or another, physical, emotional, or financial; and greed is the result of fear. We shall also be thinking of violence of any kind as a breech of trust, an attack on belief or ideology. Then we will return to the question in our thought experiment.
Good Night and Good Luck!
wingedcentaur
Friday, November 27, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Good Evening Friends and Happy Thanksgiving!
I trust you are reading this well after you have recovered from your turkey-induced coma. Some of you may have been lucky enough to have been granted or to have secured an extended holiday weekend for yourself. Not I unfortunately but those are the brakes, as the song says.
Friends, I'd like to interrupt our conceptual project to ruminate a little about how ideology (or belief) functons today (as probably as ever).
There is a marvelous Slovenian philosopher called Slavoj Zizek, whose work primarily concerns the nature of belief. What does it mean for someone to say "I believe..." something. There are many videos clips of addresses he has given on the Internet, of course. I first heard of him on a news program called DemocracyNow! with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez.
But I would refer you specifically to a campus address he gave which is available at Authors@Google: and the name, again, is Slavoj Zizek. By way of introduction I should begin as he seems to usually begin - with a story about the quantum physicist Niels Bohr.
It seems that one day a friend, also a scientist, visited Bohr at his country home. Above the entrance the friend observed a horse shoe (in Europe, Zizek informs us that this is a charm to keep evil spirits out of the house). The friend and fellow scientist, somewhat surprised, asked Dr. Bohr if he believed in the power of the horse shoe. Niels Bohr responded to this by saying "No, but I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it."
This, says Zizek, is how ideology functions today - in two ways.
1) Democracy. Zizek says that we act as if democracy [still] works when it doesn't. I know there are activist on the Left, of a certain age, who would certainly say that American democracy doesn't work as well as it used to, especially since the demise of the Soviet Union.
I know from the Internet that this is an important sub-theme in the public addresses of noted scholars and activists, Dr. Michael Parenti and particularly Tariq Ali. We can say that the New Deal-Fair Deal-Great Society continuum stretching from the late 1930s up to the mid 1970s, was perhaps the period when American political and economic democracy - such as it was - was at its highest level.
In a speech concerning his book, Bush in Babylon, I heard Tariq Ali say that it seems that with the demise of the Soviet Union democracy in America is on the decline - almost as if the American system had to hold up a brave face for propaganda purposes against the Soviet Union. With the dissolution of that empire went the need for the American system to over-exert itself in proving its superiority to the Russian system.
Mr. Ali is also a novelist and filmmaker and he remembers a glorious time when a truly wide spectrum of opinion and perspective was available to the public, in news, the arts, and politics. The western capitalist powers, in general, would allow provacative leftist content of all kinds to be shown on television, which, today, one can barely get the resources and clearances together to show in a documentary film format.
In a speech called Terrorism, Globalization, and Capitalism, Michael Parenti offered a wonderful phrase capturing this post-Soviet period as it relates to American (and western) liberal democracy. "It's no longer capitalism with a human face. It's capitalism in your face."
Because there was a period when American political and economic democracy worked relatively well - by mainstream standards - it was attended by worldwide pro-U.S. propaganda during the entire saga of the Cold War, of course, the system continues this nationalist advocacy in this post-Soviet period, even as the justification for it in terms of real democratic content has dimished over the last twenty years. What I'm saying is that the system continues this pro-U.S. advocacy in the face of decreased justification through the power of inertia, and we, the population as a whole, seem to agree.
We return to Slavoj Zizek's thesis and express it in economic terms: over the last 20-30 years the democratic wage has not kept pace with the inflation, yes, inflation of pro-U.S. propaganda.
You may recall a story I often relate from John Bradshaw's Family Secrets, about the woman and the ham, and how this shows that actions (certainly belief in their necessity and efficacy) continue down through the generations even after they have been detached from their original cause. It's essentially the same thing.
2) Cap and Trade ideology. Individuals do not have to believe. We can ascribe belief to others on our behalf. "Interpassivity." This is the even more interesting of Zizek's analysis on the nature of belief.
You, as an individual do not have to believe in certain things. As long as their are abstract folks out there to whom you can ascribe such a belief to, the system of belief functions. Zizek, in that Google video clip talks about canned laughter on television, Santa Claus, and God.
A. The purpose of canned laughter, says Zizek, is not to cause us to laugh as the Pavlovians would have it. Rather it is to relieve us of the responsibility of laughing. The television has laughed for us and at the end of the program we feel a sense of release as though we have laughed at a half hour program of Friends or some such. Even though you may not feel like laughing at the time, the television does it and through this you stay in touch, in a way, with your sense of humor, I would say. In a way, I would say, canned laughter has the strange dual purpose of honing one's sense of humor at times when he or she is incapable or unwilling to exercise it actively by taking the trouble to laugh.
B. Zizek says that parents will only claim to pretend to believe in Santa Claus for the sake of the children, to assure them that there is magic in the world, I suppose. And he says that children, if you ask them, will say that they pretend to believe in Santa Claus in order not to disappoint their parents and so forth. We might also add parenthetically that perhaps the children know their parents expect them to believe. Its as if neither group, the parents nor the children want to acknowledge belief though both groups attribute it to the other. It's like that old game of hot potato. Still, the system of belief functions.
C. God. According to information Slavoj Zizek saw, Israel is probably the most atheistic country in the world, paradoxically, with polls showing that at least sixty percent of Israeli Jews say that they do not believe in God. It seems that the first prime minister of Israel, Golda Maier, was asked: Do you believe in God? Her answer was "I believe in the Jewish people and the Jewish people believe in God."
I will continue with this tomorrow. I can say that these ideas have made me modify my ideas on love. We will also apply the structure of belief to criminology in looking at the so-called sociopath.
Until next time, then.
wingedcentaur
I trust you are reading this well after you have recovered from your turkey-induced coma. Some of you may have been lucky enough to have been granted or to have secured an extended holiday weekend for yourself. Not I unfortunately but those are the brakes, as the song says.
Friends, I'd like to interrupt our conceptual project to ruminate a little about how ideology (or belief) functons today (as probably as ever).
There is a marvelous Slovenian philosopher called Slavoj Zizek, whose work primarily concerns the nature of belief. What does it mean for someone to say "I believe..." something. There are many videos clips of addresses he has given on the Internet, of course. I first heard of him on a news program called DemocracyNow! with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez.
But I would refer you specifically to a campus address he gave which is available at Authors@Google: and the name, again, is Slavoj Zizek. By way of introduction I should begin as he seems to usually begin - with a story about the quantum physicist Niels Bohr.
It seems that one day a friend, also a scientist, visited Bohr at his country home. Above the entrance the friend observed a horse shoe (in Europe, Zizek informs us that this is a charm to keep evil spirits out of the house). The friend and fellow scientist, somewhat surprised, asked Dr. Bohr if he believed in the power of the horse shoe. Niels Bohr responded to this by saying "No, but I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it."
This, says Zizek, is how ideology functions today - in two ways.
1) Democracy. Zizek says that we act as if democracy [still] works when it doesn't. I know there are activist on the Left, of a certain age, who would certainly say that American democracy doesn't work as well as it used to, especially since the demise of the Soviet Union.
I know from the Internet that this is an important sub-theme in the public addresses of noted scholars and activists, Dr. Michael Parenti and particularly Tariq Ali. We can say that the New Deal-Fair Deal-Great Society continuum stretching from the late 1930s up to the mid 1970s, was perhaps the period when American political and economic democracy - such as it was - was at its highest level.
In a speech concerning his book, Bush in Babylon, I heard Tariq Ali say that it seems that with the demise of the Soviet Union democracy in America is on the decline - almost as if the American system had to hold up a brave face for propaganda purposes against the Soviet Union. With the dissolution of that empire went the need for the American system to over-exert itself in proving its superiority to the Russian system.
Mr. Ali is also a novelist and filmmaker and he remembers a glorious time when a truly wide spectrum of opinion and perspective was available to the public, in news, the arts, and politics. The western capitalist powers, in general, would allow provacative leftist content of all kinds to be shown on television, which, today, one can barely get the resources and clearances together to show in a documentary film format.
In a speech called Terrorism, Globalization, and Capitalism, Michael Parenti offered a wonderful phrase capturing this post-Soviet period as it relates to American (and western) liberal democracy. "It's no longer capitalism with a human face. It's capitalism in your face."
Because there was a period when American political and economic democracy worked relatively well - by mainstream standards - it was attended by worldwide pro-U.S. propaganda during the entire saga of the Cold War, of course, the system continues this nationalist advocacy in this post-Soviet period, even as the justification for it in terms of real democratic content has dimished over the last twenty years. What I'm saying is that the system continues this pro-U.S. advocacy in the face of decreased justification through the power of inertia, and we, the population as a whole, seem to agree.
We return to Slavoj Zizek's thesis and express it in economic terms: over the last 20-30 years the democratic wage has not kept pace with the inflation, yes, inflation of pro-U.S. propaganda.
You may recall a story I often relate from John Bradshaw's Family Secrets, about the woman and the ham, and how this shows that actions (certainly belief in their necessity and efficacy) continue down through the generations even after they have been detached from their original cause. It's essentially the same thing.
2) Cap and Trade ideology. Individuals do not have to believe. We can ascribe belief to others on our behalf. "Interpassivity." This is the even more interesting of Zizek's analysis on the nature of belief.
You, as an individual do not have to believe in certain things. As long as their are abstract folks out there to whom you can ascribe such a belief to, the system of belief functions. Zizek, in that Google video clip talks about canned laughter on television, Santa Claus, and God.
A. The purpose of canned laughter, says Zizek, is not to cause us to laugh as the Pavlovians would have it. Rather it is to relieve us of the responsibility of laughing. The television has laughed for us and at the end of the program we feel a sense of release as though we have laughed at a half hour program of Friends or some such. Even though you may not feel like laughing at the time, the television does it and through this you stay in touch, in a way, with your sense of humor, I would say. In a way, I would say, canned laughter has the strange dual purpose of honing one's sense of humor at times when he or she is incapable or unwilling to exercise it actively by taking the trouble to laugh.
B. Zizek says that parents will only claim to pretend to believe in Santa Claus for the sake of the children, to assure them that there is magic in the world, I suppose. And he says that children, if you ask them, will say that they pretend to believe in Santa Claus in order not to disappoint their parents and so forth. We might also add parenthetically that perhaps the children know their parents expect them to believe. Its as if neither group, the parents nor the children want to acknowledge belief though both groups attribute it to the other. It's like that old game of hot potato. Still, the system of belief functions.
C. God. According to information Slavoj Zizek saw, Israel is probably the most atheistic country in the world, paradoxically, with polls showing that at least sixty percent of Israeli Jews say that they do not believe in God. It seems that the first prime minister of Israel, Golda Maier, was asked: Do you believe in God? Her answer was "I believe in the Jewish people and the Jewish people believe in God."
I will continue with this tomorrow. I can say that these ideas have made me modify my ideas on love. We will also apply the structure of belief to criminology in looking at the so-called sociopath.
Until next time, then.
wingedcentaur
Friday, November 20, 2009
Friends, there is something mythical about the way Biff and Hap's respective identities become solidified at the end of the play.
Hap is the son of Willie's salesman side, the back-slapping, self-promoting, propagandistic side. Biff is the son of Willie's utilitarian side, that is skilled at working with his hands and likes hard physical work.
Hap's biological grandfather is Willie's father, as it is for Biff, but his spiritual grandfather is Dave Singleman. Biff's spiritual, as well as biological grandfather, is Old Man Loman, Willie's father - for reasons we have exhaustively reviewed.
The mechanisms of identity revealed in Death of a Salesman reminds me of the Bible story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob "stole" Esau's blessing from their father. Jacob was a man of smooth skin, refined in features and manners, closer to his mother emotionally than his father.
Esau was a man of the wild outdoors, hairy, fond of hunting and that sort of thing. He was a bit more rough of manner than Jacob. He was closer emotionally to his father, who in turn, took him as his favorite.
Upon his death he choose to bestow a blessing upon Esau, making him the father of a great nation and so forth. On his death bed, and in a state in which he barely knew where he was, he asked for his son Esau to be brought to him.
Jacob learned of this and contrived to displace his brother and receive that blessing for himself. Jacob went to his father wearing an animal skin with which he could feign the hairy skin of his brother, Esau.
The father questioned the voice but when he felt his son's skin and felt its hairy texture (Jacob wearing the animal skin), he was satisfied. He gave the blessing to Jacob, thinking he was Esau and the rest, as they say, is history.
By the way, doesn't the story of Jacob and Esau also remind you of modern-day identity fraud, in which the thief steals the blessings of your highly favorable credit rating to unjustly procure cash and goods?
I'll finish this tomorrow.
wingedcentaur
Hap is the son of Willie's salesman side, the back-slapping, self-promoting, propagandistic side. Biff is the son of Willie's utilitarian side, that is skilled at working with his hands and likes hard physical work.
Hap's biological grandfather is Willie's father, as it is for Biff, but his spiritual grandfather is Dave Singleman. Biff's spiritual, as well as biological grandfather, is Old Man Loman, Willie's father - for reasons we have exhaustively reviewed.
The mechanisms of identity revealed in Death of a Salesman reminds me of the Bible story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob "stole" Esau's blessing from their father. Jacob was a man of smooth skin, refined in features and manners, closer to his mother emotionally than his father.
Esau was a man of the wild outdoors, hairy, fond of hunting and that sort of thing. He was a bit more rough of manner than Jacob. He was closer emotionally to his father, who in turn, took him as his favorite.
Upon his death he choose to bestow a blessing upon Esau, making him the father of a great nation and so forth. On his death bed, and in a state in which he barely knew where he was, he asked for his son Esau to be brought to him.
Jacob learned of this and contrived to displace his brother and receive that blessing for himself. Jacob went to his father wearing an animal skin with which he could feign the hairy skin of his brother, Esau.
The father questioned the voice but when he felt his son's skin and felt its hairy texture (Jacob wearing the animal skin), he was satisfied. He gave the blessing to Jacob, thinking he was Esau and the rest, as they say, is history.
By the way, doesn't the story of Jacob and Esau also remind you of modern-day identity fraud, in which the thief steals the blessings of your highly favorable credit rating to unjustly procure cash and goods?
I'll finish this tomorrow.
wingedcentaur
Good Evening Friends,
I have tried my best to make the case for the idea that Hap is, at the end of Death of a Salesman, the very reincarnation of Willie Loman, his father. In declaring his intention to remain in New York and fulfill the "good dream" that everyone acknowledges eluded Willie, he carries on the perceived legacy of his spiritual grandfather, Dave Singleman. Hap becomes the torch-bearer for Willie.
Willie had tried to pass the torch to Biff. None of this, I want to emphasize, is anything like the normal way parents influence their children. We are really looking at something special and disturbing in the Loman family.
Biff comes to embody the neglected side of Willie. This is a side that Willie indulges only recreationally, a side he must reject even as he is drawn to it because it is the side of him that comes from his biological father - who abandoned Willie. This utilitarian side of himself, from Willie's perspective, is not the side that is fit for the "business world."
Willie never consciously tried to teach his boys any values that might be derived from making or fixing things with one's own hands. He taught them about selling themselves. And for a while there it had looked as if Biff was the perfect acolyte absorbing the holy teachings of the cult of Dave Singleman, as interpreted by the high priest, Willie Loman.
But as we all know and as we have been saying, that was not to be. I have tried to make the case that what we see in Hap and Biff a secular example of a kind of "bipolar" (not in the mood sense) psychological reincarnation.
To be continued.
wingedcentaur
I have tried my best to make the case for the idea that Hap is, at the end of Death of a Salesman, the very reincarnation of Willie Loman, his father. In declaring his intention to remain in New York and fulfill the "good dream" that everyone acknowledges eluded Willie, he carries on the perceived legacy of his spiritual grandfather, Dave Singleman. Hap becomes the torch-bearer for Willie.
Willie had tried to pass the torch to Biff. None of this, I want to emphasize, is anything like the normal way parents influence their children. We are really looking at something special and disturbing in the Loman family.
Biff comes to embody the neglected side of Willie. This is a side that Willie indulges only recreationally, a side he must reject even as he is drawn to it because it is the side of him that comes from his biological father - who abandoned Willie. This utilitarian side of himself, from Willie's perspective, is not the side that is fit for the "business world."
Willie never consciously tried to teach his boys any values that might be derived from making or fixing things with one's own hands. He taught them about selling themselves. And for a while there it had looked as if Biff was the perfect acolyte absorbing the holy teachings of the cult of Dave Singleman, as interpreted by the high priest, Willie Loman.
But as we all know and as we have been saying, that was not to be. I have tried to make the case that what we see in Hap and Biff a secular example of a kind of "bipolar" (not in the mood sense) psychological reincarnation.
To be continued.
wingedcentaur
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Friends, there was a scene in the play when a seventeen year old Biff, at the peak of his charismatic powers and bound for the University of Virginia on a football scholarship, ventures to Boston where Willie is on business for the Wagner Company, it's a sales trip.
Biff is in a bit of a state of panic. He has failed his mathematics final exam - by four points - and therefore he will not be able to graduate and go off to university. Biff wants his father to talk to the math teacher, and convince him to simply grant Biff the four points. Biff expresses to Willie the belief (and this is very important - he verbally expresses the belief) that he will be able to talk the math teacher into it. "You know how you can talk," Biff said.
This is the scene in the hotel and the hotel room to where Biff has tracked him to. Meanwhile, Willie's longtime lover, the secretary, is hiding in the bathroom. But the woman, drunk on alcohol and forbidden passion, is unable to contain herself, revealing her presence in the room.
Willie tries to lie his way out of it, saying that the woman is staying in the room next door, and there has been some plumbing accident and people are fixing up her accomodations, and she is merely holding out in Willie's room until the repairs are complete. And so on and so forth.
But Willie is a poor salesman and a worse liar. Everything is almost instantly quite clear to Biff, who reacts with predictable hurt and anger.
Willie hustles the woman out the door and tries to forcefully banish the event from existence. He tells Biff to help him back, for he is on his way back to New York to have a talk with that math teacher who is so vexing his Golden Boy.
Biff said to this, "He wouldn't listen to you." This is very interesting. He does not say "Don't bother," or "I don't want anything from you." He does not say that. He declares that the math teacher would not listen to his father.
It is intellectually possible to maintain a belief in the persuasive powers of Willie, but not want him to deploy them in light of this enormous betrayal Biff has witnessed. But no, Biff denies those powers.
We suspect that he is right. But he must have known this all along to have reached this conclusion so quickly, instantaneously in fact. I like to compare this incident to a situation in which a transplanted organ is ultimately rejected by the body, despite the best intervention of doctors, because of the fundamental incompatibility of the organ and the perspective host body.
In that moment when Biff says to Willie, "He wouldn't listen to you," the young man repudiates everything Willie has ever stood for - I say stood for, not what he was (indeed, it is at this moment that he begins to draw to the neglected aspect of the Loman legacy, working outdoors with one's hands).
Biff rejects the propaganda that he has been inundated with all his life, that Willie is a great salesman, persuasive, well liked, the heir to the great Dave Singleman, and that this is Biff's specific inheritance, legacy for Biff the carry on.
But as this organ is rejected by the body which is the personality of Biff, takes strong root, decades later, in the personality of Hap. Hap's assertion that "he [Willie] had a good dream and here's where I'm gonna win it for him."
In this case an organ transplant is attempted, the outcome is uncertain but ultimately the graft holds.
Biff has never told anyone, not Hap and especially not his mother, about what he learned about Willie's affair. Linda, being a woman of her time, would not have appreciated the dislosure had Biff told her about it. Hap would not have been able to work up any indignation about it, in fact quite the opposite.
One interesting question we can pose is: how might Hap have reacted if he had been the one to seek out Willie in Boston, and found Willie in such a delicate situation with the secretary?
Everything we know about Hap says that his reaction would have been very different. He would not have been upset. He would have rather thought he was a chip off the old block. He would have solemnly promised to keep Willie's secret and not tell his mother.
This Hap would do, not out of a desire to spare his mother pain, but as a means of connection to his father, as a means of finally feeling important to his father.
But at the end of the play, well after Willie's suicide and funeral, when the rest of the family and uncle Charlie is all assembled back at the Loman house, Biff once again asked Hap to come out west with him. This is the scene in which Biff says Willie had the wrong dreams and Charlie, irrelevantly, replies that "a salesman's got to dream, boy."
Hap defends Willie's dream saying that it was a "good dream." One can aruge whether or not it is a worthy dream to be a successful salesman, but aside from that that term "good dream," again, misses the point of the issue Biff raised, that Willie's dream was the wrong one for him, given who he was.
"... and here's where I'm gonna win it for him," Hap says about his determination to stick it out in New York and be a successful salesman. He refuses Biff's invitation to go out west with the additional epithet "The Loman brothers," he spits out with contempt.
Hap might have well as said "I am Willie Loman now." I will make one more point about this next time.
wingedcentaur
Biff is in a bit of a state of panic. He has failed his mathematics final exam - by four points - and therefore he will not be able to graduate and go off to university. Biff wants his father to talk to the math teacher, and convince him to simply grant Biff the four points. Biff expresses to Willie the belief (and this is very important - he verbally expresses the belief) that he will be able to talk the math teacher into it. "You know how you can talk," Biff said.
This is the scene in the hotel and the hotel room to where Biff has tracked him to. Meanwhile, Willie's longtime lover, the secretary, is hiding in the bathroom. But the woman, drunk on alcohol and forbidden passion, is unable to contain herself, revealing her presence in the room.
Willie tries to lie his way out of it, saying that the woman is staying in the room next door, and there has been some plumbing accident and people are fixing up her accomodations, and she is merely holding out in Willie's room until the repairs are complete. And so on and so forth.
But Willie is a poor salesman and a worse liar. Everything is almost instantly quite clear to Biff, who reacts with predictable hurt and anger.
Willie hustles the woman out the door and tries to forcefully banish the event from existence. He tells Biff to help him back, for he is on his way back to New York to have a talk with that math teacher who is so vexing his Golden Boy.
Biff said to this, "He wouldn't listen to you." This is very interesting. He does not say "Don't bother," or "I don't want anything from you." He does not say that. He declares that the math teacher would not listen to his father.
It is intellectually possible to maintain a belief in the persuasive powers of Willie, but not want him to deploy them in light of this enormous betrayal Biff has witnessed. But no, Biff denies those powers.
We suspect that he is right. But he must have known this all along to have reached this conclusion so quickly, instantaneously in fact. I like to compare this incident to a situation in which a transplanted organ is ultimately rejected by the body, despite the best intervention of doctors, because of the fundamental incompatibility of the organ and the perspective host body.
In that moment when Biff says to Willie, "He wouldn't listen to you," the young man repudiates everything Willie has ever stood for - I say stood for, not what he was (indeed, it is at this moment that he begins to draw to the neglected aspect of the Loman legacy, working outdoors with one's hands).
Biff rejects the propaganda that he has been inundated with all his life, that Willie is a great salesman, persuasive, well liked, the heir to the great Dave Singleman, and that this is Biff's specific inheritance, legacy for Biff the carry on.
But as this organ is rejected by the body which is the personality of Biff, takes strong root, decades later, in the personality of Hap. Hap's assertion that "he [Willie] had a good dream and here's where I'm gonna win it for him."
In this case an organ transplant is attempted, the outcome is uncertain but ultimately the graft holds.
Biff has never told anyone, not Hap and especially not his mother, about what he learned about Willie's affair. Linda, being a woman of her time, would not have appreciated the dislosure had Biff told her about it. Hap would not have been able to work up any indignation about it, in fact quite the opposite.
One interesting question we can pose is: how might Hap have reacted if he had been the one to seek out Willie in Boston, and found Willie in such a delicate situation with the secretary?
Everything we know about Hap says that his reaction would have been very different. He would not have been upset. He would have rather thought he was a chip off the old block. He would have solemnly promised to keep Willie's secret and not tell his mother.
This Hap would do, not out of a desire to spare his mother pain, but as a means of connection to his father, as a means of finally feeling important to his father.
But at the end of the play, well after Willie's suicide and funeral, when the rest of the family and uncle Charlie is all assembled back at the Loman house, Biff once again asked Hap to come out west with him. This is the scene in which Biff says Willie had the wrong dreams and Charlie, irrelevantly, replies that "a salesman's got to dream, boy."
Hap defends Willie's dream saying that it was a "good dream." One can aruge whether or not it is a worthy dream to be a successful salesman, but aside from that that term "good dream," again, misses the point of the issue Biff raised, that Willie's dream was the wrong one for him, given who he was.
"... and here's where I'm gonna win it for him," Hap says about his determination to stick it out in New York and be a successful salesman. He refuses Biff's invitation to go out west with the additional epithet "The Loman brothers," he spits out with contempt.
Hap might have well as said "I am Willie Loman now." I will make one more point about this next time.
wingedcentaur
Good Morning Friends,
We are now going to examine the transformations of Biff and Hap Loman. As we have said, Biff is more the ideological son of Old Man Loman, Willie's father. Biff shares with his grandfather and Willie a tendency to find fulfilment in working with his hands, the outdoors, the wanderlust, and some suggestion of criminality that is somewhat connected to their criminality.
This manual tendency and skill is filtered through Willie in a kind of apologetic way. By that I mean that our salesman regards his skill at carpentry as a hobby, not suitable for a certain caliber of man to do as a profession. "Even your grandfather was better than a carpenter."
But Willie cannot fully embrace this part of himself because his father - from whom this part comes - abandoned him when he was "just a baby." By the way, Willie conveys a bit of criminality when he wants to show off for his brother, Ben - ".. we're gonna rebuild the entire front stoop right now," sending young Hap and Biff to "get" (steal) some building supplies from a building project across the street.
And as we have said, it was Biff to whom Willie was trying to transfer the spirit or legacy of Dave Singleman.
Hap, as we have said, is a man very much like Willie, though that was never the salesman's intention. Hap is the spiritual descendant of Dave Singleman - the legendary salesman who had been such an inspiration to Willie. Dave Singleman, you may remember, was the eighty-four year old who could still check into any hotel in any city in America, put on his slippers, get on the phone and contact the buyers, and thus, without leaving his hotel room, make his living.
And Willie was particularly admiring of the massive scale of Dave Singleman's funeral. But Hap is a salesman, a bad one, just like his father. He believes in being well-liked just like his father, and self-delusionally thinks of himself as well liked, again, just like his father. Hap is a boaster and liar just like his father. Hap is also a womanizer, just like his father.
We'll go to another post.
wingedcentaur
We are now going to examine the transformations of Biff and Hap Loman. As we have said, Biff is more the ideological son of Old Man Loman, Willie's father. Biff shares with his grandfather and Willie a tendency to find fulfilment in working with his hands, the outdoors, the wanderlust, and some suggestion of criminality that is somewhat connected to their criminality.
This manual tendency and skill is filtered through Willie in a kind of apologetic way. By that I mean that our salesman regards his skill at carpentry as a hobby, not suitable for a certain caliber of man to do as a profession. "Even your grandfather was better than a carpenter."
But Willie cannot fully embrace this part of himself because his father - from whom this part comes - abandoned him when he was "just a baby." By the way, Willie conveys a bit of criminality when he wants to show off for his brother, Ben - ".. we're gonna rebuild the entire front stoop right now," sending young Hap and Biff to "get" (steal) some building supplies from a building project across the street.
And as we have said, it was Biff to whom Willie was trying to transfer the spirit or legacy of Dave Singleman.
Hap, as we have said, is a man very much like Willie, though that was never the salesman's intention. Hap is the spiritual descendant of Dave Singleman - the legendary salesman who had been such an inspiration to Willie. Dave Singleman, you may remember, was the eighty-four year old who could still check into any hotel in any city in America, put on his slippers, get on the phone and contact the buyers, and thus, without leaving his hotel room, make his living.
And Willie was particularly admiring of the massive scale of Dave Singleman's funeral. But Hap is a salesman, a bad one, just like his father. He believes in being well-liked just like his father, and self-delusionally thinks of himself as well liked, again, just like his father. Hap is a boaster and liar just like his father. Hap is also a womanizer, just like his father.
We'll go to another post.
wingedcentaur
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Good Evening Friends,
Willie Loman had been given a second chance to save himself. Charlie (known as Uncle Charlie to Biff and Hap), is the family friend who owns his own business of an undefined nature. Through out the play Charlie repeatedly offers Willie a job with his company. Willie should have taken Charlie up on this. It would have been the pragmatic and wise thing to do.
Charlie makes a powerful argument to Willie about why he should take the job. "You can make two hundred dollars a week (relatively decent money in 1950) and I won't send you on the road." Willie really needs to reliable income and he needs to be off the road.
We first meet Willie Loman at the beginning of the play, when he has come back from his sales trip in Boston - early. It seems he never arrived at his destination. He returned because "I couldn't make it."
He might have even "smashed up" the car again. But as he explains, his eyesight is not failing and there is no problem with his glasses - "I see everything." He simply states that "I can't keep my mind on it (driving)." Poor Willie is plagued with daydreams when they were all young and Biff was in his glory and the star high school football player, through whom Willie was going to finally become a success - vicariously, of course.
We'll speed things up to save time. Linda, his wife, urges Willie to go talk to Howard Wagner (the son of Old Man Wagner, the original chief of the company and possibly its founder), now the head of the organization for which Willie toils, and persuade him to give Willie the job in New York, to base Willie in New York so that he does not have to travel anymore.
In the interest of brevity, let me just say that his appeals fail. Not only does he not get the job in New York but he is also fired. Not only that, but before this moment, we have learned that Willie has been working for the Wagner Company on a strictly commission basis for quite some time.
Willie's right to a regular wage was taken away from him. He has also been borrowing two hundred dollars a week from Charlie, and pretending to Linda that it was his pay. Still, Willie cannot work for Charlie.
Just quickly, remember that Willie and Charlie are very different kinds of men. Willie, as we have been developing the profile, is... well - Willie. Charlie, in contrast, is plainspoken, pragmatic, practical, realistic, one not given to boasting or self congratulation. He achieves his intentions by action, not talk. He does not invest nearly so much in being "well liked" as Willie does. And so on and so forth.
Willie cannot work for Charlie because, to do so, would be an intolerable self repudiation of everything the salesman has ever stood for his whole life, everything he is. If Willie had gone to work for Charlie, then who would he be? Not: where would he be? Who would he be?!
Hap refuses to go out west with Biff for exactly the same reason. Next time we'll talk about the transformations of Biff and Hap, as we wrap up the discussion of Death of a Salesman.
wingedcentaur
Willie Loman had been given a second chance to save himself. Charlie (known as Uncle Charlie to Biff and Hap), is the family friend who owns his own business of an undefined nature. Through out the play Charlie repeatedly offers Willie a job with his company. Willie should have taken Charlie up on this. It would have been the pragmatic and wise thing to do.
Charlie makes a powerful argument to Willie about why he should take the job. "You can make two hundred dollars a week (relatively decent money in 1950) and I won't send you on the road." Willie really needs to reliable income and he needs to be off the road.
We first meet Willie Loman at the beginning of the play, when he has come back from his sales trip in Boston - early. It seems he never arrived at his destination. He returned because "I couldn't make it."
He might have even "smashed up" the car again. But as he explains, his eyesight is not failing and there is no problem with his glasses - "I see everything." He simply states that "I can't keep my mind on it (driving)." Poor Willie is plagued with daydreams when they were all young and Biff was in his glory and the star high school football player, through whom Willie was going to finally become a success - vicariously, of course.
We'll speed things up to save time. Linda, his wife, urges Willie to go talk to Howard Wagner (the son of Old Man Wagner, the original chief of the company and possibly its founder), now the head of the organization for which Willie toils, and persuade him to give Willie the job in New York, to base Willie in New York so that he does not have to travel anymore.
In the interest of brevity, let me just say that his appeals fail. Not only does he not get the job in New York but he is also fired. Not only that, but before this moment, we have learned that Willie has been working for the Wagner Company on a strictly commission basis for quite some time.
Willie's right to a regular wage was taken away from him. He has also been borrowing two hundred dollars a week from Charlie, and pretending to Linda that it was his pay. Still, Willie cannot work for Charlie.
Just quickly, remember that Willie and Charlie are very different kinds of men. Willie, as we have been developing the profile, is... well - Willie. Charlie, in contrast, is plainspoken, pragmatic, practical, realistic, one not given to boasting or self congratulation. He achieves his intentions by action, not talk. He does not invest nearly so much in being "well liked" as Willie does. And so on and so forth.
Willie cannot work for Charlie because, to do so, would be an intolerable self repudiation of everything the salesman has ever stood for his whole life, everything he is. If Willie had gone to work for Charlie, then who would he be? Not: where would he be? Who would he be?!
Hap refuses to go out west with Biff for exactly the same reason. Next time we'll talk about the transformations of Biff and Hap, as we wrap up the discussion of Death of a Salesman.
wingedcentaur
Monday, November 16, 2009
Good Evening Friends,
We are coming to the home stretch of our analysis of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Before considering the transformations of Biff and Hap, there is one thing I would like to cover very briefly. I mentioned before a parallel dynamic between Hap and Willie. Both Biff and Ben, Willie's brother, had offered the two men something which they both refused, to their folly.
Ben had offered Willie a position managing some properties for him in Alaska. Willie refused forcefully, for reasons we have gone over. Let me just say - and I can't stress this enough - Willie really should have taken that offer! Biff had offered Hap the opportunity to go out west with him, and work out in the open air, where they can work with their shirts off, and whistle whenever they feel like it - maybe even get their own ranch someday.
Hap should have taken Biff up on that offer. But Hap, this spiritual descendant of Dave Singleman, first did not hear Biff's request (he wasn't paying attention) and second vehemently refused for exactly the same reason. Hap really should have taken that offer. He is no more a salesman than Willie is.
My eyelids are getting heavy. I'll continue this tomorrow.
wingedcentaur
We are coming to the home stretch of our analysis of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Before considering the transformations of Biff and Hap, there is one thing I would like to cover very briefly. I mentioned before a parallel dynamic between Hap and Willie. Both Biff and Ben, Willie's brother, had offered the two men something which they both refused, to their folly.
Ben had offered Willie a position managing some properties for him in Alaska. Willie refused forcefully, for reasons we have gone over. Let me just say - and I can't stress this enough - Willie really should have taken that offer! Biff had offered Hap the opportunity to go out west with him, and work out in the open air, where they can work with their shirts off, and whistle whenever they feel like it - maybe even get their own ranch someday.
Hap should have taken Biff up on that offer. But Hap, this spiritual descendant of Dave Singleman, first did not hear Biff's request (he wasn't paying attention) and second vehemently refused for exactly the same reason. Hap really should have taken that offer. He is no more a salesman than Willie is.
My eyelids are getting heavy. I'll continue this tomorrow.
wingedcentaur
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Friends, we know how a child reacts when his father abandons him at a very early age, especially when he has no intervening maternal presence to ease his self-doubt. This is Willie Loman's case history.
What happens when a child is emotionally but not physically abandoned by his father, and he too has no access to an intervening maternal presence to ease his self-doubt. This is Hap Loman's case history.
If we are to judge from Hap's reactions, we can say that the pain must be very similar. Like his father, Willie, Hap became a salesman - a bad one - and a womanizer, again, just like his father. And like his father Hap seeks out the maternal love he didn't get from his own mother.
The play gives us no evidence that Linda, the mother, ever took an independent interest in Hap, or even Biff, except to the extent that they have pleased or displeased Willie, to whom she gave her whole devotion. Clearly, then, she was not aware of Hap's feeling of emotional abandonment by Willie, and did not, therefore, do anything to console him.
Let me close with this. Hap is a bad salesman just like his father. Like, Willie, Hap often gets professionally frustrated. He speaks to Biff about wanting to rip off his shirt and "... outbox that goddamned sales manager (at the retail establishment where he works)." Hap goes on to say that "I got more ability in my little finger than he's got in his whole body."
Well, this sounds so much like Willie's empty claims that one suspects that the exact opposite is true. The sales manager probably has more ability in his little finger than Hap Loman has in his whole body - in the selling field. Hap, like his father, is not right for selling.
Hap shoehorns himself into a field that is all wrong for him, as well as womanize, because, like his father, he must prove that he is "well liked."
wingedcentaur
What happens when a child is emotionally but not physically abandoned by his father, and he too has no access to an intervening maternal presence to ease his self-doubt. This is Hap Loman's case history.
If we are to judge from Hap's reactions, we can say that the pain must be very similar. Like his father, Willie, Hap became a salesman - a bad one - and a womanizer, again, just like his father. And like his father Hap seeks out the maternal love he didn't get from his own mother.
The play gives us no evidence that Linda, the mother, ever took an independent interest in Hap, or even Biff, except to the extent that they have pleased or displeased Willie, to whom she gave her whole devotion. Clearly, then, she was not aware of Hap's feeling of emotional abandonment by Willie, and did not, therefore, do anything to console him.
Let me close with this. Hap is a bad salesman just like his father. Like, Willie, Hap often gets professionally frustrated. He speaks to Biff about wanting to rip off his shirt and "... outbox that goddamned sales manager (at the retail establishment where he works)." Hap goes on to say that "I got more ability in my little finger than he's got in his whole body."
Well, this sounds so much like Willie's empty claims that one suspects that the exact opposite is true. The sales manager probably has more ability in his little finger than Hap Loman has in his whole body - in the selling field. Hap, like his father, is not right for selling.
Hap shoehorns himself into a field that is all wrong for him, as well as womanize, because, like his father, he must prove that he is "well liked."
wingedcentaur
Good Evening Friends,
We return to our examination of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Here we want to get to know the two sons of Willie Loman. There's Biff, who we have already met. He is the eldest son. He is the Golden Boy, High School Football Hero Quaterback. He is the focus of Willie's parenting efforts.
Biff is the one to whom Willie tries to transfer the spirit of Dave Singleman. But Singleman is the spiritual ancestor of Hap Loman, not Biff. We meet Biff as a thirty four year old man whose latest job is working with horses in Texas, and though he isn't supposed to, he enjoys the work. He enjoys the work so much that his dream - the correct dream for him - is to somehow scrape together enough money to buy a ranch of his own.
Biff is back at the Loman family home for a visit. He is bunking with his brother, Hap, in the old room - just like old times a very long time ago. Biff talks of the ranch and invites Hap to come along with him. At first, Hap seems to agree, and apparently squeals with delight. "The Loman brothers!" he declares.
"Sure, we'll be known all over the counties," Biff says, getting into the spirit.
We quickly learn that Hap's heart is not really into it, because he turns on a dime and invites Biff to move back to New York and share his apartment with him. Hap seems to think that he and Biff would make an admirable Cassanova team and that they would enjoy nightly orgies with beautiful women. I'm exaggerating - a little.
Who is Hap Loman?
He is the spiritual descendant of Dave Singleman, first of all. He is the second son of Willie Loman. He is the barely acknowledged child of Willie Loman. He is not a sports figure like Biff, but we get the idea that he, like his brother The Golden Boy, is vaguely cut from the same cloth in the looks department. He is a big, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, good looking brute, reasonably "well liked." But it is clear that he does not have the effortless charisma that his older brother, Biff, exudes like an aroma.
During Willie's flashback scenes to the period when they were young, we always notice Hap in the background, on his back, peddling his legs in the air saying, "I'm losing weight, pop. You notice?"
Of course, Willie never does. In fact, Willie is so far removed from his second son that Willie has, in effect, recreated the parental abandonment dynamic with Hap. In other words, just as Willie's father abandoned him when he was "just a baby," so has Willie, emotionally abandoned Hap.
He was never engaged with Hap. All the evidence from the text points to the fact that any attention Willie gave to Hap was spillover from the hero worship he slathered over Biff, The Golden Boy. So, at one point in the play when Linda Loman, Willie's wife, says "... he [Willie] put everything into you boys..."
Note the plural, "you boys." But we know that he assertion is simply not true in connection to Hap. At best Hap got Willie's leftover love.
By the way, how's this for the title of a sad country song?: "Don't Gimme Your Leftover Love!"
I'll finish this in the next post.
wingedcentaur
We return to our examination of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Here we want to get to know the two sons of Willie Loman. There's Biff, who we have already met. He is the eldest son. He is the Golden Boy, High School Football Hero Quaterback. He is the focus of Willie's parenting efforts.
Biff is the one to whom Willie tries to transfer the spirit of Dave Singleman. But Singleman is the spiritual ancestor of Hap Loman, not Biff. We meet Biff as a thirty four year old man whose latest job is working with horses in Texas, and though he isn't supposed to, he enjoys the work. He enjoys the work so much that his dream - the correct dream for him - is to somehow scrape together enough money to buy a ranch of his own.
Biff is back at the Loman family home for a visit. He is bunking with his brother, Hap, in the old room - just like old times a very long time ago. Biff talks of the ranch and invites Hap to come along with him. At first, Hap seems to agree, and apparently squeals with delight. "The Loman brothers!" he declares.
"Sure, we'll be known all over the counties," Biff says, getting into the spirit.
We quickly learn that Hap's heart is not really into it, because he turns on a dime and invites Biff to move back to New York and share his apartment with him. Hap seems to think that he and Biff would make an admirable Cassanova team and that they would enjoy nightly orgies with beautiful women. I'm exaggerating - a little.
Who is Hap Loman?
He is the spiritual descendant of Dave Singleman, first of all. He is the second son of Willie Loman. He is the barely acknowledged child of Willie Loman. He is not a sports figure like Biff, but we get the idea that he, like his brother The Golden Boy, is vaguely cut from the same cloth in the looks department. He is a big, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, good looking brute, reasonably "well liked." But it is clear that he does not have the effortless charisma that his older brother, Biff, exudes like an aroma.
During Willie's flashback scenes to the period when they were young, we always notice Hap in the background, on his back, peddling his legs in the air saying, "I'm losing weight, pop. You notice?"
Of course, Willie never does. In fact, Willie is so far removed from his second son that Willie has, in effect, recreated the parental abandonment dynamic with Hap. In other words, just as Willie's father abandoned him when he was "just a baby," so has Willie, emotionally abandoned Hap.
He was never engaged with Hap. All the evidence from the text points to the fact that any attention Willie gave to Hap was spillover from the hero worship he slathered over Biff, The Golden Boy. So, at one point in the play when Linda Loman, Willie's wife, says "... he [Willie] put everything into you boys..."
Note the plural, "you boys." But we know that he assertion is simply not true in connection to Hap. At best Hap got Willie's leftover love.
By the way, how's this for the title of a sad country song?: "Don't Gimme Your Leftover Love!"
I'll finish this in the next post.
wingedcentaur
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Good Evening Friends,
Another brief note. In thinking about the novel, The Egyptologist, I am thinking we should examine it in comparison with a Patricia Highsmith novel called The Talented Mr. Ripley. Like the Egyptologist, Ripley is a literary crime novel, which at the same time is so much more. The latter like the former is about the ways in which we might manipulate identity - but not so much for the purpose of deceiving others as much as for the goal of liberating ourselves.
There are many parallels between Tom Ripley and Ralph M. Trilipush. The first is murder. While we know Ripley committed murder in order to assume his identity (by identity I don't mean name and other particulars - Tom Ripley is the character's real name, which is probably more than we can say for Ralph Trilipush), we are only very sure the man who we know as Ralph Trilipush committed homicide, or was part of a conspiracy to commit murder, in order to become who he was.
We know this about Ripley and strongly suspect this about Trilipush: both men came from very different, more working class backgrounds than they later presented themselves to the world. In other words, both men did an image self-makover to become "well spoken," polished, European sophisticates. They did this because both men had not thought they were "good enough" as they had been originally to achieve their goal, to live the cultured life.
Both men, Trilipush and Ripley had a devoted relationship with other, particular men, bordering on worship. And both men seem to have thought that with the demise of the objects of their adoration, that they, somehow, absorbed the charisma of the departed.
Again, we know this is so with Tom Ripley because such is stated explicitly. And again, we merely strongly suspect this is the case with Ralph Trilipush. The idea of such a mystical transfer is powerfully indicated.
wingedcentaur
Another brief note. In thinking about the novel, The Egyptologist, I am thinking we should examine it in comparison with a Patricia Highsmith novel called The Talented Mr. Ripley. Like the Egyptologist, Ripley is a literary crime novel, which at the same time is so much more. The latter like the former is about the ways in which we might manipulate identity - but not so much for the purpose of deceiving others as much as for the goal of liberating ourselves.
There are many parallels between Tom Ripley and Ralph M. Trilipush. The first is murder. While we know Ripley committed murder in order to assume his identity (by identity I don't mean name and other particulars - Tom Ripley is the character's real name, which is probably more than we can say for Ralph Trilipush), we are only very sure the man who we know as Ralph Trilipush committed homicide, or was part of a conspiracy to commit murder, in order to become who he was.
We know this about Ripley and strongly suspect this about Trilipush: both men came from very different, more working class backgrounds than they later presented themselves to the world. In other words, both men did an image self-makover to become "well spoken," polished, European sophisticates. They did this because both men had not thought they were "good enough" as they had been originally to achieve their goal, to live the cultured life.
Both men, Trilipush and Ripley had a devoted relationship with other, particular men, bordering on worship. And both men seem to have thought that with the demise of the objects of their adoration, that they, somehow, absorbed the charisma of the departed.
Again, we know this is so with Tom Ripley because such is stated explicitly. And again, we merely strongly suspect this is the case with Ralph Trilipush. The idea of such a mystical transfer is powerfully indicated.
wingedcentaur
Friday, November 13, 2009
Good Evening Friends,
Another quick note before we get back into the groove. You know, at some point in these speculations we must also find the space to discuss another masterful novel, Richard Wright's The Outsider. This is my favorite book by Mr. Wright, and though I am clearly biased, I think it is his best.
The Outsider is a dramatic, almost clinical study of the nature of identity and the ways we may try to manipulate it, and like Arthur Phillips's The Egyptologist, crafted in the form of a highly entertaining, literary crime novel.
The Outsider is about a Chicago postal worker called Cross Damon. Damon is married with children. The "love is gone" from his marriage (cue violins here) and he is emotionally removed from his children. He has a mistress, a young woman twenty years his junior, who is pregnant with Damon's baby.
His wife has found out about the affair and is preparing to divorce him, vindictively (but her vindictiveness is understandable) promising to squeeze Damon, but good, for all she can get from him for alimony and child support. The young mistress, on the advice of a friend, is also preparing to squeeze Damon [I use the word 'squeeze' only to describe Damon's perspective] for child support for their joint creation.
Cross Damon goes on to fake his own death, opportunistically taking advantage of a bad train accident. He changes his name and gets fraudulent papers and so forth, has various adventures. Damon's end, like Ralph Trilipush's end came the way it had to come and the story ended the way it had to end.
If you get the chance, friends, you should read both novels, The Egyptologist and The Outsider. They're both thrilling reads as well as virtual case studies of the complexities of identity.
Until next time,
wingedcentaur
Another quick note before we get back into the groove. You know, at some point in these speculations we must also find the space to discuss another masterful novel, Richard Wright's The Outsider. This is my favorite book by Mr. Wright, and though I am clearly biased, I think it is his best.
The Outsider is a dramatic, almost clinical study of the nature of identity and the ways we may try to manipulate it, and like Arthur Phillips's The Egyptologist, crafted in the form of a highly entertaining, literary crime novel.
The Outsider is about a Chicago postal worker called Cross Damon. Damon is married with children. The "love is gone" from his marriage (cue violins here) and he is emotionally removed from his children. He has a mistress, a young woman twenty years his junior, who is pregnant with Damon's baby.
His wife has found out about the affair and is preparing to divorce him, vindictively (but her vindictiveness is understandable) promising to squeeze Damon, but good, for all she can get from him for alimony and child support. The young mistress, on the advice of a friend, is also preparing to squeeze Damon [I use the word 'squeeze' only to describe Damon's perspective] for child support for their joint creation.
Cross Damon goes on to fake his own death, opportunistically taking advantage of a bad train accident. He changes his name and gets fraudulent papers and so forth, has various adventures. Damon's end, like Ralph Trilipush's end came the way it had to come and the story ended the way it had to end.
If you get the chance, friends, you should read both novels, The Egyptologist and The Outsider. They're both thrilling reads as well as virtual case studies of the complexities of identity.
Until next time,
wingedcentaur
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Good Evening,
Friends, a brief note here.
Sometime during the course of this blog we must find the time to discuss Arthur Phillips's masterful novel, The Egyptologist. What we witness is nothing less than the catastrophic disintegration of the identity of the protagonist, one Professor Ralp M. Trilipush - from his own perspective.
The book is far more than a mere murder mystery, but it is a mystery in the way that all good novels are mysterious. The Egyptologist is not sentimental in the traditional sense. Words like 'sad,' 'tragic,' 'horrible,' and the like are a dime a dozen. Let me just say that the unraveling of Ralph M. Trilipush is almost more than I can bear.
One wants to help him, ease his pain, his burden, even if Trilipush (if that's even his real name) is quite possibly a murderer.
Let me leave you with this, hopefully tantalizing clue. It is important to remember that in the Hollywood of the thirties, forties, and fifties, the studio system was in full force. Actors and actresses were publicly stage managed and their public images were carefully groomed. The public relations apparatus completely dwarfed anything available or practiced for movie stars today.
Talent scouts might find a cute farm girl from Nebraska, bring her to Hollywood, change her name, get her singing lessons, dance lessons, acting lessons, provide her with a suitably glamorous wardrobe, of course, perhaps pump her full of diet pills, and voila - a star is born!
This same public relations apparatus also went to work to teach gay male stars how to remove all supposed effeminate traces from their mannerisms and vocal tones and speech patterns, so that they could convincingly behave as though they were heterosexual. It was not socially acceptable to be openly gay in the era of thirties, forties, and fifties Golden Age of Hollywood.
I mention all of this because we have every indication that the identity of Ralph M. Trilipush was a collective creation (a group effort was involved), a kind of conspiracy, if you like. One suspects that this conspiracy may have even been involved in a murder, so that the Ralph Trilipush we know can emerge ( not that there was necessarily a man named Ralph M. Trilipush who was killed and whose identity was subsequently stolen).
It's not that neat. It's not that simple. Next time we go back to Death of a Salesman.
wingedcentaur
Friends, a brief note here.
Sometime during the course of this blog we must find the time to discuss Arthur Phillips's masterful novel, The Egyptologist. What we witness is nothing less than the catastrophic disintegration of the identity of the protagonist, one Professor Ralp M. Trilipush - from his own perspective.
The book is far more than a mere murder mystery, but it is a mystery in the way that all good novels are mysterious. The Egyptologist is not sentimental in the traditional sense. Words like 'sad,' 'tragic,' 'horrible,' and the like are a dime a dozen. Let me just say that the unraveling of Ralph M. Trilipush is almost more than I can bear.
One wants to help him, ease his pain, his burden, even if Trilipush (if that's even his real name) is quite possibly a murderer.
Let me leave you with this, hopefully tantalizing clue. It is important to remember that in the Hollywood of the thirties, forties, and fifties, the studio system was in full force. Actors and actresses were publicly stage managed and their public images were carefully groomed. The public relations apparatus completely dwarfed anything available or practiced for movie stars today.
Talent scouts might find a cute farm girl from Nebraska, bring her to Hollywood, change her name, get her singing lessons, dance lessons, acting lessons, provide her with a suitably glamorous wardrobe, of course, perhaps pump her full of diet pills, and voila - a star is born!
This same public relations apparatus also went to work to teach gay male stars how to remove all supposed effeminate traces from their mannerisms and vocal tones and speech patterns, so that they could convincingly behave as though they were heterosexual. It was not socially acceptable to be openly gay in the era of thirties, forties, and fifties Golden Age of Hollywood.
I mention all of this because we have every indication that the identity of Ralph M. Trilipush was a collective creation (a group effort was involved), a kind of conspiracy, if you like. One suspects that this conspiracy may have even been involved in a murder, so that the Ralph Trilipush we know can emerge ( not that there was necessarily a man named Ralph M. Trilipush who was killed and whose identity was subsequently stolen).
It's not that neat. It's not that simple. Next time we go back to Death of a Salesman.
wingedcentaur
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Good Evening Friends,
Consider the magnitude of what we've been discussing. Biff and Hap were like spiritual half-brothers, who had the same bio-spiritual father but different spiritual grandfathers, known to them (Biff and Hap) and acting upon them through the conduit of Willie Loman alone. It is the two polarities or (under conditional circumstances we might say "personalities") that are being channeled through Willie and acting on his two sons.
There are different views about reincarnation. There are those who believe this process is routine. There are those who believe reincarnation is a rare phenomenon done under rare circumstances.
Remember what we've been saying about the nature of identity, as one of the mechanisms of the self.
1) identity is a lifelong, accumulative thing and process [we each carry around dozens, maybe hundreds of subatomic particle fragments of dozens, maybe hundreds of different people whom we come in contact with and we will probably pick up dozens or hundreds more before we die. there is no self without others.
2) following from the first factor is the fact, I believe, that every human personality is not only multifaceted, which is a given, but also, for lack of a better word, multi-modular. that is, we could dissect any human personality, and if we wanted to, we could conceptually segment it into different components that we could refer to as "personalities," [which nevertheless operate within a relatively fixed frame of reference, I think] and which, in a few people, for reasons we don't fully understand, become semi-detached ("Multiple Personalit Disorder").
3) a behavior or method of doing something can persist for generation after generation after generation even after the original behavior has been long ago detached from its original cause. i gave as an example a story about the woman and the ham (cutting off both ends first), from John Bradshaw's book, Family Secrets.
4) trauma can go on generation after generation, after generation, as well, even when it has been detached from its original cause. i talked about the story of the man who got a rash on his neck every Feburaru 14, Valentine's Day. his mother and grandmother both killed themselves around that date. the man carries around the trauma and it manifests itself physically.
this story also comes from the book, Family Secrets. i also made a parallel to the Jesus story in the New Testament about the disfigured and how it was not he but his parents who'd sinned.
Taken together I'd like to think we have a firm basis for a naturalistic foundation for what would become the supernatural, and by definition, exaggerated, doctrine of reincarnation. I believe these things had been recognized by the ancient masters.
Arthur Miller, the great writer that he was, recognized these things even if he could not describe them with the vocabulary we can bring to bear. There may not have been a knowledge base from which he could draw in the 1950s.
Indeed, if the Adam Curtis BBC documentary, The Trap, is any indication, then the state of psychiatry was primitive, retrograde, even inexcusably backward for its time.
I'll leave it there. Next time we'll look at Hap and try to understand Biff's transformation.
wingedcentaur
Consider the magnitude of what we've been discussing. Biff and Hap were like spiritual half-brothers, who had the same bio-spiritual father but different spiritual grandfathers, known to them (Biff and Hap) and acting upon them through the conduit of Willie Loman alone. It is the two polarities or (under conditional circumstances we might say "personalities") that are being channeled through Willie and acting on his two sons.
There are different views about reincarnation. There are those who believe this process is routine. There are those who believe reincarnation is a rare phenomenon done under rare circumstances.
Remember what we've been saying about the nature of identity, as one of the mechanisms of the self.
1) identity is a lifelong, accumulative thing and process [we each carry around dozens, maybe hundreds of subatomic particle fragments of dozens, maybe hundreds of different people whom we come in contact with and we will probably pick up dozens or hundreds more before we die. there is no self without others.
2) following from the first factor is the fact, I believe, that every human personality is not only multifaceted, which is a given, but also, for lack of a better word, multi-modular. that is, we could dissect any human personality, and if we wanted to, we could conceptually segment it into different components that we could refer to as "personalities," [which nevertheless operate within a relatively fixed frame of reference, I think] and which, in a few people, for reasons we don't fully understand, become semi-detached ("Multiple Personalit Disorder").
3) a behavior or method of doing something can persist for generation after generation after generation even after the original behavior has been long ago detached from its original cause. i gave as an example a story about the woman and the ham (cutting off both ends first), from John Bradshaw's book, Family Secrets.
4) trauma can go on generation after generation, after generation, as well, even when it has been detached from its original cause. i talked about the story of the man who got a rash on his neck every Feburaru 14, Valentine's Day. his mother and grandmother both killed themselves around that date. the man carries around the trauma and it manifests itself physically.
this story also comes from the book, Family Secrets. i also made a parallel to the Jesus story in the New Testament about the disfigured and how it was not he but his parents who'd sinned.
Taken together I'd like to think we have a firm basis for a naturalistic foundation for what would become the supernatural, and by definition, exaggerated, doctrine of reincarnation. I believe these things had been recognized by the ancient masters.
Arthur Miller, the great writer that he was, recognized these things even if he could not describe them with the vocabulary we can bring to bear. There may not have been a knowledge base from which he could draw in the 1950s.
Indeed, if the Adam Curtis BBC documentary, The Trap, is any indication, then the state of psychiatry was primitive, retrograde, even inexcusably backward for its time.
I'll leave it there. Next time we'll look at Hap and try to understand Biff's transformation.
wingedcentaur
Good Evening Friends,
Who is Charlie (Uncle Charlie)? He is the next door neighbor and family friend of the Lomans. He is confidant of Willie. I think 'friend' would be too strong a word. Frankly, I saw no evidence in the play that Willie Loman had any friends or was even capable of making any friends, despite his zeal to be "well liked."
Charlie owns his own business. He is a man very much the antithesis of Willie. He does not care about selling himself. He is not a idealistic dreamer like Willie. He is down-to-earth and practical. He does not talk about what he's going to do or what he's done, he just does it. And this is one of the ethics he had apparently taught his one offspring, Bernard.
But we are interested in Charlie for another reason. There is a parallel dynamic at work between Charlie and Willie and Biff and Hap. You see, both Charlie and Biff make an offer to Willie and Hap, respectively, that Willie and Hap should have accepted.
But Willie and Hap do not because, for them, to have done so would have been the unacceptable admission of defeat. They would have to had to have acknowledged the complete futility of their lives up to that point. The situations were that serious!
I am spoiling the suspense, aren't I? No matter. Yes, Hap, the barely acknowledged second son is the one who is the reincarnation (and I can't stress this enough) of salesman Willie, the false self of Willie Loman. And it is Biff who is actually the reincarnation of the true self of Willie Loman.
In fact we can go further. Biff, as well as being the biological, is the spiritual grandson of Old Man Loman, Willie's father. Both Biff and Old Man Loman are both ne'er do wells (or they have that aspect about themselves.
You will recall that I theorized that the reason Old Man Loman moved around so much was that he was running from creditors. Biff has itchy fingers. He steals. At one point he tells Hap about an incident that occurred when he once worked for Bill Oliver, the sporting goods man.
Biff stole a crate of basketballs from Oliver. No reason for this is given. Biff was never sure if Oliver knew it was he that stole those basketballs. But Biff thought Oliver knew and so he quit before Oliver could fire him.
If I am right about Old Man Loman - and I think I am - then a third thing he and Biff have in common is there propensity to get themselves into trouble through some irresponsible behavior of some kind (having to do with goods and money) and flee the scene to avoid a confrontation or responsibility for their actions.
Hap, interestingly enough, but yet for obvious reasons, is the spiritual grandson of Dave Singleman - at least as Willie Loman had always idealized him. But then again, this is precisely what it means to be the spiritual descendant of someone.
Next time we shall say a word about Hap and also examine the transformation of Biff.
wingedcentaur
Who is Charlie (Uncle Charlie)? He is the next door neighbor and family friend of the Lomans. He is confidant of Willie. I think 'friend' would be too strong a word. Frankly, I saw no evidence in the play that Willie Loman had any friends or was even capable of making any friends, despite his zeal to be "well liked."
Charlie owns his own business. He is a man very much the antithesis of Willie. He does not care about selling himself. He is not a idealistic dreamer like Willie. He is down-to-earth and practical. He does not talk about what he's going to do or what he's done, he just does it. And this is one of the ethics he had apparently taught his one offspring, Bernard.
But we are interested in Charlie for another reason. There is a parallel dynamic at work between Charlie and Willie and Biff and Hap. You see, both Charlie and Biff make an offer to Willie and Hap, respectively, that Willie and Hap should have accepted.
But Willie and Hap do not because, for them, to have done so would have been the unacceptable admission of defeat. They would have to had to have acknowledged the complete futility of their lives up to that point. The situations were that serious!
I am spoiling the suspense, aren't I? No matter. Yes, Hap, the barely acknowledged second son is the one who is the reincarnation (and I can't stress this enough) of salesman Willie, the false self of Willie Loman. And it is Biff who is actually the reincarnation of the true self of Willie Loman.
In fact we can go further. Biff, as well as being the biological, is the spiritual grandson of Old Man Loman, Willie's father. Both Biff and Old Man Loman are both ne'er do wells (or they have that aspect about themselves.
You will recall that I theorized that the reason Old Man Loman moved around so much was that he was running from creditors. Biff has itchy fingers. He steals. At one point he tells Hap about an incident that occurred when he once worked for Bill Oliver, the sporting goods man.
Biff stole a crate of basketballs from Oliver. No reason for this is given. Biff was never sure if Oliver knew it was he that stole those basketballs. But Biff thought Oliver knew and so he quit before Oliver could fire him.
If I am right about Old Man Loman - and I think I am - then a third thing he and Biff have in common is there propensity to get themselves into trouble through some irresponsible behavior of some kind (having to do with goods and money) and flee the scene to avoid a confrontation or responsibility for their actions.
Hap, interestingly enough, but yet for obvious reasons, is the spiritual grandson of Dave Singleman - at least as Willie Loman had always idealized him. But then again, this is precisely what it means to be the spiritual descendant of someone.
Next time we shall say a word about Hap and also examine the transformation of Biff.
wingedcentaur
Good Morning Friends,
"Even your grandfather was better than a carpenter," said Willie Loman to his son, Biff. We have been discussing the ambivalence with which Willie views his own father and his legacy. I ended the last post with the question: what does the word 'even' mean in this context?
It means what it always means. It means that Willie actually holds his biological father in low regard, but he grudgingly gives the man his limited due, and also reluctantly puts him at a higher caliber than Biff currently occupies. This also means that Willie knows that his romanticized vision of his father is not quite true.
Old man Loman is depicted as this wandering Thomas Edison. Loman was nomadic, moving from town to town, not only inventing his own gadgets but selling them himself. I have argued that the part about being an inventor was pure fantasy, and that old man Loman most likely moved from town to town, dodging creditors.
Since Willie knows that his father was just a poor working stiff, not an inventor, who probably spent the bulk of his adult life on the run from creditors, he sees working with one's hands for a living as demonstrably discredited. Knowing all this, Willie's sober assessment is that old man Loman was still "better than a carpenter," and still better than Biff is at the moment - if one measures a person's worth by the amount of money he earns.
Willie rails at his wife, Linda, near the beginning of the play, "He [Biff] has yet to make thirty four dollars a week!"
Willie is a natural carpenter. Still, while it's alright to do carpentry as a hobby, it is not suitable, according to Willie's false scale of values, for any real man to pursue this as a profession. A carpenter is just not a man to be taken seriously in the wider "business world," - again this is a concept, "the business world," is invoked in the play as if it were Valhalla.
Willie Loman operates on a false scale of values because he does not know what he values. He does not know what he values because he does not know who he is and never found out. We know this because of the uncertainly he feels that he is "teaching them [his sons] right."
He says this to his brother, Ben, during one of his visits. What Willie means by this is that he does not know if he is demonstating the proper model of manhood for his boys to aspire to. Now, there is always uncertainty in parenting. But I wouldn't think there is this fundamental degree of mystification in functioning families.
Willie is utterly lost and therefore has to pretend to a certaintly that he does not possess. He identity is built an a very weak, tenuous foundation, which is why he has to assert it (the salesman - "a salesman's got to dream, boy!") with such vehemence.
wingedcentaur
"Even your grandfather was better than a carpenter," said Willie Loman to his son, Biff. We have been discussing the ambivalence with which Willie views his own father and his legacy. I ended the last post with the question: what does the word 'even' mean in this context?
It means what it always means. It means that Willie actually holds his biological father in low regard, but he grudgingly gives the man his limited due, and also reluctantly puts him at a higher caliber than Biff currently occupies. This also means that Willie knows that his romanticized vision of his father is not quite true.
Old man Loman is depicted as this wandering Thomas Edison. Loman was nomadic, moving from town to town, not only inventing his own gadgets but selling them himself. I have argued that the part about being an inventor was pure fantasy, and that old man Loman most likely moved from town to town, dodging creditors.
Since Willie knows that his father was just a poor working stiff, not an inventor, who probably spent the bulk of his adult life on the run from creditors, he sees working with one's hands for a living as demonstrably discredited. Knowing all this, Willie's sober assessment is that old man Loman was still "better than a carpenter," and still better than Biff is at the moment - if one measures a person's worth by the amount of money he earns.
Willie rails at his wife, Linda, near the beginning of the play, "He [Biff] has yet to make thirty four dollars a week!"
Willie is a natural carpenter. Still, while it's alright to do carpentry as a hobby, it is not suitable, according to Willie's false scale of values, for any real man to pursue this as a profession. A carpenter is just not a man to be taken seriously in the wider "business world," - again this is a concept, "the business world," is invoked in the play as if it were Valhalla.
Willie Loman operates on a false scale of values because he does not know what he values. He does not know what he values because he does not know who he is and never found out. We know this because of the uncertainly he feels that he is "teaching them [his sons] right."
He says this to his brother, Ben, during one of his visits. What Willie means by this is that he does not know if he is demonstating the proper model of manhood for his boys to aspire to. Now, there is always uncertainty in parenting. But I wouldn't think there is this fundamental degree of mystification in functioning families.
Willie is utterly lost and therefore has to pretend to a certaintly that he does not possess. He identity is built an a very weak, tenuous foundation, which is why he has to assert it (the salesman - "a salesman's got to dream, boy!") with such vehemence.
wingedcentaur
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Good Evening Friends,
Willie Loman seems to be in touch with his authentic self when he is relaxed, at ease, not trying to maintain his front, when he has his defenses down. When he is at ease he uses his innate carpentry talents.
When he is trying to impress his brother, Ben, he instructs Hap and Biff to go across the street and steal (of course that is not the word he uses) some building supplies from across the street because "....we're gonna rebuild the entire front stoop right now!"
Or, when he is bored this proclicity apparently yearns to express itself. There is the scene where we meet the character called Charlie (Uncle Charlie to Biff and Hap), a family friend of the Lomans, for the first time.
The two of them are sitting in the kitchen and Willie says to Charlie, "You see the ceiling I put up in the living room?" Charlie says that it's a "piece of work," and that he could never do that. Willie reacts with contempt and says that any man who can't handle tools is not a real man. He says to Charlie, "You're disgusting."
This is interesting. Now, we have been saying that Willie feels ambivalent toward his father and the legacy he endowed Willie with through genetic inheritance. With Charlie Willie promotes his skill with his hands as almost a badge of honor, a bludgeon to attempt to shame Charlie with.
But in the scene just before he meets with Charlie, Willie almost disparages his gifts and therefore his own biological father. Willie is off on one of his waking sleep walking journeys around the neighborhood. He is ranting, reliving memories from a happier time of Biff's high school glory. This is something he does quite often lately.
Hap and Biff, who is home for a visit (he has been working with horses out in Texas) are in the kitchen with their mother, Linda. Biff is surprised and indignant. In anger he says that Willie, his father, has "got no character," and that Charlie would never put on such a shameful display.
Hap and Biff get into an argument. Hap talks about how Biff has thus far made a flop in the "business world." He talks about the time when Biff had a job with a man, involved with sporting goods I believe, called Bill Oliver.
Hap seems to think that Biff ruined his career (as a shipping clerk) there by whistling in an elevator. I'm not kidding. Hap is very cross with Biff about this. He says, "No man who's got a responsible job whistles in an elevator."
Biff talks about how they (the Loman family) don't really belong in this city (New York). He says that they belong somewhere out in the open field, working as, perhaps, "...carpenters. A carpenter is allowed to whistle."
Willie walks in at this moment and says, "Even your grandfather was better than a carpenter."
What does the word 'even' mean in this context? What does it mean to be 'better than a carpenter?'
It's late and I'm getting groggy. I'll take this up next time.
wingedcentaur
Willie Loman seems to be in touch with his authentic self when he is relaxed, at ease, not trying to maintain his front, when he has his defenses down. When he is at ease he uses his innate carpentry talents.
When he is trying to impress his brother, Ben, he instructs Hap and Biff to go across the street and steal (of course that is not the word he uses) some building supplies from across the street because "....we're gonna rebuild the entire front stoop right now!"
Or, when he is bored this proclicity apparently yearns to express itself. There is the scene where we meet the character called Charlie (Uncle Charlie to Biff and Hap), a family friend of the Lomans, for the first time.
The two of them are sitting in the kitchen and Willie says to Charlie, "You see the ceiling I put up in the living room?" Charlie says that it's a "piece of work," and that he could never do that. Willie reacts with contempt and says that any man who can't handle tools is not a real man. He says to Charlie, "You're disgusting."
This is interesting. Now, we have been saying that Willie feels ambivalent toward his father and the legacy he endowed Willie with through genetic inheritance. With Charlie Willie promotes his skill with his hands as almost a badge of honor, a bludgeon to attempt to shame Charlie with.
But in the scene just before he meets with Charlie, Willie almost disparages his gifts and therefore his own biological father. Willie is off on one of his waking sleep walking journeys around the neighborhood. He is ranting, reliving memories from a happier time of Biff's high school glory. This is something he does quite often lately.
Hap and Biff, who is home for a visit (he has been working with horses out in Texas) are in the kitchen with their mother, Linda. Biff is surprised and indignant. In anger he says that Willie, his father, has "got no character," and that Charlie would never put on such a shameful display.
Hap and Biff get into an argument. Hap talks about how Biff has thus far made a flop in the "business world." He talks about the time when Biff had a job with a man, involved with sporting goods I believe, called Bill Oliver.
Hap seems to think that Biff ruined his career (as a shipping clerk) there by whistling in an elevator. I'm not kidding. Hap is very cross with Biff about this. He says, "No man who's got a responsible job whistles in an elevator."
Biff talks about how they (the Loman family) don't really belong in this city (New York). He says that they belong somewhere out in the open field, working as, perhaps, "...carpenters. A carpenter is allowed to whistle."
Willie walks in at this moment and says, "Even your grandfather was better than a carpenter."
What does the word 'even' mean in this context? What does it mean to be 'better than a carpenter?'
It's late and I'm getting groggy. I'll take this up next time.
wingedcentaur
Monday, November 9, 2009
Hi, everybody! A quick word here before I shove off to work.
What I hope I have shown, so far, is that Willie Loman is a very unusual person, in that both the nature of his identity and the way it was created is very unusual. His is a "double" identitiy. He is a product of his two "fathers."
There was old man Loman, whom Willie barely knew, the one whose inclinations and talents, he seemed to have inherited. Willie's talent with his hands, making things, building things, carpentry, and the like, seem to have been passed along by his father genetically, as certain characteristics are prone to do, as we know.
Then there was the "father," Dave Singleman whom Willie desperately clung to. Singleman was the brilliant salesman who was well known and well liked all over the land, and whose funeral was something of an extravaganza.
Willie could not help being good with his hands. That is just who he was. It was as natural to him as breathing. That was the gift of his biological father.
But who was Dave Singleman? We are given no other information about him. But we might carefully infer. Singleman may have been Willie Loman's mentor, back when the youth first started with the Wagner Company.
Willie was likely much more energetic and gung-ho. This enthusiasm and hard work (remember Willie confides to Linda, his wife that unlike other men he has to "be at it ten, twelve hours a day. Other men seem to do it easier.") probably disguised and made up for a real lack of skill and fundamental unfitness for the career of selling.
Selling, the profession and way of life of being "well liked" worked well for Willie's "father," Dave Singleman. This was what I meant when I said that, in a way, for Willie, selling "ran in the family." Since it "runs in the family," since it worked for his "father," it must work for Willie, his "son."
This is why Willie cannot give up the illusion of himself as being a successful salesman. After all, it is from this paradigm that he provides the totality of his ethical instruction to his two sons, Biff and Hap. I fear that I am not quite making myself clear, but I cannot stress this enough: human personalities are not usually developed this way!!!
What we will see as we go on is that Willie taught his two boys from the side of his personality taken from his "father," Dave Singleman. He particular focused his efforts in this direction at his older son, Biff, the star.
However, it was Biff who ended up taking on the authentic part of his heritage, the old man Loman aspect, good with his hands and so forth. And it was Hap, the second son, barely acknowledged as an afterthought, in whom the Dave Singleman aspect is reincarnated. Willie, when he was alive would never have necessarily wanted and certainly would never have expected that, I think.
Reincarnated is the proper word, I'm convinced, for what we witness, so astonishing the transformation is, as we shall see in time.
Until next time then,
wingedcentaur
What I hope I have shown, so far, is that Willie Loman is a very unusual person, in that both the nature of his identity and the way it was created is very unusual. His is a "double" identitiy. He is a product of his two "fathers."
There was old man Loman, whom Willie barely knew, the one whose inclinations and talents, he seemed to have inherited. Willie's talent with his hands, making things, building things, carpentry, and the like, seem to have been passed along by his father genetically, as certain characteristics are prone to do, as we know.
Then there was the "father," Dave Singleman whom Willie desperately clung to. Singleman was the brilliant salesman who was well known and well liked all over the land, and whose funeral was something of an extravaganza.
Willie could not help being good with his hands. That is just who he was. It was as natural to him as breathing. That was the gift of his biological father.
But who was Dave Singleman? We are given no other information about him. But we might carefully infer. Singleman may have been Willie Loman's mentor, back when the youth first started with the Wagner Company.
Willie was likely much more energetic and gung-ho. This enthusiasm and hard work (remember Willie confides to Linda, his wife that unlike other men he has to "be at it ten, twelve hours a day. Other men seem to do it easier.") probably disguised and made up for a real lack of skill and fundamental unfitness for the career of selling.
Selling, the profession and way of life of being "well liked" worked well for Willie's "father," Dave Singleman. This was what I meant when I said that, in a way, for Willie, selling "ran in the family." Since it "runs in the family," since it worked for his "father," it must work for Willie, his "son."
This is why Willie cannot give up the illusion of himself as being a successful salesman. After all, it is from this paradigm that he provides the totality of his ethical instruction to his two sons, Biff and Hap. I fear that I am not quite making myself clear, but I cannot stress this enough: human personalities are not usually developed this way!!!
What we will see as we go on is that Willie taught his two boys from the side of his personality taken from his "father," Dave Singleman. He particular focused his efforts in this direction at his older son, Biff, the star.
However, it was Biff who ended up taking on the authentic part of his heritage, the old man Loman aspect, good with his hands and so forth. And it was Hap, the second son, barely acknowledged as an afterthought, in whom the Dave Singleman aspect is reincarnated. Willie, when he was alive would never have necessarily wanted and certainly would never have expected that, I think.
Reincarnated is the proper word, I'm convinced, for what we witness, so astonishing the transformation is, as we shall see in time.
Until next time then,
wingedcentaur
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