Invitation to a Beheading takes place in a surreal world meant to reflect aspects of our own. Identify another work of art (in any medium) that presupposes a world which, on the surface, seems exaggerated (or grotesque) but which is used by the artist to explore real human issues. The work can be comic or tragic, new or old. Then describe the world of the work (in terms of what its characters value or assume) as well as how the world allows its creator to explore his or her chosen issues.
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Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading is reminiscent of another book: The Giver, by Lois Lowry. Although The Giver was written for young adults, there are definite similarities between the two. In The Giver, the protagonist is a young boy who lives in a surreal community that is completely closed to outsiders. All of the children in the community are conceived and born through a birthing department responsible for reproduction, and then given parents during a ceremony. Each person in the community is assigned a career when they reach the age of 12, and is expected to stay in that career for the duration of their lives. Sexual attraction is repressed by pills that must be taken every day, beginning at the onset of puberty. No one can see color, only black and white. Most importantly, there are no emotions. Parents do not love their children; the word “love” is considered inappropriate, as it has no real meaning. Instead, parents “enjoy” their children.
ReplyDeleteWhen Jonas, the protagonist, turns 12, he finds his job title to be “Receiver of Memory”. He is the person solely responsible for retaining the memories of color, love, family, happiness, sadness, physical and emotional pain, and everything in between. The purpose of the community is to make everyone equal, by removing any differences that would make them otherwise. Jonas’ realization that all of these things exist, but that he is the only one that can see them, makes him terribly lonely.
The author uses the contrast between what Jonas knows and the relative ignorance of the community to show the emptiness of a world without emotion. The town is comparable to the prison in Invitation to a Beheading: everyone’s physical needs are taken care of, yet their lives are entirely without purpose. There is no poverty, no crime, no hunger, no disease, and nothing to distinguish one person from another. As a result, each day bleeds into the next without end. Lowry successfully illustrates that emotion, beauty, and diversity are what make life worth living.
-Laura S.
Where to start? Burgess, Pynchon, Vonnegut, Bradbury, Kafka? Dali, Ernst, Miro, Magritte?
ReplyDeleteMaybe I could be a little more creative in my selection of surreal inspiration: "If on a winter's night a traveler..." by Italo Calvino.
Now, if you've read it, you're saying, "Wait a minute. That's not surreal. It's set in contemporary time; there aren't any fantastical influences or supernatural, fantasmagoric occurrences. It's more or less, just a novel about reading another novel." And you'd be right; sort of.
The novel begins with a man discovering that the copy of a novel he has recently purchased is defective. He returns to the bookshop the following day and meets a young woman who is on an identical mission. They both profess a preference for the Polish novel. Interposed between the chapters in which the two strangers attempt to authenticate their texts are excerpts that parody genres of contemporary world fiction.
Calvino doesn't play with the dream-like landscapes of Dali or the absurd characters of Nabokov. Instead, he places our "reality" inside a hall of mirrors. Everything is slightly off: too coincidental, too funny, too serious. He warps expectations. Using shifting structures, a succession of tales, and different points of view, the Calvino illustrates the tense relationship between story and reality, reader and narrator.
Calvino creates a surreal novel novel to examine what you, the reader, are actually taking part in.
M. Daniele
In the Foreword to Invitation to a Beheading, Nabokov attempts to shrug off the term "Kafkaesque" in relation to his work, based on the fact that those who called it that first did not know that Nabokov was, at the time of the writing of Invitation, totally ignorant of both Modern German and Kafka. I very much doubt Nabokov himself believed this logic: his not reading Kafka has nothing to do with whether the book is Kafkaesque or not, and ordinarily I think Nabokov would see this clearly (something similar to Borges' idea that every author creates his own precursors). There are two reasons, then, why Nabokov makes this statement: first, to ask that the book be read on its own terms. In another one of his novels, Transparent Things, Nabokov attacks Freudian theory on similar grounds; because of a distaste for "Freudian" readings; go to what the book is telling you, not the theory you're applying to it. It's true, too, that Invitation is a novel that absolutely demands to be read on its own terms. The second reason is that Nabokov is making a little bit of a claim for himself here: I did what Kafka did, without Kafka.
ReplyDeleteThat's fine. Now, we can take any one of Kafka's works and talk about its similarity to Invitation. I just finished reading Amerika: The Missing Person, so that one it is... Karl Rossman, like Cincinnatus, is treated like a child. Unlike Cincinnatus, he really is only a teenage boy. Karl is sent away from his home and his country by his parents after he is seduced by the maid in the house, who becomes pregnant, and they send him away to avoid paying child support. Before getting off the ship, Karl runs into his uncle, who gives him room, board, and pays for his English, horseback riding, and piano lessons, until Karl nearly disobeys him, and once again is cast out. He travels with an Irishman and a Frenchman, who exploit him for his money and treat him poorly. He finds a job in a hotel and is doing well there until the Irishman shows up one night, drunk, and demands that Karl give him money. When he is too drunk to leave, and begins puking for minutes at a time, Karl temporarily leaves his post as a lift boy and takes the man upstairs to sleep in the lift boy dormitory until Karl can get out him later in the morning. Then, the scene. Karl returns to his post to hear that he has been summoned by the floor manager to his office. Karl is completely unable to defend himself against the accusations: of abandoning his post, of letting the man into the dormitory, and the false accusation of stealing. He is offered multiple opportunities to provide an explanation for his behavior and he simply cannot bring himself to do it. The scene is an exaggerated one because of the ridiculous behavior of everyone present: the floor manager reads for some minutes before even acknowledging Karl's presence and when he finally does he speak he simply begins screaming at Karl and immediately fires him; he also has a logic of Karl's guilt that, besides being untrue, is also absolutely impossible. The head porter holds Karl by the arm the whole time, pressing his knees into his back and torturing him with pain (which somehow goes unnoticed to everyone present); the head cook, who had brought Karl on in the first place, attempts to intercede on his behalf by using her (possibly sexual) relationship with the floor manager to her advantage, but changes course when she sees that Karl can provide no defense for himself; and finally, Therese, the young girl with whom Karl has becoming closely acquainted, cries the ENTIRE scene, out of sadness and joy, and sometimes for nothing.
But what actually happens in this scene is that Karl is thrust back to a world that is recognizable to all of us. Karl is a child facing interrogating elders after a supposed wrongdoing. What Karl is unable to see is that he is not responsible for what has happened. He cannot understand that it is not his fault. This is why he is unable to defend himself, not simply because of the enormous fear and anxiety he feels, but because this fear and anxiety does not allow him to see that he is not guilty. The recklessness, the carelessness, the injustice with which he is treated render him helpless. What Karl never thinks of doing, is telling the entire story, from beginning to end. He even goes so far as to call the Irishman his comrade, basically giving himself to his accusers. We see the impossbiility, in this scene, of asking a child to defend himself in such a hostile evironment, but I'd argue that we also see the impossbility of man to defend himself in any environment. Guilt is assigned so easily, and when guilt is presupposed, when people feel guilty, they condemn themselves. But guilt is so natural to us, so built-in to our emotional make-up as people, that Karl, even as a young man, is unable to overcome it enough to realize the truth of his circumstances: that he is being unjustly punished, that what has happened is not his fault.
It takes Cincinnatus 19 chapters to understand that he is not powerless, that the visciousness and the coarseness and the careless of Pierre, and Rodion, and Roman, and Rodrig has been blinding him to the possbility of escape, of freedom. It is after walking himself to the scaffold, it after placing his head on the block himself, it is after counting to 10 himself, that is free... because he is no longer dependent on Rodrig and Rodion and Pierre... like a child who is no longer dependent on his or her parents and who no longer has to obey them. It is this freedom, the freedom to act on one's own, the freedom to search out, like Cincinnatus sets out to do at the end of the novel, one's own kind, that releases Cincinnatus from his blind acceptance of his fate, and in following, death by beheading.
Of course, the idea of seeing these two characters as "children" is only one way of understanding, or seeing, what is happening in the stories. But, the idea of portraying adult interaction as child-adult interactions is important because it accentuates the unfairness, the rawness, and the significance with which every action of the parent carries with it (children, like prisoners on death row, do not have the defense--because they do not have the luxury--of shrugging off what is said or done to them). Both stories give us a picture of human interaction as inherently unfair, and ask us, in some way, to reserve judgement, and to act forgivingly. Or at least, they demonstrate the profound and dangerous implications of doing the opposite.
Chris M
Gulliver's Travels, Swift, Jonathan. Chapter two of the Third Book.
ReplyDelete"Their houses are very ill-built, the Walls bevil, without one right Angle in any Apartment; and this Defect ariseth from the Contempt they bear for practical Geometry; which they despise as vulgar and mechanic, those Instructions they give being too refined for the Intellectuals of their Workmen; which occasions perpetual Mistakes."
Gulliver is describing the homes of the Laputians as he observes the villages and towns on the way to Lagado, the capital city. Gulliver is describing a people who hold no esteem for the proper execution of building sturdy and useful things: “the Contempt they bear for practical Geometry” (150), but instead pursue intellectual affairs to their detriment, here in their houses, and later in their farms, education and politics. He goes on to say that the people are awkward, self-involved (They use surrogates called “flappers” to speak for them) and totally focused on Math and Music. The world of the Laputians is comical and grotesque, representing people as ridiculous because they have taken their love of the aesthetic to an extreme. They disregard what is “common sense” to Gulliver, but also reveal the ability of people in general to deceive themselves about reality; people pursue fads and participate in groupthink to their demise. Iraq war or no down payment mortgages, anyone?
-Tim Oswald
Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale is one of the dozens of works that come to mind. The world of the novel is the Republic of Gilead: a rigid, class-based dictatorship. Gilead’s inhabitants are indoctrinated, forced into chosen roles, and forbidden from almost all meaningful contact. While the world seems far from our own, Atwood offers many specific links that make us question our current values. Written in the 1980s, the novel is an exaggerated projection of contemporary society. Satirizing the role of class and wealth in the ‘80s, Atwood divides women into a class-based hierarchy: wives, Econo-wives, handmaids (permanent childbearers), Marthas (servants), and Unwomen, each conspicuously separated by the color of their robes. Atwood also raises questions about the direction in which religious fundamentalism was headed at the time. The subjugation of women in Gilead has Biblical roots and the justification for use of handmaids comes directly from the Old Testament.
ReplyDeleteLike most dystopian novels, The Handmaid’s Tale does more than just explore societal woes. Atwood forces us to reflect on ourselves: how could we have let our world become like this? In one scene, the protagonist, Offred, gawks at the exposed legs of Japanese women, tourists in Gilead. She claims that she nearly forgets what it was like to dress like that, even though the regime in which she lives under came into power only a few years ago. She is startled by how easily she has forgotten what it is to be free. Even more frightening, Atwood offers us a glimpse at post-Gilead society. At an academic lecture about the Gileadean period, the speaker makes lighthearted and sexist jokes (at which everyone laughs). How easy it is to lose touch with our sense of history...
B. Long
Good job, all! This post now closed.
ReplyDeleteLewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland takes place in a dream world of her own. It's a world where size doesn't matter--she varies from house-size to caterpillar-size from page to page--and nor do most conventions of reality. While Nabokov's world is meant to engage the reader, Carroll's is one we must simply accept. This allows our values and assumptions, not Alice's to be more directly challenged.
ReplyDeleteAlice's story begins in reality with her lazily commenting on how dreadfully boring it is for her to sit through a story her sister is reading. "And what is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?" she asks. From the first paragraph, the reader realizes her childish naivete, and this becomes a world not in which values and assumptions will be tested but where they will be formed. Alice, as a child, is impressionable and incredibly curious. When confronted with absurdities that defy the laws of reality--her rapid growths, talking caterpillars, mad tea parties--she usually respods, "Curiouser and curiouser!"
Alice is the only character that Carroll could've put in Wonderland. Her inquisitiveness and curiosity make her the only character able to unveil a lot of the "truths" within the world she inhabits. For example, when talking with the Chesire Cat he says, "You can visit either one you like [The Mad Hatter or the March Hare] they're both mad," and she innocently remarks, "Well I don't want to go among mad people!"
Imagine Cincinnatus in Wonderland confronting the Chesire Cat. Imagine any of Poe's or James's narrators there. It's imperative to have a child protagonist in Wonderland because Carroll is not interested in changing Alice's "world-view," rather, the absurd bits of wisdom he presents challenge the reader's. For example, the mad tea party, as absurd as it is, states several things that truly do cause the reader to question what he or she values as normal conventions. In a heated exchange with the Mad Hatter, he offers Alice more tea, who has not had any yet. Pointing this out the following dialogue occurs:
"I haven't had any yet, I can't possibly have more."
"You mean you can't possibly have less, it's very easy to have more."
"Nobody asked your opinion."
"Who's making personal remarks now?"
We've all been in these situations, talking to poeple we really do not want to be talking to and just getting progressively more annoyed but Alice does not see this, she simply responds, "I never wish to go there again, that was the stupidest tea party I've ever been to." That is the child's response but Carroll invites us to see more and think about these things, no matter how absurd they are.
--P. Danner
One film that seems utterly grotesque and surreal is David Lynch's Eraserhead, but when examined more closely several real world issues present themselves. Eraserhead is about Henry Spencer, a printer on vacation, who after a bizarre meeting with his girlfriend and her parents, finds that his girlfriend is pregnant. The baby is no normal baby, but a deformed chicken-like creature without limbs who makes a lot of noise and is disgusting to look at. Words can't really describe what this baby looks like. Throughout the movie, Henry meets a deformed Lady in the Radiator who sings a song about heaven and has an affair with the woman who lives in his building. By the end, Henry's head falls off, picked up by a young boy, who takes his head to a factory where Henry's brain is made into pencil erasers. This turns out to be a dream, but at this point the baby has driven Henry mad and he cuts open the baby's body with scissors culminating in an electric storm. He greets the Lady in the Radiator and the film fades to white.
ReplyDeleteTo one who doesn't think about it, Eraserhead may just seem like insane nonsense, but the issues are there. Lynch deals with unwanted pregnancy and the stress put on a father who doesn't necessarily want to be a father. Henry sees the baby as a disgusting creature who he feels forced to care for. These feelings may reflect Lynch's own, as he was a young father who had trouble coping with the responsibility.
The world of Eraserhead is very dark and and permeated by noise of machinery. It reflects the industrial wasteland Lynch inhabited at the time. The world is a grotesque version of Lynch's own life, allowing him to focus on the issues in an exaggerated sense.