This was my "big" research paper for American Lit. Not great, and it definitely trails off toward the end (fatigue sets in at 3am even for the caffeinated) but I'm tired of working hard on things only one person will ever read. So if you want to get my take on the modern male protagonist, you go right ahead and read. I wish I could have done a better job. I might hang on to this topic for use in the future at big kid school.
“Clean-Cut Kid”
The Evolution of American Literature’s Sullen Un-Hero
“Everybody wants to know why he couldn't adjust.
Adjust to what, a dream that bust?” -- Bob Dylan
Though it is tempting to think of the world of literature as a cerebral entity separated from the banalities of everyday life, the reality of the fact is that the writing and publishing of books is a commercial enterprise, almost entirely dependant on the tastes of consumers. As such, certain novels will go in and out of vogue and the popular books of today bear little resemblance to those written a hundred, or even fifty years ago.
Some novels, of course, are able to stand against the whims of the masses, and some literary elements remain as powerful and potent today as they ever were. Isolated, young male protagonists who are quick to question the social mores of their generation – characters usually based on the authors themselves – always seem to captivate audiences. Readers’ fascination with these characters may not be a uniquely American phenomenon, but they certainly seem to hold a special place in the Yankee literary canon and collective subconscious.
Though earlier prototypes for this type of character almost certainly exist, the earliest example that fits our profile exactly would have to be Mark Twain’s Huck Finn. Superficially, Huck may bear little resemblance to the more brooding heroes of the 20th century such as Holden Caulfield and Sal Paradise, but Twain is able to effectively use his youthful innocence to satirize the bigotry and pretenses of pre-Civil War Southern society – practices Twain felt were not only foolish and hateful, but directly responsible for the war and the needless deaths of thousands of young men. Twain’s views were not uncontroversial at the time, but Huck’s wild and easy-going nature helps take some of the sting off the book’s ideas. “I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it,” Huck says at the moral climax of the story, debating whether to tell Miss Watson where Jim is. “I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: ‘All right then, I’ll go to hell.’” (Twain, 359) Huck is very rarely angry and the very opposite of bitter, but nevertheless, in his refusal to play by the rules of St. Petersburg, Missouri, he is giving society the finger as loud and clear as Holden ever did.
Two world wars over the course of three decades produced thousands upon thousands of disillusioned, displaced young Americans – in particular the young men who experienced the brutality of war first hand. Many authors emerged to give voice to the lives that had been forever scarred by these events, but perhaps none did so as effectively or memorably as Jack Kerouac in On the Road. The novel, based almost entirely on the experiences of Kerouac and his friends, details Sal’s efforts to live life to the fullest and explore the country he risked his life to defend. He finds himself unable to content himself with a university career, steady job or family life, searching instead for meaning through authenticity of experience. Sal picks cotton, attends the opera, panhandles and hitchhikes all with equal enthusiasm. He frequently discovers new sources of “wild yea-saying American… joy” (Kerouac, 7), while simultaneously mourning the “phoniness” of some of the people and places he meets: “I was amazed, at the same time I felt ridiculous,” Sal says of his first time in Colorado, passing through a Wild West festival. “In my first shot at the West I was seeing to what absurd devices it had fallen to keep its proud tradition.” (Kerouac, 30)
Sal begins his story depressed, weak and bitter. The war has left him with serious emotional issues and he has little faith in himself as a man or a writer. He rejects the consumerist, one-size-fits-all culture of Middle America. By finding his “authentic” America on the nation’s freeways and back roads, Sal finds the courage to mature as a writer and commit to an adult relationship. Kerouac leaves his readers with a feeling of hope: his generation need not be defined by the trauma of war, but it will need to define itself on its own terms, not through those of consumerism or conformity.
Some writers, however, were not able to write about their wartime experiences immediately after coming home. It took Kurt Vonnegut nearly 25 years to pen Slaughterhouse Five, a novel that mixes the intense trauma he suffered as a POW when Dresden was bombed with dark comedy and science fiction. Slaughterhouse is highly autobiographical, though not in the conventional sense. Rather, Vonnegut seems to be splitting his psyche into three different directions: the character of the young Billy Pilgrim, who is woefully unsuited to the rigors of war, older Billy Pilgrim, a mild-mannered optometrist who may or may not be suffering from post-traumatic-stress disorder, and Vonnegut himself. The isolation Pilgrim feels as a result of his experience is made manifest when he is abducted by the Tralfamadorians and kept as exhibit in their zoo (though it’s entirely possible Pilgrim is hallucinating the entire thing), and also through the novel’s use of time travel, which is perhaps the closest a civilian could come to understanding the disorientating effects of the horrors of war.
Like On the Road, Slaughter House Five is the author’s attempt to grapple with the effects of war, but Vonnegut is not concerned only with his generation, but how all generations can continue to live in the face of the potential destruction of a World War. To the author, war is the enemy of all life itself – not merely those directly involved in the conflict. “There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like ‘Poo-tee-weet?’” (Vonnegut, 19) That Vonnegut is able to take his experience and turn it into a work of beauty despite the forces of death and destruction, however, is the book’s most powerful testament to humanity’s ability to cope in the face of horror.
World Wars, however, are not the only forces capable of separating individuals from their peers and setting them into stark relief against their communities. Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero, written when the author was only a sophomore in college, takes the archetypal Jake Barnes/Holden Caulfield/Sal Paradise figure and plants him in Los Angeles high society in the midst of the decadent 1980s. The protagonist, Clay, is returning to his Beverly Hills home after finishing his first semester at a small liberal arts college on the east coast. During his four weeks of winter break the reader follows his re-descent into the underbelly of southern California – cocaine to get high, valium to come down, prostitution (gay, straight and otherwise) for money and drugs, snuff films and finally the capture of a twelve-year old girl for use as a sex slave – all committed by people somewhere between the ages of 17 and 25. “If you want something, you have the right to take it,” says Rip, an acquaintance of Clay’s, justifying their treatment of the young girl. “If you want to do something, you have the right to do it.” (Ellis, 189)
But perhaps the greatest moral crime of the novel is not the drugs or rapes, but Clay’s absolute inability to say one word against his friends’ behavior, much less do anything about it. If anything, he seems more bored than horrified. His personality, and the personalities of his friends, are exactly in line with the disaffection and malaise of Holden or Sal, but with the money and access afforded them, these become much more dangerous traits. These young people have nothing to look forward to because they already have everything they could ever want. When Sal grew dissatisfied with New York, he headed westward, but because Clay and his friends were born on the beaches of California, they have nowhere to go but down. Whereas Sal taught himself to embrace poverty and hard work as aspects of life beautiful and worthy as any other, Clay and his friends cannot begin to appreciate the privilege they were born into. Dean Moriarty’s edict to “go and never stop til we get there,” (Kerouac, 240) has been replaced by hopelessness and one meaningless party after another.
Twain shocked his readers with his comparatively radical politics. Kerouac did so with his stream-of-consciousness portrayal of America’s good, bad and ugly. Vonnegut juxtaposed the horror of war with the absurdity of life. Ellis revealed a part of his youth so slimy and corrupt that a reader could scarcely be blamed for running away from every college student to cross his or her path. It seems as though very few things are left that are able to shock modern, savvy readers. So how would a present-day author reinvent the outcast male protagonist?
Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves was written largely in response to the author’s grief over the death of his father, a filmmaker whose relationship with his children was rocky, at best. Like Slaughterhouse Five, the book features three protagonists, each of which represent a part of the author’s psyche. One is Will Navidson, a prize-winning photojournalist plagued with guilt over the price of his success, who is filming a documentary about his family’s relocation to the east coast. Another is Zampano, an academic who is writing a lengthy critique about said documentary, though there is no evidence it ever actually existed and, even if it did, Zampano is blind and could not possibly have seen it. The last is Johnny Truant, a young, disaffected (if intelligent) drifter who discovers the manuscript after Zampano’s death and attempts to assemble it in a cohesive form, but who finds himself entirely too affected by the book.
All of these men suffer from isolation and paralysis of some sort. Navidson is crippled by guilt over his professional choices and his marriage is on the rocks – and when a mysterious labyrinth manifests in his home, it gets worst. Zampano is not only blind, but is a recluse; he is physically cut off from the world and exists primarily in the world of his scholarly pursuits. Johnny, who initially seems to suffer only from youthful angst, loses his grip on reality the more involved he becomes in Zampano’s work: he stops bathing, rarely eats, stops going to work, and distances himself from essentially everyone in his life. The labyrinth in the Navidson home (and the Minotaur that may or may not live within its halls) consumes all three men. But it isn’t a monster, the darkness or even the sheer size of the structure that is to blame – it is the blackness that lurks inside them to begin with. There is no cross-country journey so dramatic or harrowing as the journey within, Sal learned. The men of House of Leaves are forced to learn this in a much more terrifying way. “Why did God create a dual universe?” Zampano muses. “So he might say, ‘Be not like me. I am alone.’ And it might be heard.” (Danielewski, 150)
None of the men from any of these books could be considered heroes in the Hercules/Beowulf sense of the word, and yet the label Anti-Hero doesn’t seem to fit either. Their aims are not antithetical to what the heroes of old set out to accomplish, rather it is how they are able to act. These characters stand in stark opposition to classical ideals of how men “ought” to be – big, burly, courageous, a bit brutal. The heroes of Vonnegut, Twain, Ellis, Kerouac and their ilk rather are more brain than brawn, more emotion than adrenaline, more David than Goliath. Modern readers know that sometimes taking up a knapsack and ditching the suburbs, or facing the shadows of your subconscious, can be more meaningful and brave than clobbering your enemies, and these new Un-Heroes have emerged to help readers navigate the complex and ever-shifting social roadways of America.
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