Yu In The Present

“If you are depressed you are living in the past. 

If you are anxious you are living in the future. 

If you are at peace you are living in the present.” - Lao Tzu

An Analysis on Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

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With a perfect blend of eon bridging, space dogs,  and transcendental futurism, Charles Yu's novel, titled to sound like a post-modern survival guide to a sci-fi enthusiast's dream world, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, is about a time machine repairman, Yu himself, trying to reconnect with his father, the creator of time travel. The novel attempts to solve problems that are the very foundation of the existential anxieties that pang the modern soul expressed through the experiences of time travel.

More specifically, the world this survival guide was written for is called Minor Universe 31 or MU31 for short. The world was unfinished and only 93 percent complete because it "was slightly damaged during its construction and, as a result, the builder-developer who owns the rights abandoned the original plans for the space." Despite of the bit of unpredictability in some places, the universe seemed completely safe. Yu expresses fragmentation in the modern souls of the people on MU31 as he explains that the technology left behind by the engineering team is first-rate despite it only being partially developed but contrariwise "the same can't be said of its human inhabitants, who seem to have been left with a lingering sense of incompleteness" (Yu, 11).

Charles has been isolated with nothing but a depressive operating system, TAMMY and a "nonexistent but ontologically valid dog," Ed as his only company for a decade within a time machine. His job as a repairman was to assist users who have gotten themselves in unfortunate situations. Time machine owners have a tendency of falling into such situations by always trying to travel to their worst days of their personal history. They travel to those negative times in their past in attempts to try to fix their current problems. The only issue with this is that there exists the principles of Novikovian self-consistency that reveals the impossibility of time paradoxes through stating that a past event cannot be changed. The narrator describes his most common repair calls as unnecessary because of the fact that "a lot of the time, the machine isn't even broken. I just have to explain to the customer the basics of Novikovian self-consistency, which no one wants to hear about. No one wants to hear that they went to all this trouble for nothing. For some people, that's the only reason they rented the thing, to go back and fix their broken lives... No matter how hard you try, you can't change the past" (Yu, 13-14). 

The self, however, is not important enough for time to allow one to alter it at their own will and perhaps any past unfavorable events that may have left a temponaut's soul fragmented is just an inevitable part of life. It is true that "the universe just doesn't put up with that. We aren't important enough. No one is. Even in our own lives. We're not strong enough, willful enough, skilled enough in chronodiegetic manipulation to be able to just accidentally change the entire course of anything, even ourselves... There are too many factors,too many variables. Time isn't an orderly stream. Time isn't a placid lake recording each of our ripples.Time is viscous. Time is a massive flow..." All of our human actions may affect the universe "on the surface, but that doesn't even register in the depths, in the powerful undercurrents miles below us, taking us wherever they are taking us." It is this delusional importance on the self that gives Charles his job. "Human nature is what keeps me employed" (Yu, 14-15). 

Charles Yu avoids this fatalistic nature of the universe by voluntarily giving up his chronological living since he decided that it is "kind of a lie... Existence doesn't have more meaning in one direction that it does in any other. Completing the days of your life in strict calendar order can feel forced. Arbitrary. Especially after you've seen what I've seen. Most people I know live their lives moving in constant forward direction, the whole time looking backward." He calls living in the present a lie because those not living in a time machine are mostly dwelling on their pasts anyways. His escape from reality also gives him a sense of security since life encoded in a box is a "life without chances... Without danger...without the risk of Now" (Yu, 22). He purposely filled his need for a sense of comfort and security by choosing to remain "in a quiet, nameless, dateless day found tucked into a hidden cul-de-sac of space time... The most uneventful piece of time... Same exact thing every night, night after night. Total silence. Absolute nothing." "That's why I chose it," said Charles, "I know for a fact that nothing bad can happen to me in here" (Yu, 15).

His mother, whom he gifted a state-of-the-art time machine to, is similarly fulfilling her addiction to escapism by reliving the same sixty minute dinner with her son and vanished husband over and over again when she felt happy as a mother and wife. The time-loop fails to satisfy her loneliness and hologram Yu and his father did not deliver the familial comforts and security she was seeking. Ironically, Yu's mother is a Buddhist in the novel and Buddhism holds a strongly convicted emphasis on living in the present-moment (Babauta).

According to Yu, one chooses to relive these moments in their time machine because they cannot handle the idea that they only get one chance at life. His father who spent most of his life working on time travel not appreciating other aspects of life "spent the better part of four decades trying to come to terms with just how screwed up and unfair it is that we only get to do this all once, with the intractability and general awfulness of trying to parse the idea of once, trying to get any kind of handle on it, trying to put into the equations, isolate into a variable the slippery concept of onceness." Yu describes his father's unconsciousness of the now as "years of his life, my life, his life with my mom, years and years and years, down in that garage, near us, but not with us... He spent all the time he had with us thinking about how he wished he had more time, if he could only have more time" (Yu, 18). By creating these analogies, Yu tries to makes the reader conscious enough to awaken their own ability to enjoy each and every present-moment before it is faded into one's memories.

Yu expresses how time can be an opponent against one's dearest memories as he expresses his inability to miss his father after not seeing him for so long; "Unfortunately, it's true: time does heal. It will do so whether you like it or not, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. If you're not careful, time will take away everything that ever hurt you, everything you have ever lost, and replace it with knowledge. Time is a machine: it will convert your pain into experience... The individual events of your life will be transmuted into another substance called memory and in the mechanism something will be lost and you will never be able to reverse it, you will never again have the original moment back in its uncategorized, pre-processed state. It will force you to move on and you will not have a choice in the matter" (Yu, 54).

Coincidentally, Yu fails to take his own advice avoiding moving forward as he obsesses over his own memories with his father. He incidentally gets caught into the same existential anxieties of his fellow time-travelers as he attempts to dissect every past interaction to find what might have gone in his life and in his father's life. Charles fell into the same predicament as his father who wanted to use time travel "for sadness, to investigate the source of his own,of his father's, and om and on, to the ultimate origin, some dark radiating body, trapped in its own severe curvature, cut off from the rest of the universe" (Yu, 48).

How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe serves as a warning to the reader not to get caught in the allure of not living and appreciating the present moment because of the tragedy and dangers that it may result in.  One of these tragedies is when Yu, in a natural reaction of shock, shoots a future version of himself in the stomach and tried to avert the situation by jumping into the same time machine his future self came out of. Inside the time machine he finds a package, the survival guide written by his future self that TAMMY reveals to be some sort of key solution to all his problems toward the end as he finds himself consequentially stuck in a time loop "hovering over scenes from (his) own life as a detached observer... Lurching around from moment to random moment and never even learning about those moments." Being aware of his time loop's preset length he expresses the inability to change his fate by claiming, "it already happened, and it happened the way it happened,  and any moment now, I'm going to find myself going back to a Hangar 157 to get myself shot in the stomach." Tammy says, "that's it... When you shot yourself in the stomach, he was trying to tell you something" and Yu comes to the realization, "it's all in the book. The book is the key" (Yu, 200).

It turns out, that at the end everything happened exactly the same way. Yu shot himself in the stomach and jumped into the time machine again but upon opening the package he has realized that he is in a time loop. Upon this realization he makes the choice to "step out into the world of time and risk and loss again" and he plans out how he will approach his father when he finally finds him but the novel abruptly ends before Yu's real father is revealed to the reader (Yu, 233).

Charles realizes the significant decision he has to make to get out of the time machine and "face what is coming." He expresses, "instead of just passively allowing the events of my life to continue to happen to me, I could see what it might be like to be the main character in my own story" (Yu, 217). They key is to become the protagonist of your own story by living in the present moment and not constantly dwelling in existential angst about the past or future. Through experiencing his past in third person in his time-loop, Yu realizes how easily one can lose one's self by not being in the present-moment. Yu imparts this wisdom on the reader: "Maybe we go through life never actually being ourselves, mostly never being ourselves. Maybe we spend most of our decades being someone else, avoiding ourselves, maybe a man is only himself, his true self, for a few days in his entire life" (Yu, 176).

Works Cited:

Babauta, Leo. 5 Inspirations for Being in the Moment. July 12, 2007, zenhabits.net, web.

Yu, Charles. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. 2010, Pub. Vintage

Books, New York.

The Drama and Struggle of the Search for Truth

Analysis on Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle

A Reflection of Reality. A Vision of the Future.

One of the gruesome realities of the post-modern world is that the everlasting struggle in search of truth has proven to provide no progress for the better of humanity. In fact, this long term battle for the search of scientific or spiritual enlightenment have done the exact opposite. With our desires of modernization, technological advances and further, when you factor in the self-entitlement of modern societies that deem it necessary to impose on lesser advanced cultures, the possibility of improving the human condition has been put at grave risk.

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Kurt Vonnegut's apocalyptic novel, “Cat’s Cradle," places a heavy emphasis on the differences between the modern society in the city of Illium and the more indigenous and impoverished society in the island of San Lorenzo. Illium is highly technologically advanced and the people in this city govern their lives according to truths based on science and experiments while the islanders govern their lives based on their faith in a fictitious religion of Bokonon. Truth and knowledge has been sought throughout humanity since the beginning of times without proof that this search for truth, either through science or religion, has been helpful. Science and religion are both heavily influential to humankind yet both are often pitted as sworn enemies of each other. According to British philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North, “the future course of history depends upon the decision of this generation as to the relations between science and religion” (North, 632).

The narrator, Jonah is trying to write a book about a scientist, Felix Hoenikker, who created an invention called ice-nine. Ice-nine functions as an emergency means of freezing water, which was created initially to help soldiers get through muddy terrain. The ice-nine, however, has the dangerous potential of freezing an entire ocean and even all of Earth's water if it ever fell into the wrong hands. Hoenikker was asked to create something to make mud easier to cross and he exaggeratedly creates an invention that ceaselessly freezes. Ice-nine is representative of Hoenikkers frigidly deadly and relentless pursuit without boundaries as he solves problems without considering the ramifications of his solutions.

While trying to obtain information about the infamous scientist, Jonah speaks to a colleague of Felix, Dr. Breed. The scientific side of truth-seeking is emphasized through Dr. Breed's recollections of Felix as he shines light to the dark side of unethical scientists. Dr. Breed expresses to Jonah how there is nothing generous about the work that scientists do because "new knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with the richer we become." He admits that science is just a means of getting wealthier. There is no global, not even national, humane end to justify the means; "men are paid to increase knowledge, to work toward no end but that." These statements analyzed as a reflection of reality depict how non-fictional modern societies research and continue to technologically advance themselves with the sole purpose of finding cheaper ways of creating products in order to make a higher profit from it, even if the means of creating these products inexpensively are unfair or destructive to the rest of the world (Vonnegut, 41).

According to Karl Jaspers, "truth is the satisfaction of existence resulting from its creative interaction with its environment." If this definition is correct, then modern society will accept truth as whatever satisfies the modern individual with little to no regard to the rest of humanity, even if these collectively accepted truths are false. A similar case occurs when accepting religious beliefs as an absolute truth as do the Bokononist people in San Lorenzo whose lives are governed by the theological hogwash of a local hideaway madman, Bokonon who has the intentions of giving people hope through a grisly collaboration with the island's president (Jasper, 270).

Because truth is a conditional element, it can never be used for social development on a global scale because truth is manifested from what is suitable for the individual's preservation and enhancement of his/her individual existence. What is true for one may not be true for another. This concept of truth is pragmatic because it is functional on an individually conscious level, but not on a universally conscious level, making truth a product of perception that is a "means and ends without a final end." If spiritual and scientific research is not done outside of a selfish manner, and with the needs of all of humankind in mind, then "truth is not universally valid for the evidence of understanding." Although even when doing so, it is nearly impossible to please everyone. "Truth is what produces wholeness" in an individual so truth is rarely a cogent correctness. While one, such as a Christian, may feel whole by validating his/her existence with the use of faith in God, another unreligious individual may validate his/her existence in relating their emotions or experiences to the words of poets. It is because of these peculiarities between different truths that one has a natural "awareness of the limits of every meaning of truth" (Jasper, 270-271).

Felix Hoenikker, the renowned inventor of ice-nine, has a reputed strong moral emphasis on his life when it came to truth. He was also regarded as harmless, "humble, gentle and dreamy" due to his many eccentricities. These are considerably false attributes, as Hoenikker never considered the consequences on the population and ecology of Earth before inventing an atomic bomb or ice-nine. Marvin Breed, however, who witnessed Dr. Hoenikker at more intimate moments in his life said about Felix's wife, "the best-hearted, most beautiful woman in the world, his own wife, was dying for lack of love and understanding." Felix is responsible for two of the world's most dangerous inventions. His colleague depicts the scientist as unethical and inhumane. Breed shuddered to Jonah, "sometimes I wonder if he wasn't born dead. I never met a man who was less interested in the living. Sometimes I think that's the trouble with the world: too many people in high places who are stone-cold dead" (Vonnegut, 68).

Dr. Marvin Breed's statement about "people in high places" is a reflection of reality because it is true that people in power are creating a burden to those not from first-world countries because of the modern need for immensity. We find the technology to fill these necessities at an inexpensive manufacturing cost, allowing us to build more, faster and cheaper yet essentially destroying the entire world. An example of the carelessness of human life that has come from a result of post-modernization is the immense pollution in China due to the many factories built there. There are areas in China where one cannot even walk around without a mask to protect one’s lungs from the smog. We monetarily support these other countries but are ecologically destroying them with our needs 

Another reflection of reality that depicts post-modern injustices of today is the introduction of Felix's presumably murdered son, Franklin Hoenikker. As Jonah interviewed people for his book about Dr. Felix Hoenikker, he interviewed Jack. Jack had worked with Franklin as storekeepers in a hobby shop and were long time business partners. Jack showed Jonah a remarkably realistic miniature town that Franklin built and would consistently work at it every day to perfection until the day of his disappearance. Jack described Franklin as being able to "see things you and I wouldn't see... And he'd be right, too." Jack saw so much hope in a mind like Franklin's that he would advise him to "go to college and study some engineering so he could go to work for American Flyer or somebody like that-- somebody big, somebody who'd really back all the ideas he had." Jack wished he could have helped Franklin achieve this but he "didn't have the capital." Jack is able to consider the potential of regular people with no economic or political power having better, ethical ideas but not having the proper resources to make something out of it. Franklin was not resourceful or wealthy enough to turn his talents into anything globally significant (Vonnegut, 76).

Although Franklin was not resourceful enough to make something out of his scientific talents in Illium, he was something powerful in a third-world country. Franklin was not murdered but disappeared to the island of San Lorenzo, where he was appointed the Minister of Science and Progress in the Republic of San Lorenzo. To an emerging nation like San Lorenzo, the blood son of Dr. Felix Hoenikker was the perfect asset, promising potential progress. In a sense, Frank inherited his power because Papa" Monzano "plainly felt that Frank was a piece of the old man's magic meat." It was his relation to Felix that caught "Papa's" attention (Vonnegut, 80-82).

Naturally, Jonah took his inquisition to San Lorenzo in search of more information on the esteemed Dr. Felix Hoenikker and he knew that Frank had ice-nine in his possession. On the plane he meets Angela and Newt Hoenikker, siblings of Frank. Newt is a midget. Becoming acquainted with the other children of Felix Hoenikker helped provide information for Jonah's book as well as being helpful for eventually becoming acquainted with Frank Hoenikker in San Lorenzo, too.

The island of San Lorenzo has been colonized several times, over and over again, each time obliterating the previous cultures of the island. Their latest leader, "Papa" Monzano, is a Christian who secretly practices Bokononism.  The creator of this religion, Bokonon, is in cahoots with "Papa" as they originally arrived on the island, saw how diseased and impoverished it actually was and decided to do something about it. Because the truth is so grim, they decide to create a system that is held together through comforting lies. The islanders are secretly Bokononists as well because "Papa" has outlawed the religion in the island per Bokonon's request in an attempt to make the ideology more exciting and meaningful to people. In the Books of Bokonon there is a calypso expressive of the cruel paradox about "the heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality, and the heartbreaking impossibility of lying about it: midget, midget, midget, how he struts and winks, /for he knows a man's as big as what he hopes and thinks!" (Vonnegut, 284).

This lie did not just make Bokononism more exciting for the islanders, but it was also necessary because, according to The Books of Bokonon, "it was the belief of Bokonon that good societies could be built only by pitting good against evil, and keeping the tension between the two high at all times" (Vonnegut, 102). If anyone were to openly practice Bokononism, they were to get "the hook." In fact, any crime, from petty to extreme, would automatically get the hook. There were no jails or anything in San Lorenzo. Even for stealing a candy bar, one would get hung up on a giant hook to suffer a bloody death. That is how they scared the citizens of San Lorenzo to so easily abandon their liberty and be submissive to laws. One time, an innocent father was accused of murdering his son and got the hook. They later found out he was not guilty. The religious need to punish a sinner proves that religion has also been no more humane or helpful to humankind than science in this story.

The hook, clearly analogous to the noose, guillotine, electric chair and other forms of public capital punishment, is a form of discipline that has become a religious justification for sadism. The hook served a purpose for conditioning the people in the island to voluntarily give up their freedoms. They had to oppress themselves and their Bokononist values to avoid being hung to a bloody death on the hook. Bertrand Russell notes in his essay, "Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization," about the impossibilities of "doctrines leading to this fiendish cruelty can be considered to have any good effects upon morals" (Russell, 660).

The search for truth through science has led to destructive inventions that could possibly end the world as we know it, while the search of truth through religion has led to a metaphysical destruction of humankind. For example, many Christians might be existing with a constant sense of morbid sin and immorality because many natural thoughts or urges have been presented to them as deplorable. There is also the existential destruction in how religion calls to try and figure out one's assigned purpose in life but Russell advises that we "ask ourselves whether we have any evidence of purpose in the universe apart from the purposes of living beings on the surface of this planet" (Russell, 661).

Likewise, The Books of Bokonon that Jonah comes across warns people about lies and the inability to find concrete truth through religion. One of the passages depict a man asking God, "what is the purpose of all this?" In which God responds, "everything must have a purpose?" The man immediately assumes, "certainly." God responds by leaving this responsibility up to humans; "then I leave it to you to think of one for all this" (Vonnegut, 265).

The people of San Lorenzo would have listened to anything that Bokonon said besides the lack of evidence that the religion has any truth behind it. If Bokonon told them to follow him off a cliff, they surely would have. In a place like San Lorenzo, all they could hold on to was their faith. The citizens of the island were impoverished, extremely thin and unhealthy as opposed to their plumper president, "Papa" Monzano.

When Dr. Felix Hoenikker died, the ice-nine was split in three amongst his three children. The ice-nine in all of their possessions ended up in someone else's hand. An attractive man tricked the unattractive Angela into falling in love with him in order to get his hands on some. A Russian midget spy, disguised as a stripper, crushed Newt's heart for some ice-nine. Most importantly and worst of all, however, Frank got his position as  Minister of Science and Progress in the Republic of San Lorenzo by giving "Papa" some of the infamous commodity, ice-nine, which he kept in a vial around his neck.

"Papa" was becoming sick and old and knew he was going to die soon. Not long after arriving at the island, Jonah's mission to complete the book about Felix Hoenikker had dwindled from his goals. He was now going to be appointed the next president of San Lorenzo. "Papa," who did not want to wait for death to take him decided, to swallow the ice-nine and he became the first in history to ever die of ice-nine.

When Jonah and the Hoenikker siblings discovered what had happened to "Papa" they try to clean everything up and hide how he died from everyone on the island. Their plan fails when an earthquake takes Monzano's castle and his ice-nine ridden body into the sea, turning everything into frozen white frost and causing storms of tornadoes and freezing cold winds. When Jonah arises from his underground bunk that protected him, he found that everyone was dead. They had survived the natural disaster caused by science, however, they all took a piece of ice-nine and ate it as instructed by their religious leader, Bokonon. Jonah learns this in a note signed by Bokonon that he found amongst all the neatly assembled petrified bodies: "To Whom It May Concern: these people around you are almost all of the survivors on San Lorenzo of the winds that followed the freezing of the sea. These people are made a captive of the spurious holy man named Bokonon. They brought him here, placed him at their center, and commanded him to tell them exactly what God Almighty was up to and what they should do. The mountebank told them that God was surely trying to kill them, possibly because He was through with them, and that they should have the good manners to die. This, as you can see, they did" (Vonnegut, 273).

Kurt Vonnegut skillfully uses a cat's cradle as a metaphor about postmodern manners of accepting truths given by considerably authoritative individuals. Many unsuspectingly trust what our political leaders and scientists have to tell us. In a dialogue with Jonah, little Newt wisely declares, "no wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's... No damn cat, and no damn cradle" (Vonnegut, 165-166). There is no cat's cradle. It is just yarn. Vonnegut uses a cat's cradle the same way George Orwell uses "2+2=5" in his novel, "Nineteen Eighty-Four," as an example of something, although being plainly false, if collectively believed, it is eventually considered truth even if it is based on a lie or traditional narrative or myth.

Although many people did not die from the natural disasters caused by science through the creation of ice-nine, those who did not, died by religion through listening to the theologies of Bokonon. In Cat's Cradle, putting one’s faith in neither science nor religion turned out to be useful in the improvement of the human condition because they are not absolute truths as far as humanity is concerned. The most constructive outlet would be to avoid imposing truths based on lies unto others, which is a bad habit of post-modern cultures, since these truths are only one's personal ideals to help cope with the reality of truth and no ideals are a concrete truth.  During a discussion about nature's wonder after their underground survival, Frank asked Jonah "you know why ants are so successful? ...they cooperate" (Vonnegut, 280). Rather than imposing false truths, whether discovered through science or religion, one of the only true ways of improving the human condition is by simply cooperating peacefully.

Works Cited:

Jaspers, Karl. “Truth and Existence” Traversing Philosophical Boundaries. 3rd

          Edition. Hallman, Max O. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2007.

North, Alfred. “Religion and Science.” Traversing Philosophical Boundaries. 3rd

          Edition. Hallman, Max O. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2007.

Russell, Bertrand. “Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?” Traversing

Philosophical Boundaries. 3rd Edition. Hallman, Max O. Belmont, CA: Thomson

Wadsworth, 2007.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat’s Cradle. 2006, The Dial Press, New York.

Testimony as a Potential Cure of PTSD

Analysis on William P. Young's The Shack

Book Cover

            Unfortunately, more than often one consequently undergoes a dreadful depression and impenetrable silence after a traumatic event. It is an occurrence we see displayed in William P. Young’s The Shack as Mack is subjected to “the great sadness” succeeding the horrendous kidnapping and murder of his daughter, Missy. The Shack illustrates the struggle of overcoming trauma through Willie’s testimony of Mack’s journey toward overcoming and surviving trauma. Dori Laub describes the importance and process of this journey of traumatic and emotional victory in his essay, “Truth and Testimony: The Process and The Struggle.”

            According to Laub there are three levels of witnessing traumatic event; the first one being witnessing one’s own experience, the second one being witnessing one’s story of their experience, and the third level is witnessing the process of witnessing. Mack and his family undergo the first level of witnessing when they are inside witnesses of their victimization by the kidnapping of Missy at the camp site. Willie undergoes the second level of witnessing as he is the listener of Mack’s story as well as the re-teller of it. The final level of witnessing is what will help Mack overcome the event as he starts to realize the process of witnessing what he is going through.

            Willie isn’t the only one who is involved as a listener in the second level of witnessing. The Holy Trinity, which Mack meets at the Shack, Jesus, Sarayu and God, or Papa are also a witness to Mack’s story. Papa aids Mack in the reliving and re-experiencing of the event by sending Mack an invitation back to the abandoned shack, the scene of the crime where they came across poor Missy’s bloody dress. As Mack and the three of them exchange dialogue about the horrific event, Papa, Jesus and Sarayu become the receiver of Mack’s testimony. Their purpose, therefore, is to serve as a “companion on the eerie journey of the testimony” and share with Mack the mutual “struggle to go beyond the event and not be submerged and lost in it” (Laub, 62).

            Telling one’s traumatic story could be a process filled with struggle and affliction as one processes their memories and thoughts of a certain event in attempts to piece their story together. “There are never enough words or the right words to articulate the story that cannot be fully captured in thought, memory, and speech” (Laub, 63). Because of the difficulty in telling their story, many trauma survivors are fated to live their lives in an inevitable “loneliness and bereavement.” Accordingly, Mack fell into an unpierceable silence when tackling “the great sadness” he succumbed to ensuing Missy’s abduction and murder. “The Great Sadness entered his life and he almost quit talking altogether” (Young, 13). According to Laub, it would be essential for survival that Mack breaks through, talks and tells his story. One must express their imperative to tell in order for the continuance of life. Mack, however, seemed temporarily at a silent, frozen pause. “The survivors did not only need to survive so that they could tell their stories; they also needed to tell their stories in order to survive” (Laub, 63).

Relative Illustration (Created by Analiz Jee)

            According to Laub, this incapability to overcome the stress of trauma in order to battle silence makes the “impossibility of telling” that allows “silence about the truth to commonly prevail.” It is important for Mack to defeat the silence accompanied succeeding a traumatic event because the longer remains silent about it, the longer it becomes distorted within one’s mind. “Survivors who do not tell their story become victims of a distorted memory which causes an endless struggle with and over a delusion” (Laub). Mack is already somewhat delusional as the events cause him to question his prior beliefs and he becomes quite blameful and angry towards God. A non-delusional Mack would not have self-isolated himself emotionally from his family and friends who were unable to “thaw his heart, or penetrate the bars of his self-imprisonment” until after his experience with the divine trilogy during his re-visit to the shack.

            Dori Laub explains that one of the consequences of allowing a traumatic event to become distorted in the mind is that it begins to affect one’s perception of themselves. According to Laub’s account of a Holocaust survivor he interviewed for the Fortunoff Video Archive, “her previous inability to tell her story had marred her perception of herself. The untold events had become so distorted in her unconscious memory as to make her believe that she herself, and not the perpetrator, was responsible for the atrocities she witnessed.” The distorted way in which she perceives herself causes her to fail at being an “authentic witness” to her own self (Laub, 65).

            Kate, Missy’s sister is an excellent example of a character who fails to be an authentic witness to herself. Her self-perception is false and distorted based on her memory of the traumatic experience. She fell into a similar impenetrable silence as well. “Kate seemed to have been affected the most, disappearing into a shell, like a turtle protecting its soft underbelly from anything potentially dangerous. It seemed that she would only poke her head out when she felt fully safe, which was becoming less and less often. Mack and Nan both worried increasingly about her, but couldn’t seem to find the right words to penetrate the fortress she was building around her heart... It was as if something had died inside her, and now was slowly infecting her from the inside, spilling out occasionally in bitter words or emotionless silence” (Young, 39). Unlike Mack, she didn’t get an invitation from Papa to help her overcome and tell her story but Mack was given a valuable token of vital information as Sarayu, the colorful and windy personification of the Holy Spirit, expressed to him how Kate blames herself for the kidnapping and death of her sister. Her distorted self-perception caused her to feel an unbearable guilt as she blamed herself and not the perpetrator for the horrendous acts committed to Missy. “What Sarayu told him was so obvious. It made perfect sense that Kate would blame herself. She had raised the paddle that started the sequence of events that led to Missy being taken” (Young, 133). Thanks to this enlightenment Sarayu helped him achieve, he was able to console his daughter to overcome her own struggles when he awoke from a coma. As he told her she shouldn’t blame herself, Kate’s unspoken guilt came pouring out and she began her own process of healing through dialogue and witnessing.

            According to Laub, “a witness is a witness to the truth of what happens during an event. The truth of the event could have been recorded in perception and in memory, either from within or without by any of a number of ‘outsiders’.” Willie is an outside witness and friend of Mack who records the story. Laub believes that “ultimately, God himself could be the witness.” In The Shack God is personified and literally becomes a witness and receiver of testimony as Papa exchanges dialogue with Mack and tries to help him overcome the tragedy. “‘Well, Mackenzie Allen Phillips,’ she laughed, causing him to look up quickly, ‘I am here to help you.’ If a rainbow makes a sound, or a flower as it grows, that was the sound of her laughter. It was a shower of light, an invitation to talk, and Mack chuckles along with her, not even knowing or caring why” (Young, 87). Through talking and engaging in dialogue with Mack, the Holy Trinity was able to convince Mack to let go of his bottled emotions, express his story and eventually forgive the killer for what he did in order to heal.

After Mackenzie’s younger daughter died and he kept his feelings under lock and key in the depths of his heart and soul, he was helplessly entangled in “the great sadness.” However, with the assistance of Papa’s invitation, he was able to relive the events, be relieved of his pain and patch up his relationship with God through talking and testimony, which Laub calls a “dialogical process of exploration and reconciliation of two worlds- the one that was brutally destroyed and one that is- that are different and will always remain so.”  Mack felt as if an immense weight had been lifted from his shoulders once repressed memories began to come back to him and he let out his words, tears, anger and rage during his journey to and experience in the shack in which Missy’s blood-stained red dress was found on that dreadful camping trip three years earlier.

Although the events happened in his dreams while he was in a coma for four days after crashing his car on his way to the shack, there was a noticeable difference in Mack when he awoke. Not only did his visions help him to find Missy’s undiscovered body in order to bury it and help the entire family carry on and heal but Mack woke up with a profound transformation. The great sadness was gone and he was ready to begin a life filled with happiness and simplicity.

Laub considers testimony as being an essential part in the process of facing loss. Although it doesn’t undo what was done or bring back the dead, it does offer a sense of relief that allows possible repossession of yourself and life after being faced with a traumatic experience. Overcoming silence and participating in testimony is “the realization that the lost ones are not coming back; the realization that what life is all about is precisely living with an unfulfilled hope; only this time with the sense that you are not alone any longer” (Laub, 74). The Shack really shows how it is necessary to eventually be open and expressive about your feelings, and not to repress memories in order to alleviate depression and the strong, passionate emotions that are accompanied after trauma has occurred and continue to attempt living a fulfilled life. 

Imposed Gender Roles Within "The Glass Menagerie"

The best thing a person can be in life is who he or she is.

Quite often in life, there are conventional roles that are placed on individuals by society. These roles are usually defined by stereotypes based by one’s race, gender, ethnicity or social class.  Many times, people may suffer from existential anxieties in attempts to redefine themselves as an individual apart from these set roles. Often, however, one may not live to their fullest potential because it is metaphysically easier to simply fall into these roles in attempts to obtain the acceptance of others than to be the product of independent thought.

            Simone de Beauvoir refers to these roles and incapability to develop a unique identity as “the other.” In Tennessee Williams’ tragedy play, The Glass Menagerie, there is a profuse amount of imposed gender roles. This is especially true in the imposing of what the mother, Amanda Wingfield’s idea of what femininity is on her daughter, Laura Wingfield. This is evident from the very beginning when the family is discussing Laura’s lack of “gentleman callers" and her ideas of what women should be to attract and entertain these "gentleman callers" (Williams, Tennessee, 684).

According to De Beauvoir, many people, like Amanda, are ultimately the other because they have chosen to be. Amanda is the perfect example of a woman who enjoys her role as other because it allows her to escape the anxiety of defining herself as subject. It seems that when one does try to break free from other in attempts to simply develop their own personality, they may suffer consequences that affect the quality of life. Some of these punishments that one may suffer from is shown in Amanda’s stringent unthoughtful criticisms toward her daughter (de Beauvoir, 124).

Because Laura does not get any suitable men trying to court her, Amanda is afraid she will not have a man to take care of her and develops aspirations for her daughter to become a secretary. Amanda signs Laura up for school in hopes that she can develop a life for herself. This was never in Laura’s plans, however and although she allows her mother to believe she is going to school, she really is not. In a way, Laura feels the need to deceive her own mother and as a result has to oppress herself around her own family in order to avoid hearing any criticism or negative comments. This is dimly ironic because by not simply being true to herself, Laura has multiplied the criticism because now, not only does she get criticized for not attending her typing classes, but she gets criticized for being deceitful as well. Amanda does not only question Laura’s femininity in comparison to other people but also her entire adulthood. When she finds out Laura has been lying to her she tells her, “I thought you were an adult; it seems that I was mistaken” (Williams, 685).

The roles that are imposed on people often leaves one in a state of delusion. In the case of femininity, one can say that Amanda is delusional about what her daughter truly wants to be like as she makes plans for what Laura's life and personality should be according to her standards. Amanda covers her incapability to deal with reality by focusing on Laura, through her criticisms and through her unrealistic expectations. Rather than focusing on her own transcendence and defining herself as an individual apart from these standards, she is focused on hopes that Laura will fit the same standards, remaining in the same state of immanence as her mother.

Laura, although secretly defiant of her mothers’ imposing, is also in a state of self-delusion and otherness because she often feels the need to create an illusion fitting of Amanda's standards in order to avoid hearing criticism. She never wanted to go to business school, she would have rather secretly explored, and she did. During the hours where she was supposed to be at school, Laura was visiting the museum, the park, the movies, shops, etc. Although she managed to do what she wanted behind her mother’s back, her worries are evident as she explains the reasons for lying to her mother. She did not just lie for the sake of being deceitful. She lied because she did not want to disappoint her mother: "Mother, when you're disappointed, you get that awful suffering look on your face, like the picture of Jesus' mother in the museum! I couldn't face it." This tendency to avoid disappointing the people around her, is what inhibits Laura's genuineness from flourishing. (Williams, 686).

The very advice given to Laura by her own mother proves that parenthood may be one of the primary institutions within the patriarchy that emphasize the value of gender roles in society. Too often, women are not understood in themselves independent from men, but are defined and valued in terms of their relation to men. While mothers like Amanda continue to give their daughters this kind of advice the difficulty to define oneself independent from men will prevail, leaving many women in a state of immanence. Women are highly capable of transcending, but the traditional relationship between man and woman dooms many women to an existence of immanence in which she never progresses or develops her own unique identity (De Beauvoir, 128).Through imposing these traditional values on Laura, Amanda is encouraging of this lack of progression. "It is proved that there is a description of gender role socialization within mother-daughter relationship, that Amanda has been socialized certain gender roles explicitly to Laura, by using specific ways in socializing those gender roles" (Tungka & Darta, 1).

Amanda warns Laura of the consequences of not taking up the business career and plans that she has made for her daughter. She asks of Laura, “what is there left but dependency all our lives?” and warns her by depicting a horrible alternative life as the consequence of not following Amanda’s plans, “I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who aren’t prepared to occupy a position. I’ve seen such pitiful cases in the South-- barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging patronage of sister’s husband or brother’s wife!-- stuck away in some little mouse-trap of a room-- encouraged by one in-law to visit another-- little birdlike women without any nest-- eating the crust of humility all their life! Is that the future we’ve mapped out for ourselves?” She advises her daughter that if she cannot make a business career of herself that she ought to marry some nice man to depend on (Williams, 686-687).

Amanda, as a dominant single mother tries to prepare Laura for the sole purpose of finding a husband after failing to complete her classes. Amanda is filling her position in a patriarchal institution by forcefully socializing the role of a housewife to Laura through her advice. She wants Laura to stay "fresh and pretty-- for gentleman callers!" (Williams, 682).

Laurie Arliss explains in her book Gender Communication that parenthood is one of main foundations that result in the social conditioning of an individual because parents are the very first agents of society in a child's life since birth. While raising a child, parents react differently toward their child's behavior in relation to their gender by reinforcing what is considered feminine behaviors in girls and what is considered masculine behavior in boys. By purposely preparing children for appropriate adult sex roles, one may never transcend thus raising an individual who does not live to their fullest potential. Some examples of social conditioning by parents is the rewarding of 'strong, solid and independent' behaviors in boys and 'loving, cute and sweet' behaviors in girls. Children are also conditioned by the very beginning through their toys as boys are usually playing with toy soldiers, cars and participating in sports, while girls are surrounded by dolls and play kitchen sets. Arliss refers to this condition as "anticipatory socialization." On the reverse side, parents also may act negatively toward behaviors deemed as the opposite of gender appropriate through either disciplinary verbal sanctions or physical punishment. This negative reinforcement is called "non-anticipatory socialization" (Arliss, 133-134).

Amanda conditions Laura by determining how she ought to behave in order to attract any potential suitors by claiming how girls in her days "knew how to talk" and that she, unlike Laura, "understood the art of conversation." She explains to her son, Tom that she and the girls from her time "knew how to entertain their gentleman callers. It wasn't enough for a girl to be possessed of a pretty face and a graceful figure-- although I wasn't slighted in either respect. She also needed wit and a tongue to meet all occasions" (Williams, 682).

Amanda also tries to condition Laura's interests and personality by advising that not only should she be a good conversationalist but that she also should not be so quiet and shy and that she ought to be more outgoing and encourages her to get dressed up and go out rather than stay at home. Amanda asks her, "Laura are you going to do what I asked you to do, or do I have to get dressed and go out myself? 

Rather than accepting Laura's differences in her personality she tries to adjust her shy character toward a more charming and vivacious one. While Amanda is helping Laura get ready for a date with Jim O' Connor, she questions her trembling and nervousness. Any of Laura's actions that do not fit Amanda's ideals of what it means to be feminine confuses her: "I don't understand you, Laura. You couldn't be satisfied with just sitting home, yet whenever I try to arrange something for you, you seem to resist it." Amanda seems to be frustrated with any of Laura's differences and does not believe that she should simply be satisfied with her own individual pastimes, which is sitting at home with her old records playing and taking care if her glass menagerie. Not only does she impose social standards on to Laura but she also imposes beauty standards by enhancing her bosom, stuffing her bra with two powder puffs. She calls them "Gay Deceivers" and when Laura expresses her refusal to wear them, Amanda forces her to and insults her by saying, "to be painfully honest, your chest is flat" (Williams, 705).

By enforcing gender roles from the very beginning of life many people are growing up to not fulfill their full potential. As a result, parenthood is a biological institution "lying under the patriarchal society, which aim to ensure that all potential on earth, and including women, shall remain under male control." Through this social conditioning brought on by one’s parents, daughters are placed in the "subordinate position, where male will always be the center or the purpose on their life" (Humm, 269).

Simone de Beauvoir agrees with Humm's claim by stating that "humanity is male, and man defines woman not in herself but in relation to him; she is not considered as an autonomous being." By being kept in a position of inferiority through these types of social conditionings, women have become inferior to men and because of the emphasis on social conformity, the emancipation of woman has been seen as a danger that threatens conservative morals and interests. This social conditioning have created an atmosphere where a man's self-entitlement allows him to never even have to question his place on earth in comparison to a woman's. "One of the benefits that oppression gives the oppressors is that it makes the most humble men among them feel superior... When compared to women, the most mediocre male can think of himself as a demi-god" (de Beauvoir, 124-127).

Everything that Amanda does in preperance for Laura's date with Jim is under the agenda to please him while there is no focus on Laura's needs or what makes her happy. She even goes as far as letting Laura take responsibility for the dinner that she prepared, giving Jim the illusion that Laura actually is this subordinate, male-serving character. "You know that Laura is in full charge of supper! It's rare for a girl as sweet an' pretty as Laura to be domestic! But Laura is, thank heavens, not only pretty but also very domestic." Not only does Amanda's dialogue between her, Jim and Tom in this scene impose roles toward women, but it also imposes what a man should be attracted to on women. Amanda selfishly puts her marriage plans for Laura into play by delivering the most convincing good impression that she can possibly leave on Jim. (Williams, 711-712).

Amanda does not mean to lead her daughter toward this path of immanence. As a parent, she has good intentions and realizes the consequences of straying away from the role as other. Simone de Beauvoir does not deny these consequences either. She warns readers that “to refuse to be the Other, to refuse complicity with men, would require that women renounce all the advantages that alliance with the superior cast confers upon them” the same way that Amanda warns Laura of the consequential alternative lifestyle for not conforming to her expectations. Aside from Amanda’s “barely tolerated spinsters” example, de Beauvoir offers her own example of a well-known female author who refused to allow her portrait to appear in a photo series dedicated to female authors. According to de Beauvoir, she wanted to be included among the men, not solely women “but she used the influence of her husband to obtain this privilege” making it nearly impossible to obtain masculine respect and acknowledgement without using her husband as a means to getting to that position (De Beauvoir, 124-125).

Although there may be social consequences for not filling the role of other, De Beauvoir also warns her readers of the more grim metaphysical consequences of not justifying her existence as a unique individual. She warns the reader, “along with the economic risk, she also eludes the metaphysical risk of a freedom that must invent its own ends without help. Indeed, besides the urge of every individual to affirm himself as subject, which is an ethical urge, there is also the temptation to flee one’s freedom to become an object.” This temptation that Amanda has fallen into and urges for her daughter to as well “is a disastrous path-- passive, alienated, lost; on it one becomes prey to someone else’s will, cut off from one’s transcendence, defrauded of all worth. But it is an easy path.” It is an easy path for one such as Amanda whom seems incapable of developing a personality based on independent thought but voluntarily devlops one based on oppressive traditional values. Just because Amanda has conformed to the role of other, however, does not mean that she is any less happy than someone who has decided to define themselves based on their own exclusive mindset because to a certain extent, it eliminates some despair as it “evades the anguish and the stress of taking upon oneself an authentic existence… Woman does not affirm herself as subject because she does not have the material resources, because she feels that the bond that ties her to the man is necessary even if it lacks reciprocity, and because she is often pleased with her role as the Other” (de Beauvoir, 125).

By allowing Laura to decide little regarding her own future, Laura's responsibility to define herself as an individual is being put at risk. By not trusting Laura to make decisions for herself she is risking her falling into a state of immanence. Amanda's lack of trust that Laura can lead her own life is evident in the dialogue between her and her son. Amanda tells Tom, "we have to be making plans and provisions for her... It frightens me how she just drifts along... I mean that as soon as Laura has got somebody to take care of her, married, a home of her own, independent.” This is an ironic use of the word “independent” because Amanda’s idea of independent is apparently to be completely reliant on a husband. She continues, “I put her in business college-- a dismal failure! I took her over to the Young People’s League at the church. Another fiasco. She spoke to nobody, nobody spoke to her. Now all she does is fool with those pieces of glass and play those worn-out records. What kind of life is that for a girl to lead?” (Williams, 696-697).

Amanda focused all her energy on planning a life out for Laura, rather than focusing on her own transcendence. It is ironic how much effort she put into finding Laura a husband because the one gentleman that she found suitable is unavailable. Jim turns out to be engaged to marry a woman by the name of Betty soon. Amanda fails to see the error of her ways and blames Tom for the whole disaster since he was the one who introduced Jim to the family even though he did not even know about Betty.

Through her negative criticisms, Amanda offers Laura all but negatives sanctions as a consequence for her gender/age inappropriate behavior. Through the automatic connotation of Laura's shy and nervous nature with negativity and silliness, Amanda makes Laura feel inferior for who she naturally is. Through her parenting tactics, Amanda's character shows how parenthood can be a primary enforcer of misogyny within a patriarchal society, as well as an enforcer of all imposed stereotyped roles of the world. As long as these social oppressions exist, the importance of being a human being above all the peculiarities that distinguish humans from one another will rarely take part in shaping humanity to its fullest potential.

Works Cited:

Arliss, Laurie. 1990. “Gender Communication.” New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

De Beauvoir, Simone. “Woman as The Second Sex.” Traversing Philosophical Boundaries. 3rd

          Edition. Hallman, Max O. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2007, pg. 121-129.

Humm, Maggie. 1992. “Feminism, A Reader.” Great Britain: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Tungka, Novalita Francisca & Darta, Deta Maria Sri. “The Study of Gender Role Socialization

          Between the Major Female Characters in Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie.”

Williams, Tennessee. “The Glass Menagerie.” The Heath Introduction to Drama. 5th Edition.       

          Miller, Jordan Y. Lexington, Ma.: D.C. Heath and Company, 1996, pg. 679-728.