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Making Meaning in America, Works Cited, African American Identity, L'…

- - - - The Crying of Lot 49
        
        “A hand emerged from the veil of shower-steam to indicate his suspended head – ‘in here. That’s what I’m for. To give the spirit flesh. The words, who cares?... Wharfinger supplied words and yarn. I gave them life” (Pynchon 63).
        
        Though The Crying of Lot 49 is not explicitly a Christian novel, nor does it convey a very Evangelical message, the scene where director Driblette speaks to Oedipa about giving life to words, “spirt” to “flesh” is a clear reference to John 1:14, which states, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (New International Version). In the novel, the word is meaningless without stage direction according to Driblette, who encourages Oedipa to accept the reality of mystery. Similarly, the Word (God’s Word) becoming flesh (Jesus) is essential to Christianity; though the Word of the Bible is incredibly important, the process of the Incarnation of Jesus becoming man is essential. However, humans are not able to understand or fully fathom how Jesus was both fully man and fully God, but rather they must have faith in what they cannot comprehend – just as Driblette encourages Oedipa to embrace the mystery. This scene is part of the religious, and more specifically Christian, connotations within the novel, yet, just like Driblette who is shrouded in steam, the connections are never fully visible or tangible.
      - Mumbo Jumbo
        
        Conspiracy
        
        Both Mumbo Jumbo and The Crying of Lot 49 draw on conspiracy theories, secret organizations, and alternative histories or religious texts challenge the accepted norm of Judeo-Christianity as the predominant belief system of the West.
        
        “In anger Moses flung his rod to the ground where it immediately transformed into a snake. The people laughed” (Reed 186).
        
        VooDoo shares its roots with Judeo-Christianity, with Moses as a common ancestor. The quote which references a staff turning into a snake is a clear delineation between the two texts, while in Mumno Jumbo’s VooDoo background history lesson, Moses is mocked as one of the “cheap charlatans” as he was tricked by Set and fails to succeed in harnessing the power of the Jes Grew, the music and dance “contagion” (Reed 183). In the Bible Moses’ brother Aaron’s rod turns into a snake as proof of God’s power to entice Pharaoh to release the Israelites from slavery (Exodus 7:8-13).
    - - Yomesh
        
        “Meshe is the center of time…in the Center there is no time past and no time to come…nothing is unseen” (Le Guin 161).
        “One center, one seeing, one law, one light. Look now into the Eye of Meshe” (Le Guin 163).
        
        Yomesh is a religion of monism (the belief in one prophet/god/supreme entity) centred around the prophet Meshe. While the Handdara believe in duality, the Yomesh believe that everything is in the light and seen. The opposition of the Handdara and the Yomesh represent the constant dualism within the novel, unifying opposites. While everything is in the light, according to the Yomesh, Estraven makes the point that, “We need the shadows, in order to walk,” conveying the need for dualism, both light and dark (Le Guin 267
      - Handdara
        
        “It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness…Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male…Both and one. A shadow on snow” (Le Guin 267).
        “‘We are dualists too. Duality is an essential…I and Thou’” (Le Guin 233).
        
        The Handdara is a religion of dualism, which includes both light and dark, a religion of both and.
        
        Martin Buber's "I and Thou"/ "I and It"
        
        The Handdara also connects to Martin Buber’s concept of “I and Thou” which describes the “twofold” word pairs of I and thou central to human relationships. However, Buber also warns of when the “thou” becomes an “it” and we reduce the people in our lives to objects of our use.
      - The Left Hand of Darkness has two main religions (the Handdara and Yomesh), which reflect to concepts of the Tao Te Ching that Le Guin translated, as well as her background growing up with a father who studied Anthropology.
    - - Seize the Day
        
        "Don't expect me to believe in all this voodoo" (Bellow 45).
        
        Dr. Adler references "voodoo" as a way to invalidate Wilhelm's feeling of being emotionally strangled by his estranged wife. The reference to "voodoo" as a placeholder meaning spiritual nonsense in the novel connects to Mumbo Jumbo in which VooDoo is a very real presence, just as Wilhelm's feelings are valid, even if Dr. Adler doesn't think so.
      - Mumbo Jumbo
        
        Jes Grew
        
        "Jes Grew is the lost liturgy seeking its litany" (Reed 211).
        
        Jes Grew is connected to the spiritual VooDoo, music, dance, and expression, while also taking on its own role with its own religious significance and connotations. Jes Grew is a representation of Black culture and expression, but it also takes on an element of religion, never being destroyed or eradicated, as Hinkle Von Vampton, The Wallflower Order, and the Knights Templar (White societies) assume.
        
        "Jes Grew has no end and no beginning" (Reed 204).
        
        “Whoever his progenitor, whatever his lineage, his grandfather it is known was brought to America on a slave ship mixed with other workers who were responsible for bringing African religion to the Americas where it survives to this day” (Reed 23).
        
        VooDoo, or “The Work,” is central to the novel, both in terms of its connection to the roots and spread of Jes Grew, the focus on PaPa LaBas and Black Herman as VooDoo practitioners, but also through the central purpose of the novel which draws on African traditions to show the cultural and living resilience of Black men and women in America. The form of the novel splices together the history of VooDoo tradition as if it were part of a history book, challenging the “traditional” dissemination of knowledge, which focuses on European and Western traditions. VooDoo is both a form of religion and art to be practiced, while also providing Black men and women, whose ancestors were stolen and sold in the Slave Trade, a connection to their cultural roots which will not die, despite the inherited trauma generations have faced.
  - - - Freud
        
        Sexual Repression
        
        Invisible Man
        
        Sybil’s (a white woman) racist rape fantasy is the fruition of her own feeling of “[r]epression…[that] men have repressed [women] too much,” a reference to Freud’s theory of sexual repression (Ellison 519). Because of racism within American society, Sybil is unable to express her own sexual desires and have a healthy relationship with African American men which she also desires, so she represses her want until it comes out in a violent fantasy, fueled by alcohol. Sybil's repression connects to the social taboos on female sexuality, while also impacting the narrator's identity as she forces him into a racist role.
        
        Freud's theory essentially states that because of social norms people are not able to act on their sexual desires and feel guilt for having these desires.
        
        Mumbo Jumbo
        
        “Freud would read this as a ‘feeling of an indissoluble bond, of being one with the external whole,’ which poor Freud ‘never experienced’” (Reed 45).
        
        Mumbo Jumbo combines a series of cultural texts, including the psychological work of Freud that was popular at the time. Reed’s references to a variety of texts that were important to different viewpoints demonstrates the mixing of ideas and jargon at the time, but also allows readers to see the widely accepted Freudian theories next to texts and beliefs within African American communities as well, demonstrating that they were just as valid and important as the hegemonic (and predominantly White) “belief systems,” including psychology. In fact, by mentioning Freud “never experienced” the feeling, he is the one on the outside, subverting the typical hierarchy of cultural knowledge and power.
    - - Satirize Psychology
        
        Both The Crying of Lot 49 and Lolita satirize psychology through their respective characters of Dr. Hilarius and Humbert Humbert. Hilarius, a psychiatrist, has his own complete mental breakdown out of fear for being put on trial for his war crimes and encourages the use of LSD to placate his patients. Humbert, the narrative voice of Lolita, speaks condescendingly about “[p]sychoanalysts [that] wooed [him] with pseudoliberations and pseudolibidoes” (Nabokov 18), but he thinks that he is above them, bragging that he finds an “endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists: cunningly leading them on” (34). The two novels toy with the validity of psychology as a pursuit of meaning making, which is ironic because I would suggest that both Hilarius and Humbert need therapy.
    - - Jung vs. Freud
        
        “If I’d been a real Nazi I’d have chosen Jung, nicht wahr? But I chose Freud instead” (Pynchon 112).
        
        "Freud, who disliked prophecy, was in no position to make a diagnosis...Later Jung travels to Buffalo New York and...discovers what Freud saw...Jung calls this process 'going Black.' This chilly Swiss keeps it to himself however" (Reed 209).
        
        In both The Crying of Lot 49 and Mumbo Jumbo, psychologists Freud and Jung are compared or placed in conversation together. The two psychoanalysts are fairly similar, though Jung focuses more on how ancestral past, biological makeup, and desires for the future influence behaviours, while Freud focuses on individual childhoods and repressed desires to form the future. Though the two psychologists are different, and the two texts mention Freud and Jung within the specific context of their plots, they are used to demonstrate the same overall idea. Though Freud and Jung are different, it does not change the situation in the novels: Dr. Hilarius is still a Nazi collaborator, regardless of who he was influenced by (in The Crying of Lot 49), and both Jung and Freud still represent the hegemonic idea that history, culture, and meaning is defined by European/Western/Colonial men (in Mumbo Jumbo). Both texts demonstrate the distrust and frustration with older psychological meaning making by the 1970s.
  - - - Mumbo Jumbo
        
        "61 lynchings occurred in 1920 alone. In 1921, 62, some of the victims, soldiers returning from the Great War who after fighting and winning significant victories – just as they fought in the Revolutionary and Civil wars and the wars against the Indians – thought that America would repay them for the generosity of putting their lives on the line…[i]nstead, a Protestant country…executes soldiers” (Reed 30).
        
        Mumbo Jumbo was published in 1972, at the time when support for the Vietnam War was incredibly low, as was morale. Reed highlights the very real reality of America gladly accepting Black men to lay down their lives for the country and then immediately turning its back on them, condoning and allowing incredible racial violence and denying them basic civil rights. The quote also reflects a more general sentiment of the anti-war protest, which was centered around the discrepancy between the wealthy politicians who called for war, along with the privileged male citizens who were able to avoid conscription, while poor, working class, minorities were shipped off to fight.
      - The Left Hand of Darkness
        
        “But on Genthen nothing led to war” (Le Guin 48).
        
        The absence of defined gender roles, including the association of masculinity and war, is not present on the planet of Genthen, which is part of the utopian aspect of the novel. The novel was published in 1969, during the Vietnam War, and the lack of war on the planet of Genthen is Le Guin’s creation of a society that is not stuggling through another controversial war playing out in the media. The lack of war is also tied to the lack of gendered behaviours that are explored in the novel
    - - Invisible Man
        
        “Because, Brother, the enemies of man are dispossessing the world!” (Ellison 307).
        
        “‘You have to be pure in heart and you have to be disciplined in body and mind. Brother, you understand what I mean?’
        ‘Yes, I think I do…some folks feel that way about their religion” (Ellison 394).
        
        The Brotherhood is a socialist group which the narrator is drawn into, hoping to find meaning through their policies, ideology, and in his role as a speaker and organizer. Though there was significant pressure on Ellison to make the Brotherhood seem less desirable during the Cold War, the Brotherhood’s ideals of pushing against capitalist powers is meaningful, but they also demonstrate the obsession with ideology and ideals over individuals, especially Black Americans. In the novel the Brotherhood does represent one way to make meaning out of politics, but they also betray the individuals which make up the community they claim to be fighting for. Ellison’s portrayal of the Brotherhood and its betrayal of the narrator also show how socialist and other political movements were led by still powerful White men who used and abandoned People of Colour.
    - - The Crying of Lot 49
        
        “Driving over she passed by Zapf’s Used Books, and was alarmed to find a pile of charred rubble where the bookstore only a week ago had stood…She stopped and went into the government surplus outlet next door,” where the owner mentions “swastika armbands” (Pynchon 122).
        
        “‘I worked…on experimentally-induced insanity…Liberal SS circles felt it would be more humane” (Pynchon 112).
        
        The novel was published in 1965, twenty years after the Second World War, and yet people were still reeling from the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime, trying to make sense of human behaviour and cruelty. Pynchon’s inclusion of the ex-Nazi psychiatrist and the government surplus store selling swastika armbands recalls the inhumanity of the Nazi regime and its resurgence in different pockets of the world. The inclusion of trusted people and institutions (like a doctor and the government) actually having dark Nazi backgrounds contributes to the feeling of uncertainty and layers of distrust of hegemonic structures and systems within the novel. Pynchon’s inclusion of a Nazi doctor and government overflowing with swastika armbands (which are being mass produced nearby) adds to the inability to make sense of the world.
        
        The burning of the bookstore “for the insurance” also connects to the Nazi regime burning books in a public display of censorship (which is a significant theme in The Crying of Lot 49). However, the burning of books for insurance money also connects to the notion that money is power in a consumerist society, and perhaps even valued over knowledge – especially the knowledge Oedipa seeks at the used bookstore (Pynchon 122).
- - - - Seize the Day
        
        Two Souls/Emersonian Transcendentalism
        
        Bellow's concept of two souls (as described through Dr. Tamkin) relates to Emerson's concept of Transcendentalism, which describes how nature and self form the "oversoul"
        
        Wilhelm struggles with how he perceives himself, but Dr. Tamkin’s concept of of two souls – a “pretender soul” and a “real soul” (the body and the mind) – allows Wilhelm to consider himself from a new point of view as he tries to understand the conflict within himself, fighting his own vanity, the “pretender soul,” and his desire for truth and connection, the “real soul” (Bellow 66).
    - - The Crying of Lot 49
        
        Oedipa’s first name is a reference to Oedipus Rex, signifying her quest.
      - Invisible Man
        
        Though readers never learn the name of the narrator, the concept of his name plays a very important role in the attempted foundations of his identity. After his accident at the paint factory, the narrator loses his name, his identity, and all he can remember is a rhyme from his childhood. He loses almost every part of himself, but slowly remembers as time passes.
        
        Just after the narrator loses his identity, he is given a name and “new identity” through the Brotherhood (Ellison 309), which allows the narrator to feel that he “was becoming someone else” with his new name and role in the organization (335). However, the Brotherhood’s new name and identity also demonstrate the fact that the Brotherhood reduces the importance of the individual within their organization, and rather than giving the narrator a “new identity,” they are stripping him of his true name (309).
      - The Left Hand of Darkness
        
        “‘You use my landname’
        ‘I don’t know what to call you either.’…
        ‘Who uses first names?’
        ‘Hearth-brothers, or friends.’” (Le Guin 213).
        
        “’And now you cannot say my name’” (Le Guin 24).
        
        Names can be a bit confusing in The Left Hand of Darkness as characters take on different names depending on where they are and their roles in society as well (Estraven also goes by Tharem or Harth, or Therem Harth at different points, and there is another unrelated character named Estraven as well…). However, though there is a bit of confusion and complications with names, they symbolize community and connection. When two brothers break the rules of kemmering and one commits suicide, which is the ultimate worst act in Genthen, his brother is unable to say his name, reflecting the importance names play in relating to others, and that the punishment for committing the worst act is to lose your name – which also punishes your loved ones who cannot outwardly mourn for you.
        On the other side, saying ones real name is a reflection of the bond between two people, which is demonstrated by Estraven telling Genly his full name as they become closer, or, as Estraven calls it, “hearth-brothers” (Le Guin 213).
      - Lolita
        
        “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta... she was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock…She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita” (Nabokov 9).
        
        Humbert’s ownership of Dolores begins with his corruption of her name, removing her personal identity and replacing it with his own fantasy of her. Though all other names have been changed, including that of “Humbert Humbert,” which sometimes shifts and takes on similar forms, including “Humberg…Homberg…Hamburg” (Nabokov 109), Dolores’ name is “too closely interwound with the inmost fiber of the book” to be changed, which further removes her agency (4). Ironically, through Dolores is the only character who keeps her “actual” name, she is the character who loses her identity the most.
      - Seize the Day
        
        “‘My son and I use different monikers. I uphold tradition. He’s for the new.’ The Tommy was Wilhelm’s own invention. He adopted it when he went to Hollywood, and dropped the Adler” (Bellow 11).
        
        Wilhelm and Dr. Adler represent two different generations in the 1950s, with the younger generation antsy to make money and cope with the pressure of coming of age around the time of the Second World War and are now drifting in the fragments of society. The separation between Wilhelm and his father is clearly demonstrated through their different names, especially as Wilhelm’s name is his own creation, a way for him to separate from his father and try to make his own way, even though he is failing. The difference in names also reflects the alienation Wilhelm feels, as if with his change in name he has removed himself from a familial bond with his father.
  - - - Oedipa is struggling to make meaning out of the feminine social confines of the 1960s and wants to embroider her own tapestry. She does challenge gender norms by setting out on her own quest to find out the meaning behind the Trystero, but she also has to rely on men with the information, who often put her in sexual situations (Dr. Nefastis on page 86, Metzger on page 24 onwards).
    - - “I had thought of him as my landlady, for he had fat buttocks that wagged as he walked…he was so feminine in looks and manner that I once asked him how many children he had” (Le Guin 48).
        
        Le Guin’s conception of a unique society in which native citizens are mostly androgynous and fluid in their gender presentation, presenting sexual attributes once in a 26-28 day cycle, is a different way of making meaning out of gender during the late 1960s – at the time discussions of gender and sexuality were emerging (the book was published the same year as the Stonewall Riots, for example). Genly, who is accustomed to female and male gendering, is very misogynistic, using “he/him/his” pronouns when referring to anyone on Genthen, even if he perceives them as presenting more “feminine” traits – like his description of his landlady. Through the novel Genly must challenge his own misogyny and his desire to divide Genthen citizens within binary gendered categories. The concept of fluid/changing gender in the novel reflect its conversation about the importance of duality.
    - - .
- - - - Wilhelm feels the pressure of being broke within a consumerist society, which further causes his feelings of anxiety, self-hate, and alienation, and forces him to trust in the shady Dr. Tamkin and the volatile nature of blindly trusting a conman and the stock market.
  - - - Humbert perceives himself as a cultured man and wants Dolores to conform to his sense of highbrow music, art, literature, and language. However, as a young girl in the late 1940s, Dolores is more interested in “sentimental hit songs” (Nabokov 148), including the catchy “O my Carmen, my little Carmen” song (59). Dolores’ own taste for music provides her with a small sense of individuality, separate from Humbert’s aestheticized fantasy version of her.
      - Jazz and Blues
        
        Mumbo Jumbo
        
        “So don’t ask me how to catch Jes Grew. Ask Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, your poets, your painters, your musicians, ask them how to catch it” (Reed 152).
        
        Jes Grew is a plague of fun, of music and dancing and enjoying oneself, the “delight of the gods” (Reed 6), but Western society sees it as a destroyer of “aesthetic integrity” (17). It is deeply intertwined with music, particularly jazz, in the novel, which connects the music to Black culture and expression.
        
        Invisible Man
        
        Louis Armstrong is also significant because he sets the example which allows the narrator to decide that “it was the good music that came from the bell of old Bad Air’s horn…Old Bad Air is still around with his music and his dancing and his diversity, and I’ll be up and around with mine” (Ellison 581). Armstrong and his jazz music connect to the narrator’s understanding of the importance of both the individual and the collective, the struggle in the world and the beauty in being with good people which is necessary for art. Music represents the infinite possibilities that the narrator eventually recognizes and shows that there are different ways to view history and society.
    - - Lolita
        
        Dolores loves movies and Hollywood stars, an indicator of her interest in material culture. Humbert uses the cinema as a way to keep Dolores occupied during their long road trip, with the sole purpose of extending the amount of time he has sexual access to Dolores. He also attempts to sneak some caresses in the dark theatre but finds it too uncomfortable and fears getting caught. Movies are part of the commodification of Humbert and Dolores’ relationship, as she learns to trade touches for money, movies, and material goods.
        
        "I wondered how to keep the whole arrangement possible…after we had taken in all the movies in Lepingville” (Nabokov 140).
      - The Crying of Lot 49
        
        Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra - Truth vs. Reproduction
        
        Simulacra is a post-modern concept that the world is just full of copies without originals.
        
        The novel edges on postmodernism through its questioning of if everything is just copies of the real that have been replicated too much to have an origin. The concept of the simulacra is present in the novel’s portrayal of movies and TV shows. The character of Metzger mentions that “Raymond Burr is an actor, impersonating a lawyer, who in front of a jury becomes an actor,” while Metzger himself is a “former actor who became a lawyer,” and is getting a TV show made about his life and will be played by “a one-time lawyer who quit his firm to be an actor. Who in this pilot plays me, an actor become lawyer reverting periodically to being an actor” (Pynchon 21-22). Through the passage Pynchon represents Baudrillard's concept, both in the fact that the TV is just a copy repeating what is being played until it loses its origin, but also in the muddle of actors playing lawyers who are acting while being lawyers played by actors – essentially all the TV actors/lawyers are just copies of each other and the “real” is “substituted” with endless copies. Through the novel Pynchon conveys how difficult it is to make meaning in a society of simulacra.
  - - - The car, endless American highways, roadside tourist traps, and motel rooms are essential to Humbert’s consuming of Dolores. He depends on the anonymity of the road and different hotel rooms to avoid suspicion and getting caught for his pedophilia and related crimes, as well as the attractions that are necessary to “keep [Dolores] in passable humour from kiss to kiss” (Nabokov 154). The money that Humbert puts into hotel rooms, gas, car maintenance, tourist attractions, and roadside diners is the same money that he spends to continue his relationship with Dolores, making her just as much of a commodity as an fudgy ice cream sundae, a visit to painted caves, or a stay in a “pretentious dude ranch” (175).
    - - In the novel, Mucho has a repeated “bad dream…about the car lot…we were a member of the National Automobile Dealers’ Association. N.A.D.A. Just the creaking metal sign that said nada, nada, against the blue sky” (Pynchon 118), which connects to his feeling of hatred and sickness towards “the endless rituals of trade-in, week after week” at the dealership (5). Mucho’s reflections convey the human experience of generating waste in a consumerist society as they are caught in an endless cycle of production and consuming, making life meaningless.
        The presence of the freeway as a “hypodermic needle…inserted…[into] a vein nourishing the mainliner L.A.” (15), which is built over cemeteries and the bones of dead Americans (46) also demonstrates the lack of respect for human life in societies driven my consumerism, yet these roads are paradoxically necessary for maintaining society. Oedipa also needs to travel up and down the freeways in her search for meaning - without them she would not be able to seek out the answers she is searching for. The novel demonstrates that cars, freeways, and comsumer culture are making the world meaningless, but we also depend upon them to somehow search for lost meaning
- - - - The Crying of Lot 49
        
        “In Mexico City they somehow wandered into an exhibition of paintings by the beautiful Spanish exile Remedios Varo: in the central painting…titled “Bordando el Manto Terrestre,” were a number of frail girls with heart-shaped faces, huge eyes, spun-gold hair, prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void” (Pynchon 11).
        
        The painting becomes an important cultural artefact to Oedipa and is a metaphor for her feelings of being trapped within 1950s society and gender roles, but also demonstrates the feminine desire to make her own meaning in the world. The painting and the tapestry in the painting are important visual artefacts that influence Oedipa, and also connect to her desire to find meaning in society and the concept of her female identity.
    - - “This looting of the world’s art treasures can’t go on…How would you like it if someone disturbed your dead, dug up their bones and put them on display, melted down the sacred jewelry of your ancestors…” (Reed 113).
        
        Barbelang and his fellow members of the Mu'tafikah take back cultural artefacts that have been stolen from colonized nations – essentially an intense form of repatriation. Their re-stealing is a reflection of anti-colonialism in the 1970s and the importance of cultural artefacts and artwork going back to their rightful cultures. It is a rejection of the colonial excuse of being more “civilized” and ties into the larger representation of celebrating Black cultures at the heart of Mumbo Jumbo.
        
        "Mu'tafikah were looting the museums shipping the plunder back to where it came from...Ikons of the aesthetically victimized civilizations" (Reed 15).
  - - - “What about those three boys…tall and slender, walking stiffly with swinging shoulders in their well-pressed, too-hot-for-summer suits, their collars high and tight about their necks, their identical hats of black cheap felt…’distorted in the interest of a design’…men outside of historical time” (Ellison 440). / “I had enlisted in a fraternity in which I was recognized at a glance – not by features, but by clothes, by uniform, by gait” (Ellison 485).
        
        The Hipsters that the narrator describes and imitates are a countercultural group, recognizable through their aesthetic. The Hipsters were new figures on the scene, which the narrator becomes conscious of at the time in which his previous belief in the Brotherhood and the beneficiary support of White men. The Hipsters are very far from the previous ideals of the Brotherhood, which is based around ideologies not aesthetics, and serve as a transitional aesthetic or disguise for the narrator to adopt in his search for meaning. The Hipsters themselves are part of a Black rejection of cultural norms and are significantly linked to the narrator trying on another identity in his search for his own true self.
  - - - "What lay between was deep, azure, dirty, complex, crystal, rusty, with the red bones of new apartments rising on the bluffs of New Jersey, and huge liners in their berths, the tugs with matted beards of cordage" (Bellow 103).
        
        This passage demonstrates the Flaubertism in the novel, where it would be impossible for Wilhelm to notice all of these small details and describe the room of Tamkin so beautifully. Though Wilhelm is not able to notice all of the details at once, Bellow’s introduction of Wilhelm’s softer, more artistic second soul, may explain why he would have such an eloquent sweep though of the room.
    - - "We came to know -- nous connûmes, to use a Flaubertian intonation -- the stone cottages under enormous Chateaubriandesque trees..." (Nabokov 145).
        
        Humbert Humbert likes to equate himself to philosophical or poetic thinkers, including Flaubert. His incredibly detailed and artistic descriptions of landscapes and Dolores are attempts to showcase his artistic prowess and also are a device to mask the ugliness of his twisted pedophilia.
- - - - “All of a sudden, unsought, a general love for all these imperfect and lurid-looking people burst out in Wilhelm’s breast. He loved them. They were his brothers and sisters. He was imperfect and disfigured himself, but what difference did that make if he was united with them in this blaze of love?” (Bellow 81).
        
        Throughout Seize the Day, Tommy Wilhelm struggles to feel connected to those in his life, including his father, his estranged wife, himself, and his community. Yet in these two moments, Wilhelm feels an intense connection and love for those around him, as if they were all part of a flawed family. Wilhelm’s display of human emotion at his not-brother’s funeral can be read as a way Wilhelm finally shares a human experience of sorrow, releasing his pent-up emotions and mourning for himself and a stranger. Though the onlookers are certain Wilhelm could not be the deceased’s brother, in that moment the two men (one alive but barely holding on, the other dead) are connected as Wilhelm makes a meaningful connection, though Bellow purposely leaves the state of Wilhelm’s connections ambiguous as the novel ends. But I like to think that the scene is about touching human connection
      - “‘Oh my, oh my! To be mourned like that,’ said one man and looked at Wilhelm’s heavy shaken shoulders, his clutched face… ‘The man’s brother, maybe?’ ‘Oh, I doubt that very much…they’re not alike at all” (Bellow 114).
    - - “Brothers are the same colour; how the hell you call these white men brother? … We sons of Mama Africa, you done forgot? You black, BLACK!” (Ellison 370-371).
        
        These two quotes reflect the narrator’s struggle to find a meaningful community that represents him. The Brotherhood, which claims to be a united “family” through their name betrays the narrator, sacrificing him and his Black community in Harlem for their larger ideological cause – abandoning the people that look like their “brother.” However, the narrator also does not fully agree with the Black Nationalism of Ras the Destroyer, who believes that Black social liberation can only come from within the community. Neither of two portrayals of “brothers” provide the narrator with a lasting community.
      - “‘That’s the worst kind of thing for Brotherhood – because we want to make folks think of the things we have in common. That’s what makes for Brotherhood…In the Brotherhood we are all Brothers” (Ellison 392).
    - - Humbert Humbert does not have strong family connections and ensures that Dolores is severed from any familial ties in order for him to take on the role of her father and lover. Family would only get in the way of Humbert’s preying on Dolores, which is why it is ironic that Dolores’ “uncle” – Humbert’s “brother” – provided Dolores her escape from Humbert (Nabokov 246-247). Though Quilty and Humbert are not blood related, they possibly bare a similar resemblance that Dolores had childishly fancied, and they are connected through their pedophilia and desire to take advantage of young girls…you could say it is something the two “brothers” have in common.
    - - “You called me – It was my brother. It was his voice I heard” (Le Guin 253).
        
        Estraven and Genly’s journey over the ice allows for an intimacy and connection between the two, which is solidified through their conversation in mindspeak, in which Genly adopts the voice of Estraven’s brother and kemmer (lover). The connection between Estraven and Genly moves into a relationship that walks the line of brotherhood.
- - - - Invisible Man
        
        The narrator’s life in the South is more obviously controlled by powerful White Supremacy and paternalism. Though he receives an education, the narrator’s college experience is shaped around fitting into the world of White men, which is made evident from both a comment made by Mr. Norton, a trustee, who says, “‘Your people were somehow closely connected with my destiny’” (Ellison 41), and Dr. Blesdoe, the president of the narrator’s college, who says, “’You’re a Black educated food…You’re nobody, son. You don’t exist – can’t you see that?” (Ellison 143). The narrator’s education in the South allowed him to opportunity to receive a higher-level education in a segregated college, but it came with the assumption that he would conform to constantly being under the power of racist White society.
        
        The narrator’s education and public speaking skills give him the opportunity to perhaps establish his identity in the Brotherhood, which claims not to be racist. He is educated in their ideology, but Brother Jack, the leader of sorts, still views the narrator as a tool to rally the community in Harlem. However, Brother Jack tells the narrator, “You were not hired to think,” demonstrating that though the Brotherhood wanted the narrator for his speaking abilities, they do not want to hear his thoughts, and still reduce him to a pawn in their vision of society (Ellison 469).
      - Mumbo Jumbo
        
        "New Negro" Movement
        
        The term was developed by Alain Leroy Locke, a Black philosopher and educator, during the Harlem Renaissance which focused on Black culture, art, education, and advocacy.
        
        In Mumbo Jumbo, the term is used by both those within the Black community, who see the educated advocates as: “Some of these people with degrees going around here shouting that they are the New Negroes are really serving the Man who awarded their degrees, who initiated them into his slang and found them ‘qualified,’ which means loyal” (Reed 37).
        It is also mentioned by racist White characters in the book, including Hinckle Von Vampton, who expresses, “What do you expect from these New Negroes or whatever they call themselves. Uppity. Arrogant. If they were real Black men…” (Reed 102). Both viewpoints demonstrate the contention around education and its role in the formation of Black identities
        
        Mumbo Jumbo also presents the education of Black characters in the form of learning The Work and about their cultural roots. At the end of the novel Earline decides to start an education that does not take place on a college campus, but rather she decides to “learn more…[by] going to New Orleans and Haiti, Brazil and all over the South studying our ancient cultures, our HooDoo cultures,” and hopes that “by and by some future artists 30 to 40 years from now will benefit from [her] research” (Reed 206).