Copyright
by
Jeffrey Allan Jaeckle
2005
The Dissertation Committee for Jeffrey Allan Jaeckle
certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation:
Reading the Reiterative: Concordance Mapping and the American Novel
Committee:
_____________________________
Martin Kevorkian, Supervisor
_____________________________
Evan Carton
_____________________________
Tony Hilfer
_____________________________
Jeanne Reesman
_____________________________
Mark Womack
Reading the Reiterative: Concordance Mapping and the American Novel
by
Jeffrey Allan Jaeckle, B.A., M.A.
Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
the University of Texas at Austin
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
The University of Texas at Austin
December 2005
iii
Acknowledgements
I share the authorship of this book with everyone who has helped me get to this point. I
extend particular thanks to Martin Kevorkian, Mark Womack, Jeanne Reesman, Evan
Carton, and Tony Hilfer. I am also grateful to Eileen, to Lewis, and Sami—the best
friends I’ve had since I was a kid. I thank my family for standing by me all these years
and all my life. Though last in this list, I give my thanks and my love to Lynn, who is
first in more ways than I can imagine.
iv
Reading the Reiterative: Concordance Mapping and the American Novel
Publication No.___________
Jeffrey Allan Jaeckle, Ph.D.
The University of Texas at Austin, 2005
Supervisor: Martin Kevorkian
Concordance mapping is a student-oriented reading method that promotes the
search for and analysis of reiterative word patterns. Students are required to read
carefully to identify reiterative patterns that construct literary texts; they are encouraged
to use concordance data to verify these observed patterns; when writing about literature,
students are taught do so through extensively analyzing and citing observed reiterative
patterns. Concordance mapping is therefore an evidence-generating tool that encourages
students to focus their reading, research, and writing energies on reiterative word
patterns. Each chapter serves as an example of how concordance mapping can yield
detailed readings of American novels; these novels include Fitzgerald’s The Great
Gatsby (1925), Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), Salinger’s The Catcher
in the Rye (1951), and Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994). This
combination of canonical and popular novels is designed to appeal to a wide audience in
order to promote greater interest in concordance mapping. The chapters are similarly
strategic: each analyzes a well-known American novel to demonstrate how concordance
v
mapping can extend existing readings by providing concrete evidence drawn from
detailed analyses of observed reiterative word patterns. Chapter 1 examines patterns of
perfection and imperfection in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, including Nick’s
complicated use of superlatives and qualifications such as “absolute,” “all,” “but,”
“everything,” and “small.” Chapter 2 examines the role of stretchers in Twain’s
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; these stretchers find
expression in a series of reiterative word patterns such as “ransom,” “orgies,” and
“again.” Chapter 3 examines Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye by tracing the
ambivalences that construct Holden Caulfield’s narrative voice, evident in word patterns
such as “truth” and “phony” and the phrases “and all” and “all of a sudden.” Chapter 4
analyzes the language of confrontation in Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory, which
manifests in reiterative word patterns such as “confrontation,” “face,” and “name.” These
chapters collectively demonstrate that concordance mapping is a type of self-sharpening
exercise: one that provides specific improvements in a student’s knowledge of how a text
works and general knowledge in the skills of critical reading.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: Words, Texts, and Readers
1
Chapter 1: How The Great Gatsby Works
34
Chapter 2: Sequels and Stretchers in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Chapter 3: The Ambivalent Experience of The Catcher in the Rye
67
101
Chapter 4: Faces and Facing in Breath, Eyes, Memory
130
Epilogue: From Verbal to Visual and Aural Concordances
155
Appendices
158
Bibliography 161
Vita
170
vii
Introduction: Students, Words, and Concordances
I recently asked my students, a group of twenty-five undergraduates of varying
majors and grade levels, to define the word “concordance.” Those that answered tended
to respond: “It’s when things come together.” I then surveyed roughly the same number
of English graduate students who were studying to become literary scholars and teachers;
they, too, gave the “things come together” response. Not one of these fifty students, even
those with advanced degrees in literature, replied that a “concordance” is an index of
words that indicates their frequency and location within a text. Given both the title and
focus of this book, such ignorance didn’t sit well with me. After all, what does it mean if
you’re developing a reading method called “concordance mapping” and no one can
define the key term? It means that you must start with the basics.
A “concordance,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is the “fact of
agreeing or being concordant; agreement, harmony.” The students were therefore correct
to supply the “things come together” response. Yet a “concordance” is also defined as an
“alphabetical arrangement of the principal words contained in a book, with citations of
the passages in which they occur.” A concordance according to this definition is a tool
designed to improve the study of language via an index of “principal words,” or
reiterative word patterns; it therefore reorganizes the language of a text into an accessible
framework of repetition. This reorganization facilitates a reader’s ability to identify and
gather examples, or evidence, of word patterns. These patterns can be analyzed and, in
turn, can enable readers to expand and improve their knowledge of the complicated ways
in which language works in literary texts.
1
Students have used concordance-based analysis for centuries. Although no
definitive history of the concordance exists, we do know that the first concordance,
completed in 1230 by the Dominican Cardinal Hugo de Santo Caro, was designed to
improve study of the Latin Vulgate Bible.1 In Indexing from A to Z (1995), Hans H.
Wellisch explains that de Santo Caro enlisted “the help of five hundred monks” to
compile the concordance; even then, Wellisch points out, “his concordance listed only
nouns, adjectives, and verbs” (183). Five hundred years later, in 1738, Alexander Cruden
completed the first English-language concordance to the Old and New Testaments;
though more complete than de Santo Caro’s concordance, Cruden’s excluded common
pronouns and prepositions. In 1879, Robert Young published his Analytical Concordance
to the Bible, which included every word in the Bible translated into English, Hebrew, and
Greek. Around the same time, literary scholars began following the lead of biblical
scholars by compiling secular concordances designed to improve literary study. These
concordances, Wellisch explains, “were the work of single individuals, many of whom
spent an entire lifetime listing every word” in the works of “Shakespeare, Dickens,
Proust, Joyce, and other literary giants” (183). Within the next century, in 1950, the first
machine-produced concordance appeared; by the 1970s, the publication of computerproduced concordances exploded, prompting T.H. Howard-Hill to release the first, and to
this day only, work on concordance construction: Literary Concordances: A Guide to the
Preparation of Manual and Computer Concordances (1979). Through the 1980s and
1990s, computer-produced concordances began appearing on the Internet, as the rise of
1
For more information on the history of concordances and concordance technology, consult: Brian
O’Conner’s Explorations in Indexing and Abstracting: Pointing, Virtue, and Power (1996), Oxford
University’s Centre for Textual Studies website: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ctitext2/, Hans H. Wellisch’s
Indexing from A to Z (1995), and Robert L. Oakman’s Computer Methods for Literary Research (1984).
2
online libraries and digital technologies made personal concordance-based analysis an
efficient and effective form of literary study.
These trends have continued to this day to the extent that concordances have
entered the commercial market as selling tools. One of the most accessible and farreaching online systems is Amazon’s “Concordance.” A part of the international
bookseller’s popular “Look Inside” feature, which allows users to view passages of texts
and tables of contents, consumers can now browse millions of selections by clicking
“Concordance,” a feature that provides an index of the one hundred most frequentlyoccurring words in a given text. Users can even click on an individual word to view its
each and every occurrence. Prospective buyers can therefore acquire three pieces of
information by using “Concordance”: 1) they can learn more about a text by searching an
index of its most commonly occurring words; 2) they can learn where and how a specific
word occurs in a text from beginning to end; and 3) they can use information on word
location and frequency to learn more about how a text uses language.
The efficiency of this “Concordance” feature, coupled with Amazon’s status as
the world’s largest bookseller, would seem to suggest that concordances are well-known
and well-used tools. As my survey experience reveals, however, undergraduate students
and even aspiring scholars actually know little about the possibilities for concordancebased analysis; indeed, they are unaware that textual concordances exist. To a large
extent, this book attempts to counteract the prevailing ignorance of concordances and
concordance-based analysis among students of literature. My proposed method of
reading, which I call “concordance mapping,” promotes the practice of concordancebased analysis by combining the human skill of critical reading with the computerized
3
skill of digital word mapping. I argue that these critical reading and research skills serve
as the starting point for all literary critical endeavors, thereby making concordance
mapping useful at every level of sophistication. When referring to “students” throughout
the book, then, I am referring to any and all individuals engaged in the study of literature,
be they undergraduates, graduates, or professional scholars. No matter the student’s level
of expertise, the practice of concordance mapping can effectively heighten one’s ability
to read slowly, to recognize word patterns, and to understand better how a text uses
language.
The practice of concordance mapping consists of three related critical acts. First is
the act of manual reading. For students to gain a better understanding of the text in front
of them, they must begin by scrutinizing it, not by viewing it through the medium of a
print or computer concordance. Instead, this act of critical reading involves the creation
of a personal concordance: the student engages in the act of slow, patient reading with a
writing implement in hand to mark word patterns. After examining the text several times
in this fashion, the student will have constructed a personal concordance, a list of word
patterns that span the length of the text; this list is a “map” which allows the student to
look back over the text at any time to observe the pattern of a word, including where it
occurs most, where it occurs least, and what it occurs in relation to.
The student then consults existing concordance data to check the accuracy of his
or her personal concordance. Contemporary students are not in the positions of either de
Santo Caro or Alexander Cruden; it is no longer necessary to enlist hundreds of people
and years of painstaking notation to construct a reliable concordance. Students now have
4
one of several efficient and dependable options: 1) they can access print concordances; 2)
they can browse online concordances and online libraries, such as Amazon’s
Concordance, Project Gutenberg, the Oxford Concordance Program, and Bibliomania;
and 3) they can use concordance software such as Concordance, MonoConc, and
TextSTAT to create their own digital concordances. These options are useful to the extent
that they enable students to verify the location and frequency of word patterns.
The creation of a personal concordance, verified by existing concordance data,
constitutes an amassing of evidence, a list of word patterns made available for analysis.
The third task faced by a student using concordance mapping, then, is to analyze this
evidence—the observed word patterns—with the aims of understanding better the
language of a given text. These analyses require the student to question the complicated
ways in which an individual word works: if it describes a character or a setting, if it is
used sarcastically or ironically, if it forms part of a simile or metaphor, if it is ambiguous
or paradoxical, if it is a pun or homonym. A student must also question if an individual
word’s meaning is consistent throughout the text or why and how it changes. When
placed in the context of other word patterns, a student must question if the individual
word’s meaning is consistent or why and how its contexts give rise to new images,
characterizations, similes, paradoxes, puns, and so on. These analyses can, in turn, serve
as starting points for more advanced critiques of language, such as detailed analyses of
setting, narration, and character. Together, these analyses can enable students to develop
sophisticated interpretive frameworks that can be substantiated at multiple levels of
textual construction and in minute detail.
5
Although these questions can be posed without the use of concordance mapping,
my belief is that the method actually encourages the asking of such questions by
providing students with greater ability to respond to them in the reading, research, and
writing phases of literary study. Concordance mapping promotes what Alan Partington
calls “a statistical methodological philosophy”: “the search for—and belief in the
importance of—recurring patterns” (original emphasis 9). Concordance mapping
embraces this philosophy by emphasizing the use of concordance tools in conjunction
with a student’s critical intelligence to unearth word patterns otherwise unmanageable or
unknown. Concordance mapping is therefore a practice-oriented critical method: it is an
evidence-generating tool that encourages students to focus their reading, research, and
writing energies on word patterns in literary texts.
I
Beyond its capacity to improve critical reading, research, and writing skills,
concordance mapping promotes awareness of the complex roles of repetition in art and
human existence. Sigmund Freud makes the case in Beyond the Pleasure Principle that
repetition is so critical to human existence it can be said to “exhibit to a high degree an
instinctual character” (41). Countless other psychologists, philosophers, artists, and
literary critics regard repetition as having a similar magnitude. According to Bruce F.
Kawin in Telling It Again and Again: Repetition in Literature and Film (1972), “Life
takes its tone and character from repetition” (1). For Kawin, repetition is not only “the
key to our existence” but also “the key to our expression of experience” (7). For Steven
Conner, author of Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theory, and Text (1996), “repetition is a
6
central and necessary concept within all attempts to understand individual and social
being and representation” (1). Psychologists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides concur:
All humans tend to impose on the world a common encompassing
conceptual organization, made possible by universal mechanisms
operating on the recurrent features of human life. This is a central reality
of human life and is necessary to explain how humans can communicate
with each other, learn the culture they are born into, understand the
meaning of others’ acts, imitate each other, adopt the cultural practices of
others, and operate in a coordinated way with others in the social world
they inhabit. (91)
This practice of “conceptual organization,” based on principles of repetition, is essential
to human existence. Repetition is in fact so central to human activity that, according to
Robert Storey, “without this capacity, neither human life nor human art could exist”
(126).2
Literature is a human art steeped in repetition. According to J. Hillis Miller in
Fiction and Repetition: Seven English Novels (1982), every literary work is “a complex
tissue of repetitions and of repetitions within repetitions, or of repetitions linked in chain
fashion to other repetitions. In each case there are repetitions making up the structure of
the work within itself, as well as repetitions determining its multiple relations to what is
outside it” (3). Kawin makes the similar observation that literature relies on “the
constructive powers of repetition,” including “its ability to emphasize, interweave, and
2
For a fuller account of the functions of repetition see: Robert Storey’s Mimesis and the Human Animal:
On the Biogenetic Foundations of Literary Representation (1996).
7
lyricize” (7). Barbara Johnstone highlights the sheer extent of these constructive powers
when suggesting in Repetition in Discourse (1994): “Repetition is a salient feature of all
verbal art, be it in flirtatious banter, dramatic representations of conflict and failure,
traditional Southeast Asian poetry, or postmodern novelistic foregrounding of the
mundane” (xii).
One of the many forms repetition takes is that of the repeated word. When a word
in a text repeats, it forms a pattern; to study that pattern is to study repetition. Barbara
Johnstone nicely captures this relationship when observing: “repetition is pattern, and
pattern is repetition” (3). To read the reiterative is therefore to read for patterns that
constitute a text and, by extension, those that exist in art and human experience. As
students improve their ability to read the reiterative, they are better equipped to
comprehend not only the texts in front of them but also the complex ways in which
human beings use repetition. Susan Sontag extends these ideas when arguing that
analyses of repetition are of paramount importance to literary study. For Sontag, not to
examine repetition as a primary feature of literature is tantamount to illiteracy. She
insists, “if one does not perceive how a work repeats itself, the work is, almost literally,
not perceptible and therefore, at the same time, not intelligible. It is the perception of
repetitions that makes a work of art intelligible” (35).
Concordance mapping is one way to promote analyses of repetition in literary
study and instruction. The means are quite simple, requiring little more than a text, a
writing implement, and (if available) Internet access. When used in the classroom, the
writing assignments associated with concordance mapping might range from a one-page
analysis to a seminar paper, from an in-class exercise to a two-week project. In each case,
8
students will improve their manual reading abilities as well as their computing skills; they
will learn more about textual repetition as well as cultural repetition; they will gain
knowledge about literary diction, style, and form while also applying this knowledge to
the improvement of their own writing. The practice of concordance mapping can
therefore enhance a student’s reading, research, and writing capabilities; and these skills,
once acquired, will benefit them for a lifetime, both inside and outside the classroom.
II
“Ultimately,” David Lodge insists in Language of Fiction (1966), “critical
methods are characterized and justified by their practical applications” (81). Although an
almost endless variety of texts can be used to illustrate the method of concordance
mapping, I’ve chosen a short prose piece, Ernest Hemingway’s “The End of Something”
from In Our Time (1925). Hemingway’s story is an ideal test case for concordance
mapping given that the author's whittled style of journalistic prose, simple sentences, and
muted adjectives such as “nice” and “good” are well rehearsed in academic and
pedagogical discourse. Hemingway is also one of the few prose writers whose works
have concordances. (The concordance to In Our Time appeared in 1990.) Although
students are acquainted with Hemingway’s craft, a brief explication of the short story
“The End of Something” reveals the extent to which they can learn even more about the
story’s use of language.
“The End of Something” dramatizes the breakup of two young adults, the story’s
protagonist Nick Adams and his girlfriend, Marjorie. Set on a river adjacent to the
abandoned lumber town of Horton’s Bay, Nick and Marjorie’s decline is appropriately
9
staged. The couple fish in a boat as they discuss the “old ruin” of Horton’s Bay, which
parallels the old ruin of their relationship. They then head to shore, where Marjorie
questions Nick about his unhappiness, resulting in his response that love “isn’t fun
anymore.” When it becomes clear that the relationship is over, Marjorie reacts by calmly
leaving in the boat. Following her departure, Nick’s friend Bill emerges from the bushes
to ask about the incident, only to be rebuffed. The story ends as Bill leaves to check the
fishing poles while Nick lies face down on a blanket.
Although the story is fairly well known and commonly taught, student knowledge
of it is often limited to theme. Study guides, for instance, often emphasize the story’s
themes of loss and confusion. The guide for the AQA Anthology highlights a theme of
strained relationships, evident in the “idea that (young) men and women have
fundamentally different ways of seeing things” (Moore). It is possible to dismiss this
guide and, indeed, all study guides as examples of poor instruction. Yet this dismissal
would be problematic because a) students often rely on such guides as aids to their
reading and writing, and b) the AQA guide targets teachers of literature as well as
students. The prefatory material explains:
This guide is written for students and teachers who are preparing for
GCSE exams in English literature. It contains a detailed study of Ernest
Hemingway’s “The End of Something,” one of the prose texts in the AQA
Anthology, which is a set text for the AQA's GCSE syllabuses for English
and English Literature Specification A. (Moore)
I cite this information to highlight the common misconception that a thematic overview
constitutes a “detailed study.” Although it is quite true that Hemingway’s “The End of
10
Something” concerns loss and failed relationships, this summary finding is anything but
detailed. As a comparison, I will use concordance mapping to generate a reading based
on precise references to and analyses of several of the story’s word patterns.
The process of concordance mapping begins by reading the work with a writing
implement in hand to mark repeated words. After reading the story numerous times, I
checked my data against Hays’s concordance and deduced a series of patterns.3 One is the
narrator’s repeated reference to fishing, including images of minnows, perch, and trout as
well as descriptions about how to bait a fish. Another pattern is the repeated use of the
word “blanket,” which occurs seven times. Rather than providing warmth and security,
the blanket acts as a literal stage for the couple’s breakup. Yet perhaps most pervasive are
the story’s thirty instances of negation including “no,” “nothing,” “not,” and “without.” I
would also include the use of contractions such as “don’t,” “won’t,” “can’t,” “aren’t,”
and “isn’t.” These words of absence are continually coupled with words of presence and
absolutism, including “all” and “everything,” which appear twelve times.
Readers might step back at this point to ask: how does a student choose to analyze
one word pattern over another? According to David Lodge, the decision of which word
pattern to analyze is not dependent upon its sheer occurrence. He explains, “The most
frequently recurring word in a given text is not necessarily the most significant word. If it
were, computers could perform the initial critical task for us” (85). Lodge also
emphasizes that critical interest in a word pattern is “not dependent upon its being
consciously and spontaneously recognized by a majority of intelligent readers” (83).
3
See Appendix A.
11
Which word a student chooses to investigate in detail is therefore not dependent upon
either its frequent occurrence or its relative obscurity.
Once a word pattern is chosen and analyzed, this reading represents a perspective,
not the perspective, on the text. William Empson captures this sentiment in The Structure
of Complex Words (1967) when stressing: it is a mistake to claim that literary works
contain “one ‘key word’ and can be explained by analyzing the meaning of that” (444). In
the case of Hemingway’s short story, for instance, I’ve chosen to focus on a series of
negations. However, in focusing on negations, I am admittedly making an interpretive
choice not to focus on other repeated words, such as “blanket.” These interpretive choices
inform any literary critical undertaking. Stanley Fish famously captured this reality when
suggesting that a literary work is an event: “And this event, this happening—all of it and
not anything that could be said about it or any information one might take away from
it—that is, I would argue, the meaning” (25). My reading of negation in “The End of
Something” is therefore one example of “anything that could be said about” the story, not
all that could be said. Therefore, even though I choose to focus on negation, other
students could conduct other analyses that might complement or contradict my own.
These differences of opinion are possible, indeed encouraged, in concordance mapping
because the method leaves to the student’s discretion the choice of which word patterns
to examine.
Returning to “The End of Something,” I will begin by addressing the commonly
noted detail that the first paragraph establishes a parallel between the decay of Horton’s
Bay and the decline of Nick and Marjorie’s relationship. Joseph M. Flora claims, “The
history of Horton’s Bay is also a symbol for the relationship about to end between Nick
12
and Marjorie” (54). Critics such as Joseph DeFalco up the ante when describing the
setting as “a correlative parable of exposition and waste” (41). This shift from symbol to
parable is reflected, for DeFalco, in the dominant physical presence of Horton’s Bay,
which he argues, “in emblematic fashion, foreshadows the whole of the coming story”
(41).
Although true, these observations fail to provide any explanation as to how the
parallel between Horton’s Bay and Nick and Marjorie is actually achieved. Wendolyn
Tetlow fills in some of the gaps by analyzing the imagery of the opening paragraphs,
noting that they convey “barrenness and sterility” (58). “Taken as a whole,” she
continues, “the images in the three paragraphs are the objective correlative for Nick’s and
Marjorie’s relationship, the picture of the schooner piled high with the remains of the
town anticipating their separation” (58). Tetlow’s observations, though astute, still do not
get at the story’s language, particularly its patterns of negation.
Everything readers learn of Horton's Bay is presented negatively: “No one who
lived in it” remains, “there were no more logs to make lumber,” “All the piles of lumber
were carried away,” the “machinery that was removable taken out,” and the “schooner
moved out . . . carrying with it everything that had made the mill a mill and Horton’s Bay
a town” (31). Comparing these descriptions of Horton’s Bay with those of Nick and
Marjorie, readers not only see a parallel between town and people, but also a more
specific parallel of negation, conveyed through diction. Readers learn that “Nick said
nothing,” the fish “aren’t striking,” and “won’t strike” later (32). When questioned about
his feelings, Nick claims, “I don’t know” and that he “can’t help it” (33, 34). He reveals
that love “isn’t fun anymore. Not any of it” (34).
13
Even words that tend to connote presence come to suggest absence. In Horton’s
Bay, “all the piles of lumber,” “all its machinery,” and “all the rollers, wheels, belts, and
iron” are carried way. Everything is negated so that “all” comes to suggest absence, and
“everything” comes to mean nothing. Applying these verbal patterns to the couple’s
relationship, readers see that when “Nick said nothing,” his silence conveys everything.
When he tells Marjorie, “You know everything,” it turns out that she knows nothing; she
is even unaware of Bill’s conspiratorial presence in the bushes. References to knowledge
are thus simultaneous references to ignorance. Tetlow says as much in a passing
reference to “Hemingway’s play on the verb ‘to know’”; specifically, a possible
homonymic pun exists on “know” and “no” (59). This pun culminates in the repeated
word “lying.”
After Marjorie pulls away in the boat, Nick “went back and lay down with his
face in the blanket by the fire” (35). The narrator reiterates this detail in the next
paragraph, indicating that Nick “lay there for a long time.” This detail occurs a third time,
as Nick “lay there while he heard Bill come into the clearing.” When Bill asks if the
breakup went smoothly, Nick responds affirmatively:
“Yes,” Nick said, lying, his face on the blanket. (35)
Given the three preceding references to Nick’s physical position, “lying” seems to be a
fourth reiteration. The line’s construction lends itself to this reading, as “lying, his face
on the blanket” is similar to the prior phrase, “lay down with his face in the blanket.”
However, the subtle shift in the word’s presentation, from “lay” to “lying” makes
possible a connotation of duplicity. Indeed, in a story in which Nick consistently
responds negatively, the unequivocal use of “yes” already seems suspicious. By contrast,
14
the word “lying” in this context is equivocal: the bracketing commas allow the word an
additional meaning so that it can refer to Nick’s physical position as well as to his
deceptive response. When used in the story, then, the word “lying” makes more prevalent
a pun of deceit. Furthermore, the possible pun on “lying” parallels the earlier homonymic
pun on “know” and “no.”
As the story progresses, knowledge becomes increasingly difficult for characters
and readers to acquire. Marjorie does not know why Nick is unhappy. Nick remarks to
her, “You know everything,” but undermines this claim by stating, “I’ve taught you
everything.” According to Nick, everything Marjorie knows is dependent on his tutelage,
which would mean that she knows nothing—or, at least, nothing apart from him. Later,
when Marjorie leaves, she does not know that Bill is in the bushes, and neither do
readers. After Bill appears, readers realize that they, too, have lacked knowledge: though
the story’s title, “The End of Something,” suggests that the relationship will dissolve, it
does not contain information regarding premeditation, thereby leaving readers in the
dark. Finally, the possible pun on “lying” suggests that even Bill lacks knowledge.
Though Nick assures Bill “there wasn’t any scene,” what remains is the equivocal
definition of “scene.” Readers therefore arrive at the end of the story immersed in a world
of negation: one generated through negative portrayals of landscape, relationships, and
the ability to know.
Although a student reading “The End of Something” can certainly infer such
negations by analyzing the story with an eye to its themes of loss and decay, what
concordance mapping does differently is to provide quantifiable evidence that points to
the source of these negations: the story’s language. While this method of reading requires
15
more work on the part of students than does a thematic analysis, this extra effort has
several benefits. The requirement that students read and reread the story has the effect of
improving their familiarity with the text. Concordance data further improves their
familiarity with the text through a reorganization of language into an accessible
framework of repetition. These acts of reading the text thoroughly and verifying its word
patterns using concordance data culminate in perhaps the most significant benefit: the
improvement of critical reading skills. Concordance mapping is therefore a type of selfsharpening exercise, providing specific improvements in a student’s knowledge of how a
text works as well as general knowledge in the skills of critical reading.
III
In The Practice of Reading (1998), Denis Donoghue argues, “most of the defects
of our reading and teaching arise from the fact that we are reading and teaching English
as though our students were already in command of the language” (75). Teachers fail to
recognize that their students come to literary texts ill equipped to address what Donoghue
calls “the opacity of language” (76). According to Donoghue, educators face a glaring
problem: students are currently in need of critical reading skills that can provide them
with a more confident grasp on how to analyze language.
Teachers in search of models of these skills are likely to consult one or more
critical schools, including new criticism, deconstruction, and cultural studies. In new
criticism, the literary text is a coherent, self-enclosed object, or verbal icon; its opaque
language can be analyzed and understood by applying the techniques of close reading,
16
which shed light on a work’s “tension,” “atmosphere,” and “focus.”4 In deconstruction,
the text is not a coherent object but an infinite set of differences; close reading
underscores these differences by revealing the opacity and ultimate indeterminacy of
language. In cultural studies—itself an umbrella term for new historicist, feminist, and
Marxist criticism as well as queer and postcolonial studies—opaque language is often
viewed as a means for transmitting ideology, be it imperialist, sexist, or racist; close
reading can shed light on this opacity and in turn reveal these ideologies.
Each method has its strengths and weaknesses. New criticism has been described
as “eminently teachable” (DuBois 2); however, the method contains vestiges of elitism
given its prevailing concerns with organic unity and literary worth; moreover, the method
is primarily applicable to poetry and is therefore less suited to analyses of novels, films,
and nonfiction. While deconstruction effectively dismisses concerns with organic unity
and literary worth, the method is often difficult for students to comprehend: before they
adequately learn to recognize patterns of language, they are instructed to deconstruct
these patterns. Cultural studies effectively incorporates all forms of verbal
communication, including poetry, novels, plays, films, television shows, and song lyrics;
however, cultural studies is so diverse in its methods and objects of analysis that students
often lack specific instruction in the skills of reading; their critiques of ideology are
therefore hampered by their failure to critique language.
Concordance mapping has the capacity to synthesize new criticism,
deconstruction, and cultural studies within an accessible, teachable, and effective reading
4
See the glossary to Understanding Poetry for these and other New critical close reading terms, pages 683704.
17
method. Concordance mapping borrows primarily from new criticism: it is a form of
close reading that encourages students to examine individual word patterns as a means of
analyzing larger patterns of language. Yet concordance mapping also draws upon
deconstruction. Although concordance mapping encourages identification and analyses of
word patterns, it does not urge students to make claims for organic unity and literary
worth; instead, like deconstruction, concordance mapping emphasizes the perpetual
teasing out of language. Finally, concordance mapping is akin to cultural studies in that
all verbal texts are available for analysis, be they poems or films, novels or newspapers;
because every verbal text features repetition to at least some extent, the possibilities for
concordance mapping are infinite.
The similarities between concordance mapping and new criticism, deconstruction,
and cultural studies are balanced by the differences. Concordance mapping provides a
tool for conducting analyses of language that the other methods lack: concordances.
Although other critical schools have certainly employed concordance tools, none have
advocated for the systematic implementation of a concordance-based method of reading.
Furthermore, although each method employs techniques of close reading, none focuses
primarily on developing skills of slow reading, evidence generation, and concordancebased analysis. Yet because concordance mapping so clearly draws its strength from its
combination of new criticism, deconstruction, and cultural studies, the method works best
as a supplement, not a replacement, to these existing critical methods. Concordance
mapping therefore serves as a starting-point for literary criticism.
18
1) New Criticism
Although new criticism is associated with a handful of critics in the United States
and England in the 1930s and 1940s, including John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth Brooks,
I.A. Richards, T.S. Eliot, Allen Tate, and William Empson, it does not accurately refer to
a homogenous group of individuals; rather, new criticism is what William Harmon and C.
Hugh Holmon characterize as “a cluster of attitudes toward literature rather than an
organized critical system” (345). One of the most influential advocates of these attitudes
was I.A. Richards. In Practical Criticism (1929), Richards argues that literary criticism is
“an exercise in navigation” and that the “whole apparatus of critical rules and principles
is a means to the attainment of finer, more precise, more discriminating communication”
(10). This attainment is achieved through the practice of close reading, which Richards
characterizes in a later work, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936), as “a persistent,
systematic, detailed inquiry into how words work” (23). Concordance mapping, like
Richards’s practical criticism, is an exercise in navigation that enables more precise and
discriminating communication through close reading: critical reading and concordance
data enable students to navigate (or map) texts in terms of word patterns; these patterns
are subsequently analyzed in detail; students then write about their findings and, in the
process, improve their ability to communicate using concrete evidence to formulate
substantiated arguments about literary works.
While concordance mapping is certainly premised on the practice of close
reading, the method does not espouse other new critical concerns with organic unity and
literary worth. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren outline these concerns in
Understanding Poetry (1938). They contend, “all really good poetry,” or literature,
19
“attains its unity by establishing meaningful relationships among its apparently
discordant elements” (695). I.A. Richards echoes these sentiments when instructing
students to pose three questions about a literary work: 1) “What it communicates,” 2)
“how it does so,” and 3) “the worth of what is communicated” (10). By virtue of its
concern with questions of the “what” and “how” of language, concordance mapping is
decidedly new critical in design. However, the third question of a literary work’s unity,
and by extension its worth, are concerns not entailed by concordance mapping. In
concordance mapping, all literary works—be they poems, novels, plays, films, or
television shows—are “worthy” of the type of close scrutiny that critical reading and
concordance data facilitate.
Although concordance mapping does not focus on organic unity and literary
worth, the method can nonetheless serve as an effective supplement to new critical
analysis. In my reading of Hemingway’s “The End of Something,” for instance, I claimed
that patterns of negation pervade the story’s language. This claim involved a series of
new critical underpinnings. I assumed that the story was a complex object that could be
dissected and analyzed; I assumed as well that my analyses could reveal patterns of
language. What I did differently, however, was to use a specific, though relatively
unused, form of close reading: a concordance-based analysis. The creation of a personal
concordance and the use of verifiable concordance data enabled me to generate empirical
evidence of negation: the words “no,” “nothing,” “not,” “without,” “don’t,” “won’t,”
“can’t,” “aren’t,” and “isn’t.” This evidence made for a closer close reading in which
arguments about textual patterns were consistently correlated with evidence of those
patterns. Therefore, in place of new critical terms such as “tension,” “atmosphere,” and
20
“focus,” which students might find vague or confusing, I used concordance mapping to
identify and analyze observable patterns of language.
2) Deconstruction
Although concordance mapping resembles new criticism in its practice of close
reading, the method also finds parallels with deconstruction. Jonathan Culler’s On
Deconstruction (1982) provides an excellent summary of the deconstructive project.
Culler defines deconstruction as “a practice of reading and writing attuned to the aporias
that arise in attempts to tell us the truth” (155). This focus on aporia, or what the OED
defines as “perplexing difficulty,” contrasts with the new critical emphasis on organic
unity. Culler, for instance, observes that “deconstructive readings show scant respect for
the wholeness or integrity of individual works” (220). This jettisoning of requirements
for organic unity allows students of deconstruction more opportunity to investigate any
number of textual patterns, even those that contradict claims for coherence or wholeness.
These opportunities do not suggest an absence of meaning but rather that meaning is
contingent. According to Evan Carton and Gerald Graff, “deconstruction is not about
relativism but relationality, not meaning’s absences but its unruly excesses, not
referential anarchy but what terms mean through complex relations with other terms”
(355).
Jacques Derrida captures these possibilities for relationality in his concepts of the
“transcendental signified” and “play.” The belief in the existence of a transcendental
signified, or a central signified around which a text is constructed, mirrors a belief in
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organic unity. Derrida argues, however, that “the central signified, the original or
transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside a system of difference”
(“Structure” 249). Because no text contains a transcendental signified, texts engender and
readers gain the opportunity for “play.” For Derrida, play is predicated on the
“limitlessness of play” in so far as the “absence of the transcendental signified extends
the domain and the interplay of signification ad infinitum” (Of Grammatology 50). This
infinite play allows for a more comprehensive close analysis. Indeed, Culler observes of
deconstructionists, “Their ‘closeness’ seems to depend on their investigation of
possibilities that would be neglected or eliminated by other readings, and that are
neglected precisely because they would disrupt the focus or continuity of readings which
their elimination makes possible” (246).
Concordance mapping, like deconstruction, encourages play. The difference is
that while deconstruction promotes play, concordance mapping concretely enables it by
providing students with instruction on the use of concordance tools. A concordance, I’ve
said, reorganizes the language of a text into an accessible framework of repeated words.
Considering that a single literary work can span hundreds of thousands of words, this
reorganization means that the opportunity for play becomes all the more accessible. In the
case of Hemingway’s “The End of Something,” for instance, concordance mapping made
more apparent patterns of negation and contradiction, evident in words such as “nothing”
and “don’t” and in the possible pun on “lying.” A student could use this evidence to
engage in deconstructionist play, investigating how word patterns create unresolved
aporias. A deconstructive analysis of the word “lying,” for instance, would shed greater
light on problems of knowledge. Students might also use concordance mapping to
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deconstruct the presuppositions involved in a critical focus on negation. Culler locates
such methodological questioning at the heart of deconstruction. “A literary analysis,” he
observes, “does not foreclose possibilities of structure and meaning in the name of the
rules of some limited discursive practice” (182). Students could therefore further
concordance map Hemingway’s story by analyzing other word patterns that differ from,
undermine, or contradict claims for patterns of negation. Thus, rather than foreclosing
meaning, or providing a totalizing reading, concordance mapping can generate a plethora
of textual evidence that can then be used to deconstruct both the story under analysis as
well as the analysis itself.
3) Cultural Studies
Cultural studies is not a single method of analysis so much as a conglomeration
of methods, theories, and critical perspectives, each of which differently situates the
literary text under examination. David Macey notes in his definition of cultural studies in
The Penguin Handbook of Critical Theory (2000): “There is no one theory of cultural
studies, and the discipline has always been characterized by a high level of eclecticism”
(77). In line with such eclecticism, cultural studies is capable of incorporating
psychoanalytic criticism and new historicism just as easily as it can accommodate
feminist and postcolonial theories. The objects of analysis in cultural studies are similarly
diverse. Terry Eagleton captured this diversity best when asserting that cultural studies
can include everything “from Moby-Dick to the Muppet show, from Dryden and JeanLuc Godard to the portrayal of women in advertisements and the rhetorical techniques of
23
government reports” (180). This diversity in both method and object effectively
dismantles claims for methodological “purity,” for “high” literary culture, and for the
literary “canon,” thereby making possible a more thoroughly historicized, politicized, and
democratized form of literary analysis.
A common criticism leveled against cultural studies, however, is that its
practitioners don’t read with an eye to form—or, more specifically, that they don’t “close
read.” In Close Reading: The Reader (2003), Frank Lentricchia and Andrew DuBois
respond to such claims with the argument that cultural studies practitioners or
“nonformalists who have dominated literary criticism and theory over the last decades of
the twentieth century do their most persuasive work by attending closely to the artistic
character of the text before them” (viv). Matthew P. Brown advances a similar argument
in “How is Cultural Studies Anyway?: Evidence, Discipline, and the Iconographic
Impulse” (2001). Brown sees what he calls the “indigenous history of ‘close reading’
methods within cultural studies scholarship” (60). Using the term “artifact-based
analyses” as a substitute for the contested term “close reading,” Brown advocates for the
practice and “efficacy of text-based analyses . . . for the undergraduate cultural studies
classroom” (63).
A key benefit of artifact-based analysis is that, according to Brown, it “avoids the
top-down pronouncements of the teacher; the artifact becomes the machine to think with”
(63). I’ve made a similar argument for the practice of concordance mapping as means of
encouraging students to develop their sense of critical autonomy. Moreover, because
concordance mapping is an evidence-generating tool, it mirrors artifact-based analysis in
that it occupies a foundational space: it can serve as the starting point for literary
24
criticism. Students can apply concordance mapping to a host of artifacts, including
poems, novels, plays, films, and television commercials. Yet unlike traditional artifactbased analysis, the creation of personal concordances as part of concordance mapping
provides an additional advantage: a plethora of empirical textual evidence that can be
analyzed in support of any number of cultural studies arguments.
A concordance-based analysis of the Hemingway story, for instance, might take a
number of different angles. Students could investigate the story’s use of absolutes and
superlatives—the “all” and “everything” mentioned earlier—to conduct a feminist
reading. The couple’s breakup involves two competing characterizations of Marjorie:
Nick claims “You know everything” yet qualifies this statement with “I taught you
everything.” Students could link this competing use of “everything” to other descriptions
of Marjorie that suggest her competency as part of a larger discussion of gender in the
story. Students might also conduct a Marxist reading of the story by examining further
the parallels between the diction used to describe the economically depressed lumber
town of Horton’s Bay and Marjorie and Nick’s failed interpersonal relationship. Students
might examine as well other word patterns in the story not accounted for by negation;
these words would give rise to additional evidence, new readings, and ultimately greater
knowledge of how the story’s language works.
As these brief examples suggest, when used in conjunction with the three critical
methods described above, concordance mapping may provide an effective means of
teaching and encouraging students to read slowly, to generate textual evidence, and to
analyze evidence in detail. These skills of critical reading and research are the basis of
25
concordance mapping; they in turn make the practice of new criticism, deconstruction,
and cultural studies all the more rigorous and effective.
IV
So far, I’ve introduced and outlined concordance mapping as a reading method,
applied it briefly to a short prose text, and situated it among three literary critical schools.
What remains to be demonstrated is an extended application of concordance mapping that
explicitly highlights its potential influences both inside and outside the classroom. Of the
many forms of literature that can benefit from concordance mapping, the American novel
offers perhaps the most compelling introductory case. The American novel is one of the
most taught forms of literature to undergraduate populations in the United States,
evidenced in part by the plethora of pedagogical handbooks and manuals designed to
provide fresh and exciting teaching perspectives on these texts. American novels are also
the cornerstones of literary criticism in the United States: each year sees the release of
hundreds of academic publications—be they books, journal articles, or entire journal
issues—that tackle these novels from biographical, historical, textual, and cultural
perspectives. Yet despite the number of hours per year devoted to these works both inside
and outside the classroom, the American novel remains one of the most overlooked forms
of literature when it comes to the practice of verbal analysis. Perhaps most telling is the
relatively late emergence of concordances for American novels.
Although concordances for American poetry date from the early twentieth
century, the first concordance for an American novel did not appear until 1974 when
Andrew Crosland released A Concordance to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
26
One reason for the relative absence of novel concordances, especially when compared to
poetry concordances, concerns what Miriam J. Shillingsburg calls a “problem of bulk.”
She argues that the sheer size of novel concordances, which can be up to “six times as
long as the work” itself, have “discouraged in prose writings the kinds of meticulous
scholarship long associated with poetry” (143). It makes sense, then, that it wasn’t until
the advent of computer concordance programs, which made concordance construction
efficient and inexpensive, that the first concordance to an American novel appeared.
The publication of Crosland’s concordance to Gatsby was therefore a milestone in
the practice of prose analysis. Crosland’s Introduction captures the excitement of the
moment:
I hope this concordance will provide the information needed to make
accurate critical judgments, to better understand and appreciate the
‘blankets of excellent prose’ in Gatsby. Indeed, I hope this concordance—
the first to be published for an American novel—will point the way to a
better study of the novel form. Works in this genre are not scrutinized with
the care given to poems, short stories, or even plays. The chief reason for
this relative neglect is that novels are generally longer than works in these
other forms and so are more difficult to study in detail. No doubt,
concordances will be made for many novels and will enable scholars to
give this genre the careful attention it deserves. (xv)
Thirty years later, the Gatsby concordance is out of print, thereby making it inaccessible
to anyone unable to locate a library edition; moreover, few scholars have followed
Crosland’s lead by publishing concordances to other novels. It would seem, then, that
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Crosland’s hopes for “a better study of the novel form” have gone unrealized. As it turns
out, however, the rise of digital libraries and online concordances are quickly
transforming Crosland’s hopes into a reality.
Concordance mapping is one way to bring about a better study of the novel form.
Its combination of critical reading and concordance data enables students to give the
novel, as Crosland suggests, “the careful attention it deserves.” My reading of
Hemingway’s “The End of Something,” for instance, provided some sense of the level of
careful attention made possible by concordance mapping. Within a few short pages, my
reading provided detailed examples of patterns of negation in the story—patterns that
have been overlooked since the release of In Our Time over eighty years ago. This brief
example, though informative, does not provide sufficient evidence that concordance
mapping has the potential to revolutionize the practice of literary pedagogy and
scholarship of prose texts. Therefore, the remainder of this book takes up this task by
providing four extended examples of how concordance mapping, when applied to the
American novel, can extend and improve the practice of prose analysis.
I’ve chosen four novels that span a century of American literature to illustrate the
strength of concordance mapping: Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), Twain’s
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951), and
Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994). These novels figure prominently in
both high school and undergraduate curricula, which makes them excellent candidates for
demonstrations of concordance mapping. The Great Gatsby and Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn are ultra-canonical novels, while The Catcher in the Rye and Breath,
Eyes, Memory, though less canonical, have massive audiences both inside and outside the
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classroom. Catcher, for instance, has sold over 60 million copies since its release in
1951; in 2002, it was the second best-selling “classic” book of the year, with 524,000
copies worldwide.5 Breath was an immediate success upon its release in 1994, earning
Danticat the 1995 Woman of Achievement Award; the novel then saw a boon in sales in
1998 when it became an Oprah Book Club selection. This combination of canonical and
popular novels is designed to appeal to a wide audience of students and teachers in order
to promote greater interest in the method of concordance mapping. The chapters are
similarly strategic: each analyzes a well-known and well-taught American novel to
demonstrate how concordance mapping can extend and improve existing readings by
providing concrete evidence drawn from detailed analyses of observed reiterative word
patterns.
Each chapter employs New Critical, Deconstructive, and Cultural Studies
methods, but to differing extents. Given the method’s underlying presuppositions, the
bulk of each chapter functions as a modified New Critical close reading. I use the term
“modified” as reminder that concordance mapping differs in its 1) use of concordance
tools, 2) emphasis on evidence generation, and 3) concern with pursuit of contingent, not
organic or universal, textual unities as heuristic aids with which to buttress interpretive
arguments. Yet as the Hemingway examples suggest, students can use concordance
mapping as a starting point for Deconstructive or Cultural Studies readings that ground
detailed textual evidence in an historico-political framework. No matter which route they
5
See Carol Jago’s Appendix B: Classic Bestsellers in Classics in the Classroom: Designing Accessible
Literature Lessons (2004). The appendix charts book sales for 2002: The Catcher in the Rye ranked second
with 524,000 copies, The Great Gatsby ranked sixth with 223,000 copies, and Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn ranked fourteenth with 144,000 copies; though it didn’t make Jago’s list, the popularity of Breath,
Eyes, Memory is evident in its wide inclusion in course syllabi across the country.
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choose, these chapters—indeed, this entire book—is designed to foster in students
curiosity and critical acumen, which they can apply not only to American novels but to
any and every form of verbal communication.
Chapter 1 examines Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Although Gatsby is the first
American novel to have a concordance, few readings are available that actually address
the novel’s word patterns. Fitzgerald scholars such as Jackson R. Bryer, Janet Giltrow,
and David Stouck have made calls for language-focused interventions into critical
discourse on Gatsby that examine the ways in which “the smallest units in the language
of the novel function as indicators of its meaning as a whole” (Bryer 123). My goals in
the chapter, then, are to respond to this call and to provide such an intervention.
Throughout the chapter, I use concordance mapping to analyze these “smallest units” of
language as they find expression in a series of word patterns. Using Crosland’s
concordance, I pay particular attention to Nick’s complicated use of retraction and
assertion, to his use of “as if” and “as though” similes, and to his and other characters’
repeated use of superlatives and qualifications such as “absolute,” “all,” “but,”
“everything,” and “small.” These analyses support my argument that the novel’s
language gives rise to a seemingly endless series of oppositions with which readers must
contend as they progress through the novel. The result is that readers come to adopt what
I call a lens of opposition, which allows them to achieve a critical perspective that
Fitzgerald would later characterize in The Crack-Up as “a first-rate intelligence.”
Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer are the basis of chapter 2. Although the language of Huckleberry Finn has
received a fair amount of attention, most recently in Shelly Fisher Fishkin’s Was Huck
30
Black? (1993) and Carl F. Wieck’s Refiguring Huck Finn (2000), surprisingly little
attention has been paid to analyses of language across the two novels; that is, few people
have examined how the language of Tom Sawyer informs the language of Huckleberry
Finn. One reason for this gap in critical discourse is the prevailing viewpoint that
Huckleberry Finn, though the sequel to Tom Sawyer, actually has little in common with
its predecessor. This viewpoint is apparent in the work of Jeffrey Steinbrink, who insists
that Huckleberry Finn is a mere “supplement” to Tom Sawyer that, as it develops, “ceases
in any substantial way to be a sequel” (96). This chapter offers an alternative reading that
expands critical discourse on the novels. I argue that patterns of sequels, or stretchers, are
at work in a series of intra-textual and inter-textual word patterns such as “ransom,”
“orgies,” and “again.” My concordance mapping of these words enables me to argue that
these stretchers are evident at multiple levels of textual construction, including diction,
character development, and plot. These observations in turn support my argument that
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, not in
some limited historical sense, but rather in pervasive structural terms.
J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye has given rise to only scattered articles on
its use of language. According to G.S. Amur, “Despite the large body of Salinger
criticism . . . very few have spoken with the actual literary object before their eyes. The
appeal of The Catcher in the Rye as a psychological, social and philosophic myth seems
to have been far more powerful than its artistic and literary appeal” (11). These glaring
absences suggest an opportunity to intervene by concordance mapping Catcher in order
to shed greater light on its use of language. Chapter 3 concentrates on the language of
Catcher via patterns of narrative ambivalence. I trace the inconsistencies and
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contradictions that construct the ambivalent voice of Holden Caulfield, evident in a series
of word patterns that include “truth” and “phony,” “remember” and “forget,” and the
phrases “and all” and “all of a sudden.” The inconsistencies also include factual errors,
selective narration, lapses in memory, narrative digressions, play-acting, and outright
lying. I argue that these inconsistencies are so numerous and are of such a variety that
readers are thrust into an experience of ambivalence: one that finds them both agreeing
with Holden and disagreeing with him, both trusting him and doubting him, and,
ultimately, both loving the novel and hating it. This reading proves an effective means of
understanding better, not only Holden Caulfield as a character, but also The Catcher in
the Rye as a novel.
Of all the cases I approach with concordance map in this book, Edwidge
Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory is possibly the most receptive. This receptivity stems
from the inordinate absence of critical readings on the novel’s use of language. These
absences are in fact so apparent that Danticat has repeatedly urged readers (be they
students or scholars) to pay greater attention to the complex texture of her prose. In a
2003 interview, Danticat insists, “what I write are novels, not anthropology or social
research”; she then reiterates her claim: “Readers have to remember that we’re writing
fiction, telling stories” (Lyons 187, 190). In chapter 4, I attempt refigure the critical
discourse on Breath by using concordance mapping to diligently analyze the novel’s use
of reiterative words, specifically those that illustrate patterns of confrontation. The
novel’s main female characters—Grandmè Ifé, Tante Atie, Martine, and the
narrator/protagonist Sophie—are confronted by a series of physical and psychological
traumas that they are unable to confront. These struggles with confrontation are mirrored
32
by the reader’s struggle to balance the novel’s historicized presentation of Haitian
women’s traumas with its status as a fictional novel. I argue that both struggles are best
captured in the novel’s language of confrontation, which manifests in words such as
“confrontation,” “face,” and “name.” This reading demonstrates further the efficacy of
concordance mapping as a reading method while also shedding new light on how the
novel’s language of confrontation both constitutes the novel’s characters and influences
its readers.
In the Epilogue, “From Verbal to Visual and Aural Concordances,” I discuss the
wider applications of concordance mapping in the classroom. Once students become
proficient in applying the skills of concordance-based analysis to verbal texts such as
short stories and novels, they can begin applying these skills to a number of visual as well
as visual-verbal texts. I am most concerned with advancing the practice of concordance
mapping in film. The teaching of film is witness to several of the same shortcomings as
the teaching of prose: students tend to lack instruction in slow reading, in evidence
generation, and in detailed analysis. Film study, like the study of prose, is often relegated
to discussions of character, setting, plot, and theme. Language, or more specifically
diction, as a topic is often overlooked. This Epilogue provides a brief discussion of how
concordance mapping may be able to expand both the study and teaching of film by
supplementing existing methodologies.
33
Chapter 1: How The Great Gatsby Works
In 1984, almost sixty years after the first release of The Great Gatsby, Jackson R.
Bryer published an annotated bibliography of Gatsby criticism, “Style as Meaning in The
Great Gatsby: Notes Toward a New Approach.” He begins with the claim: “In the nearly
six decades since its publication, The Great Gatsby has probably elicited more scholarly,
critical, and popular attention than any other modern American novel” (117). Bryer then
traces this criticism decade by decade. In the 1940s and 1950s, when scholarly “study of
Gatsby began,” Bryer observes that critics concentrated on “the American experience”
and on the novel’s “universal themes and appeal” (118). Between 1960 and 1980, Bryer
argues that a good portion of Gatsby scholarship was “comparative and influence studies”
that linked the novel to works such as Milton’s Paradise Lost, Pope’s Moral Epistles, and
Dreiser’s American Tragedy (119). This same period also saw the rise of criticism on
“individual characters” and “symbol patterns” (120); the 1970s gave particular rise to
“bibliographical and textual study” (122). Throughout this detailed bibliography of more
than forty years of Gatsby criticism, Bryer is struck by the relative absence of analyses of
the novel’s language. He traces these absences up to 1984 and notes that almost none of
the Gatsby criticism “deal[s] in any detail with the way in which the smallest units in the
language of the novel function as indicators of its meaning as a whole” (123).
In 2003, almost twenty years after publishing his annotated bibliography on
Gatsby, Bryer co-edited with Ruth Prigozy and Milton R. Stern a collection entitled F.
Scott Fitzgerald in the Twenty-first Century. One of the articles in the collection, Janet
Giltrow and David Stouck’s “Pastoral Mode and Language in The Great Gatsby,” is a
34
language-focused intervention into critical discourse on The Great Gatsby. Giltrow and
Stouck begin by declaring: “we respond to Jackson R. Bryer’s call for a focus on ‘small
units’ of style” (139). The writers follow up their statement by analyzing Fitzgerald’s use
of “lexical repetition” or reiterative word patterns. Giltrow and Stouck’s intervention,
then, is similar in methodology to concordance mapping. The writer’s describe their
method when observing that a “particular word can recur in a text—in different localities,
with different reference—and concordance techniques can calculate those recurrences,
which create a network of interdependencies beyond plot, or argument, or image” (146).
Giltrow and Stouck diligently trace these interdependencies in words such as “electric,”
“lights,” and “thunder,” noting how these verbal collocations create “potential for long
cohesive spans” so that individual “words seem to draw reverberations from the whole
text” (148).
Although Giltrow and Stouck’s intervention provided the necessary first step in
expanding Gatsby scholarship to include analyses of language, the writers admit that
further action is required to ensure the place of such analyses. Given their claim that the
“tensions and complexities of the novel are everywhere and resonant in the language,”
Giltrow and Stouck insist that these tensions and complexities—if they are to become a
topic in critical discourse—“need to be examined as they reach across spans of the text”
(149). This chapter responds to the call of Giltrow and Stouck by further focusing critical
discourse on the language of Gatsby. Like Giltrow and Stouck, I respond to this call by
employing “concordance techniques”; however, this chapter—indeed, this entire
book—goes a step further by proposing concordance mapping as a specific methodology
for the practice and teaching of such “concordance techniques.” If students can learn to
35
apply concordance mapping to Gatsby, a novel that Fitzgerald himself characterized as
intricately patterned, they will gain the confidence to apply these techniques to any
number of intricate texts.
I
In Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World (2002), Michael Holquist adds his name to
the list of critics who have found in The Great Gatsby patterns of opposition. Holquist
specifically addresses Fitzgerald’s use of oxymorons, noting that these patterns are so
extensive that the novel is “governed by the trope of oxymoron” (171). In the process of
concordance mapping the novel, I too found a series of oppositions. Specifically, I
observed that Fitzgerald frequently pits words that indicate perfection against those that
indicate imperfection. These words often find expression in superlatives such as
“everything” and in diminutives such as “small.” A superlative word that especially
caught my eye was “absolute”: the characters Nick, Jordan, Daisy, and Jay each use the
word at least once. In the process of concordance mapping, then, I began assembling two
reiterative wordlists: one contained words that indicate perfection and absolutism while
the other contained words that indicate imperfection and qualification. I then consulted
Andrew Crosland’s concordance to Gatsby and located more superlatives, qualifications,
and related words. This concordance data enabled me to map a series intersecting
reiterative patterns, including “perfect,” “absolute,” “everything,” “more,” “all,” “but,”
and “small.”6
6
See Appendix B.
36
What struck me as odd about my findings is that none of the critical writings I
came across expressed much interest in analysis of these reiterated words. After making
his “trope of oxymoron” argument, for instance, Holquist immediately moves on to
another topic. Instead of pausing to unpack the numerous oppositions present in the
novel’s oxymorons, Holquist abruptly concludes his discussion by noting, these
“oppositions are too obvious to dwell on” (172). While this observation may be true for
Michael Holquist and even for his immediate audience, it is less true for the vast majority
of students reading Gatsby, even those reading with an eye to patterns of opposition. To
some extent, Holquist is right to observe that the novel’s patterns of opposition are
obvious: the novel is both indicative of the 1920s and yet a timeless classic; it stands as
the embodiment of the American Dream but offers a savage critique of it; Gatsby is a
character of profound romantic idealism yet he is also a gangster. What is less obvious,
however, is that these patterns of opposition exist at multiple levels of textual
construction, including diction, narration, and character.
These less obvious patterns suggest that students would benefit from having at
their fingertips an essay that treats in detail some of the patterns of opposition that run
throughout Gatsby; moreover, because Gatsby is one of the most taught American novels,
an extended concordance mapping of the novel can shed light on the method’s
procedures and advantages, thereby increasing the chances that students (or teachers) will
employ concordance mapping in the classroom. The reading that follows is therefore an
extended analysis of several reiterated words in Gatsby, specifically those that highlight
patterns of opposition in the novel. Readers are not consumed by these oppositions so
much as they come to embrace them, emerging as what Matthew Bruccoli describes “as a
37
collaborator or as a co-author” (84). Fitzgerald makes it “incumbent upon the reader to do
this task,” Bruccoli explains, “because the author intersperses true biography with false
biography” (84). Readers embrace the role of collaborator, I would argue, by adopting a
lens of opposition, which allows them to achieve what Fitzgerald would later describe in
The Crack-Up (1936) as “a first-rate intelligence”: “the ability to hold two opposed ideas
in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function” (69).
II
Critics have used a number of terms to account for the novel’s patterns of
opposition: Malcom Cowley uses “double vision” (12), Ross Posnock uses
“ambivalence” (201), Jackson Bryer uses “juxtaposition” and “contradiction” (124), and
Michael Holquist uses “oxymoron” (171). On the most basic level, the term
“ambivalence” suggests a coexistence of contrary attitudes or emotions, “oxymoron”
denotes a contradiction in terms, and a “contradiction” is statement that denies the truth
of another statement. But the terms more polyvalent then these definitions make clear.
Each term therefore brings with it a different set of meanings, which means that the task
of parsing them would involve the creation of a lengthy taxonomy. This taxonomy could
have the effect of substituting an analysis of critical terminology for an analysis of the
novel’s language. While both tasks are certainly important, the former task (i.e., analyses
of critical terminology) would involve the concordance mapping of multiple texts. The
latter task (i.e., analyses of the novel’s language), however, because it involves the
analysis of only a single text, is more effective as an introductory demonstration of the
method of concordance mapping. I’ve therefore chosen to use the term “opposition”
38
throughout the chapter in its widest sense: “A state of contrast or antithesis; the action of
comparing or contrasting one thing to another; a contrary or opposite quality or state.”
(Oxford English Dictionary, def. 7 gen). However, I do return to the issue of critical
taxonomies in the chapter’s conclusion.
The novel’s patterns of opposition are especially evident in two reiterative
patterns: those of perfection and those of imperfection. By “perfection” I am referring to
notions of purity, ideality, completeness, and the absolute. “Imperfection” refers to
patterns that tend away from completeness and the absolute, or somehow undercut these
ideals. I will begin tracing these patterns of perfection and imperfection quite literally by
discussing the words “perfect” and “absolute.”
Thematically speaking, the novel is teeming with oppositions between perfection
and imperfection: between the ideal American dream and its flawed reality, between
memories of a perfect past, realities of an imperfect present, and dreams of an ideal
future. These battles are played out in part in the fictional settings of East and West Egg,
Long Island. Nick explains that these locales are dissimilar in “every particular except
shape and size” with West Egg being “the less fashionable of the two” (9). Yet both Eggs
represent a type of material perfection, be it in Gatsby’s West Egg mansion, which is a
“colossal affair by any standard,” or the Buchanan’s estate, indicative of the “white
palaces of fashionable East Egg” (9, 10).
Within these scenes of opulence, however, are inherent flaws. Nick says that the
Eggs “are not perfect ovals,” but are “both crushed flat at the contact end” (9). This detail
marks the first appearance of “perfect” in the novel—an appearance that stands out in
light of its negation. Both areas resemble and yet do not resemble eggs. Nick observes,
39
“their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly
overhead” (9). The imperfect Eggs also epitomize the greater opposition between
perfection and imperfection: characters strive to attain perfection within locales that, from
a larger perspective, are seen to be imperfect. Though these characters endeavor for
flawlessness, they are literally surrounded by a form of imperfection beyond their control.
Such oppositions are echoed within the characters themselves. Meyer Wolfshiem
describes Gatsby as a “‘perfect gentleman,’” yet readers later learn that Gatsby is a
bootlegger, an accomplice in Myrtle’s death, and a fraud (76). This sense of opposition is
also evident during Jay’s first encounter with Daisy, during which he leans against Nick’s
“mantelpiece in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease” (91). In both instances, an
opposition exists between appearance and reality, be it in the reader’s overall impression
of Gatsby or in specific knowledge of his physical posturing. Daisy’s character is
similarly convoluted. Though she is said to have “an absolutely perfect reputation,” she
commits adultery and manslaughter (82). Once again, truth and falsity are at issue:
Daisy’s perfect reputation is at odds with her imperfect behavior.
The characterization of Daisy as “absolutely perfect,” though technically
redundant, is key for a novel such as Gatsby in which characters work doubly hard at
asserting their flawlessness. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED),
“absolute” can be defined as: “Free from all imperfection or deficiency; complete,
finished; perfect, consummate.” The word also has connotations of religious ideality as in
the related OED definition: “absolved” and “pure.” It has political connotations as well,
including the definition: “absolute power, governing absolutely; unlimited by a
constitution or the concurrent authority of a parliament.” Each connotation is arguably at
40
play throughout novel. At the surface level, however, the word tends to appear within a
different, if not opposed, context. “Absolutely” is, in many respects, common parlance,
and is often used flippantly as a sign of agreement. The word also functions as a class
marker, serving more as an affectation than an overt claim of perfection. This secular and
affected usage takes on increased weight as the novel develops.
The word first appears in chapter one. It is said by Jordan Baker in response to
Tom’s insistence that someone would be a “God Damn fool to live anywhere else” than
the East. Jordan responds: “Absolutely” (15). Readers might notice the subtle association
of “God” with “Absolutely,” given their relative proximity. Readers are also likely,
perhaps at an unconscious level, to draw initially on the religious connotation of
“absolute.” The irony, of course, is that Jordan’s response has even less of a connection
to God than Tom’s previous invocation—a reality that becomes exceedingly apparent as
the conversation develops. Jordan’s use of “absolute,” which Nick explains is “the first
word she had uttered since I came into the room,” not only lacks any connection to
perfection, religion, or power, but also bears almost no relation to the conversation at
hand (15). Moreover, Jordan’s use of “absolutely,” with its connotation of absolution,
works in subtle contrast to Tom’s condemning use of “God damn.” Such flippancy is
evident in Jordan’s second use of “absolute” only tens lines after its initial appearance.
When explaining why she will not visit New York, Jordan insists, “I am absolutely in
training” (15). Jordan’s usage is not only secular in nature but also superfluous and
affected; nevertheless, the word accurately characterizes her.
41
Daisy is the second character to use “absolute.” She does so, like Jordan, in an
affected and superfluous fashion. In the midst of telling rumors about the butler’s nose,
Daisy comments to Nick:
‘I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an
absolute rose. Doesn’t he?’ She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation.
‘An absolute rose?’ (19)
Readers can dismiss Daisy’s statement as indicative of her hyperbolic manner of speech.
Yet if her words are examined closely, it becomes apparent that the phrase “absolute
rose,” even in its repeated insistence, is awkward. Daisy’s actually begins with a halted
assertion, evident in the em dash. She then moves to an assertion of “rose,” modifies the
noun to “absolute rose,” follows with a rhetorical question to Jordan, and then reasserts
the phrase “absolute rose” as an interrogative. These lines are further complicated by
Nick’s immediate aside: “This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose” (19). Nick’s
aside, much like Daisy’s preceding statement, is exaggerated and affected. Both passages
draw into question any certainty as to whether Nick is or is not like a rose, much less an
“absolute” one. Daisy’s insistence on Nick’s “absolute” nature is thus analogous to
Nick’s repeated denial of this nature.
The impression readers are left with, then, is conflicted: hovering somewhere
between Daisy’s hyperbolic description of Nick and Nick’s hyperbolic denial of this
description. The lingering effect, I would argue, is a microcosmic example of the novel’s
larger pattern of opposition. Readers are asked to maintain numerous inconsistent
positions in their minds at the same time. These oppositions are so all-encompassing that
even attentive readers eventually abandon the need to decipher and resolve issues of truth
42
or falsity. At this point, they actually come to accept the perpetual existence of competing
positions, thereby adopting a lens of opposition. Let me stress, however, that readers of
Gatsby, even attentive ones, do not come to adopt the novel’s lens of opposition at the
same time and in the same manner. While the general critical consensus regarding the
novel’s “double vision,” “trope of oxymoron,” and “patterns of linked ambivalence”
attests to the reality that readers are immersed in a world of opposition, it is also true that
each reader comes to the text with a slightly different set of abilities and preconceptions.
While some may recognize the novel’s patterns of opposition in the opening chapter,
others may wait until the last. These differences in the reading experience are possible
precisely because the novel is so complex in its construction that, as Harvey observes,
“wherever the reader enters the book—whatever aspect of it he chooses to
emphasize—his attention is engaged in a series of ever-widening perspectives until the
whole of the novel is encompassed” (94).
We can apply this pattern to Nick’s use of “absolute,” which occurs just two
pages after Daisy applies it to him. In listening to Daisy’s speech on the ruin of her life,
Nick engages in yet another aside contradicting Daisy. He comments to readers: “The
instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, I felt the basic insincerity of
what she had said” (22). The opposition here is between the relative truth and/or falsity of
Daisy’s speech; yet it is also found in the dismissive phrase “ceasing to compel my
attention,” which suggests that Nick’s belief or disbelief in Daisy’s speech is dependent
upon, not the content of her talk, but on whether she happens to be speaking at the time.
Nick continues to question Daisy’s motives and comes to the conclusion that “the whole
evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributary emotion from me” (22).
43
Nick then reads Daisy’s facial expression, only to find further evidence of her duplicity:
“I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her
lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society
to which she and Tom belonged” (22).
Here again an opposition arises between reality and appearance. Given Nick’s
previous second-guessing of Daisy, readers cannot be entirely sure what the smirk
portends; moreover, given Nick’s tendencies toward conflictive narration, it is difficult to
determine if Nick’s characterization of Daisy’s “absolute smirk” is accurate or inaccurate,
sincere or false. For instance, Nick’s use of “absolute,” though certainly exaggerated,
might also underscore his paranoid tendencies. Although his conspiracy theory spans
only one paragraph, Nick nonetheless suggests that Daisy has schemed to ruin his “whole
evening” and that she belongs to a “secret society.” This information becomes even more
dubious when we recall Nick’s earlier confession, “I have no sight into Daisy’s heart”
(10). This line is questionable in light of Nick’s tendency to behave the exact opposite:
that is, to make proclamations regarding the state of Daisy’s heart as well her mind.
Consider, for instance, Nick’s comments regarding the Buchanan’s move East: “This was
a permanent move, said Daisy over the phone, but I didn’t believe it” (10).
Examining Nick and Daisy’s interactions in the order that they occur, a number of
oppositions emerge. Nick begins by admitting his disbelief in Daisy’s claim that her
move East is permanent. He then admits to having no insight into her heart, only to assert
several pages later that her opinions are insincere. Nick then ventures into an exaggerated
if not paranoid aside when suggesting that Daisy concocted a scheme to manipulate him.
He then assesses Daisy’s behavior by depicting her facial expression as an “absolute
44
smirk.” By the time readers reach the phrase “absolute smirk,” they have had to wade
through a convoluted series of narrative oppositions. They have also encountered the
word “absolute” on four previous occasions, each time occurring in a context of flippancy
and exaggeration, thereby contributing further to the overall sense of opposition. As I’ve
been suggesting, these conflicts reach such a fevered pitch that readers eventually adopt a
lens of opposition.
Let me note that I am not suggesting a scenario in which readers encounter so
many oppositions that they come to ignore them. This position seems untenable, for it
would propose that the best readers of Gatsby do not actually read the novel, but rather
learn to skim the work for uncomplicated nuggets of information. Nor am I suggesting
that readers are consciously aware of each and every one of the complicated maneuvers
involved in the novel’s structure of opposition. Matthew Bruccoli reminds us, “Fitzgerald
makes no extreme demands on the reader, which is one explanation for the enduring
appeal of the novel. He does some complicated structural things without making the
reader feel unnecessarily pressured” (84). What I’m suggesting, then, is that readers
gradually come to recognize the novel’s “complicated structural things” by adopting a
lens of opposition. This task does not require “extreme demands” at the conscious level
so much as it requires readers to keep reading.
III
To illustrate these points further, I’ll turn from “perfect” and “absolute” to other
words and phrases that reveal the novel’s structure of opposition. I will begin on the side
45
of perfection and completeness by detailing Nick’s use of superlatives and maxims,
which readers encounter from the novel’s opening:
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some
advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you
feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people
in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” He didn’t say
any more but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved
way and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In
consequence I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened
up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few
veteran bores. (5)
Patterns of perfection pervade Nick’s language, particularly in words such as “all,” which
occurs twice in this passage and 222 times in the novel, or more than once per page. The
first attribution is to Nick’s father, who speaks not of the people in the world but more
expansively of “all the people in this world.” By the same token, Nick is not inclined to
reserve judgments to but reserve “all judgments.” This tactic extends to other words as
well. Nick and his father are not just communicative, they are “unusually
communicative”; Nick is not the victim of bores, but the victim of “not a few veteran
bores”; Nick’s father does not mean more than what he said, but a “great deal more.”
Returning to the word “all,” we see that Nick often uses it multiple times in a
single passage. Consider his description of his intention to return to the status of a “wellrounded man”:
46
now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become
again that most limited of all specialists, the ‘well-rounded’ man. This
isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a
single window, after all. (9)
As with “all judgments,” Nick relies on the superlative when explaining his desire to
bring back not “such things” but “all such things,” not to become a “limited specialist”
but “that most limited of all specialists.” Even more intriguing is Nick’s appended “after
all.” Unlike the standard adjectival form of “all,” the colloquial phrase “after all” both
emphasizes and essentializes the preceding statement. The OED defines “after all” as,
“Hence, after all: after considering everything to the contrary, nevertheless.” Although
the phrase does not indicate perfection, it does tend toward it by transforming Nick’s
single-window opinion into a maxim. Nick therefore immediately enacts his intention to
write “solemn and obvious editorials,” except that his use of “after all” subtly changes
opinion into quasi-truth; indeed, he informs readers, “This is not just an epigram.”
The novel’s lexicon of perfection is echoed in other words such as “more,” which
occurs 74 times in the novel. This connotation of “more” comes to dominate the opening
chapter, as readers infer that Nick, his father, and the subsequent characters introduced
are accustomed to “more,” be it money, houses, education, or “advantages.” As already
noted, Nick’s father does not simply mean what he said, but a “great deal more.” Readers
also learn of Nick’s unknown neighbor, whose house contains “a marble swimming pool
and more than forty acres of lawn and garden” (9). This sense of scale continues as Nick
visits the Buchanan’s and discovers, “Their house was even more elaborate than I
expected” (11). Readers then meet Tom and immediately learn of his demeanor,
47
particularly of his arrogance, which suggests: “‘I’m stronger and more of a man than you
are’” (11).
This lexicon of perfection pervades the speech of other characters such as Daisy,
Tom, Jordan, and Jay. It is evident not only in words like “all” and “more” but in
“everything,” “everywhere,” and “everyone.” Tom’s arrogance is particularly suited to
this type of speech, as in his discussion of racial superiority and Goddard’s “The Rise of
the Coloured Empires.” Tom informs the table that “everybody ought to read it” and that
it contains “all scientific stuff” (17). He reiterates this position a few lines later, insisting,
“Well, these books are all scientific . . . This fellow has worked out the whole thing” (17).
These superlatives continue in Tom’s justification for racism and imperialism, as in his
sweeping generalization: “we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh,
science and art and all that” (18).
Although Nick, Jordan, and Daisy dismiss Tom’s rant, they actually employ a
similar form of superlative speech. When Daisy asks if her friends in Chicago miss her,
Nick responds, “All the cars have left the rear wheel painted black” and “there’s a
persistent wail all night along the North Shore” (14). Though it’s possible that Nick
recognizes the hyperbolic nature of his speech, but it is less clear if Daisy does, as her
immediate response is, “How gorgeous!” (14). She, too, employs superlative flourishes,
such as her insistence that she has been trying “all afternoon” to get to New York (15).
Perhaps Daisy’s most elaborate use of superlatives occurs during her confession to Nick
after her fight with Tom:
48
‘You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,’ she went on in a convinced
way. ‘Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve
been everywhere and seen everything and done everything’” (22)
These lines are so extreme in their tone and construction that they seem parodic. Daisy
uses “everything” or “everybody” a total of five times, not including words like “most”
or the italicized “know.” Her repeated use of “and” adds to the sense of scale, suggesting
that she’s been, seen, and done even more than she’s already told us.
From the preceding examples, it might seem that the novel’s language does not
give rise to patterns of opposition; instead, it appears that that the novel espouses a
rhetoric of perfection. I need merely turn, however, to other passages to reveal subtle yet
insistent strains of imperfection. Although superlatives such as “all” and “always”
crisscross the novel, they are placed alongside diminutives, such as “small,” which occurs
in some form on 36 occasions throughout the novel. These diminutives are especially
concentrated in chapter 2, as Nick crosses from the seemingly perfect sphere of East and
West Egg, Long Island to the undeniably imperfect locales of the valley of ashes and
Myrtle’s apartment. The valley “is bounded on one side by a small foul river,” with
Wilson’s garage located in “a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste
land” (28). Myrtle’s New York apartment consists of “a small living room, a small dining
room, a small bedroom and a bath” (33). The apartment is actually so tiny that, while
Myrtle speaks, “the room grew smaller around her until she seemed to be revolving in a
noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air” (35).
These diminutives have the fairly obvious effect of highlighting the contrast
between rich and poor. Yet the novel’s language actually extends beyond this simple
49
economic contrast so that even superlatives—such as “absolute,” “everything,” and
“all”—become aligned with images of decay, haze, and disintegration. In detailing the
location of Wilson’s garage, for instance, Nick explains that the small yellow brick
building is “contiguous to absolutely nothing” (29). Notice that this conventional
meaning of “absolute” as complete and consummate is reserved for the occasion that it is,
in effect, negated. Upon meeting Wilson, readers discover that a “white ashen dust veiled
his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife”
(30). Here “everything” is veiled until it is figuratively transformed into nothing. This
nothingness is evident in later descriptions of Wilson as a “ghost” who seems literally to
disappear: his ashen body “mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls”
(30). Even Myrtle is described in part through absence: though she is said to have a
“thickish figure,” she is not spared the sweeping assessment that her face “contained no
facet or gleam of beauty” (30). These negations continue in repeated images of haze and
decay. The painting in Myrtle’s apartment, for instance, is said to feature a hen that when
looked at from a distance, “resolved itself into a bonnet” (33). Myrtle’s sister has
eyebrows that give “a blurred air to her face,” while Myrtle’s mother is pictured in a “dim
enlargement” on the wall (34). The air of the apartment is described as “smoky”; by the
same token, Nick claims that his overall impression of the event “has a dim hazy cast
over it” (33). These images of decay and haze are perhaps best captured in the image of a
dog biscuit, which “decomposed apathetically in the saucer of milk all afternoon” (33).
As with “absolutely” and “everything,” the word “all” in this context calls to attention,
not the biscuit’s perfection and completeness, but its decomposition.
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--This intermingling of perfection and imperfection occurs at the phrasal level as
well, specifically in Nick’s blending of assertion with retraction or qualification.
Concordance mapping aids in the identification and analysis of individual words, but it
also aids in analyses of reiterative phrases. Readers, for instance, can search for
qualifications and retractions in Nick’s narration, which are partly evident in words such
as “but” and “however”; readers can concordance map these individual words, link them
to reiterative phrases, and then analyze these words and phrases together as examples of
patterns of opposition. These oppositions occur sometimes literally from word to word as
Nick quickly asserts and qualifies, states and retracts. Take his discussion of the
Carraway family line. He explains, “The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have
a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch” (7). The statement seems
to be an assertion of lineage. Though Nick undercuts the phrase “a tradition” with the
word “something,” the sentence resonates with an air of truth. However, just as quickly
as this truth sets in, it is undercut as the sentence continues: “but the actual founder of my
line was my grandfather’s brother who came here in fifty-one” (7). One might argue that
I’m nitpicking, that Nick is simply presenting two types of truth in a single sentence:
what people believe and what really happened. However, this rhetorical device is so
prevalent that it comes to dominate Nick’s mode of storytelling and, by extension, the
reader’s mode of perception.
When discussing his capacity to reserve judgment, for instance, Nick confesses,
“And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit”
(6). Here the qualifier “limit” directly opposes Nick’s common use of the superlative
51
“all.” The word “limit” in this context therefore reveals Nick’s inability to “reserve all
judgments.” It also suggests his capacity as narrator to hover somewhere between
perfection and imperfection, “simultaneously within and without,” between refraining
from judgment and giving himself over to it entirely. Near the middle of chapter 3, for
instance, Nick actually steps outside the narrative proper to confess his inconsistencies:
Reading over what I have written so far I see that I have given the
impression that the events of the three nights several weeks apart were all
that absorbed me. On the contrary they were merely casual events in a
crowded summer and, until much later, they absorbed me infinitely less
than my personal affairs. (60-61)
Here, use the word “contrary,” like the earlier use of “limit,” qualifies Nick’s previous
and often superlative statements. This passage is therefore indicative of Nick’s narrative
style, which I’ve been arguing perpetually mingles perfection and imperfection, absolutes
and qualifications. Nick’s claim, for instance, that the preceding events of the novel were
“merely casual” simply doesn’t hold up, given that he’s taken a third of the book to relay
them. The suggestion that these causal events didn’t actually absorb him “until much
later” is also flawed, given that readers find themselves almost forcefully reabsorbed in
Gatsby’s story less than five pages after Nick’s claim of disinterestedness. Chapter 6, for
instance, opens by plunging readers immediately into the already convoluted world of
gossip with the line: “‘He’s a bootlegger’” (65). Nick’s vague attribution, “said the
ladies” compounds our confusion by assigning the single line of gossip to an unknown
multiple of female speakers.
52
This confusion is evident as well in Nick’s introductory maxim, “Conduct may be
founded on the hard rock or the wet marches,” which we are encouraged to take as fact
(6). Yet even more interesting is our casual acceptance of Nick’s immediate dismissal of
this maxim. The sentence continues: “but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s
founded on” (6). Yet again, Nick uses the word “but” to qualify a seemingly absolute
statement. Within a single sentence, Nick presents a seeming truth and then suddenly
pulls it out from under us. This complex maneuver might entirely stall another narrative;
in Gatsby, however, these oppositions are allowed to coexist. Take an example from the
same page: “Father agreed to finance me for a year and after various delays I came east,
permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two” (7). This simultaneity of assertion
and retraction is so quick that it is, arguably, beyond conscious notice. Yet the pattern is
actually quite simple: it involves the blending of an assertion, “I came east, permanently,”
followed by a comma that brackets a retraction, or qualification, “I thought,” followed by
another comma and the completion of the sentence. In a third example, Nick details the
amenities of his cottage and informs us, “I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days
until he ran a way” (8). The rhetorical device at play here is again one of assertion and
retraction: instead of “but,” “limit,” or “I thought,” Nick now uses the qualifier “at least.”
He states in four monosyllabic words, “I had a dog”; yet, as soon as the dog enters the
story, it exits with little more than a comma and an “at least” to link its presence with its
absence. This transition enters the reader’s brain for less than a second and is then
forgotten; though, I would argue, not entirely.
Because these textual maneuvers are so complicated and are so diverse, a tool of
analysis such as concordance mapping becomes all the more useful. Its ability to
53
reorganize the novel in terms of reiterative word patterns enables readers to recognize
better the novel’s complex contours; moreover, the method allows readers to quantify and
illustrate these contours with increased specificity. For students, such specificity makes
for more substantiated, and therefore more effective, critical work; for teachers who use
concordance mapping in the classroom, such specificity gives rise to a greater number of
concrete examples to use in conjunction with lecture materials and class assignments. In
this respect, then, the use of concordance mapping in scholarship and pedagogy is
potentially similar to our experience of reading The Great Gatsby; it, too, propels readers
into a heightened state of awareness.
IV
I’ll now turn from these lightning quick narrative conflicts to the types of
oppositions that take longer to develop. I am speaking specifically of Nick’s repeated use
of “as if” and “as though” similes. Concordance mapping helps to reveal lexical patterns,
but it also helps readers to track the use of poetic devices. Simile is frequently used
throughout Gatsby to great effect. Bryer observes, for instance, that the novel’s “similes
manifest all of the characteristics of other small units of style”: namely, “patterns of
linked ambivalence” (127, 124). Although Bryer makes a compelling argument for
Fitzgerald’s general use of simile, the critic does not take into account the almost
inordinate use of the “as if” and “as though” variant categorized by the Chicago Manual
of Style as a “subordinating conjunction of manner,” which denotes “Comparison or
degree” (192).
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To give an example of the sheer prevalence of these similes, let me note that the
word “as” occurs 272 times in the novel; 68 of these occurrences are in the form of “as
if” or “as though,” with a large number, though certainly not all, of these subordinating
conjunctions functioning as similes. These constructions are particularly apparent in
Nick’s depictions of Daisy and Jordan. The two women are first described together,
“buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon” (12). We then turn to Jordan, who
appears “with her chin raised as if she were balancing something on it which was quite
likely to fall” (13). Nick then says that Daisy’s voice is the kind that “the ear follows up
and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again”
(13). These examples span less than two pages in chapter one; moreover, they pale in
comparison to the more convoluted “as if” similes that pervade the entire novel.
To answer those who might dismiss the distinctions between the “as” simile and
“as if” or “as though” constructions, I defer to Jacqueline Vaught Brogan, who cogently
argues that “as if”/“as though” similes signal the “interdependence of what may be called
the unitive and disjunctive tendencies in language” (3-4). She specifically references
Wallace Stevens’s use of the “as if” simile, observing that it “takes away with one hand
what the poet has already given with the other” (11). The result, Brogan argues, is “the
interaction and interdependence of seemingly opposed tendencies in language” (18).
Applying Brogan’s findings to Gatsby, we see that the “as if” and “as though” simile
constructions achieve an effect analogous to Nick’s feeling simultaneously “within and
without” (40). They also capture Fitzgerald’s notion of a first-rate intelligence, which is
at work in the lens of opposition: the “ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the
same time, and still retain the ability to function” (59).
55
These oppositions are apparent in a variety of similes throughout the novel. Nick
makes the first “as if” simile in reference to Gatsby:
If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was
something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the
promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines
that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. (6)
As the sentence unfolds, it meanders so that readers are hard pressed to locate the actual
simile. This confusion is present with almost all of the “as if”/“as though” similes in the
novel. Despite the use of “if,” the clauses are assertive statements, not conditional
propositions. They read like facts so that 1) personality is an “unbroken series of
successful gestures,” 2) there was “something gorgeous” about Gatsby, and 3) he did
possess a “heightened sensitivity.” Upon encountering the simile, readers are likely to
regard it, too, as fact. The simile’s construction aids in the likelihood of this response.
The conditional “as if” makes less overt Nick’s comparison between Gatsby and
machine—a comparison that, if it were overt, would seem contradictory if not detrimental
to Nick’s romantic characterization of Gatsby. The passive phrase “were related”
elongates and thus obscures the simile. The phrase “intricate machines that register
earthquakes ten thousand miles away” achieves a similar effect: instead of using the
precise term “seismograph,” Nick’s language meanders so that the simile is almost lost.
Readers reach the end of this sentence, I would argue, largely unaware of the mental
gymnastics they have just performed: they have accepted that Gatsby is a man with a
heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, and that this sensitivity is somehow
akin—and yet simultaneously not akin—to an unfeeling and unthinking machine that
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possesses a heightened sensitivity to seismic activity. Readers assimilate this information
rather easily so that the simile’s oppositions never consciously register as such; they
therefore move forward in the narrative with little apparent difficulty.
Another interesting simile occurs during Jay and Daisy’s initial reunion, during
which Nick finds himself standing awkwardly outside his own home. Upon reentering, he
discovers the following scene between Jay and Daisy:
They were sitting at either end of the couch looking at each other as if
some question had been asked or was in the air, and every vestige of
embarrassment was gone. (94)
The simile is yet again difficult to pinpoint. Upon first glance, the line doesn’t appear to
contain a simile, but rather seems to be a straightforward description of the scene. Unlike
the earlier comparison of man with machine, this instance makes no associations between
characters and animate or inanimate objects. Instead, readers are asked to compare an
actual scene (how Jay and Daisy are looking at each other) with an imagined one (how
Nick imagines Jay and Daisy are looking at each other). The simile resides in this
imaginative comparison. The reality of the scene, as far as readers can tell, is that Jay and
Daisy are staring at one another from opposite ends of the couch. Readers have no clear
notion of what has transpired, nor do they know what their look actually portends; more
importantly, neither does Nick. He nevertheless attempts to describe the scene by
imposing upon it an imagined event: that “some question had been asked or was in the
air, and every vestige of embarrassment was gone.” This simile gives rise to an
opposition between the characters’ physical position (distant and seated apart from one
another) and their supposed mental state (showing no “vestige of embarrassment”).
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However, readers are not likely to recognize these discrepancies because they are
presented in a similarly elongated and obscured manner. Readers are therefore left to
assimilate two conflicting bits of information: Nick’s objective narration of the scene and
his imagined perception of its significance. In a sense, both are “true”; at the very least,
both are relevant to the narrative, and both contribute to the reader’s perception of the
characters, the larger scene, and the overall novel.
I’ll conclude with two related similes. After listening to Jay talk about his
encounters with Daisy five years prior, Nick offers an extended aside on how Gatsby’s
speech affected him:
Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was
reminded of something—an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that
I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to
take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though
there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they
made no sound and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable
forever. (118)
Here the simile is so elongated that it, in effect, is never made. Nick gestures toward it,
using the “as though” formulation to draw a tentative association between “a wisp of
startled air” and the “more struggling upon” his lips. But the formulation is also
dissociative: not a simile so much as an estrangement. Readers are not asked to consider
the “wisp of startled air” as X, but as not X, as less than X. All similes in some way make
this same maneuver, but Fitzgerald’s combined use of the “as though” and “more” makes
even more palpable the sense of un-identification. The simile is itself couched within a
58
larger context of ambiguity and opposition. Nick’s uses the superlative “all,” which
gathers Gatsby’s entire story “even . . . his appalling sentimentality,” into one
undifferentiated mass. He then responds to this mass by recalling “something”—an
already vague attribution. He then describes the “something” as “elusive, as a
“fragment,” and also as “lost.” Although Nick remembers having heard this fragment
“somewhere” before, he admits it was “a long time ago.”
Nick has, in effect, recalled nothing. Though he regards the recollection with a
certain magnitude, he has nevertheless conveyed no real information to readers. The
sheer vacuity of the moment is exacerbated when Nick progresses from an
underdeveloped recollection to an equally underdeveloped speech act. He begins by
noting that, “for a moment,” the phrase “tried” to take shape. The site of this shaping, it
seems, is twofold: “my mouth and my lips,” yet just as soon as readers connect the two
images they are made to sever them, realizing that the “mouth” is solely responsible for
shaping the phrase while the lips are reserved for parting. At this point, readers encounter
a clear simile: “my lips parted like a dumb man’s.” The simile depicts a speech act via an
image of muteness—an image that readers will soon see is quite appropriate. This direct
simile is butted up against the “as though” construction, which itself only partially links
the “wisp of startled air” with the amorphous “more.” The conditional nature of this
simile is so overt that the association is denied before it is ever made. As readers enter the
final line, they discover that the air “made no sound” and, thus, the speech act is indeed
“like a dumb man’s.” Then, just when Nick’s use of qualification seems unbearable, he
ups the ante by specifying that this soundless air is part and parcel of the initial unformed
59
recollection, which was not only “almost remembered” but is now seen to be
“uncommunicable forever.”
Nick adds yet again to this confusion when employing a variation of the “as if”
simile toward the novel’s end. As Nick recounts the story of Gatsby’s first encounter with
Daisy, the scene comes to rest on the image of Gatsby on a train, stretching his arms out
to grasp some part of the “vanishing city” where Daisy “had drawn her breath” (160).
Nick goes on to explain:
He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to
save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was
all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost
that part of it, the freshest and the best forever. (160-161)
This second passage is striking in its similarity to the first: both employ a similar diction,
including “wisp of air,” “fragment,” “lost,” and “forever”; both detail a scene in which
characters strive to capture something transcendent; both conclude with the character’s
inability to grasp this elusive fragment, which eventually reveals itself to be lost forever.
Yet these parallels are intersected by key differences. Though the similes involve the
similar phrases “wisp of startled air” and “wisp of air,” this language is employed to
differing ends. In the first instance, Gatsby’s speech prompts Nick to recall an “elusive
rhythm” that he attempts to articulate, but which turns out to be nothing more than a
soundless “wisp of startled air” (118). The second instance concerns Gatsby’s literal and
failed attempt to snatch a “wisp of air” from the “vanishing city”—the air that Daisy
breathes. Nick’s failure is symbolized by the air itself, which he is left with, while
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Gatsby’s failure is also symbolized by the air, but by his loss of it. Thus, Nick strives for
“more” than the wisp of air, while Gatsby seeks to capture “only” it.
V
I could go on at this point to identify and analyze the various oppositions inherent
in each of novel’s main characters. However, it seems best to focus my efforts on Gatsby,
the character with whom the novel’s conflicts achieve their most extreme articulation.
Readers must ultimately view Gatsby through a lens of opposition, if they are to view
him at all. This requirement stems from Nick’s unrelentingly inconsistent presentation of
the character.
Much of this inconsistency stems from Nick’s lack of knowledge, which he both
admits to and yet elides. On one hand, Nick’s narration is confident, as with concluding
assertions such as, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by
year recedes before us” (189). Here Nick offers insight not only into the heart of the
novel’s title character but also into the human experience. Yet all too often Nick
undercuts his authority by admitting his ignorance of Gatsby’s thoughts, feelings, and
motivations. This sense of uncertainty is evident in Nick’s language, particularly in
repeated use of qualifications such as “I think,” “I suppose,” “I gathered,” and “I
guessed.” These qualifications frequently occur in reference to Gatsby. Here are a
handful examples, which I gleaned through by combining close analysis with
concordance data: “I think he reevaluated everything” (96), “I think that voice held him”
(101), “I think he would’ve acknowledged anything now” (155), “I suppose he had the
name ready for a long time” (104), “I suppose he smiled at Cody” (106), “There must
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have been moments” (101), “he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world”
(169), “He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky” (169), “I gathered that he wanted to
recover something” (117), “I guessed at his unutterable depression” (116), “I guessed at
the truth” (151).
Nick’s lack of knowledge is compounded by his relative immaturity, which
manifests in his tendency to vacillate in his opinions on Gatsby. Specifically, Nick spends
the entirety of the novel alternating between believing and supporting Gatsby and
disbelieving and disparaging him. Nick actually highlights this tendency when admitting
to “believing everything and nothing” about Gatsby (107). Such vacillations occur during
the pair’s first encounter. Nick’s descriptions are tender and wondrous, telling us that
Gatsby “smiled understandingly” and that he possessed “one of those rare smiles with a
quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life”
(52). Later, as Gatsby surveys the crowd from his marble steps, Nick admits that he
“could see nothing sinister about him” (54). It doesn’t take long, however, for rumor and
gossip to corrode this initial impression, leading Nick to retract his characterization.
Based on Gatsby’s hurried discussion of Oxford and his sidelong glances, Nick questions
“if there wasn’t something a little sinister about him after all” (69). The repetition of
“sinister” is key: in the span of 15 pages, readers progress from “nothing sinister” to
“something a little sinister.” This transition is also confusing, given that Nick doesn’t
change his opinion so much as complicate it: first offering a clear negation then a
muddled assertion.
These oppositions are compounded only two pages later when Gatsby relates the
story of his escapades in Montenegro, complete with souvenir medals. Based on this
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evidence, Nick wavers yet again, as his “incredulity was submerged in fascination” (71).
Upon seeing a photo of Gatsby at Oxford, Nick concludes: “Then it was all true” (71).
(Note Nick’s use of the superlative.) Nick’s fascination takes over, submerging his
incredulity even further in imaginary evidence. He waxes, “I saw the skins of tigers
flaming in his palace on the Grand Canal; I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease,
with their crimson-lighted depths, the gnawings of his broken heart” (71). Though this
passage is the stuff of imagination, it nonetheless possesses an air of reality, partly
achieved through Nick’s use of parallelism with “I saw” and his repetition of red images:
“tigers flaming,” “chest of rubies,” and “crimson-lighted depths”—all of which add a
level of formal consistency to lines that are patently false.
Nick continues to vacillate in his impression of Gatsby up until the moment of
their final encounter, during which Nick intimates to readers, “I disapproved of him from
beginning to end” (162). This superlative statement is interesting given that it occurs
immediately after Nick’s comment to Gatsby: “‘They’re a rotten crowd . . . You’re worth
the whole damn bunch of them put together’” (162). This compliment seems to suggest
Nick’s approval of Gatsby—an approval made at the expense of disapproving of
everyone else. Although Nick insists, “It was the only compliment I ever gave him,” he
does not suggest that the compliment is a lie. He also does not comment that this “only
compliment” is limited to Nick’s conversations with Gatsby; it therefore does not include
the commentary Nick has offered readers all along—commentary that highlights the
oppositions between what Nick has said to and what he has said about Gatsby. Nick
nevertheless suggests that his views of Gatsby are largely consistent, as when observing
that the pair’s final encounter is similar to the first: Nick notes that Gatsby “broke into
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that radiant and understanding smile” reminiscent of “the night when I first came to his
ancestral home” (162). The phrase “understanding smile” nicely echoes, in terms of both
content and form, Nick’s initial impression that Gatsby “smiled understandingly” (52).
The validity of Nick’s observation, however, is undercut by an invalid
observation: Gatsby’s West Egg mansion is not his “ancestral” home. The mansion has
no familial connection whatsoever, not with Gatsby’s father Henry Gatz in Minnesota,
nor even with his deceased father figure Dan Cody. Readers would even be hard pressed
to suggest that the home is “ancestral” in that it contains vestiges of Gatsby’s selfconception and rebirth from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby, given that Gatz is said to have
changed his name “at the age of seventeen” (104). Finally, the word’s use is further
complicated given that its only other appearance in the novel, as “ancestors,” occurs in
the context of Gatsby’s lie that he was “educated at Oxford because all my ancestors have
been educated there for many years” (69). Just as Gatsby’s Oxford ancestors are complete
fabrications, so too are any suggestions that Gatsby’s mansion is his ancestral home. As
with the entirety of the novel, readers are confronted with an opposition between truth
and falsity, reality and imagination. They could, in the process of reading, pause to
unpack the oppositions present in a single word such as “ancestral”: it’s clear that
Gatsby’s is lying when referring to his Oxford “ancestors,” but it is less clear if Nick’s
use of “ancestral” is deceptive or delusional. At some level of consciousness, readers
recognize the problems with Nick’s use of “ancestral,” yet they are able to move on
because they have learned to read the novel, not as sleuths in search of a definite answer,
but as possessors of a “first-rate intelligence”—one that allows them to accept opposition.
In the end, it matters little if Gatsby’s house is truly “ancestral” or not; what matters is
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how the perception of “ancestral” and its attendant oppositions affect the reading
experience.
VI
Throughout this chapter, I’ve focused on analyses of the novel’s language as part
of a response to the calls of Jackson R. Bryer, Janet Giltrow, and David Stouck. As I
suggested in both sections one and two, an analysis of its language would effectively
expand critical discourse on Gatsby while also demonstrating the efficacy and
pedagogical usefulness of concordance mapping. This focus required that I use
“opposition” as a catchall term to defer the meta-critical discussion of the critical lexicon
deployed in Gatsby scholarship. The term also served to cover the range of meanings in
that lexicon, which includes, as I mentioned in section two, “oxymoron,” “contradiction,”
“ambivalence,” “juxtaposition,” etc. Though I’ve chosen not to pursue such a discussion
for the purposes of this chapter, an analysis of the critical lexicon used in Gatsby
scholarship—both its consistencies and inconsistencies—would offer much meta-critical
insight.
In as much as Gatsby scholarship constitutes a set of texts, and given that, as I’ve
argued in the Introduction, concordance mapping is an evidence-generating tool for
textual analysis, the method is well suited to use in such meta-critical analyses. One
could, for instance, concordance map the relevant work of the critics mentioned above,
including Jackson Bryer, Michael Holquist, Douglas Taylor, and Ross Posnock. This
analysis would examine the internal consistency of each critic’s use of her or his chosen
term or terms. It could also investigate in detail how, for example, Bryer’s use of
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“juxtaposition” differs from and/or informs Holquist’s use of “oxymoron.” The latter of
these tasks involves a concordance mapping of two texts, with an eye to their intertextual reiterative word patterns.
In chapter two, “Sequels and Stretchers in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” I
provide an extended example of such inter-textual concordance mapping by examining
the ways in which the language of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer informs the language
of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This next chapter also provides further demonstration
of intra-textual (or single text) concordance mapping.
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Chapter 2: Sequels and Stretchers in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Every time I read Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), I’m
struck by the novel’s opening sentence: “You don’t know about me, without you have
read a book by the name of ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,’ but that ain’t no matter”
(2).7 I’ve always found it odd that Twain begins the novel by having his protagonist Huck
Finn make explicit reference to his role in Twain’s earlier novel, The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer (1876). Yet even more bizarre is the concluding clause, “but that ain’t no matter.”
In twenty-four words, Huck incites the reader’s curiosity by explaining that the present
narrative is a sequel yet dismisses this knowledge as unnecessary. The question I always
had is, if Huck Finn is the sequel to Tom Sawyer how could that not matter? If it does
matter, then it seems probable that a student familiar with both novels could observe,
beyond the opening sentence of Huck Finn, ways in which the sequel—specifically, the
language of the sequel—is informed by the language of its predecessor. I had this
question of sequels in mind most recently when concordance mapping both Huck Finn
and Tom Sawyer.
Unlike my concordance mapping of The Great Gatsby, I did not concordance map
Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer and then develop an argument about patterns of language;
instead, I began with a specific query that led me to observe some words more than
others. While concordance mapping Huck Finn, for instance, I searched for words that
suggested repetition: because a sequel is a continuation or quasi-repetition of a text, it
7
All references to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are drawn from the
Oxford Mark Twain facsimile editions.
67
seemed likely that the novel’s language would—as it does in the opening
sentence—make reference to its status as sequel. In the course of reading and underlining
words in the text, I discovered that the word “again” occurs on almost every other page;
after consulting Amazon’s Concordance, I found even more occurrences of the word
“again”: 175 times in 359 pages. When concordance mapping Tom Sawyer, I took a
different route: instead of searching for words of repetition, such as “again,” I looked for
words that occur in Tom Sawyer and then reoccur in Huck Finn. The distinction here is
between intra-textual repetition (how a word repeats in a single text) and inter-textual
repetition (the repetition of a word across multiple texts). Yet again, I combined manual
reading and personal concordance construction with verification from Amazon’s
Concordance for Tom Sawyer. This search led me to discover that, beyond the number of
common words that occur in both texts, the unlikely words “ransom” and “orgies” do as
well.8 My success in locating repeated words spurred me to search for repeated images
and scenes. I found three: 1) Pap breaking his arm, 2) Huck fishing for bread, and 3)
wagonloads of gold.
These intra-textual and inter-textual repetitions suggested that Huck Finn was not
only the sequel to Tom Sawyer but that I could use concordance mapping to generate a
detailed reading that provides evidence for this relationship. Some evidence for this
sequel relationship immediately suggested itself. Both novels use the generic indicator
“adventures” in the title, while the subtitle to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, “Tom
Sawyer's Comrade,” emphasizes the continuity of Huck Finn from the Tom Sawyer.
Huckleberry Finn literally begins where Tom Sawyer ends, and therefore features several
8
See Appendix C.
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of the same characters, among them Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Aunt Polly, Judge
Thatcher, and the Widow Douglas. Biographical evidence further secures the status of
Huckleberry Finn as sequel. Twain began the novel in the summer of 1876 while
reviewing galley proofs for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. As Walter Blair remarks,
“Tom Sawyer was much on its author’s mind that summer” (99). In 1884, upon
completing the manuscript for Huckleberry Finn, Twain remarked to William Dean
Howells, “Although I mean to publish Huck in a volume by itself, I think I will also jam
it & Sawyer into a volume together at the same time, since Huck is in some sense a
continuation of the former story” (qtd. in Steinbrink 87). Finally, the narrator of Tom
Sawyer even prepares readers for a sequel when suggesting, “Someday it may seem
worth while to take up the story of the younger ones again” (275).
This evidence of led me to review the critical history on the relationship between
Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Although critics recognize parallels between the two novels,
the consensus tends to be that Huckleberry Finn is qualitatively different in both style and
subject matter from Tom Sawyer, and is therefore not really a sequel. At best, then,
Huckleberry Finn is what Jeffrey Steinbrink calls a “supplement” to Tom Sawyer (86).
This shift from “sequel” to “supplement” highlights, not the formal and substantive
parallels between Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, but rather “the real line of
demarcation between Tom’s book and Huck’s” (Steinbrink 94). And because this
position is relatively established, it is not uncommon to find critics such as Steinbrink
asserting that Huckleberry Finn “ceases in any substantial way to be a sequel to Tom
Sawyer” (96).
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This “line of demarcation” is also present in the classroom. In Making Mark
Twain Work in the Classroom, James S. Leonard provides compelling polling evidence
that teachers most commonly pair Huckleberry Finn, not with Tom Sawyer, but with texts
written by authors other than Twain. Leonard explains, “the greatest frequency of
responses indicated works related to the racial context [of the novel]: Uncle Tom’s Cabin,
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, other slave narratives, Charles Chestnutt’s
short story ‘The Goophered Grapevine,’ and Joel Chandler Harris’s ‘Free Joe and the
Rest of the World’” (11). When asked what works teachers use by Mark Twain other than
Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer ranked third behind A Connecticut Yankee in King
Arthur’s Court and The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson. Even when taught alongside
Huckleberry Finn, evidence suggests that teachers most commonly use Tom Sawyer “to
provide background for Huck’s narrative and to highlight differences that reflect
interestingly on both novels” (21).
These critical and pedagogical gaps provided me with further incentive to
concordance map the novels in terms of their intra-textual and inter-textual reiterative
word patterns. This chapter therefore provides a response not only to Jeffrey Steinbrink,
who claims that Huck Finn is the "supplement” to Tom Sawyer, but to Twain scholars
and teachers everywhere who claim or have concentrated so heavily and so consistently
on “differences” between the novels. Therefore, because critical and pedagogical
discourse on Twain has historically divided Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, this chapter acts
to link the two novels and to refigure the prevailing critical discourse. This intervention
proffers that Huck Finn is not only the sequel to Tom Sawyer in a historical sense, but
70
that its status as sequel is achieved along both intra-textual and inter-textual lines via
reiterative word patterns.
I
Intra-textual Reiterative Words
The sequel status of Huck Finn is dependent in part upon the novel’s repeated use
of “again.” The final word of Tom Sawyer is “again.” In the work’s Conclusion, the
narrator informs readers: “Someday it may seem worth while to take up the story of the
younger ones again” (275). In some ways, then, Huckleberry Finn is premised on this
concern with again-ness.
Huck’s day-to-day actions, for instance, are especially repetitive. When the novel
opens, readers discover that Huck’s life has changed little since the conclusion of Tom
Sawyer. Yet even as the novel develops, Huck’s new adventures reveal a strong element
of repetition. The second paragraph of Chapter 1, for instance, shows Huck returning to
his old ways. Unable to cope with the Widow’s rules, Huck tells readers, “I got into my
old rags, and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied” (17). But Huck soon
returns to the Widow’s, only to find himself performing another type of repetition: “She
put me in them new clothes again” (18). The passage feels so much like a sequel that
Huck even admits, “Well, then, the old thing commenced again” (18). Later, after being
kidnapped by Pap, Huck returns yet again to his previous lifestyle. He informs readers: “I
had stopped cussing, because the Widow didn’t like it; but I now returned to it again
because pap hadn’t no objections” (47).
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Pap Finn plays a significant role in Huck’s repetitive behavior, serving as a key
source of his son’s anxiety and physical harm. After Huck finds Pap’s shoeprint in
chapter 3, he tells readers: “So I was uncomfortable again. I judged the old man would
turn up again by-and-by, though I wished he wouldn’t” (30). When Pap does reappear,
readers discover Huck’s difficulty in ridding himself of his father. After chastising Huck
for learning how to read, Pap exits in trademark fashion through the window. Yet his
tirade is far from over:
When he had got out on the shed, he put his head in again, and cussed me
for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when I reckoned
he was gone, he come back and put his head in again, and told me to mind
about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick me if I
didn’t drop that. (42)
Not only does Pap repeatedly “come back” to curse Huck, but the language of this
passage is such that it feels circular. We are told that Pap “put his head in again”; Huck
then repeats this phrase verbatim upon Pap’s second return, saying that he “put his head
in again.”
Even after Huck escapes from Pap, readers are still led through a series of
repetitive situations. Huck vacillates for the bulk of the novel from a state of calm to one
of chaos and then back again; these shifts are mirrored in his frequent use of “stretchers”
or lies: he often shifts from telling a lie to almost getting caught to getting away with it. It
is not surprising, then, that several of Huck’s repetitions consist of two related uses of
“again.” Huck either enters a dangerous state: “So I was uncomfortable again” (30), “Jim
and me was in a sweat again” (168), “I see I was up a stump again” (223), “well I was
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gone up again” (224), and “there I was, up a stump again!” (358); or he returns to a
relatively safe state: “then I got easy again,” “I see I was out of the woods again” (222),
and “it did seem so good to be free again” (260).
The word “again” also plays a role in the lives of other characters such as Pap and
Jim. Pap, like Huck, is caught in a series of daily repetitions. In this case, his inveterate
drinking is often coupled with verbal tirades. Huck tells readers that Pap “cussed
everything and everybody he could think of, and then he cussed them all over again”;
later, after another round of drinks, Pap “went to ripping again” (46, 49). These tirades
concern Pap’s discontent with local authorities, such as Judge Thatcher. When Thatcher
denies Pap access to Huck’s money, Pap claims that he will change his life through
relocation: “for two cents I’d leave the blamed country and never come anear it again”
(49). Then, upon learning that a former slave is able to vote in Ohio, Pap opts to change
his level of political involvement; he twice insists, “I’ll never vote agin” and “I’ll never
vote agin as long as I live” (50). Pap, however, is unable to effect either of these changes,
choosing instead to continue his lifestyle of drunkenness.
Jim’s life is also dominated by repetition, specifically the cycles of slavery and
poverty. The first cycle seems relentless, with Jim being under the constant and quite real
fear of re-enslavement: “he didn’t want nobody to pick him up, and take him into slavery
again” (150). Following their separation in the fog, for instance, Huck and Jim recognize
“the same old river again,” which means that Jim must be “in the slave country again”
(123). Jim nonetheless remains hopeful: “he set down again, and went to watching, same
as before” (123). Jim’s hope of freedom is related to his conviction that, once free, he
will break the cycle of poverty. While on Jackson’s Island, Jim tells Huck of his financial
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dreams, and here again they are circular: “I ben rich wunst, and gwyne to be rich agin”
(73). Unlike Pap, who becomes mired in repetition until his death, Jim actually succeeds
in breaking the cycles of slavery and poverty, though, one could argue, only tentatively.
Jim is set free following Miss Watson’s death, yet he remains a slave for an additional
two months. By the same token, though Jim does receive forty dollars from Tom, he
remains relatively poor by the novel’s end. Jim nonetheless considers the forty dollars as
the fulfillment of his earlier prediction of wealth. Just before exiting the novel, Jim
exclaims: “I tole you I ben rich wunst, en gwineter to be rich agin, and it’s come true . . .
and I knowed jis’ ’s well ’at I ’uz gwineter be rich agin as I’s stannin’ heah dis minute!”
(365). Jim is, then, in many ways the only character to effect real change by the novel’s
end: Huck plans to continue his adventures, only this time in the “Territory”; Pap
continues drinking and only stops this cycle by getting killed; Jim, however, both gains
his freedom as a human being and experiences a financial boon, which he plans to put
toward buying his wife and children out of slavery. In this way, Jim arguably sets himself
apart from the other characters: though he is like them in that he too tells “stretchers,”
Jim is the only character who seems capable of changing his life.
--The telling of “stretchers” by the majority of the novel’s characters, including
Huck, Tom, Jim, Pap, the king, the duke, and even Aunt Sally, serves as further evidence
of the Huck Finn’s status as a sequel. These connections are made clear in the novel’s
opening paragraph:
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You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of
“The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” but that ain’t no matter. That book was
made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things
which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never
seen anybody but lied, one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or
the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and
Mary, and the Widow Douglas, is all told about in that book—which is
mostly a true book; with some stretchers, as I said before. (17)
The narrative opens with an intriguing premise: Huck, a fictional character in a novel
written by Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, has managed somehow to read
the very book in which he was created; Huck then becomes an author, employing himself
as both narrator and character along with most of the cast of the previous novel. Huck has
thus written a sequel to Tom Sawyer. Yet Huck does not merely desire to copy the former
novel. In this respect, I agree with Brander Matthews that “Huckleberry Finn is not an
attempt to do Tom Sawyer over again” (22). Instead, Huck openly suggests that his sequel
is different from Tom Sawyer in that it is better than the original novel. Although readers
are informed from the beginning that Huck is a character in Tom Sawyer, they are also
told that this novel is somewhat inconsequential: “but that ain’t no matter.” Huck then
ups the ante when positing himself as a better liar, or teller of “stretchers,” than Twain.
After admitting that Twain’s novel contained “things which he stretched,” Huck
flippantly asserts, “That is nothing.” The novel is therefore premised on an open
challenge by a fictional character to his own author.
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A key element of this challenge is the “stretcher.” The sequel itself is a stretcher
in the sense that Huck “stretches” one novel into two through his open continuation of
Tom Sawyer, now titled Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The sequel is also stretched in
terms of length: Huckleberry Finn spans 359 pages, making it a full third longer than the
260-page Tom Sawyer. The premise of this sequel—that of a fictional and newly literate
character managing to write his autobiography—is also a type of stretcher in that the
novel’s premise is, at all times, entirely fictional.9 Within Huck’s sequel, readers are also
told to expect a greater utilization of the “stretcher” as a storytelling mode, as evidenced
by Huck's claim "That is nothing." The novel is therefore structurally premised on two
types of stretchers, inter-textual and intra-textual, which are similar in nature to the
reiterative word patterns in the novels.
Intra-textual stretchers are evident the dozens upon dozens of lies told by
numerous characters throughout Huck Finn. Jim is one such character. Although Jim is
far from being the morally corrupt king or duke, he is nonetheless a skilled purveyor of
stretchers. Jim’s stretching skills are evident in his increasingly “stretched” tale of
bewitchment, which in reality is nothing more than practical joke by Tom. While this tale
employs the word “again” only once, it conveys a sense of circularity throughout, evident
in words such as “next” and phrases such as “more and more.” Jim first says that the
“witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State, and then
set him under the trees again and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it” (23). He
then stretches the story outside the bounds of Missouri: “And next time Jim told it he said
9
In discussing “Huck’s sequel,” I am, admittedly, doing so in the context of the novel’s fictional premise;
the reality is that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is Mark Twain’s sequel to his own The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer. The most impressive stretcher of all, then, is Twain’s ability to convince readers that
Huckleberry Finn is not only a narrator and character but an author as well.
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they rode him down to New Orleans” (23). Jim’s third stretch takes on international
importance. This stretcher is actually so extreme that Huck calls attention to its sheer
scope: “every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by-and-by he said they rode
him all over the world” (24). The word “spread” in this context is synonymous with
“stretch” in that both connote a type of deceit. George Monteiro agrees that “spread”
“recalls, beyond the sense of elaborating or disseminating, the notion of spreading stories
or tales or lies, and is therefore linked to the stretchers Huck admits were told by Twain
in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (230).
Jim’s stretchers are more than stories, tales, or even lies; they also serve as a
steady source of income. People are so impressed with Jim’s stories that they “come from
all around there and give Jim anything they had” (24). Jim gladly accepts the money, just
as he does from Huck in chapter four of Huckleberry Finn. Here readers learn that Jim is
in possession of a hairball that he insists can do magic. Jim claims “there was a spirit
inside of it, and it knowed everything” (36). Yet the hairball does not work for free; Jim
suggests, “sometimes it wouldn’t talk without money” (36). After accepting a counterfeit
quarter from Huck, Jim proceeds to tell Huck’s fortune, which is little more than an intratextual stretcher.
Jim is particularly skilled in stretching through equivocation. Jim’s fortune telling
begins with Pap: “Sometimes he spec he’ll go ’way, en den agin he spec he’ll stay . . .
Dey’s two angels hoverin’ roun ’bout him. One uv ’em is white en shiny, en ’tother one
is black” (37). The fortune is merely a series of paired oppositions: “go”/“stay” and
“white”/“black.” Such vacillation works for Huck as well. Jim explains, “You gwyne to
have considable trouble in yo’ life, en considable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt,
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en sometimes you gwyne to git sick’ but every time you gwyne to git well agin” (37).
While the terms are new—“trouble”/“joy” and “sick”/“well”—the stretcher’s style of
paired opposites is the same. Jim even uses again the image of “two angels hoverin’ roun
’bout,” only this time he modifies it to “two gals flyin’ ’bout” (37). He then returns again
to a series of oppositions, informing Huck: “One uv ’em’s light en ’tother is dark. One is
rich en ’tother is po’” (37-38). Huck’s “light” and “dark” gals, much like Pap’s “white”
and “black” angels, show Jim at his stretching peak.
--Although Jim is certainly a skilled teller of stretchers, the novel’s lies reach their
peak with Huck. During the Phelps Farm evasion scheme in particular, Huck’s lies
climax in terms of frequency and complexity. As I’ve been arguing, Huck’s open
challenge to Twain—“That is nothing”—suggests that Huckleberry Finn will contain just
as many, if not more, intra-textual stretchers (or lies) than its predecessor. I’ve shown the
intra-textual stretcher at work in Jim’s lies about bewitchment and Huck’s fortune. But
because Huck serves as both narrator and character, I’ll step back for a minute to chart
the progression of other, more elaborate intra-textual stretchers. This chart does not
pretend to account for all of the novel’s lies, only those involving Huck as a key
character:
Judith Loftus section:
Chapter 11 (8 pages)
Grangerford section:
Chapters 17-18 (24 pages)
Wilks section:
Chapters 24-30 (62 pages)
Phelps section:
Chapters 32-43 (89 pages)
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Each subsequent stretcher stretches the preceding one. The Grangerford stretcher, during
which Huck pretends to be George Jackson, is three times longer than the Loftus
stretcher, during which he pretends to be George Peters. The Wilks stretcher, during
which Huck pretends to be the valet Adolphus, is more than twice as long as the
Grangerford section. Finally, the Phelps stretcher, during which Huck pretends to be Tom
Sawyer, is almost a third longer than the Wilks stretcher.
These statistics illustrate that the novel develops unimpeded in its deployment of
intra-textual stretchers. What is not clear, however, is that these stretchers are linked
through their use of “again.” Judith Loftus, for instance, calls Huck out for repeatedly
lying: “I thought maybe you was trying to hocus me again” (90). Huck has similar
encounters with the “hare-lip,” during which he continually finds himself “up a stump
again” (223). Yet perhaps most telling is Huck’s reaction upon being mistaken by Aunt
Sally for Tom Sawyer: “it was like being born again” (282). This notion of re-birth
suggests that, to some extent, the Phelps farm section is a type of sequel to Huckleberry
Finn. Intra-textual stretchers allow Huck to expand his narrative almost infinitely by
simply linking one stretcher, or lie, to the next. George Monteiro argues an analogous
position when asserting, “the playing out of lies dominates the long internal narrative of
this book”; John Bird makes the similar observation that lies “form a thematic and
structural unity that helps tie the novel together” (233, 71). It is not a stretch, then, to
argue that the plot of Huckleberry Finn can be described as a series of miniature sequels:
one stretcher continuing to the next and to the next and so on. If one accepts this claim
for intra-textual stretchers as miniature sequels, then the Phelps farm section arguably
marks the climax of these sequels.
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Huck is born as a character in Tom Sawyer and then reborn as an author, narrator,
and character in his sequel Huckleberry Finn; his declaration, “it was like being born
again” suggests therefore that he is subsequently re-reborn as “Tom Sawyer” in the
Phelps Farm section (282). An interesting feature of this second rebirth is that it actually
comes full circle by giving the title character “Huckleberry Finn” the name of the
prequel’s title character, “Tom Sawyer.” In this respect, Huck’s rebirth in the last third of
the novel signals a change as well as a repetition. This new form draws heavily upon the
old one: namely, Tom reemerges as the main character, as he was in Tom Sawyer, though
he is now referred to as “Sid Sawyer”; the character also brings with him all of the
romantic conventions and clichés of the earlier novel. It makes sense, then, that this last
section features the novel’s most impressive intra-textual stretcher: the scheme to free
Jim. Tom spearheads this scheme by emphasizing the need for complexity, with Huck
commenting about the plan: “I see in a minute it was worth fifteen of mine” (294). The
sheer magnitude of Tom’s stretcher is indicated by the 15 to 1 ratio; this stretcher is not
only elaborate, it is also intended to be quite lengthy. Tom hopes that “it could be strung
out to as much as eighty year” so that “we would keep it up all the rest of our lives and
leave Jim to our children to get out” (313).
As this intra-textual stretcher develops, it achieves a particular height in relation
to Aunt Sally, whom the boys repeatedly dupe as part of their scheme. It is also marked
by use of the word “again.”10 This stretcher is in full swing when Sally counts her
silverware, during which the boys repeatedly steal and replace one spoon, thereby ruining
10
Notice as well that the novel reaches its adventurous climax around the same time that its stretchers begin
to affect the character whose very name connotes adventure; according to the Oxford English Dictionary,
“sally” has the connotation of “an audacious or adventurous proceeding, an escapade.”
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her count. She becomes frustrated and after the second count decides, “I’ll count ’m
again” (320). When this count also proves incorrect, Sally comments, “Well, I’ll count
’m again” (320). As with the example of Pap repeatedly putting his head the window, the
language of these lines feels circular; this feeling is exacerbated by phrasal repetition of
“I’ll count ’m” and by the italicization of “again.” This circular feeling increases as Sally
enters her third, fourth, fifth, and even six counts, after which Huck comments that she
“couldn’t ever count them spoons twice alike again to save her life” (321). Spurred by
their success with the spoons, the boys decide to steal one of Sally’s sheets: they “kept
putting it back and stealing it again, for a couple of days” (321). When these counts all
prove incorrect, Sally decides a second time that she “wouldn’t count them again not to
save her life” (321). As with the repetition of “count ’m,” this emphasis on not counting
“to save her life” feels circular in its verbatim repetition. Perhaps even more circular is
the sheer repetition of the word “again,” which occurs six times in two pages.
The boys torture Aunt Sally again by repeatedly sending Silas and her anonymous
threatening letters that contain drawings of skulls and coffins. Sally responds with terror:
she was always a whirling around, sudden, and saying ‘ouch,’ and before
she’d get two-thirds around, she’d whirl back again, and say it again.
(338)
Sally’s actions are literally circular. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the
word “whirl” means: “To move in a circle or similar curve, to circle, circulate.” The word
also takes on a figurative circularity through being used twice: “whirling around” and
“whirl back around.” The word “around” also connotes a type of circularity; it, too,
occurs twice: “whirling around” and “two-thirds around.” Finally, the word “again,”
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which suggests repetition, appears twice as well: Sally whirls around and then whirls
“back again”; she says ouch and then says “it again.”
Even the so-called “nonnamous letter” sent to Sally and Silas features a curious
use of the word “again.” Tom writes the letter from the point-of-view of a criminal who
has had a recent conversion. In revealing the “hellish design” that is supposedly about to
befall the Phelps’, the criminal remarks, “I am one of the gang, but have got religgion and
wish to quit it and lead an honest life again” (338). The letter’s language is similar to an
earlier stretcher told by a duplicitous Pap to a new town Judge: “he was agoing to turn
over a new leaf and be man nobody wouldn’t be ashamed of” (43); the letter’s language
is similar as well to an earlier lie told by the king to members of an Arkansas campmeeting, during which he pretends to be a pirate set on turning other pirates to “the truth
path”: “he was a changed man now, and happy for the first time in his life” (173). In each
case, Huck and Tom, Pap, and the king lie about a life-changing event as part of an intertextual stretcher: for both Pap and the king, the goal is money; for Huck and Tom, the
goal is to arouse the family’s fears, thereby making the scheme more dangerous.
Indeed, the scheme does become more dangerous and elaborate, so much so that
the boys need to pare it down. They are unable, for instance, to dig a hole under the cabin
with case knives or to have Jim water a plant with his tears. Yet rather than simply
abandoning the scheme, the boys proceed to stretch their own stretcher by “letting on”
that they accomplish the scheme’s intricate goals (308). In this respect, the Phelp’s farm
section is a stretcher within a stretcher as well as a sequel within a sequel. The boys “let
on,” for instance, about the reality of their supplies: instead of using case knives to dig
under the shed, they use pick-axes and “let on it’s case knives” (310). They also “let on”
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about the danger of their work, such as when deciding to “let on that a lantern’s resky” to
work by (310). The boys even “let on” about the actual duration of the stretcher: after
realizing that they must free Jim sooner than later, Tom suggests that the two “let on, to
ourselves, that we was at it thirty-seven years” (307).
All of this “letting on” eventually catches up with boys, so that it’s not long into
the actual evasion before everything falls apart and the novel seems destined to recycle its
plot once again. Upon initially escaping from the cabin, Huck proclaims that Jim’s cycle
of slavery has ended: “Now, old Jim, you’re a freeman again, and I bet you won’t ever be
a slave no more” (344). The italicization of “again” should put readers on edge: just as
Aunt Sally wrongly believed she would not count her spoons “again,” so too is it
doubtful that Jim will be free of slavery forever. Sure enough, it isn’t long before Tom is
shot in the leg, Huck is stopped by Uncle Silas, and Jim is re-enslaved. After being
captured, for instance, Jim is placed “in that cabin again”: “they took him to the same
cabin, and put his own clothes on him, and chained him again” (360, 356). This emphasis
on “same” and “again” is reinforced by Aunt Sally’s insistence that Huck not attempt to
change Jim’s slave status; she thus instructs that Huck cease “meddling with him again”
(360).
This emphasis on repetition is then rather violently halted in the novel’s
concluding pages in which four significant changes occur: 1) Jim learns that he has been
set free by Miss Watson in her will; 2) Jim is given forty dollars by Tom and thus feels
himself to be “rich agin”; 3) Huck learns from Jim that Pap is dead and that 4) Pap never
gained possession of Huck’s six-thousand dollars. In a sense, then, Jim and Huck
experience similar changes: both are set free of their oppressive owners (one being a
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slave owner the other being an oppressive father) and both experience a financial boon.
These changes are then capped by Huck’s seeming decision to break the repetitive cycles
of his life by “lighting out” for the Territory.
II
Inter-textual Reiterative Words
Before addressing the again-ness of Huck’s decision to light out for the Territory,
I’d like to review a series of inter-textual stretchers that prove in a different way that
Huck Finn is the sequel to Tom Sawyer.
Walter Blair has provided some of the best textual evidence that Huckleberry
Finn is the sequel to Tom Sawyer. In Mark Twain and Huck Finn, Blair argues that Twain
composed parts of Huckleberry Finn by “rewriting and probably elaborating [upon]
discarded material from Tom Sawyer” (100). This elaboration is at work in the opening
chapter of Huckleberry Finn, during which Huck leaves the widow’s house to seek
shelter in a sugar hogshead. Blair points out that this scene originally appeared as the
final chapter to Tom Sawyer but was deleted at the suggestion of William Dean Howells.
For Blair, then, the first chapter of Huckleberry Finn consists largely of a “reworking of
the chapter removed from Tom Sawyer” (99). Blair goes on to suggest that Twain’s
elaboration of discarded material carried him “through chapter iii” of Huckleberry Finn
(100). Yet Blair also acknowledges that Huckleberry Finn is not a mere rewriting of Tom
Sawyer; rather, he argues that “as the story progresses Mark tends to identify himself
with his hero” and chooses to endow Huck “with poetic sensitivity pretty certainly
borrowed from the man writing about Huck rather than from his prototype” (105). Yet
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despite Huck’s extensive character development, Blair does not contend that Huckleberry
Finn is a mere “supplement” to Tom Sawyer. He suggests instead that the latter novel’s
peculiarities call attention to its “numerous echoes” of the former novel, thereby
reminding readers that “the new book was a sequel” (99).
Though Blair certainly does a good job of identifying Huck’s appropriation of
discarded material from Tom Sawyer, the critic does not take into account the several
appropriations of extant material in Tom Sawyer, a novel that the character claims to have
read. Instead of merely lifting this material from its original context—instead of
attempting “to do Tom Sawyer over again”—Huck “stretches” the material through
additions of exposition, characters, and humor; he thereby assimilates this material into
his own sequel. This inter-textual stretching is at work as early as chapter 2 in
Huckleberry Finn, during which Huck, Tom, and the other boys discuss the definition of
“ransom.”
A strikingly similar discussion occurs in chapter 33 of Tom Sawyer. As Huck and
Tom make their way to the cave, they discuss the formation of Tom Sawyer’s Gang.
Huck asks Tom:
“What’s a ransom?”
“Money. You make them raise all they can, off’n their friends; and after
you’ve kept them a year, if it ain’t raised then you kill them. That’s the
general way.” (258)
Tom’s answer seems definitive, so the two boys move on. The subject of Tom Sawyer’s
Gang does not come up again until chapter 2 of Huckleberry Finn, during which a similar
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discussion of ransom yields different results. This time, Huck and Tom’s mutual friend
Ben Rogers asks Tom:
“Ransomed? What’s that?”
“I don’t know. But that’s what they do. I’ve seen it in books; and so of
course that’s what we’ve got to do.”
“But how can we do it if we don’t know what it is?”
“Why blame it all, we’ve got to do it. Don’t I tell you it’s in the books? Do
you want to go to doing different from what’s in the books, and get
things all muddled up?”
“Oh, that’s very fine to say, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are these
fellows going to be ransomed if we don’t know how to do it to them?
that’s the thing I want to get at. Now what do you reckon it is?”
“Well I don’t know. But per’aps if we keep them till they’re ransomed, it
means that we keep them till they’re dead.” (27)
The second passage is “stretched” if only in terms of length: expanding from four
sentences to almost a full page. More tellingly, Huck explicitly reverses Tom’s answer
from a clear one-word response, “Money,” to a repeated admittance of ignorance, “I
don’t know” and “Well I don’t know.” In Tom Sawyer, Tom’s surety and matter-of-fact
speech make the scene humorous, given that readers are likely to have a deeper
understanding of ransom than as something people “raise off’n their friends” (258).
When the passage is stretched in Huckleberry Finn, the scene and the word “ransom”
acquire new comic proportions, such as Tom’s insistence that it’s “in the books” or his
supposition that “ransom” means “that we keep them till they’re dead” (27).
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Yet Huck’s stretching does not stop here, but continues with Ben Rogers’s
response to Tom’s ransom thesis:
Now that’s something like. That’ll answer. Why couldn’t you said that
before? We’ll keep them till they’re ransomed to death. (27)
After considering the difficulty of housing so many abductees in the cave at one time,
Ben Rogers offers another opinion: “Why can’t a body take a club and ransom them as
soon as they get here?” (27). Within the space of a page, the word “ransom” fluctuates
from an unknown word, to a noun connoting a form of death as part of an abduction, to a
verb meaning to kill abductees. Even more humorous are Tom’s reactions to the debate:
despite his shift in actual knowledge about ransom, the character remains firm in his
insistence that the gang perform ransoms; in Tom Sawyer, Tom stresses the need to
ransom people “the general way” (258); in Huckleberry Finn, he urges that the gang
“ransom them in the regular way” (27). Much of the scene’s humor, then, is amplified
when placed in the context of the sequel: readers of both novels are better able to
recognize that Tom’s repeated insistence on literary authority occurs not only within this
novel but across the two novels; moreover, they recognize that Tom’s ignorance actually
increases in the sequel, thereby making him a more comic character.
Readers encounter a similar mix of repetition and novelty with the word “orgies.”
The word is associated with the king’s “funeral orgies” speech in Huckleberry Finn,
during which he pretends to be Harvey Wilks, the minister and surviving brother of Peter
Wilks; but the word is first used to comic effect in chapter 33 of Tom Sawyer. After
discovering the gold, Huck and Tom discuss the cave as a future site for Tom Sawyer’s
Gang. Tom remarks on the need to keep the guns and ammunition in the cave:
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“No, Huck—leave them there. They’re just the tricks to have when we go
to robbing. We’ll keep them there all the time, and we’ll hold our orgies
here, too. It’s an awful snug place for orgies.”
“What’s orgies?”
“I duno. But robbers always have orgies, and of course we’ve got to have
them, too.” (261)
The joke here is similar to the “ransom” gag: Tom uses a word that the boys do not
understand only to turn that ignorance into an occasion for humor. Whereas “ransom” has
violent connotations that the boys do not comprehend, “orgies” evokes sexual
connotations that they fail to grasp. The “orgies” joke also occurs in Huckleberry Finn,
this time placed in the mouth of the king. The king invites the townspeople to Peter
Wilks’ funeral, during which he confuses the word “orgies” for “obsequies”: “to-morrow
we want all to come—everybody; for he respected everybody, he liked everybody, and so
it’s fitten that his funeral orgiess h’d be public” (217). The king continues in this vein,
commenting upon “his funeral orgies again” (217). Even after the duke corrects the king
by passing him a slip of paper that reads “obsequies, you old fool,” Huck explains that
the king “goes to dropping in his funeral orgies again every now and then, just like he
done before” (217). Though the joke is already made, Huck’s stretcher allows for a third,
more elaborate occurrence, during which the king dramatically heightens his speech:
I say orgies, not because it’s the common term, because it ain’t—
obsequies bein’ the common term—but because orgies is the right term.
Obsequies ain’t used in England no more, now—it’s gone out. We say
orgies now, in England. Orgies is better, because it means the thing you’re
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after, more exact. It’s a word that’s made up out’n the Greek orgo,
outside, open, abroad; and the Hebrew jessum, to plant, cover up; hence
inter. So, you see, funeral orgies is an open er public funeral. (217)
The audacity of the king’s intra-textual stretcher, or lie—itself encapsulated within
Huck’s inter-textual stretcher—is unparalleled in the novel. Even Huck, no stranger to
telling stretchers, is thoroughly impressed; he comments about the king, “He was the
worst I ever struck” (217). The king’s funeral orgies speech in Huckleberry Finn is
therefore, in terms of comedic brilliance, better than Tom and Huck’s orgy discussion in
Tom Sawyer. In this respect, Huck has made good on his challenge to Twain.
The success of Huck’s challenge lies in the way he stretches the “orgies” joke.
Instead of relying on humorous ignorance—Tom’s “I duno”—the joke takes the opposite
extreme of arrogant, albeit duplicitous, knowledge. The king literally stretches the word
“orgies” by separating it into two root words: orgo and jessum. He then further stretches
the word by locating the root words in two different languages: Greek and Hebrew.
Finally, the king stretches the word “orgies” by prolonging its appearance. He uses orgies
“again” and “weaves along again,” repeating the word seven times throughout the course
of his speech; this number increases to eight if we include Huck’s own commentary.
Once again, the humor of this passage is heightened when placed in the context of the
sequel. Readers discover that, unlike Tom, Huck’s character is actually more
knowledgeable: though he still doesn’t know the meaning of “orgies,” he does recognize
that the king doesn’t know what the word means either, as when observing: “He was the
worst I ever struck” (217). The two “orgies” passages also provide evidence that the king
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is capable of telling elaborate and weighty lies; in this respect, the audacity of the king’s
orgies speech foreshadows the cruelty of his latter schemes.
--When not stretching individual words such as “ransom” and “orgies,” Huck’s
sequel stretches a number of specific scenes in Tom Sawyer. Concordance mapping aids
in the identification of these repeated scenes in much the same way that it does with
individual words: readers move through the text with a pen in hand, underlining words
and phrases that tend to reappear. In the case of repeated scenes, the reader highlights not
just a single word, such as “ransom,” but rather a phrasal unit and/or image pattern. In the
case of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, a key overlap occurs in descriptions of Pap’s
broken arm. Pap’s appearance in Huckleberry Finn is, as Blair reminds us, “in
accordance with Huck’s prediction in Tom Sawyer”: “Pap Finn shows up and makes
trouble” (101). Pap is introduced in Tom Sawyer during Tom and Huck’s discussion of
old mother Hopkins, whom they suspect is a witch. Huck makes his case using anecdotal
evidence:
She witched pap. Pap says so his own self. He come along one day, and he
see she was a witching him, so he took up a rock, and if she hadn’t dodged
it, he’d a got her. Well that very night he rolled off’n a shed whar’ he was
a layin drunk, and broke his arm. (66)
The story convinces Tom and the conversation changes. When a similar subject of Pap
and broken arms occurs in Huckleberry Finn, the story stretches from four sentences to a
full page. Huck begins by detailing Pap’s courthouse encounter with a new judge eager to
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“make a man out of him” (42). Pap is given food, clothes, and a bed and at first seems to
repent his old ways, saying that he’s “started in on a new life” (43). Pap’s conversion,
however, is nothing more than a stretcher. That evening, he crawls out the window and
heads into town for a drink. Though he returns home by midmorning,
towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off
the porch and broke his left arm in two places and was most froze to death
when somebody found him after sun-up. (43)
The second passage, though similar to the first, is notably “stretched,” by which I mean
that it is more elaborate and more humorous. This second passage also contains a frame
story, but instead of a witch, readers learn about the judge and his wife. Seemingly
overcome with emotion by the judge’s moving speech on temperance, Pap “cried, and
said he’d been a fool, and fooled away his life” (42). The couple are similarly affected:
the “judge said he could hug him for those words: so he cried, and his wife she cried
again” (42). The drama continues throughout the evening, so that it isn’t long before
“they cried again” (43). This repeated crying is then paralleled with Pap’s repeated
crawling out of the window. Readers learn that Pap “slid down a stanchion and traded his
new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old time” (43). He
then “crawled out again” only to break his arm.
Readers return at this point to a familiar scene: a drunken Pap breaking his arm.
Just as the judge and his wife cry “again,” and just as Pap crawls out the window “again,”
so too do readers of Huckleberry Finn encounter the story of Pap’s broken arm again, but
with notable differences. Pap is drunk in both passages, but in this version he crawls out
onto a “porch” instead of a “shed.” In both passages, he “rolled off’n” or “rolled off,”
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resulting in a broken arm; in the second passage, however, Pap specifically breaks his
“left arm,” and not in one but “two places.” Huck thus stretches the story in part by
expanding the details of Pap’s physical trauma; he does so again by continuing the story
until the following morning, thereby informing readers that Pap “was most froze to
death.” Huck’s technique, then, is to stretch the scene by increasing the level of morbid
humor. This technique works particularly well with the character of Pap, whom readers
likely want to see harmed; thus, Huck’s decision to return to Pap in the sequel—to do
further harm to the character by breaking his arm a second time—makes for yet another
successful inter-textual stretcher.
Huck uses morbid humor again in chapter eight of Huckleberry Finn, during
which he watches from Jackson’s Island as a ferryboat full of people hunt for his remains.
This scene is not the first time Huck has been presumed dead. In Chapter 13 of Tom
Sawyer Huck, Tom, and Ben Rogers are all on Jackson’s Island and are all believed to be
dead. The boys see “a great jet of white smoke burst from the ferry’s side” (125). They
then realize that the party is searching for a drowning victim. Huck comments about the
search: “they take loaves of bread and put quicksilver in ’em and set ’em afloat, and
wherever there’s anybody that’s drowned, they’ll float right there and stop” (126). Huck
later appropriates this scene for his sequel. Once again, a ferryboat full of townspeople
searches for Huck’s body. The passage begins as a loose retelling of the original. Huck
observes:
“Boom!” I see the white smoke squirt out of the ferry-boat’s side . . . Well,
then I happened to think how they always put quicksilver in loaves of
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bread and float them off because they always go right to the drowned
carcass and stop there. (62)
Repetition is evident in Huck’s descriptions of “white smoke,” “the ferry’s side,”
“quicksilver in loaves of bread,” and bread that will “float . . . to the drowned carcass and
stop there.” Both passages are also morbid: Huck, who is presumed dead, discusses
methods for recovering the carcasses of drowning victims as he watches a search party
hunt for his remains. Huck stretches this morbidity even further by including two
additional scenes.
Readers know that Huck takes pleasure in being presumed dead, as when he says:
“I was having a good enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders” (62). He
continues this good time by eating one of the floating quicksilver loaves for breakfast,
during which he contemplates the value of prayer: “I says, now I reckon the widow or the
parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone and done
it. So there ain’t no doubt there is something in that thing” (62). Unlike the loaves in Tom
Sawyer, the quicksilver bread is stretched in the sequel to include two uses: 1) to make
light of Huck’s presumed death and 2) to satirize the act of prayer. A similar form of
stretching occurs when Huck extends the search party scene. While watching the
ferryboat, Huck witnesses: “such a blast right before me that it made me deef with the
noise and pretty near blind with smoke, and I judged I was gone. If they’d a had some
bullets in, I reckon they’d a got the corpse they was after” (63). As with Pap’s broken
arm, this scene is made humorous through its morbid emphasis on physical trauma: not
only does Huck look on as a search party hunts for his bodily remains, but the danger is
such that he almost supplies those remains. In both the bread and search party stretchers,
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then, Huck’s sequel moves beyond mere discussion of these topics to include physical
interaction: Huck not only sees the bread, this time he eats it; he not only hears the search
party, this time they almost kill him.
--On occasion, Huck’s inter-textual stretcher extends a scene in Tom Sawyer by
drawing attention to Huckleberry Finn’s status as sequel. One such instance occurs as the
Royal Nonesuch enters its third night in Arkansas. Huck notices a change in the crowd
and tells readers, “I smelt sickly eggs by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things”
(198). He continues, “and if I know the signs of a dead cat being around, and I bet I do,
there was sixty-four of them went in” (198). What initially struck me about this passage
is Huck’s insistent claim to knowledge: “and I bet I do.” Though no other references to
dead cats exist in Huckleberry Finn, Huck’s confident ability to smell out a dead cat is
referenced in Tom Sawyer. Using the Amazon concordance feature, I quickly located uses
of the word “cat” in the novel; this footwork also led me to recall that the first image of
Huckleberry Finn, in an illustration by True Williams, is of the character in his “cast off
clothes” gripping a dead cat by its hind leg.
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The text corroborates this image. When Tom questions Huck—“What’s that you
got?”—Huck responds, “Dead cat.”
I find Huck’s confident assertion, “and I bet I do,” quite similar in effect to the
novel’s opening sentence: “You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by
the name of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” but that ain’t no matter” (17). Although
the novel’s opening sentence is more blatant than “and I bet I do,” both lines suggest that
a reader’s knowledge of Huck is located in the past. The novel’s opening sentence
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explicitly locates this knowledge in Tom Sawyer, while “and I bet I do” provides no such
direction. The second instance, then, potentially hinders the reader’s ability to know
Huck. In this respect, Huck does not “stretch” the dead cat passage from Tom Sawyer so
much as shrink it by not providing any specifics as to the source of his knowledge.
However, I would also argue that this scene marks one of the few occasions in the two
novels in which readers can know, with relative certainty, that Huck is telling the truth.
Yet the only way for readers to verify this truth is by reading Huckleberry Finn as the
sequel to Tom Sawyer.
As is more often the case, however, reading Huckleberry Finn as the sequel to
Tom Sawyer effectively diminishes a reader’s ability to decipher truth. One example is
Huck’s account of the Royal Nonesuch. He remarks of the king and duke’s ingenuity:
“Them rapscallions took in four hundred and sixty-five dollars in that three nights. I
never see money hauled in by the wagon-load like that, before” (199). Although Huck is
speaking figuratively about the “wagon-load” of money, he is (unwittingly or not) lying
about his experiences. Once again, readers can use concordance data to locate verbal
parallels between the two novels; in this case, I searched for repeated references to words
such as “money” and “wagon-load.” Readers of Tom Sawyer learn that Huck and Tom
are worth upwards of “six thousand dollars apiece—all gold,” which he and Tom
acquired during their adventures (17). Readers also know that Huck and Tom transported
this twelve thousand dollars in “Benny Taylor’s little wagon,” in which they “put the two
small sacks” of gold (262). Huck therefore has literally seen large amounts of money
hauled in by the wagonload before. Readers of both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn,
then, have just caught Huck in a possible dual lie: both about how much money he has
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and about how he transported that money. Though this lie is admittedly minor, it
nonetheless serves as another reminder that knowledge of Huck is located in not one but
two texts—that, indeed, Huckleberry Finn is a sequel.
III
The conclusion of Huckleberry Finn seems to suggest a hard break. Instead of
ending with the word “again,” as does Tom Sawyer, Huck emphasizes his refusal to enter
another cycle of repetition, telling readers that he will not let Aunt Sally “sivilize” him: “I
can’t stand it. I been there before.” If this shift from “again” to “before” isn’t a strong
enough conclusion, the text also offers two concluding remarks. The first is a standard
curtain closer: “THE END,” while a second is a standard letter closer: “YOURS TRULY,
HUCK FINN.” Much like Huck’s emphasis on not returning to Aunt Sally’s, these dual
concluding remarks seem to suggest a hard break in the narrative—indeed, an end to the
sequel.
Well, yes and no. It turns out that the language of the novel’s ending is not as
conclusive as readers might expect. Though changes do occur that bring the novel to a
close—including Jim’s emancipation and Huck’s discovery that Pap is dead—these
changes ultimately prove weaker than the characters’ continuing interest in adventure. As
the novel comes to a close, Tom suggests that the boys begin their adventures and
stretchers all over again:
And then Tom he talked along, and talked along, and says, le’s all three
slide out of here one of these nights, and get an outfit, and go for howling
adventures amongst the Injuns, over in the Territory. (365)
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Huck immediately signs on for the adventure, telling readers: “I says, all right, that suits
me” (365). A few lines later, Huck seems even more intent on beginning the adventure,
as he informs readers of his plan to go ahead of Tom and Jim: “But I reckon I got to light
out for the Territory ahead of the rest” (366). This line does not mark a change so much
as a repetition. Huck does want to escape Aunt Sally’s “sivilizing” influence; however,
he only desires to do so within the recurring context of adventure and with the same two
adventurers, Tom and Jim. Huck therefore does not undergo a radical change in deciding
to “light out.” William R. Manierre expressed this idea in 1965 when suggesting that any
argument for Huck’s epiphany in deciding to “light out” is an “erroneous thesis,” but one
that nevertheless “has attained almost the stature of an American myth” (343). Forty
years later, this same myth would have readers believe that Huckleberry Finn is merely
the supplement to Tom Sawyer. In both cases, I defer to the words of Manierre:
“Unfortunately, the facts are otherwise” (343). The conclusion to Huckleberry Finn does
not mark a radical change for Huck or for the narrative; if anything, this conclusion sets
the stage for yet another sequel.
If readers have any doubts about Twain’s interest in writing a sequel to
Huckleberry Finn, they need merely turn to the book’s publication history. Twain began
Huckleberry Finn in the summer of 1876 while reviewing galley proofs for Tom Sawyer.
Twain then began the sequel “Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians” in 1884
while reviewing galley proofs for Huckleberry Finn. He wrote to his business manager
Charles L. Webster requesting materials for this sequel: “I want several other personal
narratives of the life & adventures out yonder on the Plains & in the Mountains, if you
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can run across them.—especially life among the Indians. See what you can find. I mean
to take Huck Finn out there” (qtd. in Delaney 215).
And take Huck out there he did, along with a number of inter-textual and intratextual stretchers. Paul Delaney argues, “‘Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the
Indians’ directly extends the thematic concerns of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Indeed, in many respects, Twain’s Indian novel is more closely linked to Huck Finn than
that book is to its predecessor” (216). Delaney observes that the sequel opens again with
Huck, the author and narrator, discussing his role in the prequel: “That other book which
I made before, was named ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.’ Maybe you remember it”
(qtd. in Delaney 216). Twain actually modified the manuscript of Huckleberry Finn to
prepare readers for its sequel. Delaney observes, “Twain even asked Webster to alter the
title page of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn so it would read ‘Time, forty to fifty
years ago’ instead of ‘Time, forty years ago’” (216); this change in period would allow
Huckleberry Finn’s sequel to begin in the mid-1830s—the period that corresponds to “the
incidents he [Twain] was borrowing from his ‘Injun books’” (216).
But Twain never completed this sequel, producing less than nine chapters of the
novel. Twain would then begin another sequel to Huckleberry Finn known as Tom
Sawyer Abroad. He would then write another sequel called Tom Sawyer, Detective. In all,
Twain attempted at least five sequels to Huckleberry Finn. Kazuhiko Tsuji comments on
these follow-ups: Twain “tried to write the sequels again and again, but he couldn’t
succeed in completing most of the works” (70). In the end, Twain’s most successful
sequel would, oddly enough, turn out to be the one novel rarely referred to by critics as a
sequel: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
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In the following chapter, “The Ambivalent Experience of The Catcher in the
Rye,” I attempt another intervention into critical discourse. This chapter concentrates on
intra-textual reiterative word patterns, specifically their role in creating and sustaining the
ambivalent voice of Holden Caulfield. Since the novel’s release in 1951, critics and
teachers have read Holden either as honest or duplicitous, as an innocent or a confidence
man, as a victim or a victimizer. This chapter intervenes in that discourse by suggesting
that, rather than choosing a single position, the novel’s language constitutes a
complicated composite of those extremes; it therefore gives rise in readers to a sustained
and unresolved experience of ambivalence.
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Chapter 3: The Ambivalent Experience of The Catcher in the Rye
I first encountered J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye in grade school, then
again in high school and college, and then again in graduate school. Each time I read the
novel, it took me longer to finish because, each time, I became more aware of the
complicated and often convoluted voice of the novel’s seventeen-year old protagonist and
narrator, Holden Caulfield. During my most recent reading, I concordance mapped the
novel and began to discover some of the reasons why Holden’s voice could seem so
simple and yet so difficult at the same time. I first noticed that Holden’s signature word
“phony” is often countered by the word “truth.” Similarly, I noticed that the word
“remember,” which Holden uses to narrate the events of the previous Christmas, is often
countered by the word “forget.” Another interesting pattern is Holden’s excessive use of
the word “all,” particularly the phrases “and all” and “all of a sudden.” These phrases are
often linked to Holden’s use of “phony,” “truth,” “forget,” and “remember.” For instance,
instead of fleshing out the truth of his story or his memory of it, Holden tends to use “and
all” as a vague catchall; by the same token, instead of providing exposition to verify the
truth and accuracy of his memories, Holden tends to use “all of a sudden” to underscore a
feeling of spontaneity.
To verify the accuracy of my findings, I sought a concordance to the novel but
was unable to locate an online full-text version of the novel or a word list on Amazon’s
Concordance; I did, however, locate The Catcher in the Rye Book Index
(www.geocities.com/exploring_citr/bookindex.htm#p), which indexes proper names,
places, and reiterative words such as “phony.” This concordance data supported my
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personal concordance findings that the words and phrases “phony,” “truth,” “remember,”
“forget,” “and all,” and “all of a sudden” occur throughout the course of the novel and
often in close proximity to each other. These word pairings suggested that a large portion
of the novel concerns topics of truth and deception, memory and time, and ways of
knowing. These words and topics in turn pointed to a pattern of ambivalence: Holden’s
voice is both simple and yet complex; he is both phony and truthful; he both remembers
and forgets; he narrates events that occurred in the past yet often seem spontaneous.
Before analyzing these reiterative words, I reviewed a series of academic books
and articles on Catcher to see if anyone else had noticed patterns of ambivalence. I
discovered that almost no one has examined in the novel’s language in any significant
detail. According to G.S. Amur, “Despite the large body of Salinger criticism . . . very
few have spoken with the actual literary object before their eyes. The appeal of The
Catcher in the Rye as a psychological, social and philosophic myth seems to have been
far more powerful than its artistic and literary appeal” (11). These absences suggested
that I could use concordance mapping to conduct a detailed analysis of the novel’s
ambivalent language—one that would supplement the existing psychological, social, and
philosophic analyses. Moreover, given the novel’s massive popularity of amongst
students both inside and outside the classroom, it occurred to me that a detailed analysis
of ambivalence in Catcher would help to expand a student’s knowledge of the novel’s
language while also offering an extended example of how concordance mapping can
expand such knowledge.
This chapter therefore focuses on patterns of ambivalence as they find expression
in Holden’s voice, particularly in reiterative words and phrases, “phony,” “truth,”
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“remember,” “forget,” “and all,” and “all of a sudden.”11 These words are couched within
narrative devices of selective exposition, memory lapses, digressions, play-acting, and
lying: an analysis of the reiterative word “phony,” for instance, leads to an analysis of
Holden’s selective exposition; by the same token, an examination of “forget” leads to an
examination of Holden’s memory lapses. These reiterative words and devices pervade the
novel, thereby giving rise to sustained patterns of ambivalence. To read Catcher is
therefore to immerse oneself in these patterns of ambivalence. The results are akin to an
experience of ambivalence: one that finds readers both agreeing with Holden and
disagreeing with him, both trusting him and doubting him, and, ultimately, both loving
the novel and hating it.
I
Ten years after the novel’s initial publication, Carl Strauch proposed that the
“readiest way of understanding The Catcher lies in an awareness of the dualism or
ambivalence of language” (146). Strauch argues that Holden’s behavior “discloses
patterns of ambivalence—withdrawal and aggression, guilt feelings, fantasies of
mutilation, the death-wish” (150). This ambivalence also finds expression through
Holden’s use of “both the slob and the literate idiom,” which Strauch identifies and
analyzes through a series of reiterative word patterns including “madman,” “crazy,” and
“yellow.” Although Strauch does trace some of the novel’s word patterns, his greater
intention is to extrapolate meaning, not to analyze language; consequently, he talks less
11
See Appendix D.
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about how individual reiterative patterns work and more about what these patterns
supposedly symbolize.
This shortcoming is exacerbated by Strauch’s shift in emphasis from language to
symbolic objects and behaviors. Strauch argues, for instance, that Allie’s baseball mitt
“symbolically indicates” Holden’s sensitivity to the “game of life” and that Stradlater’s
crude behavior is a “symbolic gesture” of Holden’s impotence (153). He then shifts his
focus from symbolic objects to American culture at large, which allows him to locate the
novel’s source of ambivalence in the well-rehearsed American struggle of the individual
versus society. For Strauch, the novel portrays “a society that ignores or rejects his
[Holden’s] gesture for understanding, that preempts his possessions, body, and mind, that
invades and violates his inner being” (150). What emerges, then, is a “violent contrast
between such a society and Holden’s private world”—a contrast that, Strauch contends,
“produces the psychological ambivalence” from which Holden suffers (151). Strauch
then shifts yet again, this time from American culture to Eastern philosophy, arguing that
the novel’s conclusion shows Holden “reborn into a new world of secure feelings and
emotions,” thanks in part to his unconscious emergence as a type of Zen “master” (169).
This concluding section on Buddhist philosophy moves Strauch even further away from
an analysis of the novel’s ambivalent language. Despite his repeated emphasis on the
novel’s “complex patterns,” Strauch is ultimately more concerned with interpreting
content than with analyzing form (154).
A somewhat more effective article on ambivalent language in Catcher, but one
that similarly falls short, is Susan K. Mitchell’s “To Tell You the Truth.” Like Strauch,
Mitchell locates the novel’s ambivalences in Holden:
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Holden is himself fragmented and ravaged by the warring forces within
him. For instance, within Holden, the desire to reject others conflicts with
the desire to be approved by others; he doesn’t want to lend Stradlater his
coat, but his overt actions belie this covert, warring want; he despises
Ackley, but he invites him to see a movie; he hates movies, believing them
to foster phoniness in society, but during the three days of the book he
sees or talks about several; he craves truth, but he tells blatant lies. (154)
Mitchell initially employs these insights to investigate how readers respond to Holden’s
ambivalent language. She notes, for instance, that the “distinctions between truth and
falsehood become blurred as he [Holden] often adds the phrase ‘to tell you the truth’ onto
whatever he is saying” (147). This concern with the truth of Holden’s narrative leads
Mitchell to ask a key question about voice: “does this catch phrase ensure that his words
are any more truthful?” (147). She shrewdly observes that our doubts surrounding this
catchphrase extend to the whole of Holden’s narrative, leading readers to wonder:
“Which is the truth? Is he a liar or is he sincere?” (147).
Mitchell initially responds to these questions by positing, “Perhaps neither can be
proven superior to the other” (154). She strengthens this claim by likening Holden’s
narrative to the Cretan paradox: “Is he not, like the Cretan who declared that all Cretans
were liars, a person declaring that all people are phony?” (147). Yet Mitchell quickly
abandons the novel’s mode of ambivalence (or paradox) for a clear-cut resolution of it,
claiming that Holden is not only a liar but a poor liar:
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Throughout the novel, Holden tries to lull us into accepting his view of
surrounding life as he makes statements that seem to make sense, but
which, upon closer inspection, do not bear up to a writerly view. (149)
Mitchell, however, rarely holds Holden’s statements up to “closer inspection.” Instead of
analyzing the novel’s patterns of ambivalence, she attempts to resolve them by subjecting
Holden to moral scrutiny, asking questions such as: “is [Holden] right to condemn his
brother” D.B. and “can we really trust Holden’s view of his parents?” (151, 150). In this
respect, she goes the route of Strauch by placing Holden’s character in the interpretive
framework of the individual versus society. Whereas Strauch sides with the individual in
this struggle, Mitchell sides with society—or readers. For Mitchell, then, Holden “is
phony” because he “unethically” stacks the deck against readers by failing to provide an
“objective view” of the various situations he describes in the novel (152, 150).
While Strauch and Mitchell claim to address the novel’s ambivalences, both
eventually abandon an analysis of ambivalence for a resolution of it. They therefore
replace complex analysis for the simpler satisfactions of moralizing. Strauch’s defense of
Holden as Zen “master” is essentially no different than Mitchell’s accusation that Holden
“is phony” (169, 152). Both critics therefore fail to provide a sufficient descriptive
account of the novel’s ambivalent language. My goal in writing this chapter, then, is to
provide that missing account. Instead of depicting Holden as either a “good” or “bad”
character, this chapter seeks to expand the critical discourse on Holden Caulfield and The
Catcher in the Rye by focusing further on the novel’s use of language. This expansion
will enable both scholars and students to see that Holden Caulfield has been consistently
misread by the critical tradition. By providing an alternative reading, one that addresses
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such misreadings by taking into account the specifics of the novel’s language,
concordance mapping proves an effective means of understanding better not only Holden
Caulfied as a character but also The Catcher in the Rye as a novel.
II
In examining Holden’s ambivalent relationship to truth and falsity, perhaps a
useful starting point would be to analyze the single word most commonly associated with
the character of Holden Caulfield and with Catcher generally: “phony.” Common
readings of the novel’s language suggest that Holden’s repeated use of the word “phony”
testifies to his sincere concern with truth. Dan Wakefield, for instance, characterizes
Holden’s use of “phony” rather unequivocally: “The things that Holden finds so deeply
repulsive are the things he calls ‘phony’” (81). Charles H. Kegel also comments that
Holden’s use of “phony” reveals an “absolute hatred of phoniness” (54, 55). Of course,
this same word might also bespeak a different reality; it could be that Holden’s repeated
rejection of phoniness actually underscores his duplicity.
Mitchell employs this logic in her critique of Holden’s use of the word “truth,” as
in his common phrase, “if you want to know the truth.” Given that Holden not only
controls the narrative but also repeatedly admits to his duplicitous tendencies, readers
cannot say for sure what his intentions are when using words such as “phony” and
“truth.” To make matters worse, readers cannot even be sure if Holden knows his own
intentions. Mitchell expresses this concern when suggesting: “Although Holden has
claimed that he is a liar, he does not always realize whether he is lying or telling the
truth” (147). Thus, readers are forced to decipher truth from lies within a narrative
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relayed by a self-proclaimed liar who potentially lies unwittingly. When these
uncertainties are placed within a discussion of language, readers might ask: does Holden
despise “phoniness” and crave “truth,” or is he a “phony” who subverts “truth”? In line
with the novel’s paradoxical structure, Mitchell is right to remind us: “Perhaps neither
can be proven superior to the other” (154).
Mitchell’s observation proves all the more telling when applied to the word
“truth.” Chapter 2 expands “truth” from its first two appearances in chapter 1 as part of
the cliché “if you want to know the truth.” Consider, for instance, Holden’s meeting with
Spencer, in which the narrative digresses into a commentary on Holden’s gray hair and
immature behavior:
The one side of my head—the right side—is full of millions of gray hairs.
I’ve had them ever since I was a kid. And yet I still act sometimes like I
was only about twelve. Everybody says that, especially my father. It’s
partly true, too, but it isn’t all true. People always think something’s all
true. (original emphasis 9)
The passage is typical of Holden’s trite, exaggerated, and digressive mode of speech: he
transitions in six clumsy sentences from a) the topic of gray hair to b) his immature
behavior to c) his being called out for immaturity by his father to d) a consideration of the
nature of truth. Yet the passage is also well structured, moving from an image of gray
hair to a general discussion of appearance and behavior to a brief meditation on the
nature of reality. With each progression, what readers can claim to be “true” steadily
diminishes.
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Holden first notes that he has a “million gray hairs” on the right side of his head.
This statement is untrue, of course, given that the entire human head contains roughly
100,000 to 150,000 hairs. Even still, readers could dismiss this statement as an instance
of hyperbole. Indeed, Holden commonly speaks in a mode of exaggeration, telling
readers for example that Pencey advertises in a “thousand magazines” (2), that Ackley
looked at a picture of Sally Hayes “at least five thousand times” (20), that the Spaulding
salesman asked his mother “a million dopey questions” (52), that “there were a million
girls sitting and standing around” the museum (123), and so on. Holden then moves on to
what seems to be a series of factual observations: 1) he behaves as if he were twelve, 2)
everybody comments on this immaturity, and 3) his father is one of these commentators.
Yet Holden qualifies these statements as soon as he makes them, saying that the issue of
his immaturity is only “partly true.” He then reiterates that it is not “all true.”
The problem with these reiterations is that it is difficult to determine what should
be regarded as “partly true.” Does Holden behave immaturely? Is it true that “everybody”
calls him immature? Does his father really do so more than others? Yet before readers
can even begin to pose these questions, Holden transitions to a much larger qualification:
“People always think something’s all true.” At this moment readers are prompted to
abandon questions about gray hair and adolescent immaturity for questions such as: What
is the nature of reality? Is it a composite of truths, half-truths, and outright falsities?
Holden exacerbates these uncertainties when commenting on his encounters with those
who regard him as immature. After revealing the dangers of believing that something is
“all true,” Holden provides a concrete example: his own appearance and behavior. He
confesses, “Sometimes I act a lot older than I am”; yet he also comments, “I still act
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sometimes like I was only about twelve” (9). At issue again are questions of truth.
Holden offers readers two instances of play-acting: 1) “I still act like sometimes like I
was only about twelve” and 2) “Sometimes I act a lot older than I am” (9). The problem,
he argues, is that people only tend to recognize his ability for regression; although he
occasionally acts “a lot older,” Holden laments, “people never notice it” (9). Returning to
the issue of Holden’s duplicity, the critical consensus is that Holden is not only acting
like he’s “about twelve,” but that in many ways, he is twelve. Maxwell Geismar adopts
this position when concluding that Holden “is still, and forever, the innocent child” (76).
In this respect, readers like Geismar fail to recognize Holden’s capacity for sophisticated
narrative manipulation: they, too, “never notice anything” (9).
This lack of conscious notice of Holden’s manipulative behavior is actually quite
difficult to maintain, given that Holden takes repeated opportunities to reveal just how
much of “terrific liar” he can be. Consider his frequent use of the word “phony,” which
he uses early on to list the names of people he considers slobs and bastards. In chapter
one, Holden describes Thurmer, Pencey’s headmaster, as a “phony slob” (3). In chapter
two, Holden criticizes both the word “grand” as well as his classmates at Elkton Hills, his
previous school, as “phony”; he even suggests that the Elkton Hills headmaster, Mr.
Haas, was not just a phony, but “the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life” (13-14).12
This list of phonies continues to grow in chapter three when Holden discusses the
undertaker Ossenburger, yet another “phony bastard” (17), and Holden’s roommate Ward
Stradlater, a “crumby bastard” and a “secret slob” who Holden claims is a “phony kind of
friendly” (27, 44, 26).
12
Holden’s specific complaint is that Haas has a “phony smile” (14).
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This list becomes particularly interesting when Holden suddenly joins it in
chapter seven. Up to this point, Holden has consistently used “phony” to suggest
unequivocal disgust. Yet his eighth usage of the word is conspicuous. Following his fight
with Stradlater, Holden enters the room of Robert Ackley—a classmate described as a
“bastard” and a “nasty guy,” but never as a phony (35, 19). Upon leaving the room,
Holden explains:
I stopped on the way, though, and picked up Ackley’s hand, and gave him
a big, phony handshake. He pulled it away from me. “What’s the idea?” he
said. “No idea. I just want to thank you for being such a goddam prince,
that’s all,” I said. I said it in this very sincere voice. “You’re aces, Ackley
kid,” I said. (50)
Holden’s sarcasm is perfectly in line with his character, especially when it comes to
Ackley. He says just pages earlier, “I can be quite sarcastic when I’m in the mood” (21).
But this instance of sarcasm becomes particularly charged in light of Holden’s calm
admission that his own “handshake” and “sincere voice” are phony. In this respect,
Holden is no different than the headmaster Haas: the supposed “phoniest bastard” who
Holden says “went around shaking hands with everybody’s parents as they drove up to
school” (14).
Even more interesting than Holden’s similarity to Haas is Ackley’s recognition of
Holden’s phoniness. Ackley responds violently, “Wise guy. Someday somebody’s gonna
bash your—” (51). On one hand, Holden seems entirely unaffected by Ackley’s reaction:
“I didn’t even bother to listen to him” (51). Yet this same behavior might also reveal
Holden’s refusal to accept his own phoniness. Ihab Hassan offers this possibility when
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suggesting that Holden is “in flight from mendacity rather than in search of truth”;
Holden’s criticism of phoniness, then, marks his own “self-disgust” (63). It makes sense,
then, that Holden responds by immediately leaving Pencey, thereby placing distance
between him and those who recognize his phoniness. Holden also diverts attention away
from his own phoniness by turning attention yet again to his ever-expanding list of
phonies. In this case, Holden uses his own ostensibly honest narrative to warn against
phony narratives: those “lousy stories” in magazines “with a lot of phony, lean-jawed
guys named David in it, and a lot of phony girls named Linda or Marcia” (53). The irony,
of course, is that Holden purchases “about four magazines” (53).
At this point, readers might begin to question Holden’s ambivalent behavior: if he
despises phoniness, why does he give Ackley a “big, phony handshake” (50); if he can
barely read a magazine “without puking,” why does he buy four (53)? But like Holden’s
aside on immaturity and truth, he never pauses long enough to consider these
discrepancies. Instead, Holden moves almost immediately from criticizing “phony, leanjawed guys” to becoming one. On the train to the city, Holden meets the mother of his
classmate Ernest Morrow, a boy said to be “doubtless the biggest bastard that ever went
to Pencey” (54). When she notices the Pencey sticker on Holden’s luggage, he takes the
opportunity to dupe her. He adopts the pseudonym “Rudolph Schmidt,” the name of the
janitor in his dorm, and then proceeds to lie to her about himself as well as her own son.
Holden excuses the lie by suggesting that the moniker “Rudolph Schmidt” successfully
prevents him from “giving her my whole life story”; and though Holden admits that he
could tell the truth, he chooses not to because “it would’ve taken too long” (55, 56).
Holden also attempts to make his lie seem innocuous by describing it as “shooting the old
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crap around a little bit” (55). Thus begins a series of blatant lies: Holden claims to like
Pencey, saying it’s “not too bad” (55); he claims that his bloody nose came, not from his
fight with Stradlater, but from a snowball fight (56); he claims that the “biggest bastard”
Ernest Morrow actually has a “very original personality,” that “he’s so darn shy and
modest and all,” and that he was the “unanimous choice” for class president” (56, 57, 56).
Even more telling than Holden’s ability to lie is his awareness and enjoyment of
his craft. Holden first surveys his mark, Mrs. Morrow: “I gave her a good look. She
didn’t look like any dope to me” (55). He concludes that Mrs. Morrow may be lying
herself—“you can’t always tell—with somebody’s mother”—but that he can proceed
nonetheless with the ruse (55). Once Holden commits to lying, he begins relishing in his
abilities, commenting to readers: “boy, you should’ve seen her. I had her glued to her
seat” (56). Even in retrospect, Holden is content with his lying: “I’m glad I shot it [the
crap] for a while, though” (57). Holden even attempts to transform the lie into a form of
social service, suggesting that his duplicity improved Mrs. Morrow’s life: “But I’ll bet,
after all the crap I shot, Mrs. Morrow’ll keep thinking of him [Ernest] now as this very
shy, modest guy that wouldn’t let us nominate him for president” (57).
The conclusion of this scene is perhaps the most telling in terms of revealing
Holden’s personal ambivalence and the novel’s ambivalent language. After Mrs. Morrow
realizes that Holden is headed home for the holidays too early, Holden lies that he is
scheduled to have an operation. He tells her, “I have this tiny little tumor on the brain”
(58). It is at this point that Holden’s self-satisfaction becomes mixed with self-disgust and
the character forces himself to stop lying. He admits to readers:
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Then I started reading a timetable I had in my pocket. Just to stop lying.
Once I get started, I can go on for hours if I feel like it. No kidding. Hours.
(58)
Of course, Holden doesn’t feel too bad about lying to Mrs. Morrow, otherwise he might
have confessed to her. Nor does he seem too concerned about lying in general, otherwise
he wouldn’t develop such elaborate lies, narrate them in detail, and then simultaneously
confess and brag about them to readers. Holden is therefore both able and at times willing
to manipulate others for his own pleasure. It is tempting then to suggest that Holden’s
narrative—that this entire novel—stands as the type of lie that “can go on for hours.” But
how, then, is it possible that so many critics over the past half century could have found
in the Holden an “uncompromising morality” (Pinsker 12)? How is it possible to regard
Holden as a tragic hero and not as a consummate confidence man?
The answer lies yet again in Holden’s ambivalent language, particularly in his
frequent use of the words “remember” and “forget.” Holden tends to fight his feelings of
depression and loneliness by retreating to the past through memory. Perhaps his strongest
memory is that of Allie, his dead younger brother. Mitchell explains that Holden tends to
deify Allie, “preserving him in his memory by carrying Allie’s uniquely poem-laden
baseball mitt, praying aloud to him,” and “remembering his good-natured innocence” (99,
152). Yet Holden often ignored his brother when he was alive, refusing to let Allie join
him and his friends. Now that he’s dead, Mitchell explains, Holden possesses “guilt
feelings about Allie” and thus “paints Allie larger than life” through his narrative (153). It
is within this grief-stricken and guilt-laden struggle that Holden appears unequivocally
honest and sincere. Readers cannot help but be moved by Holden’s response to Allie’s
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death: “I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with
my fist . . . It was a very stupid thing to do, I’ll admit, but I hardly didn’t even know I
was doing it, and you didn’t know Allie” (39). It is not surprising, then, that readers often
identify what they see as Holden’s innocence, his love for children such as his sister
Phoebe, and his longing for the past. This sense of innocence helps to explain readings by
critics such as Frederic I. Carpenter that the novel’s “central theme” is “the individual’s
search for genuine values,” which Holden must confront not through memory but through
life. Carpenter therefore concludes, Holden must “face those problems of growing up
which our maturing society must also face” (70-71).
A problem with Carpenter’s claim is that it oversimplifies Holden’s character. It’s
not that Holden is somehow not in search of truth and genuine values; it’s just that he is
not only in search of these things. As the example of Rudolph Schmidt proves, Holden is
often in search of anything but truth, if he is in search of anything at all. These
ambivalences are further captured in Holden’s convoluted use of “forget” and
“remember.” Though these words only occur about 36 times in the novel, my
concordance mapping found that they frequently occur in chunks of two or more; chapter
6, for instance, contains 8 occurrences. The words therefore stand out, not in terms of
repetition, but in terms of density. Although these words are associated quite powerfully
with Holden’s fondness for and guilt over Allie, they are also employed on numerous
occasions as a form of selective narration premised on accidental memory loss. When
Holden doesn’t opt to say, “I don’t feel like going into it,” he can manipulate memory so
that readers are to believe, “Some things are hard to remember” (1, 40).
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Chapter one establishes Holden’s difficulty with memory. The bulk of the novel is
a relatively recent recounting of the events of Holden’s life “around last Christmas” (1).
It is possible, then, that he is liable to make mistakes in memory. Yet what I find so
intriguing are the distinctions between what Holden does and does not remember. At
times, Holden seems to remember exactly when and where he was, as when he discusses
the Pencey football game with Saxon: “I remember around three o’clock that afternoon I
was standing way the hell up on Thomsen Hill, right next to this crazy cannon that was in
the Revolution” (2). At other times, Holden seems unable or unwilling to recall the most
crucial events of his story, as when he leaves out the details about why he left Pencey: “I
forgot to tell you about that. They kicked me out” (4).
Holden’s memory becomes increasingly unreliable as his narrative unfolds. When
Holden recounts a memory that he is fond of, he is able to set the entire scene; but when
the memory is troubling or damaging to his character, Holden’s ability for recollection
diminishes. This tactic is at play both before and after Holden’s fight with Stradlater—a
fight Holden sorely loses. Before the fight begins, Holden reminisces about Allie with a
fair amount of certainty: “I remember once, the summer I was around twelve, teeing off
and all, and having a hunch that if I turned around, all of a sudden, I’d see Allie” (38).
Holden remembers his age (“around twelve”) and the time of year (“summer”); he even
remembers Allie’s location: “on his bike outside the fence . . . about a hundred and fifty
yards behind me” (38). Just two pages later, Holden opens chapter six unable to offer a
consistent picture of the events:
Some things are hard to remember. I’m thinking now of when Stradlater
got back from his date with Jane. I mean I can’t remember exactly what I
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was doing when I heard his goddam stupid footsteps coming down the
corridor. I probably was still looking out the window, but I swear I can’t
remember. (40)
In the span of four sentences, Holden uses the word “remember” three times, each
increasingly negated, from “hard to remember” to “can’t remember” to “I swear I can’t
remember.” Between these occurrences, Holden employs other devices that make it
difficult for readers to perceive anything resembling the “truth” of the events: Holden
shifts from past to present tense with “I’m thinking now”; he negates “exactly” and adds
the qualifier “probably”; he misdirects attention, expending almost an entire sentence to
describe Stradlater’s “goddam stupid footsteps.” This tactic of misdirection continues as
Holden shifts our focus in the paragraph from his inability to “remember” to his hyperability to “worry”:
I was so worried, that’s why. When I really worry about something, I
don’t just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry
about something. Only, I don’t go. I’m too worried to go. I don’t want to
interrupt my worrying to go. If you knew Stradlater, you’d have been
worried, too. (40)
Holden again engages in excessive repetition, using some form of “worry” six times in
seven sentences, with two of these sentences being fragments or run-ons. As with “forget
and “remember,” the word “worry” stands out in light of its sheer density, thereby
making it an intriguing word to concordance map. Holden is unable to provide a clear
answer for why he “can’t remember” the events; however, he has no problem identifying
the source of his anxiety: “If you knew Stradlater, you’d have been worried, too.” This
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tactic of selective memory is then paralleled with selective narration. Holden turns once
again to Stradlater’s feet:
Anyway, the corridor was all linoleum and all, and you could hear his
goddam footsteps coming right towards the room. I don’t even remember
where I was sitting when he came in—at the window, or in my chair or
his. I swear I can’t remember. (40)
This passage largely restates the chapter’s opening. Once again readers are made to focus
on Stradlater’s “goddam footsteps,” this time linked to an image and sound of linoleum.
Holden once again insists on memory loss: though he can recall Stradlater’s exact
movements, he is unable to recall his own, stressing to readers, “I don’t even remember”
and “I swear I can’t remember.” When the fight begins, Holden says yet again: “The next
part I don’t remember so hot” (43). He then attempts to punch Stradlater but misses, only
to find himself pinned to the floor. Holden then insults Stradlater, calling him a “goddam
moron,” but pauses to inform readers: “I can hardly even remember all I said to him”
(44). Stradlater attacks Holden a second time, which leads Holden to reassert his lack of
memory: “I don’t remember if he knocked me out or not, but I don’t think so” (45).
Holden couples his overall uncertainty about the event with a sense of
spontaneity—an effect achieved, in part, by his introduction of the fight in present tense.
The phrase “I’m thinking now” actually serves two roles: 1) it bolsters Holden’s
argument for memory loss, given that he is just thinking about the fight “now” and thus
has not thought about it since Christmas; 2) it creates the impression that Holden is
simply reporting the event as he recalls it “now,” without embellishment and without
revision. This sense of spontaneity comes across in Holden’s play-by-play account of the
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fight, conveyed in phrases such as “the next thing I knew, I was on the goddam floor,”
and “the next thing I knew, I was on the goddam floor again” (43. 45). Holden would
have readers believe, then, that everything happened so fast that all he could do was
respond. Readers are therefore likely to overlook the detail that Holden throws the sucker
punch that starts the fight: “I got up from the bed, like I was going down to the can or
something, and then I tried to sock him, with all my might” (43). Of course, given
Holden’s admittedly poor memory of the fight, readers can only accept his account with a
significant grain of salt. It is possible, for instance, to doubt Holden’s contention that 1)
he doesn’t “think” he passed out, 2) that he was both “almost” and “practically bawling”
but that he never cried, 3) that Stradlater “probably was scared” when Holden fell to the
floor, and so on. Ultimately, then, the reader’s perspective on the fight is just as
ambivalent as his memory of it: “It partly scared me and it partly fascinated me” (45).
Holden’s memory problems pepper the entire novel, as he either misremembers or
simply fails to remember his motivations during key events. When Holden begins crying
upon leaving Pencey, for instance, he supplies no greater justification than: “I was sort of
crying. I don’t know why” (52). When explaining why he’s still a virgin, Holden says
that he almost had sex once but that something “went wrong, though—I don’t remember
what any more” (92). When Holden becomes sad at the thought of a prostitute shopping
for clothes he comments: “It made me feel sad as hell—I don’t know why exactly” (96).
One way to read these narrative gaps is to suggest that Holden is unable to articulate
these events because he lacks both the memory and the language to do so. Kegel takes
this position when proposing that Holden’s “problem is one of communication: as a teenager, he simply cannot get through to the adult world which surrounds him” (54). While
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Kegel is certainly right, he is only partly right, given that his theory of incommunicability
fails to account for convoluted statements such as the following:
I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like
it. (122)
Though Holden certainly has communication problems, this flippant statement suggests
that his issues of communicability are not, as Kegel suggests, localized to age or writing
ability. Rather, Holden is an ambivalent character with ambivalent relations to memory
and language. Sometimes he “can’t explain” himself. Sometimes he can, but doesn’t “feel
like it.”
Both Holden and readers battle with these incompatibilities of memory and
language throughout the novel. This battle is intensified by Holden’s seeming ability to
remain in a constant state of surprise and unpreparedness. His narrative is so successful,
in part, because he convinces readers that his scattered reportage of events is an accurate
portrait of his experiences. This narrative style is perhaps best captured by the word “all,”
particularly as it appears in the phrases “and all” and “all of a sudden.” Of the reiterative
patterns I’ve mentioned so far, “all” is by far the most common, occurring 1024 times in
the 214 page novel, or roughly four times per page. Given that each page contains
approximately 300 words, this means that readers encounter some form of “all” about
every 75 words from the novel’s beginning to end, which makes it particularly apt for
concordance mapping; moreover, unlike “forget, “remember,” and “worry,” the word
“all” stands out in terms of both frequency and density: the word occurs in chunks but it
also occurs in every chapter and in almost every page of the novel.
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The phrases “and all” and “all of a sudden” are key to the development of
Holden’s voice; as Donald Costello notes, they “give a sense of looseness of expression
and looseness of thought” (94). On one hand, this looseness bolsters common views that
Holden’s narrative is spontaneous, simplistic, and even, as Costello comments,
“extremely trite and typical teenage speech” (94). On the other hand, these same words,
while betraying the spontaneous triteness of Holden’s narrative, also testify to the sheer
constructedness of his story. Even Costello admits that the “and all” signals that “Holden
knows there is more going on that could be said about the issue at hand” (94). From this
perspective, words and phrases such as “and all” and “all of a sudden” appear to serve
contrasting roles: they establish Holden as a typical teenager and as an untutored writer;
they establish Holden as an above-average teenager and as a skilled craftsman.
I will start by extending Costello’s analysis of “and all.” Consider Holden’s
opening description of his parents as being “nice and all,” or that of D.B. as “my brother
and all” (1). In both instances, “and all” is grammatically superfluous and semantically
empty. Costello is right to observe that this phrase adds to “the flavor of the book” by
becoming “a part of Holden himself” (94). Yet this flavor is somewhat bland, since
Holden’s use of “and all” suggests not only poor writing but also a lack of revision. The
word’s usage thus reveals the simplicity and spontaneity of Holden’s narrative. The same
might be said of “all of a sudden.” Consider the statements “All of a sudden I thought of
something” and “All of a sudden then, I wanted to get the hell out of the room” (4, 10).
As with “and all,” the phrase “all of a sudden” contributes to a feeling of spontaneity,
leading readers to believe that Holden is merely reacting to and then diligently reporting
the events around him.
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From a different perspective, Holden’s use of “and all” and “all of a sudden” does
not bespeak spontaneity and poor writing so much as it betrays a sense of control and
manipulation. If Holden’s repeated rejection of “phoniness” reveals his own phoniness,
then his repeated emphasis on poor writing (“and all”) and spontaneity (“all of a sudden”)
signal the opposite reality. Holden’s repeated use of “all” can therefore be said to
establish an expectation of superficial and simplistic writing, thereby allowing him to
admit openly that he has forgotten, misrepresented, or simply ignored certain aspects of
his narrative. Mitchell, for instance, comments upon the fact that readers never learn the
first names of Holden’s parents: “We are given so few facts and scenes to describe them
that we have trouble refuting Holden, except that we know he is holding something back
from us” (150). This reading applies as well to phrases such as: “All of a sudden I
thought of something that helped me know I was getting the hell out” of Pencey (4).
These phrases allow the narrator to shift from topic to topic without offering any
motivation or excuse. In this respect, they function as flimsy transitions, jarring the
narrative loose so that Holden can shift, without logical cause, to a new topic, only to jar
the narrative loose again moments later. When placed in the larger context of errors,
digressions, pseudonyms, and lies, Holden’s ability to make the novel seem simple,
spontaneous, and downright poorly written is amazing, for it provides yet another level of
ambivalence, thereby distancing readers even further from any clear notion of narrative
“truth.” Try as they may to sort through these inconsistencies, or try as they may to
escape them, readers ultimately arrive at the end of the novel in much the same position
as Holden.
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III
The reiterative words “phony,” “truth,” “forget,” “remember,” and “all” point to
patterns of ambivalence in the novel. These words also serve as jumping off points for
larger examples of the novel’s ambivalent use of language. After concordance mapping a
series of reiterative words, I began searching for similar patterns of ambivalence in
Holden’s overall narrative. What I discovered, as I mentioned earlier, is that the patterns
of ambivalence found in Holden’s reiterative diction parallel patterns of ambivalence in a
variety of narrative devices that include factual errors, selective narration, lapses in
memory, narrative digressions, play-acting, and outright lying. This section briefly
addresses some of the ways in which concordance mapping of individual words can
enable analyses of larger patterns, such as those of narration.
Each narrative device can be earmarked by its most obvious occurrence—those
made available through even the most cursory reading of the novel. Thus, factual errors
appear in Holden’s misremembering of the Robert Burns line “Gin a body meet a body /
Coming thro’ the rye” as “If a body catch a body coming through the rye” (173).
Selective narration is at work in the novel’s opening paragraph in which Holden blithely
asserts, “I’m only going to tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around
last Christmas” (1). Alleged memory lapses occur by page four when Holden casually
confesses about leaving Pencey: “I forgot to tell you about that. They kicked me out” (4).
Holden’s narrative digressions appear within the novel’s first paragraph, as he provides a
meandering introduction to D.B., including the information that D.B. is his brother, that
he is a writer in Hollywood, that he drives a Jaguar and dates a British woman, that his
first book of short stories was terrific, that his story “The Secret Goldfish” stood out, that
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Holden disapproves of his brother’s recent writings, and that Holden hates movies.
Holden’s play-acting is perhaps most obvious in his fabrication of personalities such as
“Rudolf Schmidt” and “Jim Steele.” Finally, Holden proudly admits to his ability for
deception in the opening of chapter 3: “I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your
life” (16).
Though Holden admits to lying on several occasions, his duplicity is not limited
to these more obvious and consciously recognized instances. I don’t think it far-fetched to
suggest that Holden’s factual errors, memory lapses, and misrepresentations can also be
viewed as types of lies. How is it possible, then, that readers are often so defensive and
supportive of Holden’s character? How is it that Holden comes across to many readers as
naïve, sincere, and almost painfully honest? To return to the Robert Burns error, how is it
possible to view Holden as the venerable “catcher in the rye” when he not only
misremembers the poem but also surrounds this error with a myriad of other errors,
uncertainties, and lies? The answer, as I’ve been suggesting, lies in Holden’s narrative
voice.
This ambivalence is at work from the novel’s opening sentence:
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to
know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and
how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that
David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you
want to know the truth. (1)
Common readings of this sentence are quite similar to common readings of the entire
novel: 17-year old Holden Caulfield relays his experiences of the previous winter in a
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straightforward, often crass, and occasionally simplistic manner. This view is perhaps
best expressed in Donald Costello’s “The Language of The Catcher in the Rye.” Like
Strauch, Costello traces a number of the novel’s reiterative word patterns, including
Holden’s use of slang and curse words such as “crap,” “ass,” “hell,” and “shit.” For
Costello, these patterns are indicative of Holden’s voice and of typical American teenage
speech. Speaking specifically of readers in 1951, Costello notes that “the language of
Holden Caulfield . . . struck the ear of the contemporary reader as an accurate rendering
of the informal speech of an intelligent, educated, Northeastern American adolescent”
(93). While Costello’s observations are certainly true, his concern with the novel’s
“accurate rendering” of speech frames the discussion of voice as accurate versus
inaccurate; it therefore excludes a consideration of voice as sincere versus insincere.
Thus, despite Costello’s observation that Holden has a “habit of writing on more than one
level at the same time,” he nonetheless agrees with critics such as Heiserman and Miller
that “‘Holden feels compelled to reinforce his sincerity and truthfulness constantly’”
(29).13
Holden’s frank and simplistic narration, however, is often countered, or at least
tempered, by skilled and manipulative storytelling. From this perspective, then, the first
sentence of Catcher introduces readers to two Holden Caulfields—the typical adolescent
and the capable writer—with whom readers will contend until (and even after) the novel
concludes. Readers begin by encountering a conditional proposition:
If you really want to hear about it. (1)
13
Charles H. Kegel makes a similar argument about language and sincerity in Catcher, noting that
Holden’s “repeated assertions that something he has said is ‘really’ so demonstrate his attempt to keep faith
with the Word” (original emphasis 54).
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This proposition offers readers two options: to read the book or not to read the book. To
read the book presumes that readers “want,” at least generally, to hear Holden’s story; it
does not guarantee that readers “really” want to hear it. Holden, however, does not
espouse this logic, but rather assumes that, if reading his book, readers do “really want to
hear about it.” He even presumes to know what readers “probably want to know first,”
which is the story of his childhood and, even further back in time, the story of his parents
before he was born. Holden then links the reader’s preferred narrative structure to a preexisting novel, David Copperfield, revealing that he has not only read the book but that
he knows it well enough to draw correspondences between its plot line and that of his
own life. Holden thus reveals two types of presumed knowledge: that of literature and
that of his audience. Yet as soon as he admits this knowledge, he discounts it, or at least
recasts it. He calls David Copperfield “crap” and then denies the reader’s presumed
desire to hear about his childhood and parents by dismissively remarking, “I don’t feel
like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
Within the span of a single sprawling sentence, Holden successfully bypasses two
key questions concerning his motivations as author. He first poses as a reluctant writer,
only consenting to relay his narrative because readers “really want to hear about it”—or
so he says. Holden then openly withholds information about his childhood and his
parents, only offering the most cursory motivation for doing so: “I don’t feel like going
into it.” Readers, of course, never learn why Holden doesn’t feel like going into it, only
that he doesn’t. Instead, Holden openly admits that he is “not going to tell” his entire
story and that he will “just tell” us what happened “around last Christmas” (1). In this
respect, the novel’s first sentence can be said to prevent the acquisition of two types of
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knowledge: why Holden is writing and why he is writing so selectively. The phrase “if
you want to know the truth” therefore functions as more than a cliché; it also captures the
reader’s desire to know the truth of Holden’s narrative.
For Jonathan P. Lewis, much of the novel’s ambivalence stems from Holden’s
repeated “rejection of totalizing narratives” (4). Lewis highlights some of the novel’s
structural ambivalences, including its “limited narrative point of view and Holden’s self
ascribed label as ‘the most terrific liar you ever saw’”—aspects of the narrative which
complicate our ability as readers to say “what a ‘true’ picture of Holden’s experience may
be” (4). Lewis even rejects common readings of Catcher as a portrait of an adolescent’s
descent into insanity, noting that the novel espouses “no grand narrative of psychological
decay” (4). Instead, Lewis observes that Salinger chooses “to begin with Holden’s last
day at Pencey and end before the breakdown, rather than build to it” (4).
Holden’s rejection of grand narratives, his ability to write on several levels at the
same time, his memory lapses, and his digressive speech all complicate a reader’s ability
to deduce the “truth” of the narrative. When combined with Holden’s complex use of
reiterative words and phrases “phony,” “truth,” “forget,” “remember,” “and all,” and “all
of a sudden,” the relative truth or falsity of the narrative is difficult, if not impossible to
gauge with any accuracy. Mitchell perhaps captures this reality best when observing,
“Perhaps neither can be proven superior to the other” (154). The sheer difficulty of
making a firm claim about the novel’s relative truth or falsity affects all types of readers.
Casual readers would seem unable to overlook, among other discrepancies, the stark
contrast between Holden’s repeated hatred of phoniness and his proclamation, “I’m the
most terrific liar you ever saw in your life” (16). Slightly more attentive readers are likely
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to notice the discrepancy between’s Holden’s self-proclaimed desire to be the “catcher in
the rye” and his blatant misremembering of the Robert Burns poem on which his desire is
supposedly based. As a reader’s level of scrutiny increases, so too does the novel’s sense
of ambivalence. Even readers who push themselves to slog through each and every
minute instance of ambivalence in the novel will still come away with much the same
response as the casual reader. For this answer, reader might take their cue from Holden,
who concludes his novel with a pronounced degree of ambivalence: “If you want to know
the truth, I don’t know what I think about it” (213-214).
IV
It is quite common that people who have read Catcher once have also read it
twice or even three or more times. Douglas R. Hofstadter comments upon this reaction to
the novel in Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language:
Ever since I first read and fell in love with it in 1960, I have made a
practice of re-reading J.D. Salinger’s masterpiece The Catcher in the Rye
every ten years. Each go-round, I have feared that this time, finally, I
would find it too adolescent, too simplistic, too dated, too corny—too this,
too that, too something-or-other—but each time, glad to say, to my joy
and relief, I have found it to be not too young or too trite, but too touching
for words, too frank, and as funny and fresh as the first time, to boot. (281)
Hofstadter’s observations reveal that one effect of the novel is that it compels readers to
pick it up again and again. A possible reason for this compulsion is the novel’s
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ambivalent language, which creates within readers an abiding desire to revisit the
ambivalences, to gain greater awareness and knowledge of them.
Concordance mapping, I believe, can inspire a similar form of compulsion in
readers, not just for Catcher, but for any number of texts. This idea connects with my
earlier claim that concordance mapping encourages deconstructive “play.” Because the
concordance reorganizes a text’s language into an alphabetized list of reiterative words,
readers, or students, immediately gain a new form of access to the text. This access can
be as extensive or as limited as the student chooses: although every word in the text is
available for analysis, to at least some extent, students can exercise autonomy by
deciding their level of critical sufficiency. Though my analysis of Catcher, for instance,
encompassed primarily six words and phrases, not counting narrative devices, students
building upon my reading could extend their personal concordance by ten, twenty, or
fifty times. Students could devote more time, for example, to Holden’s ambivalent
descriptions of people, be it his parents, his brother D.B., his sister Phoebe, Ackley, or
Stradlater. One example is Holden’s mixed response to his sister Phoebe, whom he both
adores and derides. Holden claims that Phoebe has “sense and all” and tells readers,
“You’d like her” (66, 67); yet he later admits, “I was almost all set to hit her” and “I
almost hated her” (206, 207). These additional analyses will inspire others and still
others; each time, the student will locate new reiterative words and conduct new analyses
of those words; each time, the student will gain greater knowledge of the novel’s
language; each time, the student will acquire greater skill in the practice of reading,
evidence generation, and close analysis.
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Chapter 4: Faces and Facing in Breath, Eyes, Memory
Since its release in 1994, critical discussion of Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes,
Memory has consistently overlooked the novel’s use of language. This absence is
explained, in part, by the novel’s stark subject matter, which has largely preoccupied its
readers. Exile and migration, mother-daughter relationships, sexual trauma, Haitian
political history, rape, bulimia, and Haitian religious folklore are just a few of the issues
touched upon in this fictionalized first-person memoir. Numerous scholarly articles have
been drawn from these topics: Nancy Gerber addresses storytelling and the motherdaughter relationship, Donette A. Francis discusses Haitian women’s sexual histories,
and Liza Anatol examines Caribbean migration and exile in the novel. Although these
articles certainly require close analysis of the novel’s characters, themes, and cultural
implications, these same readings often have the obverse effect of diminishing the
attention paid to the novel’s language.
In a recent interview, Danticat laments the existence of such gaps in the critical
discourse surrounding her novel. When asked about her inclusion of an Afterword to the
1998 edition, Danticat explained: “I wrote the afterword because of the people who
insisted on reading the novel as a ‘study’ of Haitian women . . . I was so naïve that I
never anticipated that people wouldn’t be able to make the distinction between one
family’s story and an entire group’s story. I wanted to write the afterword not as an
apology or a defense, but as a clarification” (Lyons 191). This clarification is Danticat’s
call to scholars and teachers of Breath, whom she implores: “what I write are novels, not
anthropology or social research” (187). Danticat extends this call to include, not just her
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and other Haitian writers, but women and minority writers over the world. Speaking
again to scholars and teachers of literature, Danticat explains: “There is a tendency to see
our work as sociology or anthropology, an ‘insight’ into a complex culture. Readers have
to remember that we’re writing fiction, telling stories” (Lyons 187, 190).
An expansion of critical discourse on Danticat therefore requires that scholars and
teachers locate their concerns about Breath not in sociology and anthropology but in
fiction. This maneuver does not limit the possibilities for analysis so much as it offers an
opportunity to approach the novel from a fresh perspective; one that not only sheds new
light on the novel’s use of language but also enables students reading Breath to
understand better the intertwining of form and content in literature. Readers can
effectively access the novel’s subject matter through examining its language. Topics such
as mother-daughter relationships, sexual trauma, and migration can be identified and
extensively analyzed via patterns of language. One means of approaching this language is
through concordance mapping, which facilitates a reader ability to access the novel’s
content through its form: specifically, through its use of reiterative word patterns. This
chapter offers a demonstration of this critical maneuver by serving as an introductory
examination of language patterns of Breath. This chapter therefore responds to the call
put forth by Danticat that scholars and teachers extend critical discourse on Breath by
reading it as a work of fiction, a construction. What follows, then, is a supplementary
reading of Breath that promotes concordance mapping as an effective tool for analyzing
patterns of language in the novel.
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I
The need to expand critical discourse on Breath to include analyses of its
language becomes evident after reading articles such as Patrick Samway’s “A Homeward
Journey: Edwidge Danticat’s Fictional Landscapes, Mindscapes, Genescapes, and
Signscapes in Breath, Eyes, Memory.” Given its title, Samway’s article might seem to be
an analysis of Danticat’s craft of fiction. The critic begins in fact by examining language
in the form of onomastics, including references to Nigeria in Grandma Ifé’s name as well
as the “flamboyant red bird and Haitian revolutionary heros” simultaneously referenced
in the “Caco” family name (76). However, his article gradually turns away from an
analysis of language to an encomium on Danticat’s cultural achievement in writing the
novel. Samway remarks, “In short, this novel has revolutionized Haitian literature by
giving a new sense of empowerment to the feminist literary liberation movement there”
(82). Samway even goes so far as to suggest that the novel succeeds in “reshaping the
categories of feminism, power, liberation, resistance, culture, marriage, and identity”
(83). Though Samway expresses concern with the reshaping of everything from
“feminism” to “identity,” his article fails to offer concrete illustrations of this reshaping
as it takes place in the novel. He characterizes Danticat’s prose as “a progressive type of
semiotics concerning the open-endedness of language,” yet his approach to the text has
the effect of overriding the analysis of this semiotics (77).
The critic is not alone is this maneuver. Readers can also turn to Giselle Liza
Anatol’s “Caribbean migration, ex-isles, and the New World novel.” Anatol claims that
her essay will pay “[p]articular attention to the works of Caribbean-American writers,
such as Paule Marshall and Edwidge Danticat”; yet her focus on Danticat spans barely
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three of thirteen pages. Although she references Danticat’s interest in “word play and . . .
mental and verbal wit,” Anatol devotes most of her time to summarizing a series of
themes, including: themes of “dislocation and conflicting ideas of ‘home’” as well as the
“crucial theme” of sexuality (80).
Such theme-based critical discourse on Breath often unwittingly uses patterns of
language similar to those found in novel; the critics, however, rarely pause long enough
to consider these parallels. Once such pattern is the novel’s language of confrontation,
evident in words such as “confrontation,” “face” and “facing,” and “name” and
“naming.” These words inform the novel’s plot, setting, and characterizations. For
instance, the novel’s four main characters— Grandmè Ifé, Tante Atie, Martine, and the
narrator and protagonist, Sophie—are each embattled by personal traumas, ranging from
inordinate grief to rape to bulimia. Critics have commonly addressed these topics as they
relate to the issue of confrontation. One example is Donette A. Francis’ “‘Silences Too
Horrific to Disturb: Writing Sexual Histories in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes,
Memory.” Francis argues that Danticat’s characters “work to confront and move beyond
their histories of silence, shame and trauma” (emphasis mine 85); she suggests that the
novel “challenges” and “compels” readers to reconsider the impact of these sexual
traumas (76, 86); Martine, for example, is said to commit suicide “because she never
confronts nor revises the trauma” of rape (emphasis mine 82); the critic also claims that
Sophie’s catharsis “in the canefields suggests a confrontation with cultural history and
social practices as she uses her body as the vehicle to rewrite dominant narratives”
(emphasis mine 87).
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This same language of confrontation appears in Marie-José N’Zengo-Tayo’s
“Children in Haitian Popular Migrations as Seen by Maryse Condé and Edwidge
Danticat.” N’Zengo-Tayo admits upfront that the novel is “very complex” and that her
“paper examines only one aspect of it [. . .] the impact of migration on the motherdaughter relationship” (97). Although this focus prevents N’Zengo-Tayo from discussing
the novel’s language of confrontation directly, her article unwittingly employs a similar
diction. For instance, she observes of Sophie’s character: “The narrator understands all
prejudices Haitian children have to face in American schools, including racial prejudice
and rejection based on popular stereotypes. Adjustment to American society means
confrontation with rejection” (emphasis mine 98).
Carole Boyce Davies’s Black Women, Writing and Identity, released the same
year as Breath, Eyes, Memory, employs a similar language of confrontation. While
Davies doesn’t reference Danticat by name, she does make claims about the “question of
identity for Afro-Caribbean/American women writers” (115). For Davies, these questions
are addressed in part through the “confronting [of] racial discrimination and foreign bias,
Caribbean male phallicism and American imperialism” (emphasis mine 116). As with
both the Francis and N’Zengo-Tayo articles, however, Davies’ concern with the novel’s
subject matter prevents her from extending her argument by connecting the topic of
confrontation in the novel with its parallel language of confrontation. Thus, each critic
concludes with statements about cultural themes, not textual construction: Francis
observes that Danticat “ultimately reshapes Haitian political history” (88); N’Zengo-Tayo
claims, “Danticat seems to advocate for this miscegenation of cultures” (100); Davies
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contends, “Beyond language, locale, genre, medium, we question what it is that creative
Black women are saying everywhere” (128).
I am most struck by Davies’s claim. Though I have no argument with posing
questions about what creative Black women are saying “everywhere,” I do admit to
holding an interest in finding out what they are saying in a specific place at a specific
time: one language, one locale, one genre, one medium. For this reason, I locate my
current concerns, not in Haitian political history or even in Caribbean women writers, but
on patterns of confrontation as they find expression in the language of Breath. This
chapter therefore takes a different route: instead of devoting myself solely to analyses of
the novel’s key topics, I examine its language of confrontation as a means of working
through such topics. Because each of the four characters is faced with the decision to
confront, or not to confront, her trauma, I examine these struggles one-by-one, characterby-character.
II
Breath, Eyes, Memory is the story of the Caco family, which Danticat describes in
an interview as “a family full of kindness as well as harshness, a family full of love as
well as grief, a family deeply rooted in the past, yet struggling to confront an
unpredictable future” (235). These struggles find their greatest articulation in the lives of
the four female members of the Caco family, the novel’s main characters: Grandmè Ifé,
Tante Atie, Martine, and the narrator and protagonist, Sophie. Each character is caught
between conflicting states of kindness and harshness, love and grief; specifically, each
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character is immersed in a series of interrelated traumas.14 Grandmè Ifé is burdened with
the death of her husband and her experiences as a mother who “tests” the virginity of her
two daughters; Aunt Atie struggles with her love for Monsieur Augustin as well as her
desire to be a mother; Martine is challenged by painful memories of being raped and her
strained relationship with the product of that rape, her daughter Sophie; Sophie attempts
to grapple with her identity as a child of rape, the trauma of “testing,” and the disorder of
bulimia.
Danticat captures the struggles of these characters through language patterns of
confrontation. I located some of these patterns by concordance mapping the novel with a
pen in hand. I then checked this data against Amazon’s Concordance. The word
“confrontation,” for instance, is used only twice in the novel—both times by Sophie’s
therapist, a Santeria priestess—and once in the Afterword, by Danticat. But the word also
pervades the novel in other forms. “Confrontation,” according to the Oxford English
Dictionary, derives from the Medieval Latin word, confrontatio, meaning: “The bringing
of persons face to face; esp. for examination and eliciting of the truth.” The word “face”
plays a key role in the novel’s language of confrontation. My research found that “face”
occurs in some form on 121 occasions in the 234-page text, or more than once every
other page.15 This language is both literal and metaphoric: while the noun form of “face”
is used in relation to the literal features of these women’s faces, the verb form of “face” is
14
By “trauma” I mean “psychological trauma,” which therapists such as Raymond B. Flannery, Jr. define
in terms appropriate to Danticat’s novel of confrontation: “being faced with the uncontrollable
overwhelming events where the person is helpless to affect the outcome of the event” (Psychological
Trauma 218).
15
See Appendix E.
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used to indicate their both figurative and literal need to confront both past and present
traumas.
Grandmè Ifé, the matriarch of the Caco family, has a life marked by trauma. She
suffers from grief over the premature death of her husband; the character has also caused
trauma to her two daughters—Atie and Martine—through the act of “testing” their
virginity by ensuring that their hymens are intact. Yet her commitment to the past, be it
past experiences or past traditions, prevents her from addressing both the death of her
husband and her role in the testing. Ifé thus learns to live with these traumas rather than
confronting them.
Her character is introduced in the first chapter during a flashback about the death
of Sophie’s grandfather. While working in the canefields, the grandfather “stopped to
wipe his forehead, leaned forward, and died” (4). Ifé initially responds to her husband’s
death with incredulity. Sophie tells readers: “My grandmother took the body in her arms
and tried to scream the life back into it” (4). Overcome with grief, Ifé avoids confronting
or “facing” this image of death by both literally and figuratively veiling the death’s head.
Sophie explains: “my grandmother’s tears bathed the corpse’s face. Nothing would bring
my grandfather back” (5). Ifé tears hide the image of her husband’s face and thus prevent
her from confronting his death.
Even after her husband is long buried, Ifé is unable to accept his death; this
refusal is represented in part though her wearing of “a long black dress, as part of her
deuil” (24). Although the amount of time since the husband’s death is never stipulated,
we know that Ifé has worn the deuil for at least 20 years—the duration of time Martine
has resided in New York. Upon Martine’s first return to Haiti, she greets her mother with
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surprise: “I see you still wear the deuil” (159). Ifé’s response is telling: “‘It is all the
same,’ answered my grandmother. ‘The black is easier; it does not get dirty’” (160). For
Roberta Q. Knowles, this response suggests that “Grandmè Ifé’s devotion is tempered by
pragmatism” (168). I would argue, however, that Ifé’s continued wearing of the deuil
indicates an unhealthy devotion: her inability to confront the death of her husband. The
wearing of the deuil is indeed “easier,” for it allows Ifé to exist in a perpetual state of
grief. In this respect, Ifé’s claim, “It is all the same,” comments both on her unchanging
wardrobe and her unchanging state of grief.
Unable to cope with life, Ifé prefers to concentrate on death. Though she shows
no signs of ailing health, she nonetheless emphasizes her impeding demise. This
behavior, too, signals Ifé’s inability to confront trauma. Such avoidance is evident during
her trip to the fabric market with Sophie: “‘I have this at home,’ said my grandmother,
rubbing the edge of a white fabric against her face. ‘It will be for my burial’” (117).
Much like a veil, the white fabric both literally and figuratively represents Ifé’s refusal to
face the death of her husband; by focusing on her burial plans, she can temporarily avoid
the reality of his death.
Ifé engages in a similar form of avoidance when questioned about the testing of
her daughters’ virginity. Sophie confides to her grandmother that Martine’s previous
testing has made sexual intercourse traumatic: “I hated the tests,” I said. “It is the most
horrible thing that ever happened to me. When my husband is with me now, it gives me
such nightmares that I have to bite my tongue to do it again.” (156).
Ifé is both the product of testing and a tester herself. Unable to confront—or
perhaps even recognize—her own complicity in these traumatic acts, Ifé holds firm to the
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tradition of testing. She explains: “From the time a girl begins to menstruate to the time
you turn her over to her husband, the mother is responsible for her purity” (156). After
Sophie insists that Martine and Atie “hated” the testing, Ifé still responds: “I had to keep
them clean until they had husbands” (156). When Sophie admits that she, too, hated the
testing and in fact suffers “nightmares” because of it, Ifé remains unmoved. She
responds, “With patience, it goes away” (156). When Sophie asserts her hatred of testing
a fourth time, Ifé’s only recourse is to change the subject: “Ti Alice, she has passed her
examination” (156).
From these examples, it would seem that Ifé fails to recognize, much less
confront, her role in these traumatic events. Yet the character does seem to experience a
brief moment of facing. Following Sophie’s painful confession about testing, Ifé
responds: “My heart, it weeps like a river . . . for the pain we have caused you” (157).
Later, Sophie thinks she hears this weeping taking place. As she cries herself to sleep,
Sophie comments: “I think I heard my grandmother crying too” (157). This line suggests
that Ifé begins to face the painful reality of testing. As the line continues, however,
readers learn: “but it was rain slowing down to a mere drizzle, tapping on the roof” (157).
At best, then, Ifé experiences only a partial confrontation with her past and present
traumas.
--Tante Atie is more successful than her mother in confronting trauma. Like Ifé,
Atie exists in a perpetual state of grief. Yet unlike her mother, Atie literally “faces” her
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grief daily, though she is figuratively unable to confront this trauma. Instead of struggling
with the death of her husband, Atie copes with the aftermath of a failed engagement.
Her former lover, Monsieur Donald Augustin, lives across the street from Atie
with his wife, referred to as Madame Augustin. Atie tortures herself by intently watching
(or facing) the couple as they amorously prepare for bed. Readers learn that Atie stands
outside on the porch and “kept her eyes on the Augustin’s house” (15). Atie witnesses
each action: “Monsieur Augustin got up to undress . . . Madame Augustin took off her
day clothes . . . they began a tickling fight . . . The light flickered off and they tumbled
into bed” (15). Atie is so fixated on the couple that she “kept looking at the window even
after all signs of the Augustins had faded into the night” (15). The event is traumatic for
Atie, so much so that a “tear rolled her cheek as she unbolted the door to go inside” (15).
On one hand, this event seems to signal a confrontation: Atie faces the event and
subsequently purges herself through crying. Readers quickly learn, however, that Atie’s
spying is a nightly ritual, during which she relives the trauma of her estrangement from
Augustin. Like Ifé, Atie finds it “easier” to relive the trauma than to confront it and move
on. Thus, she instructs Sophie: “Don’t you ever tell anyone that I cry when I watch
Donald and his wife getting ready for bed” (17).
The trauma of Atie’s failed engagement is exacerbated by her relationship with
her niece, Sophie. After Sophie’s mother Martine is raped in the canefields, she flees to
New York to escape her sexual trauma, leaving her daughter behind in Haiti. Atie is left
to raise Sophie for 12 years, during which time the two form their own mother-daughter
relationship. Sophie considers Atie a mother figure, as evident from the novel’s opening
line: “A flattened and drying daffodil was dangling off the little card that I had made my
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aunt Atie for Mother’s Day” (3). Yet Atie’s failed engagement with Augustin prevents
her from accepting her role as mother. Atie admits that Mother’s Day makes her “sad,”
which leads Sophie to hypothesize: “Maybe she wanted to be a real mother, have a real
daughter to wear matching clothes with, hold hands and learn to read with” (7). The
trauma of Atie’s failed engagement is therefore combined with her perceived failure in
motherhood. Thus, when Sophie presents Atie with a Mother’s Day card, the character’s
only recourse is to avoid the sight of it. Atie’s inability to confront her trauma is evident
in her body language: “her face drooped into her palms” (8). Sophie tells readers: “Atie
handed the card back to me. She did not even look inside” (8). This literal refusal to
“face” the card is paralleled again by Atie’s body language: “Atie lowered her head and
covered her face with her hands” (8). Atie also does not allow Sophie to read the poem
she has written inside the card, for the mere sound of it would require her to face her
trauma. She therefore insists: “It is not for me to hear, my angel. It is for your mother”
(9).
While Atie’s situation might seem as dire as Ifé’s, the character actually differs in
her ability to locate a partial solution to her trauma. The solution is literacy. After
watching the Augustins prepare for bed, Atie comments to Sophie: “Do you know why I
always wished I could read? . . . so I could read that old Bible under my pillow and find
the answers to everything right there between those pages” (16). Although Atie
frequently insists that she will never learn to read—“But not at my age. My time is
gone”—the character uses Sophie’s absence as a motivation to take lessons from Louise
(4). Sophie, in fact, plays a large part in Atie’s literacy; Louise explains to Sophie: “I am
teaching Atie her letters now and all she can write in her book is your name” (98).
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Atie makes no mention of reading the Bible for “the answers to everything,” yet
she nonetheless uses her newfound literacy as a form of therapy. She tells Sophie: “I
always felt, I did, that I knew words in my head. I did not know them on paper. Now
once every so often, I put some nice words down. Louise, she calls them poems” (103).
When Sophie asks Atie to read one of these poems, she responds with the following:
My mother is a daffodil,
limber and strong as one.
My mother is a daffodil,
but in the wind, iron strong. (108)
The lines, Sophie immediately realizes, are “the very same words as those I’d written
down on the card that I had made her so long ago, on Mother’s Day” (108). These words,
in effect, become Atie’s mantra, allowing her to replace the pain of not being a “real
mother” with her love for Sophie. Atie herself explains, “I have never forgotten those
words. I have written them down”; and later, “When you have something precious, you
do not forget it” (109, 120). It makes sense, then, that Atie’s other habit when writing is
to repeat Sophie’s name, as this practice too acts as a form of therapy.
Though literacy serves as a form of confrontation for Atie, it does not entirely free
her from the psychological effects of trauma. Writing helps her to relieve the pain of
absent motherhood, but Atie is still bound by the trauma of her failed engagement to
Monsieur Augustin and by an overwhelming sense of isolation. The lingering effects of
these traumas are evident in Atie’s reading style. Sophie observes that Atie reads by
raising “the notebook so it covered her face” (108); Sophie later informs us that Atie
“held the notebook so close to her face, I thought there was a mirror inside of it” (120).
142
Reading both liberates and isolates Atie: it helps her to cope with the pain of absent
motherhood, yet it also cuts her off from the surrounding world—a world populated by
the Augustins.
The negative effects of Atie’s literacy become especially apparent when Louise,
Atie’s teacher and possible lover, abandons her. Here Atie’s literacy actually inhibits her
ability for confrontation. Though Atie insists that Louise’s absence is “no loss,” her
actions suggest otherwise: “She leaned back against the porch railing, pulling her
notebook from her sack, and began writing her name. She wrote it over and over” (149,
148). Much like Atie’s tendency to hold the notebook so that it “covered her face,” this
obsessive act of writing creates a barrier to confrontation. In this respect, literacy actually
prevents Atie from facing one trauma even while it provides succor from another.
--Unlike Atie, Martine is unable to find even a partial resolution to her trauma—her
rape in the cane fields. Perhaps the most horrific aspect of Martine’s rape is the rapist’s
facelessness. The story of the rape is revealed in pieces throughout the novel. Martine
offers Sophie the first account of the event: “I did not know this man. I never saw his
face. He had it covered when he did this to me. But now when I look at your face I think
it is true what they say. A child out of wedlock always looks like its father” (61). Sophie
later offers a more detailed account, once again emphasizing the rapist’s facelessness:
He had a black bandanna over his face so she never saw anything but his hair, which was
the color of eggplants. He kept pounding her until she was too stunned to make a sound.
143
When he was done, he made her keep her face in the dirt, threatening to shoot her if she
looked up. (139)
Following her pregnancy and Sophie’s birth, Martine flees to New York. She is
both literally and figuratively unable to face the trauma of the rape, which causes her to
have violent nightmares: “a man with no face, pounding a life into a helpless young girl”
(193). Even after twelve years, the rape remains as fresh for Martine as when it first
occurred. This trauma becomes especially pronounced when Martine and Sophie reunite,
for Sophie’s face calls to mind that of the faceless rapist. Martine comments, “When I
first saw you in New York, I must admit, it frightened me the way you looked . . . I have
always had nightmares . . . It was just stronger then, because that was the first time I was
seeing that face” (170). Martine’s inability to face Sophie is actually a nightly ritual.
During their first night together, for instance, Sophie wakes her mother up from a
nightmare, after which Martine “covered her face with her hands and turned away” (48).
When Martine actually does look into her daughter’s face, Sophie responds with
amazement: “She turned over on her back and stared directly into my face, something she
did not do very often” (58). These nightmares continue uninterrupted and Martine
continues to avoid confronting her trauma for another eight years.
Though Martine is unable to confront the trauma of her rape, she is able to
recognize that her memory of the rape is ruining her life. For example, she admits that her
memories of the rape prevent her from returning to Haiti. She comments to Sophie: “I
have to go back to make final arrangements for your grandmother’s resting place . . . but I
don’t want to stay there for more than three or four days” (78). The reason, Martine
explains, is that there “are ghosts there that I can’t face” (78). Martine also recognizes
144
that her memory of the rape prevents her from seeking therapy. She admits to Sophie, “I
know I should get help, but I am afraid. I am afraid it will become even more real if I see
a psychiatrist and starts telling me to face it” (190).
Unable to receive proper therapy, Martine responds by engaging in a series of
avoidance behaviors. First, upon moving to New York, she whitens her skin. Sophie
explains, “My mother brought some face cream that promised to make her skin lighter”
(51). Martine lightens her skin not only because she is discriminated against as a Haitian,
but also because her actual skin color reminds her of the rapist. Sophie tells readers that
Martine’s skin is “an eggplant shade . . . before she applied her skin bleaching creams”
(51). This shade exactly matches the rapist’s "hair, which was the color of eggplants”
(139). Martine therefore literally alters her own face so as to avoid the figurative facing
of her traumatic rape. Martine then engages in a second avoidance behavior: she enters an
intimate personal relationship with another Haitian immigrant, Marc Chevalier. While
this decision might seem positive, the relationship actually exacerbates Martine’s still
unresolved trauma. She becomes especially mired in this trauma after becoming
pregnant. Sophie’s therapist, a Santeria priestess, comments on the danger of Martine’s
pregnancy in relation to the rape: “She never gave him a face . . . This pregnancy is
bringing feelings to the surface that she had never completely dealt with” (209).
Martine’s failure to give the rapist “a face” is indicative of her larger inability to
confront the memory of her rape. These failures continue to mount until Martine’s death.
Just before her suicide, for instance, Martine becomes obsessed with the face of her
unborn child. She decides to abort the fetus, telling Sophie: “I never want to see this
child’s face . . . This child, I will never look into its face” (217). Even after Sophie
145
stresses that the child was conceived with her lover Marc, not the rapist, Martine still
insists: “What if there is something left in me and when the child comes out it has that
other face?” (217). These terrors consume Martine to the point of suicide, leading her to
stab herself in the stomach 17 times.
Perhaps the most telling image of Martine’s failure to confront her trauma is her
physical appearance after death: “Her eyelids were stretched over her eyes as though they
had been sewn shut” (228). Unable to face the trauma of rape in life, Martine enters death
with her eyes permanently closed.
--While Martine’s trauma is rooted in her rapist’s facelessness, Sophie’s traumas
are rooted in her personal sense of facelessness. Her father is both nameless and faceless,
while her mother Martine resides in New York, leaving behind a single photograph.
Sophie struggles to locate her own image in her mother’s: “I only knew my mother from
the picture on the night table by Tante Atie’s pillow. She waved from inside the frame
with a wide grin on her face and a large flower in her hair” (8). This struggle to locate a
face eventually consumes Sophie: Martine’s “face was in my dreams all night long”; at
times, these dreams turn to nightmares, with Sophie fearing that her mother “would try to
squeeze me into the small frame so I could be in the picture with her” (28, 8).
When Sophie finally meets her mother in New York, her sense of facelessness
increases. She comments that Martine “did not look like the picture Tante Atie had on her
night table. Her face was long and hollow” (42). Sophie’s only connection with a familial
face is therefore severed. Even after Sophie is shown an infant picture of herself, her
146
sense of facelessness persists: “It was the first time in my life that I noticed that I looked
like no one in my family. Not my mother. Not my Tante Atie. I did not look like them
when I was a baby and I did not look like them now” (45). These experiences propel
Sophie into a liminal state: unable to match her face with that of anyone in her family,
Sophie’s only response is to create a new one. Upon her first night in New York, Sophie
undergoes a figurative transformation. While preparing for bed, Sophie splashes water on
her face and stares into the mirror. She comments, “New eyes seemed to be looking back
at me. A new face all together” (49).
While this new face allows Sophie to cope with the pain of her facelessness, it
also works much like a mask: preventing Sophie from working through, and therefore
moving beyond, the trauma. This failure becomes increasingly evident after Martine
explains the secret of Sophie’s birth: “A man grabbed me from the side of the road,
pulled me into a cane field, and put you in my body . . . I never saw his face . . . But now
when I look at your face I think it is true what they say. A child out of wedlock always
looks like its father” (61). Sophie’s new face suddenly becomes insufficient. When
meeting Joseph, for instance, Sophie finds herself attracted to him in part because his
“look went beyond the face” (68). Then, when Martine “tests” Sophie’s virginity, the new
face is nullified. Martine distracts Sophie during the testing by suggesting that they are
Marassas: “The same person duplicated in two. They looked the same, talked the same,
walked the same” (84). Yet Sophie’s underlying sense of facelessness prevents her from
adopting her mother’s face as her own. She is unable to become a Marassa. Thus,
following her first testing, Sophie strives to locate another face to distract from her
trauma: “I closed my legs and tried to see Tante Atie’s face” (85).
147
As the testing becomes more traumatic, so too does Sophie’s sense of
facelessness, represented in part through her practice of doubling. This doubling occurs
during the testing: “I would close my eyes and imagine all the pleasant things that I had
known. The lukewarm noon breeze through our bougainvillea. Tante Atie’s gentle voice
blowing over a field of daffodils” (155). Much like Atie’s tendency to cover her face with
a notebook, Sophie’s doubling allows her temporarily to ignore the traumatic realities
around her. As the testing continues, however, the act of doubling proves insufficient.
Unable to confront her mother about these events, Sophie puts a forcible end to her
virginity by using the kitchen pestle to break her hymen: “My flesh ripped apart as I
pressed the pestle into it. I could see the blood slowly dripping onto the bed sheet . . . It
was all gone, the veil that always held my mother’s finger back every time she tested me”
(88). The word “veil” is key in this second transformation. This lifting of the veil would
seem to require Martine to face the reality of her daughter’s sexuality; she reacts,
however, by banishing Sophie from her sight: “‘Go,’ she said with tears running down
her face” (88). For Sophie, the lifting of the veil would seem to signal her victory over
the sexual trauma of testing; however, the character quickly discovers that the breaking of
her hymen is much like her creation of a new face: although this act provides a temporary
means of coping with trauma, it ultimately proves insufficient.
When Sophie returns to Haiti, she finds that the memory of this sexual trauma has
traveled with her. She tells Ifé about the effects of the testing: “I call it humiliation . . . I
hate my body. I am ashamed to show it to anybody, including my husband. Sometimes I
feel like I should be off somewhere by myself. That is why I am here” (123). Sophie has
yet to realize, however, that her humiliation and trauma will not be solved through escape
148
but only through confrontation. It makes sense, then, that even after breaking her hymen,
Sophie finds it necessary to double. She explains to Ifé: “After my marriage, whenever
Joseph and I were together, I doubled” (156). These practices continue uninterrupted until
Martine also arrives in Haiti. Only after the mother and daughter reunite at the original
site of the trauma, where Martine was both tested by her mother and raped by a faceless
man, does Sophie become able to confront her own traumas.
These confrontations occur in stages and over time, beginning with Sophie and
Martine’s literal confrontation—their face-to-face encounter. When Sophie questions
Martine about her ongoing nightmares, she also asks about the source of these
nightmares:
“I thought it was my face that brought them on,” I said.
“Your face?”
“Because I look like him. My father. A child out of wedlock always looks
like its father.”
She seemed shocked that I remembered.
“When I first saw you in New York, I must admit, it frightened me the
way you looked. But it is not something that I can help. It is not
something that you can help. It is just part of our lives.” (169)
Martine’s fatalistic response has the key effect of confirming for Sophie the need to break
the cycle of trauma and learned helplessness. Sophie responds by setting a goal not to
adopt her mother’s opinion that trauma is “just part of our lives.” Thus, immediately
following their conversation, Sophie finds herself committed to ending the cycle of
149
trauma. She remarks, “I had a greater need to understand, so that I would never repeat it
myself” (170).
Sophie begins the process of confrontation by joining a sexual phobia group and
by undergoing private therapy. The sexual phobia group stresses confrontation through
naming. The act of naming is also a type of facing. According to the Oxford English
Dictionary, “name” is defined as: “to describe, recognize, or acknowledge.” These same
words capture the act of facing. Although sexual phobia group scene contains few
references to the word “face,” we can still use concordance mapping to trace indirect
references to facing. In this case, the word “name” occurs four times in three pages, each
time in reference to a form of confrontation that requires the victim to name the
victimizer. For Sophie, her victimizer is Martine, whose name she writes on a slip of
paper. This act of naming is followed by an act of purging: “We each wrote the name of
our abusers in a piece of paper, raised it over a candle, and watched as the flames
consumed it” (203). While the act of naming allows Sophie to purge herself, it also
symbolically purges the Caco women of the long-held trauma of testing. In facing her
own trauma, Sophie believes that she is facing it for Ifé, Atie, Martine, and even her
infant daughter Brigitte: “It was up to me to avoid my turn in the fire. It was up to me to
make sure that my daughter never slept with ghosts, never lived with nightmares, and
never had her name burnt in the flames” (203). Because these acts of naming are also acts
of purging or facing, it makes sense that several of women cry during the process. Sophie
observes, for instance, of one woman named Buki: “There were tears rolling down her
face as she read the letter” (202). By contrast, Sophie’s inability to cry at this point
suggests her need for further confrontation; she addresses by attending private therapy.
150
Sophie uses this therapy to turn her attentions to the larger trauma of facelessness
brought about by her mother’s rape. She seeks counseling from a Santeria priestess who
emphasizes the importance of facing trauma; Sophie must first recognize that her father is
a rapist. The therapist insists: “I’ll have to ask you to confront your feelings about him in
some way, give him a face” (209). It becomes increasingly apparent that Sophie’s
figurative facing of her father can only be achieved through a literal facing of the site
where her mother was raped: the cane fields. Her therapist once again uses a language of
confrontation:
You and your mother should both go there again and see that you can walk
away from it. Even if you can never face the man who is your father, there
are things you can say to the spot where it happened. I think you’ll be free
once you have your confrontation. There will be no more ghosts (211).
This passage contains words such as “see,” “face,” “free,” and “confrontation”—the same
words of confrontation that permeate the entire novel. The therapist’s appearance toward
the novel’s end is therefore fitting: as Sophie becomes increasingly capable of
confronting her traumas, the novel becomes more explicit and more insistent in its
language of confrontation.
After Martine commits suicide, however, Sophie again seems unable to confront
her trauma; instead, she slips back into a state of helpless. Consumed by the traumas that
ruined her mother’s life, Sophie tells herself: “It is your fault that she killed herself in the
first place. Your face took her back again” (227). Sophie’s guilt and remorse continue to
grow, reaching a fevered pitch at the funeral. Here we see all of the Caco women
gathered to mourn the death of their daughter, sister, and mother. Each woman is bound
151
by her own traumas and her own grief, making any form of confrontation nearly
impossible. Ifé is nearly incapacitated; Sophie explains: “My grandmother did not look
directly at my mother’s face . . . [it] looked as though she was going to fall down in
shock” (231). Atie is in a similar state of helplessness: “Tante Atie fell on the ground; her
body convulsing . . . the tears never stopped flowing down her face” (232). Sophie also
finds herself unable to confront the implications of Martine’s death: “I couldn’t bear to
see them shoveling dirt over my mother” (233).
The novel’s language of confrontation becomes quite literal at this point. As
Sophie physically confronts her long-held traumas, the word “face” temporarily
disappears; it is replaced instead by detailed descriptions of Sophie’s confrontation.
References to “confrontation” now find expression in words of action such as “pounded,”
“pushed,” “striking,” and “yanking.” After fleeing the funeral scene, Sophie finds herself
in the cane fields, face-to-face with the site of her mother’s rape—the site of both
women’s trauma. She reacts by physically confronting the site:
I ran through the field, attacking the cane. I took off my shoes and began
to beat the cane stalk. I pounded it until it began to lean over. I pushed
over the cane stalk. It snapped back, striking my shoulder. I pulled at it,
yanking it from the ground. My palm was bleeding. (233)
Sophie confronts the cane in the same violent fashion in which the faceless rapist
confronted Martine: he acted by “pounding a life into a helpless girl,” while Sophie
“pounded it until it began to lean over” (193, 233). The cane then reacts by “striking”
Sophie’s shoulder; she responds in kind, “yanking it from the ground” (233).
152
As if awoken from their traumatized silence, Ifé and Atie join in Sophie’s
confrontation when exclaiming, “Ou libéré!” (233). Ifé is actually so moved by Sophie’s
actions that the character takes part in the confrontation. When Sophie finds herself
struck dumb by her encounter, Ifé provides the words and, ultimately, the conclusion to
the novel:
There is a place where women are buried in clothes the color of flames,
where we drop coffee on the ground for those who went ahead, where the
daughter is never fully a women until her mother has passed on before her.
There is a place where, if you listen closely in the night, you will hear
your mother telling a story and at the end of the tale, she will ask you this
question: “Ou libéré?” Are you free, my daughter? . . . “Now,” she said,
“you will know how to answer.” (234)
With those words, Sophie achieves a new ability to confront her traumas and the novel
quickly draws to a close.
III
This chapter was an introductory examination of the novel’s patterns of language.
Though I concentrated on the words “confrontation,” “face,” and “name” in relation to
the four female characters, this analysis by no means constitutes a full account of these
patterns. For instance, I did not discuss a number of images of faces and facing that shed
light on the Haitian political system under the Duvalier regime. Future articles might
examine images of corruption and violence: the “baby-faced Macoute” who takes part in
the murder of Dessalines or the woman beaten by a soldier until “her face [is] covered
153
with her own blood” (118 34). By the same token, I did not take into full account the
novel’s complicated use of the word “name.” Though I made reference to naming in
connection to Sophie’s sexual phobia group, more work might be done on names and
naming as they occur in the novel’s dedication, in its discussion of lineage, or even in
Atie’s decision to join the valley registry by having “her name carved in letters” (128).
I demonstrate these absences in my chapter as evidence of the wide array of
language patterns not yet identified and accounted for in the novel. These absences also
suggest concordance mapping as an effective means for conducting such analyses;
moreover, the method illustrates the extent to which critical discourse on Breath, Eyes,
Memory can be expanded to include Danticat’s use of language. Indeed, concordance
mapping can serve to remind readers, especially students, that any and every work of
literature is open and available for detailed analyses of language; what’s needed is the
interest to conduct such readings and the reading tools such as concordance mapping to
carry them out.
154
Epilogue: From Verbal to Visual and Aural Concordances
This book introduced concordance mapping as a reading method that promotes
the study of reiterative word patterns in literary texts. This method uses concordance
tools and the skills of concordance-based analysis to generate textual evidence that can be
analyzed and subsequently employed to support interpretive arguments about the role of
language patterns in literary texts. In each chapter, I applied concordance mapping to a
different American novel, including The Great Gatsby, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Catcher in the Rye, and Breath, Eyes, Memory. Each
reading used a combination of personal and print or online concordance data to generate
evidence of reiterative word patterns. Because the novel is a largely print-based genre,
this data relied on verbal concordances as the key tools of analysis. In literature
classrooms across the country, however, students are increasingly turning their attentions
to texts that require visual and aural as well as verbal concordances. An argument that I
have not advanced in this book, but will touch upon here, is that concordance mapping
can be extended to these multimedia texts, the most popular of which is film.
A key difference between concordance mapping films and novels is that
reiterative patterns can be studied verbally as well as visually and aurally: readers are also
viewers and listeners, which means that their analyses must account for 1) the written
screenplay, 2) the images on screen (e.g., stage design, costuming, camera movements,
and lighting and composition), and 3) the soundtrack (e.g., dialogue, sound effects, and
music). These filmic elements are interdependent, meaning that reiterative patterns in a
film’s screenplay are often found as well in its imagery and soundtrack. Such differences
155
require that students employ visual and aural as well as verbal concordances as part of
their task of understanding better how the film achieves its effects.
A popular film such as Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Big Lebowski (1998) might
give rise, for instance, to an analysis of the ways in which repetition informs the film’s
imagery, soundtrack, and diction. Every character in the film is caught in a cycle of
repetitive behavior: Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski is a perpetual hippie figure while his
friend Walter Sobchack constantly recounts his experiences during the Vietnam war.
Here, students would employ visual concordance techniques to catalog the character’s
costuming. The practice of watching the film with a pen or pencil in hand is similar to
that of reading a novel with a writing implement handy. Students might observe, for
instance, that the Dude is always portrayed with shaggy hair, bead, and sandals while
Walter’s combat fatigues mark him as a war veteran. The film’s soundtrack also exhibits
cycles of repetition. Students listening to the film will also do so with a pen or pencil in
hand to compile an aural concordance. Such notation might, for instance, include
observations that the film repeats individual songs, such as Bob Dylan’s “The Man in
Me”; it also uses several songs from the same musical group, such as the inclusion of
Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Up Through the Jungle” and “Out My Back Door.”
These visual and aural concordance techniques work in conjunction with the verbal
concordance techniques discussed throughout this book. Thus, students would read the
screenplay to The Big Lebowski with a writing implement in hand. Just as the visual and
aural analyses suggested patterns of repetition, so to does the film’s diction. Perhaps most
striking is the inordinate use of the word “fuck,” which occurs 241 times in 117 minutes,
a figure that translates to one “fuck” roughly every thirty seconds.
156
These observations about The Big Lebowski in no way constitute a reading of the
film; moreover, they do not provide a full account of the efficacy of concordance
mapping as a tool of film study. However, they do suggest that the opportunities for
concordance mapping in the classroom are just becoming apparent and that future
studies, future books, and future courses might be developed that extend the practice of
concordance-based analysis in the classroom in fresh and exciting ways.
157
APPENDICES
Appendix A
A Brief Concordance to Hemingway’s “The End of Something” from In Our Time
Word
Frequency
Used By
all
aren’t
can’t
don’t
everything
isn’t
lay
lying
no
not
nothing
without
won’t
8
1
1
11
5
3
3
1
6
5
2
2
1
Narrator, Nick, Bill
Nick
Nick
Nick, Marjorie
Narrator, Nick
Nick, Marjorie
Narrator
Narrator
Narrator, Nick, Marjorie
Narrator, Nick
Narrator
Narrator
Nick
Appendix B
A Brief Concordance to Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
Word
Frequency
Used By (selected)
absolute/ly
all
as if/though
but
contrary
everybody
everything/’s
everywhere
however
limit/ed
more
perfect/ly
sinister
small/er
12
222
68
256
1
10
23
2
8
5
74
4
4
35
Nick, Daisy, Jay, Jordan
Mr. Carraway, Nick, Tom
Nick
Nick, Daisy, Jay, Jordan
Nick
Daisy
Nick, Daisy, Wilson
Nick, Daisy
Nick
Nick
Nick, Jay, Daisy
Nick, Meyer, Tom
Nick
Nick, Jay, Meyer
158
Appendix C
Brief Concordances to Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn
Tom Sawyer:
Word
Frequency
Used By (selected)
again
orgies
ransom
96
4
2
narrator, Tom
Tom, Huck
Tom, Huck
Word
Frequency
Used By (selected)
again/agin
orgies/orgiess
ransom/ed
175
8
8
Huck, Tom, Jim, Pap
the king, Huck
Tom, Ben Rogers
--Huck Finn:
Appendix D
A Brief Concordance to Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye
(words used primarily, often exclusively, by Holden Caulfield)
Word
Frequency
all
“all of a sudden”
“and all”
forget/s
liar/lying
phony/phonies/phonier/phoniest
(can’t) (don’t) remember
true/truer/truth
1024
69
317
6
2
45
30
32
159
Appendix E
A Brief Concordance to Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory
Word
Frequency
Used By (selected)
confront
confrontation
face
name
1
1
121
37
Santeria therapist
Santeria therapist
Sophie, Martine, Atie, Ifé
Sophie, Martine, Atie, Ifé
160
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VITA
Jeffrey Allan Jaeckle was born in Houston, Texas on December 31, 1976, the son of Tara
Beth Jaeckle and Robert John Jaeckle, Jr. After completing his work at Highlands High
School, San Antonio, Texas, in 1995, he entered The University of Texas at San Antonio.
He received his Bachelor of Arts in May 1999 and his Masters of Arts in May 2001 from
The University of Texas at San Antonio. In August 2001 he entered the Graduate School
of The University of Texas at Austin.
Permanent Address: 1315 Greer, San Antonio, Texas 78210
This dissertation was typed by the author.
170