THE 2011 JOHN C. YOUNG SCHOLARS JOURNAL
PAPERS OF THE 20TH GROUP OF SCHOLARS
CENTRE COLLEGE
DANVILLE, KY
Scholars and Mentors
Kara Beer
Dr. Phyllis Passariello, Mentor
Trish Bredar
Dr. Helen Emmitt & Dr. John Kinkade, Mentors
James Kalb
Dr. Dan Manheim & Dr. Nathan Link, Mentors
Brian Klosterboer
Dr. Lori Hartmann-Mahmud, Mentor
Kelsey Lownds
Dr. Larry Bitensky & Dr. Mykol Hamilton, Mentors
Evis Muhameti
Dr. Sarah Goodrum, Mentor
The John C. Young Program was established to provide an opportunity for outstanding seniors at Centre
College to carry out independent study and research under the guidance of a faculty mentor.
Competitively selected by a faculty committee, the John C. Young Scholars work for two terms on their
projects, receiving financial support for research materials and travel.
2011-12 John C. Young Scholars Journal
Vol. 21
Table of Contents
“Who Has Ethnographic Authority? Exploring Qualitative Methods through Centre’s
Study Abroad Program”
Kara Beer — Dr. Phyllis Passariello, Faculty Mentor .............................................................. 1
“The Female Protagonist and the Journey Motif in the Early Novel”
Trish Bredar — Dr. Helen Emmitt & Dr. John Kinkade, Faculty Mentors ....................... 14
“Chinese Finger-traps: The Failure of Narrative in Philip K. Dick’s VALIS”
James Kalb — Dr. Dan Manheim & Dr. Nathan Link, Faculty Mentors ........................... 32
‘Difficult to Repair’: Applying African Models for Transitional Justice to Peace and
Restoration Prospects in the Congo
Brian Klosterboer — Dr. Lori Hartmann-Mahmud, Faculty Mentor ................................. 63
“If You're Happy and You Know It: Understanding the Relationship Between Music
Production and Emotion in 3rd-5th graders”
Kelsey Lownds — Dr. Larry Bitensky & Dr. Mykol Hamilton, Faculty Mentors ........... 97
“Effectiveness of Youth Centers Through In-depth Interviews With Youth Who Have
Experienced Incarceration”
Evis Muhameti — Dr. Sarah Goodrum, Faculty Mentor ..................................................... 128
Who Has Ethnographic Authority? Exploring Qualitative
Methods through Centre’s Study Abroad Program
KARA BEER
Dr. Phyllis Passariello, Faculty Mentor
A key and constant question in anthropology is “who has ethnographic authority?”
Anyone is able to enter a situation and gather information, to create a story, a narrative, an
ethnography, but who has the right to tell the story, who owns the story, who can best tell the
story? Many have tried, and still try: insiders, outsiders, and professional observers like
anthropologists, travel writers, and tourists. We try.
As we enter the field, and this can be a jungle in South America or even a barbershop in
small town America, the information we collect becomes essentially our primary source material.
There are no findings from carefully constructed experiments in a laboratory; our laboratory is
the ‘field’ and we are players in the field whether we want to be or not. We are inevitably
‘biased’ by our very human nature. Human life in all of its aspects is biocultural, an inseparable
merging of nature and nurture, an on-going interaction between our biological selves, always
influenced by our particular life experiences.
Our field experiences are shaped from the start and often may seem to reflect more of
ourselves than those under study; however, that is acceptable, since we are always part of the
cultural scene that we find ourselves ‘in’. The social sciences unapologetically must use a more
subjective lens; and after all, there is no one story to tell. For many reasons, anthropological
fieldwork is under great scrutiny from both within and outside the discipline.
Field work is a rite of passage in anthropology, and qualitative methodologies have
defined the discipline, since the times of Franz Boas. And still, these methodologies have always
been and continue to be contested. The history of anthropology is in a way, and always has been,
experimental ethnography. Ethnography is essentially the writing of a culture and thus there are
experiments in writing forms for presenting cultures and their societal contexts. In 1955, Levi
Strauss wrote Triste Tropique, a part memoir and part travel log. It had the detail of a novel and
yet is considered a classic of ethnographic literature. Or we can look at Paul Radin and his 1920
Autobiography of a Winnebago Indian, in which he literally spoke for his informant.
Another example of experimental ethnography is Oscar Lewis’ 1961 Children of
Sanchez, Five Families, in which he constructed a new methodology in ethnography which was
creating a composite of a living person based on “typical day” experiences. He feels confident
speaking for his subjects and is respected as a master of ethnography.
Perhaps the issues have even been more contested in the last 20 years, partially because
of the intellectual fashions of the times. Trends in thought such as post-modernism, post
colonialism, auto-ethnography, and self –reflexivity have had a noticeable impact on
ethnographic writing. Paul Rabinow’s groundbreaking book, Reflections on Fieldwork in
Morocco, published in 1977, effectively legitimized self-reflexivity by the ethnographer as a
valid and relevant part of fieldwork. James Clifford’s and George Marcus’s anthology, Writing
Culture: the poetics and politics of Ethnography, published in 1986, presents essays from several
top tier anthropologists who examine various aspects of the intersections of ethnography and
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literature, opening up a huge ‘gray area’ of even the proper definition of
ethnography: documentation of data, and/or creative non-fiction? Now, a central concern for
anthropologists looms: the difference between ‘culture’ and ‘representing culture.’
Anthropology still depends on qualitative methodologies, and so the so-called ‘crisis in
ethnography’ is also a ‘crisis in anthropology.’ Everything is predicated by human relations, and
any of us and any human interrelationships tend to be ‘fuzzy.’ The anthropologist, the
fieldworker, in a sense, not only collects but “invents” ethnographic data. And this is where the
debate about the authority of these and any narratives begins.
There are two major ’umbrellas’ over the methodologies in the sciences: qualitative and
quantitative. Anthropologists utilize both methods, however in this particular project I focus on
qualitative methodologies because they are justly controversial, and because they are nuanced
and difficult to interpret, and yet also have the potential for substantial and meaningful returns.
Quantitative research can quantify the number of guinea pigs eaten by a small tribe in Peru,
whereas qualitative research may help to reveal why. How best to collect meaning is the
important question and at the same time the dilemma.
I chose to focus in particular on the basics of qualitative methods: surveys, interviews,
group interviews, in-depth immersion, focus groups, journal entries and internet ethnography
(including blogs and Facebook posts). This sampling of qualitative methods only begins to
demonstrate the flexibility and adaptability necessary for data collection in the field. With my
John C. Young project I wanted to explore and have a chance to try some qualitative methods;
and I chose to investigate the student outcomes from Centre’s study abroad programs precisely
because ‘assessment of student outcomes’ is a very difficult endeavor, a very gray area, and also
a ’hot’ topic in colleges across the country.
Over the past year I have created surveys, conducted interviews, worked with a fieldmethods class, read journals and blog entries and even had the opportunity to attend a
professional conference for study abroad educators ----with the goals to learn about and practice
various methodologies as well as to see what the data would (or could ) reveal about the
outcomes of study abroad. From my work this year, I have conducted several kinds of field
methodologies and I have determined my assessment of various qualitative methods. And, along
the way, I have identified some trends in student responses to the study abroad program at Centre
College.
I was able to observe students studying abroad for both Centre’s long and short terms,
focusing on their experiences, culture shock, and their reentry into the United States. Centre’s
study abroad program is unique in that it is autonomous, basically bringing its classrooms
abroad. There are too many pros and cons with this system to go into right now, except to say
that our programs both facilitate and hamper students’ experiences abroad. Students often refer
to their abroad situations as the “Centre Bubble”. I collected a lot of information regarding the
pros and cons of this “bubble” through my qualitative research, and may even find ways of
addressing these issues in the future.
An important note here about how research participants were chosen: because Centre
College is a small, fixed, mostly homogenous community, and because I needed specifically only
people who had experienced abroad study with Centre, the actual choice of participants had no
precise method, but neither was it technically random. Rather, choice of participants was based
on serendipity, circumstance and convenience. And, of course, I was tethered by the constraints
of time and opportunity,
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The first method I used was the survey, which in itself can be problematic as a qualitative
method. There are several ways to survey. Common written surveys require the researcher to
create questions and then also provide several answers, from which students must chose; then
the data can be ‘coded’ and easily reduced to numbers, meaningful to some. This type of survey
is obviously flawed. Aware of the potential problems, I constructed pre- and post- trip surveys
for some students participating in Centre term trips, asking them questions ranging from their
background knowledge on the country they were visiting, to their political views, asking them to
highlight any changes in their ideas.
Also, I experimented with various forms of ‘the interview,’ which I conducted with
individuals or with a group of people. The interview can be a very effective method because,
although you, the researcher, may create the initial questions and can manipulate the discussion,
the subject, the interviewee, does have the chance to offer up their own choices on how they
frame and narrate their experiences. The interview has the potential to produce much more
subjective data, and thus is more ‘qualitative.’ There is a skill to interviewing which I am
learning: I learned to not lead the interviewee, but rather try to simply initiate their talking, and
let the conversation follow the participant’s lead, with no preformed goals; and I learned how to
use the ethnographer’s best friend, the ’silent probe’, noting how an interviewer’s silence can
provoke more information.
I interviewed individuals about their long and short term trips, some before, some after,
and some both (as with this past winter’s 2011-12 study-trips) In addition I held several group
interviews with people who had participated in either or both Centre semesters abroad and/or
Centreterms abroad, including also a group of fraternity men who traveled abroad together.
One of the most important and beneficial types of qualitative research is in-depth
immersion. The researcher must practice deep participant observation, the bedrock of
anthropological methodology, as well as live an extended period of time in the environment
under study. In November I attended a CIEE (Conference on International Education Exchange)
study abroad conference in New Orleans. During this conference I attended different seminars
and workshops about study abroad programs and the latest trends in this popular area of college
life. This in-depth immersion in the world of abroad educators, proved to be a great chance for
collecting data because I was surrounded by and living among the “study abroad educator”
culture for three days, picking up new vocabulary, and thus new ways to consider study abroad
issues. Even from only my weekend immersion, (and of course my many months of participantobservation during my own abroad studies), I was aware of the shift in my status as a researcher.
No longer was I in control of the interactions with others; in-depth immersion provides the
opportunity for, and in fact, necessity of, the fieldworker to take on a liminal role, which offers
different insights into the targeted cultural scene.
In addition to experiencing the in-depth immersion at the study abroad conference and
my own study abroad, I was also able to practice participant-observation by attending group
informational meetings for students. I was able to sit and watch the group dynamics at play,
learning more about the personalities of individuals, gender role differences, and so on, certainly
relevant to any outcomes. For example, more females than males asked questions concerning
safety in foreign countries, whereas men more often asked about opportunities for outdoor
activities ( a predictable outcome perhaps, yet definitely corroborated by the data.) For example,
one female respondent said “I am so excited to study abroad, but I just worry I will be robbed
everywhere I go”. Additionally I was able to actually observe more thoroughly the anxiety that
goes along with studying abroad in these meetings where students felt at ease with one another
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and their professor. The only hindrance to this kind of in-depth immersion was my outsider
status; some students were hesitant about my presence. Additionally several students from one
group thought I was a part of the trip and said they were surprised when I didn’t show up at the
airport!
Also, I explored the technique of the focus group. For one focus group I worked with the
22 class members of a current Field Methods course (ANT 301). During one exercise I divided
the class into several sub- groups and gave them questions to focus on and discuss among
themselves, and then with the class as a whole. These questions varied from thoughts on the
importance of studying abroad to one’s favorite experience while abroad. I noticed, that unlike
the group interview which was less structured, with the focus groups there was a greater sense of
organization. The format allowed easier access to more answers, and notably more thoughtful
answers to the questions. Because of the class setting, students took it seriously and thus I think
using a class for a focus group was productive.
In this historical moment, there is no denying the internet as a source for ethnographic
research; I performed this by examining respondents’ Facebook statuses and blog posts. The
internet is obviously an increasingly influential sphere for communication and most students
rarely communicated with family and friends via any other mode. Though counterintuitive and a
bit ironic, what I found from my research on the internet was that students were more likely to
share deep and personal information when it was communicated in written form. This was also
evident in the hand- written travel journals that I collected and studied. As we know, these online and other hi-tech resources and practices are major parts of most students’ lives, and provide
other solid venues for qualitative data collection. Like all data collection, there are flaws to hitech ethnography as well; for example, written information, including the innovative languages
emerging, LOL and such, is always somewhat self-conscious and sometimes deliberately and
carefully crafted; but, fortunately, ethnographers are interested in peoples’ thoughts and
behaviors, including their fabrications!
Having spent considerable time working with different qualitative methods, I have now
informed opinions on their effectiveness. In general I would say that the survey has benefits for
obtaining superficial information from a large group of people, however it does not provide
enough context or insight as to how people are truly feeling about something. For example one
student answered that she “strongly agreed” that she had cultural knowledge about the country
she was visiting; but, in her interview she admitted that all she knew was based on stereotypes.
This is an example of where a survey validates pre-conceived answers and forfeits the
respondent’s ability to thoroughly think about the question.
One of the most fruitful methods to elicit information, in my opinion, was a wellconducted interview. Both the group and one-on-one interviews were effective. The one-on-one,
I felt, was better for more personal responses, whereas the group interview helped divulge group
sentiments about the experience. During a one-on-one interview, though I had ready some
specific questions, the interview was really an interaction, a meaningful conversation between
two people. On the other hand, with a group of people, I had to suggest and manage specific
‘talking points’ to allow multiple people to talk.
As I gained perspective on the benefits and drawbacks of various kinds of qualitative
methods, I did learn more about study abroad through the process. I selected to use the study
abroad program at Centre as my case study because I am interested in the potential importance of
foreign study in one’s life, including my own. There are plenty of statistics which report that
studying abroad is life-changing; however I wanted to find out why and how. Collecting
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information regarding students’ study abroad experiences is in itself a very difficult task because
so many very personal and difficult questions are posed or intimated, and yet there are also
stereotypical no-brainer responses that everyone and anyone knows. And finally, all qualitative
methodologies have many difficulties in application and analysis, because they are trying to elicit
meaningful and nuanced answers.
At this point I want to reiterate and emphasize that I have still only nicked the surface of
my questions about qualitative methods and I have not as of yet collected any world shaking
conclusions about study abroad. But all along, this project has been as much about process as
results. And, I feel like I have been able to gain some useful information on both accounts.
None-the-less I was able to document some relevant information. Through my research I
found that European countries are by far the most popular place for Centre students to travel
abroad. When asked why, many respondents answered that this was due to either language
and/or perceived cultural similarities between the home and abroad cultures. Many students
wanted to study abroad but didn’t want to travel too far out of their comfort zones, thus choosing
London or France as their destinations. One respondent said, “I am so excited to travel abroad,
however I just don’t think I am ready for a huge culture shock. I think in London they have a lot
of the same comforts as I could find in America”.
I have learned by questioning faculty, that there was considerable time and discussion
involved in finally breaking the Euro-centric focus of Centre’s abroad study. The Latin America
programs and other non-Euro, and some non-Western programs, though still not as popular as
Europe, are now thriving, as if they were always here.
Most recently, Mexico and other Latin American countries are losing a bit more
popularity among Centre students, due to a variety of reasons. Certainly, Euro-centrism,
ethnocentrism, and even racism have affected students’ choices all along but most recently it is
probably the perceived unstable political conditions, and media attention to the drug war that
puts off parents, in particular. I think that one of the issues facing Centre’s study abroad program
is how to educate all of our student body about Latin America and other more challenging places
to combat these and other cruel and non-productive stereotypes.
Another issue in the realm of study abroad is the short vs. long trips. Most would assume
that the long-term study abroad trip has greater benefits for students; however on some levels I
found that for students the short trip can be equally beneficial depending on the circumstances. In
one interview a respondent said he felt that by traveling extensively and staying constantly busy
for three weeks during Centre term he gained even more cultural perspective than he did during
his semester-long term abroad. Although several students may view or simply report on their
short term experiences as vacations, from my experience and observations, the group bonds
formed and the major eye-opening experienced during the intense three-week immersions
involved are frequently life-changing. Additionally many students were aware of these benefits
prior to even leaving. In a pre-trip interview an informant said, “I think that this trip will really
make me appreciate all the opportunities I have and it may even change the way I look at the
world”.
In conclusion I would say my project has enabled me to study various qualitative
methods in relation to outcome assessment and discover ways to glean excellent results. Yet,
there is still a great amount of work left for me to do with this project in the future. Reading
many ethnographies as varied in form as content, applying theories in an effort to make
meaningful comparisons and so on, form a large part of our study in anthropology and sociology.
And truthfully, I have discovered that there is no one perfect method and that many of the
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pioneering ethnographers with their long-term participant observation had done pretty well after
all.
Perhaps, and most significantly, I have learned that the most important factor in any field
research is not the hypothesis, not even the research design, but rather to always remember to
“let the data speak,” because in spite of researcher bias and all the foibles of any and all methods,
we occasionally can collect data, and with some sensitivity and finesse we can help that data
speak for the people.
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Works Cited:
Blowsnake, Sam, and Paul Radin. The Autobiography of a Winnebago Indian. New York: Dover
Publications, 1963. Print.
Clifford, James, and George E. Marcus. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of
Ethnography : A School of American Research Advanced Seminar. Berkeley: University
of California, 1986. Print.
Lewis, Oscar.
Vintage, 1963. Print.
. New York:
"Tristes Tropiques [Paperback]." Amazon.com: Tristes Tropiques (9780140165623): Claude
Levi-Strauss, John Weightman, Doreen Weightman: Books. Web. 14 May 2012.
<http://www.amazon.com/Tristes-Tropiques-Claude-Levi-Strauss/dp/0140165622>.
Rabinow, Paul. Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. Berkeley: University of California, 2007.
Print.
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Appendix:
I.
II.
III.
Sample Pre-Test Survey
Sample Interview Questions
Conference Sessions
Pre-Test Survey:
Centre College Study Abroad Pre Test
Name_____________________________________
Gender____________________________________
Grade in School_____________________________
Age_______________________________________
Major/Minor________________________________
1.
Study Abroad Program:_______________________________________
2.
Prior to this trip, how many times have you engaged in college-level study abroad
programs? (Please list where and year)
________________________________________________________________________
3.
Prior to this trip, how many times have you engaged in high-school level study abroad
programs? (Please list where and year)
________________________________________________________________________
4.
How many times have you been outside of the United States for any reason other than
study abroad? (Example, family vacation. Please list where and year)
________________________________________________________________________
5.
Have you studied or do you speak a language other than English? Please circle the correct
answer.
Spanish
French
German
Chinese
Japanese
Other _____________
6.
If you answered number 5, would you say you are beginner, intermediate, or fluent in the
language? ______________________________________________________________
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Please answer the below questions truthfully, succinctly, and without much reflection:
1.
Why do you want to go on this trip?
2.
Do you have any specific expectations of what you might gain from your abroad
experience?
3.
What are 3 words that describe your personality?
4.
Does the word “risk” describe a situation of danger or curiosity?
Below is a list of statements concerning personal, intercultural, professional/career and academic
skills, values, and attitudes. On a scale of 1-5 (With 1 being “Strongly disagree”, 2 being
“Disagree”, 3 being “neither disagree or agree”, 4 being “Agree”, and 5 being “Strongly agree)
please indicate your response for the following statements in each of the columns.
I have a good understanding of the culture of my study abroad host country.
1 2
3
4
5
I have a good understanding of international issues.
1
2
3
4
5
1
2
3
4
5
I have a good understanding of my own culture.
I am curious about other cultures.
1
2
3
4
5
I interact differently with people having backgrounds different from mine.
1
2
3 4
5
Knowing a foreign language provides a tool for understanding foreign cultures.
1
2
3 4
5
I seek out a diverse group of friends. 1
2
3 4
5
Foreign language training is an important aspect of college education.
1
2
3 4
5
I want to improve my foreign language skills.
1
2
3 4
5
I am inclined to try new things.
1
2
3 4
5
I am flexible in adapting to situations of change.
1
2
3 4
5
I think my study abroad experience will impact my career aspirations.
1
2
3 4
5
I think my study abroad experience will impact my political affiliations.
1
2
3 4
5
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Sample Interview Questions:
Pre-trip:
- Why did you choose to study abroad?
- Do you want goals that you hope to accomplish during this trip?
- What do you think you will be able to take away from your experiences abroad?
- Do you plan to use any forms of media communication with those back home?
- What are your biggest fears?
- Do you have any preconceptions about the country you are visiting?
- Do you plan to buy souvenirs? If so what are you looking for? What do you think
about notions of authenticity?
Post-trip:
- Did your experiences impact your political, environmental, or even academic
interests?
- Would you say there was an element of reciprocity between yourself and the host
country?
- Do you plan to return to the place you studied abroad or has it inspired you to travel
to other places?
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CIEE Conference Sessions
- From Research into Practice: 15 Years of Studies in International Education
Over the past fifteen years, research in international education in general and on study
abroad in particular, has increased dramatically. The past decade alone saw the
publication of more than a thousand articles, chapters, and books reporting study
abroad research findings. CIEE has played a significant historical role in this surge of
interest: it created the Journal of Studies in International Education in 1996 and has
continued to co-sponsor the journal ever since. This session’s speakers, Hans de Wit
(JSIE editor) and Michael Vande Berg (CIEE Vice President for Academic Affairs),
will explore main trends in research in international education and study abroad
during those years; after identifying primary sources of information and key research
challenges, they will facilitate a conversation with the audience about the extent to
which study abroad professionals and faculty who design and lead programs abroad
are linking research and practice.
-
Mind the Gap: Challenging and Supporting Students to Reach Their Study Abroad
Goals within the Reality of their International Experience
In this session, participants will discuss why establishing goals is crucial to student
development and successful learning experiences and how education abroad
educators can assist students in reaching their goals. The presenters and participants
will examine the entire student learning experience beginning with pre-departure
advising, continuing through the experience abroad, and ending with re-entry. In
round table discussions, participants will examine what gaps exist between the goals,
expectations, and realities students are preparing themselves for and what education
abroad educators can do to help minimize the gap to better facilitate student learning
and development
-
Beyo “I w s w s
!” E
E
R -entry
Returnee study abroad students are enthusiastic about their experience and want to
share what they’ve learned with as many students as will listen. But all too often,
students are not able to express the outcomes of their study abroad experience
beyond, “It was awesome!” This session will focus on re-entry strategies to assist
study abroad alumni in applying their study abroad experiences to their ongoing
academic, professional, and personal lives. Presenters will discuss programs and
initiatives that help students apply the skills and competencies they learned while
abroad, and also articulate the benefits and attributes they gained overseas.
-
The Heart of Study Abroad
This session will discuss the essence or heart of study abroad (Title inspired by
Partket J. Palmer & Arthur Zajonc, The Heart of Higher Education, 2010). Five
questions and related problems will be focused on: (1) What is the relation between
globalization and study abroad? (2) What features of today’s U.S undergraduate
students (Generation X) are important in relation to study abroad? (3) How can study
abroad help students develop and inquiring mind and genuine insight within their
academic major? (4) How can the intercultural side of study abroad be enhanced? (5)
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How can study abroad support a renewal of the curriculum at U.S universities and
colleges?
-
Student Learning Abroad: At Whose Expense and/or Benefit?
As international educators redefine student learning abroad they must not do so at the
expense of host communities. Although reciprocity between program providers and
local communities is often listed as a goal of study abroad programs, it is not always
clear what reciprocity means in practice, and few studies have addressed host
communities’ views of reciprocity and their perspectives on learning outcomes.
Therefore, this session will provide theoretical frameworks for understanding
reciprocity; share the results of three different research projects that address issues of
reciprocity; and offer participants tools for exploring issues of reciprocity in their own
programs.
-
Deepening the Impact and Assessment of Short-stay Study Abroad
Quality program design and assessment, incorporating experiential learning on-site
and cross-cultural learning and reflection, are critical to maximize learning potential
on education abroad programs. Presenters for this session examine program design
and assessment in short-stay education abroad from three distinct perspectives:
assessment of compulsory study abroad, use of the IDI for guided cultural learning,
and on-site partnership in program design. This session concludes with a discussion
on three topics: How can assessment enhance the use of study abroad as a requisite?
What are the ethics of using the IDI purely for research? How can host country staff
ensure that learning outcomes are being met?
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13
The Female Protagonist and the Journey Motif
in the Early Novel
TRISH BREDAR
Dr. Helen Emmitt & Dr. John Kinkade, Faculty Mentors
Introduction
The idea of the hero and the journey are linked in a tradition that is as old as literature
itself. Consider Odysseus, Aeneas, Dante, the Redcrosse Knight: the archetypal male hero goes
off to seek adventure, battle monsters, wage war. Whatever the aim, movement is one of his
defining characteristics. His goals must be achieved through action. And what are the women
doing while the men are off on their heroic adventures? Most likely they are sitting at home
waiting for their men. Or, perhaps they are the object of his quest, held prisoner as they patiently
await the arrival of their heroes. Regardless of the situation, the basic pattern is the same: the
woman’s role in this tradition is stationary and passive; the man’s is mobile and active. These
traditional roles are not easily shaken; in fact, the stereotypes are, to an extent, still in place
today. However, in the eighteenth century a new literary form emerged which allowed the
woman the chance to be the hero, or at least the protagonist, of a literary work. The rise of the
novel provided a new stage for female characters as well as women writers. So named because it
was quite literally “novel,” this new genre broke with previous literary traditions and forged a
new path, one whose direction was unknown even to those first novelists.
One of the defining characteristics of the novel which sets it apart from other genres is its
focus on realism. Ian Watt, in his foundational study on the emergence of the novel, also cites a
heightened interest in the individual and the human experience as a crucial component of the
new genre (11). This new commitment to a realistic depiction of individuals, which extends to
female as well as male characters, thus calls for an increased attention to women’s lives. As
early novelists “attempt to portray all the varieties of human experience,” they begin to
investigate the female experience more closely as well (Watt 11). Works such as Moll Flanders
and Pamela, whose very titles demonstrate their focus on a female character, are among the first
forays into the new literary form.
The rise of the novel also saw a dramatic increase in the number of female readers and
authors. Among the many conditions which contributed to the rise of the novel was the growth of
the reading public, and women were a large part of this new readership. Though there is little
definitive evidence, it is likely that, “women and servants of both sexes were devoting much of
their time in the early eighteenth century to reading ‘novels’” (McKeon 2). As women made up a
large part of the audience for novels at a time when the writing and production of books was
becoming a consumerist industry, it stands to reason that women should have begun to feature
prominently in them. At the same time, women writers were also carving out a niche in the new
genre. Ian Watt notes that, “the majority of eighteenth-century novels were actually written by
women,” a claim which more recent studies have confirmed (298, Spencer 212). However, Watt
goes on to qualify his statement by adding that, “this had long remained a purely quantitative
assertion of dominance” (298). Many of the female authors, often referred to as “scribblers,”
flooded the market with hastily-written novels which, as Watt implies, were not exactly works of
high literature. Despite the large number of novels by women being published in the 1700s, the
14
literary world continued to be dominated by men and most female authors either published
anonymously or wrote under a male pseudonym until well into the nineteenth century (Marshall).
Such is the case with all three of the novels in this study which were written by women. Evelina
was published anonymously, the title page of Pride and Prejudice read only “by the author of
Sense and Sensibility,” which in turn was attributed only to “A Lady,” and Jane Eyre was
published under the name Currer Bell. Although this study does not fully account for the
subtleties of the period and there were of course strong female figures present in the world of
literature, in general terms the entry of women into the world of the novel was a timid one. Just
as women writers ease their way into the literary world rather than erupting with a dramatic
overthrow of patriarchal ideals, female protagonists do not immediately leap up off the page and
take off on epic journeys. However, these leading ladies do begin to express their independence
through movement, and these two concepts– movement and independence– become inexorably
linked.
In this paper, I will investigate this connection between movement and independence in
each of five major novels: Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, Fanny
Burney’s Evelina, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. These
novels, each of which focuses on a female protagonist, span the period of greatest development
for the novel as a literary form. Defoe, who wrote Moll Flanders in 1722, is often considered the
first novelist.1 By the time Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre was published in 1847, the novel had
become a staple of the literary world and an immensely popular and influential genre. As the
novel evolves and comes into its own, the female protagonist evolves as well. These novels thus
provide a convenient framework through which to study the female protagonist across this period
of transformation. The journey motif serves as a unifying thread, allowing a comparison between
five very dissimilar heroines. My primary interest will be those journeys which the protagonists
make alone and on foot. While traveling by coach or boat can be a completely passive
experience, the act of walking necessitates action. When a character takes a journey on foot, she
is moving under her own power. Furthermore, the act of walking implies self-sufficiency,
requiring nothing other than the physical ability to move forward. When we consider the
implications of the solitary walk, its symbolic significance becomes apparent. When a female
protagonist journeys out alone and on foot, she is also asserting her independence.
In each of the five novels, the heroines assert their independence through motion or have
their movement impeded by obstacles both internal and external. These patterns in movement
provide a parallel for the overall development of the female protagonist. Following the journey
motif in a selection of novels, we can also follow progress of the female protagonist as she
struggles against and breaks free from the rules and conventions that bind her. As the novel
comes into its own as a literary form, so does the female protagonist. As the female protagonist
interacts with the male-dominated world of action, independence and heroism, the journey comes
to define her evolution from a patriarchal ideal, a stationary model of female perfection, to a
mobile, independent, and realistic image of woman.
Moll
Moll Flanders is a clear outlier among the five novels selected for my study. While this
novel, like the others, focuses on a central female protagonist, Moll is extremely mobile and thus
1
Some critics, including Ian Watt, contend that Defoe is not truly a novelist, and that his works actually predate the
first “real” novel.
15
does not fit into the rather neat pattern of increasing mobility that emerges in the four later
novels. This freedom is enabled by Moll’s complete abandonment of all conventional notions of
morality and proper conduct. Rather than pushing against the social order, Moll simply denies it
completely. In so doing, she gains almost total freedom, but is forced to operate not only outside
of polite society, but outside the dictates of the law. In a pattern that will be visible throughout
this study, mobility and morality are closely linked for women in the early novel. While a
woman might gain mobility by casting herself out of “polite society,” it is those heroines who
work to change the social norms rather than abandoning them completely that bring forth the
evolution outlined in this study.
Moll serves as an example of the type of liberation achieved through sacrificing one’s
morals, and provides an interesting foil for Pamela, who is Moll’s opposite in nearly every way.
Together, the two demonstrate the tendency of the first novelists to portray women as one of two
opposing extremes. Many scholars have noted the polarized images of women that tend to exist
in literature and often in society. Succinctly stated, “Myth and literature often provide us with
two half-women – one all good, the other completely evil. Since female evil is associated with
sexuality, these women are best known to us as the archetypes of the virgin and the whore”
(Pearson, Who Am I 7). Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar offer another closely-related dialectical
pair: the angel in the house and the monster in the attic (17). These stereotypes are part of the
patriarchal tradition, in which women are never equal, but seen either as monstrous, usually
sexual beings or objectified as pure, silent, and completely virtuous. This dichotomy becomes
less rigid in the later novels, although female characters generally continue to fall into one
category of the other, and the ideas of angel and monster provide a useful way for viewing and
analyzing each of the female protagonists.
In many ways, Moll embodies the negative female stereotype: morally corrupt, ensnaring
men for personal gain, and overtly sexual, she is to be feared by men and shunned as a bad
example by women. While Pamela and Evelina, our least independent heroines, are meant to be
models for female behavior, Moll is a “whore” and a “thief” who, though she ultimately repents
her crimes, is never a paragon of virtue (Defoe 2). However, even as Moll is hopelessly fallen
from polite society because of her misdeeds, she is also freed from the societal rules to which a
woman must adhere if she hopes to maintain her good reputation. We might easily imagine that
women would find Moll’s life of sin and freedom more alluring than Pamela’s dull and
constrained lifestyle. Moll’s independence, however, is a double-edged sword. She has more
freedom of movement than any of the other heroines, yet her life is full of danger and uncertainty
and her independence comes only with a moral sacrifice. The novel suggests that a woman
cannot have both liberty and virtue. Polite young women do not go wandering alone through the
streets of London; it is only by breaking with societal norms that Moll gains her unusual ability
to move freely.
Early in the novel, Defoe draws attention to the connection between female independence
and morality. Moll’s ambition as a young girl is to become a “Gentlewoman,” which she
understands as being able to “get my Bread by my own Work” (Defoe 14). Young Moll’s
misunderstanding of the term gentlewoman reveals that her real goal is not merely one of class
ascension, but rather of self-reliance. However, the situation becomes ironic when young Moll
cites a woman who is actually a “Person of ill Fame” as an example, claiming that, “I would be
such a Gentlewoman as that” (Defoe 15). Ironically, Moll’s misdirected aspirations are fulfilled
later in the novel when she turns to a life of crime and prostitution. However, it is also significant
16
that by becoming a “person of ill fame,” Moll does succeed in her original aspirations by gaining
a certain amount of self-sufficiency.
Moll’s moral decline begins early in the novel, starting with her affair with the older
brother, but her real move toward independence occurs at the moment when she turns to theft.
Moll finds herself desperate, alone, and poverty-stricken: “In this Distress I had no Assistant, no
Friend to comfort or advise me” (Defoe 150). When the opportunity to carry off a “little Bundle”
from outside an apothecary presents itself, Moll steals the package. After this first theft, she
“cross’d and turn’d thro’ so many ways and turnings that I could never tell which way it was, nor
where I went, for I felt not the Ground, I stept on...I was under such a Surprize that I still know
not whither I was a going, or what to do” (Defoe 152). In this moment, Moll finds her
independence, but becomes lost, not just literally, but in a moral and religious sense. This is
Moll’s first journey on foot as well as her first theft, but it is not a clear or purposeful journey.
The confused and dizzying description of Moll’s flight through London reflects the inner turmoil
created by her decision to steal the bundle. London has become a maze full of “many ways and
turnings” and, while we will see that taking a journey alone and on foot repeatedly signals a
moment of liberation for a female character, Moll initially seems just as trapped by her decision
as she is freed by it.
However, a major shift occurs by the time Moll ventures out again. Her desperation soon
overcomes her guilt and “terror of mind” at becoming a criminal, and Moll decides to steal again
(Defoe 152). The description of the second theft makes clear the fact that she has experienced a
moment of liberation. This time, Moll goes out with the intention of stealing and successfully
procures a necklace from a young girl. The passage describing her subsequent escape contrasts
sharply to the turmoil of her first theft:
I went thro’ into Bartholomew Close, and then turn’d round to another Passage that goes
into Long-lane, so away into Charterhouse-Yard and out into St. John’s-street, then
crossing into Smithfield, went down Chick-lane and into Field-lane to Holbourn-bridge,
when mixing with the Crowd of People, usually passing there, it was not possible to have
been found out; and thus I enterpriz’d my second Sally into the World. (Defoe 153)
The clear, more orderly syntax, the cataloging of specific streets, and the confidence of success
expressed in this passage demonstrate a clear change in Moll’s thoughts and actions. Here she is
not wandering aimlessly, but rather moving with certainty through the previously baffling maze
of London. Her journey, however whatever its moral consequences, has instilled Moll with a
new and powerful confidence.
Moll’s terrifying and liberating fall into vice is as much a necessity as a choice. Moll’s
fear of being alone in the world is mentioned throughout the early part of the novel. During
Moll’s relationship with the older brother she fears “being turn’d out to the wide World...with no
Friend, no Acquaintance in the whole World...all this terrify’d me to the last Degree” (Defoe 47).
This fear, which we have already seen echoed again just before Moll’s first theft, is later
accompanied by “the terrible prospect of Poverty and Starving,” which becomes a “frightful
Spectre” for Moll (Defoe 96). Often, Moll manages to avoid poverty through her relationships
with men. When the older brother first places coins into her hand, inspiring a feeling even more
powerful than love, a pattern begins that is not broken until Moll’s first theft. Men provide a fix
for her financial needs, and her various husbands and lovers serve as temporary solutions. For
one reason or another, though, these romantic relationships do not last and often leave Moll even
more desperate than before. The turn towards theft marks Moll’s first attempt at financial
independence, providing an enduring, through perilous, source of income. While Moll still
17
depends on other people to an extent, her solo journey through London is a powerful indication
that she is now able to face the world on her own. Just as she knows exactly which streets to take
as she makes her escape, Moll quickly develops an aptitude for crime and has many successful
“adventures.” She no longer needs to rely on a patriarchal figure for survival.
Descriptions of Moll’s criminal career are filled with the language of the journey: “taking
a walk” to signify looking for opportunities for theft, a job referred to as her “first Step,” a
comment about “all the Journeys I made by myself” (Defoe 157, 187, 201). As she walks about
the city, she demonstrates a type of freedom that none of the other heroines possess. Even Jane
Eyre has to invent excuses to walk to town. Moll is able to go where she wants, when she wants,
without permission or supervision. For all of the other heroines discussed in this paper, each
journey is significant because it generally involves a rare moment of freedom and some type of
escape from authority or the regulations of society. Moll, on the other hand, moves about so
freely that, for her, taking a walk is commonplace.
However, this powerful freedom is also riddled with traps and threats. We are constantly
reminded that Moll’s independence is fragile. As she becomes entrapped in a life of criminality,
Moll finds herself lost in “labyrinths of trouble” (Defoe 160). Her use of this phrase
demonstrates that, while Moll may seem confident in her newfound mobility, she is still confined
in many ways. She may have the freedom to go where she will, but she is unknowingly moving
within the confines of a maze from which she cannot escape. Her freedom is an illusion, a fact
which becomes clear when Moll is finally imprisoned in Newgate. The threat of literal
imprisonment counteracts her extraordinary liberation throughout the novel. Newgate looms as a
constant threat in Moll’s life, the reality that cannot be avoided forever. The novel supports the
notion that an independent woman with such freedom is unacceptable; she cannot be allowed to
continue her lifestyle and must be imprisoned, reformed, and at last released, now properly
penitent and settled with a husband. When Moll is finally apprehended, her freedom of
movement is immediately brought to an end. She is pulled forcefully back into the house she was
trying to steal from, while a maid “shuts the Door upon [her]” (Defoe 214). When the constable
arrives, Moll is “struck...with terror, and I thought I should have sunk into the Ground” (Defoe
214). Thus Moll’s movement is simultaneously cut off by physical force, by imprisonment, and
by immobilizing fear. Her confinement is absolute, her excess of freedom completely inverted.
Moll is reformed during her confinement at Newgate; she claims to be truly repentant
and, when she is released under the conditions of transportation, immediately settles down with
her husband into a more stable, less mobile mode of living. This is not an absolute loss of
freedom, and Moll’s ending is a happy one. However, it is certain that, in being “reformed” into
a much more conventional female role, Moll also loses some of her distinctive autonomy. As
Helene Moglen claims in The Trauma of Gender, “In Moll Flanders...Defoe attempted to
represent a female individualist who would be equivalent to Crusoe, but his inability to think
beyond the values of the emerging sex-gender system limited the possibilities of his
representation” (20). I would argue that it is not only a limitation of Defoe’s thinking, but a
limitation set by the bounds of realism, that constrains Moll’s freedom. It would be hard to
conceive of a woman with Crusoe’s individualism and capitalist tendencies because such a
woman could not exist in eighteenth-century London. Instead, we see a woman with
independence and freedom of mobility who even makes her own money. However, social
conditions and the “male anxieties about female autonomy” felt by patriarchal society and
perhaps by Defoe himself, allow Moll freedom only at the price of a moral sacrifice (Gilbert 28).
She may be lovable and entertaining, but she is no role model and no hero. While Moll seems to
18
be of a different breed than the other female protagonists in this study, the novel in fact provides
a crucial starting point in the evolution of the female protagonist in the novel. None of the other
heroines totally abandon the conventions of the day and, while this confines them at first, we see
those rules slowly loosen as the evolution of the female protagonist continues. Pamela, the next
female protagonist, adheres completely to conservative conventions and is Moll’s opposite in
nearly every way and thus provides a very interesting contrast.
Pamela
If Moll is an image of liberation gained through a sacrifice of moral integrity, Pamela is
just the opposite. Pamela, declared from the very title to be full of “virtue,” is forced to endure
total physical confinement. Her “sad Story” is one in which journeys appear as either failed
attempts or mere imaginings (Richardson 24). Submissive, obedient, physically weak, and very
concerned with the rules and regulations of society, Pamela is the embodiment of that virtuous
woman who Gilbert and Gubar describe as the “angel,” the woman that “male authors dream of
generating” (20). Richardson created her as “a moral model for behavior in a trying situation,”
and Pamela functions as such, often appearing to be more of a manual for proper conduct that a
believable representation of an individual (Case 22). In order to maintain her supernatural
goodness and serve as a paradigm for eighteenth-century female virtue, she must surrender all
hope of female autonomy.
While Pamela and Moll both begin life as lower-class and moves upward, Moll takes the
opposite path, choosing virtue over material gain. In fact, Moll faces a Pamela-esque situation
with the older brother, and quickly gives in to both sexual desire and the temptation of monetary
reward. Whereas this lack of morality wins Moll riches and mobility, but later condemns her to
imprisonment and transportation, Pamela at first suffers through confinement and constant attack
but is ultimately “rewarded” with a wealthy husband. Pamela rebels just enough that her
resistance seems genuine, thus avoiding that “improper” grasping for liberty that (in the eyes of
society) becomes a flaw in Moll, Elizabeth, and Jane. While she once exclaims, “I only wanted
to...have my own Liberty, and not to be confined to such unlawful Restraint,” ultimately Pamela
does not seek freedom, but rather a more comfortable captivity, as made clear by the fact that she
marries her captor (Richardson 201). Unlike so many of the other heroines, Pamela never tries to
escape the constraints of society or the tedium of her life (even though her life, above all others,
is tedious). Her only driving factor seems to be the preservation of her moral integrity. Pamela is
also notable for her complete lack of growth or change; she has no flaw that needs to be
remedied.
Naturally, a reading of Pamela from a feminist perspective can find plenty of faults with
its heroine. Her portrayal simply reinforces patriarchal ideals, including the idea that the place of
a virtuous woman is at home. She should certainly not be allowed to journey out on her own and,
in keeping with this line of thinking, Pamela shows little inclination to do so. True, her
imprisonment is often quite severe, kept under lock and key with the ominously mannish Mrs.
Jewkes as her jailer. However, throughout Part One of the novel there are ample opportunities
for escape. For example, after Mr. B first attacks her in the Summer-house, Pamela considers
running away to preserve her innocence:
Sometimes I thought I would leave the House, and go to the next Town, and wait an
Opportunity to get to you; but then I was at a Loss to resolve whether to take away the
Things he had given me or no...I had two miles and a half, and a By-way, to go to the
Town; and being pretty well dress’d, I might come to some harm...and then may-be...it
19
will be reported, I have stolen something, and so was forc’d to run away; and to carry a
bad Name back with me to my dear poor Parents, would be a sad thing indeed!
(Richardson 25)
This passage provides a classic example of Pamela’s hesitance and her tendency to rationalize
herself into inaction. She produces reason after reason why running away could be dangerous,
even though she knows that staying will bring her into certain danger. Later, she is again
discouraged from escaping by a “nasty grim Bull...with fiery Saucer Eyes, as I thought,” which
she believes to be Satan himself (Richardson 152). That a bull, an embodiment of masculine
force, blocks her attempt is a resounding indication that Pamela–the weak, timid woman–is no
match for masculine authority. Even her most serious escape attempt fails when the wall
crumbles before she can even begin to climb it. Most of Pamela’s bids for freedom are halfhearted at best, and her more earnest attempts are still doomed to failure. In Richardson’s novel
we find only the failed journey, the heroine who can make only weak and futile attempts to break
out of her confinement.
At this point, it is significant to note that Pamela presents an image of a woman as
imagined by a man. Richardson does not seem to be much concerned with accurately
representing a female mind. Instead, the novel represents women in a way that reinforces the
patriarchal order. Pamela is virtuous through obedience and submission, embodying the
pervasive image of the ideal female in the eighteenth century. Richard Allestree, an author who
wrote extensively on the moral standards of his period, outlines the characteristics of this ideal
woman: “her chief virtue (and duty) is obedience...Female virtue is more passive than active, and
consists more largely in an attitude of the soul than in action. Modesty, humility,
resignation...these are her glories” (Doody 16). Pamela possesses all of these qualities, often in
extreme. Even in the moments after Mr. B’s first advances, Pamela takes care to wipe her eyes
before entering the house because “I would not be too disobedient” (Richardson 25). Richardson
purposefully fashioned his heroine as a model of correct behavior. He believed in the didactic
powers of literature, even giving out copies of the letters from which Pamela originated as
“cautions to young folk circumstanced as Pamela was” (quoted in Doody 16). Thus his virtuous
heroine teaches women to submit to male authority figures and to maintain a passive, rather than
an active, virtue. It is not only appropriate, but necessary, that Pamela’s attempts to escape, to
make her own path or take a journey, amount to little more than half-hearted failures.
Pamela and Moll Flanders together, then, provide us with a starting point for the
evolution of the female protagonist. One a virgin, the other a whore, these two protagonists fit
neatly into the two female stereotypes. Both novels provide us with extreme, rather onedimensional images of women. They also demonstrate that, at this point, female autonomy is
only obtained by abandoning virtue. Our next heroine, Evelina, shares many characteristics with
Pamela, yet we begin to see hints of a less polarized representation and of the movement that
characterizes the female protagonist’s evolution.
Evelina
Although Fanny Burney’s Evelina has received less critical attention than the other
novels in this study, it is an important step for the female heroine, in some ways serving as a link
between the earlier and later works discussed here. Burney is traditionally seen as “a transitional
figure between the major novelists of the mid-eighteenth century and Austen” and indeed, I will
consider her novel as just such a link between the other works in my study (Staves 368). Evelina
is the first of our novels to have a female author, yet the values which it reinforces bear many
20
similarities to those of Richardson’s Pamela. Evelina, like Pamela, is a virtuous and passive
heroine. Both are almost wholly good: the purpose of these novels is not to follow the growth
and development of the protagonist, but to demonstrate how, despite her trials, her virtue is
finally rewarded. The most noticeable effect of female authorship is that Evelina seems a more
realistic portrayal of the female mind than does Pamela. While Pamela’s letters usually convey
two repetitive emotions–one shock, the other anxiety about offending or disappointing various
authority figures–Burney imbues her heroine with a bit more depth and a wider range of feelings
and emotions. However, the fact remains that the shift in ideology between the two novels is not
dramatic, and that Burney’s novel continues to reinforce patriarchal ideals. The theory offered by
Carol Pearson and Katherine Pope is that marginalized groups often “internalize the dominant
values” of a society, even those which are prejudiced against them (Pearson, Who Am I 2).
“Accordingly, works by women authors....provide less of a dual perspective than might be
expected because they often reflect upper-class male ideologies” (Pearson, Who Am I 2-3).
Evelina does reflect many of the dominant patriarchal values, and Burney paints her virtuous
protagonist as a helpless creature, dependent on male authority figures, whose happy ending is
enabled only by male intervention.
Burney’s novel does, however, hint at the evolution that is underway for the female
protagonist. There is a definite tension between a spirit of female independence and an
endorsement of male ideologies. Critics have noted that Burney’s works present a “set of
contradictions... [that] might be said to define the ideological tensions inhering in the period’s
complex demarcations of woman’s social place” (Epstein 198). It appears that Burney struggles a
bit with the patriarchal ideals of the society in which she lives, yet is ultimately unable to break
away from them. These tensions emerge to a degree when one considers Evelina and the
opposing forces which govern her life. In Evelina we find a timid heroine whose confinement is
less extreme than Pamela’s, and who does have an independent streak, yet who is clearly not
ready to venture out on her own. Evelina moves around quite a bit–from Berry Hill to Howard’s
Grove to London to Clifton Heights. However, none of these travels is undertaken alone or on
foot, and most of Evelina’s journeys (both long and short) are coerced. In several notable
examples, Evelina is forcibly moved from place to place. Sir Clement Willoughby practically
kidnaps her in his coach, Mr. Smith “runs away with her” without giving her time to resist, and
she is made to follow Madame Duval and various other embarrassing companions, who pay no
attention to her protestations (Burney 161).
In the brief moments when Evelina is left alone, she seems incapable of handling her
independence. Each time she is left to her own devices, the results are disastrous. One critic calls
attention to this phenomenon by pointing out that “Evelina’s progress through the public places
of London is about as tranquil as the progress of a fair-haired girl through modern Naples”
(Staves 15). Lured into the dark alleys by Miss Branghton and confronted by a rowdy group of
men, Evelina becomes separated and “flew rather than ran up the walk,” fueled by fear, only to
run straight into another group of sinister men and then be taken into custody by Willoughby
(Burney 163). On another occasion, she becomes lost in the crowd at Marylebone and walks “in
disordered haste, from place to place, without knowing which way to turn, or whither I went”
(Burney 194). After once more finding herself threatened by members of the opposite sex, she
seeks help from what turn out to be two prostitutes, and succeeds only in exposing herself to
more humiliation. This passage is reminiscent of Moll’s confused flight after her first theft, when
she “could never tell which way it was, nor where I went...whither I was a going, or what to do”
(Defoe 152). Unlike Moll, though, Evelina lacks the strength and/or the opportunity to move past
21
this fear and disorientation. When she is left to move without supervision, her wanderings are
panicked and confused, as though she is not ready for the responsibility that comes with
independence. Although her companions are often unsatisfactory, Evelina is never comfortable
when on her own.
That said, Evelina is not as passive and helpless as Pamela, and does demonstrate a slight
movement away from Pamela’s awe of male authority figures. I would argue that Evelina
possesses a stronger sense of self and, often, a sense that the control which others take over her
life is wrong and unfair. While Pamela often rebels against her imprisonment, in many ways she
also accepts the fact that an older man of higher class is allowed to have control over her life, and
she feels anxiety about disobeying such authority. Evelina, who constantly worries about
adhering to proper decorum, nevertheless finds herself able to rebel at times against the men who
exert their power over her. For instance, when lost in the alleys with Miss Branghton and seized
by one of the “riotous” gentlemen, Evelina struggles “with such vehemence to disengage myself
from him, that I succeeded, in spite of his efforts to detain me” (Burney 163). Here we see a brief
moment of physicality in which Evelina successfully defends herself against a man who would
imprison her. When Sir Clement Willoughby kidnaps her after the opera in order to profess his
love, Evelina has no qualms about breaking “forcibly from him” and feels “indignation” as well
as fear at his forceful behavior (Burney 83). However, these brief moments of success are
overwhelmed by the examples of male physical superiority. It seems that men are “frequently
and forcibly” taking hold of Evelina; in response she usually “struggled as well as I could” or
“would fain have disengaged myself from him, but he would not let me” (Burney 258, 161, 121).
She is also involuntarily hauled from place to place, as I mentioned earlier, by various parties. In
all of these examples, there is the sense that it is only this physical superiority that keeps Evelina
from rebelling freely. The overall mood is one of helplessness; Evelina wants to resist, to have
control over her own movement, but does not have the ability.
In this third novel, the spark of independence which lends such vitality to Elizabeth
Bennet and Jane Eyre has not yet come to life, but it does begin to emerge in subtle ways. We
also see in Evelina the idea of taking a long walk alone as a way to escape from the frustrations
of her life, a pattern which will become hugely important in both Pride and Prejudice and Jane
Eyre. Near the end of the novel, Evelina arises early in the morning before the rest of the family
is awake and “strolled out, purposing to take a long walk” (Burney 245). However, this idea, like
so many of her solo ventures, does not work out as planned. Evelina has scarcely left the house
when she encounters Mr. Macartney, who has traced her to her current location and whose
arrival (like most events in the novel) ends up causing Evelina embarrassment and anxiety. The
impulse to set out alone is present, but Evelina is not able to carry out her desires. Ultimately,
though Evelina looks forward in some ways, Burney’s heroine has little independence, relying
on others to resolve her problems. Mr. Villars and Lord Orville, both older men, serve as
Evelina’s guides and protectors. It is only by their interference that Evelina avoids crisis and
gains her happy ending. Like Pamela, Evelina’s only true power is her passive virtue, and
playing an active role in shaping her future is not yet an option. The conflict that exists between
this fact and Evelina’s obvious desire to have at least partial independence seems to reflect
Burney’s own opposing feelings on the matter. However, at the dawn of the nineteenth century
an author and heroine emerge who, together, are able to further push the bounds of propriety and
expand the role of the female protagonist.
22
Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice and its heroine mark a dramatic departure from the timidity and
angelic perfection of Pamela and Evelina. Elizabeth Bennet is lively, quick-witted, and not afraid
to push the boundaries of proper social conduct. Neither angel nor monster, she is the first of our
heroines to occupy a realistic middle ground and, as she breaks out of these flattening
stereotypes, she takes the female protagonist to a new level. Elizabeth is certainly “good,” and
the reader feels no qualms about taking her side throughout the novel, but she also flawed and
makes mistakes which she later learns from, thus growing as a character. Austen presents us with
a woman who is not perfect, who feels deeply, and who has a desire for independence, in short, a
more realistic woman than we have yet seen depicted in the other novels.
This increased sense of realism corresponds with a greater desire for mobility. Elizabeth
is the first of our heroines to venture out alone by choice rather than necessity. Whereas Moll
clings to male companionship for support as much as possible and only becomes independent
and mobile when she must, Elizabeth seems to have a natural desire for independence which
manifests itself throughout the novel, and seeks time alone as a source of comfort and often as an
escape from the frustrations of her family life. The most significant of Elizabeth’s journeys on
foot is the trip she makes to visit Jane at Netherfield. When Elizabeth hears that her sister is sick,
she immediately feels compelled to visit her, although the rest of the family does not feel the
same sense of urgency. So Elizabeth sets out “early in the day, in...dirty weather, and by herself”
to make the three-mile trek (Austen 23). The description of the trip emphasizes the physicality of
the walk:
Elizabeth continued her walk alone, crossing field after field at a quick pace,
jumping over stiles and springing over puddles with impatient activity, and finding
herself at last within view of the house, with weary ancles, dirty stockings, and a face
glowing with the warmth of exercise. (Austen 23)
Thus we have a heroine who feels the need to accomplish something and who, when no one else
offers to assist her, undertakes the task on her own. This spark of independence and selfsufficiency demonstrates an important step for the female protagonist, setting her apart not just
from her predecessors, but her contemporaries. While Elizabeth is not afraid to venture out on
her own, her actions do not reflect social norms, as demonstrated by Miss Bingley’s reaction to
Elizabeth’s long morning walk. Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley are shocked that she has come so
far on foot and later, when Elizabeth has left the room, Miss Bingley uses Elizabeth’s
independence as point of criticism. “To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles...alone,
quite alone! What could she mean by it? It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited
independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum” (Austen 25). To Miss Bingley,
who is quite concerned with propriety, Elizabeth’s independence is not admirable at all; it is a
violation of decorum. Miss Bingley serves as a demonstration of traditional values, reminding us
that, although we begin to see the female protagonist evolving, this growth jars against the rules
of tradition.
Elizabeth’s decision to walk to Netherfield not only places her ahead of her
contemporaries, but also introduces another important pattern. Here, and at various points
throughout the novel, Elizabeth uses walking as a source of comfort in difficult situations, a
pattern which will continue throughout the novel. The fact that she is able to go to Jane, under
her own power, is a way for Elizabeth to assert her control over the situation. She may not be
able to control the actions of her family or heal Jane’s illness, but she does have control over
herself and her own actions. Similarly, Elizabeth uses walking as a method of seeking comfort
23
and sorting out her thoughts after Darcy’s first proposal and after receiving his explanatory letter.
The day after the proposal, Elizabeth “resolved soon after breakfast to indulge herself in air and
exercise” (Austen 128). Solitude, exercise, and fresh air seem to be the primary healing elements
in Elizabeth’s life. Though she cannot run away from her thoughts or emotions, she can avoid the
interference of others and gain time to sort out her thoughts by escaping into nature. It is while
“indulging in exercise” that Darcy approaches her with a letter, which she reads while continuing
her walk. After reading it, she wanders “along the lane for two hours, giving way to every variety
of thought” and finally returns to the house “with the wish of appearing cheerful as usual, and the
resolution of repressing such reflections as must make her unfit for conversation” (Austen 138).
There is here a clear delineation between her solitary walk, when she can reflect and reconsider
to her heart’s content, and the return to the house and to civilization, when her feelings must be
concealed behind a cheerful facade. This duality between the structure of the indoors and the
relative freedom of the outdoors is a frequent pattern in all of the novels, though it is particularly
important in Pride and Prejudice. There is some symbolic significance to the fact that, when a
heroine asserts her independence through movement, she abandons the company of others and
the literal structure of an indoor setting for the freedom and solitude of the outdoors. By
venturing out alone, she temporarily escapes the confines of society and the pressures exerted by
the bounds of propriety.
Walking also features significantly in several important moments in Elizabeth’s life.
When Lady Catherine arrives unexpectedly at the Bennets’ home, she and Elizabeth take a walk
together. It is during this walk that Elizabeth makes her most powerful display of strength and
independence. She holds her own against the formidable Lady Catherine, refusing to be
intimidated by her. Although at one point in the conversation they sit down at Lady Catherine’s
command, it is Elizabeth who ends the conversation on her own terms, rising as she says, “You
can now have nothing farther to say” and signals the end of the visit (Austen 233). By holding
her own against such an intimidating figure, Elizabeth is asserting her own self worth, refusing to
be made inferior based only on rank and title. A similar assertion is made on friendlier terms near
the end of the novel when Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy take a walk together. During their stroll they
confess their feelings and become engaged. That their relationship is cemented while walking
together is symbolic, suggesting that Elizabeth’s marriage does not signify a loss of
independence. Whereas Moll’s marriage signaled an end to her highly mobile lifestyle and
Evelina was essentially rescued by marriage and saved from having to fend for herself,
Elizabeth’s marriage is one of equality. Although Mr. Darcy’s name and fortune rank above
Elizabeth’s, Austen makes clear through the interactions between the two that they are mentally
equal. Elizabeth is not intimidated by Darcy, and will not sacrifice her independent spirit in
marrying him. This type of equality in marriage is an important step for the female protagonist;
she is no longer simply a damsel in distress awaiting rescue by marriage, but a woman who sees
her husband as a matched equal rather than a superior being.
Jane Austen presents us with a heroine whose tendency to walk alone and on foot marks
her independence and sets her apart from the other female characters in the novel. While her
sisters walk to Meryton for entertainment and Miss Bingley takes a turn about the room to entice
Darcy, Elizabeth is the only female character who walks for the sake of walking, and who enjoys
the solitude that accompanies the activity. Bolder than her sister Jane, whose total passivity
almost costs her everything, and tamer than Lydia, whose wildness results in an unhappy
marriage, Elizabeth is presented as a perfect middle ground. Falling outside of the two extreme
images of women seen thus far, Elizabeth represents an important step towards realism for the
24
female protagonist. The way in which she uses walking also sets her apart from the other
protagonists I have discussed thus far. Although there is a hint of this type of desire at the end of
Evelina, Elizabeth is the first of our heroines to use walking as an outlet (and to have the
freedom to do so). Our first protagonist to access movement as a tool of independence, Elizabeth
represents a new breed of female protagonist. As Claudia Johnson observes, “Elizabeth
emphatically does not [conform to conservative conventions]…Austen’s conviction that
Elizabeth was ‘as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print” was well-founded, for… no
heroine quite like Elizabeth Bennet had “ever appeared in print” before” (75). Elizabeth defies
categorization in a way that none of her predecessors have. As a flawed but decidedly positive
character, Elizabeth demonstrates that a woman need not be either perfectly good and physically
constrained or free to move but morally corrupt. She adheres to neither extreme, pushing the
boundaries of propriety while still maintaining her position in society. By creating such a
heroine, Austen also moves the female protagonist forward on her evolution. Taking to the road–
or the field, or the garden path–Elizabeth Bennet brings the female protagonist to her feet and
gets her moving in the right direction.
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is, in many ways, a culmination of the evolution that has taken place in Moll
Flanders, Pamela, Evelina, and Pride and Prejudice. Charlotte Brontë infuses her heroine with a
spirit of independence and allows her to create her own path; a feat that Elizabeth and Moll
accomplish to an extent but which is impossibility for Pamela and Evelina. Jane uses her ability
to journey in a way that none of the other heroines do. While Jane shares many characteristics
with Elizabeth Bennet, she uses walking as not just a method of therapy and escape, but also as a
way of taking control of her own life. A close look at the novel reveals that each of the journeys
in Jane Eyre is closely connected with a major change in Jane’s life.
The novel chronicles Jane’s development, from her childhood at Gateshead to her final
destination, Ferndean, and her marriage to Mr. Rochester. Every step of Jane’s development is
linked to a journey of some sort, and her progress cannot be completely understood without
considering the link between Jane’s movement and her growing maturity and independence. As
in my discussions of the other novels, it is the journeys taken on foot that hold the greatest
significance. Walking, as a self-sufficient mode of transportation, proves to be a lifeline for Jane,
even more so than for Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice. Regardless of how penniless, friendless,
or distressed Jane may be, she retains the ability to move forward on her own two feet and, by
extension, her ability to create change in her life.
The idea of walking is introduced in the first sentence of the novel. Jane is at Gateshead,
on the verge of, but not having yet begun, her journey towards independence. Our narrator
begins her story by telling us that “there was no possibility of taking a walk that day” (Brontë 5).
A few lines later she adds, “I was glad of it” (Brontë 5). This may seem to be an ironic start
given the topic of this study, but it corresponds to Jane’s restricted state. As a child, Jane is still
dependent on others and made to believe that she is inferior by her adopted family; she is not yet
ready to assert her independence. It is not until Jane is a young woman, ready to begin shaping
her own future, that her walking becomes important. Jane’s time at Gateshead and Lowood are
marked by deference to figures of authority. Though she resists at times, Jane is still a child and
remains subordinate to her elders. In accordance with this subordinate role, there is a lack of
purposeful movement during Jane’s early life. Although she mentions taking a few recreational
walks during her years as a student at Lowood, her first significant journey takes place only
25
when Jane has become an instructor and is ready to take her first major step towards
independence.
At the age of eighteen years, after spending eight years at Lowood, Jane takes action for
the first time with the intention of changing her circumstances. This action springs from a
restlessness in Jane’s nature, and a need to break from her limited and routine life at the school.
In a particularly significant passage, Jane looks out her window, fixing her sights on the remote
peaks of the horizon. “I traced the white road winding around the base of one mountain, and
vanishing in a gorge between two: how I longed to follow it further!” (Brontë 72). This winding
path in the distance seems to represent the larger journey which is stretching before Jane at this
point in the novel. However, she cannot yet travel that distant road, but must take smaller steps,
growing and maturing as she does so. Jane seems aware of this: “for liberty I gasped; for liberty I
uttered a prayer...I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication: that petition, too, seemed
swept off into vague space: ‘Then,’ I cried, half desperate, ‘grant me at least a new servitude!’”
(Brontë 72). Though she compromises her desire for absolute freedom in favor of a more
realistic aim, this moment of fierce desire for independence spurs Jane into action.
It is toward the aim of finding “a new servitude” that Jane sets out to the post office to
advertise for a position as a governess. The two mile walk to Lowton is an important
representation of Jane’s independence, and signifies the beginning of her journey towards
maturity. This trip, like all the others which signal a major change for Jane, is made alone and
one foot, reminding us that she is capable of acting on her own desires in order to change her
life, without guidance or assistance from others. After placing her advertisement, she returns to
Lowood “with a relieved heart” (Brontë 74). This relief, an inward acknowledgment of her first
step towards liberty, comes even before Jane discovers that her efforts have been successful. The
very act of stepping outside the domain of Lowood School, characterized by its authority,
rigidity, and its unchanging routine, is perhaps just as important as the subsequent shift that
occurs in Jane’s life as a result. After a second trip “afoot...to Lowton,” Jane is rewarded for
striking out on her own by receiving an offer of employment as a governess at Thornfield Hall,
the next destination on Jane’s road of development (Brontë 74). With this first small journey,
Jane has succeeded in changing her life, propelling herself forward in her search for happiness.
The next time Jane sets out on a solitary walk, her life is once more on the verge of a
significant change. Having lived at Thornfield for several months, Jane as has already begun to
ache under the “viewless fetters of a uniform and too still existence” (Brontë 99). The situation
is, in many ways, parallel to that of Jane’s first sojourn. The journey is preceded by an expository
paragraph in which Jane describes her emotional state and, just as at Lowton, Jane is plagued by
restlessness, dissatisfaction with a life that is too routine. Interestingly, her longing takes the
form of an urge to see distant places: “[I] looked out afar over sequestered field and hill...then I
longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world,
towns, regions full of life I had heard but never seen” (Brontë 93). The desire for variety, for
novelty, becomes closely connected with the journey impulse. Just as Jane yearned to follow a
distant road when she first reached for independence, she here expresses a similar desire. The
things she seeks are like distant places: they lie just beyond the horizon, but remain unreachable
for a dependent woman such as Jane.
At the same time, Jane identifies her desire for action as a basic human need: “It is in
vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility; they must have action” (Brontë
93). She goes on to connect this statement to the lives of women, who are forced to “confine
themselves” to housework, but who “suffer from too rigid a constraint, too absolute a stagnation,
26
precisely as men would suffer” (Brontë 93). In this striking passage, Brontë calls attention to the
convention which keeps women largely immobile and tied to the home while men are allowed to
pursue action and adventure wherever they please. Jane, suffering under this forced stasis, once
again uses walking as an outlet for her frustration. It is also significant that, as Jane expresses her
yearning to break free and seek action, she paces back and forth along the third-floor corridor.
This pacing once again connects the type of feelings that Jane is articulating with need for
movement. It also creates a very interesting parallel between Jane Eyre and the insane, animallike Bertha Rochester, “runs backwards and forwards...on all fours” in her room (Brontë 250).
While Jane often feels constrained by her circumstances, and is able to seek relief by journeying,
Bertha is literally imprisoned just a few rooms away, her mad pacing an endless and pointless
attempt to seek her own relief. Gilbert and Gubar point out the connection between the two
women, proposing the Bertha is an “avatar” for Jane’s wilder, more furious nature that she
exhibits in the red room incident, her own moment of unjust imprisonment (359). Jane, however,
has learned to control her rebellious nature and, instead of striking out wildly against her
circumstances only to be caged like Bertha, she is able to use action productively.
We see this productive movement again with Jane’s second journey. Again, Jane’s
destination is the post office; although this time she does not set out to create a change, but rather
to escape the “stagnation” and monotony of her daily life (Brontë 93). In the earlier trip, Brontë
chose to emphasize the turmoil of Jane’s thoughts and her sense of excitement; this time, the
most important aspect of the passage is her loneliness. Jane recalls that “the ground was hard, the
air was still, my road was lonely” and describes her surroundings in detail, noting the “utter
solitude and leafless repose” of the landscape (Brontë 94). Although Jane does not seem to
mourn her solitude, the lack of satisfying companionship in Jane’s life is the underlying cause of
its stagnation. When, in the middle of her walk, Mr. Rochester bursts into the scene, Jane’s
solitude is broken. Rochester brings new excitement and purpose to her life, as well as to her
walk, and provides the stimulating companionship which Jane has been lacking. She enjoys his
conversation, taking a “keen delight in receiving the new ideas he offered,” and no longer
complains of restlessness or boredom (Brontë 125). Furthermore it is Rochester who ultimately
will provide Jane with lifelong companionship in the form of friend and spouse. Once again,
Jane’s restlessness and dissatisfaction has led her to a journey out and find the change which she
had been craving.
The longest and most desperate of Jane’s journeys on foot also ushers in the most
dramatic alteration in her life. It occurs after she ends her relationship with Mr. Rochester and
flees both Thornfield and its master. Though she makes the first stage of this journey by coach,
Jane arrives at Whitcross divested of both money and all worldly possessions, with “not a tie”
holding her to “human society” (Brontë 275). In this lonely, heartbroken state, Jane sets off
without any idea of her destination. The circumstances of this journey are more extreme than
ever before, and the object is to seek a total change, a new life. This time, Jane does not plan to
return to her home. After wandering the countryside on “weary, trembling limbs” and then
fruitlessly seeking employment and nourishment in a small village, Jane at last finds herself at
what will become her new home, Marsh End (Brontë 275). As she approaches, weak and
starving, a light guides her to the place where she will find both shelter and, later, family. “The
light was yet there, shining dim but constant through the rain. I tried to walk again: I dragged my
exhausted limbs slowly towards it” (Brontë 282). Jane falls twice as she nears her destination,
“but as often I rose and rallied my faculties” (Brontë 282). In the passages concerning this
particular journey, Brontë emphasizes the physical difficulty of moving forward. The physicality
27
of the journey, and the utter solitude that Jane feels, demonstrates more than ever Jane’s fierce
strength of will, her fortitude and her independence. Stretched to her limits, both mentally and
physically, she nevertheless “[rises] and [rallies] her faculties” rather than admitting defeat. As a
result, Jane’s life again undergoes a drastic change; she finds a home, inherits the money that
will make her financially independent and, most importantly, gains the family that she has
always desired. Having begun her journey lamenting her lack of human connections, she is
carried by her will power and her own two feet to the one place where she can find those
connections.
Jane’s final journey takes place near the end of the novel, when she reaches both her
literal and psychological destination, once again arriving on foot. This final stretch brings her to
Ferndean, and the Jane who finally arrives at Mr. Rochester’s doorstep has changed drastically
from the Jane who set out on that first journey at Lowood. She is now financially independent,
she is no longer friendless and alone in the world, her resolve has been tested and she has
emerged a confident and self-sufficient woman. The moral obstruction to Jane and Rochester’s
relationship has been removed, and she is now able to go to him confidently and with a clear
conscience. The fact that Jane chooses to travel the last mile on foot is important, for it brings the
walking motif full circle. Even the description of this final step in the journey echoes the longer
journey that Jane has taken. The track “stretched on and on, it wound far and farther…I thought I
had taken a wrong direction and lost my way” (Brontë 366). By exaggerating the length of the
road, which Jane tells us is only one mile long; Brontë recalls the length of the metaphorical road
that Jane has followed to this point. This journey is the final piece to Jane’s story of
development. While Gilbert and Gubar claim that this stage of the novel is part of “an essential
epilogue to that pilgrimage toward selfhood which had in other ways concluded at Marsh End,”
Jane’s pilgrimage is not complete until she makes this final journey (367). When Jane tells the
reader, “I looked around in search of another road. There was none,” she is also expressing a
realization that the metaphorical road she has travelled to this point, however long and difficult,
was the only correct path for her (Brontë 366). This last journey solidifies Jane’s self-assurance,
bringing her confidently to her final destination. At every point in Jane’s life, she has asserted
her independence by walking. Only by striking out on her own, spurred by the desire for a better
life and a longing seek new horizons, has she achieved her “happy ending.”
The journey motif is fully realized in Jane Eyre. Jane not only makes a solitary journey
of epic proportions, but she also uses her ability to move as a tool for taking control over own
life and fulfilling her own goals and desires. Perhaps we would not place Jane in the same
category as Odysseus or Aeneus, but she is nevertheless groundbreaking character for the female
literary tradition. In fact, when the novel concludes, Jane is both “prop and guide” to Rochester,
an image which we might connect to Aeneus carrying his father from a burning Troy (Brontë
382). Our final heroine is not only the “equal” of her husband, but also his leader, capable of
guiding others as well as herself (Brontë 217). This is a powerful image when we consider the
timidity of Pamela, too awed by the power of her male “superior” to risk disobedience. Jane
serves an emblem of purposeful independence for the female protagonist. She is able to succeed
in forging her own path and break free of would-be constraints, pushing the boundaries without
falling into vice or criminality. Her accomplishments demonstrate how far the female protagonist
has come.
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Conclusion
Carl Jung viewed the journey of the hero as “dramatizing the human being’s inner
development toward maturity and psychological wholeness” (Pearson, Female Hero 3). If we
accept this statement, it follows that, when a female is allowed to make a journey, she is also
being recognized as a psychologically realistic character with the potential for such inner
development. As we track the rise of the female protagonist, we see that her ability to move is
about much more than physical freedom. The journey is representative of independence and selfassertion as well as a movement towards female characters as depictions of realistic individuals.
There are certainly elements of the female experience which warrant a desire for these qualities.
Despite the dramatic differences between the five female protagonists in this study, their
experiences have a common element in the uncertainty of their various positions in life. Moll
grows up as a poor orphan petted over by an upper-class family and spends the rest of her life in
a position of social ambiguity. Pamela’s story begins with the death of her mistress and the
uncertainty of Pamela’s future employment. From the very beginning when she is given some of
her mistress’s fine clothes, Pamela too is caught in an ambiguous position between two social
classes. Evelina’s situation is confused so much that even her last name is uncertain. Elizabeth’s
future is called into question by the entail of her father’s estate and the lack of fortune that
constantly strains her relationships with the family’s wealthier acquaintances. Jane is raised in a
wealthy family but given none of the same advantages as the other children and later works as a
governess, an occupation with an inherently ambiguous social position. This uncertainty, which
proves to be a fundamental part of each heroine’s experience, seems to be a defining
characteristic of the female experience during the period. As a marginalized group, women were
often placed in difficult and ambiguous positions. Movement and stasis or, in broader terms,
activity and passivity, have emerged in this study as the two ways in which female heroines can
cope with their station in life. Moll, Elizabeth, and especially Jane use movement in an attempt
to banish this uncertainty and take control of their own lives, fighting against the “special
helplessness of women to determine their own fates” enacted in Pamela and Evelina (Staves
380). When Jane makes her first walk to the post office, she is enacting her refusal to be satisfied
with a passive acceptance of her place and demonstrating that women need not be so entirely
helpless.
As the female protagonist starts to assert herself and find her place in life and, in broader
terms, within the world of the novel, the ties that hold her immobile loosen and fall away. We do
not see a complete overthrowing of traditional male/female roles or of the patriarchal order that
defines them. Instead, we see an evolution which allows women to finally have a narrative of
growth and movement. The earlier heroines are mostly static characters. Moll does reform and
change her lifestyle, yet she demonstrates little real growth or change. Pamela and Evelina,
already perfectly virtuous, have no room to grow, no faults that need correcting. Both Jane and
Elizabeth, on the other hand, undergo a very noticeable development as their stories progress.
This potential for change is a key feature of the overall evolution of the female protagonist. The
earlier heroines, both stationary and static, remain fairly one-dimensional and represent one side
of Woman rather than presenting a fully developed and realistic female character. However, as
the female protagonist gradually begins to move and to resist the expectations of societal norms,
this flattened quality falls away. Elizabeth Bennet is one of literatures most memorable heroines
precisely because she is lively, bold, and flawed. Not only is Elizabeth imperfect, but she is
noticeably pushing the boundaries of propriety. We see this encapsulated in Miss Bingley’s
shocked distain when Elizabeth arrives, dirty and out of breath, after her journey to Netherfield.
29
This ability to act outside the rules of custom demonstrates the change that is occurring in the
female protagonist. As she develops, she changes more quickly than the regulations of society
and thus often comes into conflict with traditional values. Likewise, Jane Eyre was received by
many members of the public with “shock and moral outrage” and was described by one critic as
expressing “a total ignorance of the habits of society” (Barker 90-91). This “ignorance”
doubtlessly refers to Brontë’s choice to have her protagonist break with many of the conventions
of society. By having their heroines act outside the boundaries of propriety, these nineteenthcentury authors were themselves acting outside those boundaries. In so doing, Austen and Brontë
usher in a new era for the female protagonist. In their novels, we see the beginning of female
characters who are more than just embodiments of a particular stereotype. As the female
protagonist asserts her independence through movement, she brings forth a depiction of women
as realistic characters who struggle against their circumstances, who grow through their
experiences, and who demonstrate that women have stories worth telling.
Works Cited
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000. Print.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontes. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Print.
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001. Print.
Burney, Frances. Evelina. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998. Print.
Case, Alison. Plotting Women: Gender and Narration in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century
British Novel. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999. Print.
Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004. Print.
Doody, Margaret Anne. A Natural Passion: a study of the novels of Samuel Richardson. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1974. Print.
Epstein, Julia. “Marginality in Frances Burney’s novels.” A Cambridge Companion to the
Eighteenth-Century Novel. Ed. John Richetti. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996. 198-211. Print.
Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2000. Print.
Johnson, Claudia. Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1988. Print.
Marshall, Alice. Pen Names of Women Writers. Camp Hill: 1985. Print.
McKeon, Michael. The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1987. Print.
Moglen, Helene. The Trauma of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Print.
Pearson, Carol and Pope, Katherine. Who Am I This Time? Female Portraits in British and
American Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976. Print.
Pearson, Carol and Pope, Katherine. The Female Hero in American and British Literature. New
Providence: Bowker, 1981. Print.
Richardson, Samuel. Pamela. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.
Spencer, Jane. “Women writers and the eighteenth-century novel.” A Cambridge Companion to
the Eighteenth-Century Novel. Ed. John Richetti. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996. 212-235. Print.
Staves, Susan. “‘Evelina;’ or, Female Difficulties.” Modern Philology 73.4 (1976): 368-381.
JSTOR. Web. 6 May 2012.
Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957. Print.
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31
Chinese Finger-traps: The Failure of Narrative
in Philip K. Dick’s VALIS
JAMES KALB
Dr. Dan Manheim & Dr. Nathan Link, Faculty Mentors
Forward: Approaching Philip K. Dick
Science fiction author Philip K. Dick has left a powerful legacy since his death in 1982.
For many, his influence is most apparent through the numerous film adaptations of his works.
The extremely successful Blade Runner was released soon after his death and twelve other
adaptations have followed. Other movies have been heavily influenced by his work. The Truman
Show owes a debt to Dick’s novel, Time Out of Joint and according to Frank Rose “his influence
is pervasive in the Matrix (Rose, 1). Moreover, his “anxious surrealism all but defines
contemporary Hollywood science fiction” (1). For his loyal and increasing readership, however,
these adaptations pale in comparison to his novels and short stories. Often, these readers identify
the value in Dick’s work as his startling philosophical and religious ideas. Consequently, he is
frequently labeled as a novelist of ideas—more a philosopher than a novelist.1
This limited view of Dick’s work has affected the ways in which readers have
approached VALIS, one of his final novels. VALIS is arguably Dick’s best work. Critics often
treat the novel as an exploration of Dick’s idiosyncratic religious beliefs. Such analyses
emphasize the autobiographical elements of the novel. While such approaches are often fruitful,
little attention has been paid to issues of narrative as they play out in the text. An emphasis on
problems of narrative, on the other hand, involves exploring the complications and incoherencies
in the novel rather than merely attributing these aspects of VALIS to issues of authorship. With
this orientation, the particular problems of narration in VALIS open important questions about the
nature of narration in general. In particular, Philip K. Dick’s novel VALIS challenges narrative’s
capacity to achieve coherence.
Introduction: The Failure of Narrative
At its most fundamental level, VALIS is a novel about a fractured psyche that needs to be
healed. The story begins with a character named Horselover Fat experiencing a nervous
breakdown after his friend Gloria commits suicide. Soon afterwards, Fat’s wife and son leave
him, and his friend Sherri dies of cancer. Gloria’s suicide is what originally draws Fat into what
the narrator calls an “unspeakable psychological game” (2). The narrator introduces himself, “I
am Horselover Fat and I am narrating this in the third person to gain much-needed objectivity”
(3). However, it becomes clear the narrator is an entity that is distinct from Horselover Fat. This
narrator’s name, we learn, is Phil Dick—a Phil Dick who is distinct from the biographical author
of the novel, Philip K. Dick. Horselover Fat thinks he has a divine experience: a theophany. Fat
Dick himself proclaims, “I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist; my novel & story-writing
ability is employed as a means to formulate my perception” (In Pursuit of VALIS, 161).
1
32
experiences God as a pink beam of light and characterizes his vision as a divine transmission of
“living information” (218).
Fat begins to theorize about this experience, trying to understand what has happened to
him and why. Phil is resistant to this theorizing at first, but together Fat and Phil see a movie
called VALIS (an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, which refers to an artifact
that beams information into people’s heads).2 Though events in the film are represented in
science fiction form, the themes resonate with Fat’s actual experiences, so Phil, Fat, and some of
their friends go to see the group who made the movie, called the “Friends of God,” for answers.
The Friends of God claim to be the caretaker of the “next savior,” an incredibly intelligent twoyear old named Sophia, who momentarily “cures” Phil. She causes him to see that Horselover
Fat, the character under consideration for most of this book, is actually a psychological
projection created by Phil out of his inability to cope with Gloria’s death. Fat disappears, and
Sophia suggests that a new epoch is coming soon—essentially, the kingdom of God on Earth.
However, it becomes apparent that these Friends of God are insane. One of them accidentally
kills Sophia in an attempt to extract information from her head with a laser. With the death of the
savior, Horselover Fat reappears. Immediately, Phil and Fat have a falling out. Fat believes the
savior is still out in the world, waiting for Fat to find him. Phil’s orientation is ambivalent, but he
seems to think Sophia had an important message, though Fat writes Sophia off as insane. Their
disagreement culminates in Fat’s departure on a renewed quest for the savior, which Phil thinks
is insane and unproductive. VALIS ends with Phil sitting alone at home, waiting for God to tell
him what to do next.
Within the narrative, it is stated that Phil goes on to write the text of VALIS. Phil narrates
VALIS from the perspective of a character reflecting on the events that have occurred as the
fictional writer of VALIS. Phil’s orientation changes both within the story and in the narration
itself.3 At times the narrator is sarcastic and seems detached from the events recounted but at
revealing moments in the story he seems vulnerable and moved by these events. Fat is usually
the object of narration. Fat is characterized as an earnest truth-seeker, convinced of the
possibility of achieving coherence. He is treated as a character entirely distinct from Phil for
most of the novel.
Throughout the course of VALIS, patterns emerge in Phil and Fat’s search for healing. Fat
seeks divine healing and generates theories that aim to understand what has happened to him,
most of which have a strong theological bent. Eventually, Fat seeks out the next savior. Phil
increasingly participates in Fat’s theorizing and search, though he is at first resistant to Fat’s
ideas and has a different orientation than Fat. The narrator uses narration as an attempt to seek
clarity, which serves as a precursor for eventual healing.
In VALIS, the division of this psyche into Phil and Fat is a response to the psychological
trauma caused by Gloria’s suicide. Thus, the healing that both Fat and Phil seek would have to
involve the reintegration of these two halves of a psyche. The existence of the Fat/Phil amalgam
A fictitious Soviet Dictionary entry at the beginning of the book defines VALIS as, “A perturbation in
the reality field in which a spontaneous self-monitoring negentropic vortex is formed, tending
progressively to subsume and incorporate its environment into arrangements of information.
Characterized by quasi-consciousness, purpose, intelligence, growth and an armillary coherence” (i).
This refers to the science fiction rendering of God in the film VALIS. Henceforth, all mentions of VALIS
pertain to the novel itself, not the VALIS movie within the novel.
3
In service of clarity, I will refer to the character within the narrative as “Phil” and I refer to the narrator,
who is, in fact, Phil after the events of VALIS have taken place, as “the narrator.”
2
33
is implied—but not contained—within the text itself. Indeed, it cannot be contained in the text
because only one half of the psyche is narrating. The fractured psyche is the primary
manifestation of an inability to process Gloria’s suicide. Thus, the ultimate goal of narration,
which is also a quest for healing, must include reintegration of the fractured psyche. However,
the scope of VALIS seems to transcend a mere attempt to deal with the death of Gloria; the text
points to a need for personal healing as well as a general need for theological coherence. The
issue that most directly challenges a sense of coherence in the world of VALIS is the seeming
irrationality of a universe in which such tragedies as Gloria’s death can occur—a universe, it
appears, in which God allows horrible suffering. The various attempts to deal with the problem
of theodicy, or God’s justice, in VALIS converge on the need for a savior who will bring healing
and coherence.
The narrator engages in his search for healing when he implicitly seeks reintegration of
his divided psyche. Phil and Fat engage in a parallel search for healing within the narrative. In
both cases, healing is sought through narrative. Just as Phil produces the text of VALIS, Fat
produces theories that take the shape of narratives. However, the need for coherence is not
satisfied in VALIS. There are three types of narrative that fail to reach their implied goals. The
first type of narrative failure can be seen in the narrator’s implicit goal of reintegration through
narrative. VALIS does not end with reintegration but rather with a radical separation—Horselover
Fat and Phil are continents apart by the end of VALIS. Moreover, the process of narration reifies
the separation that it seeks to heal. The second manifestation is that the narrator, in the process of
narrating, makes himself increasingly unviable as a narrator. Although the implied goal in the
narration clearly encompasses reintegration, the viewpoints and orientations of the narrator in
different parts of VALIS conflict irreconcilably. That is, the process of narrating underlines the
instability of the narrator—he is a shifting entity even though for him all the events of VALIS
have already transpired. The third manifestation of the failure of narrative is within the broader
need for coherence that we see in both Phil and Horselover Fat and the failure of any sense of
coherence at the end of VALIS. Narrative emerges as a manifestation of a human need for
coherence and attempts to achieve this goal. However, in VALIS we generally see the
embodiment of hoped-for coherence in something outside of the narrative, i.e., an external
savior. Since the external savior cannot be bound up in narrative terms, subject to human
limitations, such coherence cannot be achieved solely through narrative. In spite of this,
producing narratives is valuable because it gives voice to a basic human need for coherence. This
dynamic expresses the fundamental problem in VALIS: there is an overwhelming need for
coherence and a failure of narrative to achieve coherence, though narrative emerges as the only
viable option for addressing this need.
A Survey of Relevant Criticism
Before proceeding, I will define my position in relation to the critics of Philip K. Dick. In
his excellent introduction to Dick’s work, Understanding Philip K. Dick, Eric Link articulates a
standard approach to VALIS, focusing on the relationship between the author and aspects of the
novel. Dick’s final four novels, Radio Free Albemuth, VALIS, The Divine Invasion, and The
Transmigration of Timothy Archer all deal with themes that relate to Dick’s mystical experiences
(Link, 134).4 Link suggests that VALIS stands out from these thematically similar novels because
4
Radio Free Albemuth is sometimes treated as a draft of VALIS, and sometimes as an entirely distinct
creation. VALIS, The Divine Invasion, and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer are sometimes grouped
34
“it is a barely fictionalized rendering” of Dick’s experiences which only heads into the “realm of
pure fiction” in the second half (135). For critics like Link, the primary interest in VALIS is in
what it reveals about Dick. Accordingly, the split between Phil and Fat is treated as a way for
Dick to comment on his own experiences (135).
Lawrence Sutin’s seminal biography on Dick, Divine Invasions, is a successful treatment
of the relationship between Dick’s life and work. This biography has detailed analyses of Dick’s
account of his own religious experiences, including a 1974 theophany. Dick thought God was
contacting him, and he draws on his experiences to render Fat’s theophany in VALIS. Divine
Invasions is also the first comprehensive foray into Dick’s Exegesis—a project Dick worked on
from 1974 until his death. The Exegesis engages in a number of metaphysical explorations that
seek to understand Dick’s experiences. Drawing on these sources, Sutin’s reading of VALIS
informs interpretations of authorial intent. For example, Sutin connects the negative portrait of
Fat’s wife in VALIS to Phil’s accusatory attitude towards his wife, Tessa (240). Sherri is based on
Dick’s mother Doris, with whom Fat had a fraught relationship. Additionally, Sutin demonstrates
that Dick’s fixation on twins and premature birth, which manifests in Fat’s theories in VALIS,
arises from Dick’s own premature birth and the early death of his twin sister Jane (239).
Knowledge of these biographical links can clarify the emotional power of Phil and Fat’s
experiences in VALIS, especially the deaths of Gloria and Sophia, who both become
representations of Phil’s lost sister.
After setting up this biographical information, Sutin suggests the insoluble, infinite
regress of splitting oneself into two characters brings up the question of whether or not “‘Fat’ is
really crazy—for if he is, then how can ‘Phil’ be objective?” (257–8). This, in turn, is seen as a
commentary on the author’s cognitive dissonance. Sutin quotes Dick as saying, “Oddly, the most
bizarre events in [VALIS] are true (or rather—and this is the crucial difference—I believe they
are true)” (258). Because of the focus on the author’s belief in VALIS, Sutin argues, “Deep down
Phil and the reader both know that the hope of the world lies in Fat never being convinced” he is
insane (258). This interpretation effectively glosses over the incoherencies at the end of VALIS
that seem to resist objective narration, and suggests that Phil merely resists what he knows to be
true at the end of VALIS. An interrogation of narrative in VALIS takes no stance on the truth or
falsity of Phil or Fat’s beliefs. Instead of operating within the traditional biographical approach
to VALIS, this interrogation would demonstrate that the narrative complications in VALIS imply
problems of narration in general.
Most of the available criticism on Dick focuses on the novels of the late 1950s and 1960s,
often considered his best work. Carl Freedman locates the height of Dick’s career in the late
1960s, considering Ubik Dick’s masterwork because of its effective commentary on the
commodification of American society. For critics like Freedman, VALIS is no more than an
“interesting” failure (123). Even for critics who do not dismiss Dick’s later work, the criticism of
his early work implies approaches that can have profound effects on one’s reading of VALIS. In
particular, these early critics orient the reader to problems of authenticity instead of problems of
narration. The Writers of the 21st Century book contains articles that deal with Dick’s earlier
work. Eugene Warren’s article, “The Search for Absolutes,” represents a standard approach in its
assertion that Dick’s fiction “focuses on an intense, frightening view of our society—its mass
into a “Divine Trilogy,” though it is only a trilogy in a thematic sense; the plots bear no direct relation to
each other. The Divine Invasion resembles Dick’s 1960s science fiction and has no relevance to the issues
of narrative explored in this paper. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, however, has a problematic
narration that would benefit from an analysis similar to my approach to VALIS.
35
population, its artificial environment, its confusion of real and fake, its loss of absolute values”
(161). The problem of distinguishing real and fake takes the form of confusion between the
android and the human. Patricia Warrick says, “Finding an answer to the question of what is
truly human and what only masquerades as human is, for Dick, the most important difficulty
facing us” (189). A more comprehensive collection of articles is entitled On Philip K. Dick: 40
Articles from Science-Fiction Studies. Many of these articles set precedents for interpreting
Dick’s work in terms of characters’ search for authenticity. This is a potentially limiting
orientation. The primary tension in VALIS is between the need to reach coherence through
narrative and the failure of narrative to achieve coherence, not between authenticity and
fakeness, or even belief and disbelief. This paper has a divergent orientation from the criticism
focused on problems of authenticity.
Another potentially limiting approach is seen in much of the postmodernist criticism on
Dick, which analyzes his works in relation to the science fiction pulp tradition. George Slusser
makes the deceptively simple argument that “Philip K. Dick is an American SF writer. As such,
he is a writer in the American mainstream, dealing with issues that occupy the deepest level of a
continuous national consciousness. [Slusser hopes] to prove that it is crucial to place Dick in this
context; for only by doing so can we understand the nature of his fiction” (187). This article tries
to situate the production of fiction in terms of the relationship between individuals and their
cultural-historical context. John Huntington’s analysis of VALIS, part of the same series of
articles on Dick’s work, operates within such a critical tradition. Huntington responds to the
phenomenon in VALIS that, “Having indulged in one interpretation for a while, Dick will simply
reverse himself and indulge another” (153). This critic argues that Dick “has learned how to give
the impression of deep understanding simply by contradicting himself” (154). Huntington
suggests the contradictions in the novel stem from Dick’s proficiency with a mechanical style of
narration articulated by science fiction author A. E. van Vogt. This is the “800-word rule,”
according to which an author arbitrarily changes plot elements in order to maintain narrative
interest.
Huntington’s analysis is not without merit. According to Huntington, Dick’s mechanical
shifts in narration mirror “the arbitrariness that he sees in the universe itself” (155). This is
persuasively demonstrated in a passage in which the reader sees multiple shifts between relative
and absolute understandings of rationality. Huntington argues that through the mechanical style
of narration he learned from Vogt, Dick is able to give weight to both interpretations. As the
reader attempts to understand the perceived profundity behind these shifts, a game between
author and reader emerges. Huntington argues, “In reading Dick we trap ourselves. It is because
we invoke categories with weighty consequences that Dick becomes a problem for us” (159).
This is similar to Disch’s argument in a 1976 piece, “Toward the Transcendent,” that Dick is
“slippery, a game-player whose rules (what is possible, and what isn’t, within the world of his
invention) change from book to book, and sometimes from chapter to chapter” (16). The
adversary in this game is the reader, who is “liable to experience one of Dick’s novels as a direct
assault on his sanity” (15).
Because I am interested in the novel’s engagement with problems of narrative in general,
this paper does not fall within the same critical tradition as Huntington’s work. Situating VALIS
in a science fiction tradition is necessary when the critic is interested in ascertaining Dick’s
writing process, inspiration, and intentions. However, I remain unconvinced that it is necessary
to read VALIS as a commentary on historical events, or even that such a reading is the most
useful approach to VALIS. Indeed, engagements with the problems of narrative that the failure of
36
narrative in VALIS points towards are obfuscated by a historical or genre-oriented approach. In a
genre-oriented reading, for instance, the shifts in definition in VALIS become a problem of the
pulp tradition as they do for Huntington, or a way of representing a worldview. I argue that these
shifts represent a problem of narration; the shifts and incoherencies in VALIS arise in spite of an
earnest need for coherence on the part of the narrator. What this reveals about the possibilities of
narrative deserves attention.
Peter Fitting’s interest in the construction of realities through ideological narratives in
Dick’s work encompasses a treatment of VALIS that is interested in narrative. However, my
focus is different from Fitting’s Marxist orientation. Fitting is one of the great early critics of
Dick’s work. Fitting treats VALIS as “the narrative of a character's attempt to make sense out of a
reality in the process of disintegration” (231). According to Fitting, the disintegration of reality is
a basic pattern in the novels of Dick. VALIS shifts the “problem of reality” because it engages in
a different explanation for this disintegration. VALIS, according to Fitting, explains illusory
reality in terms of Valentinian Gnosticism (231). This is contrasted from the “practical solutions”
in earlier Dick novels “when the characters simply turned their backs on the contradictions and
dilemmas and sought, through manual activity, to make their own limited meaning for an
irrational world” (233). Fitting seems to regard the “insistence” on a metaphysical interpretation
of events in VALIS as problematic, since his interest is in how ruling classes define reality
through ideology. However, there are some problems with Fitting’s approach. First, there is a
problem with his characterization of reality in VALIS. While many of Dick’s novels portray
disintegrating realities, most of Dick’s work contains multiple third-person narrators who give
different perspectives on events. In VALIS there is one narrator, and the novel should
consequently be viewed differently. With the different perspectives of multiple narrators, the
reader can parse out a shared reality that is then subject to analysis. With a single narrator, one
must be careful to analyze the narrator’s perceptions, not the reality of the novel directly—
especially in a novel like VALIS where the narrator’s sanity is called into question. It seems
presumptive to say that characters in VALIS deal with a disintegrating reality. One must instead
say that these characters perceive reality as disintegrating at times, and this affects the narration
of the novel. Claiming that reality disintegrates in VALIS assumes an answer to one of the central
but unanswerable questions of VALIS: are Horselover Fat’s experiences real? There is no
“reality” in the novel, only the narrator’s portrayal of his experience. In order to understand the
narrator’s experience of reality I consider his narrative representations and, in particular, I focus
on the ways in which narration undermines itself.
Another concern is Fitting’s assertion that VALIS insists on a metaphysical explanation.
In my reading, the ending of VALIS represents a failure of any coherent explanation. Certainly,
the narrator still seems to have some belief at the end of the novel, but this belief is shifting and
uncertain, not insistent metaphysical dogma. Although Fitting’s notion of constructed realities
points to problems of narrative that are present in VALIS, I think his work makes some
presumptions about VALIS that reveal the critic’s Marxist predilections. His ideological approach
is limiting.
Some criticism focuses specifically on the religious beliefs of Philip K. Dick. One of the
most compelling is Gabriel McKee’s study, called Pink Beams of Light from the God in the
Gutter. McKee criticizes Fitting’s work. He thinks that Marxist and postmodern readings of
Dick’s work underemphasize the “insistence on compassion as a stabilizing force” and Dick’s
“earnest search for absolute reality,” which resonates with the divine healing scene in VALIS
(25). McKee also tries to generate a shift in the pervasive discussion of Dick’s Gnosticism,
37
which is a standard understanding of his beliefs, to recognition of Dick’s Pauline Christianity.
According to McKee, Dick engages in a great deal of speculation in his Exegesis, but
Christianity emerges as an assumption rather than a theory, by which other theories are judged
(33). Accordingly, McKee sees Dick’s use of the concept of the logos in Augustinian terms; the
Scripture “contain only truth” and “every truth is contained in it” (37). This reassessment of
Dick’s beliefs is important because it highlights the importance of the theoretical process. Instead
of simply labeling Dick as a “Gnostic,” McKee argues, “The act of creating new theories was
vital to [Dick’s] religious experience” (48). Exegetical work is seen as a game—an “unsolvable
puzzle the goal of which was to create an infinitude of theories regarding the source and meaning
of his experience” (48). I consider McKee’s emphasis on the theorizing process to be a central
insight on Dick’s religious beliefs. Although my interest in VALIS does not lie in the author’s
beliefs or intentions, McKee’s ideas become useful in my analysis. I consider Dick a philosopher
of the theorizing process whose ideas I use to elucidate problems in VALIS rather than as an
author who is trying to prove his beliefs through his fiction.
Although I have not found any criticism that engages in an approach to VALIS like my
own, science fiction author and critic Thomas Disch opens up a space for the sort of
interpretations of narrative I consider in his piece “Talking with Jesus.” Disch suggests that it is
rewarding to treat VALIS as a novel rather than a work of autobiography. According to Disch,
VALIS has value “if you read it as a realistic, confessional novel, in the sad-mad-glad vein of
Plath’s The Bell Jar or (better) Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance . . . Even its
wilder flights of fancy fall into place, not as a system of belief to be considered on its merits, but
as components of the self being confessed” (100). This conception of VALIS as a novel
fundamentally about self-narration is quite different from the standard treatments of VALIS as a
commentary on the author or as demonstrating a coherent Gnostic worldview. In this paper, I
hope to expand upon Disch’s insights by exploring the implications of narrative issues in VALIS.
The Reification of Horselover Fat
The phenomenon of narrative failure in VALIS is significant in terms of the narrative’s
implied goal. The narrator establishes the explicit goal of his narration when he introduces
himself: “I am Horselover Fat and I am writing this in the third person to gain much-needed
objectivity” (3). That this objectivity is “much-needed” suggests that the purpose of this narrative
is not merely clarification for its own sake, but rather clarification for some other purpose. This
greater purpose must include reintegration of the fractured psyche. However, a precise
formulation of the task of reintegration within the narrative would require the narrator to
recognize that there is no actual separation, which would render the narrative nonsensical.
Instead of trying to narrate himself directly into psychological wholeness, the narrator analyzes
Fat’s theories about God, focusing on Fat’s need for divine healing rather than his own need for a
coherent self-narrative.
Because the desire to find God is consistently connected with a need for psychological
healing in VALIS, talking about Fat’s theorizing becomes a way of talking about the narrator’s
need to reintegrate his psyche. Roger J. Stilling describes the connection between the need for
psychological healing and Fat’s extrapolation of his sense of loss into theories of metaphysical
healing. In VALIS there is “a strong . . . therapeutic motive, with a particular focus on mental
healing” (Stilling, 91). Much of the novel consists of the narrator’s psychoanalysis of Horselover
Fat, whose personal need for healing is bound up with the “necessity of healing at a metaphysical
38
level” (92–3). There is no authoritative theory about how or why the universe is irrational, but
rather a multiplicity of theories, making any specific diagnosis or prognosis difficult. However,
this perceived irrationality is fundamentally related to Fat’s idea that “we need medical
attention” because of the detrimental influence of the universe’s irrational element on the
individual psyche (93). Since Fat’s search for God reflects and comments on the narrator’s need
for healing, the sense of overwhelming irrationality in Fat’s theories suggests the problematic
nature of the narrator’s search for reintegration.
Though the goal of narration is reintegration, Phil and Horselover Fat become
increasingly distinct as the narrative unfolds. This process begins when the narrator distinguishes
his emotional reactions from Horselover Fat’s within the narrative (not at the point of narration).
For instance, the narrator says, “I did not love Gloria Knudson, but I liked her,” when it is clearly
established that Horselover Fat, though he is a bit of a bumbling fool when it comes to crisis
prevention, loves Gloria deeply (3).5 Perhaps, at first, this disconnect is attributable to the
narrator’s attempt to distance himself emotionally from the events in order to try to understand
them. However, if this is the case, the narrator has committed an act of self-distortion in the
service of self-understanding—a patent absurdity. Regardless of the narrator’s intention in
distinguishing his emotional reaction from Fat’s, we begin to see the reification of a
psychological separation between two aspects of an opaque amalgam—one distanced and ironic
(Phil), the other earnest and the recipient of an emotional beating (Fat). Soon after the
establishment of emotional distinctions, the narrator begins referring to conversations between
Fat and himself, which seriously complicate the statement, “I am Horselover Fat” (3).
These destabilizations of the narrative point to the idea that the psychological split we see
in VALIS allows Phil to survive. The split characterizes Phil’s attempt to gain distance from the
emotional trauma of Gloria’s death. Phil projects his emotional problems onto Horselover Fat,
and we see this is still true after the events of VALIS when the narrator tries to claim that he liked
Gloria but did not love her. The narrator is, in effect, denying that Gloria’s death was his loss. It
becomes evident that the narrative search for healing and the perpetuation of this split are
fundamentally at odds.
Because of this tension, some of the most effective breakdowns in the narrative occur
when the narrator slips into first person. Consider this selection:
I am, by profession, a science fiction writer. I deal in fantasies. My life is a
fantasy. Nonetheless, Gloria Knudson lies in a box in Modesto, California.
There’s a photo of her funeral wreaths in my photo album. It’s a color photo so
you can see how lovely the wreaths are. In the background a VW car is parked. I
can be seen crawling into the VW, in the midst of the service. I am not able to
take any more (4).
Although the narrator attempts to emotionally distance himself from Gloria’s death through
fantasy, his efforts collapse in the face of the actuality of Gloria’s dead body. The narrator
attempts to reassert the distance when he subsequently references “Fat weeping in the parked car
by himself” (7). However, the slip into first person seems more significant than the reassertion—
At Gloria’s funeral, Fat begins weeping and crawls into his VW alone in an attempt to deal with his
emotional reaction (7). Later, the narrator says, “For two months after Gloria’s suicide, [Fat] cried and
watched TV and took more dope—his brain was going too, but he didn’t know it. Infinite are the mercies
of God” (3).
5
39
the decision to narrate in the third person breaks down at an emotionally fraught section of the
narrator’s story. This slippage is also one of the moments in VALIS where it appears the narrator
is on the verge of a sort of reintegration through an acknowledgment of the amalgam of Phil and
Fat. That is, the narrator slips into saying that the event (Gloria’s death) that caused his psyche to
fracture in the first place actually happened to him, undermining the separation of the psyche into
two physically distinct characters. Still, the fracturing itself is a survivalist response, so the
narrator reasserts the third-person voice. When talking about Gloria’s husband, Bob, and him
driving to the funeral in Modesto, California, he corrects himself mid-line: “Bob and I—I mean,
Bob and Horselover Fat” (4).
A further manifestation of the narrator’s inability to deal with his own emotional state
emerges as the narrator psychoanalyzes Fat. The narrator seems desperate to demonstrate that Fat
is insane, which is another way for the narrator to distance himself from his own emotions. To
contextualize this characterization of Fat, we must go back to the beginning of Fat’s madness.
The point where Fat begins to break down occurs when Gloria calls Fat and asks him for
Nembutal capsules so she can commit suicide by overdosing. In their phone conversation, Gloria
tells Fat about her recent discharge from Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco, where she was
sent after trying to commit suicide. Fat asks, “Are you cured,” to which she responds, “Yes” (2).
According to the narrator, Gloria’s “rationally ask[ing] to die” sets into motion Fat’s mental
breakdown (2). To be sure, Fat’s sadness after Gloria’s eventual suicide contributes to his
madness, but this early scene between Fat and Gloria demonstrates that Fat’s psychotic break has
more psychological complexity than sadness alone. Instead, it involves both a powerful sense of
loss and also a sense of fear and incomprehension in the face of a world where such an empty
“rationality” resonates. This scene highlights a fear that is deep in the heart of VALIS: rationality
is utterly unstable, merely a veneer. The narrator says, “Fat heard in [Gloria’s] tone the harp of
nihilism, the twang of the void” (2).6 This fear of nihilism challenges the idea of a rational
universe and a loving God, thereby engendering the pervasive desire for coherence in the
narrative.
Within VALIS, the phenomenon of getting farther away from the very goal one pursues is
characterized by the metaphor of the Chinese finger-trap. According to the narrator, thinking
about madness is a Chinese finger-trap because “you cannot think about it without becoming part
of it” (9). Thus, “By thinking about madness, Horselover Fat slipped by degrees into madness”
(9). Indeed, the narrator’s characterization of insanity uses this same metaphor: “It is sometimes
an appropriate response to reality to go insane. To listen to Gloria rationally ask to die was to
inhale the contagion. It was a Chinese finger-trap, where the harder you pull to get out, the
tighter the trap gets” (2). There is a parallel between the narrator’s presentation of Fat and what
the narrator himself is doing. Fat gets more caught up in his madness by trying to extricate
himself from it, and the narrator reifies Horselover Fat in the very process of trying to reintegrate
his split psyche. The narrator dedicates significant energy to psychoanalyzing Fat—in his quest
for objectivity he comes to resemble a psychological detective. However, the very act of
6
This nihilism is demonstrated in the purely destructive power of words. The narrator characterizes the
scene:
As she talked she began to disappear. [Fat] watched her go; it was amazing. Gloria, in
her measured way, talked herself out of existence word by word. It was rationality at the
service of—well, he thought, at the service of nonbeing. All that really remained now
was her husk; which is to say, her uninhabited corpse (5).
40
narrating makes the prospect of reintegration unlikely. The more the narrator analyzes Fat, the
more real and distinct he seems.
The Textuality of VALIS and the Fictional Author
At key points in the narrative, the narrator of VALIS makes clear his recognition that
VALIS is a text. This textuality is first evident when the narrator makes reference to the time “Fat
got me started writing” the text of VALIS (7). The text also establishes Phil as a professional
author, suggesting that the contents of VALIS are not only textual but also possibly have the form
of a publishable account. These clues confirm that Phil is the fictional author of VALIS, meaning
that the text of VALIS claims Phil as its author (the biographical author, Philip K. Dick, however,
is distinct from this fictional author). The narrator is also distinct from the fictional author. The
narrator exists within the text, addressing the reader. However, the reader cannot posit a physical
existence for the narrator qua narrator—the narration is a purely textual phenomenon. In
contrast, the fictional author is Phil after the events of VALIS occur. The reader can grant Phil
physical existence because, insofar as he is the fictional author, his physical and mental existence
is antecedent to the text of VALIS. This is true only after the reader accepts the text’s assertion
that Phil is its author. In a biographical sense, the text of VALIS and the existence of Phil are
inextricable because the text of VALIS was actually produced by the author, Philip K. Dick, and
Phil is a character in this novel. However, suspending disbelief and accepting the text’s claim
that Phil is its author opens up a space for an interpretation of another kind of narrative failure.
Counterintuitively, the fictional author’s physical existence precludes the possibility of
the reader directly engaging him. The reader meets with the narrator directly because his
existence is textual and the reader interacts with the text in a straightforward manner, but the
fictional author is outside of the text and outside of fictional time. Here, fictional time refers to
the sense that the narrator is narrating in a theoretical, fictional time continuum. That is, the
entire narration cannot be considered in a single instant, but rather as an unfolding event. For
instance, at one point the narrator interrupts the text and says, “I write this literally with a heavy
hand; I am so weary I am dropping as I sit here” (166).7 This event of writing, just like the event
of telling, must be considered in terms of fictional time. We can imagine the narrator reacting to
his narrative as he tells it. However, we can extrapolate beyond this narrator, who functions as a
fluctuating, dynamic, textual entity, to the fictional author who we can consider from a single
point in time: the moment the text of VALIS is complete. This, in turn, allows us to grasp the
second manifestation of the failure of narrative. This failure of narrative is seen when the
narrator, in the process of narrating, destabilizes this fictional author.
There are points of incoherence in narrative tone, knowledge, and orientation that
destabilize a sense that the fictional author’s narration of himself gives the reader adequate
knowledge of the fictional author. In the process of destabilizing the fictional author, the text
suggests that the narrator is at points within the narrative on the cusp of reintegration. Though
the extent of the separation between Phil and Fat increases in the narration, the narration
simultaneously calls the stability of that narrative separation into question. Because this
7
Though the narrator makes reference to his physical hand, this does not contradict the pure textuality of
the narrator. This reference merely renders the specific event of the fictional author writing this portion of
the text. However, we only have access to the fictional author through his narration of himself. A useful
way of thinking of the distinction between the narrator and the fictional author is that the narrator is what
the fictional author does.
41
instability contradicts the terms of the narrative, which stipulate that Phil observes Fat, the
moments in the text that seem to acknowledge the illusory nature of Phil and Fat’s separation are
fundamentally problematic for the narrative. Paradoxically, these moments of acknowledgment
both disclose a limited narrative lucidity and also cover up a sense of the fictional author of this
narrative.
Shifts in narrative tone immediately challenge a sense of a coherent fictional author.
Towards the beginning of the book, the narrator takes an ironic, accusatory attitude toward God,
saying, “For two months after Gloria’s suicide, [Fat] cried and watched TV and took more
dope—his brain was going too, but he didn’t know it. Infinite are the mercies of God” (3). The
narrator also says of Fat in 1971, when Fat is dealing with Gloria, that, “In 1972 [Fat] would be
up north in Vancouver, British Columbia, involved in trying to kill himself, alone, poor, and
scared, in a foreign city. Right now he was spared that knowledge. . . . One of God’s greatest
mercies is that he keeps us perpetually occluded” (2–3). This problematic characterization of
God’s “mercy” implicitly poses questions of theodicy. Later, when Fat’s friend Sherri is dying of
cancer, Phil goes to visit her in the hospital. Sherri is “virtually blind, nearly deaf, [and]
underwent constant seizures” (17). Sherri says, “I feel that God is healing me” (17). After this
jarring juxtaposition draws out her undeserved suffering and her need to turn to God in her pain,
the narrator comments, “In my opinion a FUCK YOU, GOD sign would have been more
appropriate” than the rosary beside her hospital bed (17).
Meanwhile, Fat earnestly proclaims that God has healed him. Fat says, “Illness, pain, and
undeserved suffering arise not from God but from elsewhere” (17). The narrator characterizes
such beliefs as insane, saying that Fat “had become totally whacked out” (14). In particular, Fat
believes that God beamed information into his brain concerning an undiagnosed birth defect in
his son—a “right inguinal hernia which had popped the hydroseal and gone down into the scrotal
sack” (14). Although Fat’s belief that God contacted him is flagrant evidence of Fat’s insanity
for the narrator,8 the narrator says, “In all fairness, I have to admit that God—or someone calling
himself God, a distinction of mere semantics—had fired precious information at Horselover
Fat’s head by which their son, Christopher, had been saved. Some people God cures and some he
slays. Fat denies God slays anyone” (17). The narrator has to admit this because the information
was correct—“as soon as the beam struck him—he knew things he had never known” (13).9 How
The narrator says, “Did this indicate [Fat] had begun to get better? Hardly. Now he held the view that
‘they’ or God or someone owned a long-range very tight information-rich beam of energy focused on
Fat’s head . . . he now had a ‘they.’ It seemed to me a pyrrhic victory” (16).
9
Certain parallels can be seen here between Phil and philosopher William James, to whom we will later
turn. James believes in a “superhuman life” with whom we are “co-conscious;” he does not think the
available evidence of experience, especially evil and suffering, permits the postulation of an all-knowing,
all-loving, all-powerful God (Copleston, 101). Instead, he posits a “finite God” with whom humans can
cooperate to make the world better, although there is no force that will determine the future in a
pessimistic or optimistic sense (101). This idiosyncratic view of God resonates somewhat with Phil’s
view of God here; though Phil acknowledges that God helped Fat, he implies that there could not be a
perfect God because of the undeserved suffering of Gloria and Sherri. Similarly, there is a parallel
between the ideas in VALIS and the philosophy of James in that both acknowledge the possibility that
trauma, like the mental illness of Fat, can act (or seem to act) as an opening for the divine (Kripal, 153n).
Early in VALIS, it is suggested that there is a relationship between Fat’s mental illness and his divine
experiences (31-32). This recalls James’s work on mystical experience in The Varieties of Religious
Experience, in which he argues that the relationship between visionary experiences and mental illness
proves nothing about the validity of such experiences—“If there were such a thing as inspiration from a
8
42
the narrator manages to contain both the view that Fat is right and that his beliefs are insane is
not entirely clear. Perhaps the narrator’s resists to Fat’s ideas reflects his desire for objectivity,
though his attempt to distance himself here actually undermines this objectivity. This tension
also calls the fictional author’s intentions into question. Why does the fictional author choose to
narrate such different views of Fat? Are his own views on the matter established, in which case
the narration would seem to highlight a former cognitive dissonance, or do they represent
conflicts the fictional author still has not resolved? These problematic questions are unanswered
in the text, obfuscating the fictional author’s views.
As the narrative tone shifts, the narrator comes to resemble Horselover Fat, which further
confuses a sense of the fictional author. This resemblance becomes evident when Phil, Fat, and
their friends Kevin and David all join Fat’s search for God. The narrative tone changes at key
points in the text, suggesting the narrator becomes as credulous as the characters he is narrating.
For instance, Fat believes at one point that another personality, an early Christian named
Thomas, is living in his head. He thinks that time is an illusion and we are actually living in
apostolic times—hence the superimposition of Thomas (Fat’s early Christian self) and Fat. Of
this, the narrator says, “Fat had scared the shit out of me” (99). The narrator explains the ideas
that jarred him so: “We are not individuals. We are stations in a single Mind. We are supposed to
remain separate from one another at all times . . . [But] Space and time were revealed to Fat—
and to Thomas!—as mere mechanisms of separation. Fat found himself viewing a double
exposure of two realities superimposed, and Thomas probably found himself doing the same”
(100). This is a very different sort of narration from the irony dominating the early chapters; here
the narrator shows an unexpected enthusiasm for Fat’s “revelations.”
The narrator acknowledges the narrative shift under discussion: “Concern had, by gradual
increments, overcome our little group. We were no longer friends comforting and propping up a
deranged member; we were collectively in deep trouble. A total reversal had in fact taken place:
instead of mollifying Fat we now had to turn to him for advice” (149). This reversal is not
problematic for the narrator per se, because the narrator is a dynamic entity operating in fictional
time. However, problems emerge for the fictional author, who exists after these events. At some
points the narrator makes sure to distinguish between his thoughts and Phil’s thoughts within the
narrative. However, in his descriptions of Fat’s experience with Thomas the narrator does not
bemoan the fact that he believed Fat at the time. Instead, he proclaims, “Space and time were
revealed to Fat” (100). Given the radical shifts in narrative tone, the fictional author seems to
contain utterly irreconcilable attitudes towards Fat’s beliefs.
Even more problematic than the shifts in tone are the points at which the narrator
intimates things that he cannot know within the terms of the narrative. Specifically, there are
growing implications within the narrative that Fat is a projection, and the separation is illusory.
Knowledge of the illusory nature of this separation would undermine the narrator’s project and
thereby destabilize the fictional author. This process of acknowledgment begins with the
assertion of a special sort of relationship between Phil and Fat. This is evident in the scene in
which Fat announces to Phil his plan to search out the savior (117). As they discuss this, Phil and
Fat attempt to joke with each other, though they are both reeling from the loss of their friend,
Sherri. Sherri’s death is emotionally traumatic for Fat just as Gloria’s suicide was.10 After a
higher realm, it might well be that the neurotic temperament would furnish the chief condition of the
requisite receptivity” (25).
10
Of Sherri’s death Fat says, “She suffocated . . . She just fucking suffocated; she couldn’t breathe any
longer” (116).
43
certain point the narrator says, “Neither of us could be funny any longer, even between us”
(117). The nature of the relationship implied in this statement is ambiguous.
What follows in their conversation demonstrates the extent of this ambiguity. Fat says he
will die if he does not go on his search for the savior. Phil responds, “Well then, I’ll die too . . . if
you do” (118). Fat, in turn, says, “That’s right . . . You can’t exist without me and I can’t exist
without you. We’re in this together” (118). Does this suggest they are such close friends that they
have an almost symbiotic relationship, and in this sense cannot survive without the other? Does it
suggest Phil, on some unconscious level, knows that his and Fat’s fates are inseparable because
they are the same person? If neither of these interpretations has adequate explanatory power, the
passage may represent a bubbling up of something very close to the Phil/Far amalgam—or at
least an acknowledgment of the amalgam—within the narrative. In the most problematic
interpretation of the line, it is a conscious recognition of the oneness of Phil and Fat within the
narrative. This would fundamentally destabilize the implied purpose of the narrative because it
would imply that the sought reintegration is already acknowledged within the narration.
However, a subsequent scene supports this problematic third interpretation. The divine
healing scene is one of the most crucial scenes of VALIS. The entire group of friends, consisting
of Fat, Phil, Kevin, and David, manages to find the fifth savior, a child named Sophia, and go to
meet her. Sophia greets Phil with an accusation, saying, “Your suicide attempt was a violent
cruelty against yourself” (176). Phil claims, “It was Horselover Fat” who made this attempt,
again pushing the emotional responsibility for what has happened to him onto Fat (176). The rest
of this section is worth quoting at length:
Sophia said, ‘Phil, Kevin and David. Three of you. There are no more.’
Turning to speak to Fat—I saw no one. . . . Fat was gone. Nothing remained of
him. Horselover Fat was gone forever. As if he had never existed.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. You destroyed him. . . . Why?’
‘To make you whole.’
‘Then he’s in me? Alive in me?’
‘Yes,’ Sophia said. By degrees, the anger left her face. The great dark eyes ceased
to smolder.
‘He was me all the time,’ I said.
‘That is right,’ Sophia said (177).
This is, perhaps, as close as Phil’s fractured psyche gets to the healing that this narrative seeks. It
is almost as if the implied goal of this narrative were not to seek reintegration but to recover a
reintegration that has already occurred (and is, paradoxically, in the narrative itself). If this is the
case, the narration of VALIS has the potential to become an infinite regress; the narrative tries to
recover healing that occurs within the narrative but fails to maintain this healing in the
subsequent reassertion of the separation between Phil and Fat. However, this healing might not
even take place fully within the text. It is significant that the narrator uses the language of loss to
describe Phil’s newfound wholeness: “It felt strange not to have Fat to phone up or visit” (180).
Even if Phil says in the text, “Horselover Fat was part of me projected outward so I wouldn’t
have to deal with Gloria’s death,” there still seems to be the sense that he has lost a friend rather
than psychologically reintegrated (177).
This sense of loss implies that reintegration is incomplete, because full reintegration
would be a healing of the separation between two halves of Phil’s psyche, not a loss of one half
44
or the other. The probability that healing is incomplete manifests in the text in an incredibly
baffling turn. the narrator says, “I wondered what Beth would think when the child support
checks stopped coming in. Well, I realized, I could assume the economic liability; I could take
care of Christopher. I had the funds to do it, and in many ways I loved Christopher as much as
his father had” (180). This seems to be nonsensical; Phil has admitted Fat is a projection and yet
Phil has not managed to extricate himself from the world in which Fat was involved. Phil is still
entrapped by the implications of Fat’s existence, though he has admitted Fat does not exist.
There are only two options for interpreting Beth and Christopher in this light: they are illusory—
extensions of the projection that is Fat, or they are actually Phil’s wife and he has not
reintegrated to the point where he can realize this. Kevin’s subsequent comment would support
either interpretation: “You’re waking up,” to which Phil agrees (180). The only way to make
sense of this scene is to say that reintegration is progressing but fundamentally incomplete. If the
purpose of the narrative is to maintain any sort of coherence, the healing must be regarded as
partial. Therefore, the narration of VALIS seeks healing rather than a recovery of a healing that
takes place within the narrative.
The stakes change when the “Friend of God” named Mini tries to engage in “information
transfer by laser” on the two-year old Sophia, killing her in the process (200). The narrator again
reifies Horselover Fat in order to deal with the loss of this third female. The narrator says, “I
began to think about death. Not Sophia Lampton’s death but death in general and then, by
degrees, my own death. Actually, I didn’t think about it. Horselover Fat did” (201). This
reassertion of the separation seriously complicates our sense of the fictional author. It is unclear
how the healing scene can be contained within the narration without destroying the narrator’s
project. Surely the process of narrating the healing scene, with a recognition that it represents the
starting point of an awakening on the part of Phil, cannot be reconciled with the reappearance of
Fat in relation to the fictional author; something similar to the goal of reintegration is implicitly
recognized in the disappearance of Fat.
The fictional author’s orientation and motivations for telling the story become entirely
opaque when juxtaposing the scene in which Fat disappears with the ending of VALIS. After Fat
reappears, Fat claims that the death of Sophia proves “what we knew anyhow,” namely, “They
were nuts” (201). However, Phil says, “The parents were nuts. But not Sophia” (201). Fat then
goes on to argue that if she were truly the savior, Sophia would have had foreknowledge of her
death and could have averted it, thus concluding that “All that was involved from the start . . .
was advanced laser technology,” not a divine child (202). This is a surprising moment because
throughout most of the novel Fat is credulous and Phil is resistant. However, Fat here tries to
deconstruct the idea that Sophia was the savior, to which Phil says nothing because “there was
nothing to say” (202). Of course, Fat is interested in proving this so that he can go on to seek out
the savior again, whereas Phil claims Fat is wasting his time. Soon, there is a re-reversal back
into their original personality roles. Once the distinction between Horselover Fat and Phil is
reestablished, the novel ends with Horselover Fat in Micronesia, searching out the next savior,
and Phil sitting at home and waiting for something to happen—for some sign to tell him what to
think (211). Phil and Fat are wholly separate in terms of orientation and location—indeed, this is
in some ways the most divided the two have ever been. The reassertion of the separation is
problematic for the fictional author; how can the same fictional author articulate both this scene
and the healing scene? The opacity of the fictional author represents a failure of narrative in
VALIS, making a formulation of the nature of the separation between Phil and Horselover Fat
more problematic than ever.
45
The Failure of Narrative and the Need for Coherence
The reification of Horselover Fat and the destabilization of the fictional author are both
subsets of narrative failure, where the act of narrating undermines the implied goals of narration.
However, this phenomenon only becomes significant because in VALIS there is a need to narrate
in order to try to achieve coherence. The failure of narrative in VALIS implies that narrative itself
is ill equipped to provide solutions to certain kinds of problems, especially knowledge of God
and self-knowledge. In both cases, narrative is itself a Chinese finger-trap because God and self
are both outside of the capacity for narrative to achieve full coherence. In spite of this, there is an
intense, palpable need for coherence in VALIS; narrative is the only viable option for Phil, Fat,
and the narrator. VALIS becomes an exploration of this dynamic of narrative failure.
Horselover Fat’s theorizing is an expression of his need for coherence. After Fat’s
theophany, he engages in complicated theorizing in which the theorizing process seems to take
precedence over any particular theory.11 The theories themselves are varied and the way they
work together seems haphazard at some points, incoherent at others. Critic Christopher Palmer
characterizes this theorizing in a helpful way, saying, “Fat plunges into the flow of theories,
terms, citations, accepting, forgetting (never refuting), collaging, stitching” (231). In contrast to
the idea attributed to Heraclitus that you never step in the same river twice, Palmer says the
theories in VALIS are like “never once stepping out of the different river” (231). That is, each
individual theory seems to both contain and miss something vital. The theorizing process is more
important than any particular theory in the same way that the scientific method is more useful
than any particular scientific discovery (which is not to suggest Fat’s theorizing process is
scientific).
Early in the book, the narrator makes some potentially clarifying comments about Fat’s
theory-production in the context of particular theories. Take entry thirty-eight in Fat’s Exegesis:
“From loss and grief the Mind has become deranged. Therefore we, as parts of the universe, the
Brian, are partly deranged” (28). The narrator says, “Obviously he had extrapolated into cosmic
proportions from his own loss of Gloria” (28). After this comes a crucial passage from Fat’s
Exegesis:
The changing information which we experience as world is an unfolding
narrative. It tells about the death of a woman (italics mine). This woman, who
died long ago, was one of the primordial twins. She was half of the divine syzygy.
The purpose of the narrative is the recollection of her and of her death. The Mind
does not wish to forget her. . . . The record of her existence and passing is ordered
onto the meanest level of reality by the suffering Mind which is now alone (28–
29).
Following this, the narrator says, “If, in reading this, you cannot see that Fat is writing about
himself, then you understand nothing” (29). The narrator seeks to expose the reason for Fat’s
theorizing as having a psychological basis, as evidenced in the “italics mine.” The narrator’s
interpretation obviously implies that Fat is producing these theories as a way of trying to come to
terms with Gloria’s death through this cosmic extrapolation.
McKee makes a similar point about Dick’s exegetical work, saying there is a “centrality of the
theoretical process in Dick’s Exegesis” (30).
11
46
This cosmic extrapolation keeps returning to the idea that, “A streak of the irrational
permeated the entire universe, all the way up to God, or the Ultimate Mind, which lay behind it”
(28). Fat seeks to explain the universe in terms of Gloria’s death. Using Gloria’s death as a piece
of empirical evidence, Fat uses an inductive process to characterize the sort of universe in which
her death could take place. Fat cannot imagine a universe in which God could allow such
needless suffering to happen to Gloria, so he asserts there must be something fundamentally
irrational about the universe itself.
Depending on the point in the narrative, the narrator sees Fat’s theorizing as either
delusional or therapeutic, the latter taking precedence. The narrator comes to recognize that Fat
has no alternative to theorizing and that theorizing represents the only alternative to cynical
defeatism. For instance, Fat’s cynical friend Kevin expends a great deal of energy trying to tear
down Fat’s theories. Of Kevin, the narrator says, “His cynical grin had about it the grin of death”
(28). Consequently, “In no way, shape, or form did Kevin represent a viable alternative to mental
illness” (28).12 As a result, “Every time Kevin tore down Fat’s system of delusions—mocked
them and lampooned them—Fat gained strength. If Mockery were the only antidote to his
malady, he was palpably better off where he stood” (28). Given this alternative, Fat’s theorizing
process is a matter of matter of psychological survival, even if the narrator is correct in his
characterization of Fat’s delusions.
However, Fat does not want to merely understand what is wrong with a universe in which
people he loves suffer and die needlessly. He is seeking a greater coherence, which can be seen
through one of his most mythical theories, which takes the shape of a narrative Fat calls his
“Cosmogeny.” It tells the story of the creation of the universe in terms of twins born to a
Daoistic mother. These two twins each form a “hyperuniverse,” which together form a hologram.
It is this hologram we experience as reality. However, the second twin, in its desire to exist,
comes into being prematurely, thereby causing problems in hyperuniverse II. The entry says,
“The decaying condition of hyperuniverse II introduced malfactors which damaged our
hologramatic universe. [The premature birth of the second twin] is the origin of entropy,
undeserved suffering, chaos and death . . . in essence, the aborting of the proper health and
growth of the life forms within the hologramatic universe” (82). This theory represents a
reiteration of the idea that Fat is seeking to understand the sort of universe in which the death of
Gloria could occur—it would have to be one in which something is fundamentally wrong, and
here that mistake is given a mythical origin. Fat suggests healing is possible through the
activities of the first twin, the generator of the healthy universe. I quote a portion of this entry
below:
The psyche of hyperuniverse I sent a micro-form of itself into hyperuniverse II to
attempt to heal it. The micro-form was apparent in our hologramatic universe as
Jesus Christ. However, hyperuniverse II, being deranged, at once tormented,
humiliated, rejected and finally killed the micro-form of the healing psyche of her
healthy twin. After that, hyperuniverse II continued to decay into blind,
mechanical, purposeless causal processes. It then became the task of Christ (more
properly the Holy Spirit) to either rescue the life forms in the hologramatic
universe, or abolish all influences on it emanating from II. . . .
Here, mental illness seems to refer specifically to Fat’s religious beliefs.
12
47
Within time, hyperuniverse II remains alive: "The Empire never ended." But in
eternity, where the hyperuniverses exist, she has been killed—of necessity—by
the healthy twin of hyperuniverse I, who is our champion. The One grieves for
this death, since the One loved both twins; therefore the information of the Mind
consists of a tragic tale of the death of a woman, the undertones of which generate
anguish into all the creatures of the hologrammatic universe without their
knowing why. This grief will depart when the healthy twin undergoes mitosis and
the "Kingdom of God" arrives. The machinery for this transformation—the
procession within time from the Age of Iron to the Age of Gold—is at work now;
in eternity it is already accomplished (82–3).
Although Fat’s language is esoteric and his ideas are complicated, essentially the thought
expressed in this entry is simple: everything will make sense when the Kingdom of God arrives
and the process that will bring this about is “at work now.” For Fat, healing and coherence
appear to be synonymous terms—once the irrational streak in the universe is repaired there will
be a cosmic healing, reversing both the irrationality of the universe and the need to grieve.
Through this narrative, Fat tries to approach the psychological healing he fundamentally needs.
However, his theory contains the seeds of its own deconstruction. He makes a distinction
between eternity, in which coherence (and, by extension, healing) is achieved and the
irrationality that permeates existence in time (the influence of hyperuniverse II). Therefore, any
narrative that seeks healing will, by definition, exist within time because outside of time healing
has already been achieved and narrative will be unnecessary. If narrative is fundamentally
temporal (which seems inescapable), how can it achieve knowledge of the eternal, which lies
outside of time? And how can narrative, steeped in the language of an irrational, fallen state of
reality, hope to encompass that which lies outside of itself: healing and coherence?
Even though the attempt to formulate the possibility of coherence through narrative in
VALIS is problematic in its own terms, there is still a palpable need to produce narratives that
attempt to achieve coherence. The narrator’s portrayal of Horselover Fat and Phil’s emotional
states demonstrates this need. For example, when Fat is living with Sherri the narrator says, “At
night, [Fat] did the only act left open to him: work on his exegesis” (86). Given the general
resistance of the narrator to Fat’s ideas, the reader is encouraged to take the narrator’s admission
of value in Fat’s Exegesis as a definitive characterization. If we accept that Fat’s Exegesis is an
act of survival, it is insufficient to view Fat’s theorizing as a bizarre response to psychological
trauma. The real power and tragedy of the narrative Chinese finger-trap, i.e., the need to establish
coherence and the inability of narrative to achieve coherence, is seen in Fat’s theorizing and
subsequent physical search for the savior. Theorizing is Fat’s only viable course of action—an
insight suggested earlier in the narrator’s assertion that Kevin’s cynicism did not present a viable
alternative to Fat’s “madness” and here established definitively.
As the survivalist element of Horsleover Fat’s theorizing becomes more pronounced,
there is a pronounced attitudinal shift towards Fat in the text. This occurs within the story, as the
other characters join Fat’s search, and in the narration, as the narrator’s ironic tone disappears. In
a conversation between Phil and Fat, the narrator essentially admits, “It was true. The Savior
stood between Horselover Fat and annihilation, suggesting Fat’s only other course of action, as
implied by this “annihilation,” is another suicide attempt (118). Within this context, both Phil
and Fat agree that the sensations Fat feels are “rational . . . In terms of the situation. It’s true.
48
This is not insanity. I have to find [the savior], wherever he is, or die” (118). These “sensations”
seem to encompass Fat’s theophany, theorizing process, and his pursuit of God.
What is even more interesting is Phil’s need for coherence, which becomes increasingly
evident as the story unfolds. Early in the narrative, Phil engages in theological arguments with
Fat and their group of friends. The narrator defines each of their predictable roles within the
argument, and the narrator says of Phil, “I switched my position according to who I was talking
to at the time” (21). Here, Phil comes off as a distant, ironic, playful character that views the
theological disputes as games without real stakes. However, in the conversation between Phil
and Fat at the midpoint of the novel, Phil admits, “Sherri’s death had torn me down, too, had
deconstructed me into basic parts, like a toy disassembled back to what had arrived in the gailycolored kit. I felt like saying, ‘Take me along, Fat. Show me the way home’” (116). Here, Phil
needs the savior just as visibly as Fat.
Phil’s need becomes even more palpable right before the group travels to see Sophia.
When talking on the phone to Eric Lampton, the narrator says, of Phil, “To my surprise, I had
stopped shaking. It was as if I had been shaking my whole life, from a chronic undercurrent of
fear . . . . Now the fear had died, soothed away by the news I had heard” (157). Phil even goes so
far as to think he was created for this purpose for this purpose: “to be present when the news [of
salvation] came and for no other purpose” (157). Phil feels he is ontologically defined by the
eventual fulfillment of longed-for coherence. This millennial language anticipates a momentous
event: Fat, Phil, Kevin, and David believe they are about to witness the savior who will
presumably heal all of them. When Phil tells Fat about his conversation with Eric, Fat asks, “Did
Eric Lampton really say we don’t have to think about [Gloria’s] death any more?” Phil responds,
“The age of oppression ended in August 1974; now the age of sorrow begins to end. Okay?”
(158). Here, Phil is earnest and compassionate, not the distanced and ironic character to whom
the reader is accustomed. Contrary to the narrator’s characterization of Phil at the beginning of
VALIS, Phil says to Fat, “You’re not crazy, you know. You can’t use that as a cop-out” (158).
Even the cynical Kevin, after talking to Sophia, says, “That is the most beautiful child I have
ever seen” (180). Although Kevin originally thought her immense intelligence could only be
explained by suggesting she was actually a computer terminal, he later acknowledges that this
idea made sense at the time, “But not when I look back. When I have perspective” (181). Kevin
also comes to believe she is completely different from the Lamptons. He says, “She is not nuts.
She is as not nuts as [the Friends of God] are” (180). After Fat disappears, Phil seems essentially
indistinguishable from Fat when he says, “She is St. Sophia . . . and St. Sophia is a hypostasis of
Christ” (181). All of these characters are prepared to believe that they have taken the first step
towards enlightenment and healing. Sophia assures the characters, “I will not fail you,” and Phil
believes her (186).
The failure of Phil and Fat’s narratives to understand the catastrophic death of Sophia
contextualizes the rest of the novel. Sophia’s death causes the split between Phil and Fat to
reemerge, and their intense falling out must be understood in terms of the brutal loss of a healing
almost achieved. When Fat says that the Lamptons were all just crazy, Phil says, “The parents
were nuts. But not Sophia” (201). It is not clear what this means for him, however. Fat argues
Sophia could not have been the savior because a savior would have foreseen her own death and
averted it. In a noncommittal response, Phil says, “Sure,” telling Fat to “Drop it” when Fat insists
(202). It is clear that Phil has trouble letting go of Sophia. His idea of Sophia after their
encounter seems to contain possible contradictions rooted in the scene with Sophia itself.
According to Phil’s interpretation of Sophia, “Human beings should now give up the worship of
49
all deities except mankind itself” (198). And yet, Phil also thinks, “We needed help now . . . You
always need the Savior now. Later is always too late” (198). There is an apparent disconnect
between the suggestion that man is his own savior and the idea that the savior is external to
mankind. Yet Phil seems to believe both.
The words of Sophia that so affect Phil (and not Fat, since he was not present) are:
“Many claim to speak for god but there is only one god and that god is man himself” (184). She
says, “I am not a god; I am a human. I am a child, the child of my father, which is Wisdom
Himself” (184). Sophia speaks in millennial language, saying, “The goal of your lives has been
reached . . . You are to follow one rule: you are to love one another as you love me and I love
you, for this love proceeds from the one true god, which is yourselves” (184). However, Sophia
also says, “Go wherever I send you and you will know what to do. There is no place where I am
not. When you leave here you will not see me, but later you will see me again” (186). Although
she proclaims that mankind is God, this hardly sounds like the words of a human child. Instead,
her stated omnipresence suggests something distinctly nonhuman. If we are to take Sophia at her
word that mankind is the savior, it seems, at the very least, man needs help from something
external to the corrupt, worldly power that imprison them. Throughout VALIS, Fat terms this
mysterious power “the Empire” or the “black iron prison,” suggesting a state of affairs that is
difficult, at best, to escape. Certainly, one cannot be expected to do it alone.
Perhaps this external thing is simply love. Love might allow man to achieve his potential
as savior by offering a stable alternative to the web of power that determines historical narrative.
Still, Fat’s love of Gloria and Sherri led only to emotional distress. From the beginning of
VALIS, Fat has been caught up in psychological responses to others—his desire to help Gloria
and Sherri both led to his own psychological trauma. Perhaps one could argue these were not
truly instances of love, but Phil seems to feel Fat’s trapped predicament keenly. In their final
face-to-face confrontation, before Fat goes exploring for the next savior, Fat claims he will not
try to commit suicide anymore. The narrator says, “I didn’t believe him. I could tell; I knew him,
better than he knew himself. Gloria’s death, Beth abandoning him, Sherri dying—all that saved
him after Sherri died was to go in search of the ‘fifth savior,’ and now that hope had perished.
What did he have left? Fat had tried everything, and everything had failed” (202). There is a
tension, here, between the idea that man can, in some sense, save himself and the idea that the
savior is purely external, something to be physically sought. In his actions at the end of the
novel, Fat gravitates to the latter by renewing his search. Phil’s orientation is more complicated.
When Fat says he is going to seek out the savior again, Phil responds harshly and
vehemently. He says,
‘There is no ‘Zebra’ . . . . It’s you and only you, projecting your unanswered
wishes out, unfulfilled desires left over after Gloria did herself in. You couldn’t
fill the vacuum with reality so you filled it with fantasy; it was psychological
compensation for a fruitless, wasted, empty, pain-filled life and I don’t see why
you don’t finally now fucking give up. . . . That is the beginning and the end of it.
Okay?’
‘You rob me of hope.’
‘I rob you of nothing because there is nothing.’
‘Is all this so? You really think so? Really?’
I said, ‘I know so’ (203–204).
50
It becomes clear that Phil reacts this way because of his own sense of loss. Until Sophia’s death,
he says, “everything fit” Fat’s story. However, “Now there’s another dead girl in another box in
the ground” (204). Although Phil, Fat, and their friends all believed her, Sophia was still killed
by Mini. Phil tells Fat, “Go out and kill yourself. The hell with it” (204). It is difficult to locate
Phil’s attitude toward Fat’s search for the savior through his contradictory statements. He seems
to recognize Fat had no other option but to pursue the savior and yet castigates him for it. He also
seems to hold incompatible notions about man’s ability to save himself. No philosophical
consensus or constant appears. The failure of the achievement of coherence, in its broadest
possible sense, is crushing for Phil. The death of Sophia and Phil’s consequent despair represent
the deeply emotional manifestation of the third type of narrative failure.
Failure of Narrative Possibility: Negative Theology and the Pragmatism of William James
The scene of confrontation between Phil and Fat forces Phil to confront his fear of
nihilism. The nihilist might say that narrative is merely an edifice of rationality seeking
coherence but grounded on nothing. In the nihilistic view, not only is narrative a Chinese fingertrap, there is also no external savior. However, the inability of the narrative to sustain Sophia’s
revelatory presence and its subsequent breakdown can be interpreted in a different light. That is,
the failure of narrative to establish coherence might imply the failure of all possible narratives
that seek to know God. I refer to this potential explanation as failure of narrative possibility. In
this context, failure of narrative possibility refers to the idea that there is something about the act
of narrating itself that undermines the goal of knowing God. This assertion is quite different from
suggesting that there is no meaning undergirding the universe, but it is problematic in its own
right.
To understand failure of narrative possibility, consider the second manifestation of
narrative failure. The intimations of the narrator’s knowledge of the Phil/Fat amalgam are
paradoxical and threaten the terms of the narrative. We can think of God as analogous to the
amalgam in terms of narrative function. That is, both the amalgam and God are outside of the
scope of the narrative and they are both goals of the narrative in the sense that achieving
coherence would require both healing and a reconciliation of the narrator’s problems of theodicy.
The latter would require some knowledge of God.
The branch of philosophy interested in epistemology of the divine is fraught with
complications. Mystical philosophy is particularly relevant to this epistemological problem as it
applies to VALIS. Specifically, two interpretations of the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart have
implications for the failure of narrative possibility as it applies to the problems for knowledge of
God in VALIS. Eckhart is an important thinker in the tradition of negative theology, which
asserts that God cannot be properly contained in human language. In one view, Jacques Derrida
criticizes this tradition and Eckhart’s conceptions of God. Derrida responds to Eckhart’s
suggestion that God is nameless when Eckhart says, “God is a word: an unspoken word” and,
“The finest thing we can say about God” is in silence (Almond, 341–355). For Derrida, Eckhart’s
silence is essentially a “prohibition of all discourse, a theology that extols silence and commands
not to speak” (331). Indeed, Derrida accuses Eckhart of merely “‘pushing’ God one proposition
away from anything we can say about Him,” thereby creating a “hypertruth,” a secret eternal
truth whose revelation is endlessly deferred (332–5). Although for Eckhart words like “Being,
“Love,” and “Goodness” try, unsuccessfully, to contain God within human language, Derrida
51
thinks that Eckhart effectively asserts that God has these attributes on a higher level—in an
“infinitely ungraspable way” (333).
This criticism of negative theology is useful when looking at VALIS because at times the
text treats God in something like the hyperessentiality of Derridian negative theology. In VALIS,
failure of narrative to achieve coherence need not imply nihilism if God is a hypertruth,
knowledge of whom is endlessly deferred when we use language. In VALIS, the notion of
something like a hyperessentiality emerges in Fat’s theory that there are two realms in the
universe, which comes from his understanding of the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides. Fat
says, “One Mind there is; but under it two principles contend. . . . The Mind lets in the light, then
the dark; in interaction; so time is generated. At the end the Mind awards victory to the light;
time ceases and the Mind is complete” (50). Narration operates within time and consequently
must, in Fat’s terms, be bound up within the interaction of the two principles; after the light is
victorious, there will presumably be no need or capacity for narrative as we understand it. Fat
refers to the phenomenal world as a “narrative [that] passes through us and” infuses us with
sorrow as the universe grieves over the loss of the primordial woman—this is the reason for the
narrative of our existence (31).13 For Fat, the two principles that generate this narrative, in their
interaction, correspond to two realms, or forms. Form I contains the principle of light, associated
with the Daoistic concept of Yang, and Form II is darkness, associated with the Yin (50). Fat is
convinced that Form II is illusory—Form I is equated with “what is” and Form II is “what is not”
(50).
Form I in VALIS has the function of something like Derridian hyperessentiality. Until
time ceases, we can only defer meaning because operating within time is essentially delusional.
Fat has an interpretation of some ideas associated with Gnosticism that attempts to explain how
we are going to finally achieve hyperessential knowledge. The possibility of such enlightenment
involves the Platonic concept of anamnesis, “the loss of amnesia” (86). Plato establishes the
doctrine of recollection, which argues “the thesis that our disembodied, immortal souls have seen
the Forms [i.e., the embodied forms of truth] prior to their incarceration in the body”
(Silverman). Fat’s theories suggest that we can recall the truth (what Derrida would call
hyperessentiality) through something very much like a Platonic epistemology. 14 Fat argues that
the reason for delusion is that there has been a primordial malfunction in what the Gnostics call
the “Godhead,” i.e. the “total entity” which would embody truth if it were functioning properly
(86). However, Fat says, “The Godhead is impaired” operating in the Gnostic tradition (86).
Because of the primordial malfunction implied in this assertion, individuals’ memories are
blocked and they cannot remember the truth, like a computer in which retrieval of information
from data banks has been inhibited. Crucially, Fat suggests that the universe is in a process of
self-repair, one manifestation of which is the use of “external information, or gnosis” which will
“induce firing and retrieval” (86). This gnosis can be accessed through the healing sacraments of
Greco-Roman mystery religions and Christianity (86). Furthermore, Fat believes there is a
relationship between the macrocosm of the universe and the microcosm of an individual psyche
such that an individual in an irrational universe is bound to be delusional until the fundamental
rift is healed. Thus, narrative is insufficient: outside help is needed to repair the rift, which will
lead to the cessation of time and, by extension, the end of narratives that always fail to achieve
the needed gnosis.
13
See the Cosmogeny
The text of VALIS itself refers to Plato, who “first observed . . . that learning is a form of remembering”
(emphasis added, 86)
14
52
This idiosyncratic theology is not identical to negative theology. However, Derridian
negative theology does resonate with the desire for a millennial repair of the capacity for
retrieval, which will allow individuals to access the hypertruth. This philosophical parallel
suggests that the failure of VALIS to contain knowledge of God without breaking down might be
symptomatic of something much larger: the failure of the possibility of narrative to achieve
knowledge of God. Presumably, this occurs because narrative is subject to the human limitations,
i.e., entrapment in Form II. In line with such an argument, the failure of narrative possibility to
achieve hyperessential divine truth merely shows that the rift between retrieval and storage of
knowledge has not been completely healed. Within such an interpretation, the narrator, Phil, and
Fat are still subject to the temporal-lingual limitations of human beings at the end of VALIS. The
breakdown in divine revelation in VALIS should be seen as a failure of narrative possibility
rather than a particular failing on the part of the narrator.
Ian Almond’s response to Derrida’s interpretation of Eckhart also offers insights
applicable to VALIS. According to Almond, some aspects of Eckhart’s philosophy suggest that
there is a distinction between God and the Godhead (and a slightly different distinction from the
one Fat employs in his theories). In one of his sermons, Eckhart says, “God ‘becomes’ God when
all creatures speak God forth;” however, there is something beyond this uttered, named God—
the Godhead (Almond, 333). Eckhart says, “All that is in the Godhead is One, and of this no-one
can speak. God acts, while the Godhead does not act. There is nothing for it to do, there is no
action in it” (333). Because of this very mystical understanding of the Godhead, the extolment of
silence in Eckhart can be seen as a sign of respect for the Godhead in its unutterable
transcendence of words, not a prevention of discourse (341). Rather than prohibitive, this silence
is imitative of the Godhead—a “means towards union with the divine,” an “attempt to reach the
same state of silence as God’s ground and thereby gain access to it” (342).
According to such an interpretation, narrative that seeks to understand God is not just a
deferment of a hyperessential truth, but rather an impediment to union with the divine. Both
versions of negative theology can be seen as a prism with which to view the narration of the
divine in VALIS. Moreover, both views suggest that Fat’s theorizing project is foolish because it
seeks to articulate something that is, for Derrida’s Eckhart, endlessly deferred, and for Almond’s
Eckhart, approachable only through imitative and respectful silence. There are seeds of
Almond’s more radical interpretation within the text. In fact, Meister Eckhart is mentioned in
VALIS. Of Eckhart, Phil’s friend Kevin says, in conversation with the Lamptons, “He taught that
a person can attain union with the Godhead—he held that a concept of God exists within the
human soul! . . . The soul can actually know God as he is” (161). If this interpretation of divine
epistemology is accepted, Fat’s narratives obfuscate God in their very attempts to know him.
However, an approach to VALIS that only emphasizes this potential narrative limitation
ignores the possibility that the production of discourse about God can still fulfill psychological
needs. Perhaps narratives that strive to say something meaningful about God are preferable to a
silence based on fear and misery. Before Fat works on his Exegesis, he is lonely and miserable.
Perhaps silence, even of the mystical, enlightened variety, is not possible for him. If this is the
case, the implications of negative theology, which extols silence as the means of union with God,
have some consequences for Fat; he is caught in another Chinese finger-trap, in which narrating
precludes him from union with God but the misery of silence is unthinkable.
The religious ideas of pragmatist philosopher William James open up another
interpretation of Fat’s narratives. In his series of lectures on mystical experiences, James delves
into hundreds of written accounts of religious experiences, many of which have a great deal of
53
spiritual resonance. These accounts seek to examine religious experiences. Based on his analysis
of these accounts, James notes the power that words, phrases, and lyric poetry can have as
“irrational doorways” to the divine (320). James’s acknowledgment of the power of words seems
to distinguish such an approach from that of negative theology, in which silence, not poetry, is
the primary means for union with God. Although narrating one’s experiences may not lead one
to union with the Godhead, it is still possible that these accounts can point towards the value of a
person’s religious experiences.
James suggests that the subjective part of experience, the “unsharable feelings” which
make up an individual’s reality, has a great deal more significance and meaning than the
objective part of our experience, concerned only with facts (424–5). Although subjective feelings
may be unsharable, James’s very method of collecting accounts, or narratives, of divine
experience suggests that there is some value both in the production of such accounts and in an
engagement with these accounts. Narrative may not be sufficient to adequately convey individual
experience or reach God, but it can at least suggest the value mystical experiences have for
individuals. Applied to VALIS, this worldview not only accounts for the failure of Fat’s theories
to reach knowledge of God but also the unmistakable aesthetic and psychological value of Fat’s
theories.
The ending of VALIS leaves open the question of how to interpret Phil/Fat’s experiences.
There is a choice for the characters in VALIS to take a skeptical or a religious view of events—a
choice very similar to the one James considers between a materialistic view of the world and a
religious view of the world (Copleston, 95). For James, if there is no factual way to adjudicate
between accounts of one’s experience of the world, one is entitled to choose the explanation that
satisfies one’s need as a moral being (Copleston, 95). James suggests that a religious view of the
world can be “true,” in the pragmatic sense that these views are satisfactory and irrefutable.
However, Phil is hesitant to say his experiences are true, even in something like James’s
contingent sense of truth, by the end of VALIS. He says,
I lack Kevin’s faith and Fat’s madness. But did I see consciously two quick
messages fired off by VALIS in rapid succession, intended to strike us
subliminally, one message really, telling us the time had come? I don’t know what
to think. Maybe I am not required to think anything, or to have faith, or to have
madness; maybe all I need to do—all that is required of me—is to wait. To Wait
and to stay awake (211).15
This section is problematic. It seems in waiting for God to contact him at the end of VALIS, Phil
implies the faith he denies. Perhaps his contradictory experiences and his inability to narrate
them into coherence suggest anti-dogmatism rather than nihilism or lack of belief. A sense of
meaning and the truth of that meaning combined with such anti-dogmatism essentially describes
the outlook of James that leads him to establish his pragmatic theory of truth. 16
15
Here, VALIS refers to God conceived of as an artifact, as it is in the movie within the novel.
James argues that if we are presented with two hypotheses that cannot be adjudicated through evidence
or reasoning, we are entitled to accept the view that we find more satisfying to us as moral beings
(Copleston, 95). That is, we are within our rights to accept religious beliefs that work for us as human
beings although it is unacceptable to believe in something demonstrably false. In this very qualified sense,
James believes that there is a “human element in belief in knowledge,” and that therefore that a belief that
is more satisfying for a person, so long as it does not violate demonstrable truths, is true and that which is
16
54
Indeed, Fat telephones Phil at the end of the novel to let him know that the search for the
Savior continues. Afterwards, the narrator says, “I have a sense of the goodness of men, these
days” (212). This recalls the injunction of Sophia to love one another and seek the true God that
is man himself. Although there are no final standards with which one can objectively evaluate
the veracity of Phil/Fat’s experiences, the ending of VALIS implies that there is still value in
belief. Meaning is implicitly acknowledged in the act of waiting, demonstrated in the narration
that commences with the fictional author writing the text of VALIS, and located, finally, in the
goodness, the divine potential of man. Although VALIS points towards the possibility that the
failure of Fat and Phil to reach the final truth about God is symptomatic of a failure of narrative
possibility with regard to knowledge of the divine, the ending of VALIS opens up a space for
contingent meaning concerning the relationship between man and God. Most significantly,
uncertainty does not necessarily seem a cause for misery at the end of VALIS, nor does the
admission of the incoherence of the events and the ideas associated with them preclude the value
of these events and ideas.
The ending of VALIS in some sense represents an enigma in terms of its orientation
towards God. It is useful to look at a passage from Dick’s actual Exegesis to clarify the sense in
which we are to take the end of VALIS.17 The passage comes after the biographical Dick had a
second theophany in the last years of his life. It argues Dick’s attempts to reach God through his
theories have been delusional, as the negative theological reading of VALIS suggests, but God
turns these delusions into a path towards him, demonstrating the value in the theorizing process
that a pragmatist orientation would highlight.
I found that I had pushed my exegesis to infinity without result! & then I focussed
[sic] on the very infinitude of my theories & saw (recognized) this as an instance
of cosmogenic entropy; &, at last exhausted, prayed for release; & God did appear
to me in theophany & took the field & blocked each & all theories, & ended my
unsatisfying is false (98). Some scientific or religious hypotheses can be regarded as true until the weight
of evidence shifts, implying a worldview that the universe itself is “unfinished, changing, growing, and
plastic” (99).
A view of reality as a shifting thing resonates with elements of Fat’s theories that suggest the
“Immortal one,” in some way central to reality and truth, is living information, which emerges as a theme
that seems entirely incongruous with the monistic Platonic elements of the text (215-16). However the
weight of evidence suggests that for Fat, this changing, shifting quality of the universe is a function of
time which, as we have established, it seen as illusory. If this is the case, once time is complete we will
have reached the stasis of a view of timeless truth inspired by the likes of Parmenides and Plato as well as
Christian ideas of God. However, it is equally possible that such a timeless reality would be “living” in a
different sense, even though presumably truth would not shift in the elusive way as it does in parts of
VALIS but rather would infuse all constituents with connectedness.
17
In order to keep methodological consistency, I quote this as a philosophical exploration of issues that
pertain to VALIS by a reader and commentator on the novel (indeed much of the Exegesis is dedicated to
Dick’s readings of Dick’s own novels) rather than a production by the author of VALIS. As a
philosophical exploration of God, I treat this selection from Dick’s Exegesis in the same way as I treat
Almond’s analysis of Eckhart—it is useful to elucidate ideas already present in VALIS. I am only
interested in this selection of Dick’s Exegesis insofar as it highlights a reading of narrative failure that
implies God transforms delusion into grace. In this entry, 2-3-74 refers to Dick’s first theophany
(represented in VALIS as Fat’s experience) and 11-17-80 refers to his second theophany.
55
exegesis, not in defeat but in logical discovery of Him (which Satan had not
foreseen) . . . it was the conversion of ‘the human intellect will not lead to God
but will lead only deeper & deeper into delusion’ into its mirror opposite: ‘The
human intellect, when it has pushed to infinity, will at last, through ever
deepening delusion, find God.’ Thus I am saved: & know that I did not start out
seeing God (2-3-74) (which led to this 6 1/2 year exegesis), but, instead, wound
up finding God (11-17-80)—an irony that Satan did not foresee. & thus the wise
mind (God) wins once again, & the game continues. But someday it will end.
END (In Pursuit of VALIS, 55–57).
If such an interpretation of the theorizing process in relation to God is correct, the narrative loop
we see in VALIS, in its infinite complexity, is an example of the frustrated, delusional process,
which can lead to God only because God transforms our delusions into salvation. Such an
interpretation seems pertinent to the end of VALIS, and through this lens the failure of narrative
possibility to reach the absolute truth no longer takes on such negative connotations. Instead, this
failure points towards our need for God to turn our fallacious means into his own ends. In a very
profound sense, Fat’s theories can be seen as valuable in their very delusion. A similar case can
be made for the failure of narrative in VALIS as a whole: the value of this failure is that it points
to the need for God, who transforms our delusion into grace. Outside of narrative, lingual, and
temporal confines, God can pull us out of our own delusion and free us of the Chinese finger-trap
of narrative. In some sense, the exploration of narrative failure in VALIS is valuable because it
points to the hope for something greater than the limitations of human narrators. Phil’s antidogmatism at the end of VALIS becomes openness to divine healing rather than defeat of
narrative coherence.
Failure of Narrative Possibility: Narrative-Identity
The narrator suggests that Fat’s search for God through his theorizing narratives is a way
for Fat to deal with Gloria’s death. However, it seems that the narrator’s characterization of Fat
has implications for the narrator’s project; the narrator, in his search for healing, examines Fat’s
theories and their failure. If talking about Fat and his search is a way for the narrator to talk about
his own search for reintegration, the failure of narrative possibility to reach divine knowledge
suggests a fundamentally related failure of narrative possibility of self-narration. That is, a fully
coherent, complete picture of the self may be unapproachable through narration in the same way
that narrative cannot adequately contain knowledge of God. The two manifestations of failure of
narrative possibility are two sides of the same coin in VALIS; the narrator’s portrayal of the
failure of narrative possibility to reach God, as it relates to the goals of the narration, is a
reflection of the narrator’s attempt to achieve reintegration through narration. Reintegration
would imply a complete and coherent picture of self, which would be problematic within the
paradigm of failure of narrative possibility.
Here, it is helpful to turn to Bakhtinian ideas of self-narration. Bakhtin clarifies how the
sort of self-narration in which the narrator of VALIS engages is symptomatic of problems with
narration itself. Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan argues that from a Bakhtinian perspective, any attempt
to achieve a coherent sense of self through self-narration is doomed to fail. What she calls the “Ifor-myself,” i.e., the I narrating itself for its own purposes, “Cannot produce an autonomous
representation of my self; my own boundaries are inaccessible to my perception and
56
consciousness” (3). An individual “I” cannot create an “outward whole that would be even
relatively finished” (3–4). Accordingly, Bakhtin’s argument turns toward the need for other
people to help us complete our identities: “human beings' absolute need for the other, for the
other's seeing, remembering, gathering, and unifying self-activity—the only self-activity capable
of producing his outwardly finished personality. This outward personality could not exist, if the
other did not create it" (4). However, this means that any attempt for the self to tell itself (i.e.,
first-person narration, or autobiography) necessarily fails to tell itself fully (5–6). When the I
tries to tell himself, he makes himself an object. This is problematic because, “In this act of selfobjectification I shall never coincide with myself. . . . I am incapable of fitting all of myself into
an object, for I exceed any object as the active subjectum of it" (5). The failure of a lone attempt
at self-narration implies an ethical need to engage with others when narrating one’s own identity,
because the other can help the I shape its narrative into greater coherence than the I can on its
own. In a similar line of argument, philosopher Adriana Cavarero suggests, “One can tell an
autobiography only to an other, and one can reference an ‘I’ only in relation to a ‘you’: without
the ‘you,’ my own story becomes impossible” (quoted in Butler, 32).
In VALIS, there is a sense of separation that complicates the possibility of engaging with
others. This can be seen in Fat’s theories. Fat suggests that the universe is fundamentally
composed of information, but individuals have been cut off from this information, which
threatens our connection to both our purpose and each other. Fat says,
We should be able to hear this information, or rather narrative, as a neutral voice
inside us. But something has gone wrong. All creation is a language and nothing
but a language, which for some inexplicable reason we can’t read outside and
can’t hear inside. So I say, we have become idiots. Something has happened to
our intelligence . . . The origins of the word ‘idiot’ is the word ‘private.’ Each of
us has become private, and no longer shares the common thought of the Brain,
except at a subliminal level. Thus our life and our purpose are conducted below
our threshold of consciousness (15).
Consider this passage concerning separation in conjunction with the passage where the narrator
proclaims, “We are not individuals. We are stations in a single Mind. We are supposed to remain
separate from one another at all times . . . [But] Space and time were revealed to Fat . . . as mere
mechanisms of separation” (99). The sense of current separation and a coming union with
purpose and with other beings is expressed in cosmic, mystical language, reminiscent of Fat’s
extrapolation of Gloria’s death into “cosmic proportions” (28). Just as Fat’s theorizing points
back to his own sense of loss of Gloria, these passages concerning separation suggest Fat and
Phil have problems engaging with others.
These issues are perhaps best seen in the scenes with Gloria and Sherri. The reader is
shown very little of Fat and Gloria’s relationship, but during the scene that opens the book, when
Gloria calls Fat asking for Nembutal capsules, Fat realizes, “He was not dealing with a person;
he had a reflex-arc thing on the other end of the phone line” (2). Although Fat is profoundly
affected by Gloria’s death, in the scenes between Fat and Gloria there is little sense that either of
them recognizes each other in any kind of intimate or respectful way. In a subsequent scene, Fat
and Gloria are walking along the beach and Gloria agrees to stay at Fat’s place for a night. Fat
begins to have “involuntary visions of sex” (6). The narrator recognizes this lack of true
communication, saying, “The existence of a good person hung in the balance, hung in a balance
57
which Fat held, and all he could think of was the prospect of scoring” (6). Although we are led to
believe Gloria and Fat are close friends based on the narrator’s characterization, there is little
evidence of anything like a real friendship in this scene—the only interaction between the
characters to which the reader has access. When Fat tries to convince Gloria not to commit
suicide, he presents her “with all the wrong reasons for living” by asking her to live “as a favor
to others” (6). That is, he tells her how terrible he would feel if she killed herself rather than
really listening to her and trying to appreciate the humanity and depth in her pain. In a profound
way, this scene represents the sense of separation Fat discusses on a more visceral level than any
of his theories concerning separation. Though Fat is well-intentioned, there is little sense of Fat
or Gloria recognizing each other as other human beings in the fullest sense.
Similarly, there is disconnection between Fat and Sherri. Sherri takes advantage of Fat
when he moves in to try and take care of her when she is in remission. She refuses to contribute
any money to the rent, though Fat is barely scraping by financially, she sees other men, and she
never thanks Fat for being there for her when everyone else abandons her because of her
malignant personality (83–5). In spite of her ungrateful and cruel treatment of Fat, he “still loved
her” (85). Again, it is clear that Fat is well-intentioned. It is even clear that he loves Sherri, in
some sense. Although the narrator says, “The argument can be made that at this point Fat no
longer had any moral obligation to Sherri” because of her treatment of Fat, Fat does not question
the terms of their relationship (85). He simply wonders “why God doesn’t help her” (85). Fat’s
care for Sherri borders on self-abasement, though it is not unqualifiedly altruistic. Fat wants to
take care of Sherri for the same reason he tries to convince Gloria not to kill herself: he needs
someone else to validate him and his existence. In Bakhtinian terms, he needs others to help him
construct his self-narrative. Neither Gloria nor Sherri provides the validation Fat so desperately
needs.
However, there is a moment in the book in which Fat does feel recognized by another
person. While he is in the psychiatric institution after a failed suicide attempt, Fat’s psychiatrist
Dr. Leon Stone discusses Fat’s theories with him. Instead of rebuking Fat, Stone engages him
about Jungian ideas and the Nag Hammadi codex (58). When they are discussing Fat’s
experience with God, Stone tells Fat, “You’re the authority” (56). Following this,
Fat realized that Stone had restored his—Fat’s—spiritual life. Stone had saved
him; he was a master psychiatrist. Everything which Stone had said and done visà-vis Fat had a therapeutic basis, a therapeutic thrust. Whether the content of
Stone’s information was correct was not important; his purpose from the
beginning had been to restore Fat’s faith in himself, which had vanished when
Beth left—which had vanished, actually, when he had failed to save Gloria’s life
years ago (56).
This scene has the feeling of mutuality—of recognition. As in the divine healing scene that
occurs later, there is a hint of healing here. Notably, both scenes focus on the importance of love,
respect, and mutuality.
Throughout most of the book, Phil and Fat have no other to tell their story to under these
terms of mutual respect. True, Kevin is in some ways as deeply involved in the theorizing and
faith as Phil and Fat are. But there is still a fundamental disconnect between Phil/Fat and Kevin.
The narrator characterizes Kevin in overwhelmingly negative terms—in spite of his faith, he is
identified with a cynical, if not nihilistic, worldview. Essentially, Phil and Fat have no one in
58
whom to confide besides each other. The scene where Fat and Phil articulate their symbiotic
relationship makes this clear, as does the scene where Phil recognizes that Fat is not crazy but
rather trying to survive. In spite of Phil’s ironic persona, in this relationship there is a degree of
respect and trust, though this breaks down somewhat after the savior dies. Regardless, the two
characters do not represent viable others because, as we know, Phil and Fat are the same person.
If Bakhtin and similar philosophers have it right, we must rely on the other—the truly other—to
help us narrate ourselves in a way even approaching coherence. There is failure of the possibility
of self-narration because Phil has no real other to whom he can address himself or be recognized
by at the end of VALIS. Fat’s work on his Exegesis and Phil’s narration of VALIS are both
fundamentally solitary endeavors, precluding the completion only the other can give to selfnarration.
Still, it is after Phil’s conversation with Fat that he has a “sense of the goodness of men”
(212). The ending of VALIS should, by all accounts, be tragic. The savior is dead, Phil and Fat
are more divided than ever, and Phil never recovers from the loss of Gloria and Sherri. The
narrative, which aimed at a resolution of these problems, has demonstrated failure on almost all
accounts. Yet there is a sense of hopefulness—not only in the possibility of divine healing, but in
Phil’s fellow man. Perhaps this ending represents Phil’s openness to the other just as it represents
his openness to divine healing. He waits for the other just as he waits for God’s revelation. The
ending of VALIS certainly does not represent psychological healing. However, it does suggest
that Phil is ready for the recognition of the other who will help him achieve coherence in his selfnarration just as he is ready for the God who will heal him. Just as the failure of the possibility of
divine knowledge through narrative points to an affirmation of man’s need for God, the failure of
self-narration points to the need for engagement with an other who will allow Phil to engage in a
more coherent self-narrative and begin to heal the separation that plagues him throughout VALIS.
59
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61
62
‘Difficult to Repair’: Applying African Models for
Transitional Justice to Peace and Restoration Prospects in
the Democratic Republic of the Congo
BRIAN KLOSTERBOER
Dr. Lori Hartmann-Mahmud, Faculty Mentor
Abstract:
Almost a decade after the Pretoria Accord was signed that ended the Congo Wars,
sporadic fighting continues in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that defies
conventional conceptions of post-conflict transition. This paper highlights the limits of applying
macro-level analysis to the ongoing violence in the eastern Congo and asserts that local political,
economic, and social cleavages have fueled national instability. Drawing on African experiences
of transitional justice in Sierra Leone and Rwanda, this study compares those experiences to
local, national, and international mechanisms and institutions in the eastern Congo. Through an
analysis of levels of implementation and the legitimacy of Congolese institutions, the paper
demonstrates that a more contextualized analytic approach, which incorporates local actors who
are often marginalized from the peace-building process, better illuminates the challenges and
prospects of transitional justice. It also reveals that a policymaking strategy that maximizes the
legitimacy of Congolese institutions at each level of implementation could result in more
effective mechanisms of justice and reconciliation.
“It is not difficult to hurt, but it is difficult to repair.” – South Africa, Azania
63
Fifteen years after the Congo Wars began, the eastern provinces of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC) continue to be plagued by conflict and disorder. Only a year after
the First Congo War (1996-1997), the Second Congo War (1998-2003) caused a combined death
toll of 5.4 million people, making it the deadliest conflict since World War II.1 By 2004, 2.5
million people had been internally displaced and the eastern DRC had become infamous for a
shockingly high rate of sexual assault. 2 Despite several peace accords and the election of a
transitional government, the largest ever United Nations peacekeeping mission (MONUC) and
the Congolese army (FARDC) have struggled to maintain peace and security, and violence
remains a daily part of many people’s lives in the eastern provinces. In 2007, an estimated
45,000 people perished every month from violence, hunger, and disease. 3 And in November
2011, hopes for a peaceful presidential election faded as government security forces killed at
least 33 people, wounded 83, and arbitrarily detained 265 in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa.4
Amidst the bloodshed, Joseph Kabila secured a second full term as president while his main rival,
Etienne Tshisekedi, denounced the results as fraudulent.
As tensions escalate and violence continues, Congolese and international policymakers
are searching for ways to bring peace and reconciliation to the DRC, and many of them have
already begun to consider mechanisms of transitional justice. Transitional justice is “the
phenomenon and process by which a society utilizes legal and quasi-legal institutions to facilitate
fundamental change from one political order to another or the construction of a new reality
against the background of a profound historical memory.”5 Such processes include institutions
that promote accountability (trials, truth commissions, and lustration policies), methods of
victim-oriented restoration (reparations, memorials, and public memory projects), and processes
for promoting peace and stability (amnesties, pardons, and governmental reform).6
The Congolese government and international actors have already utilized some of these
mechanisms–including trials, amnesties, and a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC)–in an
attempt to establish peace and accountability. The Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement (1999) and the
Pretoria Accord (2002), the treaties that ended the Congo Wars, called for the creation of
amnesty laws and a Congolese TRC. While the Congolese amnesty laws have been fiercely
debated—with some scholars asserting that they were a necessary “glue” of the peace process
and others arguing that they exacerbated a culture of impunity—most observers agree that the
TRC was “cosmetic at best” and has done little to encourage national dialogue or foster
1
Frederic P. Miller, ed. and Agnes F. Vandome and John McBrewster, Second Congo War (New York: Alphascript,
2009), 2.
2
Ola Olsson and Heather Congdon Fors, “Congo: The Prize of Predation,” Journal of Peace Research 41.3 (May
2004): 321.
3
Eirin Mobekk, “Security Sector Reform and the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Protecting
Civilians in the East,” International Peacekeeping 16.2 (April 2009): 273.
4
“Human Rights violations during DRC general elections – UN report,” African Press Organization (20 March
2012).
5
Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu, “Prosecute or Pardon?: Between Truth Commissions and War Crimes Trials,” in
Chandra Lekha Sriram and Suren Pillay, eds., Peace versus Juestice? The Dilemma of Transitional Justice in Africa
(Scotsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2009), 79.
6
Tricia D. Olsen, Leigh A. Payne, and Andrew G. Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes,
Weighing Efficacy (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 2010), 1.
64
reconciliation. 7 Because Congolese amnesty laws excluded war crimes and crimes against
humanity, perpetrators can be held accountable for the most egregious acts committed during the
Congo Wars. The Congolese judiciary is underdeveloped, however, and is bound by political and
practical constraints, which have limited its ability to secure convictions. In response to this
impunity in 2004, the Congolese government invited the International Criminal Court (ICC) to
begin investigating abuses committed during and after the Congo Wars. The ICC has since
issued warrants for six Congolese warlords for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and in
March 2012, Thomas Lubanga became the first person ever convicted of war crimes by the ICC.8
This paper analyzes these mechanisms by examining the levels at which they are
implemented and the legitimacy of the processes and institutions behind them. Although there
are many approaches that can be used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of transitional
mechanisms, levels and legitimacy are particularly applicable to the Congo because of the extent
of the international community’s involvement in the transition and the absence of legitimate
sources of authority in the eastern provinces. Congolese and international policymakers have
largely followed paradigmatic models for peacebuilding and transitional justice, which focus
almost exclusively on the nation-state and international levels. Because the political, economic,
and social drivers of violence in the eastern Congo are extraordinarily complex, macro-level
perspectives on transitional justice have had limited success in helping scholars understand the
post-conflict transition or enabling policymakers to create effective mechanisms. Through a
more dynamic understanding of violence and transitional justice, a contextualized approach that
optimizes the legitimacy of international, national, and local institutions is likely to help the DRC
transition to a new political order.
Because there has not been much research published on transitional justice in the DRC,
this study fills a gap in the literature by combining research on violence in the Congo with other
case studies of African transitional justice to reveal the unique interplay of levels and legitimacy
of transitional mechanisms in the DRC. Since the dynamics of violence and reconciliation in the
Oriental, North and South Kivu, and Katanga provinces are distinct from trends in other areas of
the DRC, this study focuses primarily on the effects and prospects of transitional justice in these
four provinces. While the eastern Congo will be viewed in the context of its relationship to the
rest of the country, macro-level transitional processes have been especially ineffective at
addressing the conflict in the eastern provinces. A population-based survey from the University
of California at Berkeley reveals that communities in these provinces suffered extensively during
and after the Congo Wars, and post-conflict violence has been highest in the Oriental, North and
South Kivu, and Katanga provinces. 9 Although the challenges for post-conflict transition are
7
Jake Goodman, “The Grease in the Gears: Impunity in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Opportunity for
Peace,” Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review 32.2 (2010): 217.
8
“ICC First Verdict: Thomas Lubanga guilty of conscripting and enlisting children under the age of 15 and using
them to participate in hostilities,” African Press Organization (14 March 2012).
9
In a survey conducted from September to December 2007, 2,620 individuals in the Ituri District of Oriental
Province and in North and South Kivu were interviewed. Fifty-five percent of respondents reported being
interrogated or persecuted by armed groups, 53% being forced to work or enslaved, 46% being beaten, 46% being
threatened with death, 34% abducted for at least one week, 23% had witnessed acts of sexual violence, and 16% had
experienced sexual violence (Patrick Vinck, Phuong Pham, Suliman Baldo, and Rachel Shigekane, “Living with
Fear: A Population-Based Survey on Attitudes about Peace, Justice, and Social Reconstruction in Eastern
Democratic Republic of Congo,” Berkeley-Tulane Initiative on Vulnerable Populations (August 2008),
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/HRCweb/pdfs/LivingWithFear-DRC.pdf).
65
greatest in these four provinces, this study will show that there are numerous ways for scholars
and policymakers to rethink their approach to transitional justice in the eastern provinces and to
create effective mechanisms that could eventually bring peace and stability to the entire DRC.
I. Conflict in the Eastern Provinces: The Limits of Macro-Level Perspectives
Because the way that scholars and policymakers approach transitional justice in the
Congo has been intimately shaped by their understanding of and reactions to violence in the
eastern provinces, it is important to analyze how macro-level perspectives have defined the
Congolese transition and limited policymakers’ approaches to transforming the political order.
By analyzing the Congo only through conventional analytical frameworks like realism and
liberalism, observers have oversimplified the incredible complexity of the political, economic,
and social context of the eastern provinces. Unless these frameworks are broadened, and intricate
networks of civilians, rebel groups, and local entrepreneurs are acknowledged, conceptual
constraints will continue to limit the effectiveness of transitional mechanisms.
Throughout the post-conflict transition, there has been an especially strong international
presence in the DRC, which has resulted in top-down approaches that cohere with paradigmatic
conceptions of peacebuilding and transitional justice. The Congolese government has relied
heavily on security support from MONUC and peacekeepers from the European Union; and for
the first time in any conflict, the Pretoria Accord created an International Committee in Support
of the Transition “to institutionalize the leading role of international actors in its
implementation.” 10 These international observers contribute more than half of the Congolese
government’s national budget every year and have created what some Africanists refer to as a
21st century “protectorate.”11
United Nations officials, diplomats, and members of nongovernmental organizations
involved in the transition primarily view the conflict through national and international lenses
that cohere with “universalistic conflict resolution models that have a standard formula of peace
negotiations…[and] a trajectory of ceasefire agreements, transitional governments,
demilitarization, constitutional reform and democratic elections.” 12 Within this discursive
framework, the term “local” is often used merely in reference to the “national.” Autesserre notes
that “since the late 1990s, ‘local ownership’ has become a buzzword in international
organizations, but it means ownership by the central government, not by people on the
ground.”13 Policymakers also typically equate “local actors” with traditional leaders, women, and
youth, who are rarely considered to have much political agency. These groups are often
marginalized in transitional processes, and other local actors, including militias that are the
primary perpetrators of violence in the eastern DRC, are excluded from the analytical framework.
10
Séverine Autesserre, The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding
(New York: Cambridge University, 2010), 3.
11
Ibid.
12
Patricia Daley, “Challenges to Peace: Conflict Resolution in the Great Lakes Region of Africa,” Third World
Quarterly 27.2 (2006): 304.
13
Autesserre (2010), 43.
66
Until recently, the vast majority of research that sought to explain the reasons for the
Congo Wars (1996-2003) and the prolonged violence in the eastern DRC focused primarily on
macro-level factors, including the Congo’s colonial and kleptocratic legacies, other states’
motives for intervention, and regional political and ethnic tension. Relying heavily on the realist
framework, which puts the nation-state as the primary unit of analysis, these approaches have
helped to explain the complex Second Congo War, which is sometimes referred to as the “Great
African War” because it involved eight different states.14
By leveraging the realist framework, Prunier,15 Reyntjens,16 Turner,17 and other authors
typically apply a failed state theory to the eastern Congo. Under this theory, scholars claim that
the Mobutu regime so thoroughly eroded the country’s governance and infrastructure that the
Congo became vulnerable to warlordism and foreign intervention. As Nzongola-Ntalaja asserts,
“The power vacuum created by state decay reinforced [outsiders’] determination to fish in
troubled waters and to maximize resource extraction from the Congo.” 18 Henwood takes this
theory a step further, stating that “in terms of truly national and democratic institutions, the
nation of the DRC is a phantom. The DRC exists in name only. The country is an enclosure for
predatory elites to rob, pillage and plunder with impunity.”19
The failed state theory and other theories within the realist framework are useful in
explaining why nation-states intervened in the Congo, and to some extent, they can also explain
why violence has continued after the election of a transitional government. Some proponents of
this theory argue that President Kabila’s power and authority in Kinshasa do not extend the 3,000
kilometers to Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu. Although the UN and other international
organizations have collaborated with FARDC to strengthen Congolese military capacity, the
army only has tenuous control of the expansive eastern Congo. Poor infrastructure makes it
difficult for peacekeepers and soldiers to maintain a security presence in many communities, and
soldiers and officers in MONUC and FARDC have also been accused of committing many of the
human rights abuses that they are enlisted to prevent.20
Because of this breakdown of state authority, Kisangani argues that the eastern Congo
has become a “state of nature,” in which “security [can] only be found by joining an armed group.
War [is] profitable for those who [control] instruments of violence.”21 This observation reveals a
paradox in the predominant way that the eastern provinces are analyzed. Although many people
view the eastern Congo as a “state of nature” in which no state authority exists, they continue to
14
Filip Reyntjens, The Great African War: Congo and Regional Politics, 1996-2006 (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2009).
15
Gérard Prunier, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental
Catastrophe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
16
Reyntjens.
17
Thomas Turner, The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality (New York: Zed Books, 2007).
18
Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History (New York: Zed Books,
2002), 215.
19
Fraco Henwood, “The DRC: Moving Beyond the Bullet and Ballot Box,” in Adibe Jideofor, ed., The Democratic
Republic of Congo: From Peace Rhetoric to Sustainable Political Stability? (London: Adonis & Abbey Publishers,
2005), 29.
20
“Eastern DR Congo: Surge in Army Atrocities,” Human Rights Watch (2 November 2009), accessed April 20,
2012, http://www.hrw.org/news/2009/11/02/eastern-dr-congo-surge-army-atrocities.
21
Emizet Kisangani, “Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: A Mosaic of Insurgent Groups,”
International Journal of World Peace 20.3 (September 2003): 74.
67
analyze the conflict through national and international lenses. Contrary to this approach,
population-based studies reveal that the Congolese national government has a small amount of
authority and legitimacy in the eastern provinces and that provincial and community-based actors
also exert considerable influence at the local level. 22 A patchwork of authority exists at the
national and sub-national levels, but many observers have ignored these political structures and
have called for international intervention to respond to the Congolese “state of nature” under the
banner of the liberalist framework.
Based on the values of peace, progress, and cooperation, liberalism is an approach to
international relations that emphasizes the role of international organizations in counterbalancing
the sovereignty of nation-states in order to improve the world order. This approach values justice
and accountability, and international judicial mechanisms like the ICC fall squarely within the
liberal framework. In many ways, liberalism is a response to the realist approach, but both
perspectives tend to focus primarily on macro-levels of analysis. These approaches are certainly
useful for creating models for international relations, but they fail to encompass the complexity
of the local political, economic, and social situation in the eastern Congo, where intricate
networks of civilians, rebel groups, and business entrepreneurs have organized themselves to
affect the processes of conflict and reconciliation.
While many observers acknowledge the importance of mineral exploitation as a driver of
violence in the eastern DRC, scholars have typically analyzed Congolese economic networks
through macro-level lenses. Carayannis,23 Olsson and Fors,24 Nest,25 and Eichstaedt26 all argue
that transnational networks of economic exploitation have significantly exacerbated conflict in
the eastern provinces, but their analysis focuses primarily on multinational corporations and
international trade. They tend to overlook the complex dynamics of greed and exploitation that
occur within Congolese communities themselves, which in turn have affected peace and conflict
in the eastern provinces. Kisangani asserts that “the statist approach is not sufficient to explain
the duration of war in the DRC” and he argues that Congolese combatants have prolonged the
fighting because they continue to benefit from exploiting resources at the local level. 27
Raeymakers also claims that greed in local communities has played a central role in furthering
the conflict as many Congolese entrepreneurs have capitalized on violence and disorder to form
transnational partnerships and reap personal profit.28
During the transition, military factions like the FDLR, Mai Mai, RCD-G and other
Congolese militias remained heavily involved in illegal mining, and “large quantities of
cassiterite, Coltan, gold, diamonds, and palm nut crossed the borders every day and evaded the
22
Vinck.
Tatiana Carayannis, “Postwar reconstruction and the security dilemma: the challenge of disarmament,
demobilization, and reintegration in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” in Ahmad A. Sikainga and Ousseina
Alidou, eds., Postconflict Reconstruction in Africa (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2006).
24
Ola Olsson and Heather Congdon Fors, “Congo: The Prize of Predation,” Journal of Peace Research 41.3 (2004).
25
Michael Nest, Francois Grignon and Emizet Kisangani, The Democratic Republic of Congo: Economic
Dimensions of War and Peace (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 2005).
26
Peter Eichstaedt, Consuming the Congo: War and Conflict Minerals in the World’s Deadliest Place (Chicago:
Lawrence Hill, 2011).
27
Kisangani: 53.
28
Timothy Raeymakers, “Protection for Sale? War and the Transformation of Regulation on the Congo-Ugandan
Border,” Development and Change 41.4 (2010).
23
68
tax authorities.”29 Since these factions continue to control access to most of the mines in the
eastern provinces, they are able to extort large sums in taxes that would otherwise go to the
national government by “setting up checkpoints and demanding ‘tolls’ from those who came
through.”30
While militias vie for power over mineral extraction, many civilians have quarreled over
land ownership. The influx of refugees from the Rwandan genocide and the instability of the
Congo Wars have resulted in a number of land disputes, including squatting, theft, and forced
relocation. These disputes created resentment and cleavages that fueled violence in the eastern
provinces. When 2,620 civilians were surveyed about the causes of violence in their
communities, 46.8% said “conflicts over power,” 36.6% said “exploitation of natural resources,”
34.5% said “conflict over land/access to land,” and 28.9% said “ethnic divisions.”31 While ethnic
and economic issues are certainly drivers of violence in the eastern Congo, the primary friction
point continues to be the patchwork of political leaders who compete for power and control.
Boshoff, 32 Swart, 33 and Beswick 34 all analyze how an ambitious group of Congolese
warlords formed patron-client structures and perpetuated the conflict in order to solidify their
own power and prestige. To some extent, this feudalistic order reflects the eight parties of the
Congolese transition, which each have a sub-national base, but the true political makeup of the
eastern provinces is even more diffuse and complex. The Mai Mai, for example, is not a unified
political group; it is a loose conglomeration of local militias that were aligned with President
Kabila during the transition.35 Even when most Mai Mai had integrated into FARDC by 2004,
they continued to contend with other groups for claims on land, mining sites, and administrative
control. Kabila eventually lost his ability to control these groups that he previously armed, but
the Mai Mai are not anarchic. They are localized militias that “adhere to a firm moral code” and
“provide their members with new, stringent boundaries, a simple promise for explaining the state
of disorder (ethnicity), a solution to it (chasing the ‘foreigners’ from the Congolese soil), and an
everyday routine (training and violence).”36
While Mai Mai leaders manipulate ethnicity to motivate their followers, the international
community has also oversimplified the role of ethnicity in the eastern provinces. Tension
between the Congolese of Rwandan descent (Kinyarwanda-speaking) and the “indigenous
communities of the Kivus” has undoubtedly been a driving factor in the conflict, but ethnic
cleavages are more localized and complex than a simple Hutu/Tutsi divide.37 When two million
29
Séverine Autesserre, “Local Violence, National Peace? Postwar ‘Settlement’ in the Eastern D.R. Congo (20032006),” African Studies Review 49.3 (December 2006): 10.
30
Autesserre (2010), 154.
31
Vinck: 28.
32
Henri Boshoff, “The Demobilisation, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) Process in the Democratic Republic
of Congo,” in Jideofor Adibe, ed., The Democratic Republic of Congo: From Peace Rhetoric to Sustainable
Political Stability? (London: Adonis & Abbey, 2005).
33
Gerrie Swart, “Can the ballot prevail over the bullet? The troublesome transition in the Democratic Republic of
Congo,” in Jideofor Adibe, ed., The Democratic Republic of Congo: From Peace Rhetoric to Sustainable Political
Stability? (London: Adonis & Abbey, 2005).
34
Danielle Beswick, “The Challenge of Warlordism to Post-Conflict State Building: The Case of Laurent Nkunda in
Eastern Congo,” Round Table 98.402 (June 2009).
35
Autesserre (2010), 148.
36
Ibid, 149.
37
Ibid, 7.
69
Hutu refugees arrived in the eastern Congo after the Rwandan genocide, local ethnic tensions
were already on the rise. For several decades, local chiefs in North Kivu had attempted to
dominate the Banyarwanda population, which was comprised of both Tutsis and Hutus. When
the refugees arrived, the Hutu Banyarwanda used their swelling numbers to exert a greater
influence, but they began fighting before these refugees’ arrived. During March 1993, violence
along ethnic lines caused more than 100,000 deaths and the displacement of more than 130,000
people.38
This is just one example of the intricate ethnic cleavages that exist in the eastern Congo
and it shows that social, political, and economic dynamics are more complex than conventional
frameworks allow for. Many analyses of the eastern provinces have oversimplified the causes of
conflict, which has resulted in policy failures that demonstrate the limits of macro-level
approaches to conflict resolution. In pursuing new attempts to create transitional mechanisms
that address the complexities of the eastern Congo, it is helpful to examine the experiences of
other African post-conflict transitions in which contextualized frameworks of analysis have
yielded valuable insights for the implementation and assessment of transitional justice.
II. Localizing Transitional Justice through African Models
To assess the prospects for transitional mechanisms in the Congo, scholars can turn to a
vast body of literature on transitional justice in African post-conflict situations. Since 1970, there
have been more than 854 transitional justice mechanisms implemented in 161 countries around
the world, and 334 of these mechanisms were implemented in 40 African countries. 39 This
proliferation of transitional justice has led to a wealth of research on the subject. Olsen counted
more than 2,300 articles and books that have explored various aspects of transitional justice, and
the International Journal of Transitional Justice (Oxford University Press) was established in
2007 to create a permanent forum in which to debate the topic.40
African case studies have a unique place in this discourse because there have been so
many mechanisms implemented on the continent and because the South African TRC
represented a dramatic departure from the international trend toward punitive justice. The
chairman of the TRC, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, asserts that the paradigm of punitive justice on
other continents differs from the ‘African’ notion of justice, which is aimed at “the healing of
breaches, the redressing of imbalances, [and] the restoration of broken relationships.”41 Although
the claim that continent-wide trends of jurisprudence exist is debatable, the inception of the
South African TRC undoubtedly spurred a more restorative approach to transitional justice that
was emulated across the continent. It also sparked a prolonged debate on the merits and
consequences of retributive versus restorative justice. Thousands of pages have been written
debating this question in the last decade and a half, but Sriram and others now agree that “this
38
Autesserre (2010), 140.
Olsen, 16.
40
Ibid, 2.
41
Luc Huyse and Mark Salter, eds., Traditional Justice and Reconciliation after Violent Conflict: Learning from
African Experiences (Stockholm: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Justice, 2008), 5.
39
70
dichotomous dilemma is often overstated. In reality the choice is seldom ‘justice’ or ‘peace’ but
rather a complex mixture of both.”42
In the past decade, African societies have been at the forefront of combining methods of
punitive and restorative justice to emerge from conflict and disorder. The most documented case
study that straddles this dichotomy is Sierra Leone, where a Special Court held tribunals at the
same time that a TRC held public hearings to promote healing and restoration. Although the
Congo is more than 32 times larger than Sierra Leone and has thirteen and a half times as many
people, Sierra Leone’s transitional mechanisms can provide valuable insights for approaching the
implementation and study of transitional justice in the DRC.43 Both Sierra Leone and the Congo
experienced brutal conflicts in the late 1990s that devastated their societies with widespread
human rights abuses, gender-based violence, and recruitment and involvement of child soldiers.
Control of mineral resources was a driving motivator for combatants in each conflict, and UN
peacekeepers were deployed to each country to enforce ceasefire agreements and observe the
post-conflict transition.
While the eastern Congo remains embroiled in conflict, Sierra Leone has recently
stabilized and embarked on a path of economic development. Much of this stability can be
attributed to a successful transition, in which the TRC and Special Court for Sierra Leone
worked concurrently to achieve the goals of promoting reconciliation and punishing perpetrators
of war crimes and crimes against humanity. As in the Congo, policymakers included
“unconditional amnesty for all crimes committed by the combatants during the conflict period”
in the Lomé Peace Accord, which ended the civil war in 1999.44 However, the UN representative
at the accord added a stipulation that amnesty provisions “shall not apply to international crimes
of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and other serious violations of international
humanitarian law.”45 This clause laid the foundation for the UN to create a Special Court for
Sierra Leone to “prosecute those who bear the greatest responsibility.”46 Meanwhile, the Lomé
Accord also provided for the creation of a TRC to “provide a forum for both the victims and
perpetrators of human rights violations to tell their story…to facilitate genuine healing and
reconciliation.”47 The Special Court and TRC were therefore created to function simultaneously
with two distinct but interrelated mandates.
When the Special Court and TRC first began their work in 2002, observers worried that
the two institutions might counteract each other. Without any formal memorandum of agreement
outlining how they could cooperate, the Special Court and TRC had the potential to compete for
42
Chandra Lekha Sriram and Suren Pillay, eds., Peace versus Justice? The Dilemma of Transitional Justice in
Africa (Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2009), 1.
43
“Democratic Republic of the Congo,” The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency (2011), accessed October
20, 2011, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cg.html and “Sierra Leone,” The World
Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency (2011), accessed October 20, 2011,
https://www.cia.gov/libary/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sl.html.
44
Yasmin Louise Sooka, “The Politics of Transitional Justice,” in Chandra Lekha Sriram and Suren Pillay, eds.,
Peace versus Justice? The Dilemma of Transitional Justice in Africa (Scottsville, South Africa: University of
KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2009), 34.
45
Elizabeth M. Evenson, “Truth and Justice in Sierra Leone: Coordination Between Commission and Court,”
Columbia Law Review 104.3 (April 2004): 737.
46
Clare Da Silva, “The hybrid experience of the Special Court for Sierra Leone,” in Bartram S. Brown, Research
Handbook on International Criminal Law (Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 2011), 239.
47
Evenson: 737.
71
resources and interfere with each other’s investigations. Specifically, Sierra Leoneans were
concerned that witnesses testifying before the TRC would be less truthful if their testimony could
later be used against them by the court. When Special Court Prosecutor David Crane declared
that he would not use TRC testimony in his investigations, these fears were allayed and the stage
was set for the Special Court and TRC to fulfill their mandates simultaneously.48
In the eyes of many observers, the concurrent implementation of the TRC and Special
Court helped to enable Sierra Leone’s transition to a more stable society. Da Silva asserts that
Sierra Leone is an “enviable position” of having two mechanisms that “work together to fight
impunity.”49 However, there is also widespread agreement that the Special Court and TRC would
have been more effective if they had collaborated toward a common mandate. Evenson contends
that “such an approach, which demands that each coordination decision be taken with the goals
of transitional justice fully in mind, will help to guarantee that the concurrent operation of truth
commissions and trials captures the full benefit of their joint operation.” 50 Although
implementing this coordination would have been difficult and some argue that the Special Court
and TRC served two separate and distinct functions, sharing information and resources would
probably have strengthened both institutions. Nonetheless, most Sierra Leoneans seem to
approve of this joint quest for justice and accountability.
A BBC World Service Trust survey conducted in 2007 asked 1,717 adults in nine districts
across Sierra Leone about the country’s mechanisms for transitional justice.51 Ninety-six percent
of respondents were aware of the Special Court for Sierra Leone and more than two-thirds (68%)
approved of its work. Meanwhile, 89% of respondents had heard of the TRC, 73% said it had
helped to “create reconciliation,” and 57% thought that it had “contributed to justice.” These
positive approval ratings reflect a legitimacy of national institutions lacking in the DRC. Sixtyfour percent of Sierra Leonean respondents said they trusted national courts to bring about justice,
compared with 45% of Congolese respondents who viewed national trials as the best way to hold
war criminals accountable. 52 Once the BBC survey results are broken down by region, more
diverse opinions emerge. In Kailahun, a district that borders Liberia and suffered extensively
during the civil war, only 6% of respondents approved of the TRC. 53 Similarly, districts in the
eastern Congo have different perspectives based on their context and experiences.
While Sierra Leoneans trust these national mechanisms of justice, they also approve of
international tribunals prosecuting the most illustrious war criminals. Eighty-nine percent of
respondents were aware of Charles Taylor’s trial and only 27% thought it should be held in
Sierra Leone, compared with 47% who approved of it being held at The Hague.54 This trial might
be unique, however, if respondents thought that Taylor was too infamous to be given fair
48
Evenson: 756.
Da Silva, 256.
50
Evenson: 760.
51
“Building a Better Tomorrow: A Survey of Knowledge and Attitudes toward Transitional Justice in Sierra Leone,”
BBC World Service Trust and Search for Common Ground (August 2008): 7.
52
Ibid: 8 and Vinck: 2.
53
“Building a Better Tomorrow”: 7.
54
Ibid.
49
72
treatment in Sierra Leone or neighboring Liberia. In general, Sierra Leoneans seem to prefer
domestic tribunals, just as 85% of Congolese respondents prefer trials to be held in the DRC.55
In its quest for justice and accountability, Sierra Leone capitalized on the legitimacy of
both national and international institutions. The Special Court blended these levels together and
maximized its legitimacy by leveraging domestic and international laws, relying on Sierra
Leonean and foreign judges, and incorporating funding sources from the government and
international donors. While the TRC was commissioned by the Sierra Leonean government,
three of its seven judges were from other countries and it presented its final report to both the
President of Sierra Leone and the United Nations Security Council in October 2004.56
The Congo can certainly learn from Sierra Leone’s blending of national and international
institutions, but Sierra Leone’s success might also be difficult to emulate. As a much smaller
country with more developed infrastructure, Sierra Leone had a national ethos emerge in the
wake of civil war that propelled people to move on with their lives. The combination of a UN
peacekeeping mission (UNAMSIL) and successful democratic elections helped to seal Sierra
Leone’s fate. In 2007, Sierra Leonean President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah did what few post-conflict
African presidents have done: he followed the term limits outlined in the constitution and chose
not to run for a third term. 57 Kabbah’s decision affirmed the legitimacy of the national
government and allowed Ernest Bai Koroma to take office as the uncontested president. By
upholding the constitution, Kabbah’s decision might have increased Sierra Leoneans’ trust in the
national government as a whole.
While Sierra Leone’s experiences with transitional justice highlight the benefits of
maximizing legitimacy at the national and international levels, they also provide valuable
insights for how transitional justice can be studied at the local level. As the Special Court and
TRC conducted their work, many scholars analyzed how these institutions affected people on the
ground and women and youth in particular. As in the DRC, women and children were most
affected by the extensive human rights abuses that many Sierra Leoneans faced. Thousands of
women and children fought as combatants during the conflict and many more were victims and
survivors. In response to such widespread involvement, Sierra Leone made a determined effort to
include these groups in its transitional processes. The TRC had one of the first specific mandates
to deal with gender-based violence and child soldiers, and it was praised by the global
community for incorporating women and children into the hearings much more than the South
African TRC and other predecessors.58 The Special Court also included sex slavery as a crime
55
Vinck: 2.
“Truth Commission: Sierra Leone,” United States Institute of Peace, Truth Commissions Digital Collection,
accessed May 3, 2012, http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-sierra-leone.
57
“Elections in Sierra Leone,” Department for International Development, UKAID, accessed May 3, 2012,
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Documents/publications1/elections/elections-sl-2007-2008.pdf.
58
Shiela Meintjes, “Gender and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions,” in Chandra Lekha Sriram and Suren Pillay,
eds., Peace versus Justice? The Dilemma of Transitional Justice in Africa (Scottsville, South Africa: University of
KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2009), 107.
56
73
against humanity, indicted perpetrators for forced marriage, and charged several defendants with
recruiting and abducting child soldiers.59
As Sierra Leone implemented programs to address the needs of women and children at
the national level, scholars examined these policies’ impact at the local level. Through a villagelevel analysis of how female combatants reintegrating into their communities were viewed as
“spoiled goods,” McKay uses individual examples to demonstrate how gender can be better
incorporated into the national disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) process.60
She claims that “women and girls are usually rendered invisible or are, at best, marginalized as
leaders and facilitators of cultural and social reconstruction.” 61 In another analysis, Rashid
explores how radio stations have fostered open and honest dialogue among Sierra Leonean youth
about their experiences during and after the civil war.62 This study provides insights on how
transitional mechanisms reverberate throughout civil society and highlights unintended
consequences and subtleties that might be overlooked through a macro-level lens.
Another well-documented case study that illuminates important prospects for the Congo
is Rwanda, where a combination of mechanisms worked simultaneously to hold perpetrators
accountable and help the society emerge from the 1994 genocide. In terms of geography and
demographics, Rwanda and the DRC are drastically different. The Congo is 89 times larger than
Rwanda and has six times as many people.63 The difference in population density between the
two countries is immense, and Rwandan governments have typically had more direct control
than governments in Kinshasa exert over the expansive eastern Congo. Nevertheless, the
conflicts, cultures, and institutions of Rwanda and the eastern Congo have enough similarities
that insights garnered from Rwanda’s transitional mechanisms are applicable to the DRC.
Both Rwanda and the eastern Congo are primarily inhabited by the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic
groups, they share a common history of Belgian colonialism, and their conflicts are closely
intertwined. In the wake of the 1994 genocide that killed more than 800,000 people, the
Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) expelled the Interahamwe and nearly two million predominantlyHutu refugees fled into the eastern Congo. 64 For the next few years, many of these loosely
organized rebel groups launched raids across the Rwandan border and committed atrocities
against Tutsi living in the eastern DRC.
Although Rwanda has displayed similar dynamics of violence as the eastern DRC, the
two countries have faced very different futures since the signing of the Pretoria Accord. While
conflict and instability have continued in the eastern Congo, Rwanda has largely succeeded in
59
Yasmin Louise Sooka, “The Politics of Transitional Justice,” in Chandra Lekha Sriram and Suren Pillay, eds.,
Peace versus Justice? The Dilemma of Transitional Justice in Africa (Scottsville, South Africa: University of
KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2009), 36.
60
Susan McKay, “Reconstructing fragile lives: girls’ social reintegration in Northern Uganda and Sierra Leone,” in
Ahmad A. Sikainga and Ouesseina Alidou, eds., Postconflict Reconstruction in Africa (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa
World Press, 2006).
61
Ibid, 151.
62
Ismail Rashid, “Silent guns and talking drums: war, radio, and youth social healing in Sierra Leone,” in Ahmad A.
Sikainga and Ouesseina Alidou, eds., Postconflict Reconstruction in Africa (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World
Press, 2006).
63
“Rwanda,” The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency (2011), accessed October 20, 2011,
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rw.html.
64
Olsson, 324.
74
transitioning toward a more stable society with a developing economy. Since 2003, Rwanda has
experienced an average annual growth of 7-8% in gross domestic product (GDP) and has
attracted high rates of foreign investment.65 A decade and a half ago, most scholars would have
considered this transformation unimaginable, but the Rwandan government utilized transitional
justice mechanisms to overcome deep societal fissures and propel the society on a stable path
toward economic development. Like Sierra Leone, Rwanda blended national and international
institutions for transitional justice, and it also implemented mechanisms in a way that directly
affected local populations. Through the Gacaca trials, Rwanda leveraged the legitimacy of local
institutions while grounding its quest for justice in national and international law.
When Rwandan and international policymakers first explored the topic of transitional
justice, they not only debated the merits of restorative versus retributive justice, but also
examined at which level transitional justice should be implemented.66 According to Betts, the
Rwandan case exemplifies to the world that, “Less common, but also important, is not the issue
of which model is ‘best’, but at what level the appropriate model should be chosen and
implemented.” 67 Previously, transitional mechanisms had been decided and implemented
primarily at the nation-state level, but the extent of the atrocities and number of suspected
perpetrators prompted a more multi-level approach in Rwanda for both political and pragmatic
reasons.
Shocked by the atrocities, members of the international community lobbied for the
creation of a strong international tribunal to hold war criminals accountable. In response to this
demand for accountability, the United Nations established the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda (ICTR) in November 1994 “for the prosecution of persons responsible for genocide and
other serious violations of international humanitarian law committed…between 1 January 1994
and 31 December 1994.”68 The ICTR eventually indicted 80 people, conducted 15 trials, and
convicted 12 individuals.69 As of May 2012, six cases remained ongoing (ICTR).70 Located in
Arusha, Tanzania, the ICTR has been widely criticized for failing to affect the lives of most
Rwandans. In a 2002 study conducted by the Human Rights Center at the University of
California at Berkeley, 54.1% of 2,091 Rwandans said they would prefer the ICTR to be held in
Rwanda rather than Arusha.71 Although the court is closer to Rwanda than The Hague is to the
Congo, “the ICTR has been accused of being too remote from the people (both Tutsis and Hutus)
to facilitate national reconciliation.”72 Consequently, Tiemessen contends that Rwandans have
65
“Rwanda.”
Alana Erin Tiemessen, “After Arusha: Gacaca Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda,” African Studies Quarterly 8.1
(Fall 2004): 58.
67
Alexander Betts, “Should Approaches to Post-Conflict Justice and Reconciliation Be Determined Globally,
Nationally, or Locally?” European Journal of Development Research 17.4 (December 2005): 737.
68
“Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda,” Resolution 955, United Nations Security Council (8
November 1994).
69
Steven D. Ropier and Lilian A. Barria, Designing Criminal Tribunals: Sovereignty and International Concerns in
the Protection of Human Rights (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006), 89.
70
“Status of Cases,” International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, accessed on May 8, 2012,
http://www.unictr.org/Cases/tabid/204/Default.aspx.
71
Timothy Longman, Phuong Pham, and Harvey M. Weinstein, “Connecting justice to human experience: attitudes
toward accountability and reconciliation in Rwanda,” in Eric Stover and Harvey M. Weinstein, eds., My Neighbor,
My Enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2004), 214.
72
Ropier, 91.
66
75
also been “essentially unaffected” by the ICTR due to its distance from Rwanda and the
tribunal’s “politicized nature,” in which the international community seeks punitive
accountability to assuage its guilt while the Tutsi-dominated bureaucracy leverages this guilt to
its advantage.73
Although the ICTR has been heavily criticized, many scholars see it playing an important
role in the quest for international justice. Along with the International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), it is seen as a predecessor to the ICC and Akhavvan asserts that
“empirical evidence suggests that the ICTY and the ICTR have significantly contributed to peace
building in postwar societies, as well as to introducing criminal accountability into the culture of
international relations.” 74 However, a mere 29.2% of Rwandans approved of the ICTR
proceedings and only 37.8% thought that the tribunal was fair to all ethnic groups. 75 This low
approval could be attributed to the ICTR’s lack of communication with most Rwandans, as 55.9%
of respondents said they were “not well informed” about the ICTR’s mission or proceedings.76
As the ICTR prosecuted top genocidaires, other notorious perpetrators who committed
multiple crimes or were especially brutal were prosecuted by national courts. Of the 130,000
people originally capture d after the genocide, 6,500 had been tried at the national level by
2003.77 Rwandans generally have higher approval ratings of national tribunals than the ICTR.
Fifty-one percent of respondents said that the national tribunals “had gone well” and 65.6%
thought that they had contributed to national reconciliation.78 These trials were limited, however,
by Rwanda’s underdeveloped judiciary. Judges were frequently targeted during the genocide and
only 244 of 750 judges survived to preside over post-conflict tribunals.79 This devastated the
Rwandan court system and reduced its capacity to handle a large number of prosecutions. The
national courts prosecuted some cases, but there were also tens of thousands of suspected
perpetrators in prison in the immediate aftermath of the genocide. Prison overcrowding and the
swelling demand for justice led 70.2% of Rwandans to agree with the statement that prosecution
of genocide suspects “had taken too long.”80 Policymakers therefore sought to formulate a new
approach to handle the incredible number of cases at the local level.
Originally a method for settling village or familial disputes, the traditional Gacaca
mechanism is an informal court consisting of “people of integrity,” or inyangamugayo, who are
elected to hear cases of their fellow villagers.81 In the immediate aftermath of genocide, many
Rwandans proposed to use Gacaca to foster reconciliation through local truth telling, but the
government decided to alter this mechanism to conduct thousands of prosecutions. Ten thousand
73
Tiemessen: 60.
Payam Akhavan, “Beyond Impunity: Can International Criminal Justice Prevent Future Atrocities?” The
American Journal of International Law 95.1 (January 2001): 9.
75
Longman: 214.
76
Ibid, 213.
77
Tiemessen: 59.
78
Longman: 216.
79
Tiemessen: 59.
80
Longman, 216.
81
Lars Waldorf, “Like Jews Waiting for Jesus: Posthumous Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda,” in Rosalind Shaw,
Lars Waldorf, and Pierre Hazan, eds., Localizing Transitional Justice: Interventions and Priorities after Mass
Violence (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010), 186.
74
76
community courts were established with nearly 260,000 lay judges “to try lower-level suspects
for murder, manslaughter, assault, and property offenses during the genocide.”82
After undergoing a pilot phase from June 2002 to December 2004, Gacaca was launched
nationwide and most of the trials were completed by the end of 2007. The trial phase officially
ended in December 2009. Although Gacaca was meant to deliver justice swiftly, it took a decade
and a half for the last verdict to be delivered because of the incredible outpouring of accusations
the Gacaca courts received. Intended to try approximately 100,000 people, accusations flooded
in that added up to more than a million cases, including 450,000 people accused of violent
crimes.83
Like the South African TRC, Gacaca transformed the discourse on transitional justice. Its
inception was widely praised for having the potential to bridge the gap between retributive and
restorative justice while contextualizing the implementation of transitional mechanisms within
local customs and traditions. Gacaca also helped to alleviate overcrowding in the prisons while
fostering reintegration and reconciliation in Rwanda’s villages. The actual implementation of the
mechanism, however, was far different from what policymakers originally anticipated. Although
the courts appeared to be directed from the grassroots, they were closely administered by the
Tutsi-dominated bureaucracy. All members of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), who
committed numerous abuses after the genocide, were immune from prosecution. 84 Because
Gacaca only tried Hutu perpetrators, Corey and Joireman suggest that “the Gacaca has become a
tool for imposing a Tutsi-defined collective memory that risks perpetuating exclusion and
division.”85
The modern adaptation of Gacaca also differed greatly from its traditional form by
focusing primarily on punitive justice while doing little to promote community healing or
reconciliation. Gacaca was originally reserved for low-level crimes and it served as a place for
families to come together and trade animals to atone for wrongdoing. 86 It would never have
handled cases of homicide and would certainly have never meted prison sentences. The modern
Gacaca has dispensed so many sentences that it has been accused of undermining the healing
and reconciliation it originally sought to foster. By forcing neighbors to testify against one
another, “Gacaca did not just fail to reconcile; it actually made it more difficult, as the uneasy
coexistence among neighbors was up-ended by accusations and counteraccusations.”87
Despite this criticism, 82.9% of Rwandans said that they “had confidence in the Gacaca
process” and 90.8% reported that “Gacaca judges were selected fairly in my community.” 88
Participants in this study had some misgivings about Gacaca—56% expressed concerns that
Gacaca judges “were not well qualified” and 37.8% thought that crimes committed by RPF
members should be investigated—but 84.2% said that Gacaca had “contributed to reconciliation.”
Perhaps the most telling success of Gacaca is that 98.8% of respondents knew enough about the
82
Waldorf, 187.
Ibid, 183.
84
Tiemessen: 57.
85
Allison Corey and Sandra F. Joireman, “Retributive Justice: The Gacaca Courts in Rwanda,” African Affairs
103.410 (2004): 748.
86
Waldorf, 198.
87
Ibid.
88
Longman, 217.
83
77
mechanism to comment on its effectiveness. 89 Although this figure could be unique to this
particular survey, the fact that over 2,000 Rwandans in four different communities were familiar
with Gacaca shows that it affected people’s lives in ways that the ICTR did not. By initiating
dialogue in local communities and allowing people to engage in and observe the judicial process,
Gacaca became a personalized mechanism of transitional justice. It may have been administered
by a government that forced Rwandans to participate, but it had a much higher involvement rate
than national and international tribunals.
For many Congolese, who are even more detached from the ICC, this model provides
important insights. Gacaca itself would not be a very practical model for transitional justice in
the DRC; the number of accusations would likely be astounding and there is even less judicial
and state infrastructure than there was in Rwanda in 2002. However, a more localized institution
adapted from traditional customs could be useful in supplementing the transitional toolkit in the
DRC.
Since Rwanda paved the way for the adaptation of traditional mechanisms as tools for
transitional justice, several other African countries have incorporated this approach. In northern
Uganda, the rite of nyono tong gweno has helped reintegrate child soldiers into their home
communities after the insurrection by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). 90 This Acholi
cleansing ceremony allows people to rejoin their homestead after ceremoniously stepping on an
egg. 91 In Burundi, communities have utilized the bashingantahe institution, through which
traditional leaders arbitrate disputes and dispense punishments, to help communities move on
from the genocide of Tutsis in 1993. This informal court has been adapted by the National
Reconciliation Policy “to create a framework for dialogue and consultation between the different
factions of the Burundian people.”92 Like Gacaca, these mechanisms would not be a panacea for
bringing healing and accountability to the eastern Congo, but they demonstrate that by drawing
on local reservoirs of customs and institutions, traditional mechanisms have the potential to
allow communities to engage in transitional justice in a context more meaningful to them than
far-off institutions of international justice.
III. Seeking Justice in the DRC
As in Rwanda and Sierra Leone, civilians in the eastern Congo endured numerous
atrocities and abuses. When the Second Congo War drew to a close, most Congolese hoped for a
peaceful transition to a stable political order and policymakers began laying the groundwork for
the typical “toolkit” of post-conflict transitional mechanisms. The Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement
and the Pretoria Accord both offered amnesty to rebel groups to encourage them to lay down
their weapons, and they called for the creation of a Congolese TRC. Since those agreements,
89
Longman, 217.
James Ojera Latigo, “Northern Uganda: tradition-based practices in the Acholi region,” in Luc Huyse and Mark
Salter, eds., Traditional Justice and Reconciliation after Violent Conflict: Learning from African Experiences
(Stockholm: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance), 105.
91
Ibid.
92
Ann Nee and Peter Uvin, “Silence and Dialogue: Burundians’ Alternatives to Transitional Justice,” in Rosalin
Shaw, Lars Waldorf, and Pierre Hazan, eds., Localizing Transitional Justice: Interventions and Priorities after Mass
Violence (Stanford, California: Stanford University, 2010), 161.
90
78
however, the Congolese government and international actors have not formulated a holistic
approach to transitional justice. The ICC launched investigations in 2004 and the national
government has held some domestic tribunals, but a comprehensive plan for ensuring justice and
fostering reconciliation has yet to be envisioned.
Because policymakers have been concerned primarily with peacebuilding, transitional
justice has been seen almost as an afterthought. Although the Pretoria Accord called for the
establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission to document atrocities in the Congo,
initiate a national dialogue, and foster reconciliation, the TRC was underfunded and largely
ignored. Operating from 2003 to 2007, the TRC had a mandate to “promote the consolidation of
national unity” and was comprised of members from all eight national transitional parties. 93
Since each member had a vested interest in ensuring that the crimes and atrocities committed by
their respective groups were overlooked, the Commission did not investigate a single crime
during its tenure and barely consulted with victims and perpetrators.94 It failed to produce a final
report and Goodman calls the entire TRC process “cosmetic at best.”95
While this particular mechanism had virtually no impact on fostering a societal transition,
the truth and reconciliation model could be a viable option for the DRC. Eighty-eight percent of
people interviewed in the eastern Congo said that it is important to know the truth about what
happened during the conflict, even though most respondents were unsure of the best mechanism
for unveiling the truth.96 The primary weakness of the current TRC is that the eight political
parties each had an agenda that prohibited an honest and transparent investigation. Most effective
TRCs rely on nonpartisan judges who have a sincere commitment to exposing the truth, but the
selection of judges is primarily a political process. Because high-ranking members of the
Congolese government committed atrocities during and after the Congo Wars, it seems unlikely
that they will authorize a nonpartisan TRC in the near future. Although amnesty laws pardon
them on most counts, a public unveiling of a serious crime by a top official would cause a
government scandal and could result in a warrant from the ICC. Authentic truth-telling is
therefore closely linked to the political context of the DRC. Although the Kabila government’s
hold on power is tenuous, the regime is bolstered by the international community and it
demonstrated during the 2011 election that it is willing to use force to maintain its authority. It
therefore seems unlikely that the national political context will change until the next general
election in 2016.
While a nonpartisan, national TRC might be implausible for the near future,
policymakers could also consider creating truth and reconciliation commissions at the subnational, provincial, or local levels. Because political power in the Congo is dispersed among
sub-national actors, there might be enough political will in certain communities to initiate an
honest and transparent dialogue. Local elites might still view TRCs as challenging their authority,
but they are more likely to respond to community demands than the national government in
93
“Truth Commission: Democratic Republic of the Congo,” United States Institute of Peace, accessed October 11,
2011, http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-democratic-republic-congo.
94
Mireille Affa’a Mindzie, “Transitional Justice, Democratisation and the Rule of Law,” in Chandra Lekha Sriram
and Suren Pillay, eds., Peace versus Justice? The Dilemma of Transitional Justice in Africa (Scottsville, South
Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2009), 116.
95
Goodman: 217.
96
Vinck: 49.
79
Kinshasa. If citizens of a city or district demand to have a TRC, local leaders would have a
vested interest in creating one in order to appease their constituents. Leaders might try to
manipulate the judges or push the TRC in a certain direction, but a localized mechanism would
offer several advantages. Since national political power is not at stake, it would be less divisive
and could probably gain the backing of the Congolese government. Although initiating a TRC in
smaller, semi-homogenous communities could create immediate tension as neighbors testify
against one another, it would likely lead to more healing and reconciliation in the long run.
Because violence in the eastern provinces continues to be fueled by local fissures—where friends,
family members, and local leaders clash with one another—establishing space for local dialogue
is a crucial first step for encouraging community-based restoration.
Another transitional mechanism that has been utilized in the DRC is amnesty. Although
this was the first mechanism implemented in the DRC, it is perhaps the most controversial.
Amnesty is considered by many to be “the glue of the peace process” and Stearns asserts that
many combatants would not have laid down their weapons without it.97 In November 2005, the
Congolese Parliament fulfilled the Lusaka and Pretoria accords by granting amnesty for acts of
war and political offenses committed between August 1996 and June 2003, and in May 2009,
another law was passed that pardoned all “acts of war and insurrection,” excluding genocide, war
crimes, and crimes against humanity, committed in North and South Kivu since June 2003.98
Although many participants and observers of the peace process have credited amnesty for
laying the groundwork necessary for disarmament and demobilization, critics have accused this
“blanket amnesty” of fostering widespread impunity. In the Ituri district of the Oriental province,
where militias were accused of committing the worst atrocities, six rebel leaders were integrated
as generals in the Congolese army and 32 were given the rank of colonel, lieutenant colonel, or
commander during the transition.99 These generals included Germain Katanga, who is now being
prosecuted by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and Laurent Nkunda, who is
widely recognized as one of the most brutal warlords in the world.100
Goodman asserts that such impunity has created the “mirage” of peace because social
fissures and patronage group rivalries continue to cause violence at the local level despite the
illusion of “peace on paper.”101 By incorporating rebel leaders into the transitional government in
exchange for amnesty, the Pretoria Accord distributed lucrative and powerful positions to leaders
who had been accused of human rights abuses. These leaders gained legitimacy, prestige, and
control of natural resources once they were incorporated into the government and they were also
granted access to the state coffers. Each vice president in the transition government was given
$250,000 (USD) per month for personal use, and ministers and parliamentarians received
allowances of $4,000 and $1,500 a month, respectively.102
97
Jason K. Stearns, “Congo’s Peace: Miracle or Mirage?,” Current History (23 April 2007), accessed October 5,
2011, http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/africa/central-africa/dr-congo/congos-peace-miracle-or-mirage.aspx.
98
“2009 DRC Amnesty Law,” International Center for Transitional Justice (2009), accessed October 10, 2011,
http://ictj.org/sites/default/files/ICTJ-DRC-Amnesty-Facts-2009-English.pdf.
99
Stearns.
100
Ibid.
101
Goodman: 218.
102
Stearns.
80
Such payments certainly contributed to enticing rebel leaders to stop fighting and join the
transitional government in 2002, but they also undermined the quest for justice and
accountability and created an unintended patchwork of patronage groups that compete in various
branches of the Congolese government. Throughout the Congolese Parliament, FARDC, and all
government ministries, representation was divided between the eight most powerful military and
political groups of the transition: Kabila’s former government, the Mai Mai, the MLC, the
Political Opposition, the RCD-G, the RCD-Kisangani/Liberation Movement, the RCD-National,
and the Civil Society. 103 Even after the transition officially ended in 2006, most departments
within the Congolese government and military continued to operate along party lines, and parties
were loosely based on regions within the DRC. Under this fragmented network of authority,
subnational political structures often have more power than the central government, and both
Kabila and international policymakers are keenly aware that this tenuous power-sharing
arrangement could eventually fracture and collapse. Although proponents of amnesty argue that
it is an effective mechanism for creating peace, the political situation in the Congo is far from
stable. Thus, the common argument that the peace that amnesty brings outweighs the effects of
justice might not hold true for the eastern provinces.
Many Congolese also view amnesty as undermining the search for justice and
accountability. In 2007, 85% of Congolese said that it is important to hold war criminals
accountable and only 2% reported that such accountability can arise from amnesty.104 While the
first amnesty law pardoning crimes committed during the Congo Wars could be justified as a
necessary part of the peacebuilding process, the second amnesty law in 2009 seems
counterproductive to the goals of the transition. It did little to encourage militias to cease fighting;
it merely perpetuated the culture of impunity. By creating a pattern of giving amnesty, the
Congolese government has erased a powerful deterrent from violence and exploitation. Since
perpetrators are not held accountable for their actions and might anticipate more amnesty laws in
the future, they lack any incentive to obey the laws and stop committing acts of violence.
Congolese citizens and members of the international community have responded to this
impunity by calling for judicial mechanisms to punish perpetrators for war crimes and crimes
against humanity. Between 2002 and 2004, the Congolese transitional government and military
courts prosecuted more than a dozen individuals accused of war crimes and crimes against
humanity, but these trials were highly political and sharply criticized.105 Because the Congolese
judiciary is underdeveloped, underfunded, and unwilling to prosecute high-ranking government
officials, few policymakers view it as a viable way to ensure accountability. Even the Kabila
government acknowledged the judiciary’s shortcomings by inviting the International Criminal
Court to begin investigating abuses in the eastern provinces in 2004.106
Outlined by the Rome Statute in 1998 and enacted in 2002, the ICC was a relatively new
institution when it launched an investigation into atrocities committed in the Ituri district of the
Oriental province. The Court focused on the Ituri district for its investigation because the
atrocities there were particularly brutal and the UN and nongovernmental organizations had
103
“Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
Vinck: 43.
105
James Tsabora, “Prosecuting Congolese War Crimes,” Peace Review 23.2 (2011): 163.
106
Mindzie, 116.
104
81
already documented many of the abuses in the district.107 Out of the 66,000 square-kilometer, 4.2
million-person area, at least 60,000 people were killed in combat and half a million had to flee
their homes.108 Conscription of child soldiers was common and it was not unheard of for militias
to mutilate and cannibalize corpses and gang-rape thousands of women.109 The ICC has issued
warrants for the arrest of five leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in
the Ituri district. Four of these leaders, Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, Germain Katanga, Mathieu
Ngudjolo Chui, and Callixte Mbarushimana, have been apprehended and prosecuted at The
Hague. While Katanga and Chui’s prosecutions remain ongoing, the court declined to confirm
the eight war crimes charges and five counts of crimes against humanity against Callixte
Mbarushimana on December 16, 2011. Citing lack of evidence, the ICC released him from
custody a week later.110
A warrant was also issued for Bosco Ntaganda, who is currently serving as a general in
the Congolese army and has been accused of ordering the massacres of 800 civilians in the Ituri
district and 150 civilians in North Kivu.111 He leads the National Congress for the Defense of the
People (CNDP), and many ex-CNDP soldiers who integrated into FARDC remain loyal to him
directly.112 Because he agreed to help FARDC fight the Forces Democratiques de Liberation du
Rwanda (FDLR), Ntaganda was given “money from Kinshasa…and a guarantee that the Congo
would grant him amnesty and protect him against ICC prosecution.”113 This case highlights the
tension and competing aims of international justice and the political situation in the DRC.
Although the government remains adamant that giving amnesty to Ntaganda is vital to the peace
process, their refusal to turn him over to the ICC undermines the tribunals and reinforces the
culture of impunity in the eastern provinces.
As Ntaganda continues to elude the ICC, the court issued its first verdict on March 14,
2012 and found Thomas Lubanga guilty of “enlisting and conscripting children under the age of
15 into the Patriotic Force for the Liberation of the Congo (FPLC) and using them to participate
actively in hostilities,” which is a war crime outlined in the Rome Statute. 114 The Lubanga
verdict was greeted with mixed reactions by the international community. The Economist called
it “a victory for international justice and for Mr. Lubanga’s myriad child victims,” but others
criticized the court for a number of reasons.115 It took over a decade for the court to reach its first
verdict and the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) has faced difficulties meeting its goals. The
Mbarushimana case highlights the high burden of proof demanded of international prosecutors
and the incredible challenges of working with local authorities. The Rome Statute calls for the
ICC to meet these challenges through the principle of “positive complementarity,” which
mandates that the court promote national prosecutions and foster the rule of law at the local
107
Adam Hochschild, “The Trials of Thomas Lubanga,” Atlantic (December 2009): 78.
Ibid.
109
Ibid: 79.
110
“Cases and Situations,” International Criminal Court, accessed May 2, 2012, http://www.icccpi.int/Menus/ICC/Situations+and+Cases/Situations/Situation+ICC+0104/.
111
Ibid.
112
Mac McClelland, “To Catch a Warlord,” Mother Jones (September/October 2011): 52.
113
Goodman: 224.
114
“Cases and Situations.”
115
“The ICC’s first verdict,” Economist 402.8776 (17 March 2012).
108
82
level.116 Instead of sharing information and building judicial infrastructure, however, the ICC has
taken evidence from national courts and given little in return. There have been small efforts to
train Congolese judges, but these programs should be expanded in the future.117 The OTP should
also share its specialized knowledge of abuses committed in the Ituri district with local
prosecutors, since such collaboration would benefit Congolese tribunals without impeding the
court’s efforts.
While having a close working relationship with national prosecutors would benefit the
Congolese judiciary, the ICC has also been accused of working too intimately with the Kabila
government. Because complementarity relies on some acquiescence by the national government,
ICC prosecutions are inherently political. While the court has investigated Kabila’s rivals, no
high-ranking member of the Congolese government, with the exception of Ntaganda, has been
indicted by the ICC.118 Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo even visited Kinshasa after the
Lubanga verdict to thank President Kabila “for his commitment and support for the case.”119 In
neighboring Uganda, the ICC has issued five warrants against leaders of the Lord’s Resistance
Army but has not taken action against the Ugandan government, which has also been accused of
committing war crimes and abuses. 120 Although the ICC relies on national governments to
collect evidence and apprehend perpetrators, intimate friendships may cause the court to
overlook crimes committed by top government officials, which undermines the quest for justice
and accountability.
Another salient criticism against the ICC is that even a successful prosecution has little to
no effect on the victims and perpetrators in the eastern Congo. Since The Hague is 6,000 km
away from the Oriental province, Piranio and others have claimed that the trials are too far
removed from the daily lives of most Congolese to be seen as legitimate.121 To respond to this
criticism, the ICC established an outreach office in Bunia, the capital of Ituri, where videos of
the tribunals are shown to passersby.122 Since the videos are shown in French and most people in
Ituri speak Swahili, most residents do not understand them and the majority of Ituri residents are
unlikely to wander by the ICC office.123 Despite the ICC’s efforts, most Congolese have had
little input or interaction with the court’s proceedings. While 67% of residents in the eastern
provinces had heard of the ICC and expressed interest in participating in its activities, only 27%
of respondents had heard about the Lubanga trial or knew any details about the court’s
proceedings.124
Because the court has only investigated a handful of perpetrators, it has also left an
“impunity gap” of thousands of crimes and abuses unaccounted for. As one Congolese man at
116
Géraldine Mattioli and Anneke van Woudenberg, “Global Catalyst for National Prosecutions? The ICC in the
Democratic Republic of Congo,” in Nicholas Waddell and Phil Clark, eds., Courting Conflict? Justice, Peace and
the ICC in Africa (London: Royal African Society, 2008), 58.
117
Ibid, 61.
118
Ibid, 56.
119
“After Lubanga, ICC Vows to Go After Other Warlods,” The New Times (Kigali) (17 March 2012).
120
“Cases and Situations.”
121
Cristopher J. Piranio, “The International Criminal Court and African ‘Victimhood,’” Contemporary Review 291
(Summer 2009).
122
Hochschild: 78.
123
Ibid.
124
Vinck: 3.
83
the ICC outreach office in Bunia asked, “Why is Lubanga on trial, when others who did the same
thing are working with the government?”125 “Why is he being judged for this?” another man
asked. “I was not forced to enter [Lubanga’s army]. All our houses were burned. We had
nowhere to go—and Lubanga accepted me.” 126 While the three warlords still undergoing
prosecution at The Hague may eventually be punished for the crimes they committed, thousands
of other perpetrators have not been brought to justice. Because of this unresolved societal
memory, the International Center for Transitional Justice claims that “the Congolese government
has yet to initiate a meaningful transitional justice process to address Congo’s legacy of massive
human rights violations, despite sustained civil society advocacy to do so.”127
IV. Maximizing Legitimacy and Effectiveness
As policymakers look to address the legacy of violence and foster justice and
accountability in the eastern provinces, they should consider a more comprehensive and
contextualized approach to transitional justice. As current scholarship on conflict in the eastern
provinces indicates, sub-national political, economic, and social fissures have fueled ongoing
violence in ways that defy conventional conceptions of post-conflict transition. Rwanda and
Sierra Leone’s experiences with transitional justice also demonstrate that dynamic and
innovative mechanisms that extend beyond macro-level frameworks can help societies transition
to a more peaceful political order. International and Congolese policymakers can learn from
these experiences to formulate transitional mechanisms that maximize the legitimacy of
institutions at every level of analysis.
The current methods of transitional justice implemented in the Oriental, Katanga, and
North and South Kivu provinces have lacked legitimacy and have had very little effect on the
lives of most Congolese. While the ICC tribunals have taken steps toward holding warlords
accountable, the trials left out an incredible number of high-level abuses. This lack of
prosecution has fostered a culture of impunity in which warlords have become generals in
FARDC and members of the Congolese government. Although these high-level amnesties helped
to facilitate the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement and Pretoria Peace Accord, they have not led to the
formation of a stable national government. Rather, these leaders and political parties have
formed a sub-national patchwork of patronage groups that compete with one another to solidify
their power and exploit the Congo’s vast natural resources. There are also many militias, citizens,
and local entrepreneurs who do not swear allegiance to any authority, national or sub-national.
The conventional peacebuilding models would claim that these actors have had a minor
effect on the processes of conflict and reconciliation, and that their fighting at the local level is a
reaction to national and international forces. However, local dynamics in the Congo are not mere
manifestations of national, regional, and international forces; rather, the local dynamics
themselves have fueled national and regional tension. To create a lasting peace, local actors need
to be included in the peacebuilding process and have a voice in the formation and
implementation of mechanisms of transitional justice. Most decisions concerning transitional
125
Hochschild: 79.
Ibid.
127
“2009 DRC Amnesty Law.”
126
84
justice have been made by policymakers abroad—not by civilians in the eastern provinces.
Decisions made in The Hague or New York are far removed from local communities, which
diminishes the agency and ability of Congolese actors to engage in transitional processes. And
because the international effort to fight impunity has had such a minimal effect on Congolese
civilians, it has left a profound societal memory in the eastern provinces that has not been dealt
with.
There are two overarching strategies for ending cycles of revenge and establishing a
lasting peace: dealing with past atrocities or forgetting. In Burundi, many civilians preferred the
latter strategy for emerging from the devastating conflict of the early 1990s. Nee and Uvin
describe how most Burundians preferred “forgetting, akin to a general pardon, rather than
prosecution…because such large numbers of people of all ethnic groups committed crimes,
nearly the entire population would be in jeopardy of prosecution if any were punished.” 128
Meanwhile, Buckley-Zistel also writes how many Rwandans used “chosen amnesia” to forget
about past atrocities and move on with their day-to-day lives.129
Forgetting can be a powerful tool that helps people return to “normalcy,” but it also
requires them to have stable jobs, communities, and relationships to fall back on. With 61% of
people living below the poverty line nationwide and extremely high unemployment in the eastern
provinces, Congolese civilians are drawn to militias as the best way to ensure security, make a
living, and find belonging.130 Any successful transition program should be coupled with a robust
push to strengthen Congolese civil society and engage in economic development, but a growing
and stable economy may still be a long way off.
Thus, carefully planned and implemented transitional justice mechanisms could play a
crucial role in helping societies in the eastern provinces to overcome violence and disorder.
Although Sierra Leone and Rwanda are vastly different in terms of size and geography as the
DRC, these case studies illustrate that transitional mechanisms can be beneficial when adapted to
meet the particular context of a post-conflict society. While the countries as a whole are difficult
to compare, the four provinces of Oriental, Katanga, and North and South Kivu are a more
manageable area closer in size to Rwanda and Sierra Leone.
Despite numerous challenges for fostering peace and accountability, most Congolese
believe that peace is attainable for the eastern provinces. Ninety percent of residents in the Ituri
District and North and South Kivu said that “peace can be achieved,” and they defined peace
primarily as national unity and togetherness (49%), the end of fear (47%), and the absence of
violence (41%).131 Eighty percent of respondents said that “justice can be achieved,” and they
defined justice as establishing truth (51%), applying the law (49%), and being just/fair (48%).132
When asked how this justice should be achieved, 51% preferred the national court system, 26%
favored the ICC, 15% supported military tribunals, and 15% said traditional/customary judicial
128
Nee, 163.
Susanne Buckley-Zistel, “Remembering to Forget: Chosen Amnesia as a Strategy for Local Coexistence in PostGenocide Rwanda,” Africa: Journal of African International Institute 76.2 (2006).
130
“Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
131
Vinck: 2.
132
Ibid.
129
85
mechanisms.133 Although 82% of Congolese wanted the international community to assist with
prosecutions, 85% expressed a desire for trials to be held in the DRC.134
These statistics reveal that most Congolese have a sincere belief that peace and justice
can be achieved despite the persistent cycles of violence and impunity in the eastern provinces.
Although public opinion is split on the best ways to achieve justice and accountability, the
majority of respondents favor a stronger national judiciary. They are not opposed to the
international community supporting the quest for Congolese justice, but there is very little
support for tribunals being held outside the DRC. While few respondents called for the creation
of traditional and customary mechanisms, many Congolese might be unfamiliar with these
approaches and not necessarily opposed to them being included as part of a comprehensive
strategy for transitional justice. Depending on the particular customs and institutions available to
Congolese communities, traditional mechanisms might be able to play a role in fostering
dialogue and creating accountability at the local level. Although there are many criticisms of
Gacaca, its greatest success was involving millions of people in the transitional process. In the
eastern provinces, where violence remains a daily part of many people’s lives, there is little
evidence that a transition is even occurring, let alone achieving peace and reconciliation.
As policymakers create a more comprehensive approach to Congolese transitional justice,
they should optimize the legitimacy of institutions at each level of analysis to maximize efficacy.
The most effective transitional mechanisms could be funded by the international community and
grounded in national and international law, supported and administrated by the national
government, and implemented at the local level with input from local populations. Because
policymakers already have resources and institutions to draw upon, they should utilize what
every level does best. While prosecuting warlords at The Hague may not have much legitimacy
or effectiveness in the eyes of many Congolese, the international community has expressed a
willingness to fund and encourage domestic mechanisms of transitional justice. The United
Nations, the ICC, and other international actors could expand efforts to build national judicial
infrastructure and fund local projects for peacebuilding and community-based restoration.
Although the Kabila government diminished its legitimacy by resorting to violence in the
2011 general election, the national government is still the most powerful institution for
formulating and implementing transitional mechanisms. Sierra Leone and Rwanda both
benefited from having national governments that were committed to transitional justice, but the
Congolese government has yet to exhibit a sincere commitment to fostering accountability and
reconciliation. In the current international system, where national sovereignty trumps
international law, the national government is the most legitimate institution for grounding
transitional mechanisms. International actors could pressure the Congolese government to
engage in transitional justice by tying foreign aid to specific objectives, but the final decision on
implementation ultimately rests with the national government. Because of this reality, national
politics need to be taken into account during any discussion of Congolese transitional justice.
In the current political context of the DRC, power is tenuously divided among competing
leaders and interest groups. Unlike Rwanda and Sierra Leone, where more homogenous
governments were able to create and implement mechanisms without causing political upheaval,
133
134
Vinck: 2.
Ibid: 3.
86
the Congolese government will probably shy away from national trials and commissions that
bring unwanted attention and controversy to government actors. This silence and impunity could
hurt the country in the long run, however, as corruption, violence, and mistrust weigh down the
Congolese government. Fairer elections in 2016 could create the political will to initiate an
honest national dialogue, but it seems unlikely that the current Congolese elite will ever cede
power completely. The international community might therefore be in the best position to hold
the Congolese government accountable by encouraging justice and accountability.
By funding over half of the Congo’s national budget every year, international actors
wield considerable influence on the government’s actions.135 They could link foreign aid, and
military aid in particular, to successful prosecutions of high-level abuses. The ICC could even
step in and prosecute a key government official, which would strain the relationship between the
Congolese government and the ICC, but would probably not sever it entirely. The Congolese
government depends on international actors for both security and foreign aid and is likely to
respond to incentives for making effective policies. This relationship should not be coercive,
however, and the most practical way to begin fostering justice and accountability is a successful
partnership between the Congolese government and international community that focuses on
achieving healing and reconciliation at the local level.
Because conflict in the eastern provinces continues to be fueled by local actors, militias
that are perpetuating cycles of violence and exploitation need to be brought into the
peacebuilding process and encouraged to lay down their weapons. Although most of these actors
are covered by Congolese amnesty laws, those who committed war crimes or crimes against
humanity should be held accountable by national and military tribunals. While the ICC might be
the best vehicle for prosecuting the most controversial of these cases, there are far too many
perpetrators for international tribunals to be effective. Some international actors have already
begun to build judicial infrastructure and strengthen the Congolese judiciary, but these efforts
should be expanded and consolidated. Most Congolese expressed a desire for more national
tribunals, which would be effective forums for prosecuting serious abuses. However, national
tribunals will inevitably be influenced by national politics. By immediately upholding Kabila’s
victory in the 2011 general election, the Congolese Supreme Court was criticized for making a
“premature, unfair, and poorly considered” decision and for being biased toward the president.136
Other national trials could display similar biases.
Moreover, in a country the size of Western Europe, national tribunals could also seem
just as far removed from the lives of most Congolese as prosecutions in The Hague. To make
transitional justice relevant for local populations, the national government and international
community should consider implementing mechanisms that foster local dialogue and
accountability. Such mechanisms could include provincial or district-level truth and
reconciliation commissions, processes of customary or traditional justice, or local forums or
tribunals. Although localized mechanisms have the potential to be coopted by local elites and
could cause friction in the short run by bringing attention to atrocities and abuses, such
mechanisms are likely to expand participation and result in long-term healing and reconciliation.
135
136
“Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
“U.S. Policy toward Post-Election Democratic Republic of Congo,” States News Service (2 February 2012).
87
To ensure that localized transitional justice mechanisms are effective, more research
needs to be done on the context of the Oriental, North and South Kivu, and Katanga provinces.
There may be traditional customs and institutions that policymakers can utilize to initiate
dialogue and foster accountability, or new mechanisms might need to be created from scratch.
Either way, local actors and marginalized groups should be included at the forefront of the
transitional process and have a say in deciding which mechanisms are implemented. Women and
young people are often marginalized in Congolese national politics, but they have been
perpetrators, victims, survivors, and observers in the ongoing violence and can play important
roles in the processes of healing and reconciliation. Schwartz argues that women and youth “can
be agents of peace given the right constellation of reconstruction programs” because they have a
special interest in creating a stable and prosperous future.137
Ultimately, there is no clear model for transitional justice in the eastern provinces. What
is clear is that conventional, macro-level frameworks of analysis have oversimplified the
political, economic, and sociocultural context of the eastern provinces and that current
mechanisms of transitional justice have not brought peace and accountability to the DRC. An
organized, comprehensive, and creative approach to transitional justice could result in
mechanisms that are adapted to fit the challenges and demands of Congolese communities, but
such inventiveness will only come from a more inclusive analytical approach. Otherwise,
transitional justice will continue to have the same limited effect as the Congolese TRC and ICC
prosecutions: it will be far removed from the lives of people living in the eastern DRC and fail to
stop the violence and abuses they continue to face.
137
Stephanie Schwartz, Youth and Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Agents of Change (Washington, D.C.: United
States Institute of Peace, 2010), 13.
88
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If You’re Happy and You Know It: Understanding the Relationship Between Emotion
and Music Production in 3rd-5th Graders
According to the American Music Therapy Association, music therapy is an established
health profession in which music therapists use music-based interventions in the therapy setting.
In some cases working with a music therapist may provide, “avenues for communication that can
be helpful to those who find it difficult to express themselves in words (AMTA, 2012).” For
example, an individual may show difficulty speaking about their emotions. Not only do music
therapist’s work with problems in patient’s emotions, over the years, psychologists have
increased general research on emotion (Leupoldt, Rohde, Beregova, Thordsen –Sörensen,
Nieden, Dahme, 2007).
According to Kleinginna and Kleinginna (1981), there are 92 identified definitions for
emotion. While there is still no consensus on what an emotion is, Davidson, Scherer, and
Goldsmith’s1 (2003) definition is commonly cited. Emotion research has distinguished primary
emotions, two of these being happy and sad (Izard, 1994; Buss & Plomin, 1984). Happy and sad
emotions reflect more easily identified emotions that are readily understood subjectively and can
be described in more detail than complex emotions.
Since the research on emotion is extremely controversial, the subject also becomes very
difficult to measure; however, there is a commonality among definitions that emotion is
subjective (Sloboda & Juslin, 2010). Scientists have used various forms of self-report methods
to understand what people are subjectively experiencing (Watson, et al., 2007). These self-report
methods have proven to be the most accurate in assessing emotion (Sloboda & Juslin, 2010).
Psychological research on the emotion and music connection primarily focuses on the
relationship between emotion and music listening (Sloboda & Juslin, 2010). These relationships
were found between listening to music and inducing a mood (Vastfjall, 2002), between listening
to speech and listening to music (Juslin, 1997), individual perceptions of emotions when
listening to music (Kivy, 1990), and self-reported emotions and psychophysiological response
while listening to music (Rickard, 2004; Juslin &Vastfjall, 2008). Despite the quantity of
research on the relationship between emotion and music listening there is no known research on
a relationship between emotion and music production.
I explored this relationship between emotion and music production in 3rd-5th grade
students at Toliver Elementary School in Danville, Kentucky. Participants played what they
believed to be happy and sad music on five instruments: a piano, a guitar, an Orff (xylophone), a
hand drum, and a recorder. Their music was coded for four musical characteristics: tempo,
dynamics, style, and pitch range. Since there is no known research on this relationship I made
generalized hypotheses based on results found in aforementioned studies on music listening and
mood. I hypothesized the following: the tempo of happy music would be faster on every
instrument, the dynamics would be louder on every instrument, more chords would be used on
every instrument (style would only be only analyzed on the piano, Orff, and guitar), and the pitch
range would be higher on every instrument (pitch range would only be analyzed on the piano,
orff, and guitar). I did not hypothesize any differences in tempo, dynamics, style, and pitch
1
“Emotions are relatively brief, intense, and rapidly changing responses to potentially important
events (challenges/opportunities) in the external or internal environment, usually of a social
nature, which involve a number of subcomponents (cognitive changes, subjective feelings,
expressive behavior, and action tendencies) that are more or less ‘synchronized.’”
97
range between instruments. Furthermore, I hypothesized that participant’s mood would become
more positive after they completed the study compared to when they began the study.
Additionally, I predicted that participants would show difficulty expressing what emotion-driven
music sounds like orally.
Method
Participants
Thirty-six Toliver Elementary School students (17 males, 19 females, age range: 17 third
graders, 7 fourth graders, 12 fifth graders) were recruited through a parental consent form sent
home with students. Convenience sampling was used. Participants came to the study
individually over two consecutive days, fifteen minutes each time. One day they played happy
music and the other day they played sad music.
Materials and Procedure
The music classroom at Toliver Elementary was used. A Casio CTK-3000 piano, an
Epiphone guitar, a two-octave alto Orff, a 2x8 inch Remo hand drum, and Suzuki recorders were
set up in a line at the front of the classroom with a flip video camera set up in front of the
instruments. For mood measurement the SAM-VP-9 mood scale was used (see appendix A).
Participants individually arrived to the classroom to complete the study and were
randomly assigned to play happy or sad music. Upon arrival participants were asked to fill out
the mood scale and were informed which type of music they would play that day. Next
participants were randomly assigned the order that they would play each of the five instruments.
Participants went through the following two steps for each instrument. First, they were given 30
seconds to familiarize themselves with the sound the instrument could produce. Second,
participants were told to produce happy or sad music (dependent on which day they were
assigned to play each type of music). I turned on the video camera and left the room during
music production. I gave participants a minute to produce music but they could stop playing at
any time. After following the two-step process on each instrument, participants were asked to
fill out another mood scale and to orally answer the following questions: Which instrument
sounded the happiest/saddest to you? Can you describe to me in words what happy/sad music
sounds like? Participants returned the next day to play whichever music type they had not
played the day before, following the same procedure described above.
Results
Coding
Videotaped sessions for each participant were observed by two researchers and coded with the
following scales.
Piano
Tempo – coded with [1 2- 2 2+ 3] scale -1 being slow and 3 being fast. For analysis
this was changed to a [1 2 3 4 5] scale.
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Dynamics – coded with a [1 2- 2 2+ 3] scale -1 being soft and 3 being loud. For
analysis this was changed to a [1 2 3 4 5] scale.
Style - researchers used a computer while watching the tapes. They pressed ‘s’ when
participants hit one note at a time and pressed ‘c’ when participants hit more than one
note at a time. The percentage of times researchers pressed ‘s’ was calculated.
Pitch Range – coded with a [1 2 3 4] scale – 1 being low notes, 2 being middle notes, 3
being high notes, and 4 being all over the instrument.
Guitar
Tempo – coded with [1 2- 2 2+ 3] scale -1 being slow and 3 being fast. For analysis
this was changed to a [1 2 3 4 5] scale.
Dynamics – coded with a [1 2- 2 2+ 3] scale -1 being soft and 3 being loud. For
analysis this was changed to a [1 2 3 4 5] scale.
Style - researchers used a computer while watching the tapes. They pressed ‘s’ when
participants plucked one string at a time and pressed ‘c’ when participants plucked
more than one string at a time/strummed the guitar. The percentage of times
researchers pressed ‘s’ was calculated.
Pitch Range – coded with a [1 2 3] scale – 1 being low notes, 2 being high notes, and 3
being all over the instrument (strumming the majority of the time).
Orff
Tempo – coded with [1 2- 2 2+ 3] scale -1 being slow and 3 being fast. For analysis
this was changed to a [1 2 3 4 5] scale.
Dynamics – coded with a [1 2- 2 2+ 3] scale -1 being soft and 3 being loud. For
analysis this was changed to a [1 2 3 4 5] scale.
Style - researchers used a computer while watching the tapes. They pressed ‘s’ when
participants hit one note at a time and pressed ‘c’ when participants hit more than one
note at a time. The percentage of times researchers pressed ‘s’ was calculated.
Pitch Range – coded with a [1 2 3] scale – 1 being low notes, 2 being high notes, 3
being all over the instrument.
Hand Drum
Tempo – coded with [1 2- 2 2+ 3] scale -1 being slow and 3 being fast. For analysis
this was changed to a [1 2 3 4 5] scale.
Dynamics – coded with a [1 2- 2 2+ 3] scale -1 being soft and 3 being loud. For
analysis this was changed to a [1 2 3 4 5] scale.
Style - researchers used a computer while watching the tapes. They pressed ‘s’ when
participants hit the drum with the stick of the mallet, pressed ‘c’ when participants hit
the center of the drum with the mallet, and pressed ‘h’ when participants hit the drum
with their hand. The percentage of times researchers pressed ‘s,’ ‘c,’ and ‘h’ were
calculated.
Recorder
Tempo – coded with [1 2- 2 2+ 3] scale -1 being slow and 3 being fast. For analysis
this was changed to a [1 2 3 4 5] scale.
Dynamics – coded with a [1 2- 2 2+ 3] scale -1 being soft and 3 being loud. For
analysis this was changed to a [1 2 3 4 5] scale.
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Inter-rater Reliability
Correlation tests were run to check inter-rater reliability for each characteristic (tempo,
dynamics, style, and pitch range) on each instrument. Every characteristic on every instrument
had high correlations between the two researchers: happy piano tempo r(31) = .86, p < .01,
happy piano dynamics r(31) = .88, p < .01, happy piano style r(31) = 1.00, p < .01, happy piano
range r(31) = 1.00, p < .01, sad piano tempo r(31) = .95, p < .01, sad piano dynamics r(31) = .97,
p < .01, sad piano style r(31) = 1.00, p < .01, sad piano range r(31) = .91, p < .01, happy guitar
tempo r(32) = .97, p < .01, happy guitar dynamics r(32) = .95, p < .01, happy guitar style r(32) =
1.00, p < .01, happy guitar range r(32) = 1.00, p < .01, sad guitar tempo r(32) = .98, p < .01, sad
guitar dynamics r(32) = .97, p < .01, sad guitar style r(32) = 1.00, p < .01, sad guitar range r(32)
= 1.00, p < .01, happy orff tempo r(32) = .86, p < .01, happy orff dynamics r(32) = .93, p < .01,
happy orff style r(32) = 1.00, p < .01, happy orff range r(32) = 1.00, p < .01, sad orff tempo
r(32) = .97, p < .01, sad orff dynamics r(32) = .98, p < .01, sad orff style r(32) = .99, p < .01, sad
orff range r(32) = 1.00, p < .01, happy drum tempo r(32) = 1.00, p < .01, happy drum dynamics
r(32) = .90, p < .01, sad drum tempo r(32) = .98, p < .01, sad drum dynamics r(32) = .93, p <
.01, happy recorder tempo r(31) = .81, p < .01, happy recorder dynamics r(31) = .96, p < .01, sad
recorder tempo r(31) = .97, p < .01, and sad recorder dynamics r(31) = .97, p < .01.
Differences in musical characteristics for each instrument
Both happy and sad music were analyzed. Thirty-two participants played both happy and
sad music. Due to absences, 1 participant played sad music only and 3 participants played happy
music only. Data were analyzed for each instrument using paired-samples t-tests.
My predictions were only moderately supported because of strong variation between
instruments. For piano happy-sad differences were only significant for tempo (Mhappy = 4.06,
SDhappy = .73; Msad = 3.26, SDsad = .855) and dynamics (Mhappy = 3.55, SDhappy = .77; Msad = 2.84,
SDsad = 1.07). Participants played happy music at a medium-fast tempo while sad music was
played at a medium tempo, t(30) = 4.05, p < .00. Happy music was only slightly louder than a
medium volume while sad music was played only slightly softer than a medium volume, t(30) =
3.41, p = <.002.
For guitar only tempo (Mhappy = 3.38, SDhappy = 1.07; Msad = 2.28, SDsad = 1.13), dynamics
(Mhappy = 3.16, SDhappy = .1.17; Msad = 2.56, SDsad = 1.05), and pitch range (Mhappy = 2.72, SDhappy
= .63; Msad = 2.19, SDsad = .93) were significantly different between happy and sad music.
Happy music was played only slightly faster than a medium tempo while sad music was played
at a medium-slow tempo t(31) = 2.32, p = .027. Happy music was played at a medium volume
while sad music was played only slightly louder than a medium-soft volume t(31) = 2.97, p =
.006. When participants played happy music they strummed all the strings more (using high and
low notes) and when they played sad music they used the high strings, t(31) = 3.28, p = .003.
For the orff all of the characteristics were significantly different between happy and sad
music: tempo (Mhappy = 4.22, SDhappy = .66; Msad = 3.22, SDsad = 1.07), dynamics (Mhappy = 3.50,
SDhappy = .84; Msad = 2.60, SDsad = .97), style (Mhappy = 89.28, SDhappy = 22.46; Msad = 95.91,
SDsad = 9.61), and pitch range (Mhappy = 3.00, SDhappy = 1.08; Msad = 2.41, SDsad = 1.32). Happy
music was played at a medium-fast tempo while sad music was played at a medium tempo t(31)
= 4.98, p < .000. Happy music was played slightly louder than a medium volume while sad
music was played slightly softer than a medium volume t(31) = 4.83, p < .000. Happy music
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used less single notes (89%) than sad music (96%) t(31) = -2.01, p = .044. Happy music used
the entire instrument (both high and low notes) while sad music used high notes t(31) = 1.89, p =
.05.
When participants played the hand drum both tempo (Mhappy = 4.06, SDhappy = .80; Msad =
3.41, SDsad = .91) and dynamics (Mhappy = 3.56, SDhappy = 1.08; Msad = 2.56, SDsad = 1.16) were
significantly different between happy and sad music. Happy music was played medium loud
dynamic while sad music was played slightly louder than a medium-loud dynamic t(31) = 3.01, p
= .005. Happy music was played slightly louder than medium volume while sad music was
played slightly softer than medium volume t(31) = 4.75, p = .000.
When participants played the recorder only tempo (Mhappy = 3.57, SDhappy = .68; Msad =
3.03, SDsad = 1.00) was significantly different between happy and sad music. Happy music was
played slightly faster than a medium tempo while sad music was played at a medium tempo t(29)
= 2.80, p = .009.
Mood
It was predicted that a participant’s mood would be more positive when they left the
study compared to when they entered the study each day. This hypothesis was supported.
Eighty-five percent of participants left the study each day feeling better or the same as when they
came in. However, of those who felt the same, 68% were already feeling a 9 on the scale (1-9
scale) when they entered the study so they couldn’t feel any better upon leaving the study.
Oral Questions
It was predicted that participants would show difficulty orally describing emotion-driven
music. This hypothesis was supported. Fifty-eight percent of participants responded with a
vague response or said, “I don’t know” to the question, “how would you describe happy/sad
music in words?” The vague responses were statements similar to, “just be so happy,” “when
you get in trouble,” and naming actual songs. The other 42% responded simply, “happy music is
major and sad music is minor.”
Discussion
The primary goal of this study was to investigate a possible relationship between emotion
and music production by examining whether 3rd-5th graders consistently vary the tempo,
dynamics, style, and pitch range of music to portray happy and sad music. The results lent
strong support indicating that there are distinct differences in tempo, dynamics, style, and pitch
range for happy and sad music depending on the instrument being used. Additionally, music
production has an effect on the mood of an individual and shows signs of being an effective
method for communication of emotions.
Since no other studies have been done examining this relationship, this study can serve as
a foundation for future research. Research could expand on the findings of this study in several
ways. The only characteristics observed in this study are tempo, dynamics, style, and pitch
range. There are a variety of other characteristics that could be analyzed and this could provide
further information on the relationship between emotion and music production. Furthermore,
this study only used five instruments and they were analyzed separately. Further research could
identify similarities/differences between instruments and use additional instruments.
101
Additionally, only 3rd-5th grade students participated in this study. Future research could
examine differences and similarities between age groups. What this study does provide is a solid
base for future research and a direction for this research to take place.
When analyzing mood results, the majority of participants entered the study feeling as
positive as possible. In the future, mood could be controlled by inducing a mood in participants
so participants would enter the study feeling neutral. In this study, an increase of positive mood
was observed but could be better assessed from an induced neutral mood.
When analyzing the oral question result, “can you describe in words what happy/sad
music sounds like” a trend was observed: more than half of the participants were unable to
answer this question. If a participant did effectively answer the question the responses were very
brief and unsure. Responses like these included “major and minor?” and “happy is high and sad
is low.” The responses of all participants strongly contrasted with the music they were
producing. For example, participants were not playing in major keys when playing happy music;
in fact, they were not playing in any identifiable key. When participants familiarized themselves
with each instrument for 30 seconds they played all over the instrument and used different
techniques. However, when they began producing happy or sad music they immediately played
a certain way. It was clear they knew the sound they wanted to produce. This supports the
Music Therapy Association statement that using music can provide a method of communication
when it is difficult to express something in words. This study shows that 3rd-5th grade students
clearly hear differences in the way happy and sad music should sound based on the
characteristics they produced on each instrument, but have a difficult time communicating this
difference. This suggests that music production could be used in a therapy setting effectively to
communicate various emotions.
102
Appendix A
SAM-VP-9 Mood Scale
103
References
American music therapy association. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.musictherapy.org/.
Buss, A. & Plomin, R. (1984). Temperament: Early developing personality traits. Hillsdale,
NJ: Erlbaum.
Davidson, R.J., Scherer, K.R., & Goldsmith, H.H. (eds) (2003). Handbook of affective
sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Izard, C.E. (1994). Innate and universal facial expression: Evidence from developmental and
cross-cultural research. Psychological Bulletin, 115, 288-299.
Juslin, P.N. (1997). Emotional communication in music performance: A functionalist
perspective and some data. Music Perception, 14, 383-418.
Juslin, P.N., & Sloboda, J.A. “At the interface between the inner and outer world: Psychological
Perspectives.” Handbook of Music and Emotion. Comp. Patrik N. Juslin and John A.
Sloboda. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Print.
Juslin, P.N., & Vastfjall, D. (2008). Emotional responses to music: The need to consider
underlying mechanisms. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31, 559-75.
Kivy, P. (1990). Music alone: Reflections on a purely musical experience. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Kleinginna, P.R., & Kleinginna, A.M. (1981). A categorized list of emotion definitions, with
a suggestion for a consensual definition. Motivation and Emotion, 5, 345-371.
Peretz, I. “Towards a neurobiology of musical emotions.” Handbook of Music and
Emotion. Comp. Patrik N. Juslin and John A. Sloboda. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2010. Print.
Rickard, N.S. (2004). Intense emotional responses to music: a test of the physiological arousal
hypothesis. Psychology of Music, 32, 371-88.
Vastfjall, D. (2002). A review of the musical mood induction procedure. Musicae Scientiae,
Special Issue 2001-2002, 173-211.
Vastfjall, D. “Indirect perceptual, Cognitive, and behavioral measures.” Handbook of Music and
Emotion. Comp. Patrik N. Juslin and John A. Sloboda. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2010. Print.
Von Leupoldt, A., Rohde, J., Beregova, A., Thordsen-Sörensen, I., Zur Nieden, J., & Dahme, B.
(2007). Films for eliciting emotional states in children. Behavior Research Methods,
39(3), 606-609. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17958174
104
If You’re Happy and You Know It
10 Short Pieces for Music Therapy
Kelsey Lownds
105
Contents
1) Introduction
2) Interactive Improvisation Pieces
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)
g)
h)
Dream
Life as a Frog
Snow
Space
Africa
Crazy Monkey
Our World
Copy Cat
3) Interactive Group Pieces
a) Detective
b) Jammin’
106
Introduction
The following pieces were written after the completion of a yearlong study
examining the relationship between music production and emotion in 3rd-5th grade
students. During this study students were asked to improvise happy and sad music on
different instruments. Then the tempo, dynamics, style (chords vs. single notes), and
pitch range were examined to see the differences between happy and sad music.
Additionally, the study made conclusions about how producing music affected mood and
a student’s ability to orally communicate information about emotion-driven music.
While I found many significant results in the study, it was another observation that led to
the writing of this music. I observed that students enjoyed the improvising and
additionally wanted to play music with me. Furthermore, the results have strong
relationships to the field of music therapy. This relationship along with the
aforementioned observations led to the writing of these pieces. These pieces can be used
in the music therapy setting to improve mood or serve other purposes identified by the
music therapist.
The 10 pieces are split into two different categories: Interactive Improvisation and
Interactive Group. These categories give music therapists a set of pieces to use one-onone with a patient and pieces to use in a larger group setting. Each piece has written
guidelines for improvisation and a written accompaniment. While the interactive
improvisation pieces are written for one patient and one therapist, they are easily
adaptable to adding more participants. If there are more patients, more instruments can
be used on a piece or patients could take turns improvising on one instrument.
In the aforementioned study a piano, guitar, alto Orff, hand drum, and recorder
were used for improvisation. In this book instruments used for improvisations and
accompaniments are: piano, soprano Orff, alto Orff, bass Orff, djembe, and 5 different
sized hand drums.
107
Interactive Improvisation Pieces
Pieces for the patient and therapist to play together
Therapist plays the accompaniment while the patient improvises
1) Dream: Piano Accompaniment and Piano Improvisation
2) Life as a Frog: Piano Accompaniment and Piano Improvisation
3) Snow: Piano Accompaniment and Piano Improvisation
4) Space: Piano Accompaniment and Piano Improvisation
5) Africa: Djembe Accompaniment and Orff Improvisation
6) Crazy Monkey: Piano Accompaniment and Djembe Improvisation
7) Our World: Interactive Djembe Piece
8) Copy Cat: Interactive Djembe Piece
Note: For these pieces it’s important to demonstrate ways that the patient can improvise
before beginning the piece. For example, you could play different note values, tempos, and
styles.
108
1) Dream - Instructions for Improvisation
“”
& œ
Notes to be used for improvisation
Piano
œ
œ
œ
œ
Instructions:
1) The patient begins the piece by rolling the above notes as fast as they can
2) After approximently four beats instruct the patient to stop
3) Begin the accompianment having the patient improvise as you play
109
{
&
?
{
1) Dream - Accompaniment
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q = 90
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110
2) Life of a Frog - Instructions for Improvisation
Notes to be used for improvisation
Piano
& œ
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œ
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œ
111
2) Life of a Frog - Accompaniment
{
Introduction
q = 113
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Repeat indefinitely
Patient Begins Improvisation
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End of Improvisation
q = 80
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Patient plays last two high C's
44
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112
3) Snow - Instructions for Improvisation
Notes to be used for improvisation
Piano
&b
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
Instructions:
1) The patient begins the piece by improvising
2) After approximently four beats the therapist begins to play the accompaniment
113
3) Snow- Accompaniment
{
Play Freely (q = 100)
& b 44 w
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w
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114
4) Space - Instructions for Improvisation
Notes to be used for improvisation
Piano
&
œ
œ
œ
œ
œ
Instructions:
1) The patient begins the piece by improvising
2) After approximently four beats the therapist begins to play the accompaniment
115
{
4) Space - Accompaniment
q = 100
& 43 ˙ ™™
˙˙ ™
? 3 ˙™
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116
5) Africa - Instructions for Improvisation
Notes to be used for improvisation (entire instrument)
Orff
&
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117
5) Africa - Drum Accompaniment
Repeat rhythms indefinitely and in any order while the patient improvises
q = 100
/ 44 œ
Rhythm 1
Djembe
œ
œœœœ
Rhythm 2
/ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
Rhythm 3
/ Ϫ
œ
Rhythm 4
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118
6) Crazy Monkey - Instructions for Improvisation
Djembe
/
Ϫ
Tone - play drum on the rim with the palm of your hand at the base of your fingers
Ϫ
Bass - play drum in the center with the palm of your hand
Instructions:
1) Demonstrate two different ways to play the djembe using the descriptions above
2) Make sure the patient understands that the piece continues to get faster
119
6) Crazy Monkey - Accompaniment
{
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f
.
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6
Repeat indefinitely gaining speed each time
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120
7) Our World
Instructions: Below is a list of sounds you can imitate on the djembe (feel free to
incorporate other instruments). You can have the patient imitate you or you can
make the sounds together. Another alternative is to have the patient come up with
the different sounds. You can also come up with a story and use the sounds as
sound effects.
Rain
Thunder
Lightning
Wind
River
Earth
Running Mice
Walking Elephant
Crunching Leaves
Stampede
Snow
Hail
Heart Pounding
High Heels Clicking
Walking
Running
Skipping
121
8) Copy Cat
Instructions: Use the Djembe to create different rhythms. Start out simple and
have the patient imitate you. Use all parts of the drum to create different sounds.
Also try switching it up and have the patient come up with the rhythms while you
copy. Below are a few ideas that could make the piece more interesting.
Play rhythms with eyes closed
Play rhythms with one finger
Play rhythms with one hand
Use clapping and snapping with rhythms
Play rhythms at different speeds
Play rhythms at different volumes
Play rhythms on different parts of your body
122
Interactive Group Pieces
Pieces for multiple patients and the therapist to play together
1) Detective: Orff Circle Piece for 2 patients and 1 therapist
2) Jammin: Drum Circle piece for 5 patients
Note: For these pieces it’s important to demonstrate ways that the patient can improvise
before beginning the piece. For example, you could play different note values, tempi, and
styles.
123
1) The Detective - For 3 Orff Instruments
Instructions:
1) Set-up Orff instruments in a circle
2) Have patients sit at the soprano and alto orffs (therapist plays the Bass Orff)
Note: It may be helpful to put colored stickers on the instruments so the patients know what notes to play.
Have the patient practice their part before beginning the piece
U
°
w
Soprano Orff &
æ
f
U
æ
Alto Orff &
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q = 100
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124
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125
2) "Jammin" - For Five Hand Drums
° 4œ œœœ œ œœœœœ
Player 1 / 4
For five different size hand drums (5 = largest, 1= smallest)
Player 2
Player 3
Player 4
Player 5
4
/4œ
4
/ 4 ‰ œJ
4
/4œ œ
44
/
œ
¢
œ œ œ
‰ œ ‰
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œ
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œ
œœ‰
œ
J
œ
‰
œ
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œ
œ
Instructions:
1. Player 5 starts.
2. Player 4 enters after approximently 5 bars.
3. Player 3 enters after approximently 5 bars
4. Player 2 enters after approximently 5 bars
5. Player 1 enters after approximently 5 bars
6. Continue "the groove" indefinitely
7. Yell "STOP"
8. Have all players hit their drums as fast and as loud as they can
9. Have all players hit their drum at the same time to end the piece
126
127
Effectiveness of Youth Centers Through In-depth Interviews
With Youth Who Have Experienced Incarceration
EVIS MUHAMETI
Dr. Sarah Goodrum, Faculty Mentor
A. Statistics
The majority of adult criminals begin their criminal activities when they are juveniles. In
2007 more than 1.6 million youth age ages 12-17 had cases handled by juvenile courts (Juvenile
Court Statistic, 2010). Between 1980 and 2006 juvenile offenders participated in 1 of every 4
homicides of juveniles (Juvenile Offenders and Victims, 2006). In 2002, on average, four
juveniles were murdered daily in the United States (Juvenile Offenders and Victims, 2006). It is
important to note that in 1994, more than 67% of prisoners were arrested within three years. In
2010 the juvenile recidivism rate in Indiana was 39.2%.
B. Purpose
Numerous programs work with at risk youth in the Unites States to prevent crime and to
rehabilitate offenders. Most programs however, are not directly focused on the youth that have
been previously incarcerated. Studies also do not focus on the voices of these youth. It is
important to differentiate amongst the two groups of youth, because unlike youth with no
records, incarcerated youth have a record that is seen by employees, and their job opportunities
after incarceration are significantly decreased. Secondly, although there are programs working
with at-risk youth, the number of youth that are getting help in the United States is surprisingly
low, only about 5% (Greenwood, 2008). Therefore, these programs are not reaching the youth
population that they should be reaching. It is also important that preventative juvenile programs
are effective because, through prevention the toll that the offenders take both financially and
128
emotionally would decrease. It would save the billions of dollars in “arresting, prosecuting,
incarcerating, and treating offenders” (Greenwood, 2008, 186). Therefore it is important to find
a solution to this problem. How can one find a solution to a problem, when the youth that are
committing these crimes have no voice? The purpose of this study is to examine the
effectiveness of youth centers and what is needed in order to prevent youth from being
delinquents and re-offending, through the analysis of in-depth interviews with 27 youth who
have experienced incarceration.
LITERATURE REVIEW
At-risk youth in the United States are more likely to engage in delinquency than non at
risk youth, which can increase the risk of drug use and dependency, school drop-out,
incarceration, injury, early pregnancy, and adult criminality (Greenwood, 2008). Risks include,
troubled family life, school difficulty, low self-esteem, and socio-economic status (Greenwood,
2008). There are different programs that are available for at risk youth, however studies have
shown that those that have tried to run preventative programs have failed. One program that had
no affect on gang prevention and delinquency was, Gang Resistance Education and Training
(GREAT). This was a law enforcement led program, and after extensive studies it was shown
that there was no difference between GREAT and non-GREAT members in their likelihood of
involvement in violence, delinquency or gang-involvement (Esbensen, 2001). Another program
to have no effect was Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE), this was also officer led
(Lynam, 1999). Programs have tried to prevent at risk youth from becoming delinquents by
providing things such as therapy, and knowledge of responsibility; however, statistics show that
this has not worked.
129
A number of youth programs focus on the youth that are at risk, however after thorough
research, it is found that many programs are geared so that the parent has to be the initiator in
order for the youth to become involved (Greenwood, 2008). According to the 2007 US Census
Bureau approximately 13.7 million single parents are raising 26% of children under the age of 21
in the U.S. Most of these single parents are women (84%) and 27% of the women live in
poverty, and for the 16% of single fathers 12.9% live in poverty. So many programs are not
taking into account the fact that a lot of these youth have single parents that might not have the
time to be involved. Research repeatedly finds that coming from poverty and a single parent
household increases the likelihood of juvenile offending due to environmental factors, such as
living in dangerous neighborhoods, making these youth at high risk.
Not only are programs not geared towards the youth being the initiator, but many are
failing to meet satisfactory criteria. In order for a program to be deemed positive, it needs to
meet 15 criteria, some of which include helping in youth of development clear and positive
identity, promoting the youth to believe in the future, and providing opportunities for prosocial
involvement. However, many programs do not meet these criteria. One of these failed prevention
centers was the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (Cabot, 1940). After realizing that many
criminal paths begin in childhood, researchers wanted to study children who were showing
delinquent tendencies. They did so by having a control group of boys that were not receiving
treatment and pairing them with a boy similar in personality and family background that were
receiving treatment. Treatment included, academic tutoring, psychological counseling, trips to
get closer to counselor, recreation for the children, medical aid, encouragement to attend church,
and received visits at home from counselors. Although the treatment group received all these
services, court records showed that there was not a substantial difference in between the control
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group and treatment group. Records showed that the treatment group had committed about the
same amount of offenses as the control group, and the seriousness level of the offense was also
roughly the same across the two groups. Treatment for these youth also began when there were
11, and the youth were seen for an average of 5 years. The only two factors that had some
positive influence on the youth were “frequent contact with the child-particularly if begun when
the child is under 10 or by a female after the boy has reached adolescence-may effectively
prevent criminality” (McCord, 1959, 90).
Similar to the Cambridge-Somerville Youth study, the Mobilization for Youth Project in
New York City, which provided educational and employment opportunities for at risk youth, still
has very unclear results. Also in New York City, there was a failed attempt at using social work
intervention when working with girls in a vocational high school. This pessimism of the positive
effect of delinquency youth programs continues when evaluating Opportunities for Youth Project
in Seattle, in which they tried to use youth employment and teaching machines. Similar to the
New York City studies, the Seattle Atlantic Street Center provided social work services, to
“acting-out and hostile boys” for six years (McCord, 1959). After following up with the boys
that were involved in the program it too proved to be ineffective.
Some youth programs have been deemed as positive by Blueprints for Violence
Prevention, which is a project of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the
University of Colorado; however of the 900 programs that they have evaluated only 11 were
found to be model programs, and 19 were found to be promising programs. In order for a
program to be deemed “model” it has to show “evidence of deterrent effect with a strong
research design, sustained effect, and multiple site replication” (University of Colorado Boulder,
2007). Therefore, according to Blueprint .0058% of programs that concentrate on at risk youth
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are model programs. When looking closely at the programs meeting this model criteria several of
them cost money. For example The Project Towards No Drug Abuse, which has great outcomes,
such as 27% prevalence reduction in 30-day cigarette use and 22% prevalence reduction in 30 –
day marijuana use, requires $70 for the teacher’s manual, and $50 for a set of five workbooks,
this means that the youth are charged for doing the program (University of Colorado Boulder,
2007). This is money that many at-risk youth do not have. Again even looking at these programs
it is clear that none of them work with youth after they have committed a crime. Also
surprisingly the Blueprints for Violence Prevention have no criteria that focuses on the opinions
of the youth participating in these programs.
The main thing that all these studies and programs are missing is the perspective of the
youth is never studied. Also all of these studies and youth programs deal with preventing
delinquency and not with youth that have just gotten out of prison or juvenile detention centers.
So the help for this youth population is very limited. Two questions need to be asked, what is
done to try to keep these youth off the streets, and what is the perspective of the youth that have
gone through one of these programs? The specific purpose of this study is to interview youth that
have gone through a Youth Program, at the Bartell Youth Center in the northeast to see how this
program has affected their lives, as well as if this program has helped them from reoffending.
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Collection
The study included in-depth interviews with twenty-seven court involved youth age 16 to
22. Of the twenty-seven participants, twenty-three were males and four were females. The
interviews were conducted by the author and were tape recorded and transcribed. All of the
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participants were recruited through the Bartell Youth Center with the help of the case mangers of
the youth and the supervisors of the youth. Bartell works with court involved youth, and is
located in an urban city in the northeast. The interviews took from twenty minutes to an hour.
The interviews contained questions about demographic characteristics, the criminal justice
system, advice for delinquency prevention, their feelings about their present and future, and their
use of drugs (the interview questions can be seen in Appendix I). The participants were each
given ten dollars for participating in the interview.
The interviews were all done in the setting that was most convenient to the participant,
including homes, place of work, the youth center, or the researcher’s car. Eleven interviews were
taped recorded, and sixteen were not tape-recorded (pursuant the request of the participants). The
tape-recorded interviews yielded more detailed, lengthy responses and at times the conversation
diverted from the original interview questions. The non tape-recorded interviews yielded less
detailed information (and responses) and the conversation tended to remain more focused on the
original interview questions (perhaps due to participants discomfort with the interview situation
in general). All of the participants were residents of the particular urban city and lived in one of
the surrounding four neighborhoods. All of the eleven participants in the in-depth interviews
were males, eight were gang involved, and the other three were associated with the particular
gang of their area; however, they were not officially gang members. Of the non-tape recorded
participants, twelve were males who were gang involved, and four were females, who were not
gang involved. Although none of the females were gang involved, all had ties to people in gangs.
Admittedly, two significant challenges emerged in the data collection process. First,
despite my use of a consent form and description of confidentiality the participants felt
uncomfortable having this interview tape-recorded. One participant said, “Nah I’m not doing this
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interview, not with that tape recorder.” Second, one participant lied about his gang involvement
and amount of times he was incarcerated, which I learned after speaking to his probation officer.
This participant’s data is included in the study, but very little emphasis is placed upon it.
Analysis
All interviews were transcribed, and all transcripts were reviewed for common themes
and patterns in the participants’ experiences. The findings reflect more of the tape-recorded
interviews because these participants were more willing to share detailed information. The
interview results of the non tape-recorded interviews are also used in further showing the
commonalities of the responses among the participants. All of the participants are given
pseudonym for confidentiality purposes. For confidentiality purposes, pseudonyms replace
participants’ names, as well as their hometowns.
RESULTS
After the transcription and analysis of the data there were four major themes that were
dominant. The first of the four is pessimism, defined as, “the tendency to see, anticipate, or
emphasize only bad or undesirable outcomes, results, conditions and problems” (MerriamWebster, 2011). Under the theme of pessimism there are four sub-themes: pessimism about
safety, about no longer gang-banging, about the future, and prevention. The second theme is lack
of remorse and not dealing with suffering. The third is lack of programming. The last theme is
lack of love and affection. The profile of the participants, includes 23 males and 4 females, 13
gang affiliated and 14 non-gang affiliated. Of the 27, 19 participants grew up in single-family
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homes, and 8 in either two-parent homes or with another guardian. All the participants were from
inner city and of lower socio economic background.
Pessimism
About Safety
The most prevalent theme throughout the interviews was pessimism about safety. This
was shown in different aspects of the lives of the participants. Pessimism is shown in the fear
that they had to be in the streets and the lack of safety.
It’s safer than the streets, I can take an ass whipping, I’ve gotten jumped plenty of time,
that’s the worse that could happen in jail, I’m not worried about dying, I hate taking the
train, all my smoke takes the train.
Here we see that Joel would rather be in jail a place that most would never imagine themselves
being, then being in the street where he always has to watch his back. Avey shares this similar
opinion “of course I feel safer in jail because I can’t get shot I can’t get stabbed most of the time,
most like the only thing I could be doing is getting jumped.” Both of these young men are highly
gang affiliated and recognizable by their peers, which adds to the fear that resides in their minds,
the fear of the streets.
Bryon when asked if he would want his children to grow up in this neighborhood said:
I wouldn't say that, I would want my children to grow up in a neighborhood where they
can enjoy themselves and don't have to look over their shoulder every two seconds when
they’re walking.
This is a very scary way to live life, a way of living that many call paranoia, but in the streets of
this city this is the smart thing to do, because trouble is always lurking near by. As Sebas
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mentions, “yea I have to watch my back every time.” He has to watch his back very carefully
because when asked if he has ever been shot at, he responded with “yea” and made sure to say
“not no recent stuff.” Because of this fear of being killed he is not be able to walk through certain
neighborhoods:
There are a few places that I can’t walk through, but I would. It’s hot everywhere, I’m hot
everywhere. (“hot” means that he is well known and there are people looking to hurt
him).
But what is even worse about this fear as Allan points out is “its dangerous around my way,
some dudes are scared to go to school even, the craziness its just crazy.” For students not being
able to go to school because of fear, this is an issue that schools need to deal with.
About No Longer Gang-Banging
When Joel was asked if he would stop banging his reaction was:
If I stop banging it doesn’t stop people that hate me to have a gun and shoot me, I don’t
have a choice if I stay in ‘this city’ I have to. I don’t have a choice, I have to get out of
‘this city.’ You can’t stay in the same place and change, it’s like a death wish.
This fear and feeling of entrapment makes the youth gravitate even more towards their gang
members, as Jimmy put in when asked about changing the minds of the youth that are gang
involved:
What you gotta do is tell a kid everybody that they gravitate towards or look up to or
everybody that you love, everybody that you ride with, wake up everyday and you see
you play games with, you done played Man Hunt with since you was a child all of that,
all of them dudes are wrong, that’s what you gotta tell the kid, that’s a lot to take in for a
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15, 16, 14 year old, who the fuck are you? And you don’t even know these people, why
should they trust you?
Too often it is forgotten that many of the youth in particular, 10 of the 11 tape recorded youth,
grew up in single family homes, and for most of them this was not a stable environment.
Therefore, it is important to reflect on Jimmy’s words and realize the fear that a lot of these
youth are facing when they have to be faced with the idea that their “true” friends might only be
leading them down a path of self-destruction. This fear leads to hardheadedness.
I don't think anything could have prevented me, because I was hard headed, and I
wouldn't listen but a lot of people tried--(Jimmy)
Jimmy makes it easier to understand why people do not stop gang banging when he says
They couldn’t do shit you would have to change a lot of shit about my life or any young
man’s life at that point for you to really change his mind. Michael Jordan wasn’t giving
that up, you seen how many times he came back he couldn’t give it up, dudes try to drop
their flag two, three, four times before they’re successful, if they ever are because you
keep coming back it’s not something you want to give up.
The gang in this sense gives the young men the attention that they want, even if it takes them
years to realize that “there’s years of my life where I didn’t get anything from, but memories that
I wish I didn’t have”-Jimmy.
About the Future
Pessimism also comes through when the young men are asked about their futures. Here
we see lack of aspiration, which is also shown by Jay MacLeod’s, “Ain’t No Making It.”
Aspirations are defined, “reflecting an individual’s view of his or her own chances for getting
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ahead and are an internalization of objective possibilities” (Merriam-Webster, 2011). The people
that MacLeod interviewed had similar reaction about their futures as the youth in this study had.
When asked about his future Allan, responded by saying:
I don’t look for the future, I don't look at the past or the future I just live for the moment
really, I just let things go, I don't look to the future like that.
This was very surprising because he was one of the two men interviewed that was not directly
gang affiliated. The other not directly gang affiliated, Devon, had a similar reaction:
I don't look to the future like that, honestly I’m just thinking about tomorrow, I don't see
years ahead because you don't know what’s to come.
The ones that did think about the future did not have a positive light about it. When Avey
was asked where he saw himself in five years he responded with:
Locked up. Why, because of the life I live.
It is interesting to think about the fact that MacLeod did his study in 1980 and 31 years later in
2011 at-risk youth still have similar reactions to questions about their futures. Shorty, one of
MacLeod’s participants, when asked about his future responded with, “Twenty years? I’m gonna
be in jail” (MacLeod, 2009, 63). The future aspirations of the youth for themselves are very low,
this is also seen in Joel, “my attempted murder sealed the deal of what I was going to do with my
life”, and his future seems very dim to him “there’s nothing for me, I got a tattoo on my face,
tattoo on my neck I got a record.” The men that did have a more optimistic view on their future
did not see much for themselves after getting a job. Terral, “umm my goals for the future is to
have a decent job, have an apartment, and get my license back” and Sebas “I’m gonna have a
good job, I’m not going to be living here in ‘this city’ no more, got to get away from this
violence, and that’s it.” That is the most in-depth that the men got about their future.
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About Prevention
Prevention of gang violence was another topic that there was very much pessimism
towards. Jimmy had extremely low hopes when it came to prevention:
You can build more youth centers, you can build this you can build that, it’s not gonna
help, because at the end of the day they still go home and live on that block and their
parents are not their only influence. The kids you’ll get interventions on are not the
threats. They’re just the kids just staying on the block, the real dudes go out and do their
work and come back.
When asked about ending gang violence Terral responded with:
I don’t think there’s gonna be an ending because its non-stop there’s never gonna be a
stop until the world ends, when everything is over.
Devon too had a similar response “no way to stop it,” as did James “never, its never gonna
stop.” Avey too had a similar reaction “nah, some can but others can’t because its murder smoke,
and you’re not just gonna leave it” (Murder smoke means that a member of the gang was killed
by someone in another gang).
Bryon did not believe that “beef” could be squashed:
You’re not going to tell someone to stop doing this because people is dying, they’re not
going to care, people are going to do what they have to do, its going to take have the
whole area sit down and talk about it, or something.
On the topic of why people reoffend there were similar responses, James “its their life style they
can’t change it.” Similarly to James, Devon says, “I don't think anything could have prevented
me, because I was hard headed, and I wouldn't listen but a lot of people tried.”
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Lack of Remorse/ Not Dealing With Suffering
The second major theme was about lack of remorse and not dealing with suffering. The
youth were not concerned with the pain that they caused others, many of them when asked about
their victims had reactions similar to Joel:
I would shoot him if I knew I could get away with it…because he put a couple of my
niggas in jail…I hate him.
Here Joel is referring to the guy that he hurt and the reason that he went to jail the second time.
Jimmy had a very similar reaction when he began talking about the boy that he put in a comma,
“He was talking shit. There was tension and I don’t like tension.” This lack of remorse for
hurting people is seen as early as the initiation of the youth into a gang:
It’s testing you like if we were (of the opposing gang) how would you act, would you run
or curl or lie about where you’re from, it’s a test of heart, and you betta swing at
someone, if you don’t and everybody just comes at you again and you just curl up again
then you’re just a bitch.
From initiation into the gang they are asked to physically hurt, and although not only the youth
interviewed were gang involved it is important to mention since a little less then 50% were gang
affiliated (13 to be specific). Even when referring to the violence that they have endured, the
youth see it as something that they owe, as Greg points out when asked if he still had beef, “I
don’t think so because I already paid for the past, but I don't know there are still a lot of people
that don't like me.” Greg feels as if he deservers having been stabbed 18 times, he believes that
he is only getting paid back for what he committed.
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After seeing the lack in remorse in the youth it is easy to assume the worst in them,
however it is important to see that these youth have a lot of suffering that they have not dealt
with. Majority of the youth interviewed have experienced the loss of a friend to violence at least
once. When Bryon was asked about loosing friends he says:
I have lost 5 friend already this year to gang violence… they all been shot, killed.
Many people can hardly deal with the loss of one friend let alone 5 in a matter of 6 months.
When Terral was asked how he dealt with the loss of his friends he says, “I don’t even talk to
people about it, once you’re gone you’re gone. I’ll see them when I get there.” This was his
attitude about loosing two of his really good friends; this is no way to deal loss.
What is important to acknowledge about not dealing with suffering is that a lot of these
youth turn to crime. When talking about stealing Greg says:
I can unleash some of that emotion when I rob; I got a lot of hate.
It is very disheartening to see that these youth need to let a lot of these emotions out, and for a lot
of them the only way out is through violence. In order to help these youth there needs to be
outlets for them, ways that they can confront and work out their emotions.
Lack of Programming
The third major theme is lack of programming. When asked about programs that they had
been a part of and the one that they were currently involved in, the youth did not have much to
say. The reason for this was because they had never thought about how well the programs
worked, and the ones that did have things to say were hesitant at first, and had to think hard
about what the programs offered. This in itself shows how little effect the programs that they
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have been a part of have had on them. What they did have to say about programming was mostly
negative. Joel was one of them:
Maybe if they worked with me, treated me more as a son instead of as a kid. You can’t
treat every kid the same because not every kid is the same, the whole system (the
programs at the juvenile detention center) they treat you the same. That’s why the system
doesn’t work; it has to be more individualized.
Jimmy too had a problem with this depersonalization of the people working for the programs:
The youth centers the counselors they (the youth) feel like they ask the same 20 questions
they ask other kids. It doesn't feel sincere, not personal.
This shows a lot because maybe in order to be more successful youth centers should have a more
personal program. It is important to remember as Sebas says, “I don’t like to be preached on, I
don’t like to be preached.” It is also important to remember that a lot of these youth do not trust
the people running these programs, especially the ones that are directly involved with the
juvenile detention centers. This is perfectly seen when Avey says:
If they want to see me change my life in a positive they want everyone to change their
life in positive. So if everybody is changing their life in positive, who's gonna be getting
locked up? How are they getting money, who would they be giving time to, they don't
want that they don't care about anybody, they don't care about no body.
Lack of Love and Affection
The last and what might be the most important part of the results is the fact that a lot of
the youth had not had positive role models or people who truly cared for them throughout their
lives. Joel has been an orphan his whole life:
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My whole life I never had a family to be loyal to. All I needed was someone older than
me to look up to. The only people that was around was gangsters so I looked up to
gangsters and eventually became a gangster.
Then when asked why he wanted to be a gangster he replied with:
I’ve been abandoned my while life, every time I started to like a family they just didn't
want me, I never had a second chance in any relationship, they assumed I was a bad
kid… the gang members I met were always loyal to me.” It is easy to see that Joel just
never had anyone that he could really turn to.
James too had similar issues, when asked what he did after being locked up he said:
When they tell me to call a guardian, I don't call anybody, I was just lucky I had money
on me, and I bailed myself out.
When asked how he felt about this he only responded with, “my family they’re not supportive,
you have to support your own self,” James just turned 16 at the time of the interview. This is also
the case with Jimmy, “I don’t look up to anybody. There’s no positive role model influence out
here.” When asked if he looked up to his mother and father he said, “hell nah, she’s not a good
person. My father never done shit for me.” He then explains where the problems begin:
Problems started in the house, lack of role model, I didn't feel any support whatsoever, so
I looked for that like some type of family, everyone’s looking for some type of love and
that's what the gang is.
So now that we know this how do we make a youth center that can address this lack of family
support, and help prevent these kids from feeling like they need to join these gangs, before they
realize that what they have gained from their crew is as Sebas says, “nothing.” When asked how
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long it took him to realize this he said, “about 6 months ago,” this was after he had been locked
up several times.
CONCLUSION
After doing these 27 interviews, it has been clear that these youth are missing many
important things in their lives, and that although it will be difficult youth centers and programs
need to compensate for. As seen in the results some of the major issues that need to be addressed
are those about pessimism, lack of remorse/not dealing with suffering, lack of programming, and
lack of love and affection. Therefore, now that we know that youth are still facing and having the
some issues as those from 31 years ago (as shown through Jay MacLeod’s work) it is time to ask
the question, “How do we use these findings to improve the services and programs offered by
youth centers?”
We use these findings by evaluating what youth centers and programs need to provide the
youth: security, protection, support, stability, love, trust and reliability. Esbensen and Lynam
showed that the programs G.R.E.A.T. and D.A.R.E failed at preventing youth delinquency, the
reason could have been that the programs did not provide any of the support listed above. Both
programs simple “preached” to the youth, something that the results of this study showed is not
effective. Other studies mentioned that had no affect such as the Cambridge-Somerville study,
which provided youth with academic tutoring, psychological counseling, trips to get closer to
counselor and medical aid (Cabot, 1940). It failed to provide the youth with protection and
security. The results of this study have shown that these youth face a lot of danger in their
neighborhoods, and that was something that the Cambridge-Somerville study did not provide.
The importance that youth centers and programs need to provide the support listed above, is also
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seen in the failed attempts of youth delinquency of the Mobilization for Youth Project in New
York, and the Seattle Atlantic Street Center.
Although there still is a lot more research that needs to be done, and a greater sample of
interviews required, it is time for a rise and time for a change. Time for youth centers and
programs to focus on the things that youth really need. If each youth center could strive to
improve in the support they are providing the youth, then there can really be a change for the
better, and the crime rate for juveniles can hopefully decrease. As Jimmy says, “They’re fighting
because they have issues, and they can’t take it out on their parents. They can't take it out on the
court system. They can’t take it out on their big brother, or whomever they're betting bullied by.
So they’re using it as an outlet, at the end of the day they really don’t hate each other, shit
happens because everyone got something to prove.”
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Reference
MacLoed, Jay. 2009. “Ain’t No Makin’ It. Aspirations & Attainment in a Low-Income
Neighborhood.” Westview Press.
Cabot, P. S. 1940. “ A Long-Term Study of Children: The Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study.”
Chid Development, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 143-151.
Esbensen, F., Taylor, T.J., Peterson, D. & Freng, A. 2001. “How Great is G.R.E.A.T.? Results
From a Longitudinal Quasi-Experimental Design.” Criminology & Public Policy, Vol. 1, pp. 87118.
Greenwood, Peter. 2008. “Prevention and Intervention Programs for Juvenile Offenders. The
Future of Children, Vol. 18, No. 2, Juvenile Justice, pp.185-210.
Lynam et al. 1999. “Project DARE: No Effects at 10- Year Follow-up”. Journal of
Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 67, No. 4, pp.1-8.
McCord, Jane & William, 1959. “Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency.” Annals of the American
Academy of Politics and Social Science, Vol. 322, pp. 89-96.
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Werner, E. E., & Smith, R. S. 1977. “Kauai’s Children Come of Age.” Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press.
Indiana Department of Correction. 2010. Juvenile Recidivism 2010. Indiana Governement
Center.
Office of Justice Programs. 2006. Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report. U.S.
Department of Justice
United States Census Bureau. 2007. U.S. Census Bureau 2007. United States Census Bureau.
United States Department of Justice. 2010. Juvenile Court Statistics 2006-2007. Pittsburgh,
PA.
"hacker." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2011. Web. 8 May 2012.
(http://www.merriam-webster.com).
2007. Blueprints for Violence Prevention Model Programs. Center for the Study and Prevention
of Violence Institute of Behavioral Science: University of Colorado Boulder. Retrieved May, 12,
2011. (http://www.colorado.edu/cspv/blueprints/modelprograms.html).
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Appendix I
Interview Questions
As I mentioned, this interview should take about 30 minutes to one hour. This interview will be
confidential, and I would like you to feel comfortable and if at all during the interview you chose
to stop the interview please feel free to do so.
1. First, I’d like to take 5 to 10 minutes for you to tell me a little bit about yourself and your life
up to this point. Could you start by telling me how old you are, how many siblings you have,
and who you live with? Could you tell me about when you first started to get into trouble?
2. Tell me about the first time you were sent to a juvenile detention center. What was the reason
for going? (Probes: Were others with you during the crime? Who? How did the crime
happen? Why?)
3. How long did you stay at the juvenile detention center?
4. When was the first time you signed up for Youth Options Unlimited? How long were you
involved with the program? Why did you go to the program?
5. What kind of resources did they help you with?
6. What parts of the program helped you the most? (Probes: Why? How did it/they help you?
Who helped you? Why were they helpful?)
7. What parts of the program were least helpful? (Probes: What parts of the program would you
change? Why? How would you change it/them?)
8. Tell me a little bit about your family? (Who are your parents/guardians?)
9. Who has been most influential in your life?
10. If gang affiliated how and why?
11. What are your goals for the future?
12. Would you want others to follow in you foot steps? Why or why not?
13. How do you feel about your future, and where do you see yourself in the future?
14. What about 5 years from now where do you see yourself? What about in 10 years?
15. Have you ever been involved with dys and why? And how many times?
16. What would you change about your life so far and why?
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17. If you could start your own youth center what kind of resources would you provide? What
youth population would you work with? What kind of programs would you set up for the
youth?
18. Why do you think people re-offend after they have been released from lock up? How can we
prevent that from happening again? How can we prevent it from happening in the first place?
19. What advice would you give to a youth who wants to find a way to make money?
20. Have you lost anyone to the streets? If so how did that make you feel? If you could change
something about the situation what would it be?
21. Who has been the most influential in your life?
22. Who has been least influential in you life?
23. How often do you use alcohol? Other drugs? (And what role have they played in your life?
Especially if a crime has been committed)
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