The Ending in "A Gathering of Old Men"

Aesthetically, I think Ernest Gaines' A Gathering of Old Men would better end with the penultimate chapter:

"But we had all gathered around Charlie. Mathu had knelt down 'side him and raised his head out of the dust. They had really got him. Right in the belly. He laid there like a big old bear looking up at us. He was trying to say something, but it never came out. He kept on looking at us, but after a while you could tell he wasn't seeing us no more. I leaned over and touched him, hoping that some of that stuff he had found back there in the swamps might rub off on me. After I touched him, the rest of the men did the same. Then the women, even Candy. Then Glo told her grandchildren they must touch him, too."

But while the final chapter seems to be but a tying up of loose ends, it actually works thematically. It is here we see reconciliation, a movement toward healing. The novel includes many anecdotes showing how the legal system was a major part of the racial oppression and injustice of the past; in the final chapter, we see the law treating the black men fairly (in this case justice means amnesty). Gil sits with his family in court, Salt and Pepper play together and win, Mathu is able to leave without Candy, and we end with a conciliatory image, with Candy holding Lou Dimes' hand (a similar image ends Paradise Lost, also a moment of hope at the end of a dark period).

At the end Lou Dimes, a peripheral character that primarily operates as a narrator, becomes important. Earlier in the novel, when Mapes uses violence, Dimes says "I didn't like what was going on either, but I knew that had I interfered, Mapes would have knocked hell out of me and thrown me in the back of his car." Lou Dimes disapproves, but he passively allows violence and racial injustice to occur (this and other forms of passivity are addressed throughout the novel). But in the end, Lou Dimes is not allowed to be passive:

"You're in charge. Raise your right hand. You do swear--"
"Like hell," Lou said.
"You're still in charge," Mapes said. "Now, don't bother me anymore tonight."
"What am I supposed to do?" Lou asked him.
"You figure that out," Mapes said. "Just leave me alone."

The old way is past. People like Lou Dimes, formerly neutral non-participants, must work toward a new way of doing things.

But Reader-response is necessary here. It is likely as a reader I find Lou Dimes significant because his social role is close to my own (the teacher in the bar is certainly closer). In my social role, I have rarely had active individual part on any side of racial injustice or the fight for progress toward equality. I've read, taught, talked, listened, discussed, thought, and as an individual strived to treat all people with equal dignity. But I have mostly been a non-participant, a passive citicizen, and I recognize my social role in coming to the novel. Other readers of different ages, races, and gender will find greater meaning in other characters. Certainly geographic location matters too: I suspect a southerner reads the book differently than a northerner (and more specifically, a Louisianian will read the text differently than a Minnesotan). We bring ourselves to the text, including our values (when reading Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello, isn't a vegetarian going to respond differently than a meat-eater?), and we needn't deny that (and it is why in literary study I prefer plurality to objectivity). The text offers me a moral meaning that it won't offer to everybody--and rather than deny that, I prefer to recognize my subjective history and concerns that may direct my focus while reading.

Christian Humanism: peace, equality, animal rights

"...with the Christian sense of human dignity and equality permeating us soul and body..."
--Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You

Peace and Equality
Pacifism is rooted in a sense of equality. To use violence against a person is to deny his/her inherent dignity, and to assert that one person's well-being is less valuable than your own (or another's). Religious people may understand this in a spiritual sense (we are all equal before God), though it has political meaning as well. Gwyn, Hunsinger, Roop, and Yoder state in "A Declaration on Peace" that

"The Dismantling of racist and patriarchal norms and structures subverts one of the traditional foundations of militarism in history."

And that

"The royal servant people is politically engaged and partisan, working with and for movements that embody more just and equitable economic relations, more peaceful resolutions to conflict, and the broader distribution of authority and decision-making in society."

It is thus that for me pacifism and equality are important elements of Christian Humanism. I despair of the history of racism, misogyny, and bigotry in our world, of the institutional and individual bigotry still existing, of the continuing anger and conflict over these issues, of the violence ensconced in it all. And I can come back to Tolstoy's words, that in this complex world, in which we are all complicit in (even if not individually responsible for) inequalities of society, I can still treat all people I encounter with "human dignity and equality." I must, and it may be all I can do.

Animal Rights
Since making the choice to become a vegetarian almost two years ago, animal rights has been a major part of my life (a personal note: since going mostly vegan less than five months ago, I've lost 46 pounds). Vegetarianism is a daily action for me, a repeated choice, and issues of animal rights often take up my thoughts.

My view on animal rights does not spring from Christian tradition; it comes from a separate area of knowledge. It may be occasionally informed by Christianity, but I do not use Christianity to center my vegetarianism in the same way Christianity can center my pacifism. I did not become a vegetarian because of my understanding of Christianity. And yet, I don't think I would be a vegetarian if I not for my own religious journey.

It is a background in Christianity that instilled in me the importance of integrity in action and in conscience. It is not so much that religion provided me with a sense of what is right (though I'm sure it did), but more that religion taught me I must seek what is right and act according to conscience. If it had not been for the religious formation of my mind, it might not matter to me that animals would die for my pleasure. Religion did not teach me that it is wrong to eat animals, but it did teach me that if I believe it is wrong to eat animals, then I must not eat animals.

And to some extent, compassion for humanity and compassion for animals are grounded together. My behavior toward humans and animals is grounded in the belief that my actions toward others should be peaceful, compassionate, and good. Christianity taught me that I must treat all people with dignity, even sacrificing myself for others, so in some way my view of animal rights is merely an extension of what Christianity taught me. I must treat humans with compassion, even sacrificing myself, and so I can also treat other living creatures with compassion, even sacrificing myself.

The reasons I'm a vegetarian are not religious (in fact they are based on science and reason). And yet it is a religious sense that permeates my actions, a religious sense that guides me to seek truth and act accordingly, a religious sense that teaches me to follow my conscience. And so I too consider animal rights a part of what I call Christian Humanism.

Distrust of the Subconcious: it is not our own

I do not trust my subconscious mind; society has placed too much junk there. Society has placed many negative assumptions about race, gender, class, sexual preference, appearance, age, weight, disability, language, job, religion, etc.

I do not believe it makes you a bigot to be aware of many bigoted stereotypes. I do not believe it makes you a bigot if sometimes these bigoted stereotypes pop into your head. These thoughts are, after all, not your own, unless you choose to own them. Society has been planting them in your head for your entire life, and you really can't help it if you are aware of the negativity placed there. You must only rely on your conscious mind to recognize, understand, and resist all the assumptions society has planted in you.

We have all these assumptions about all sorts of things. We consume this culture whether we want to or not, and this culture contains negative stereotypes about race, gender, class, sexual preference, appearance, age, weight, disability, language, job, religion, etc. We must always try to weed this junk from our conscious thought, and be aware of this junk in your subconscious. But it's always going to still be there.

Values Difference: the South and Me

I have biases against the South. I do not have bigotry against southerners, but I do have different values than what are traditionally considered Southern values.

I associate the South with a few things that I don't particularly care for.

Christian fundamentalism
A Christian myself, I do not like fundamentalist Christianity. I disagree with most of the principles of fundamentalist Christianity.

1. Theologically. I do not accept "Sola Scriptura," I do not accept a literal interpretation of Genesis, and I do not believe "This is my body" and "This is my blood" to be symbolic.
2. Socially. I like gay people. I also like non-christians, Catholics, and feminists.
3. Intellectually. I accept evolution.
4. Politically. In general, Christian fundamentalists hold political views that are not my own. Among other things, I'm a strong advocate of separation of church and state.

Racism
I associate the South with racial oppression, injustice, and inequality. The South should not be the scapegoat for the entire nation's history on race, but the South does have a pretty ugly history that includes slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow laws, segregation, and a great deal of racism and violence.

Should I consider this to be the past, history, no longer relevent? I don't think so. Robert Byrd was a member of the KKK and he filibustered Civil Rights legislation, but he continually gets re-elected in West Virginia (I realize West Virginia has a complicated history that may or may not make it part of "the South"). Strom Thurmond was a segregationist presidential candidate, but he was elected to congress in South Carolina into the 1990s. Trent Lott said that the U.S. would have been better off had it elected the segregationist Thurmond, and he still easily gets re-elected in Mississippi. This is just a guess, but if a U.S. Senate candidate in a non-Southern state had a history as a member of the KKK, a history as a supporter of segregation, or suggested the U.S. would be better off had a segregationist been elected president, his/her political career would probably be over. And many southerners continue to take pride in the Confederate flag: it is displayed at the South Carolina statehouse grounds, it is part of Mississippi's state flag, and in several southern states you can get a license plate featuring the confederate flag. I am not convinced by arguments that this is a celebration of "heritage" or "history" separate from a history that includes terrible (and official) racial oppression.

These are two central areas in which my values are at odds with southern values, or at least what I associate with southern values.

Larry David and Liberal Guilt

In Larry David's work on Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, he covers at least one topic better than I've seen anybody else do it: the anxiety of white liberals who are worried and confused about doing anything that could be perceived as racist. When George told his boss he looked like Sugar Ray Leonard, and the boss responded, "I suppose we all look alike to you," and George was trying to befriend every black person he knew to show to the boss. When Elaine thought she was dating a black man, and George kept saying, "Are we supposed to be talking about this? I don't think we're supposed to be talking about this." The legendary episode of Curb when Larry blurts out a joke about affirmative action and has a daylong nightmare as a result. Or when Larry doesn't want to fire his TV repairman because he is black, does anyway, and then keeps accidentally doing things in front of Wanda to make him look like a racist.

Who else is covering this topic? It's sort of an odd, strange, weird topic to even bring up. And yet for liberal whites, this is a part of our lives.

I go on frequent walks; it's my poor man's effort to stay fit. When walking alone, I keep a pretty good clip, and I always try to avoid bumping into people walking slower than me because of the awkwardness of going around. The other day on a walk, three guys were walking slow in front of me. Since I needed to cross the street soon anyway, and there was no traffic, I just crossed there. And suddenly, in the middle of the street, I realized this looked like the worst cliche one could think of: the people in front of me were black, and I appeared to be the white guy crossing the road to avoid them. Now, I would have crossed if there were three old white ladies walking slow in front of me and I was in Woodbury, but the perception was still bad.

They were three young black men, and I think they perceived that I was crossing to avoid them, and started jokingly trying to scare me because of that. One of them yelled "Biotch!" and another flashed an east-side hand signal at me. I thought briefly about returning it, but then just nodded a greeting.

I felt terrible guilt for the rest of my walk. I kept trying deliberately to walk past black people the rest of the walk, and attempted to make eye contact so that I could say hello. I think many of the people I passed thought I was a weirdo for staring at them. But I kept it up, walking by a whole bunch of black people and trying to make eye contact to say hello. Somehow I thought this would help make up for my "transgression." Now when I go for walks, I deliberately go to the neighborhood where I saw those guys, hoping they'll be there so I can walk by and say hello.

This is all really stupid. It's the sort of thing most people don't talk about, but that some people think about. So thanks to Larry David for actually addressing it. It's certainly not the only interesting issue David's work gets at with insight and precision.

M. Butterfly goes to White Castle

David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly is a masterful post-modern play. Hwang completely inverts the Madame Butterfly myth to subvert, expose, and destroy it.

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is a solid companion to Hwang's play. We begin with the inversion: what appears to be a typical white guy buddy movie gets abandoned as we follow the Asian-American "supporting" characters. But this becomes not so much an inversion, as every cliche of the raunchy buddy movie gets screen time, but these cliches are experienced by two Asian Americans (two Asian Americans seeking not something particular to their race, but simply seeking the same things any white, black, or other pot-smoking buddies seek in a buddy film). And as Harold and Kumar make their way to White Castle, they are essentially second-generation immigrants crossing the landscape of America: they confront members of an Asian American club that seem to fit the stereotype of the studious nerds, they deal with racist punks, they deal with the police, they deal with parental pressure. Throughout all sorts of racist and stereotypical words and images are shown...but now we are seeing them from the side of the Asian Americans who don't act remotely like any stereotype. They are simply young, high, hungry males--which is enough to show the ridiculousness of the stereotypes.

Stephen Holden of the NY Times wrote a solid review of the film (the Times has made the review very difficult to link to, so you can search for it yourself under "Reviews" on the Movie page). Holden begins,

The stoner, gross-out comedy ''Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle'' has one foot here and one foot there. The here is a politically savvy universe where the title characters, 22-year-old New Jersey roommates who are Chinese-American and Indian-American, puncture ethnic stereotypes. But the other foot is rutted knee deep in the muck of perpetual puerility according to Hollywood.

Holden's assessment is spot-on. There's subversion of stereotypes...and there's also Neil Patrick Harris sniffing coke off a stripper's ass. You laugh...but then you realize that you are able to laugh with the Asian Americans as they deal with the stereotypes that you may yourself occasionally hold (think Asians are smart? Good at math? Hard working? That Indians run convenience stores, or become doctors, scientists, or computer experts?)

In the end, M. Butterfly is far out of Harold and Kumar's league. Hwang is a first-rate playwright. But Harold and Kumar are reaching an audience that Hwang might not.