Egocentricity and Sexual Relationships in The Chaneysville Incident
The Pennsylvania Turnpike's enormous and various extensions branch between the Philadelphia, the place of John's most advanced assimilation, and the land of his origin, where in the darkness of Jack Crawley's hut he is closest to his identity as a black man. Likewise, even as a young boy learning the ways of his race, he is the latest branch of a family chronology that continues to thin ethnically, a branch with an impossibly distant origin buried in darkness. But the movement that carries John away from The Hill, away from Jack's hut and away from his own identity, is no more a source of his tormented ambivalence than the family history that fathered him. As the warring influences engage him, so too does the persistent love of Judith, a white woman with Southern ancestry upon whom the reconciliation of his identity conflict relies. However, John repels her for most of the novel and withdraws further into the isolation of his obsession.
John's attitude toward Judith underscores his ambivalence, and at times seems baffling. However, the clashing egos of men and women and the awkwardness of their attempted union are not alien to literature or to life in general, and are repeated in a Narcissistic archetype. During his maddening quest for truth, John attacks the influences that push him further from himself, shedding the alterations of time to understand his identity, which extends far beyond his birth. His energies and emotions are literally self-directed, internalizing to a frigid Narcissism, which is inevitably doomed. The fragmentation of his identity is beyond assembling, and similar to the self-directed libido that proves fatal for both Narcissus and...
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...h as is rationally possible. Though the novel's end is ambiguous and disturbing, it appears as though John has relinquished his Narcissism completely, indeed sacrificing a degree of his primordial identity, but gaining the more important aim of self-preservation, as he burns the no-longer-necessary clues. Although it is ambiguous, the hypothesis that John is about to kill himself is illogical. He doubtless undergoes a suicide of a different nature, killing his Narcissus and continuing to live with a rested conscious, directing his energy toward the future.
Work Cited and Consulted
Bradley, David. The Chaneysville Incident (1981) Rpt. New York: HR, Perennial Library Edition, 1990.
Pavlic, Edward. "Syndetic Redemption: Above-Underground Emergence in David Bradley's The Chaneysville Incident." African American Review (Summer 1996), 30(2):166-167, 169, 181n10.
The adult John comes to civilized society as an experiment by Marx and Mond to see how a "savage" would adapt to civilization. Frankly, he does not adapt very well. He is appalled by the lifestyle and ideas of civilized people, and gets himself into a lot of trouble by denouncing civilization. He loves Lenina very much, but gets very upset at her when she wants to have sex with him. He physically attacks her, and from that point on does not want to have anything to do with her. When his mother dies, he interferes with the "death conditioning" of children by being sad. Finally, his frustrations with the civilized world become too much for him and he decides to take action. He tries to be a sort of a Messiah to a group of Deltas, trying to free them from the effect of soma. He tells them only the truth, but it is not the truth that the Deltas have been conditioned to believe, so to them it is a violent lie and they begin to cause a riot. When the riot is subdued, John is apprehended and taken to have a talk with Mustapha Mond.
John decided to indulge himself in the Brave New World’s lifestyle. John tried sex, and soma, and enjoyed it. John knew he had sinned to his own religion, and he felt so wrong, that he murdered himself. The change that John went through was simple. John actually committed his inhibitions.
Summary: This story is about racism in the south and how it affects the people it concerns. It starts out with Jefferson being sentenced to death for a crime that he did not commit. He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and because he was black, they assumed he did it. Grant Wiggins is told to go up to the jail and convince Jefferson that he is a man. At first he doesn’t know how to make Jefferson see that he is a man, but through visiting Jefferson, talking to Vivian and witnessing things around the community, he is able to reach Jefferson, convince him that he was a man.
James, Johson Weldon. Comp. Henry Louis. Gates and Nellie Y. McKay. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. 832. Print.
Although the narrator feels desperate, John tells her that there is “no reason” for how she feels, she must dismiss those “silly fantasies”(166). In other words, John treats her like a child and gives her reason to doubt herself. “Of course it is only nervousness”(162). She decides. She tries to rest, to do as she is told, like a child, but suffers because John does not believe that she is ill. This makes her feel inadequate and unsure of her own sanity.
Davis, Thomas J. “The New York Slave Conspiracy of 1741 As Black Protest.” Articles on American Slavery. Ed. Paul Finkleman. Vol.5. New York: Grand, 1989. 33-46.
Writing in her journal is the only thing that keeps her sane; yet John takes that away from her: “I must put this away-he hates to have me write” (Gilman 41). The narrator yearns to confess to John how she really feels, but she prefers to keep her feelings bottled up: “I think sometimes that if I were to write a little it would relieve the pressure of ideas and rest me” (Gilman 42). Instead, she is passive and hides her emotions. “I cry at nothing and cry most of the time. Of course I don’t when John is here, or anybody else,” only “when I am alone” (Gilman 44). She tells us that “John doesn’t know how much I really suffer” (Gilman 41). Even when the narrator tries to communicate with him, he immediately dismisses her: “I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him,” but “John wouldn’t hear of it” (Gilman 40). Instead of speaking her mind and standing up for herself, she withdraws and does “not say another word”(Gilman 47).
While John resumes his position, he begins to experience “excruciating agony” (Huxley 251). In Foster’s novel, he describes how notions of a Christ figure include “agony”(Foster 119), offering a correlation between John’s crucifixion as well as Christs. As Foster explains, the author may be trying to get the reader to view the character with, “redemption, or hope, or miracle”(Foster 124). Incidentally, John’s characterization contains those three interpretations of a Christ figure as seen when he has an incredible desire to save the people of the Hospital of the Dying from soma. John emphasizes how soma is “poison to soul as well as body” (Huxley 217), therefore he attempts to try and save this rotten world from soma, which acts as the antagonist against John. In this case John wishes to “bring [them] freedom”(Huxley 217), unveiling the purpose for his actions. Foster accentuates how a Christ figure works in order to “redeem an unworthy world” (Foster 120).This same goal is desired by John, which is prominent when he opposes soma. Since soma dominates the world, it allows the population to submit to the unworthy beliefs of society. When John is seen opposing soma, it accentuates John’s purpose--to save the corrupt world from
John's decision to commit suicide was the right thing to do to make Ann happy. John thought that killing himself would make it easier for her to stay with Steven, who he thinks that she loves. John made a decision about his own life so he has the right to choose to kill himself. He also just wants Ann to be happy. He is "naively proud of Ann. He had bewildered by it once, her caring for a dull-witted fellow like him: then assured al last of her affection he had relaxed against it gratefully, unsuspecting it might ever be less constant than his own." (Pg.49) In John's mind he was making the right decision, so he was free to make it.
...ssion and intrusiveness. John’s lack of having an open mind to his wife’s thoughts and opinions and his constant childish like treatment of his wife somehow emphasizes this point, although, this may not have been his intention. The narrator felt strongly that her thoughts and feelings were being disregarded and ignored as stated by the narrator “John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him” (Gilman 115), and she shows her despise of her husband giving extra care to what he considers more important cases over his wife’s case with a sarcastic notion “I am glad my case is not serious!” (Gilman 115). It is very doubtful that John is the villain of the story, his good intentions towards doing everything practical and possible to help his wife gain her strength and wellbeing is clear throughout the story.
John, the narrator's husband, represents society at large. Like society, John controls and determines much of what his wife should or should not do, leaving his wife incapable of making her own decisions. John's domineering nature can be accredited to the fact that John is male and also a "physician of high standing" (1). John is "practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of thi...
He wanted to swim through her blood and climb up and down her spine and drink from her ovaries and press his gums against the firm red muscle of her heart. He wanted to suture their lives together.? This quote can portray Johns disturbed mind set, we see that he is consumed with rage ...
John role in Brave New World, is an important one, in that he is of the only characters to clearly articulate the atrocities of this society; how no one is truthfully happy, knows what love is, or is fully aware of their situation. And it is this realization of the world around him that eventually drives him into insanity. Everything from his mother’s eventual death, to his inability to control his lust, causes him to lose hope. Throughout the novel, John struggles to fit into society, but because he had never been brought up under the conditions of the World State, he was not able to assimilate. John’s strengths are his intelligence and determination, but his downfall’s are his s...
In addition to the above, John was a go-getter and a calculated risk taker. Even though his act of abduction seemed impulsive, a scene before his act saw him thinking intently about what he was going to do and how exactly he was going to achieve it. He had one goal in mind which was to save his son and he pressed towards that with focus a...
Good evening parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, and friends. I would like to thank you all for coming to this very special day. I know how proud you must be. As we have grown over the years, there are many stages we all have gone through. From learning our shapes and colors, to getting our first kiss in middle school, or how about explaining to our parents why we skipped school because the principal called home. As we remember these days, things that we've done will be with us forever. But this is only the start of our journey. The day has come where we say goodbye to the big yellow buses, assemblies, assigned seating, and attendance policies. Are you really gonna miss it? For some of us maybe not right away. But eventually we will so for us to be here it is not necessarily an achievement, but a privilege. All of us have been in school over half our lives. To graduate is one more step we've taken in our lives.