Fluent Essays

In my lectures on Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart, I discussed the idea of America and the way in which writers have argued that America’s promise of freedom and equality needs to be more fully achieved for everyone living in America. Using Bulosan’s text and either James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” or Philip Roth’s “The Conversion of the Jews,” please discuss how the two writers present their ideas of America. Part 3, Chapter 30 Summary Carlos is deeply affected by Marians death. He begins drinking and roaming around the West Coast aimlessly. He meets two girls on a bus, Lily and Rosaline, and gets off in Medford where they live. They had run off to San Diego to marry sailors. Carlos stays at a hotel but joins their family for dinner and goes swimming with them and their friends. The next morning he is on a bus headed for Seattle. When he arrives in Seattle he meets Conrado Torres and learns what is happening. The contractors have hired armed thugs. The local cannery union head, Dagohoy, and two other Filipinos enter the restaurant as Conrado and Carlos are leaving. They hear shooting in the restaurant and find that the three union officials had been shot and killed. Carlos goes to San Francisco after the funeral for a meeting of the Filipino unions. He finds Jose who is still mending from the San Jose beatings. Ganzo attends the meeting and Carlos goes to Salinas to find Mariano. There he receives word that a union has been formed called the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA). He tells Jose he will go to Los Angeles to pick up his belongings and then returns to help. They will meet in Lompoc. Carlos goes to Macarios in Los Angeles. He meets a girl named Dora Travers who is waiting for Macario one day. She supports him in his poetry writing. Carlos begins coughing up blood. Macario calls a doctor for him and they learn he is in the advanced stages of tuberculosis. Macario says he will stay by Carlos and help him until he is well. Part 3, Chapter 30 Analysis Carlos, who has only known Marian a short time, is deeply affected by her death. Instead of staying in Los Angeles for school, he starts roaming around the West Coast again and drinking. In Seattle, he and Conrado walk out of a restaurant right before three cannery union officials are shot and killed. Carlos plans to help Jose in Lompoc but in Los Angeles he becomes ill. He is diagnosed with tuberculosis. His brother Macario vows to remain with him and help him until he is well. Macario remembers their brother Luciano who wasted away from the same disease. Literary Realism: life presented with no filter, through a clear glass window, one tool used is Verismilitude= the appearance of truth (done by writing transparently) Bulosan, has not only this but also American Naturalism which is an intensification of realism that includes figurtive language and imagry. Naturalism tends to focus on fringe characters from the depths while realism focuses on middle class. Naturalistic determiniation: having your fate determiend for you by outside forces. The (3) Forces of Determinism 1. Biology a. Darwinism evolution, survival of the fittest) b. Then you would expect the BEtrayal of the body: sexual drives, hunger, etc. The body has a deterministic role, ie. people get cold, people get hungry, and that determines things. c. Degenerate heredity fits in here d. Osciliating pattern of looking at the sex stuff to move on to Bulosan This study source was downloaded by 100000830007241 from CourseHero.com on 08-20-2021 13:32:19 GMT -05:00 https://www.coursehero.com/file/29332729/asam-Bulosan-midterm-Review-1docx/ Th is stu dy re so ur ce w as sh ar ed v ia C ou rs eH er o. co m https://www.coursehero.com/file/29332729/asam-Bulosan-midterm-Review-1docx/ 2. Enviornment : Nature a. Nature is not hostile, only indifferent and flat its not malvalent, its vast and doesnt care about the puny individual or the individuals needs i. Ex: pg 13 Buloson - “We tried to save every ear of corn but the rain came” “rain” pg 13, “soil “ on pg 30 are also examples 3. Material Forces: aka Material Institutions a. Social, (geo)political, economic forces and occurances i. Examples Bulosan names? 1. Pg 24 “Large corporations, banks, and the church” 2. Pg 27 “its is not our plantation anymore” once belonged to the church now to a rich man 3. Pg 5 “ the philippnies was undergoing a radical social changes plunging the nation into a great economic castrperoe that tore the islands from their roots a. The power weiled by these material institutions and forces are as powerful as hurricanes is what is being said here Research Question 1: Why is Bulosan forever announcing beginnings and endings of things? What is the arc of this story? ● Consider Genres, Firstly ○ Ex: epic poems, sonnect, musical, documentary ■ vs . Literary traditions (realist naturliast) ■ If you try to do a literary tradition in a different genre it might even be considered a parody. ● Genres: ○ BildungsRoman and its Conventions: (often called novels of formation/education0 ■ A core building genre where the individual is a core unit of a society ● Usually stories about how an indifivual comes into being and reflects a growth/model of growth/refliection within in the individual ■ Individual ● youth→ maturity ● Novel of formation/education ■ Leaves home ● Individuation vs conformity ○ The literature has someone leaving a small town or somehwere which proompts a struggle between the the individuation and the conformaty demaded by society ● But after leaving the individual experinecs “rises in station” ○ “Finds place” in society ○ American “Immigrant” Narrative ■ Similar to bildungsRoman - similar conventions Conventions: ■ Rural village ■ Long jounrey ■ Empty-handed ■ Arduous struggle ■ “Finds place” in new land ■ Accepted into social order This study source was downloaded by 100000830007241 from CourseHero.com on 08-20-2021 13:32:19 GMT -05:00 https://www.coursehero.com/file/29332729/asam-Bulosan-midterm-Review-1docx/ Th is stu dy re so ur ce w as sh ar ed v ia C ou rs eH er o. co m https://www.coursehero.com/file/29332729/asam-Bulosan-midterm-Review-1docx/ Following the Conventional Narrative Arc: ● Exposition → Conflict → Rising action → climax → falling action → Resolution → + Character Growth Which Literary traditions fit well with Bildungsroman or immigrant forms- Romantics - Godlike Realist - Person Naturalist - Helpless Object So, Does Bulosan’s story arc look like this? Like a conventional narrative arc? ● Well consider: ○ “We arrived in Seattle…” (99) ○ “It was the beginning of my life in America, the beginning of a long flgiht.” (101) ○ “This isthe beginning of your life in America” (111) Bulosan uses: Competing Narrative Imperatives: ● Bildungsroman ● Immigrant narratve (content and form) ● Naturalist narrative (content) ○ Bulosan wants this kind of life: rural vialge → empty handed → long arduous journey/struggle → finds place in land/accepted in order, but his subject matter, his life is a spiral.(Natralist content, helpless object) ■ So the story itself, the subject matter wreaks havoc on the narrative arc. ● So when Bulosan has multiple beginnings and endings it is although he is trying to reset that immigrant narrative cuz he want it to end up fitting the standard. Thus Bulosan’s form and content is an Oscilating Pattern (ups and downs) ○ Consider pg 99 when he glinches the shore of seatle, we atrrived by first sight of the land was and exilerating experience. Everythng seemed familar and kind, the white faces of the buildings melting into the afternoon sun. Bulosan is striving to tell an American Dream story ● American Dream ○ Mythic story: land of opportunity (but consider the formal category of filipinos at the time as wards which was a way of excluding them ○ Material barriers to inclusion ■ Look for this in pg 268 where the barring of filipinos from jobs and other forms of exlcusion and written about. ○ Yet there is invincible idealism (104) Idealism/Dispair Manifests struggle between: ● Bildungsroman, Immigrant Narrative ○ “Triumpth of the individual” ■ Realism, check, Romanticism check ● Naturalism ○ Flickers of humanity and agency (112) - here he grabs hold of his humanity and agency but... This study source was downloaded by 100000830007241 from CourseHero.com on 08-20-2021 13:32:19 GMT -05:00 https://www.coursehero.com/file/29332729/asam-Bulosan-midterm-Review-1docx/ Th is stu dy re so ur ce w as sh ar ed v ia C ou rs eH er o. co m https://www.coursehero.com/file/29332729/asam-Bulosan-midterm-Review-1docx/ ○ Toward humanity’s demise (135) “i found man indistinguishable from beast” - here we see how his humanity has been estinguished Consider This While reading part 3: Part 2 ending suggests part 3 will shape out differently, does it? Pay attention to that. America is in the Heart: Form: ● American literary realism: realists believe art should be presented as life seen through a clear glass window: story is natural and transparent. No falsifying of messing with story ● Versimilitude: truth-like, perceives the individuals simply as a person ● American naturalism: intensification of realism. Focuses on characters from lower depths of contemporary society, perceives the individual as a helpless object ○ Naturalistic determinism: human beings as tiny figures at the mercy of great forces ● Bildungsroman=about the growth and development of an individual-leaves home at the beginning of the story. Youth to maturity. Finds place in society. ● Conventional Narrative Arc: (beginning), Complication, Climax, Resolution ● Immigrant Narrative: individual starts in a rural village embarks on a long journey. Long, arduous struggle. “finds place in a new land”, accepted into social order ● Naturalist Narrative: ● Forces of determinism ○ 1. Biology: darwinian evolution, survival of the fittest ○ 2. Environment: nature is not hostile but is indifferent ○ 3. Material Forces: social, (geo) political, economic ■ first encounter material forces-sense that different institutions are conspiring, rich are getting richer, poor are getting poorer ■ page 24: state of the Phillipines after revolt ● Fight/Flight-fighting powers or fleeing from them ○ “fighting to the end on the land” ○ “Fleeing to manhood” ● Oscillating patter (up and down attitude)-bipolar narrative ○ Pattern repeates: hitting restart Content: ● Glorious Promise/Vicious Trap ○ Page 77-78: at first is dancing with woman views her as amazing, then views her as “mud-smelling peasant” ○ Page 102: sexual affairs between Indian woman and fellow phillipino (delicious) ○ Page 103: indian woman gets pregnant; become vicious trap ○ Marriage ○ Page 89: brother had a lot of kids (Luciano)-in ten years “would be burden with so many responsibilities that he would want to lay down and die” This study source was downloaded by 100000830007241 from CourseHero.com on 08-20-2021 13:32:19 GMT -05:00 https://www.coursehero.com/file/29332729/asam-Bulosan-midterm-Review-1docx/ Th is stu dy re so ur ce w as sh ar ed v ia C ou rs eH er o. co m https://www.coursehero.com/file/29332729/asam-Bulosan-midterm-Review-1docx/ ○ Trap: (105)-cheatswoman at dancehall cheating phillipinos of their money ● Women (traps) as agents of deterministic forces ○ Helen ■ Sexual predator ■ Powerful, Helen=godlike agency ■ Vicious trap ■ 1 woman having so much power over group of men-was able to control/stop the strike ■ beaten to death-deserving of violence ● Maternal Figure ○ Idealized ○ Preserving force of his humanity ○ nurturing and sacrificial figure (page 280)- ● White Maternal Proxies ○ As glorious American promise ■ Maternal=food +books ■ Alice Odell (writer, first woman he encountered) ■ Took care of him in hospital/warmth ■ Eileen Odell ■ Brought books and delicacies ■ Exact oppositive of her sister ○ Good (white) woman-no sexual contact ■ Eileen: related her to America ■ Mary: symbol of goodness, “angel”, healthly/clean platonic relationship ■ Marian ● Women as Symbols of Paradoxical America ○ Negative agents of destruction ■ Nature/capitalism/imperialism ○ Positive angel figures ■ Chance/god/communist party ● Women as more than man/women as less than man ○ Tied to a tree This study source was downloaded by 100000830007241 from CourseHero.com on 08-20-2021 13:32:19 GMT -05:00 https://www.coursehero.com/file/29332729/asam-Bulosan-midterm-Review-1docx/ Th is stu dy re so ur ce w as sh ar ed v ia C ou rs eH er o. co m Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) https://www.coursehero.com/file/29332729/asam-Bulosan-midterm-Review-1docx/ http://www.tcpdf.org 13 The American Paradox Discovering America in Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart Dulce-Marie Flecha, McNair Scholar The Pennsylvania State University McNair Faculty Research Advisor Jeanne Britton, Ph.D Post-Doctoral Fellow in 19 th Century British Literature and Culture Department of English College of Liberal Arts The Pennsylvania State University Abstract This essay examines the definition and various roles of the United States and its inhabitants in Carlos Bulosan’s semi-autobiographical America is in the Heart, a classic work of Asian American literature. The myriad of American characters in the novel reveal a vast diversity in the American population. America is in the Heart charts the paradox of the United States in the first half of the 20 th century; while there are Americans who do not succumb to the common racism of the day—there are, in fact, those who rebel against it—the grand majority of the protagonist’s experiences with Americans, particularly those of the upper classes and those in law enforcement, project the darker aspects of their own desires and society on the ‘Other’; some label minorities as sex-crazed deviants while simultaneously displaying a subconscious obsession with sexuality, others accuse minorities of infesting the nation with crime while consciously and unabashedly stealing from them. But despite the protagonist’s seemingly constant contact with prejudice, he is also met with kindness from Americans throughout his travels and has reason to believe that this is a nation where equality is possible, even if it was not practiced. The conflicting nature of Americans throughout the novel reveals a degree of uncertainty, from both Americans and foreigners, as to what the word “American” actually means. Introduction Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart is deservedly well remembered for its insight on the immigrant experience within the United States. But if Bulosan’s audience focuses purely on this facet of Bulosan’s work, though it is certainly extremely significant, they risk doing themselves a great disservice. Bulosan’s America is in the Heart, in addition to shining light on the Filipino-American lifestyle in the first half of the 20 th century, also shines light on the United States itself. America is in the Heart, which leans heavily on Bulosan’s own personal experiences within the United States, provides readers with a snapshot of the United States from a perspective not usually explored when attempting to define the word “America”: the perspective of an American immigrant. 14 America is in the Heart, Bulosan’s best remembered work, is a semiautobiographical novel with especially strong ties to Bulosan’s own experiences—these ties are so strong that the novel is occasionally referred to as an autobiography. Bulosan himself was born sometime between 1911 and 1913 in Binalonan, a Filipino city on the island of Luzon, to a working class farming family. He spent his childhood doing manual labor in the Philippines until his late teenaged years, when he decided to leave the Philippines for the United States. He arrived in Seattle, Washington in 1930 and would never return to his homeland. Upon arriving in the United States Bulosan resumed the life of a poor laborer; he worked several odd jobs under the stress of poverty and discrimination until the fatigue and stress of a migrant and difficult life wore him down physically and he found himself in the hospital with tuberculosis. During his three year tenure in the Los Angeles County Sanitarium Bulosan had the opportunity to delve into the world of American literature; he claimed to have read a book a day for at least the grand majority of his stay, and he certainly took advantage of his newfound time to evolve intellectually. After being released from the hospital Bulosan went on to become a social presence on behalf of working class immigrants on the West Coast; he spoke out on behalf of unions and was blacklisted by the FBI for socialist leanings. He also discovered a penchant for creative writing and would become an accomplished poet, novelist, and essayist. He died in Seattle in 1956 due to advanced lung disease and is now celebrated for giving a post-colonial outlook on Asian-American involvement in the labor movement of the early 20 th century. The plot of America is in the Heart parallels its author’s personal experiences. The protagonist, who is also named Carlos (though he goes by the nickname ‘Allos’ when in the Philippines and tells others to call him ‘Carl’ while in the United States) is a young boy working with his father on their farm in the Philippines at the book’s opening. After a period of working throughout the island of Luzon Carlos immigrates to the United States, where he continues to work as a migrant laborer until he realizes he is capable of writing in English and pledges to bring his family members back to life through the written word. He also often uses literature to connect with the United States itself; Carlos reads classic American authors like Whitman and Melville in an attempt to discover and understand a side of the United States far removed from the prejudice and pain of the American society he found himself in. On one occasion Carlos and some acquaintances were attacked by a group of white men for no reason other than their race, only to be greatly aided by the white men and women working in a hospital. Walking down the marble stairway of the hospital, I began to wonder at the paradox of America. Josés tragedy was brought about by railroad detectives, yet he had done no harm of any consequence to the company. On the highway, again, motorists had refused to take a dying man. And yet in this hospital, among white people-- Americans like those who had denied us-- we had found refuge and tolerance. Why was America so kind and yet so cruel? Was there no way to simplifying things in this continent so that suffering would be minimized? Was there no common denominator on which we could all meet? I was angry and confused, and wondered if I would ever understand this paradox. (Bulosan 147) The word “paradox” perfectly summarizes Carlos’ experiences in the United States. Like Carlos searched for America through the works of great American authors, the reader can look through Bulosan’s work and glimpse at an early 20 th century America in conflict with itself. The 15 United States, which had just entered the long years of the Great Depression when Carlos arrives in Seattle, is revealed in the novel as consisting of two very different halves, and Carlos is constantly vexed by the inconsistent nature of the United States. In America Carlos experiences both great kindnesses and great cruelties, often within the same moment, and this strange combination often drives Carlos to tears. He experiences no shortage of prejudice in the United States, and the results of these prejudices range from verbal slights to severe physical and sexual abuse. Yet despite the many hardships and prejudices Carlos faces, he comes to think of America in a very positive light—the kindnesses he benefits from in the United States combine with a more intangible sense of hope in the potential of America. Within Bulosan’s work the reader finds tropes that should sound familiar to anyone who has taken elementary school American history classes; there is assurance and a faint tint of pride in the possibilities of America; by the end of the novel Carlos has faith that this is a nation where great things can and do happen, and he ends the novel by stating that nothing will ever take this faith from him again. By recognizing the two halves of this paradox and forgiving the United States for its ruthlessly conflicting nature, Bulosan shows a growth in the understandings he comes to with his various inconsistent childhood and adult perceptions of America. His ability to not only make these understandings but allow them to evolve throughout his time in the United States makes Bulosan a credible and fascinating source of information on the America that he lived within and further complicates the already tangled and wide-ranging opinions of what the word “American” should mean at all. By allowing his audience to peek into his experiences through his protagonist and namesake, Carlos Bulosan shows how America both defines and is defined by the masses who venture onto its shore in an attempt to find the lives they were meant to live. The First Half of the Paradox: American Brutality and Patriotic Brutes The United States that Carlos Bulosan describes in his novel is unquestionably a brutal world for immigrants to inhabit, and almost every facet of an immigrant’s lived is tinted with a shade of violence. The vast majority of this violence is rooted in racism. Throughout the novel Carlos has a myriad of racist experiences in the United States, the first of which occurs before he so much as steps in the country—he is called a savage by a white American for the first time on the boat that first brings him to Seattle—and the novel ends with no hope of these occurrences ever coming to an end. The worst of these racist encounters were those that escalated into violence—and this, unfortunately, was not at all uncommon. Carlos finds himself physically abused by both civilians and law enforcement officers throughout his life in the United States, and one of these attacks left Carlos with a hurt knee that never recovers. The racist incidents in the novel tend to be brief and are not described with much detail. The racists in the novel often only appear in one quick scene and usually go nameless, only serving as an example of the frequency and popularity of this racist mindset. The racism of the novel is often shown in conjunction with hypocrisy; many of the justifications for prejudice on the part of these racist white Americans are rooted in perceived flaws within the minorities that are palpable within American society. The most obvious of these is the complicated relationship between American racism and sexuality. In the novel Filipinos are often derided for being blatantly sexual beings—in Carlos’ first encounter with racism on his voyage to the United States a teenage girl tells her companion to “look at those half-naked savages from the Philippines…! Haven’t they any idea of decency?” (Bulosan 99). And yet the 16 Americans that Carlos encounters display a certain fascination with sexuality of their own. The teenage girl who derided Carlos was wearing a bathing suit that he describes as “brief” (Bulosan 99), and as a working child in Binalonan notes that the American tourists were only interesting in taking pictures of “young Igorot girls with large breasts and robust mountain men whose genitals were nearly exposed, their G-strings bulging large and alive (Bulosan 67). Racism is used as a justification for attacking minorities, exploiting minorities, and allowing minorities to continue to live in squalid and unfair conditions, and when these presumptions are challenged the American racists react strongly; one affluent white man tells Carlos that “you,” which is here used to collectively refer to all minorities suffering from the effects of gambling and opium rings, “brought this on yourself” and is infuriated when Carlos attempts to argue that many of these gambling rings are actually run by aristocratic white Americans in the area (Bulosan 163). The hypocrisy of many of the racist statements in the novel reflects a projection of subjects and habits that white Americans consider indecent or uncomfortable within society onto a vulnerable population of immigrants that cannot effectively defend themselves. The America of America is in the Heart is not only brutal, it effectively brutalizes the majority of its inhabitants; it twists the initial outrage and disappointment of the downtrodden into something significantly nastier and more violent. Bulosan’s works are so saturated with distinctive phrases and concepts that it seems curious to refer to a cliché. But when Alfredo justifies his new career as a pimp with the well-worn “Open your eyes, Carlos. This is a country of survival of the fittest” (Bulosan 170) he accurately summarizes the evolution of a mindset within many of the immigrant class. The tragedy of the immigrant in America is in the Heart is not merely embedded in the brutality of the United States; it is in the unquestionable ability of the United States to expose and nurture brutality in its inhabitants. It is a phenomenon perfectly personified in Max Smith, the small Filipino who Carlos encounters at the height of his own stint with brutality. Max Smith is particularly interesting for two reasons: first, he went by a purely American name, which Carlos acknowledges as strange, and second, he purposefully and purely maintains this brutality for his own safety: “Max pretended to be bold and fearless, but his bravado was a shield to protect himself, to keep the secret of his own cowardice” (Bulosan 164). Max’s illusion of cruelty is a specific kind of reaction to his surroundings; he is not pushed to the point where he wishes to resort to violent means, but he perceives that these violent means are necessary for survival in the United States and has no moral concerns about maintaining a negative and stereotypical image. But the reader is introduced to the concept of brutalization in the United States long before they are introduced to Max Smith; in fact, the novel introduces its reader to this brutalization before Carlos so much as sees the boat that would bring him to the United States and the rest of his life. Bulosan describes two Filipinos “bitter and confused” (Bulosan 83) by their experiences in the United States: his English teacher in the Philippines, an unabashed man who never quite managed to forgive fate for the death of his father during his fifteen year stint as a houseboy in the United States, and a peasant who had attended college in the United States and returned to lead the violent Colorum Party in several revolts throughout the Philippines. These two characters are noteworthy because they brought this bitterness back to the Philippines and their anger taints the actions they take towards fellow Filipinos—people who are in no way responsible for the treatment they received or the hardships they faced in the United States. This suggests that these two men are not merely driven by some need for revenge—if it was, one would imagine their anger (and, more importantly, the actions rooted in their anger) would be 17 directed at the American and European tourists that descend upon the Philippines throughout the first half of the book. Their personalities were very genuinely and very negatively affected by their times in America and their anger wound up channeled in their returns to the Philippines. Though it is only fair to note that, while both react to negative experiences in the United States after their return to the Philippines, the nature of these reactions are different. Regardless of how one feels about his methods, it is safe to assume that the leader of the Colorum party intends to channel his American experience into some good; the revolts are started with the intent to help the peasants of Luzon. The English teacher, on the other hand, does not take much action as a result of his experiences; while he, like the Colorum Party’s leader, does tend to direct his bitterness towards the upper classes-- specifically the hacienderos, or land-owning classes, of the Philippines—his most rebellious act recorded in the novel is giving Carlos the answers to a nation-wide test. America’s tendency to brutalize its inhabitants is not restricted to those who managed to return to their native country; Carlos documents the ‘brutalization’ of several of those close to him. Among the best documented of these brutalizations takes place within Carlos’ brothers Macario and Amado, in whom Carlos notes several changes after they reunite in the United States. Carlos first notices Amado’s “Americanization” in Amado’s speaking patterns. After Amado’s years in the United States, Carlos notices Amado’s swifter, cleaner English and he also takes note of—and is often bothered by—his brother’s calling him by his Christian name (Carlos) rather than the common nickname with which he is introduced to the reader (Allos). But Amado’s changes run deeper than his improved grammar and diminishing Filipino accent. When they first reunite Amado does not recognize his younger brother and nearly stabs Carlos as a result. “I wanted to cry because my brother was no longer the person I had known in Binolan,” Carlos reflects as he leaves Amado for Los Angeles shortly after their first American reunion. “He was no longer the gentle, hard-working janitor in the presidencia. I remembered the time when he had gone to Lingayen to cook for my brother Macario. Now he had changed, and I could not understand him anymore” (Bulosan 125-6). Carlos immediately recognizes a newfound aggression in Amado’s personality, an aggression that unnerves Carlos so greatly that he nearly cries and asks God not to allow the same to happen to him. Despite this prayer, Carlos too succumbs to this instinctive brutality when his frustration at the unfair circumstances that he can never seem to escape from in America is compounded by a personal tragedy (like his former English teacher, the news of the loss of a parent signifies the moment Carlos surrenders, however temporarily, his belief that one can live decently in the United States). I had tried to keep my faith in America, but now I could no longer. It was broken, trampled upon, driving me out into the dark nights with a gun in my hand. In the senseless days, in the tragic hours, I held tightly to the gun and stared at the world, hating it with all my power. And hating made me lonely, lonely for beauty and love, love that could resuscitate beauty and goodness… But I found only violence and hate, living in a corrupt corner of America. (Bulosan 164) After the death of his father Carlos essentially agrees to live by the standards set for poor minorities in a racially prejudiced society. He does exactly what the racist characters of the novel would expect a Filipino immigrant to do: during this period Carlos repeatedly commits petty theft from whoever has the misfortune of being conveniently close by, he makes his living 18 almost exclusively through gambling and spends a significant fraction of his winnings on alcohol, and seriously plans with Max Smith to murder both a security guard and a bank owner en route to robbing the bank itself. The disturbing part of this period in Carlos’ life is how he channeled his energy into this vicious and degraded mentality with such ease. The bank robbery was Carlos’ brainchild, and he admits that the idea drove him “like a marijuana addict when it seized my imagination” (Bulosan 165), he tells Max Smith his idea with neither hesitation nor guilt, and his excitement over the idea inspires him so greatly that he “stopped to catch [his] breath, so great was the idea, so breathtaking and courageous!” (Bulosan 165). But while Max Smith turns to the illusion of brutality to protect himself, Carlos’ brutalization is a shade deeper. Carlos considers the bank robbery to be more than a method of survival; he takes genuine pride in it, a far cry and disturbing opposite from earlier in the novel when Carlos considered defending a French-American employer and his family the only courageous thing to do and was deeply upset with Julio for pulling him away. If America fosters a brutality in men, it grows a tendency for manipulation in women. There are several females in the novel who attempt to coerce a male into marriage, but Carlos never witnesses one of these ventures succeed until he reaches the United States, when LaBelle attempts to use her pregnancy to legally ensnare Conrado and instead is awarded the good- looking Paulo for her efforts. There are a few factors that could explain why LaBelle succeeded where a number of others had failed. In the Philippines every young man accosted by a female manages to escape by escaping to a different city, a feat that Conrado neither has the time nor the presence of mind to attempt. But some credit should go LaBelle herself, who planned her attack with much more foresight than any of her contemporaries in the Philippines, and certainly goes about it with a touch more bluntness and a cruelty of her own. When a girl in the Philippines tries to find a husband in Carlos, she approaches his mother and plays with his baby sister. LaBelle greets the man she hopes to marry by throwing water on his face and asking “Are you going to marry me or not?” (102). Rather than merely trying to talk her way into a marriage, LaBelle uses her newborn—a child that Carlos and all of his coworkers were positive was not fathered by any in the group-- and a company official to attempt to force her will on Conrado. LaBelle takes a law intended to protect her and twists it in her favor. The only female in the Philippines who comes close to this level of manipulation is Veronica, and her level of destruction in Carlos’ life could very well have been accidental—the reader can assume that the landlady told Carlos to flee because Veronica had fingered Carlos as the father of her child, but is no proof in the novel strong enough to indict her. But LaBelle is not the only one who uses a cruel manipulation to her advantage. Helen makes a career of it by sabotaging worker’s unions throughout the West Coast, justifying her actions with racism. There are more examples of racism in this account than one can count, but the vast majority of those examples are initiated by men. Of the women who actively expose themselves as racists, Helen is the only female in the novel to direct her racism into some ongoing and palpable action—her work with the company owners is based in her ability to lie her way into the inner circles of Unions and manipulate a targeted member to suit her means. Helen and LaBelle both thrived by the manipulation of relationships, but they would not have been successful if relationships between the poorest of the United States not been so strained and desperate in nature. Many of the poorest in the novel react to the constant brutalities of life in the United States by banding together, but these bonds are clearly influenced and strained by their difficult life. While in the Philippines, Allos copes with his family’s poverty in 19 part by relishing in the strong bonds he has with his family; he says of one night he spent speaking with his family and fellow villagers that it was inspiring to sit with them, to listen to them talk of other times and other lands; and I knew that if there was one redeeming quality in our poverty, it was this boundless affinity for each other, this humanity that grew in each of us, as boundless as the green earth (Bulosan 10). While life was difficult in the Philippines, there was also a sense of genuine goodwill and community, and Carlos often recalls moments of bonding with all but one of his brothers (the sole exemption being his eldest brother, who briefly reappeared in Carlos’ life when he was young and who Carlos did not speak to again after that reencounter). Relationships in the United States, in contrast, tend to be rooted in something much more fraught. Carlos notices that his brother Amado’s group of friends were bonded by a shared desperation; what mattered to [Amado] was the pleasure he had with his friends. There was something urgent in their friendship, probably a defense against their environment. They created a wall around themselves in their little world, and what they did behind it was theirs alone. Their secrecy bordered on insanity (Bulosan 170). Even the relationships Carlos had with his brothers suffered after their move to the United States. Carlos repeatedly regrets their refusal to acknowledge him by the nickname he was known by in the Philippines. In the Philippines, Allos’ older brothers took on a nurturing role, often caring for him through various injuries and illnesses. In the United States this does not end completely—Macario does care for Carlos after Carlos is released from the hospital—but the stresses of difficult lives take a toll on their relationships. While all three brothers separate on a friendly note, they get into several conflicts of their own, the worst of which turning for the dangerously physical. The Second Half of the Paradox: A Place Worth Hoping For As easy as it is to wrap oneself entirely in the cruelties of the United States in America is in the Heart, Bulosan’s America is much more than a collection of sorry and pitiless people committing sorry and pitiless crimes against one another. Bulosan reveals a side of America that inspired the phrase “land of the free”. Arguably the most important facet of the positive side of the United States of Bulosan’s novel is the people who make up the nation itself. While the novel certainly features more than a fair share of violent, brutal, and racist characters in America, it also portrays characters that, for whatever reason, avoid the brutalizing effect and racially based hierarchy of the United States. There are an array of minor characters who ignore the tradition of racial prejudice and treat Carlos with the same kindness they would treat any other American. A significant portion of these minor characters are female. If we can divide the brutality of American women into two categories (those who restrict their brutality to dialogue and those who go a step further and those who channel that brutality into action) we can effectively do the same for the America women defined by kindness (those whose kindnesses are short-term and those whose kindnesses are long-term). The women of the former category only represent the most fleeting experiences in Carlos’ life—most are not given a name, let alone a description longer than a few words. The longest of these spontaneous and transitory interactions is the two or so days Carlos spends with Lily and Rosaline in Oregon. The women who grant Carlos some short-term act of kindness are not contained into some easily defined group; they can be of any race or socio-economic background—Lily and Rosaline are both Caucasian-Americans who come from fairly comfortable backgrounds, but Carlos also recalls with gratitude a working class Korean immigrant who fed him on multiple occasions while he is trying to reunite with his 20 brothers and is stunned by the stark contrast of the cruelty of his multiple physical attackers with the warmth of the nurses who were charged with cleaning his wounds. This diversity is one of this group’s great strengths; Carlos may be confronted with prejudice everywhere he turns, but he also trusts that he can find some grains of genuine goodwill, and he can occasionally rely on these fleeting kindnesses to provide great needs (for example, the Korean immigrant fed him during a period where Carlos could not afford food) in times of greater instability. The women who provide long-term kindnesses to Carlos are both less numerous and less diverse. There are three women who assume the role of caretaker in Carlos’ life—two, Marian and Eileen Odell, do so in the United States and the last, Miss Mary Strandon, in the Philippines. Marian, who Carlos stumbles upon just after he is physically assaulted and sexually abused by a group of white men, only lives to spend a short time with Carlos but makes her intentions clear almost immediately. I’ll help you. I’ll work for you. You will have no obligations. What I would like is to have someone to care for, and it should be you who are young. What matters is the affection, the relationship, between you and the object. Even a radio becomes almost human, and the voice that comes from it is something close to you, and then there grows a bond between you. For a long time now I’ve wanted to care for someone. And you are the one. Please don’t make me unhappy. (Bulosan 212). Here Marian reveals that native-born Americans are not exempt from the loneliness that haunts Carlos during his darkest days in the United States, she admits to needing an object for her care so badly that even an inanimate object can be … cweiler Typewritten Text Found online at: http://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/seminar1fall2010hong/files/2010/08/Baldwin-Sonnys-Blues.pdf scan Baldwin - Sonnys Blues.pdf The Conversion of the Jews Philip Roth (1959) “You’re a real one for opening your mouth in the first place,” Itzie said. “What do you open your mouth all the time for?” “I didn’t bring it up, Itz, I didn’t,” Ozzie said. “What do you care about Jesus Christ for anyway?” “I didn’t bring up Jesus Christ. He did. I didn’t even know what he was talking about. Jesus is historical, he kept saying. Jesus is historical.” Ozzie mimicked the monumental voice of Rabbi Binder. “Jesus was a person that lived like you and me,” Ozzie continued. “That’s what Binder said—“ “Yeah? ... So what! What do I give-two cents whether he lived or not. And what do you gotta open your mouth!” Itzie Lieberman favored closed-mouthedness, especially when it came to Ozzie Freedman’s questions. Mrs. Freedman had to see Rabbi Binder twice before about Ozzie’s questions and this Wednesday at four-thirty would be the third time. Itzie preferred to keep his mother in the kitchen; he settled for behind-the-back subtleties such as gestures, faces, snarls and other less delicate barnyard noises. “He was a real person, Jesus, but he wasn’t like God, and we don’t believe he is God.” Slowly, Ozzie was explaining Rabbi Binder’s position to Itzie, who had been absent from Hebrew School the previous afternoon. “The Catholics,” Itzie said helpfully, “they believe in Jesus Christ, that he’s God.” Itzie Lieberman used “the Catholics” in its broadest sense—to include the Protestants. Ozzie received Itzie’s remark with a tiny head bob, as though it were a footnote, and went on. “His mother was Mary, and his father probably was Joseph,” Ozzie said. “But the New Testament says his real father was God.” “His real father?” “Yeah,” Ozzie said, “that’s the big thing, his father’s supposed to be God.” “Bull.” “That’s what Rabbi Binder says, that it’s impossible—“ “Sure it’s impossible. That stuff’s all bull. To have a baby you gotta get laid,” Itzie theologized. “Mary hadda get laid.” “That’s what Binder says: ‘The only way a woman can have a baby is to have intercourse with a man.’” “He said that, Ozz?” For a moment it appeared that Itzie had put the theological question aside. “He said that, intercourse?” A little curled smile shaped itself in the lower half of Itzie’s face like a pink mustache. “What you guys do, Ozz, you laugh or something?” “I raised my hand.” “Yeah? Whatja say?” “That’s when I asked the question.” Itzie’s face lit up. “Whatja ask about—intercourse?” “No, I asked the question about God, how if He could create the heaven and earth in six days, and make all the animals and the fish and the light in six days—the light especially, that’s what always gets me, that He could make the light. Making fish and animals, that’s pretty good—“ “That’s damn good.” Itzie’s appreciation was honest but unimaginative: it was as though God had just pitched a one-hitter. “But making light . . . I mean when you think about it, it’s really something,” Ozzie said. “Anyway, I asked Binder if He could make ail that in six days, and He could pick the six days he wanted right out of nowhere, why couldn’t He let a woman have a baby without having intercourse.” “You said intercourse, Ozz, to Binder?” “Yeah.” “Right in class?” “Yeah.” Itzie smacked the side of his head. 2 “I mean, no kidding around,” Ozzie said, “that’d really be nothing. After all that other stuff, that’d practically be nothing.” Itzie considered a moment. “What’d Binder say?” “He started all over again explaining how Jesus was historical and how he lived like you and me but he wasn’t God. So I said I understood that. What I wanted to know was different.” What Ozzie wanted to know was always different. The first time he had wanted to know how Rabbi Binder could call the Jews “The Chosen People” if the Declaration of Independence claimed all men to be created equal. Rabbi Binder tried to distinguish for him between political equality and spiritual legitimacy, but what Ozzie wanted to know, he insisted vehemently, was different. That was the first time his mother had to come. Then there was the plane crash. Fifty-eight people had been killed in a plane crash at La Guardia. In studying a casualty list in the newspaper his mother had discovered among the list of those dead eight Jewish names (his grandmother had nine but she counted Miller as a Jewish name); because of the eight she said the plane crash was “a tragedy,” During free-discussion time on Wednesday Ozzie had brought to Rabbi Binder’s attention this matter of “some of his relations” always picking out the Jewish names. Rabbi Binder had begun to explain cultural unity and some other things when Ozzie stood up at his seat and said that what he wanted to know was different. Rabbi Binder insisted that he sit down and it was then that Ozzie shouted that he wished all fifty-eight were Jews. That was the second time his mother came. “And he kept explaining about Jesus being historical, and so I kept asking him. No kidding, Itz, he was trying to make me look stupid.” “So what he finally do?” “Finally he starts screaming that I was deliberately simple-minded and a wise guy, and that my mother had to come, and this was the last time. And that I’d never get bar-mitzvahed1 if he could help it. Then, Itz, then he starts talking in that voice like a statue, real slow and deep, and he says that I better think over what I said about the Lord. He told me to go to his office and think it over.” Ozzie leaned his body towards Itzie. “Itz, I thought it over for a solid hour, and now I’m convinced God could do it.” Ozzie had planned to confess his latest transgression to his mother as soon as she came home from work. But it was a Friday night in November and already dark, and when Mrs. Freedman came through the door she tossed off her coat, kissed Ozzie quickly on the face, and went to the kitchen table to light the three yellow candles, two for the Sabbath and one for Ozzie’s father. When his mother lit the candles she would move her two arms slowly towards her, dragging them through the air, as though persuading people whose minds were half made up. And her eyes would get glassy with tears. Even when his father was alive Ozzie remembered that her eyes had gotten glassy, so it didn’t have anything to do with his dying. It had something to do with lighting the candles. As she touched the flaming match to the unlit wick of a Sabbath candle, the phone rang, and Ozzie, standing only a foot from it, plucked it off the receiver and held it muffled to his chest. When his mother lit candles Ozzie felt there should be no noise; even breathing, if you could manage it, should be softened. Ozzie pressed the phone to his breast and watched his mother dragging whatever she was dragging, and he felt his own eyes get glassy. His mother was a round, tired, gray-haired penguin of a woman whose gray skin had begun to feel the tug of gravity and the weight of her own history. Even when she was dressed up she looked like a chosen person. But when she lit candles she looked like something better; like a woman who knew momentarily that God could do anything. After a few mysterious minutes she was finished. Ozzie hung up the phone and walked to the kitchen table where 1 I.e., he would be denied the ceremony of bar mitzvah that initiates a Jewish boy of thirteen to his religious duties. 3 she was beginning to lay the two places for the four-course Sabbath meal. He told her that she would have to see Rabbi Binder next Wednesday at four-thirty, and then he told her why. For the first time in their life together she hit Ozzie across the face with her hand. All through the chopped liver and chicken soup parts of the dinner Ozzie cried; he didn’t have any appetite for the rest. On Wednesday, in the largest of the three basement classrooms of the synagogue, Rabbi Marvin Binder, a tall, handsome, broad-shouldered man of thirty with thick strong-fibered black hair, removed his watch from his pocket and saw that it was four o’clock. At the rear of the room Yakov Blotnik, the seventy-one-year-old custodian, slowly polished the large window, mumbling to himself, unaware that it was four o’clock or six o’clock, Monday or Wednesday. To most of the students Yakov Blotnik’s mumbling, along with his brown curly beard, scythe nose, and two heel-trailing black cats, made him an object of wonder, a foreigner, a relic, towards whom they were alternately fearful and disrespectful, To Ozzie the mumbling had always seemed a monotonous, curious prayer; what made it curious was that old Blotnik had been mumbling so steadily for so many years, Ozzie suspected he had memorized the prayers and forgotten all about God. “It is now free-discussion time,” Rabbi Binder said. “Feel free to talk about any Jewish matter at all—religion, family, politics, sports—“ There was silence. It was a gusty, clouded November afternoon and it did not seem as though there ever was or could be a thing called baseball. So nobody this week said a word about that hero from the past, Hank Greenberg2-- which limited free discussion considerably. And the soul-battering Ozzie Freedman hadjust received from Rabbi Binder had imposed its limitation. When it was Ozzie’s turn to read aloud from the Hebrew book the rabbi 2 American baseball player (1911-1986). had asked him petulantly why he didn’t read more rapidly. He was showing no progress. Ozzie said he could read faster but that if he did he was sure not to understand what he was reading. Nevertheless, at the rabbi’s repeated suggestion Ozzie tried, and showed a great talent, but in the midst of a long passage he stopped short and said he didn’t understand a word he was reading, and started in again at a drag-footed pace. Then came the soul-battering. Consequently when free-discussion time rolled around none of the students felt too free. The rabbi’s invitation was answered only by the mumbling of feeble old Blotnik. “Isn’t there anything at all you would like to discuss?” Rabbi Binder asked again, looking at his watch. “No questions or comments?” There was a small grumble from the third row. The rabbi requested that Ozzie rise and give the rest of the class the advantage of his thought. Ozzie rose. “I forget it now,” he said, and sat down in his place. Rabbi Binder advanced a seat towards Ozzie and poised himself on e edge of the desk. It was Itzie’s desk and the rabbi’s frame only a dagger’s-length away from his face snapped him to sitting attention. “Stand up again, Oscar,” Rabbi Binder said calmly, “and try to assemble your thoughts.” Ozzie stood up. All his classmates turned in their seats and watched as he gave an unconvincing scratch to his forehead. “I can’t assemble any,” he announced, and plunked himself down. “Stand up!” Rabbi Binder advanced from Itzie’s desk to the one directly in front of Ozzie; when the rabbinical back was turned Itzie gave it five-fingers off the tip of his nose, causing a small titter in the room. Rabbi Binder was too absorbed in squelching Ozzie’s nonsense once and for all to bother with titters. “Stand up, Oscar. What’s your question about?” 4 Ozzie pulled a word out of the air. It was the handiest word. “Religion.” “Oh, now you remember?” “Yes.” “What is it?” Trapped, Ozzie blurted the first thing that came to him. “Why can’t He make anything He wants to make!” As Rabbi Binder prepared an answer, a final answer, Itzie, ten feet behind him, raised one finger on his left hand, gestured it meaningfully towards the rabbi’s back, and brought the house down. Binder twisted quickly to see what had happened and in the midst of the commotion Ozzie shouted into the rabbi’s back what he couldn’t have shouted to his face. It was a loud, toneless sound that had the timbre of something stored inside for about six days. “You don’t know! You don’t know anything about God!” The rabbi spun back towards Ozzie. “What?” “You don’t know—you don’t—“ “Apologize, Oscar, apologize!” It was a threat. “You don’t—“ Rabbi Binder’s hand flicked out at Ozzie’s cheek. Perhaps it had only been meant to clamp the boy’s mouth shut, but Ozzie ducked and the palm caught him squarely on the nose. The blood came in a short, red spurt on to Ozzie’s shirt front. The next moment was all confusion. Ozzie screamed, “You bastard, You bastard!” and broke for the classroom door. Rabbi Binder lurched a step backwards, as though his own blood had started flowing violently in the opposite direction, then gave a clumsy lurch forward and bolted out the door after Ozzie. The class followed after the rabbi’s huge blue- suited back, and before old Blotnik could turn from his window, the room was empty and everyone was headed full speed up the three flights leading to the roof. If one should compare the light of day to the life of man: sunrise to birth; sunset—the dropping down over the edge— to death; then as Ozzie Freedman wiggled through the trapdoor of the synagogue roof, his feet kicking backwards bronco-style at Rabbi Binder’s outstretched arms-at that moment the day was fifty years old. As a rule, fifty or fifty-five reflects accurately the age of late afternoons in November, for it is in that month, during those hours, that one’s awareness of light seems no longer a matter of seeing, but of hearing: light begins clicking away. In fact, as Ozzie locked shut the trapdoor in the rabbi’s face, the sharp click of the bolt into the lock might momentarily have been mistaken for the sound of the heavier gray that had just throbbed through the sky. With all his weight Ozzie kneeled on the locked door; any instant he was certain that Rabbi Binder’s shoulder would fling it open, splintering the wood into shrapnel and catapulting his body into the sky. But the door did not move and below him he heard only the rumble of feet, first loud then dim, like thunder rolling away. A question shot through his brain. “Can this be me?” For a thirteen-year-old who had just labeled his religious leader a bastard, twice, it was not an improper question. Louder and louder the question came to him—“Is it me? Is it me?”— until he discovered himself no longer kneeling, but racing crazily towards the edge of the roof, his eyes crying, his throat screaming, and his arms flying everywhichway as though not his own. “Is it me? Is it me Me ME ME ME! It has to be me—but is it!” It is the question a thief must ask himself the night he jimmies open his first window, and it is said to be the question with which bridegrooms quiz themselves before the altar. In the few wild seconds it took Ozzie’s body to propel him to the edge of the roof, his self-examination began to grow 5 fuzzy. Gazing down at the street, he became confused as to the problem beneath the question: was it, is-it-me-who-called-Binder-a-bastard? or, is-it-me-prancing- around-on-the-roof? However, the scene below settled all, for there is an instant in any action when whether it is you or somebody else is academic. The thief crams the money in his pockets and scoots out the window. The bridegroom signs the hotel register for two. And the boy on the roof finds a streetful of people gaping at him, necks stretched backwards, faces up, as though he were the ceiling of the Hayden Planetarium.3 Suddenly you know it’s you. “Oscar! Oscar Freedman!” A voice rose from the center of the crowd, a voice that, could it have been seen, would have looked like the writing on scroll. “Oscar Freedman, get down from there. Immediately!” Rabbi Binder was pointing one arm stiffly up at him; and at the end of that arm, one finger aimed menacingly. It was the attitude of a dictator, but one—the eyes confessed all—whose personal valet had spit neatly in his face. Ozzie didn’t answer. Only for a blink’s length did he look towards Rabbi Binder. Instead his eyes began to fit together the world beneath him, to sort out people from places, friends from enemies, participants from spectators. In little jagged starlike clusters his friends stood around Rabbi Binder, who was still pointing. The topmost point on a star compounded not of angels but of five adolescent boys was Itzie. What a world it was, with those stars below, Rabbi Binder below . . . Ozzie, who a moment earlier hadn’t been able to control his own body, started to feel the meaning of the word control: he felt Peace and he felt Power. “Oscar Freedman, I’ll give you three to come down.” Few dictators give their subjects three to do anything; but, as always, Rabbi Binder only looked dictatorial. “Are you ready, Oscar?” 3 Building in New York City that houses a device that projects a representation of the heavens onto a domed ceiling for viewing by spectators. Ozzie nodded his head yes, although he had no intention in the world—the lower one or the celestial one he’d just entered—of coming down even if Rabbi Binder should give him a million. “All right then,” said Rabbi Binder. He ran a hand through his black Samson hair as though it were the gesture prescribed for uttering the first digit. Then, with his other hand cutting a circle out of the small piece of sky around him, he spoke. “Onel” There was no thunder. On the contrary, at that moment, as though “one” was the cue for which he had been waiting, the world’s least thunderous person appeared on the synagogue steps. He did not so much come out the synagogue door as lean out, onto the darkening air. He clutched at the doorknob with one hand and looked up at the roof. “Oy!” Yakov Blotnik’s old mind hobbled slowly, as if on crutches, and though he couldn’t decide precisely what the boy was doing on the roof, he knew it wasn’t good-that is, it wasn’t-good-for-the-Jews. For Yakov Blotnik life had fractionated itself simply: things were either good-for-the-Jews or no-good-for-the-Jews. He smacked his free hand to his in-sucked cheek, gently. “Oy, Gut!” And then quickly as he was able, he jacked down his head and surveyed the street. There was Rabbi Binder (like a man at an auction with only three dollars in his pocket, he had just delivered a shaky “Two!”); there were the students, and that was all. So far it-wasn’t-so-bad-for-the-Jews. But the boy had to come down immediately, before anybody saw. The problem: how to get the boy off the roof? Anybody who has ever had a cat on the roof knows how to get him down. You call the fire department. Or first you call the operator and you ask her for the fire department. And the next thing there is great jamming of brakes and clanging of bells and shouting of instructions. And then the cat is off the roof. You do the same thing to get a boy off the roof. 6 That is, you do the same thing if you are Yakov Blotnik and you once had a cat on the roof. When the engines, all four of them, arrived, Rabbi Binder had four times given Ozzie the count of three. The big hook-and-ladder swung around the corner and one of the firemen leaped from it, plunging headlong towards the yellow fire hydrant in front of the synagogue. With a huge wrench he began to unscrew the top nozzle. Rabbi Binder raced over to him and pulled at his shoulder. “There’s no fire . . .” The fireman mumbled back over his shoulder and, heatedly, continued working at the nozzle. “But there’s no fire, there’s no fire . . .” Binder shouted. When the fireman mumbled again, the rabbi grasped his face with both hands and pointed it up at the roof. To Ozzie it looked as though Rabbi Binder was trying to tug the .fireman’s head out of his body, like a cork from a bottle. He had to giggle at the picture they made: it was a family portrait-rabbi in black skullcap, fireman in red fire hat, and the little yellow hydrant squatting beside like a kid brother, bareheaded. From the edge of the roof Ozziewaved at the portrait, a one-handed, flapping, mocking wave; in doing ithis right foot slipped from under him. Rabbi Binder covered his eyes with his hands. Firemen work fast. Before Ozzie had even regained his balance, a big,round, yellowed net was being held on the synagogue lawn. The firemen who held it looked up at Ozzie with stern, feelingless faces. One of the firemen turned his head towards Rabbi Binder. “What, is the kid nuts or something?” Rabbi Binder unpeeled his hands from his eyes, slowly, painfully, as if they were tape. Then he checked: nothing on the sidewalk, no dents in the net. “Is he gonna jump, or what?” the fireman shouted. In a voice not at all like a statue, Rabbi Binder finally answered. “Yes. Yes, I think so . . . He’s been threatening to . . .” Threatening to? Why, the reason he was on the roof, Ozzie rernembered, was to get away; he hadn’t even thought about jumping. He had just run to get away, and the truth was that he hadn’t really headed for the roof as much as he’d been chased there. “What’s his name, the kid?” “Freedman,” Rabbi Binder answered. “Oscar Freedman.” The fireman looked up at Ozzie. “What is it with you, Oscar? You gonna jump, or what?” Ozzie did not answer. Frankly, the question had just arisen. “Look, Oscar, if you’re gonna jump, jump—and if you’re not gonna jump, don’t jump. But don’t waste our time, willya?” Ozzie looked at the fireman and then at Rabbi Binder. He wanted to see Rabbi Binder cover his eyes one more time. “I’m going to jump.” And then he scampered around the edge of the roof to the corner, where there was no net below, and he flapped his arms at his sides, swishing the air and smacking his palms to his trousers on the downbeat. He began screaming like some kind of engine, “Wheeeee . . .wheeeeee,” and leaning way out over the edge with the upper half of his body. The firemen whipped around to cover the ground with the net. Rabbi Binder mumbled a few words to somebody and covered his eyes. Everything happened quickly, jerkily, as in a silent movie. The crowd, which had arrived with the fire engines, gave out a long, Fourth-of-July fireworks oooh-aahhh. In the excitement no one had paid the crowd much heed, except, of course, Yakov Blotnik, who swung from the doorknob counting heads. “ Fier und tsvansik. . . Finf und tsvansik . . .finf und tsvansik4 . . .Oy, Gut!” It wasn’t like this with the cat. Rabbi Binder peeked through his fingers, checked the sidewalk and net. Empty. But there was Ozzie racing to the other corner. The firemen raced with him but were unable to keep up. Whenever Ozzie wanted to he might jump and 4 Yiddish: “twenty-four . . .twenty-five” 7 splatter himself on the sidewalk, and by the time the firemen scooted to the spot all they could do with their net would be to cover the mess.. “Wheeeee . . . wheeeee . . .” “Hey, Oscar,” the winded fireman yelled. “What the hell is this, a game or something?” “Wheeeee . . . wheeeee . . .” “Hey, Oscar—“ But he was off now to the other corner, flapping his wings fiercely. Rabbi Binder couldn’t take it any longer—the fire engines from nowhere, the screaming suicidal boy, the net. He fell to his knees, exhausted, and with his hands curled together in front of his chest like a litle dome, he pleaded, “Oscar, stop it, Oscar. Don’t jump, Oscar. Please come down . . . Please don’t jump.” And further back in the crowd a single voice, a single young voice, shouted a lone word to the boy on the roof. “Jump!” It was Itzie. Ozzie momentarily stopped flapping. “Go ahead, Ozz—jump!” Itzie broke off his point of the star and courageously, with the inspiration not of a wise-guy but of a disciple, stood alone. “Jump, Ozz, jump!” Still on his knees, his hands still curled, Rabbi Binder twisted his body back. He looked at Itzie, then, agonizingly, back to Ozzie. “Oscar, Don’t Jump! Please, Don’t Jump . . . please please . . .” ‘Jump!” This time it wasn’t Itzie but another point of the star. By the time Mrs. Freedman arrived to keep her four-thirty appointment with Rabbi Binder, the whole little upside down heaven was shouting and pleading for Ozzie tojump, and Rabbi Binder no longer was pleading with him not to jump, but was crying into the dome of his hands. Understandably Mrs. Freedman couldn’t figure out what her son was doing on the roof. So she asked. “Ozzie, my Ozzie, what are you doing? My Ozzie, what is it?” Ozzie stopped wheeeeeing and slowed his arms down to a cruising flap, the kind birds use in soft winds, but he did not answer. He stood against the low, clouded, darkening sky— light clicked down swiftly now, as on a small gear—flapping softly and gazing down at the small bundle of a woman who was his mother. “What are you doing, Ozzie?” She turned towards the kneeling Rabbi Binder and rushed so close that only a paper-thickness of dusk lay between her stomach and his shoulders. “What is my baby doing?” Rabbi Binder gaped at her but he too was mute. All that moved was the dome of his hands; it shook back and forth like a weak pulse. “Rabbi, get him down! He’ll kill himself. Get him down, my only baby . . . “I can’t,” Rabbi Binder said, “I can’t. ..” and he turned his handsome head towards the crowd of boys behind him. “It’s them. Listen to them.” And for the first time Mrs. Freedman saw the crowd of boys, and she heard what they were yelling. “He’s doing it for them. He won’t listen to me. It’s them.” Rabbi Binder spoke like one in a trance. “For them?” “Yes.” “Why for them?” “They want him to . . .” Mrs. Freedman raised her two arms upward as though she were conducting the sky. “For them he’s doing it!” And then in a gesture older than pyramids, older than prophets and floods, her arms came slapping down to her sides. “A martyr I have. Look!” She tilted her head to the roof. Ozzie was still flapping softly. “My martyr.” 8 “Oscar, come down, please,” Rabbi Binder groaned. In a startling even voice Mrs. Freedman called to the boy on the roof. “Ozzie, come down, Ozzie. Don’t be a martyr.” “Gawhead, Ozz—be a Martin!” It was Itzie. “Be a Martin, be a Martin,” and all the voices joined in singing for Martindom, whatever it was. “Be a Martin, be a Martin. . .” * * * Somehow when you’re on a roof the darker it gets the less you can ear. All Ozzie knew was that two groups wanted two new things: his friends were spirited and musical about what they wanted; his mother and the rabbi were even-toned, chanting, about what they didn’t want. The rabbi’s voice was without tears now and so was his mother’s. The big net stared up at Ozzie like a …