I was disappointed in the fact that their mule-fueled great odyssey (wonderfully told) ended as it did. But as you say the author is turning the story of rugged pioneer individualism on its head, as the farm defeats Jim. Renting the farm and owing money is just the same as the coal mine paying him in scrip — a raw deal. Still I’m hoping the family finds a home somewhere.
"One joy lay in their hearts like a warmth - hope". The "fairy story" of a new life - "living among trees", having Daddy work above ground "where they could all see him", "milk from cows", going to school - has come true. Mazie and Will go to school and learn to read "the crooked white worms of words...magically transforming into words known and said". (That's how I remember the magic when reading clicked for me and for my kids, and I've always been in wonder of teachers who keep trying to help kids for whom the magic doesn't come.) There is daily food, there is the rhythm and wonder of the green earth, there is a dance. There are glimpses that at least Anna once had a life away from poverty, but as they come through Mazie's perceptions we don't learn all that much. We know from an overheard conversation between Anna and the old pioneer Caldwell that all is not right. It's not just the vagaries of nature against them. There is again, as in the mine (and as for Hugh and Deb), a system of politics and the reality of those who have vs those who have not stacked against them. Caldwell notes to Anna "children have marvelous minds. I hate to see what life does to 'em'". Can I face what is coming for Mazie of "the stars are splinters offn the moon" and "flowers growin in the night"? Can I face the thought of all the Mazies and Wills still trapped by circumstances today? What keeps me from becoming an Anna? How do we keep that "warmth of hope" burning for ourselves and others"?
By analyzing the way in which some characters acknowkedge their condition and how they respond to it, I came up with some reflections.
Mazie, is aware of her difficult life. She works hard in the family helping her mother with the siblings. She knows the dangers of the mine. She feels all the sadness of seeing her father coming back home drunk and being abusive to her mother. She is deeply affected by her environment. As a child her way of escaping reality is through imagination, daydreaming : “butterflies behind your eyes. Their wings all colored”, she says. She believes that stars are “lamps in the houses up there, or flowers growing in the night”. But, later in the novel, when her mother is in labour and she experiences a difficult moment of distress, she looks up in the sky looking for that bright star, but she can’t find it. “The sky grieved above her”. Her imagination, her tool to escape from reality, doesn’t work anymore.
Anna, Mazie’s mother believes that education is the way for her children not to be trapped in that environment for the rest of their lives: ”edjication is what you kids are going to get. It means your hands stay white and you read books and work in an office”. But later in the novel, through the character of Old Man Caldwell, we realize that even education is not the answer. Caldwell is a learned man but, getting close to death, he says:”I failed”. He tells Maize “there is more to rebel against what will not let life be”.
He also believes that the answer is not in the change of the party at the government. He adds: “It doesn’t make any difference where it’s Republican or Democrat; the same hand pulls the strings”. He also knows that the answer is not in moving from one job to another hoping to find a better life (like the Holbrooks do). He tells Maize :” your mother thought to move from the mine to the farm would be enough, but ….”. He cannot finish his sentence because he doesn’t know the rest of it.
In chapter two we can find what I think is the author’s voice. It’s just after the episode of the mine explosion. Here the author asks the mining company to quickly release a statement about the accident or else “they started to batter through with fists of strike, with the pickax of revolution”. So, the two words “strike” and “revolution” are evoked. Strike and revolution can only be successful as a community, a working class. So Olsen is pointing out the uselessness of finding a solution as individuals.
There is a direct link to Life in the Iron Mills, right? There Mitchell comments "Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the people's has worked down...Some day, out of their bitter need will be thrown up their own light-bringer...". Struggling to provide just the merest basics for yourself and your family, it is so difficult even to consider, much less work within a community of others. I wish that would be where Olsen is leading us, but I fear this won't be a hopeful ending.
A melody charged with dread, tension; sound of fear, suspended in the air waiting for a tragedy.
"On the women's faces lived the look of listening"; "everywhere the sky and earth were listening , listening ", listening to this melody and fearing to hear the much feared sound.
I can perceive and deeply feel this melody :
"the autumn days brought always the sound of fear into the air"; "leaves dashed against the houses" "giving a dry nervous undertone to everything" ; a "maniac wind" "shrieked and shrieked" and "was whirring", and "was pitting the grass and leaves".
Suddenly the much feared sound, the shrieking whistle the tragedy.
A musical void , a mournful silence follow.
"...and the hush. ...No sobs, no word spoken.."
Attention shifts from the "sound of fear" to the silence of an " open grave".
One thing I am noticing is the tension between the embodiedness of the text (it is crowded with human smells and body parts, and not only literal ones: the sky has ears and flame has tongues, for example), and the way the fragmentation allows the reader to participate in the derealization or depersonalization of the trauma of poverty, which is a very disembodied feeling; there is a slightly numb, distanced feeling in the reading of it, that the characters also seem to experience (the most obvious one is Anna's state during pregnancy on the tenant farm). It's heartbreaking.
Ooooooh ho ho! I love this reading! Yes! Your analysis brings in trauma studies in a really smart and tight way: through the lens of the body and the "derealization" of that embodied feeling. I think of the way Mazie is fixated on the sky, this kind of numb gaze outward at the cosmos. You're helping me make sense of her "numbing out" as a way to cope. Just like Anna does.
I was disappointed in the fact that their mule-fueled great odyssey (wonderfully told) ended as it did. But as you say the author is turning the story of rugged pioneer individualism on its head, as the farm defeats Jim. Renting the farm and owing money is just the same as the coal mine paying him in scrip — a raw deal. Still I’m hoping the family finds a home somewhere.
"One joy lay in their hearts like a warmth - hope". The "fairy story" of a new life - "living among trees", having Daddy work above ground "where they could all see him", "milk from cows", going to school - has come true. Mazie and Will go to school and learn to read "the crooked white worms of words...magically transforming into words known and said". (That's how I remember the magic when reading clicked for me and for my kids, and I've always been in wonder of teachers who keep trying to help kids for whom the magic doesn't come.) There is daily food, there is the rhythm and wonder of the green earth, there is a dance. There are glimpses that at least Anna once had a life away from poverty, but as they come through Mazie's perceptions we don't learn all that much. We know from an overheard conversation between Anna and the old pioneer Caldwell that all is not right. It's not just the vagaries of nature against them. There is again, as in the mine (and as for Hugh and Deb), a system of politics and the reality of those who have vs those who have not stacked against them. Caldwell notes to Anna "children have marvelous minds. I hate to see what life does to 'em'". Can I face what is coming for Mazie of "the stars are splinters offn the moon" and "flowers growin in the night"? Can I face the thought of all the Mazies and Wills still trapped by circumstances today? What keeps me from becoming an Anna? How do we keep that "warmth of hope" burning for ourselves and others"?
By analyzing the way in which some characters acknowkedge their condition and how they respond to it, I came up with some reflections.
Mazie, is aware of her difficult life. She works hard in the family helping her mother with the siblings. She knows the dangers of the mine. She feels all the sadness of seeing her father coming back home drunk and being abusive to her mother. She is deeply affected by her environment. As a child her way of escaping reality is through imagination, daydreaming : “butterflies behind your eyes. Their wings all colored”, she says. She believes that stars are “lamps in the houses up there, or flowers growing in the night”. But, later in the novel, when her mother is in labour and she experiences a difficult moment of distress, she looks up in the sky looking for that bright star, but she can’t find it. “The sky grieved above her”. Her imagination, her tool to escape from reality, doesn’t work anymore.
Anna, Mazie’s mother believes that education is the way for her children not to be trapped in that environment for the rest of their lives: ”edjication is what you kids are going to get. It means your hands stay white and you read books and work in an office”. But later in the novel, through the character of Old Man Caldwell, we realize that even education is not the answer. Caldwell is a learned man but, getting close to death, he says:”I failed”. He tells Maize “there is more to rebel against what will not let life be”.
He also believes that the answer is not in the change of the party at the government. He adds: “It doesn’t make any difference where it’s Republican or Democrat; the same hand pulls the strings”. He also knows that the answer is not in moving from one job to another hoping to find a better life (like the Holbrooks do). He tells Maize :” your mother thought to move from the mine to the farm would be enough, but ….”. He cannot finish his sentence because he doesn’t know the rest of it.
In chapter two we can find what I think is the author’s voice. It’s just after the episode of the mine explosion. Here the author asks the mining company to quickly release a statement about the accident or else “they started to batter through with fists of strike, with the pickax of revolution”. So, the two words “strike” and “revolution” are evoked. Strike and revolution can only be successful as a community, a working class. So Olsen is pointing out the uselessness of finding a solution as individuals.
There is a direct link to Life in the Iron Mills, right? There Mitchell comments "Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the people's has worked down...Some day, out of their bitter need will be thrown up their own light-bringer...". Struggling to provide just the merest basics for yourself and your family, it is so difficult even to consider, much less work within a community of others. I wish that would be where Olsen is leading us, but I fear this won't be a hopeful ending.
There is indeed a direct link! And that's a great quote: Who is the "light bringer" in Yonnondio? Is there one? (Is there any light?)
I like Chapter TWO,.
It's a melody of "sound of fear".
A melody charged with dread, tension; sound of fear, suspended in the air waiting for a tragedy.
"On the women's faces lived the look of listening"; "everywhere the sky and earth were listening , listening ", listening to this melody and fearing to hear the much feared sound.
I can perceive and deeply feel this melody :
"the autumn days brought always the sound of fear into the air"; "leaves dashed against the houses" "giving a dry nervous undertone to everything" ; a "maniac wind" "shrieked and shrieked" and "was whirring", and "was pitting the grass and leaves".
Suddenly the much feared sound, the shrieking whistle the tragedy.
A musical void , a mournful silence follow.
"...and the hush. ...No sobs, no word spoken.."
Attention shifts from the "sound of fear" to the silence of an " open grave".
Ooooh: this is excellent close reading.
You're making me think about one of the major artistic genres of the working-class, which is songs and singing.
One thing I am noticing is the tension between the embodiedness of the text (it is crowded with human smells and body parts, and not only literal ones: the sky has ears and flame has tongues, for example), and the way the fragmentation allows the reader to participate in the derealization or depersonalization of the trauma of poverty, which is a very disembodied feeling; there is a slightly numb, distanced feeling in the reading of it, that the characters also seem to experience (the most obvious one is Anna's state during pregnancy on the tenant farm). It's heartbreaking.
Ooooooh ho ho! I love this reading! Yes! Your analysis brings in trauma studies in a really smart and tight way: through the lens of the body and the "derealization" of that embodied feeling. I think of the way Mazie is fixated on the sky, this kind of numb gaze outward at the cosmos. You're helping me make sense of her "numbing out" as a way to cope. Just like Anna does.