"I know that feel bro"

It is known that J.D Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye is a novel that achieved huge success for a lot of readers, above all, adolescents. The protagonist Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye really feels like someone coming out of the pages; he communicates successfully with the reader.

Holden Caulfield is a character that unveils himself throughout the story, by showing his true persona to the reader; Holden appears so real, that at the end of the novel the reader actually feels as he or she knew him very well.

When it comes to an analysis of the novel, there is no doubt that an important aspect of it, is Holden's denial of growing up, holding close to the authenticity of childhood that we lose when we slowly start becoming adults.

The protagonist appears as a very arrogant person; he is constantly dragging people down, calling them “phonies”. But why does society seems so phony to Holden? Well, what the protagonist is doing is actually fighting against appearances and this empty perfection that doesn’t exist in real life. In fact, Holden hates adults, because adults pretend all the time. That is why Holden has this constant inner fight, because he doesn’t want to become an adult, he doesn’t want to pretend. He wants to protect the innocence and authenticity of being a child, because some day when we grow older, all of this will get lost.

It is possible to say that society has failed Holden; he is very disappointed of life, and that is what his behavior shows. Holden shows himself as an unstable and depressive person. Nonetheless, an interesting point is that he is emphatic; a virtue that doesn’t really fit into the schema of Holden’s egocentric and pessimistic personality.

In order to go in-depth about the concept of empathy in Holden Caulfield, it is very important to define the term first. Kathleen Stassen Berger (2010) in her book “Invitation to the Life Span” defines empathy as “the ability to understand the emotions and concerns of another person, especially when they differ from one’s own”.

This is exactly what Holden does in certain moments throughout the story; understanding the other person and putting himself in other people’s shoes.

But the question is "Why"? Why in this lonely and inner journey, he shows himself very careful about other people anyway? Despite all his problems and insecurities, what is it that makes Holden think about the other?

A first moment is when Holden meets the prostitute Sunny. She is in his hotel room, looking kind of nervous but ready to do “her job”. Holden is also very nervous and not quite sure about what he is going to do. The moment that turns interesting is the thought of Holden when Sunny asks him to hang her dress:

“I took her dress over to the closet and hung it up for her. It was funny. It made me feel sort of sad when I hung it up. I thought of her going in a store and buying it, and nobody in the store knowing she was a prostitute and all. The salesman probably just thought she was a regular girl when she bought it. It made me feel sad as hell—I don’t know why exactly.” 

It is interesting to think that Holden, someone who aims to appear as an alienated person, in this moment actually appears to hold on very close to people. Sunny seems so real and so “normal” just as any other person, that he is not able to objectify her. Holden doesn’t know the prostitute; nonetheless he feels empathy for her. Perhaps he is emphatic about the past of hers that lead her to work as a prostitute. All this, makes Holden change his mind about sleeping with her. Instead, he chooses to talk.

Other moment is when Holden notices the words “Fuck you” on the wall of the school:

“I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody’d written “Fuck you” on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they’d wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them (..) what it meant, and how they’d all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever’d written it.”

It may be said that the anger that Holden expresses towards this person who wrote those words, is really the anger he experiences when he thinks about growing up; these “Fuck you” words would take the kids their innocence away, and bring them a little closer to the “nasty and rude” world of adults.

These “Fuck you” words offend Holden not because of what they mean, but because they somehow destroy the childhood of the kids who could see this wall. Maybe Holden sees himself reflected in those kids. He doesn’t want his childhood to be taken away. Nonetheless, growing up is inevitable, just as inevitable as children finding out what “fuck you” means by looking at the wall.

It seems to me that this empathy that Holden shows towards others, is a product of what he’s gone trough in his life. The fact that nobody ever was emphatic with him, ended up with his life being awful and with him being aware of things having gone differently, if people had actually cared about his feelings. 

I think that being emphatic for him is something natural and unconscious; he is constantly thinking about the past and what could have happened if people were emphatic; that means, thinking about the “What if?”.

Maybe being emphatic is avoiding that other people have to go through the same miserable stuff he’d gone through. Maybe that’s why Holden doesn’t pay back by being selfish, but showing the contrary behavior.  

References:

Berger, K.S. (2010). Invitation to the Life Span. New York: Worth Publishers.

Salinger, J.D. (1951). The Catcher in the Rye.

Let's look back in anger!

Jimmy Porter, a bad temper working class young man, once believed in upward mobility, however, he realizes through his own experience in the working world, that all of what he believed in, was only for privileged people that had the right contacts. Jimmy started to feel frustrated as no matter what he did, no matter how educated he was, or how hard he worked, nothing would change. 

The feeling of disappointment towards a class-system, made him angry and to hate everything that has to do with the upper-class, he directed all his anger mainly to his wife, as she represented that part of society.

Porter strongly believes, that such society had not allow him to develop all his well-known talents and to achieve his goals just because of his economic background.

In a society that judges you for your last name, he feels that everything have been already said, his fate leads him to a life full of misery, and this is not only the feeling of one "angry young man", but the feeling of an entire generation of post-World War.   

A generation whose childhood was stolen, needs to do something, needs to fight against that system. 




Nowadays, we may believe that society have change and that all of what we read in this play remains part of the past, as it's a mid 1950's story, however, even if we live in a different context, and a lot of years have passed, it seem to me that nothing have changed. 

No more than a month ago, 724 prisioners were released in Valparaíso.



We may believe that these people only wanted to be free and that they would never come back to jail, however, most of them were not given the opportunity to do something else, and were seen by society as ex convicts that in any moment would come back to commit a crime. The prisioners were released, however they weren't taught how to "behave" outside jail, or maybe the only place were they would feel safe and less judged would be in jail.

So, lets's look back in anger and direct that anger to create something better, a society where everyone believes in achieving the goals that one have even if they seem to be "impossible".

(Francisca Villaseca) Biology Department vs. History Department

The play “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf” written by Edward Albee situates the reader into this evident aggressive and toxic relationship, interpreted by Martha and George. This married couple are the entire time showing their strong personalities and fighting in front of their young guests, Honey and Nick.

It is curious to go over George’s development during the play, a man who at the beginning seems to be a cold man with intellectual thoughts hidden on alcohol.

Analogy of the play with an article of Arts for education:

http://hechingerreport.org/advocates-for-arts-education-may-be-doing-more-harm-than-good/

George is constantly comparing history with science; biology, where he mocks about the chromosomes making a relationship with making a “pure” race.

George: …”a certain type of regulation will be necessary…uh…for the experiment to succeed. A certain number of sperm tubes will have to be cut.

…Which will assure the sterility of the imperfect… the ugly, the stupid… the unfit.

…With this, we will have, in time a race of glorious men.

…I suspect we will not have much music, much painting but we will have a civilization of men, smooth, blond, and right at the middleweight limit.

…a race of scientists and mathematicians.

…There will be a certain loss of liberty I imagine, as a result of this experiment…cultures and races will eventually vanish”.

There are studies related to arts in education which state that it may help students increase their academic results, but it has been lost in application during the years. This is because new cultural forces replaced the customs from the artistically wave European immigrants left in the past. As a result, market forces have pushed arts away.

Contextualizing the above said, in the middle of the 20th century, there was a big impact of arts because of European immigrants. They exported traditions from their cultures and imported arts into the US community and schools.

“Consider schools that need 4 hours of English, 4 of math and 3 of science credits to receive the “standard diploma” – and only 1 credit in speech or art. Computer science and technology courses crowd out arts options among electives…

It isn’t just the arts that are suffering from this focus on vocational training, Greene explained. “Literature, poetry, history, classics and the rest of the humanities are getting hit along with the arts.”

 There is a similarity with the above, where humanities can be left behind because science predominates because it is exact and society is always is searching for explicit results.

The point is that humanities are essential for humans’ development, a sometimes called inexact science, since they give a broader spectrum to our lives.

“Pointing out public health advancements are increasing the life span of Americans, O’Hare asked: Why prolong life if it’s not worth living? That’s what the arts do. They make life worth living. Even if your math scores don’t go up.”

What is happiness?

What is happiness?

Happiness has always been the emotion that people want to feel by doing what they love, being who they want to be or simply by being loved by someone. Sometimes happiness is a goal that people achieve by doing simple things like taking care of someone, listening to their favourite song or by saying “I love you” to someone.

However, there are other situations in which people does not feel happy, but they care so much about what other people might think that they create a mask to show them a different world. This mask is part of an illusion created to show others that nothing is missing in their lives, that they are complete and full of success.  

This last issue can be seen explicitly shown on the play “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf” by Edward Albee, as the protagonists, Martha and George, at the beginning are a seemingly happy couple returning from a party, but just crossing the front door of their home changes it all. They treat each other with resentment and prejudice, even more when Nick and Honey arrive from the same party to continue it on Martha and George’s home, however, Albee captured this issue with “jokes”, because that way it was not taken with so much seriousness, as plays are used to show mundane situations with a note of comedy.

Martha and George’s first bad treatments could be seen on this part of the play:

“Martha (braying). I DON'T BRAY!

George (softly). All right... you don't bray.

Martha (hurt). I do not bray.

George. All right I said you didn't bray.

Martha (pouting). Make me a drink.

George. What? Martha (still softly). I said, make me a drink.

George (moving to the portable bar). Well, I don't suppose a nigthcap'd kill either one of us.

Martha. A nightcap! Are you kidding? We've got guests.”

It is told that Martha treats George with resentment as she feels disappointed of him, as he has not accomplished anything compared to her father, a person who Martha looks up to. So that’s why she takes advantage of the “after party” that she was having in her living room, to show her discontent with her life and with her husband.

When the mask it is not useful

I have reflected upon the issue of what Sylvia Plath lived, as I mentioned before being successful in something might make people happy, but in her case this might not had been true. Moreover, this in fact might had put more pressure on her emotional state that she could not resist.             

It was easily to perceive that her emotions where not really positive or “happy”, even before reading her biography, just reading her poems you could notice the lack of vitality in her.

Maybe even Plath tried to put on a mask to show everybody that she was fine and that she was enjoying her literary success. But it was noticeable her unhappiness with the world in the poem 

“Lady Lazarus” that she talked about her suicide attempts.

“And I a smiling woman.

I am only thirty.

And like the cat I have nine times to die.”

(…)

“Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.

The first time it happened I was ten.

It was an accident.

The second time I meant

To last it out and not come back at all.

I rocked shut

As a seashell.

They had to call and call

And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.”

For me, the fact that she wanted to kill herself was because of her unhappiness towards everything since her father died, even thought she was extremely smart and had a very successful work life. Other subject that affected Plath’s state was her difficult relationship with her ex-husband, Ted Hughes.

As we saw, people might hide their unhappiness from other people to look like they have everything figure out or fulfill, and sometimes people does not even bother to cover up their sorrow, but even more, they show it to everyone, as Sylvia Plath did.

So, if you are not happy, do you hide it or do you show it to everyone?

Angry? Sure, But wear my shoes first!

“Look back in anger” by John Osborn (1956) is a quite famous playwright written in the context of a quite comfortable society (in its majority). In this play, we read about an angry man named Jimmy Porter, a person who is part of the working class of his time. Jimmy Porter, himself, represents a particular view of a postwar society, in which a group of people was truly disappointed with the institutions of that time, and how they were turning the English society into a non-desirable place.

Jimmy is married to Allison, and both together do not seem to fit the “perfect couple” stereotype, since they are always fighting – mostly because of Jimmy’s attitude – and Allison, at the same time, maintains a sort of “special” relationship with the friend of them, this is, Cliff. In repeated situations, Allison and Cliff are doing some random activities while Jimmy speaks, and of course, they do not pay attention to Jimmy’s words.

For example, in a specific situation of the play we see Jimmy delivering a long monologue, in a moment when they were all talking, however, because Jimmy speaks so much, Allison and Cliff stop following his ideas about whatever he is trying to say.

Jimmy: …Unless you’re an American of course. Perhaps all our children will be Americans. That’s a thought isn’t it? He gives Cliff a kick, and shouts at him. I said that’s a thought!
Cliff: You did?
Jimmy: You sit there like a lump of dough…      

Within this extract of the play, we can also notice how relevant is that Allison, and in this specific case Cliff, avoid or ignore what Jimmy is trying to say, considering that this is a true reflect of the society in which they are immersed in; the society ignores the ideas of this type of people, they are not accepted, they are not seen as part of the meaningful part of that place, because they represent what is contrary to the people who are in charge of everything.

The attitude that Jimmy remains towards Allison and Cliff through the story is very interesting, considering that Jimmy Porter is meant to be a kind of “avatar” of the playwright’s author, Mister John Osborn. The feeling of the author, and so the main character of the play, is a feeling of anger in the sense of how discontent people were against the society in which they were settled in.

What we see as an ambiguous attitude of Jimmy is just a firm representation of the disconformity that John Osborn has for that hypocritical world that was almost impossible to change, because the rules were established by the Bourgeois, the ones who were in power; they hated noise, they hated manifestations or opposition. Thus, we see Jimmy as this “opposition”, this “noise” that was uncomfortable for the ones in power. Jimmy’s angriness was just a matter of showing how “pissed off” (excuse my ‘French’) working class people felt in that time.

Jimmy Porter - the one who represented John Osborne the best - becomes a sort of spokesman of his generation, hence to understand him, we need to understand his generation, and the different injustices that they suffered as being people who were not born in a rich family, or a family in power as the Bourgeois.

Similarly, we can notice Allen Ginsberg - a famous poet – who represents a whole generation, the Beat Generation. A group of writers, who do not conform to the idea of happiness given by the establishment.  People who are living in a post war America, and they feel disappointed. Most of them studied at universities and realized they do not fit. Therefore, the postwar reality is quite the same in Great Britain and in the United States. I quote: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night...” (Allen Ginsberg). Throughout these lines we see the same society, connected to the same ideas of John Osborne who is part of a different place, but who is part of the same sick world.

Different than today’s world? Not at all!

Just take a look outside your comfort zone, out there through your window, and you dear reader will be able to notice the same Anger, the same disappointment, the same establishment, the same people who feel angry because they ones in power do not want to listen to us, because they do not want to fix the society and leave the comfort zone in which they have lived for years. Thus, as well as in John Osborne’s times, we will see people fighting and showing how displeasing they feel about the world, about the injustices and about a society that nobody wants to live in. So the question remains: ANGRY? Sure! But before you come up with any weird idea against my attitude, wear my shoes first! And then we can talk.

Asael Rojas Maureira

Because I'm happ... SHUT UP!

It is 1945 and the WW2 have just finished with the beginning of a new era. Now, the Cold War, Vietnam, Sputnik, Capitalism, Laika and Neil Armstrong are the #TrendingTopics of the moment while the American Dream is in its highest level after being the protagonist and the most successful country of the battle against the Nazis.

Capitalism and the American Dream brought to the world new sets of beliefs about people, family, society and economy; it changed the way of how life is seen and supposed to be. Coke’s commercials seem to represent the US culture showing how a happy family looks like and should be, and at the same time, spreading all this consumptions all over the globe.

People are bombarded with thousands of images of heteroparental families, women as housewives, men as successful providers, two kids (one boy, one girl), all of them Caucasian –of course-; images of big houses with big yards, amazing cars and a dog. The TV, the radio, advertisements, the government, the streets: all of them are trying to say “If you do this and that, you’ll be happy. If you are different from all of this, you are wrong and a complete alien who won’t be glad of its existence”.

BUT! What if all these selling aren’t truth? What if those aliens are as glad as –or even gladder than – those American dream citizens? What if HAVING is not happiness? This is just what Osborne, Albee and the Beat Generation share, and this is what I invite you to discover right away.

Even though I have been talking to you about the American Dream, it is obvious – I think – that this conception of happiness is more or less the same in all the occidental countries. So first, we have this Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger, a 1956 English play by John Osborne. Jimmy, a worker class who married a high-society woman, is constantly complaining about almost everything. The important thing here is: society forced us to be happy, but why should we be happy with these impossed roles and how should we be happy if we can see that if you are not rich and do not have contacts your probabilities of succeed in something are really low? If you are not rich you are completely messed up, then again, HOW CAN WE BE HAPPY?!?!?!

Second, we have these Martha and George, an adult married couple from the US in Edward Albee’s play Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf. To go straight to the point, I will refer to two important moments of the play: Bringing the party to the house and the death of the son.

At the beginning of the play, we can see Martha coming home very late after the party of the University in which his father is the headmaster and George is a professor. George wakes up and Martha says that she invited a young couple who was at the party to the house. She is drunk and making a lot of noise and disasters and George is really pissed off because all of the mess she is doing. Then, here is the question: why bringing the party to home? Because at the same time you bring the party, you bring the appearance of happiness, you bring the masks, you bring all the roles we play when partying.  

On the other hand, Martha and George talked about a son all over the play. As we already know, a traditional family is formed by a dad, a mom, and the children. Without children there is not any family. Nonetheless, that son never existed, at least not physically. Martha and George weren’t able to have children and to talk about their son was a way to talked about its relationship. That is why at the end of the play, while George is saying a requiem Martha refers to the death of her “son”, meaning that the death of the son is in fact, the death of their relationship.

Finally, we have Allen Ginsberg from the Beat Generation and his poem Howl. The Beat Generation is recognized to not believing in the idea of happiness that society sells. Howl presents us the real panorama in the streets. In the first part of the poem drugs, sex and alcohol is described: the Non-Coke version of the world. In second part, it can be seen the reaction to this problem of the society which is identifying the enemy (Moloch) and fighting the enemy with enormous amounts of anger, but then, the voice of the poem recognizes that fighting anger with anger, fire with fire, is the worst option one may do. Consequently, in the last part of the poem, the narrator faces this problem confronting hate with love (Carl Soloman, his friend). Realizing that support, love, integration, togetherness, will defeat hate.

What Osborne, Albee and Ginsberg share is that the vision of happiness that is out there, in the media, in our society, is not accurate. All these works are a criticism of the society, of what we are supposed to do in order to be happy. Family roles, gender roles are constantly questioned.

Pearl Jam’s Garden hit says “I don’t question our existence; I just question our modern needs” and that is exactly what these three people are questioning. The modern needs of buying, the modern needs of having, the modern needs of being a successful businessMAN and being a successful MOTHER.

What if we don’t want to be anything like that? Nothing, because we all should have the opportunity to not be part of that sick society.

Oh, won't somebody please think of the children?

Holden Caulfield is a 16-years-old teenager, protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye, a J. D. Salinger’s novel. Holden recently had a breakdown because he did not want to assume that he was growing and will soon become an adult, with all the negative aspects that being one means.

The novel is written in first person so we just see the reality in Holden’s terms and the readers have the work of interpreting that. In this sense, Holden makes a lot of contradictions, particularly in the way in which he socializes with others, that make us understand the difficult stage that he is living.  

The adult world is represented as one full of complexities, hypocrisy, badness, conflicts and changes, and this terrorize Holden. But one of the aspects that scare him the most is sexuality, that is wider processed along the novel.

The title “The Catcher in the Rye” is related to a song that Holden listened from a child that was once singing in the street. He misunderstood that the song was about a guy on a rye that was observing children playing on a cliff. The task of the guy was to protect the children from falling off the cliff, catching them if they were in danger. Holden process this idea as protecting children’s innocence, the problem was that Phoebe, Holden’s little sister, told him that the lyric of that song was completely different.

The original song was about two people having a romantic encounter on the field next to a river. Actually it is completely the opposite of what he had understood, because he wanted to protect children from this sexualization but the metaphor of the catcher in the rye was about casual sex encounters. Ironic, isn’t it?

Today in the evening I went to the shopping center because I wanted to buy something for eating. I needed motivation to write this post and food seems to be the answer for all our questions. The mother source of inspiration. Once in the food court, I listened how a group of children were screaming and playing very happily with the sound of the typical Chilean children’s song: el congelao’. I suppose it was part of a familiar activity organized by the mall’s administration, but suddenly the childish music changed abruptly to reggaeton.

I will not lie about my musical preferences and yes, I do like to sing or dance reggaeton sometimes in a party, but watching how little 7-years-old smurfs were singing as a choir “ella no estaba enamora’ de mí, pero le gusta como yo le doy” as Don Miguelo’s song claims was pretty shocking, even annoying.

That uncomfortable moment made me reflect about how children are being hypersexualized at every time more and more early age. I have an 11-years-old little brother and the minimal idea of him losing his childhood and innocence due to the grotesquely amount of “only-adult” content in many platforms became me crazy. I just could think: oh, won’t somebody please think of the children?

I mean, for a moment I felt like Holden wanting to protect all children, especially my little not-so-little brother from the invasive publicity, erotic tv models who reinforce the idea that to be important nowadays it is necessary a body that has been through surgery, protect them also from the stereotypes of beauty and teach them that people should not be as a standard model to look beautiful. We are all beautiful in our own way.

But Holden did not counted with an enemy that I have today: the internet. What can I do to protect my little brother’s innocence if we are submerged in this world wide web? Can I be at the rye watching him 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, waiting if he is in danger to catch him and protect him? Painfully, I think I do not have the answer, or simply I can’t.

Actually, I do think that I can understand why Holden can not get separated from his little brother Allie’s memories. It is not easy to see how a fragile child is turning into a bigger and older person, who surely will be as phony as the rest of the adult population. From my point of view, it is almost like losing the child that you took care of years ago. In my case, my little brother is not dying, but he is (maybe in this exact moment), letting go his childhood thanks to the uncensored reality contained on the internet (or magazines, tv shows, songs’ lyrics, newspapers, publicity, stamped towels, etc!).  

In my opinion, the last thing that I can do is to serve as a guide if my brother needs one. If I do not want him to pass through all these changes to the adult life alone, who nobody taught me how to face, all what I can do is to offer him my help, as I am sure Holden would have done with Allie and probably will do with Phoebe.

Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

When we take a look at the characters in the play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? we can see the disfunctionality  of the main couple, George and Martha, who spend most part of the play arguing , pointing each other’s flaws , screaming and constantly looking for different ways to hurt each other through their wicked games. Furthermore, once their guests arrive- Nick and Honey, a young couple that they met at the faculty party- they are also dragged to participate on these games, incentivized by the alcohol as well as George and Martha.

As we keep reading the play we can notice the different rituals that George and Martha had, such as respecting the rules regarding to not talking about their son, or their intimacy to protect themselves of what was expected from a couple by society at the 60s (a happily married couple with kids), that is part of the fragility that is broken once that Martha decides to invite Nick and Honey and talk about their son.

"Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolf

                              Virginia Wolf,

                             Virginia Wolf…"

This quote that first is used as a joke that was told during the party at the faculty in which both couples participate, is used again at the end of the play, when George sings softly  to Martha, who answers “I….am….George” .

But, what does it mean?  

Virginia Wolf is used as a euphemism to refer to life and how cruel this can turn, as in the case of their relationship and its fragility, life back in the post war time was the Big Bad Wolf since they are not able to project a lovely family but instead show who they really are, two people with serious issues that even though still love each other, can’t stand the other.

But, how did they get there?

To be capable to show such passion at some instances

-George (too matter-of-fact) Well, dear, if I kissed you I’d get all excited… I’d get beside myself, and I’d take you by force, right here on the living room rug, and then our little guests would walk in, and… well, just think what your father would say about that. (151)

And at the same time, be able to hurt themselves in so many different ways

Martha: THEY ARE MY TEETH!

George: Some of them...some of them

Martha: I’ve got more teeth than you’ve got

George: Two more

Martha: Well, two more’s a lot more

George: I suppose it is. I suppose it’s pretty remarkable…considering how old you are

Martha: YOU CUT THAT OUT! (151)

Who do we have to blame for this?  Society?  Alcohol?  Themselves?

Allen Ginsberg , part of the Beat Generation, wrote “Howl”  in 1955 as part of the collection of poetry titled Howl and Other Poems, and dedicated to his friend Carl Solomon. He used his poem as an angry critic against the fake hope and broken promises of the history of his country, specially after the war.

The beat generation was disappointed of the post-war society, and Ginsberg as part of the beat generation was also disillusioned. They were trying to get a new America and unveil the unseen in this materialistic 1950s. Trying to eliminate the capitalism and selfishness from society. 

Another important author of the Beat Generation was Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who wrote From a Coney Island of the Mind in 1958, 

"and its surrealist landscape of
mindless prairies
supermarket suburbs
steamheated cemeteries 
cinerama holy days
and protesting cathedrals
a kissproof world of plastic toiletseats tampax and taxis
drugged store cowboys and las vegas virgins"

In this quote, we can see Ferlinghetti's point of view related to society and its "mindless prairies" and " kissproof world". I think that this last quote in particular is quite related to the relationship of Martha and George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf, they were living in a "kissproof world", where the only way to interact that they knew was full of violence, sarcasm and, sometimes pure hate.

So, how do we overcome this kissproof world? Considering that we are still living in an individualistic  society, I believe that many other couples like Martha and George will be still existing as long as we don't make an actual change around us.

    

References
https://www.facebook.com/libreriabarcodepapelny/posts/970050823060520:0
https://www.facebook.com/USBotschaftBern/posts/1010872848949247

We should all have a say, always!

                                  Look Back in Anger
The play starts with the three main characters at their flat, living a typical Sunday evening for them. Soon, Jimmy Porter’s personality starts to be noticed and it results certainly unpleasant to read about someone who is constantly (or rather say always) complaining and mistreating the only persons who really care about him, but just like most things in life, looks can be deceiving. As the first act is developed, we can infer what is really happening inside Jimmy’s head and why he behaves like a person worth of absolutely no mercy. He is not as bad as he seems to be… do not get me wrong, please, he is not the best man in the world and some of his actions have no justification at all, but he has a point behind all the anger that fulfills his heart.

         Jimmy seems to hate everybody, yes I said HATE. He is constantly mistreating and humiliating Cliff for being uneducated and he certainly exerts psychological violence against his wife, Allison. But the most unbelievable (not really) fact is that he hates people with whom he has no daily contact. He constantly insults Helena, talks badly about Allison’s brother, mother and father. The man seems to have no love inside him! But, tell me something, would not you be upset with the people you live with if they had no emotions? Would not be frustrating if the people who surround you were living life without questioning everything or anything, at least? Jimmy seems to be a lot like a person taken from nowadays society, a person who is not comfortable with living the life that society tells us to live. He questions things, he questions life, and he questions the society where he lives in, for God’s sake! Should not we all do that instead of accepting everything and living the routine?

It’s true, nothing, absolutely nothing justifies violence, but the reader witnesses how Jimmy uses violence as a tool to awake people, to raise awareness about things and finally to try to make them have a say on something, at least something!

“Hallelujah! I'm alive! I've an idea. Why don't we have a little game? Let's pretend that we're human beings, and that we're actually alive. Just for a while. What do you say? Let's pretend we're human. (He looks from one to the other.) Oh, brother, it's such a long time since I was with anyone who got enthusiastic about anything.“ (Osborne, 1959. P.5)

The previous quote exemplifies exactly what was just described, he needs action! At some point of the first act, Jimmy mentions a person whose actions and thoughts were the opposite. A person who would have never needed such a violent (and unsuccessful) wake up call. Jimmy talks about Madeleine as she were the only person who gets him, the only person with whom he could talk and get some emotion from. Madeleine  spoke his same language. You get now his frustration? He had a different mind for the time and he had found a person who though just as him, but now he was stuck with people who were unable to give him feedback about his thoughts, and let me say that there’s nothing more frustrating than living with people who do not have a say on anything.

Another detail (not that detail) is Jimmy’s relationship with his father. At a fight-like  conversation with Helena, Jimmy  says something interesting just before he starts describing his father’s death. He says:

“I’m the type that detests physical violence. Which is why, if I find some woman trying to cash in on what she thinks is my defenceless chivalry by lashing out with her frail little fists, I lash back at her.”

You see? This is some gender-equality type of though, God he was a visionary! Ok, maybe it is not that obvious… and this is not the argument that I wanted to develop in this paragraph but I think that it is another example of how differently he thought for a man at the time. I’m sorry, going back to my point, what’s the relevance of his dad’s death’s in his personality?

                While he was fighting with Helena he asks her if she has ever seen someone die before, her answer was no.  As he explains the slow and painful death of his dad, we are witnesses of how difficult was for him, a 10-year-old boy to watch his father not only die, but to stand by him during a whole year, listening to war, betrayal, hate and anger stories at such a young age. He said that he was the only one who cared about his father and that is certainly a feeling that no little boy should hold in his heart.

“You see, I learnt at an early age what it was to be angry — angry and helpless. And I can never forget it.”

He was angry with life due to his father condition, and that anger stayed in his heart, it seems that experiencing such a traumatic experience at such an early age had not only a negative impacti in his later life, but also it was a permanent mark what would accompanied him for life. When I first read this part it was somehow clear that this might have been the center of his stone-like heart, but it was not until reading Terry Browne’s essay on the book that the idea was confirmed. Browne says:

“Jimmy’s source of pain and anger seem to come from the same source as that of John Osborne who, at an early age, watched his own father die of tuberculosis.” (Browne,2009)

Jesus, that makes sense! If the author had the same unpleasant experience as a child, it is pretty likely that he had included it in the play. And maybe he develops Jimmy’s character as a sort of portrait of himself, as some kind of scream through the character, a way of saying the things that he could not freely say (which was a tendency at the time). It is known that traumatic experiences mark you for the rest of your life either positively or negatively and we have no right to judge someone’s reaction to it.

You know the say “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always” I think we should keep this in mind. Instead of judge people for the way they act, let’s just stop for a minute and think: why is this person behaving this way? Is there a reason behind this inexplicable behavior? Yes, Jimmy’s attitude was absolutely despicable, but as the play is developed we are able to understand him somehow and after all, he was not as crazy as he seemed. 

Bonus track: Please, if you want to watch the 1989 movie adaptation, click here

References:

- Osborne, J. (1957). Look back in anger, a play in three acts. New York: Criterion Books.

 - Browne, T (2009) Criticism, Look back in anger.