Damned If You Do

I found Morgan's summary the other day of Volcano Cowboys and the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation that they were in to be very interesting. It reminds me of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. The main character, Valjean, skips parole and turns a new leaf. He moves to a new town and becomes an honest, God fearing, successful business man and the mayor of the town. Many years later, Javert, and ambitious policeman, moves to the town. Althought Javert was a guard at the prison Valjean was in, he does not recognize the mayor, but instead identifies another as the man who broke parole and is therefore sentenced to life in prison.

Valjean is placed in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't predicament. If he stays silent and doesn't correct Javert's mistake, then an innocent man will go to prison in his place. However, if he does identify himself, he will go to prison. If he does go to prison, the factory he owns will be shut down, and all of his employees (a significant majority of the population) will be out of work. The town's economy is already struggling, and if the factory shuts down the entire town will shut down, too.

The unabridged novel has a wonderful, several-page passage with Valjean pacing in a hallway in the courthouse, debating in his mind what he should do. Most abridged versions unfortunately cut this scene down to a paragraph, or one page at most, and they cut out most of the intriguing ethical and moral questions that Valjean is faced with. The musical, however, summarizes the problem adequately in one song, and Valjean comes to the conclusion, "If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, I am damned."

Dr. Stockmann is in the same position as Valjean. If he speaks out about the water, he is condemned, but if he keeps quiet about it he is damned. However, Stockmann and Valjean have two different motives and handle their respective situations in two very different ways. While Valjean's motivation to speak is God and righteousness, Stockmann's motivation is his own conceit. Stockmann wants the people to know that he is the one who saves the town, and he wants the community to listen to what he has to say, not to what he has to say. When he is completely turned out by the town, he stays in his house to spite the community. Valjean, on the other hand, leaves the town and moves to Paris, where he can once again live under an alias and help the lowest class there. He determines to do good for his community, wherever that may be, rather than spite the people who shun him.

The Unsophisticated as a Freethinker

After discussing Sarah's blog in class, I went back to it and reread it to better understand what she was saying. The thing that caught my attention most was the fable she included. (If you haven't already, go read Sarah's blog for a summary of the fable.) I've never heard this fable before, and the use of particular characters is what really made me start to think in-depth about the story. I think it's interesting that it's a wolf (typically scene in fables, myths, and other morality stories as "the bad guy") instead of a stray dog or other animal as the one who chooses to be malnourished and free rather than well-fed and enslaved. One layer of this animal choice implies that sophistication and slavery go hand-in-hand, and that freedom and is found among the dregs of society. It begs the question - does this slavery make the person sophisticated, or is it their sophistication that leads them to choose enslavement?

When this question first occurred to me I dismissed it as rhetorical, that it was just another chicken-or-egg question that bears no importance. As I was revising what I just wrote, I decided that I wanted to change the word 'slavery' because it has very strong connotations that have nothing to do with what I meant by the question in general. In order to think of another word, I had to decide what I do mean by 'slavery.' Suddenly the question left the realm of Rhetorical and plunged into the land of Yes There Is An Answer.

A dog is sophisticated only because he grew up around human masters who feed him and give him "kind words and caresses". Dogs that don't grow up around humans are labeled strays and are only barely above wolves on the canine class ladder. The dog chooses slavery because it is sophisticated. On the other hand, wolves do not grow up with human masters because they are initially considered unsophisticated. Dogs are sophisticated because they are enslaved, while wolves are free because they are unsophisticated.

The spelled-out moral of this story is that people should never trade their freedom for anything. Digging a little deeper, the allegorical meaning of this story is that humans should not give up their individual ability to think independently in order to conform to the thinking of the masses. It is better to be a freethinker (unsophisticated but free) and be shunned by the masses (socially malnourished) than to conform (socially fat and healthy) and not be a thinker at all (sophisticated, yet enslaved by the mass's thoughts).

So, back to the rhetorical-turned-literal question - does this slavery make the person sophisticated, or is it their sophistication that leads them to choose enslavement? If we refer back to dogs and wolves - yet another way that the character choices in this fable mean everything - we see that enslavement (by the pressure to conform) is what makes a nonthinker sophisticated, while the freethinker thinks freely because he is unsophisticated.

The Scientist as a Freethinker

The description on Card no. 26 and the dialogue on Card no. 27 share an extremely scientific, sociopathic view of obtaining information (pg. 174-7). In Card 26, Linnaeus nearly drowns himself because he wants to be able to read clearly underwater. "I amused myself very frequently with this new hobby, and being most interested in the act of reading, constantly forgot that I was nearly suffocation myself." He shows a complete disregard for even his own life because he gets caught up in the amusement of his experiment. On Card 27, there is the same show of amusement, except at the possible expense of someone else's life--a stranger's life, at that. Linnaeus is callous and insensitive to the stranger's emotions because he (the stranger) is merely a potential test subject. The fact that the stranger has not even yet agreed to donate his body to science should the boat sink does not bother Linnaeus in the slightest. In this card we also see that yet again Linnaeus disregards the possibility of his own death. He is so excited about being able to dissect the body of a man who drowned that he doesn't even stop to contemplate the fact that it could be him who drowns instead of the stranger.

In these two cards, Linnaeus's thoughts are completely focused on science, on the ends rather than the means and expenses of his experiments. He can think of nothing else besides the experiment he wants to conduct and how he will go about conducting it. And yet, in the last two lines of Card 27, Peer says, "Horrible fellows these scientists are!/You damned freethinker!" Peer assumes Linnaeus is a freethinker because he thinks differently than the average, nonscientist man would think. However, Linnaeus only thinks of one thing--the next experiment he will conduct. He's not a freethinker after all, just a differentthinker.

Isabel Milkovich

A painting is not necessarily enough to fully depict and reinvent a scene of an ocean shore. It conveys only part of it—the visual. Even if the painting gives life to a still depiction (such as a picture taken with a camera), it lacks the largeness of the sea. Even if the painting is infinitely big, it is only one painting, unchanging with time as the ocean changes with time. The life of the painting is lost because the life is a constant, but real life is never constant.

Other art forms can be added to the painting, and together they can convey the life of the scene. Dance and music both change in time, and show that progression. The painting itself is in two dimensions, but the life that it gives to the scene implies a third dimension. Dance is in three dimensions, but the movement implies a fourth (time). Music has only time as its dimension but is supported by the dimensions of the painting and the dance.

Isabel Milkovich

The woman’s song and the song of the sea supplement each other. They add to each other, but neither overpowers the other. “The sea was not a mask. No more was she.” It is the woman’s song that entices the onlookers because it is alive with her genius, but she isn’t fighting the ocean. Her song rolls along with the rhythm of the ocean’s song, and the ocean’s song and rhythm provide a place for her to sing. “There never was a world for her/Except the one she sang and, singing, made.” Walking along the ocean is the only world the woman knows, and so in a way the ocean provides comfort and protection for her. The woman’s song lifts up the ocean’s song because she makes people notice and contemplate the ocean’s song, even if it is only to determine that the woman’s song is the livelier one.

The woman makes the world in which the ocean sings, because their songs, when sung together, become one. They fuse to make an even deeper song than what is noticed by the onlookers because they are not part of the world in which she and the ocean sing. “She was the single artificer of the world/In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,/Whatever self it had, became the self/That was her song, for she was the maker.” The woman and the sea become one self in their world together, because it is just the two of them, and together they make a song that connects them to the world that we know. They make this connection because at the end of the day they know they must return to our reality and be simply a woman, and simply the sea.