Lee as a Product of His Times

Lee Harvey Oswald, as Don DeLillo portrays him, grows up as a loner in New York City, living alone with his mother in shabby living quarters and with nothing in the world going for him. The 50s mean prosperity for the middle class and rich in the United States but for children like Lee, no one cares much whether or not they go to school and he's essentially put out to find his own way in the world. Lee tries to make sense of this world, and he finds his avenue in doing so by reading the texts of Karl Marx. 

Most people know of Karl Marx as the father of communism and for his famous pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto. However, Marx's magnum opus is Das Kapital or Capital, an incredibly extensive work of political economy spread out over three giant volumes. Das Kapital, while doing many things, is a critique of capitalism and production under capitalism and some of the contradictions and crises that arise under a capitalist society. Marxist historiography, a way of understanding the pattern of history, sees the flow of history and societal relations through the lens of class conflict and how societies are divided over class, especially under capitalism. 

Lee adopts the same way of looking at his own world around him. While one can argue whether or not Lee understands much of Capital, he starts seeing the surroundings over him through this Marxist lens. Lee sees his condition as part of a broader trend of capitalism which has benefited people at the top tremendously but left people of Lee's status in society behind. As DeLillo writes on page 41, "The books themselves were secret. ... They altered the room, charged it with meaning. The drabness of his surroundings, his own shabby clothes were explained and transformed by these books. He saw himself as part of something vast and sweeping. He was the product of a sweeping history, he and his mother, locked into a process, a system of money and property that diminished their human worth every day, as if by scientific law. The books made him part of something." (41) Das Kapital isn't just a work of scholarly literature that Lee reads for the enrichment of his mind but the sheer existence of the books and what they say transform the meaning of his life, telling him that the drabness of his life is not unique to him but part of a broader societal trend, something that needs to be fought in some way or the other. 

This way in which Lee sees his life as part of a larger metanarrative takes shape over the course of the novel as Lee not only identifies himself as part of a historical trend but wants to become that history. He sees his time in prison in Japan similar to that spent by communist revolutionaries, such as Trotsky. He wants to go to Cuba and become part of the revolution to overthrow capitalism, although Fidel Castro and other Cuban officials don't seem to be as enthusiastic about Lee as he is about them. He has a photoshoot in his yard, trying to create photographs to send to Cuba of him fighting the revolution with his rifle and communist pamphlets. One can argue whether Lee's efforts are truly revolutionary or he's just some rando who's a failure in life but thinks he's better than anyone. Still, like almost everyone, Lee is a product of the society around him, which makes it hard in ways to blame him for the track he got himself onto. 

Dana's Naivete

     When Dana first meets Rufus in Maryland, her reaction to the way he interacts with her is typical of her 1970s self - most of us would've responded the way in response to Rufus's language. He calls her the n-word and tells her to refer to him as master, something she understandably feels incredibly uncomfortable with, given that she's a woman in her 20s and he's a child. She tells him not to call her that and that it's not acceptable, something that Rufus accepts somehow. At least when Rufus is a child from that point onward, they seem to have a healthy relationship where Rufus has some love and respect for Dana and in a way, Dana is able to maintain her idealism. 

    Rufus soon becomes a man however and society around him makes him aware of the sheer amount of power that he has being a white male slaveowner. Rufus starts to emotionally manipulate Dana and treats her more like his slave than anything by making sure the threat of him selling her away always looms over her head. Rufus however still does have some love for Dana - when he threatens her at gunpoint to make sure she doesn't ride off with Kevin on horseback away from the plantation, he is trying to intimidate her because he has been taught that black women are nothing but property for him (similar to why he buys Alice out of freedom) but there is also some affection in his voice. Rufus does have some level of love for both Dana and Alice but he has to mask that because he is not allowed to love them in the world they exist in. He can rape them and abuse them and have children with them but he cannot have any sort of affection for them. Dana's hopes in his childhood that she can change him and make him not another Tom Weylin seem to have backfired and have made Rufus in ways, worse than Tom Weylin himself. While Weylin was direct about his apathy towards his slaves and they always knew what to expect, Rufus's psyche has been complicated by what Dana has introduced to him, that the kind of behavior he sees everywhere is not okay, and the society around him that reinforces the exact opposite. Rufus is a slavemaster that tries to love, even when the two are contradictory. Rufus tries to love the woman who he bought out of freedom and expects her to reciprocate love when he is essentially raping her and every night is hell for her. We can see Dana starting to accept some of this as well. Part of this because she too has some stake in this story - Rufus and Dana's union is the reason why she exists centuries down the line. However, we see her again and again trying to cajole Alice into going to Rufus's room, not giving her many options and at some points, being completely apathetic to Alice's situation. 1970's Dana would've been outraged but after years of being in Maryland, Dana has almost accepted that this is a way of life. 

    In the last scene of the novel, when Rufus is about to rape Dana, we see her again in her head trying to justify this. He smells good! However, she is finally able to fight this off and stabs Rufus, allowing herself to escape from this nightmare. Can we say Dana has fully succumbed to 19th century values? No. But along with her arm, she lost some of her idealism and naivete in Maryland. The little hope that she had that her family was made out of a loving and consensual relationship is shattered, as does the history of slavery to most who are unfamiliar with its horrors. Except this time, Dana has actually experienced it. 

Parallels Between Jes Grew and Jazz

Central to the plot of Mumbo Jumbo is the 'virus' that is Jes Grew, a cultural phenomenon that is spreading across the United States is believed by the Wallflower Order to be disintegrating the root of Western Culture. As it is described in the first couple pages of the book, "We knew that something was Jes Grewing just like the 1890s flair-up. We thought that the local infestation area was Place Congo so we put our antipathetic substances to work on it, to try to drive it out; but it started to play hide and seek with us, a case occurring in 1 neighborhood and picking up in another. It began to leapfrog around us." (4) Although Jes Grew is a fictional phenomenon (or at least that's what that Atonists say), the features and patterns of Jes Grew mirror those of the spread of jazz during the Jazz Age. 

The Jazz Age was a period in the 1920s and 1930s during which the style of jazz music and everything that accompanied it spread and got its footing in American culture. Not so coincidentally, Mumbo Jumbo is also set in the 1920s (well, most of it is) and the spread of Jes Grew seems to have peaked around this time. Originating in New Orleans, jazz spread up North and around the country as African Americans moved out of the South during the Great Migration. As African Americans moved North for job opportunities and to escape the oppressive system of Southern sharecropping, they brought jazz with them. The path jazz took is similar to that of Jes Grew. Jes Grew is said to have originated in Congo Square (a spot that has also had a tremendous influence on jazz) in New Orleans and spread all over the country. Mumbo Jumbo itself is set in New York, which was also a prominent center for jazz and Jazz Age culture, especially Harlem.

I Don't Like The Ending.

Father dies, Coalhouse Walker dies, Young Brother dies. Emma Goldman is deported. Mother and Baron Ashkenazy get married and move to California. And a bunch of other stuff happens. Yay! The End.

For a book that spent the first 300 pages inventing all these fictional but totally historical characters as well as historical but definitely fictional characters and making them run into each other and say and do lots of Crazy Sh*t, the ending just felt way too abrupt and almost lacking on Doctorow's part. Granted, he might be trying to make a point about the flow of history at the end and I wouldn't know since I don't really get what he's doing for most of the book anyways, it just felt like all of this interesting build up was for nothing and Doctorow got bored of writing and so he killed half his characters and made the rest of them get out of New York. I get that this isn't just a work of fiction and that he's also trying to depict how history plays out through his novel but it just felt way too abrupt and out of place considering how the first 39 or so chapters were written. The writing style was fine, just felt very out of place and gave an abrupt ending to such a massive buildup. 

As a chapter by itself though, I think that Doctorow's depiction of how history and time move on is really interesting, especially since he wrote this book about the early 1900s in the late 1900s and we're reading it in the 21st century. In the moment, like for people living during the 1910s, the sinking of the Lusitania or the assassination of the Archduke and his wife may not have felt like it was the end of one era and everything that was "in" yesterday has to go today. Doctorow talks about how the era of Ragtime, presumably referencing not just the historical period of Ragtime but also his conveniently titled book Ragtime, had run out (336). While I don't really like this interpretation of history as something that can be cleanly divided into eras and that one day, the present era just ends and a new one begins and it's all good (since everyone from the past either dies or moves away!), I do think it reflects the fact that upcoming and developing conflicts do have an impact in making the events of the past seem almost "small" - the looming war in Europe obviously makes Father and the Peary Expedition's quest to locate the North Pole seem almost lofty. So while this chapter felt extremely awkward when put at the end of so much buildup, I do get many of the points Doctorow's trying to make about the flow and significance of history. Or maybe not. 

Mother

    From what we've read so far in this novel, Mother is one of the character that fascinates me the most. While everything about her character on the surface seems 'bland' and stereotypical, it's her development in the past few chapters that steers her away from the norms expected of her and brings her character to life.

    Mother is described as being your typical early 20th century white upper-middle class woman - she takes care of her husband and other members of her family while managing her household and has an extremely sheltered view of what is going on the world outside their home in New Rochelle. Her character's name is literally just 'Mother', Doctorow's way of portraying her not as an individual character but someone who represents many women like her at the time. Doctorow makes the sheltered worldview of the family clear in the first few pages of the novel - "There were no Negroes. There were no immigrants." (4) As we discussed in class, it's not that there were no African Americans and immigrants in the US in 1902 (or whenever this takes place). However, living the lifestyle in the society that the family exists in means that even if they interacted with African Americans or immigrants, they probably didn't fully register them as people, resulting in Father's especially bigoted worldview as seen on the Peary expedition. 

    However, when Father leaves for the expedition and leaves Mother and Younger Brother in charge of the family business, Mother starts to evolve into a multi-dimensional character for the first time. Younger Brother is off doing weird crap I'd rather not talk about, and Mother starts to have her own awakening and some longing for a purpose in life. She awakes to her internal discontent of living this almost subservient lifestyle and having to conform to what is expected of her by society and more importantly, Father. He notices this transformation when he comes back to New Rochelle - "He looked in Mother's eyes to detect there his justice. He found instead a woman curious and alerted to his new being ... She was in some way not as vigorously modest as she'd been. She took his gaze. She came to bed with her hair unbraided." (111) Father notices a change in Mother's behavior, namely that she's not nearly as modest as she had been before and as we see more clearly once Coalhouse Walker and Sarah enter into the family's lives, she starts voicing her opinions and is not afraid to shoot down what she sees as Father's stiff and 'backward' worldviews. 

    What prompts Mother's transformation? While it's hard to tell considering how much Doctorow moves around through the novel through the countless number of "fictional characters" and "historical figures", what really stood out to me is the fact that Mother basically has taken over Father's business. He leaves her and Younger Brother in charge but she becomes so adept at the affairs of running his enterprise that even he's "astounded" - "As for the business during Father's absence, it seemed to have got on well. Mother could now speak crisply of matters such as unit cost, inventory and advertising. She had assumed executive responsibilities ... Everything she had done stood up under his examination. He was astounded." (112) What comes after this made me dig even deeper - "On Mother's bedside table was a volume entitled The Ladies' Battle by Molly Elliot Seawell. He found also a pamphlet on the subject of family limitation and the author was Emma Goldman, the anarchist revolutionary." (112) Mother had started reading literature on the issue of women's rights - of course, The Ladies' Battle is an anti-suffragist text about how women are not informed enough to vote. However, one can see Mother becoming more aware about the world around her - before Father left, she probably would have subscribed to the worldview that he told her to without questioning the basis of those ideas. Mother's evolution is indicative of the broader story of first-wave feminism which was occurring at the same time. 

    Mother's character is a lens through which we can examine the broader story of women, especially well off white women in this part of the 20th century. She does not have a name, unlike Sarah or Emma Goldman, and Doctorow uses her to show us a different perspective through which views on race and gender evolve over time.