Theology and Literature Journal 5 (How to Be Good): Does 'Good' = Not Sad?

What has happened to Molly in her first eight years?  More or less nothing.  We have protected her from the world as best we can.  She has been brought up in a loving home, she has two parents, she has never been hungry, and she receives an education that will prepare her for the rest of her life; and yet she is sad, and that sadness is not, when you think about it, inappropriate.  The state of the relationship between her parents makes her anxious; she has lost a loved one (and a cat); and she has realized that such losses are going to be an unavoidable part of her life in the future.  It seems to me now that the plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don't need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity.  You just have to love someone.

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I don't think this is talking about the state of depravity.  I mean to say that although depravity is mentioned, to link all brokenness with sin somehow lessens the gravity of the mandate for relationship and fellowship.  After all, the statement that it is not good for humans to be alone occurs before the Fall. 

Loss is a part of life, it is part of what it means to be human.  Sadness is a necessary part of love.  If we did not mourn for the saints, it would mean that we did not properly love them and work together as the Body of Christ.  The ability to mourn for a person or situation is a marker of how we are effective and affected.  We are changed by the lives of others. 

I understand that Molly is overly stressed by her sadness, and that sometimes sadness can lead to psychological issues.  However, I don't think it is always a good idea to have the Christian life, or the message of Jesus, be portrayed as: Jesus always loves everyone, or everything is always easy, or simple, or fixable, or even about downsizing. 

I also don't think it's a good idea for a healer like GoodNews to be always associated with Jesus.  GoodNews always assumes that every problem was caused by sadness, and that everyone wants their sadness removed.  Jesus knows it is not always prudent to heal everyone.  He also knows that sadness is a necessary part of being human.  For example, he mourns and weeps for Lazarus himself.  This is a separate event from the raising of Lazarus, and it is equally, if not more, important.

I think that perhaps Molly has a gift for feeling the pain of the world.  Maybe it is not a good thing that GoodNews has taken her pain away, because it lessens their gift, and removes some of her intuition.  She has wisdom, and identifies with the marginalized people her mother is trying to save. 

Dr. Katie is trying to save the "heart-sinks" (despite her ethically skewed home life); David is trying to save the homeless (despite the holes in his belief system, and the flaws in his advertising); GoodNews is trying to save the sad (through his ecstasy stimulated hands); and Tom is simply trying to save his possessions (the status quo?). 

I think that Molly is the only one who might be successful, because she's the only one who isn't imposing her own viewpoint.  She isn't defining what it means to save, in essence, 'How to Be Good'.  Instead, she's making observations about what people need and want, as well as the best way she can be supportive. 

At eight years old, she's figured out how to help using natural supports, Person Centered Planning, and small, manageable changes.  She is also helping because she knows it is right, not because she wants the credit.  She is the least preoccupied with the concept of being Good, but I wish everyone who was devoted to helping others (the less fortunate) was this good at it: at recognizing the value in others, and what to do about honoring and including them in community, constructively.

 GoodNews is like Lois Lowry's The Giver, only backwards.  Instead of giving the people back their emotions, problems, and colors... yes even sadness, he is taking away their ability to feel the realities of being human, and the realities of participating in the world.  Beds and dishwashers or colors and twins, it's all the same problem.  This dystopian idea feels eminent.  I hope David doesn't lose the ability to hear music, too.  Soon he will need to be reminded of his own memories.  Is this better than being angry?

Theology and Literature Journal 4 (The Great Gatsby): Audience of One? Trauma, Lies, and Why We (Need to) Write

In a journal for another class (Spirituality for  Church Leaders) I once wrote that you don't have to publish anything, write continuously, or even write a lot to be a writer.  To be a writer means that you see the world in words, and most importantly, when something happens in the world that you need to process, you write about it.  Because you need to write, you can't understand it until you do, not in its full form.

Infomercial for Whit's class: Sometimes different things are highlighted the more you write about or talk about an experience, you remember things, or at certain details become more or less important.  You may choose to leave things out or alter things depending on your audience.  Perhaps you are not writing for a particular audience at all, but are simply writing for yourself.  You might leave things out of your narrative in order to protect yourself from whatever they symbolize or evoke.

Therefore I don't think Nick is lying as the narrator.  In some sense, I don't even think he knows he's a narrator.  Fitzgerald is writing stories for an audience, but Nick doesn't claim to be an author.  He initially set out to be one, but then he changed his mind and went into bonds, retaining the nickname "Shakespeare ".

My reading is more than likely informed by the recent film adaptation of the book.  In the movie, we meet Nick in a sanatorium, where he is encouraged by his doctors to use his writing talent to write about whatever he wants.  However, by being given a view of the doctor's notes via cinematic conventions, (which state that Nick is morbidly alcoholic, clinically depressed, anxious, and has fits of anger) we are led to believe that this is probably a therapeutic tool.

In writing about this experience of knowing Gatsby for months, a narrative emerges that is somewhat flawed, as all memory is flawed.  Nick's understanding is colored by his relationships with the other characters, by his perceptions and assumptions, by time and distance from the events, by his own involvement, by alcohol, and his own need for safety in telling the story.  In some of the omissions and falsehoods, I see a hint of self-preservation, and an attempt preserve identity and dignity.  Part of this is the reason behind the Fifth Amendment.

The other thing I see in the story which is important to remember is the lack of fairytale ending for any of these characters.  Daisy is traumatized because of a long separation, and because she assumed that Jay would not come home, and then she is forced to marry Tom.  There is a huge chasm between rich and poor, with almost no middle class.  All of Gatsby social mobility is based on lies he felt he had to create to escape the trauma of being dirt poor.  Jordan is only loved for being a (scandal ridden and infrequently victorious) tennis star; Tom is only known as 'Buchanan: The Polo Player'; Daisy and Pammy are supposed to be rich, beautiful, and foolish.  Myrtle is fat and silly, married to a rundown oblivious mechanic who's been swindled in every way by an unequal business partner.  Nick doesn't think his true vocation is worthwhile.  All of these lives are in some sense traumatic. 

With respect to events, the war has just ended, with death and dying everywhere.  He has been surrounded all summer, and one could argue all his life, with people who think they are gods, or sons of God, or play at being better than everyone else.  He has witnessed an argument for racial superiority, an assault on Myrtle, a jealous husband enraged, a manslaughter, (in which a pedestrian he knew was killed instantly, in a graphic way: "ripped her open"), a loving cover up (complete with confession), a framing for murder, a grief filled retaliation (inflicted on an innocent man), and a suicide.  I can relate to how this would be difficult to tell.  During a traumatic event, the brain shuts down anything that does not preserve life.  Therefore, some of the details become confused, including the order of events and exactly who did what.  In the telling and retelling of the story, sometimes it might seem that whoever was driving was not literally driving, or that people are more honest than they seem, or that Myrtle wasn't having an affair, etc. these may be coping mechanisms, but then maybe they're just simple lack of oxygen to the brain.  Nick isn't a liar.  Nobody's a liar.  It's all just a coping strategy, the whole book is a coping strategy.  For the trauma of the ending, for the trauma of life in the Jazz Age. (Unfortunately, many victims of trauma are called liars because they can't get their stories straight.  Or people think they're hiding something).

I'm interested in Kierkegaard's philosophy of how the ascetic move to the moral stage.  He says we find God because we fall into despair (true, sometimes).  Nick has certainly fallen into despair, but I would argue that young Mr. Carraway has not found God.  And I definitely don't think he is writing to God.  Instead, he writes about the events of his 30th birthday in an effort to ensure that he does not fall past God into something he cannot remedy.  Suicide cannot be remedied in this life, and there are some who say it cannot be even in the afterlife.  But above all, I believe Nick reason for writing is to "get somebody for [Gatsby]", as a final memorial to his friend, even if the only friend he "gets" is himself.  Or, in the imagination of that Baz Luhrmann, the doctor.



By the way, I don't think Meyer Wolfsheim is in despair, I think form his self protection is selfish.  He wants to run away from or let go of everyone after they die.  I think true despair is wanting to hold onto someone past everything else, and then realizing you can't.  Like Gatsby and his father, I know some things are too beautiful to let go of, even when it's obvious they're long gone.

Theology and Literature Journal 3: (the Great Gatsby) Gatsby's Moving Green Light- Sign of an En"Light"ened Distant God?

I decided to call to him.  Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction.  But I didn't call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone - he stretched out his arms towards the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling.  Involuntarily I glanced seaward - and distinguished nothing but a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock

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'If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay' said Gatsby 'you always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.'  Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said.  Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever.  Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her.  It had seemed as close as a star to the moon.  Now it was again a green light on a dock.  His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.

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The God in The Great Gatsby is most certainly not the God of the immanent Trinity.  The rising spectacles of the absentee occulist, Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, and the ever-distant green light that is the epitome of Gatsby's quest for Daisy and the amazing life he wants so desperately, seem more at home with the clockmaker God of the Enlightenment.  Indeed, the roaring '20s seem more Babylonian than incarnational.  However, Gatsby calls himself a son of God, which therefore destined him for greatness.  In fact, though Jesus is never mentioned, Gatsby feels entitled to an heir's inheritance.  This is not just from Dan Cody, who discovered Jimmy Gatz loafing around on the beach; Jay Gatzby he has a unique claim on inheritance from God.  Let's be clear, this is not general revelation to all people who believe in God, or general concern for all of God's creation, but special revelation that make Jay Gatzby above everyone else.  In Jay Gatzby's mind, it is impossible for him to fail; not only that, but he and his string of fabulous friends will bring everyone in on "the business".  Everyone can ride on Gatsby's coattails.  As evidenced by his uncanny ability to make any lie into a convincing story (aided by his relationship with the police commissioner) he can get away with anything... or so we think.

But it's not just the overseeing eye of a reluctant benefactor God that Gatsby is trying to get to so desperately.  His quest is almost as though each party (and/or each lie) is an attempt at fullfilling dharma.  He lost Daisy when he was a soldier, so he must remake himself in the billionaire across the lake.  He thinks he has everything she wants.  He has to remake his story again into something better than Tom Buchanan, but he even does that because he has a better kind of love.  It is deeper, purer, everlasting and... reckless.  He is single-minded and focused on rewinding the clock back through the five years he lost with Daisy.  He has earned his inheritance now.  The right to status in a place and era where everyone have inherited their status.  I has a feeling he would take pride in (or at least acknowledge as status quo) the statement made famous in The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks "... dad's got more money than God".  Gatsby considers God to be his personal Father, even if Dan Cody is a facilitator in all this.  James Gatz by successfully recovering whatever assets he loses and more has out done the prodigal son. 

He is capable of multiplying his money.  Making power and influence appear out of thin air.  Everyone knows him, and everyone speculates about him.  He has done absolutely everything, with very little help from God that he can see.

 Now he has more money than God, and can finally give Daisy the kind of life he thinks she wants.  Very much like the kind of life she has, only without Tom, with someone who is actually faithful.  Hopefully, he will be faithful to her, if not, he will at least be faithful to the dream of her.  Or the larger than life image of himself as a son of God, which is bigger than being one of many sons made in the image of God. 

The unique unstoppable inevitability of the success of his dreams make up the entirety of the symbol of the green light.  it burns all night, all night long unwavering.  It will never go out, no matter how many lies build the bridge across the lake, and no matter how many cycles of fantastic success or despairing defeat that he goes through, Gatsby will still do everything in his power to present Daisy with a glittering emerald that she will like.

 Even when she sees it (and even when she isn't pleased) he barely notices a setback.  All he sees is the elusive green light - a dream he is ever pursuing, and unlike some recent Oscar winners, he's pathologically unable to appreciate the joy and importance of the moment he has, either with Daisy or with his possessions.  He only wants to get back to the very moment he left five years ago.  He doesn't take into account any history, good or bad, with Tom as having any merit.


Worse, he hasn't given any thought to an even bigger problem: the intractable existence of the bond between mother and child.  Regardless of how much time we see Daisy away from Pammy, her existence cannot erase the history of this marriage, and will greatly reduce the likelihood they Daisy will actually leave Tom for Gatsby.  Despite apparently pining for him, perhaps even indulging in a little dreaming herself as an antidote to wallowing in her husband's affairs.  But she dotes on her daughter the only way she knows how, learning from the same culture that only known people in bonds.  She knows how to be what Pammy is: a polite little paper doll, and what she hopes Pammy is, "a beautiful little fool" She knows how to escape through parties and hotels, booze and shirts... and perhaps even trips.  But she knows the difference between a vacation and what her mother would never allow her to do, what she now would never allow herself to do... she knows the difference between a vacation for temporary relief, and leaving.  She cannot join Gatsby's life of "high religion" (at least in his own mind).   She will always return to what her family has known and will know for generations: the life of empty aesthetics.  How to be (and raise) "beautiful little fools".