ENL 10C: “A Metafictional History: New Historical Context through Metafictional Narratives”

Jolene Patricia Brown

Dr. M. Stratton

ENL 10C

27 May 2010

A Metafictional History:

New Historical Context through Metafictional Narratives

History is made up of perspectives; an event recorded in history becomes entirely reliant upon the perspectives of those who witness it, and then record their memories of the event for future generations. As historical events become more global it is harder for art and literature to represent the scale of perspective necessary to give the impact of an event, and make a reader understand the magnitude of an event on a massive scale. Literature until the twentieth century was (generally) limited to one perspective which can portray only one memory of an event. To more accurately portray an event like the bombing of Dresden with more depth and accuracy an author would need to explore a different way of giving perspective to it in order to more fully represent what the author feels is the true event. Since one cannot incorporate thousands of perspectives into a single narrative, the author can instead explore the event by using metafiction and temporal distortions. These literary tactics serve to disorient the reader, thereby giving an emotional reaction necessary to make the reader more aware of the disorientation of the event being narrated. The novel Slaughterhouse-Five distorts the reality of the reader and the novel precisely because the author wants to make the history of Dresden more real: by establishing a chronology that cannot be represented in reality, Slaughterhouse-Five challenges the reader to piece together not only the events of the novel, but also the events of history itself; a process that gives the reader more insight into the challenges of representing history as more than a single story from a single perspective. “In postmodern fiction, thematic and plot devices are designed specifically to question linear history and temporality,” (179) writes literary critic Catherine Burgass; history is more than one timeline of events from one perspective, and should be represented as such. The use of metafiction and plot disruptions in the form of temporal “time-travelling” allows a reader to imagine history as multi-dimensional—as large-scale, global events should be represented—instead of flat and singular-perspective.

Then novel starts out by making the reader question the truth within it: “All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true” (1). It turns out that the “novel” itself has not really begun, and will not begin for the fictional author until page 29 in the second chapter. Vonnegut makes use of metafiction in order to disrupt what the reader knows of the book itself. He puts us in the hands of an unreliable narrator who tells the reader from the beginning that his story is only “pretty much true” and that it all happened “more or less” without telling us what exactly the true parts are. It is significant this line occurs at the beginning of the novel, as explained by Burgass:

…beginnings and endings have a special function in postmodern metafiction, marking the entrance and exit of the fictional world and its parallel time. There is a structural circularity in these novels which confounds linear time…the narrator of Slaughterhouse-Five is particularly taken with those songs whose last line repeats the first line…” (183)

The first claim of Slaughterhouse-Five cycles through the rest of the novel endlessly as the reader questions the reality and the fiction of each scenario as presented by the speaker. From a historical perspective, the history within the novel repeats itself endlessly the reader questioning the author who, in turn, questions the novel he is writing which is a novel that questions the nature of reality itself. In many ways the Vonnegut is feeding us that old line “history repeats itself” but doing so in a way that utilizes literary devices, rather than words, to show us the cliché.

Historical perspective is really not singular, and instead should be considered plural. It is not the memories of one person that make up what is known as “history;” it is the combined memories of many people—indeed thousands of people—to create what we know as a “historical record.” As populations grow and technologies make it possible for more people to witness singular events, representing the “truth” about an event becomes more complicated. With an event as large and globally-impactful as World War II, and the bombing of Dresden, Germany, even history would have a hard time encompassing all the sides in a way that reflects the horror of war. Literature would have a hard time with this as well, since literature does not deal directly with the perspectives of reality and instead turns to fiction to represent reality:

“Did that really happen?” said Maggie White…

“Of course it happened,” Trout told her. “If I wrote something that hadn’t really happened, and I tried to sell it, I could go to jail. That’s fraud.”[…]

[Maggie:] “It’s like advertising. You have to tell the truth in advertising, or you get in trouble.”

[Trout:] “Exactly. The same body of law applies.” (Vonnegut 218)

This conversation between Maggie White and the elusive author Kilgore Trout at Billy Pilgrims eighteenth wedding anniversary party calls into question the original author’s claim of semi-truth. An author is instead compared to an advertiser out to market his own version of the truth and though this conversation seems to single out only one author and one truth that is not necessarily the case. This author, Kilgore Trout, is a fictional character in a novel written by yet another fictional novelist written by Kurt Vonnegut. The separation between the reality of the reader and the fiction of Kilgore Trout lends itself to a symbolic interpretation: Trout is all authors represented in a novel that explores reality as fiction. Indeed, Vonnegut’s claim is here rendered futile in the fact he wrote this book itself; the reader is forced to question why an author would write an anti-war novel about a man who learns that war itself is unstoppable, and cannot be prevented, and that same novel says that fictional books are truth. Instead of history, Vonnegut gives us fiction; instead of anti-war he strips us of our free will—or does he?

The reader’s ability to distinguish between the reality and the fiction presented by a metafictional text is something discussed in Burgass’ article, and she argues that metafiction itself, though it intends to disorient or disturb the reader, is rendered powerless by “average” readers:

‘Real’ readers can often quickly neutralize metafictional devices so that their ontological (and chronological categories) remain intact…The fact that readers temporarily suspend disbelief and imaginatively enter the alternative fictional world with its alternative temporality, renders them immune to metafiction. (184)

It might seem counter-intuitive to present a chronological event, such as a bombing in a war during specific period of time, in such a way as to take the emphasis off of the chronology itself by using a technique like metafictional narrative. What the literary device does, however, is force the reader to piece the events together for himself and instead of confusing or disorienting the reader, the reader is instead put in a position to become a witness to history being remade within the fictional text. In being a witness, suddenly the reader is allowed to become part of that same history—the distance between the historical event in reality and the historical event in literature is thus minimized. Instead of being “neutralized,” metafiction allows the reader a neutral stance; to take in the events presented, and incorporate the multiple perspectives presented within the metafictional text, with an invitation to provide the reader’s own (new) perspective.

The use of literary devices that are often seen as isolating to the reader, such a metafiction, are used in Slaughterhouse-Five to the opposite effect. Vonnegut represents history in a single-perspective, yet through the use of metafictional narrative allows it to be interpreted in a multi-perspective and multi-dimensional way. The generation gap that occurs between the time the novel is set, the several authors within the novel, the author Vonnegut, and the reader are collapsed into a new history, giving the reader first-hand experience of a fictional history and allowing for new perspective into history.

Works Cited

Burgass, Catherine. “A Brief Story of Postmodern Plot.” The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 30, Time and Narrative (2000): pp. 177-186. Web. 18 May 2010.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. The Dial Press: New York, NY. 2005. Print.

PHI 162: “Aristotle’s Solution to the Science of Being qua Being”

Jolene Patricia Brown

Dr. M. Wedin

PHI 162: Aristotle

25 May 2010

Aristotle’s Solution to the Science of Being qua Being

In contrast to his claim in the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle makes a case for a science of “being qua being,” stipulating that is a science to investigate the forms of all other sciences, and the forms of those forms (1003b.20-23). This claim is counter that made in the Posterior Analytics where he makes an argument against the idea that a science would be able to capture all genus as a form of study: to simultaneously study what “is” in all forms of matter would be impossible, and instead there are specific sciences that break down all the genus of things into categories; it is those categories taken together that make the whole of being. For example, there is “a man” and a man is made up of all different qualities and quantities that come together to make up the whole of the form of a man; a man has two arms, two legs, a head, a brain, a capacity to reason; he has certain qualities that differentiate him from other mammals and other qualities that differentiate him from other men. A man is a sum of all the qualities he has, and each of those qualities, Aristotle argues in the Posterior Analytics, is part of a separate genus, or science. A man himself is only a culmination of different forms and materials that come together as “a man.”

In the Metaphysics however, he seems to reverse his claim, and instead chooses to argue for a science that encompasses what he calls “being qua being” that encompasses all other sciences as well as forms and matter. The problem of a science of being, as Aristotle describes it, is that it is completely counter to what he describes in his Posterior Analytics; the idea that there is one universal that covers all other universals would only serve to inflate the problem of infinite regress of cause. He begins Posterior Analytics with the claim that “All teaching an all intellectual learning come from already existing knowledge” (71a.1). This claim, and others he makes about the existence of knowledge, led to a problem of infinite regress that is not altogether explained: if all knowledge is based on already existing knowledge, then one must continue going back to find the causes of all knowledge thereby becoming circular or impossible. By claiming that there is a science of being he asserts that by studying being qua being one can understand these causes without succumbing to the infinite regress that he postulates in the Posterior Analytics.

There are two solutions to the Aristotle’s problem of the science of being. First, he distinguishes between what it is to be a substance and what it is to be a non-substance. He postulates this at 1003b.16-20: “In every case the fundamental concern of a discipline is with its primary object…So if this thing is substance, the philosopher will need to have the principles and causes of substances.” It is the philosopher who studies substances, in relation to substances being the primary object of being, since it is substances that encompass the categories which make up being. What Aristotle puts forth as evidence of this is in regards to affirmations and negations of things: namely oppositions in the form of contrarieties.

Practically everyone agrees that the things-that-are, and substance, are composed out of contraries: at any rate, everyone describes the origins of things as contraries… It is therefore obvious from this too that it falls to one discipline to study that which is qua thing-that-is. For all things either are or are made up of contraries, and contraries originate in the one and plurality. (1004b.29-1005a.5)

To make a claim about an object is, simultaneously, to make a claim about what it is not. Take, for example, to say a man is sitting: by claiming that the man is sitting you are also claiming that he is not standing, since one cannot both stand and sit at the same time. The same can be said of qualities since to claim that all men are mortal is to simultaneously claim that there is not a man who is immortal: the claims are simultaneous of one another but contrary in that they supply information about a substance.

Furthermore, substances have the capacity to change, which is unique among the disciplines. A man who is sitting has the ability (at least under normal conditions as long as he does not suffer from bodily injury that prohibits him otherwise) to stand; a horse that is white might have offspring that are all black, and indeed there are horses who are of many colors and yet despite the color differences they are still considered “horses.” This ability to change is different from other disciplines, such as mathematics, in which stay constant and reliable regardless of the situation. An example of this would be an arithmetical example such as 2 + 2 = 4; this equality is true in any sense, and does not change. The numbers themselves are not substances and cannot, therefore, have qualities like substances such as “white,” or “sitting,” or “in such and such scenario.” Those qualities would be irrelevant for mathematics otherwise 2 + 2 would equal different things under different “qualities” but it is clear that numbers and arithmetic are not subject to claims of quality.

His second solution to the science of being he equates the science of being with the study of the origins of things:

…we shall find other things called what they are in ways similar to these: just so that which is may also be so called in several ways, but all with reference to on origin…For it falls to one discipline to study not only things called what they are by virtue of one thing, but also things called what they are with reference to one nature… Plainly, therefore, it also falls to one discipline to study the things that are qua things-that-are. (1003b.5-7 and 1003b.11-17)

To study being qua being is to study the origins of all that is such that substances are those things that encompass the categories that Aristotle is so interested in. Much like in Posterior Analytics when he says that “All teaching and all intellectual learning come from already existing knowledge” (71a.1) he begins the Metaphysics by explaining that experiences make up the “memories of the same thing [producing]…the capacity for a single experience” (980a.25). It is then, Aristotle argues, through experiences that man can know something, and the combination of experiences combine—much like the qualities that make up substances—to create memories and, ultimately, more knowledge. Substances work the same way, for the combination of qualities make up substances, such as man, horse, table and those things we know to be substances are known through experience. Those experiences are combined to form memories and humans in particular have the capacity to reason with those memories, which is yet another quality that distinguishes the substance “man” from other substances, like “animal.”

ENL 133: The Search for Love: The Poor Victorian Citizen’s Struggle as Represented by Oliver Twist

Jolene Patricia Brown

Dr. K. Frederickson

ENL 133

5 May 2010

The Search for Love: The Poor Victorian Citizen’s

Struggle as Represented by Oliver Twist

The novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens is an exploration of roots and family that takes place in a culture that values those things to the highest degree. The tragedy of Oliver is not that he is without a family, for indeed many children in the novel are without a family, but instead that he is a child deserving of a family who must find a family deserving of him. Oliver’s travels from the moment he loses his mother to the time he is adopted by Mr. Brownlow is a search for a family, and the reader is sympathizing with Oliver because he manages always to fall into the wrong circumstances, namely the wrong kind of families. The combination of his naïve innocence, his constant illnesses in times of stress, his aversion to crime, and his appreciation of positive attention render Oliver a sympathetic character to the reader; we want him to find a home and a family to care for him and nurture his innate good qualities. The idea of a family becomes a metaphor for the state of Victorian government and its lack of sympathy for poor citizens. As children were turning to crime in order to survive—and thus punished by the state—the root of their corruption was not poor upbringing, or a flaw in the poorer classes. The state was driving the criminals to a choice between punishment (by toiling in the workhouses) and crime (which ends in punishment). What the poor of England are looking for is the love of their state: sympathy from the government instead of constant punishment. With a little help from their rulers, then, in the words of Nancy to the kind Rose: “If there was more like you, there would be fewer like me, —there would—there would!” (Dickens 333).

A child without a family, raised in an environment depriving him of not only physical care but also emotional care, would be hard-pressed to care for himself. In being taken to the workhouse Oliver experiences loneliness for the first time (11), despite the terrible treatment of where he was raised. It is only a short time later, when he is in the juvenile workhouse, that Oliver finds himself in a scenario that signifies his search for familial love:

Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger and reckless with misery. He rose from the table, and advancing, basin and spoon in hand, to the master, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity –

‘Please, sir, I want some more.’

…The assistants were paralysed with wonder, and the boys with fear…

‘Please, sir,’ replied Oliver, ‘I want some more.’ (15)

Even though it is food that Oliver is requesting, the metaphor is clear: what he longs for and what he desires is really the love of a family. It is no coincidence that Oliver is taken from the one family he knows, as “Wretched as were the little companions in misery he was leaving behind” (11), then speaks up for more food when he reaches the uncaring environment at the workhouse. Being forced to leave what little love he has with his friends, and brought to a place for children considered “offenders” of the law of poverty (6) is a jarring change. Instead of finding a place of camaraderie among the boys of the workhouse, he finds a place of misery and competition that is devoid of any nurturing that his nature requires.

In the article by Larry Wolff, he cites sources that compare the camaraderie of juvenile criminals a kind of sibling relation:

…in an older tradition of writing about juvenile crime, for already in the 1750’s the magistrate John Fielding…proposed a sibling relation between the two criminal cases: “These deserted Boys were Thieves from Necessity, their Sisters are Whores from the same cause.” (231)

The environment that Oliver finds among the thieves is a welcome one precisely because it offers a kind of comfort and protection that he desires and has not found in his short life. He sees Fagin as a “merry old gentleman” why plays games with a group of young boys: the game brings Oliver to tears with laughter; probably one of the first moments of joy in Oliver’s life (Dickens 70). The game is performed in such a “funny and natural manner” (71) on the part of Fagin that Oliver sees it as a ritual of belonging, and on the very next page participates in the game himself. Through this game Oliver is brought into a family structure of criminals, and though he does not realize they are criminals he is nonetheless impressed with the brotherhood enough to want to join it. It is not until he realizes the nature of their family that he decides he does not want to belong: it is not the criminality that attracts him; it is the opportunity to belong to a family.

It is through intervention by Rose that Oliver is first allowed the luxury of a family. Rose shares with Oliver the status of being an orphan, so she understands what it is that he seeks. She comes to his rescue when he is most vulnerable, and cannot defend himself because he is near-mortally injured, and in their care:

‘…think that he may never have known a mother’s love, or even the comfort of a home, and that…may have driven him to herd with the men who have forced him to guilt…I have never felt the want of parents in [Mrs. Maylie’s] goodness and affection, but that I might have done so, and might have been equally helpless and unprotected with this poor child, have pity upon him before it is too late’ (239)

Rose recognizes Oliver’s search for love and familial companionship as one she would have had to do if it were not for the care and love of the Maylie family. Indeed, she was also rescued from a family who “began to sicken…of their fine humanity,” (437) by Mrs. Maylie, who treated her as her own daughter. Rose realizes how fortunate she was to find a family who would treat her as a daughter, a friend, and—in the case of Henry Maylie—future wife, and because she has not forgotten her luck, wishes to show that same pity to Oliver. Oliver only too happily accepts, and though he is not immediately reunited with Mr. Brownlow, he has found a family who cares about him and, more importantly, has faith in him enough to believe that there are evil men out to do him harm, and this family protects him.

The Victorian audience would appreciate Oliver’s longing for familial love, and recognize their own struggle within the country, especially those people of the lower and middle classes. Much of this novel is a protestation against the over-punishment of crime in England. Even the smallest crimes run the risk of death by the state. The struggle is between the choices made to commit a crime—a child is forced to a criminal lifestyle when there are no other options for survival, but the punishment for a child in that struggle outweighs the crime itself. The argument is then one of pity: it is wrong for the state to punish a child for maintaining their survival; Oliver struggles for survival and does not need to turn to crime to do so because he finds a family. The state must take in those poor criminals who struggle to survive and help them, like Oliver’s new family helps him; otherwise the criminal continues to wander and run the risk of getting into—or causing—more trouble.

Poverty was a crime at the time of publication, yet the wealth remained in the hands of a select few, while the vast majority of the population struggled with everyday living. What Oliver wanted more than anything was the love of a family to nurture his natural inclination to do what is right for himself and for society. The poor-houses of England were full of people who wanted nothing more than to survive, but had no way to do support themselves. Wolff cites this behavior as well in the story of a boy and a gentleman, as first related by another author Henry Mayhew in London Labour and the London Poor:

“…[the boy] went up to an old gentleman, walking slowly in Hyde-park, and said to him, ‘Sir, I’ve lived three weeks by begging, and I’m hungering now; give me a sixpence, or I’ll go and steal.’ The gentleman stopped and looked at the boy…in whose face was no doubt starvation, for without uttering a word he gave the young applicant a shilling” (241)

Instead of turning to crime, the good poor citizens turned to the state: the government-run work houses. Instead of a gentleman to give them more than they asked, like the young man in the passage above, they found themselves punished unjustly and disproportionately for their “crime” of poverty. The metaphor runs deep between the love of a family and the love of the state; the illusion is one is born with both a family and a country to care for them, but in reality neither love is a guarantee.

Works Cited

Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. London: Penguin Publishing, 2002. Print.

Wolff, Larry. “The Boys are Pickpockets and the Girl is a Prostitute: Gender and Juvenile Criminality in Oliver Twist.” New Literary History 27.2 (1996) 227-249.