Happiness Is Relinquished Because of Duty

Happiness Is Relinquished
Because of Duty
THE CAUSE of the failure of the modern serious novel to
please a wide, general audience lies, perhaps, in the moral
"relativity" of the age. Blame it on our heritage of
eighteenth-century rationalism or on the ambiguity with
which Freud and his disciples have demeaned human
sentiments, but the fact is that any wholly stirring kind
of human nobility is almost impossible to create on an
intelligent and literate level today.
James Jones ' novel From Here to Eternity was received
by the critics as a "work of genius" and as a "major contribution
to American letters." It outsold every novel of 1951
with the exception of the smooth and innocuous The
Caine Mutiny. And Jones' book achieved these popular
and critical successes despite its confused, undisciplined
writing, despite a bevy of cardboard characterizations, and
despite some of the most unlikely dialogue since the death
of Queen Victoria.
The unparalleled success of the book could be due to
the fact that the author was the literary equivalent of a
primitive in painting. He wrote with complete conviction
about a hero who could give up his life for an ideal Army.
In the sense that the hero of the novel, Private Prewitt,
was unwilling to compromise with reality or accept the
Army s it actually was, he attained the stature of a true
tragic hero.
A more sophisticated writer than Jones, a writer more
in touch with current literary trends, could have created a
character who acted like Private Prewitt, but he would
have condescended to him. More highly sophisticated
writers are committed to showing both sides of the medal.
They cannot free themselves from lessening the worthiness
of whatever idea, ideal, or principle they would ask their
heroes to die for. And consequently, successful modern
tragic art is a rare accomplishment.
This curse of sophistication is the same sudden awareness
in Adam and Eve that they were naked. Once achieved,
the knowledge can never be removed. This loss of innocence
has made it almost impossible for the serious writer
to tell a story that is nobly rather than merely pathetically
tragic. Slick writers, though, because they are not committed
to using what they have learned from psychoanalysis,
because they are not dedicated to communicating life as
they see it, are free to deal with themes such as human
sacrifice without turning the medal over to show the selfish
inspiration, the unconscious, ulterior motive. An example:
The father of two children is a Naval Reserve officer who
is about to be called back into active service. His wife finds it
impossible to accept the deprivation and loneliness this
separation will cause her and her children. She importunes
him to do what he can to stay out. But the husband sees it
as his duty to get back into his uniform. He vainly tries to
impress this same sense of duty on his wife. He explains the
need the country has at the present time for a strong defense
organization, but the wife cannot overcome a conviction that
it is unfair for one man, her husband in particular, to be
called up to the colors again after having served through
World War II.
For a final vacation together, the couple park their children
with in-laws and go off to a small cabin they own in the lovely
hill country nearby. Just as they are about to leave for home,
a forest fire breaks out. The wife, who cannot see having the
end of their vacation interrupted too, pleads with her husband
to come back with her to the city and leave the fire for
the permanent residents to battle. But there is an obvious
need for the help of every able-bodied male in this emergency,
and the husband decides he must go off with the other men.
The direction of the wind changes, putting the couple's cabin
in danger. Then, suddenly, just as the fire seems to be reaching
impossible proportions, it begins to rain. The cabin and
all the fire fighters are saved. The wife has personally experienced
the danger and the struggle of the men against the
danger. When she is at last reunited with her husband, she
has learned the necessity of men banding together to protect
their homes, and their way of life. She accepts her husband's
return to the Navy.
Certainly such a story doesn't reach anything like tragic
significance, but it deals with a sentiment which in another
context, with other treatment, might qualify. Today's
serious writers could never deal with such material in this
manner. The hardship and anguish could be delineated,
but the noble choice, the voluntary aspect of the wife's
acceptance, would probably be qualified away.
In passing, it might be interesting to call attention to
the little piece of dishonesty perpetrated in this story. In
order that the reader should identify properly with the
wife, the wife was made to seem essentially a good, average
person. If she had objected to the separation from her
husband merely because it would have caused her discomfort,
she would have seemed to the reader condemnably
out of sympathy with the national good. Therefore, it was
necessary to build up for her a true hardship case. She
would be left alone with two children; she was worried
about being able to make ends meet on his Navy salary, etc.
But, it was also necessary not to make her situation so
difficult that the reader would be unable to go along with
her acceptance of the separation at the story ' s close.
Officers are outnumbered by enlisted men ten to one
in the Navy. Suppose the husband had been returning
to the service as a common seaman; and suppose, instead of
two, he had four or five children to support on a smaller
Navy allowance, as is too often the case in real life. Would
any spiritual adjustment on the part of the wife have struck
the reader as satisfactory? A very strong case could have
been built up for the wife ' s original defection. But what
could be said after that? Just as with identity stories, assignment
stories, or really any of the rest, the writer must take
care to strike the happy mean between posing a problem
which will be interesting but insoluble and a problem
which will be only too soluble, but not very interesting.
Although this is repetition, the basic approach to life
in the slick magazine is a hedonistic one. Sacrifice stories
represent exceptions to this approach. The reason for the
sacrifice, therefore, must be given special attention. Not
just anything will do. As susceptible as the slick audience
is to didacticism, readers would hardly go along on a piece
dealing with, say, a hero who was willing to accept hardship
for his wife and children in order to protect the sanctity of
the U.S. mails.
As we've seen, the unity of the family is a sacred cause,
worthy of the greatest personal deprivation. The good of
country rates, too. But not much else. Most of the hundreds
of things for which men and women in real life give up
personal happiness are useless. The support and care of
one's aging parent as an impediment to marriage, although
it is a common sacrifice in real life, would constitute a
legitimate problem in the slicks, but a problem to be overcome.
No amount of ingenuity on the writer's part will convince
a slick reader that it is proper for a hero to give up
happiness for the wrong ideal. On the other hand, quite
often no amount of platitudinous hokum will sully the
proper ideal or principle. For example:
A middle-aged mother who, while icing a cake for her son's
seventeenth birthday, receives a call from the boy's girl friend
asking where he is. Immediately the mother begins to fear
that her son may have gone to enlist in the armed forces. The
fear is an especially keen one, since she lost her other son in
World War II. Her husband then calls to ask if the boy is
home and when he finds he is not, tells that a neighbor called
to say that the boy had been seen near a Marine recruiting
station. The husband assures her, though, that everything will
be all right, since the boy cannot complete enlistment at his
age without their permission.
The mother's fears are redoubled. She recalls with pain all
the lovable, familiar habits of her elder, dead son; remembers
her terrible anguish at hearing the news of his death. She
recalls that for months afterward she had read books and
magazines and newspapers night and day in the hope that
someone would be able to explain to her why the war was
being fought, somehow convince her that her son had not
died in vain.
Then her son comes home, and tells her that he has enlisted.
She asks him questions, one after the other, in the hope
that he will be able to explain war to her. And he does. He
comes out with the most extraordinary succession of trite
platitudes I have ever seen in the slicks. Plenty of boys go
away to war at seventeen and a few of them even for the
reasons expressed by this monstrous adolescent but not one of
them ever was so indecently articulate about it. The mother's
reaction to the situation is no less a violation of probability,
but fortunately the writer has had her think her laudable
sentiments rather than talk them.
At any rate, family and country are the two institutions
good for $1000 via nobility, nowadays.
category:plot lines