Brett Ashley and the novel The Sun Also Rises

I must admit that my views of Brett Ashley have now changed upon reading the article by Lorie Watkins Fulton.  I think that it is very easy to blame her and her manipulative and destructive tendencies for the evil that works itself into the novel The Sun Also Rises.  That is the overriding conclusion not only of the narrator Jake Barnes, but also of nearly all of the critics of the work to date.  That creates a rather compelling point of view for us.  However, I now find it hard to place all of the blame on her character and am beginning to wonder if she is, in fact, maligned.

Fulton makes a great case right away by reminding us of the completely paradoxical nature of Hemingway’s narrative.  If we are to believe that is true of the whole story, then it becomes hard to see Ashley only in one light.  How are we to believe that everyone else in the book is multi-layered but poor Ashley?  Why should we trust Barnes about this one aspect and observation of his when he proves not trustworthy about the others?  Finally, and most convincingly, it is hard to blame Ashley when we read of Jake Barnes’ obviously flawed personal observations and biases that he brings to the table: his words about the flower girl down on the street own up to the fact that he sees her as a manipulator just like all of her sex are.

This outlandish assignment of with gender should have provided a useful lens through which we could begin to see Ashley in a much more favorable light.  It shows the power of literary critics in influencing us to one point of view, just as effectively as Jake Barnes did.

Langston Hughes’ main theme and main concern is the loneliness and struggle of the black man, the Negro.  This poem is crafted well to show us this theme in a different and unexpected light.  Rather than explaining the struggles the Negro faces, and cataloging all of the well known facts of race in America, Hughes compares it to other elements that tell the same story metaphorically.  It is as if Hughes has decided that anyone reading The Weary Blues is already familiar with the issues and basic facts and is ready for a new way of seeing the history through one person but for all people.  His poem takes on color to demonstrate his concern.

The title seems obvious: it must be about the type of song the old man is singing.  Surely it is, but it’s more than that.  The poem puts the color blue right up there at the top for us to see the sadness and tiredness that Negros feel.  Hughes then goes on to tell us the plight of the black man through use of the artist’s palette.  We see ‘pale’ on line 5, ebony on line 9, ivory on line 9, black on line 15, and of course ‘blues’ 7 different times.  Why all the color?  Hughes’ theme is the tired condition of the black’s struggle, the overwhelming and consuming aspect of it.  His use of colors speaks loudly.  Blues, of course, represents the all present sadness of the people.  That is clear.  That is easy.  But look at the other things going on, too.  Pale light is a diminished opportunity.  The black man is not allowed the full brightness of spectrum, the American dream.

It is in sharp contrast to that enjoyed by the white race.  Hughes says this by not just saying that the black man is playing a piano down there on the avenue.  That wouldn’t be enough.  What he says is that he had his “ebony hands on each ivory key” (9).  That contrast of ebony and ivory, black and white, says it all.  Everything we hear from the black man, the mourning of the blues, is a discussion and revelation of his everlasting struggle as a black man in a white world.

The story of Mrs. Turpin in Revelation is one of those stories that really gets into me and make me want to take part.  I want to get right in and grab Mrs. Turpin by the shoulders with my reactions!  She may be the biggest hypocrite I have ever read about.  What makes her that way the most to me is that she is constantly referring to her position as given by Jesus himself.  O’Connor writes that Mrs. Turpin was made a better class by Jesus’ decision, and that Jesus is perfectly aware that there are many worse classes of people.

She refers to this blessing over and over while reminding herself what a good type of woman she is, what a god fearing woman she is, when the reader wants to just grab her and wake her up from this delusion.  I see the opportunities for grace everywhere for Mrs. Turpin.  Where she sees so many faults in other people, she could have talked with them instead of to them.  She could have offered to really help them and not in a self-serving manner like when she helped Claude to a chair by announcing just how much they deserved one over the others who had been there first.  I really thought that she might really experience the grace instead of just an opportunity for it when she got home and started thinking about the wart hogs.  It seemed like she really got it for once.

But then she sees those black folk and gets right back on her horse, and she has them make her feel better about the way she is! She knew that if she raised doubts about herself they would make her feel superior again, by lifting her up, and by making themselves look stupid to her!  Sadly this is one of the ways that I see this work as Southern, too.  It keeps returning to basic themes of race and religion over and over.  It is a story of defining class and making sure everyone knows their place accordingly.  This is a hallmark of Southern type stories.