Lots of smart comments so far--thank you! I find it interesting that so many of you talked about the American west and the frontier, locating the passage in an historical/cultural context as much as in the lives of the particular characters. You're right, I'm sure--but I'm surprised that so many of you seem to frame the whole experience in a kind of positive light, as if the passage is about new opportunities, a fresh start, a chance for self-improvement. This is no doubt true, but the paragraph seems pretty frightening and bleak to me! But with so many of you reading it as apparently less bleak, it must have its positive side, too! So I'd be curious to hear what others think about the tone here.
It's also interesting that (I think) only Marshall talks about God--and I think I'd got further than Marshall and say that the passage does imply that, on that night at least, Jim doubts God's existence. This goes along with my sense of the bleakness of the experience. Jim's parents are dead, he has left the world behind, and God is dead, too... What do you think?
I don't think God as dead dead, but rather, his influence is non existent in the frontier. But I do agree his faith is shaken.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of the tone I would have to say that I found it neither strictly positive nor negative. Instead, I saw it as an in-between numbness; almost as if all feeling had been swallowed up by the empty, open land and sky. Although Jim had lost his parents and was forced to move to a new region, he leaves behind the "spirit" of his parents, he isn't quite sure what he is feeling, and he has his being "blotted out" by his new surroundings. This is not necessarily a positive thing, but this does not seem to be essentially foreboding.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, God has become almost unimportant in Jim's life, as if his otherworldly numbness has left him to only glance at such non-secular ideas. The other-worldliness of this very real time and place dwarfs such an out-of-reach belief such as God; Jim can see with his very own eyes the "complete dome of heaven" and does not need to hold his beliefs in something that is not there. Although it is a life changing experience, and perhaps it may seem like a bleak idea, it is not necessarily for the worst.
-Nina Berlow
I like the word "numbness"! I also wonder, looking at it now, whether this passage has some things in common with the Emerson passage about feeling like a transparent eyeball, seeing "nothing". Of course Emerson feels connected to the universe (the currents of the universal being circulate through him, I think he says), while Jim feels personally "erased" but in both passages there is a sense of being open to the vastness of the universe... --EC
ReplyDeleteNina's comment has reminded me of something I read about some time ago... It is the idea of an active god, one who bore the earth and is now among us, exerting his omnipotence over mankind. There is also the passive creator, who no longer intervenes in human affairs. Jim might still have faith in god, and the way he describes the plains sounds divine almost, and his mention of "the complete dome of heaven" while bringing up his parents strengthened my point that Jim is religious, but does not think god is there to offer guidance and/or help. Eden
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