We Must Cultivate Our Gardens: Analysis of Donna Tartt's "The Secret History"

We Must Cultivate Our Garden: Analysis of The Secret History

Throughout Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, the six students who study Greek—particular Henry, who is arguably the most dedicated to his studies—fall into practices and mindsets of this ancient culture. Isolated from contemporary society, they seek to liberate themselves from the constraints of societal norms through substance abuse and the elite belief that they are not just outside but above the rest of the population. However, these beliefs may not be wholly innocent, and they may not be representative of the six students as a whole; rather, they may be reflections of Henry’s ideals and philosophies manifested in the other students. The students wanted to escape reality, and Henry seemed to provide the way. But as the novel progresses, Henry becomes more controlling, and it becomes clearer that he is using people as pieces in his own personal game. In the end, Henry’s shadowed misguidance leads these characters to their ultimate punishment: the endless extension of the mundane and constrained lives they always feared they would live. 

At the start of the novel, Henry is portrayed as a reserved person who may not have much desire for passion. Richard describes times Henry “walked stiffly...with the self-conscious formality of an old ballerina” and says that “he might have been handsome had his features not been less set, or his eyes, behind the glasses, less expressionless and blank” (18). From the beginning of the novel, Henry is depicted as uncomfortable in his body, less grounded, and in a sense, checked out from the current world and it’s events. However, he is soon noted to have higher aspirations. We learn that he idolizes his professor, Julien, and seeks to imitate him with simple acts such as purchasing the same fountain pen (34). This is the first we see Henry attempt to mimic someone or something he sees as a higher power. Soon after, he is also soon pointed out as a leader of the students. Not only do they turn to Henry for the final say in their Greek homework when Richard first meets them in the library. Henry also signifies himself as a mastermind when on the spot, for no real reason, he concocts a plan during class to take over Hampden “this afternoon, with six men” (37). He expresses here a desire to control something—in this case, Hampden—and easily creates a plot to do so. In this way, Henry is controlling from the start of the story, but he can be dismissed by the narrator until he is revealed as crucial. When Richard nearly freezes to death over his winter break in Hampden, Henry returns early and, in the words of the doctors, “saved my [Richard’s] life” (126). Henry becomes necessary to Richard’s survival and, in turn, exerts one of the earliest instances of his desire to control life and death by saving him not just from death, but from the cold. Henry gives Richard life as well as warmth in a physical and metaphorical sense, and it is from this point on that Henry becomes pivotal. 

When the Dionysian ritual is revealed at the crux of the story, it is definitive proof that the Greek students (directed by Henry) are attempting to emulate an ancient spirituality. When Henry reveals to Richard that he, Francis, and the twins managed to hold the ritual, he explains that he was “obsessed with the idea” of losing himself and his cognitive predispositions (164). He does not say that anyone else involved had the same motivation and obsession, and he even explains how when Bunny was not as invested, he had no qualms about omitting him from the ritual. After Bunny’s death, he later expresses in his garden that he had this desire to lose himself in something extraordinary since he was younger—since he suffered his brain injury—and he sought this in the ritual. When the ritual is first discussed at the end of one of Julien’s lectures, he calls it the “fire of pure being” and explains how the Greeks desired to weave in and out of socially constructed norms, separate the two, and in turn “let God consume us...then spit us out reborn” (42). This concept or purity and or rebirth is what fascinates Henry and what causes him to lead his classmates (excluding Richard, the narrator, and later excluding Bunny) to seek this sort of rebirth. According to what Henry tells Richard in the garden, he felt that ecstacy of living without thinking when they killed the farmer during the ritual, and nothing in his eyes has mattered much since that experience. However, through killing a man in the Dionysian ritual, Henry experiences control over giving someone not just life, but death; it is this that allows him to experience a sense of purpose in the world. 

Henry’s reactions to death are telling throughout the story. While at the beginning of the novel, he is deeply shaken by killing something as simple as a duck, this shifts once he kills the farmer. During the ritual, he experiences not just the power of giving life, but the power of giving death, and he is able to use it as a means to an end. He poisons dogs when plotting to kill Bunny and, for that matter, kills Bunny. He glorifies it; even when Richard finds him in the garden, he is killing spiders on his roses bushes and ridding the beautiful, idealized things of natural pests (491). The image of Henry as the gardener, the dictator in that small world over what lives in it and what dies, further portrays him as someone who relishes in control over life and death. Moments later, he even projects this glorification of death onto Richard who he says, like himself, doesn’t “feel a great deal of emotion for other people,” but experienced the ecstacy of living without thinking when the group killed Bunny at the ravine (493). Henry sees killing, an unconventional and morally wrong act in the eyes of most all civilized people, as a tool he can use for his benefit whether that benefit be covering up the original murder or simply the lively rush of control over life and death. He is willing to kill if he thinks it is necessary for the things he sees as worthy and beautiful to live. Within his garden, he appears at a sense of peace, and it is this sense of order which he is attempting to bring to the rest of the world. 

Henry’s faith and fanaticism for his sole control over life and death complicates at the end of the novel when Charles appears in Camilla’s hotel room to kill Henry. Since Charles, in the ritual, came to his mind trying to dismember the farmer and also later killed the wasp at Bunny’s funeral, he may be seen in Henry’s eyes as a rival in his quest for control over the living and the dead. In the hotel, Henry takes the gun from Charles, protecting himself, and tells him that killing Henry will be “the stupidest thing you ever did in your life” (534). However, Henry takes the gun moments later and, to avoid facing the police knocking at the door, takes his own life. One may question; does Henry believe that the stupidest thing Charles could do is take a life that Henry, who has controlled most all death until this point, does not want to be lost? If this is true, then when Henry takes his own life, he does so to retain control; he would rather be dead at his own hand than beg for his life from the hand of another. This sort of thought is seen even when he is calm enough to take a moment to say goodbye to Camilla, who he says he loved. The goodbye romanticizes his death, seals himself to Camilla as if with a dying word, and marks her as his own—not property of Charles, whom Henry has fought with over Camilla since after Bunny’s funeral. Finally, when the bullets sink into Henry’s head, Richard describes Henry’s open mouth and last breath paralleled with the curtains suctioned by a draft to the screen of the open window (537). Even this creates the image of a soul escaping the world they created within the hotel room and, perhaps, escaping to a new birth that Henry has desired since he sought rebirth in the Dionysian ritual. 

At the end of the novel, after Henry’s death, his memory still controls the lives of his peers. After his death, Henry reappears to other characters, in flashes, almost as a tortured ghost. Richard believes he sees Henry when Henry’s mother visits him in the hospital. Not only does he notice that the woman has Henry’s eyes—typically known to be a symbol of the soul—but he describes Henry standing in the corner of the room, dressed in his gardening clothes just as he was in one of the last conversations they had about life, and death, and fascination with those concepts. When Richard makes the connection between Henry’s eyes and his mother’s, he chooses to see it; he is, to an extent, still looking for Henry and perhaps his guidance. However, what is telling further is the image of Henry himself. Assuming that the ghostly image of Henry in the hospital was either a hallucination of some kind or an actual spector, Richard (or his subconscious) is haunted by Henry’s spirit. Likewise, Francis admits that when he bled in the bathtub upon attempting suicide, he believes he saw Henry saying, “Well, Francis, I hope you’re happy now” (553). One can assume that the reader is intended to accept this as Henry’s dialogue; after Francis tells Richard he believed he saw Henry chastising him as he bled, they discuss how “we believe in them [ghosts] every bit as much as Homer did. Only now we call them by a different name. Memory. The unconscious” (553). To these two who admit to seeing Henry after his death, the concoction of the unconscious and a literal ghost may as well be the same thing. In addition, the Homeric reference ties back to Henry’s first scene in the novel when he expresses a love for Homer; if the reader is told that Henry admires this writer and thinker, perhaps he is supposed to be read as a Homeric ghost (23). Therefore, Henry’s words to Francis are able to authentically portray Henry as bitter towards others who attempt to control life and death. This, perhaps, is because when Francis attempts to escape life, he is doing so because it is mundane and he has not tried to make it spectacular as Henry did. In this way, Henry sees death not as an escape from life but as a tool with which he can continue to exert control over his own life and that of others while, perhaps, continuing his journey in a different sort of existence.

Henry may not be able to control whether his peers are physically alive or dead from his ghostly position, but he may be able to control whether or not his living companions feel that they live in a richer, more metaphorical sense of the word. Within the epilogue, the students involved in Bunny’s murder fall into painful normalcy—in part because of Henry’s presence in their lives at one point, and in part because of his current absence. Without the purpose of Henry’s Dionysian ritual or some other religious attempt to lose himself, Charles becomes a typical drunk (552). Camilla tells Richard she cannot marry him because she is stuck looking after her grandmother, but when he presses her, she reveals that she cannot really love Richard because she still loves Henry (554). When Francis, a homosexual man, plans to wed a woman he dislikes because he doesn’t want to be cut off from his family’s wealth, he feels he has lost control, and he sees Henry’s logic; Francis attempts suicide, following Henry’s steps as if he, too, can at least gain control over whether he lives or dies (549). Like in the hospital, Richard is haunted by Henry’s ghost, but he also believes he sees an image of “Bunny, indifferent, clipping his fingernails” (545). If the reader is to believe that, like Henry’s spector, that this is really Bunny’s ghost, it proves that he did not even find rest or divinity once he was dead and buried. He is preserved in death as he was when alive—oblivious and indifferent to certain truths of life as he is to his own death. Even Richard, in graduate school like he always wanted, focuses on Jacobean literature and describes his fascination for it and for “sin unpunished...innocence destroyed” (547). He studies the very concepts he lived through Bunny’s murder, his destroyed innocence, and his lack of explicit punishment for his committed sins. That which Henry roped Richard into haunts him, and the occasional spectral image or dream of Henry only furthers it. In this way, Henry prevents his living partners in crime from doing the things that he believes would make them feel alive. He felt that after the Dionysian ritual, “it enabled me to do what I’ve always wanted most...to live without thinking” (493). The things his peers seek—love, oblivion by drink, an escape from social norms—compose aspects of the ritual, but they are also things that allow them to escape the mundane. However, without Henry to tell them they are accepted, to tell them how to reach this sort of divinity, they lose direction, and everything in the story falls out of technicolor. It’s no longer as mystical and ancient; the action of the story falls with Henry the instigator gone, and there is no more to cover up or to hide. Charles’ substance abuse seems pointless and loses it’s life and mind altering glory. None of Camilla, Francis, or Richard will love as they wished to love. They confine to social norms in one way or another, are locked down to secular ideals, and do not escape as they used to when Henry was alive and their influencer. 

All the same, there remains the last puzzle of Richard’s dream at the end of the novel. In this dream, Richard wanders aimlessly through streets that are “dark, abandoned, bombed-out” (558). This mirrors a lifeless, worthless existence. As he walks, however, he sees newer buildings that hold promise, and when he enters one, he finds none other than Henry, his image imprinted with the bullet hole still in his temple. Like Bunny, he is mirrored in death as he was in life. In this mysterious place, Henry asserts that he isn’t dead, that his “movements are restricted” (559). From this other plane, Henry is not really dead because those alive carry his memory and his ghost, and in this way, he is able to influence them to a partial, but not a full extent. He is simply restricted. Even in death, he holds more information than others as he refuses to tell Richard where they are, saying that the information is “classified” (559). All the while, images of “an Inca temple… the Parthenon… the Colosseum… Hagia Sophia… St. Basil’s” flicker by on a revolving turntable; these are images of various religious places from various major religions, and Henry has surveillance over them all (559). As religion is commonly believed to be the source of control over life and death, Henry is explicitly in a place where he can witness and perhaps, somewhere off the page, partake in it. Although he says he is “not particularly” happy in this place, he does not believe that Richard is happy with the living, either—and perhaps Richard is not satisfied because he is haunted by an unsatisfied Henry (559).  However, like always, Henry is still preoccupied with something Richard cannot see nor understand. Henry checks his watch as if he exists someplace like the land of the living where time is important and worthwhile. He says he is late for an appointment, and he doesn’t specify the nature of it, leaving Richard and the reader to believe that it is still far above their heads. He then leaves Richard without explanation just as he left his own life. Even in death, Henry remains aloof and apart, a figure of something ambiguous. By presenting himself as such, Henry retains the power of something divine. He retains the power to haunt, guide, and be a mystery through which those who knew him seek orientation and meaning. And in being such even in death, Henry retains the power to control how those he left alive can live pure, raw, fiery existences—or how are unable to live them.

Creative Investment in Creative Writing Workshops: Original Research

Creative Investment in Creative Writing Workshops

Creative writing in all its ambiguity may seem a difficult subject to teach. To teach writing is a daunting task in itself; to teach someone to create means to teach them something subjective in nature. In their article on defining creativity, Barry Liesch and Thomas Finley analyze Biblical definitions of creativity to conclude that the act of creation is something only capable of God, something that exists in humans in only a mirrored state (1984). Even the Greeks argued over the definition of creativity with Plato asserting it to be the inspiration of divine madness and his pupil, Aristotle, suggesting creativity exists in the mind, somewhere between melancholia and its temperaments; this Aristotelian concept provides the basis for more modern studies that correlate creativity and levels of mental stability (Akiskal and Akiskal 2007). Also in the contemporary era, writer Steven Pressfield in his book The War of Art believes that the only way to improve one’s craft is to sit down and work on it; however, he believes that by doing this and by saying a prayer to the muses much like that of Sophocles in the Plato’s Phaedrus, the muse will recognize his dedication to his craft, come down from the heavens, and provide his word divine inspiration (Pressfield p. 113). While people have not settled on a definition or origin of creativity, various voices from antiquity, the Renaissance, and the present have believed that creativity is something divine or otherwise out of humanity’s control. 

In this case, to be responsible for teaching someone how to create in the ways of gods and poets is an insurmountable weight, and it is one that must be handled with care. What, exactly, should be the job of creative writing courses? What, exactly, should students invest, and with what should they leave? These are questions I pondered in my research, although they are questions it would take much greater research to answer. In my paper, I seek to explore the ways creative writing is taught commonly and in the present. I aim to learn for what creative writing classes hold themselves responsible. I try to discern what students are welcomed to invest in the class and what they recieve. 

I narrowed my research on creative writing workshops. According to Jill Stukenberg, these have been a common practice for over one hundred years (2016). In these courses, students are commonly required to read their peers’ work closely, express both praise and criticism for the piece, and in turn put their own writing up for review. The author of the workshopped story witnesses their readers’ reactions to their piece and can therefore learn how their ideas are conveyed and how they can convey them more efficiently. However, there are developmental discrepancies regarding writer development in the idea and management of a workshop. According to Charles Bazerman in Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, writing expresses thoughts, ideas, and emotions that are reconstructed by readers when they attempt to comprehend these things in the text; for this reason, “every expression shared contains risk and can evoke anxiety. Writers often hesitate to share what they have expressed and may even keep private texts they consider most meaningful” (Bazerman paragraph 5). In contrast to many other classes that require writing to be turned in to just the professor or teaching assistant, workshops require students to share with an entire class of their peers. Creative writing, too, can be much more personal to the writer than academic writing, and therefore, the social yet critical nature of the workshop can feel even more exposed tan a typical class (Stukenberg 2016). In my research, I found that oftentimes, this can create anxiety in the students as the class is so focused on others’ perception of one’s creative writing. For students who are either new to writing or new to the genre in which they are writing, this anxiety could increase. 

At the University of North Texas, I interviewed three students who had taken Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction within the past academic year. The two female students had the same professor and assignment but different classes, and the third and the only male had both a different professor and assignment. In the interviews, I explored how the structure of the class, the nature of feedback, and the assignments given can affect a student's investment in the class and therefore in creative writing. Generally, I sought to get a basic understanding of the writers I interviewed, their experiences in creative writing classes (specifically, for the sake of the research, fiction workshops), and what they wanted from said experience in comparison and in contrast to what they feel like they received from it. While my small sample pool consisted of multiple genders, races, and sexualities, it was not large enough or diverse enough to provide an entirely accurate sample. This research can serve as a basis off of which further research could expand and therefore reach wider conclusions. 

ELISE

When I interviewed Elise, I was surprised to find that I received the perspective not of a self-proclaimed “creative writer” but rather of a Writing and Rhetoric major. She took Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction to fulfill an English elective and, admittedly, for fun. Although she enjoys essays, she “writes to think” and has journaled in her free time since she was younger (Elise 2018). In her calm demeanor, her preparation for the workshop, and her curiosity for difficult subjects, I recognized Elise’s intuition. 

When I asked her about the workshop, she said she was nervous beforehand and had to keep reminding herself that “I am not the story,” therefore emotionally distancing herself from the story in preparation for the critiques she would receive (Elise 2018). This reminded me, ultimately, of another Threshold Concept—Kevin Roozen’s assertion that writing is linked to identity and that “through the writing we do, we claim, challenge, perhaps even contest and resist, our alignment with the beliefs, interests, and values of the communities with which we engage” (Roozen paragraph 3). Roozen claims that writing identifies one with certain communities, even if that community is simply the community of writers. Elise, who told me she identifies as a writer, aligns with this definition; however, in her saying that she isn’t her story, she separated not just herself from the piece, but she also separated the act of writing and the story she had written. She identified as a writer without identifying with the story. If these are to be two different things, Elise could have entered the class as an invested writer, but she could still, theoretically, have to be convinced to invest in the type of writing presented in the course. 

The assignment for Elise’s class was to write a short story that retells a myth or legend using the same main character, conflict, and time and place. She chose to retell a story from Marguerite of Navarre’s collection of French stories. The original myth was about a relationship between a princess and an older knight and explores the nature of the love in question. Elise added a prince, who served as the narrator, the princess’ brother, her protector from the knight’s attack at the end of the story; however, the big twist Elise put into the story was in the unrequited love that the prince felt for the knight (Elise 2018). 

When Elise’s story came up for workshop, I was able to attend her class and observe the discussion. The class had already workshopped three stories a week for the past three weeks, and on the night of Elise’s workshop, two stories had already come before her. It was Halloween. Some students were already in costume. It was nearing 9pm , and I could feel that like any college kid at the end of a three-hour class, these students were growing tired. Students had snacks they’d purchased on break, and one student, who had a three hour poetry writing workshop immediately before the three hour fiction writing workshop, had resorted to sitting on the floor to somehow keep himself from falling asleep. All the same, after Elise read her first paragraph and then fell silent (according to Jill Stukenberg’s assessment, this is typical in the creative writing workshop), the students rallied to discuss her story. 

At the start of the workshop, various students tossed out comments on anything from the point of view of the story to the scientific possibility of a sword sinking into someone’s back and skewering the heart out through the chest. The exhausted student spoke up from the floor to say that he wanted the image of the ocean at the beginning of the story to be paralleled at the end. The professor chimed in every once in a while, but he pulled back each time with the promise of revealing his thoughts at the end of the workshop. For a while, the room was a flurry of ideas, and Elise, like me, scribbled down notes before they could be overwhelmed by a new idea.

The last half of the workshop, however, revolved mainly around one topic: the attempted rape scene at the end of the story. Students argued with one another over the relevance of the scene, whether it could be expanded to be more impactful, whether it should be left alone, whether it should be toned down to just a stolen kiss, or cut altogether. By the end of the workshop, the class reached no consensus, and the professor stepped in to assert that in his opinion, it was not, in fact, necessary to the plot of the story. The plot of the story, he said, was the internal conflict the prince felt when he found out that the knight he thought he adored loved not the prince, but the princess. With that, students passed comment sheets around the circle and to Heather. They packed up their things, chatter arose from the room, and students drifted out the door in little clusters. It was time for candy and Halloween parties. 

In my interview with Elise, she told me she enjoyed the workshop—especially the first part in which her peers suggested a variety of comments and ideas. She even said that she liked that she couldn’t speak until the end of the workshop. She said she was embarrassed when the suggested parallel of the ocean came up because she thought she should’ve imagined it herself, but she was ultimately glad it was mentioned. However, when I asked her about the debate over the end of the story, she laughed, and her voice fell. On her end, “a good conversation turned into an argument between the class about whether that scene should be included or not. I felt excluded because I couldn't chime in and explain why it was there” (Elise 2018). To Elise, the workshop began to fail when it got stuck on the same idea; even the professor commented on the debate. This particular example, a discussion of the content of the story and how the other students believed it should change or stay the same, was direct; these comments in this argument attempted to dictate what Elise should include or not include in her story. She preferred the more suggestive, facilitative comments from the earlier part of the workshop over this debate. 

 At the end of the class, Heather confided in me and in a few of her fellow class members that the rape scene was in the story because the it was a key part of the original story she was supposed to retell. The professor had suggested that students change the myth by altering the point of view, inventing characters, or choosing which parts of the story to tell and which parts to omit. However, Elise told me that she “didn’t feel confident enough to change the myth” (Elise 2018). This, perhaps, explains why she told me in her interview that she was more attached to the original story than to her original writing. It may also play into her ability to identify as a writer but not as the story she turned in to workshop. The assignment, either due to its nature or lack of clarity, prevented Heather from feeling comfortable enough to invest very deeply in her short story. As someone who “wants to investigate ideas,” the stipulations of this assignment could have made it just that—an assignment and not much more. If the job of a creative writing class is to teach students investment and creativity in the craft, Elise did not fully benefit from it. 

When I asked which workshop comments she valued the most, she said that she would be more likely to revise her short story to the professor’s standards than the students’. All the same, she said she would do this because “she trusts him” and that she’s “not really worried about the grade” (Elise 2018). Despite her reason, she reaches the consensus that the professor’s word is above that of the students. She still asserted that she enjoyed the workshop because she wanted reactions and comments from the students, who are more of an audience. She also claimed that “students expect better writing” because they are not as accustomed to and accepting of writing in an unpolished state. However, she planned to focus on the professor’s word, and in doing so, she gives him an authority not over just her grade (she wasn’t worried about the grade) but over her writing. 

It seems that Elise’s experience benefited from a collaboration between student and professor commentary—just as the workshop intended. However, that doesn’t mean things went smoothly. There was still a misconnect between Elise and the assignment, and the workshop still, in her eyes, went awry when the class became directive in their critique of the story’s content. Perhaps it is because of her lack of control over these things that she expressed a discontent with the experience and a lack of deep passion for the workshop and assignment. Come the end of the interview, Elise told me she’d gone into the class expecting and wanting to find an atmosphere charged with “webster’s dictionary creativity” (Elise 2018). However, she did not feel that creativity and passion for the assignment. One could venture to say that this lead to her frustration towards the end of her workshop; if she felt she lacked the creative freedom to greatly alter the plot of the original myth in her short story, sitting through critique of said plot could not be beneficial to her as a creative story writer. Especially considering Elise is typically a journaler or an academic writer who went into the class for credit and exploration more so than an innate passion, the things controlled by the workshop—such as the assignment—are more crucial to determining her investment. While she enjoyed the course, she did not feel as if her writing as significantly impacted by it.

TRINITY

During the second interview I conducted, I met with Trinity, a Creative Writing and Technical Communications double major. She had the same professor as Elise and also had to retell a myth; the only differences in the course were the semester in which she took it and the students in the workshop. Because her class had already passed, I was unable to sit in on her workshop. 

Trinity told me she identifies as a writer, and she described her writing preferences as somewhat ambiguous. She told me that she writes the most fiction, but that more than anything, she just loves to write and wants to make a living out of it after graduation. Unlike Elise, she had taken Intermediate Creative Writing: Poetry prior to Fiction, and at the time of the interview, she was enrolled in Intermediate Creative Writing: Nonfiction. While Trinity initially came off as a bit reserved, she opened up to me easily and warmly during our interview (Trinity 2018). 

Trinity expressed a clear division between her emotional investment in the fiction writing assignment versus other types of creative writing. All of her writings are “like her children,” but she said she has felt “overwhelming emotion” when journaling, writing poetry, or writing creative nonfiction; she said that the same emotions did not flow through her retelling of the myth, The Girl with One Hand (Trinity 2018). The myth originates from Swahili and explores the relationship between a brother and sister who lose their parents; the brother asks them for their property, and the sister asks for their blessing. Throughout the rest of the story, the brother tries to destroy his sister’s livelihood, but the blessing manifests as luck that keeps her alive and fairly happy. Trinity said that she made the myth her own by adding characters and scenes as well as changing the ending in which the girl, after her brother convinces her husband she is a witch, is accepted back into her husband’s arms. 

However, Trinity still described the assignment itself as “far removed from anything I would want to write about” (Trinity 2018). Right from the start, I witnessed her discontent with the class overall as, like Elise, this was the only piece of fiction she would write for the entire semester; she wanted the chance to try her hand at an original story and receive feedback on this. The only other grades in the course consisted of participation and revision of the myth retelling after workshop. She admitted that she couldn’t really invest in the story when she felt like she lacked the complete independence of creativity (Trinity 2018).

All the same, when I asked Trinity about the workshop experience itself, she said it was one of her favorites. She felt that most people in her class were “generally understanding that the story was a rough draft” (Trinity 2018). In saying this, she implied that the attitude of the other students in the workshop can make or break the experience. Following this, she mentioned a student whose commentary was bordering on aggressive; she believed the professor had to speak with him about his behavior because the student “never said anything nice about a story before tearing it apart” (Trinity 2018). While I only received Trinity’s description of the tone of the workshop and what she perceived as inappropriate behavior, her words still implied that providing praise in a workshop is a necessary part of proper workshop etiquette. According to Trinity, praise or lack thereof has the power to set a tone. 

Still, Trinity was overall content with the workshop. She entered expecting and wanting commentary to focus more on plot, character, and story structure rather than grammatical discrepancies, and she said this expectation was upheld. More than anything, she wanted to know if her writing “moved” the reader in an emotional way (Trinity 2018). Here, she emphasizes an emotional connection to her writing as a priority; however, if writing conveys identity, and the writer is not emotionally invested, does this writing in fact convey identity? If the writer is not invested in the piece, will the reader be either? If writers like Trinity, to whom the readers’ emotional investment is a priority, cannot or do not emotionally invest in the assignment, leading the readers to also remain distant, the workshop does not benefit the writers on this level. While the issue of the workshop can oftentimes be the investment and motivations of fellow students as individuals inside and outside of the classroom, a presiding issue can be rooted in the space the students are given in the workshop to invest their identities. 

Trinity enjoyed the workshops; she was not invested because of the assignment. If she wanted the workshop to explore emotional investment in writing, then she would ideally be invested in the writing herself. The workshop, while overall pleasant, did not fully address this. When I asked her if she wanted to feel like the workshop had more of a “magical of whimsical” atmosphere imagined of typical creative writing courses, and if this description could be true, she said “I wished it could’ve been that sort of transformational experience. I wish we could’ve all become best friends, cue the montage, et cetera. But it wasn’t, and I didn’t expect it to be. It was still just a normal class” (Trinity 2018). Here, she wanted the class to be inspirational in these ways; she said it was not, and one must question if it should be. Regardless of the answer, Trinity wanted to experience creative inspiration, but she did not feel as that she did.

TRENT

My third interview and only male student, Nathan, casts a calm yet thoughtful air over the room. He was a Creative Writing major with an affinity for philosophy, and this reflects in his tendency to entertain multiple sides of an argument and pause before answering a question. He took Intermediate Creative Fiction Writing in Spring 2018—the same semester as Trinity—and had a different professor and therefore a different class. Before that, he’d taken poetry writing, and at the time of the interview, he was enrolled in creative nonfiction writing. He told me that he started writing fiction when he was younger and has written the most in that genre; however, at the time of the interview, he expressed the most interest in and dedication to his poetry. When I asked him if he identified as a writer, he said, casually, that he “hated to get too postmodernist,” but he was hesitant to identify himself in any one way (Nathan 2018). As he pondered the question as if it were presented by one of his philosophy professors rather than myself, a peer, he concluded that “if my identity is that I try to understand things, then writing aligns with that. I don’t know if I identify as a writer...I identify so much with my actions. But writing is a thing that would come up in a conversation of what I do” (Nathan 2018). With my research considering the nature of identifying and investing in writing, Nathan’s immediate question of the definition of identity itself makes him an interesting voice in the discussion of writing investment and the writer’s identity. He is conscious of the separation between his work and his identity, but he is also aware of the separation between his identity, in a way, the act of writing. Like Elise, Nathan said he “likes to understand things...and often thinks of things in the context of writing” and in turn believes that “writing is a space in which I can view my emotions in a different way. I can investigate them” (Nathan 2018). When he uses writing to change a viewpoint and examine himself, Nathan continues to analyze the theme of distance; writing is the tool, and his identity is assessed through it. However, he still admits that—especially when he has not written for a long time—that his writing feels emotional and he has to “just dump it all out” (Nathan 2018). Like Elise, Nathan invested in his work both mentally and emotionally, and he still made the conscious effort to distance himself from his work both for self-examination and for workshop. 

As the only one of my three interviewees who had a different Fiction Writing professor than the others, Nathan also had different assignments. The main grades in his class were the writing of a scene and, later in the semester, a short story. There were no other stipulations regarding the content of the stories; they didn’t even have to be related to one another. Perhaps it is because of this advanced freedom that Nathan had less complaints about the course overall. Nathan was brief in his description of his first assignment, the short scene, as a depiction of a “digital funeral” (Nathan 2018). While he had the freedom to imagine whatever story or scene he desire, he still felt that “with fiction, you have character, so you’re already distancing yourself” (Nathan 2018). He said that poetry (in which he typically uses an expressionist lense) and creative nonfiction are more personal types of writing because it is directly about the writer. In fiction, Nathan believes that the character as an imagined person creates a shield between the writer and the emotions of the piece. Therefore, while Trinity and Elise’s complaints about the assignment in their classes directly related to their lack of investment in the pieces they wrote, Nathan asserts that the distance he felt to the writing for the class was rather about the genre itself; both he and Trinity expressed that they invested more emotionally in their poetry and creative nonfiction classes. 

When Nathan’s workshop came up in conversation, he claimed to be fairly satisfied with the experience. He wanted discrepancies of character and plot to be addressed before issues such as grammar and sentence structure, and he said that they were. All the same, he was open to sentence level critique because language provides the “building blocks” for the story (Nathan 2018). Nathan also noted that while most people were kind and understanding, some were overly critical—but he “didn’t mind it” (Nathan 2018). In this way, Nathan reasserted that, like Elise, he consciously emotionally distanced himself from his writing in workshops. He ultimately asserted that he “hopes people criticize what needs to be criticized,” but he wanted more suggestions than direct changes to his work; to Nathan, ideas for ways to fix the problems in a story are more helpful than directions on how to do so (Nathan 2018). This is how a workshop, where numerous voices comment on a writer’s work, is helpful to keeping the critique too focused. 

Nathan also had a similar attitude to the other interviewees when it came to professor feedback; he said that he “didn’t always feel like the professor’s suggestions were suggestions” but rather were more mandatory than others (Nathan 2018). He explained that when he did revisions of work for the class, he revised closer to the professor’s vision and fit student critique and commentary in where he could. Still, the revisions requirements for the class were only that the writer should, in Nathan’s words, “change something drastically” (Nathan 2018). He stated that he viewed professor feedback as of more value, but almost as a devil’s advocate, he ventured to say that the wide feedback of his peers was also crucial. This, perhaps, lead Nathan to believe that “the mood and excitement is determined by the people in the class” and in saying so assert that as the most important factor in workshop enthusiasm (Nathan 2018). 

Admittedly, Nathan never expected the class to be a “magical” experience (Nathan 2018). When I asked if the class inspired his passion or creativity in writing, he said it did so only because it required him to, for the time being, write more and to spend more time thinking about writing. The comments he received in workshop, he said, held no long-lasting impact on his writing. Considering Nathan was the only one of my three interviewees who expressed any feeling of positive change in his writing, and it was because of the increased amount of writing rather than workshop feedback (which Elise and Trinity both desired), I can conclude that writers perceive growth through their own writing. Like Pressfield, Nathan felt that his writing benefited most from the simple act of writing. The workshop gave him pointers on revision, but the increased writing experience increased his interest in writing.

Nathan claimed that student investment was out of the professors’ control; however according to Elise and Trinity, the professor’s assignment and lack of feedback diminished their motivation in the class and their emotional connection to their work. All agreed that their classmates could alter the tone of the workshop, making it enthusiastic, critical, or otherwise regardless of the professor’s attitude. All agreed that their writing may have been slight affected, but that it was not deeply changed by the workshop experience. This brings one back to the question—should creative writing workshops at a university level generate creativity within their students? They clearly did not feel that the courses fulfill this. Should the creative workshops assume that those enrolled already have a passion for their craft, and that the workshop’s job is only to fine-tune this skill for an audience? None of the students I interviewed doubted that they learned something from the experience. None of them regretted it, and they each enjoyed aspects of the class. But did they get from the class what they wanted? Is the purpose of a class to serve the students’ wants or to instruct them on what they may not know they need? All of these are still questions that can be addressed with further research, in further classes, and in further schools. Whether the job of the writing workshop should be to inspire interest and creativity in writing or should be to polish writing regardless of the care a piece has been given, each student I interviewed admitted to wanting to leave the class with that magic creativity and an inspiration for writing. 

Regardless, the workshop is so widely used in creative writing instruction that it merits further questioning and investigation. The workshop tends to assume that the students involved have a preconceived interest and investment in writing that does not need to be bulistered in coursework. It assumes that students entering the space of critique and commentary have already established themselves as writers of whatever genre or discipline on which the class focuses, and it does not ask, really, if they are passionate about that sort of writing. Perhaps they believe that because students signed up for the class that they are automatically interested and not, like Elise, taking it because it is well-known for being “sort of fun and a pretty easy elective credit” (Elise 2018). Even other self-proclaimed creative writers may take a class about fiction even though they only really like poetry. To throw a student into a workshop where their newborn writing—and perhaps their newborn interest in the act or type of writing itself—is torn apart and put back together again has the potential to deter new creative writers who, per my research, are more common in intermediate workshops than one may think. The workshop does not necessarily have the authority over a student’s passion and creativity in writing, but it may have a responsibility to respect that creativity in whatever state it is in by encouraging students not to write simply for the audience that is the other students in the workshop, but for the joy of writing for oneself. 

Works Cited

Akiskal and Akiskal. In search of Aristotle: temperament, human nature, melancholia, creativity and eminence. Journal of Affective Disorders. Volume 100. 2007 June.

Bazerman, Charles. Writing Expresses and Shares Meaning to be Reconstructed by the Reader. Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing. 2015

Liesch and Finley. The Biblical Concept of Creativity: Scope, Definition, Criteria. Journal of Psychology and Theology. Volume 12. 1984. 

Pressfield, Steven. The War of Art. 2002

Roozen, Kevin. Writing is Linked to Identity. Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing. 2015

Stukenberg, Jill. Deep habits: Workshop as critique in creative writing. Sage Journals, July 14, 2016. 

Three Shades of Blackness: Analysis of Ralph Ellison's "The Invisible Man"

Three Shades of Blackness: The Invisible Man Response 

Through characters in The Invisible Man Ellison explores disillusioned identities of black men in 20th century American culture. Brother Clifton, Ras the Exhorter, and the narrator portray different social and political beliefs in regards to black identity. One may ask which of their paths lead to the arguably best existence no matter their ultimate fate. However, it is easier to assess which character and their beliefs enacted the most societal change. But come the end of the novel, all experience pain.

Much of the novel is characterized with black obedience of namely white authorities. The narrator and those by whom he is surrounded comply to rules and social constructs, and any disobedience is quickly smothered. The murder of Brother Clifton, a black man seemingly devoted to the Brotherhood, provides a turning point. The brooding narrator stumbles upon Clifton in the streets where he shouts sales pitches for paper Sambo dolls. The crude paper puppets of black boys, manipulated by thin strings in Clifton’s hands, dance for the crowd; Clifton markets them as toys to “keep you entertained” (Ellison 431). Since Clifton’s audience consists of white people who can afford and have time for entertainment, the caricatures portray black people as white people want them to exist in America—flimsy, funny, and easily manipulated. Further, the Sambo doll allegedly “lives upon the sunshine of your [owner’s] lordly smile” (432). The doll serves to make white people happy like they wish slaves and black Americans did. Even use of the word “sunshine” creates the image of the sun, the center of the solar system, in place of a white owner around whom black servants revolve. And not only are the Sambos complacent; they are “all for twenty-five cents, the quarter part of a dollar” (432). This fact seemingly recalls the Constitutional Convention. The white Founding Fathers decided black slaves were to each be three-fifths of a person when counted in population for political representation and taxation among the states. Selling Sambo slave dolls for part of a whole dollar insinuates that, even generations after the abolition of slavery, black Americans were seen as less than white. 

Clifton embodies his product by selling the black Sambo dolls. The narrator describes Clifton’s actions like those of the awkward doll as he is “riding back and forth in his knees...without shifting his feet, his right shoulder raised at an angle and his arm pointing stiffly” (433). However, Clifton is not lost; he meets the narrator’s gaze with a “contemptuous smile” (433). The narrator interprets this as contempt towards himself and perhaps disrespect towards the Brotherhood. All the same, one could interpret this as contempt for the Sambo dolls and white buyers, for when the narrator spits on the doll, Clifton never shows anger towards him, a former Brother. The only time Clifton is enraged is when the white police harass him over his sales. When caught with the Sambo dolls, Clifton defends himself and “kicked the box [of dolls] thudding aside” (436). If he intended to protect his business, he would make an effort to protect his product. His swiftness in abandoning the dolls speaks to the lack of meaning he attributes to them. This disdain for the Sambos and the contemptuous look he shares with the narrator lead one to question if Clifton selling the dolls could be read as a satiric act of rebellion in itself. The narrator says that through this existence, Clifton “fell out of history” (434). This may be true as it’s unlikely Clifton intended to make radical change by selling Sambo dolls. However, a black man selling the white’s ideal black caricature plays into the narrator's grandfather’s theory to “agree ‘em to death” (16) while still getting something—a profit—for oneself. Clifton follows the grandfather’s advice, for he finds a niche in the systematic oppression and survives while silently rebelling. This life suffices until Clifton is killed by the police; here, Ellison finds irony in the fact that black Americans can be exactly what white Americans want and still be punished. 

Clifton’s life of compliance with the potential for subtle rebellion was not Ellison’s only embedded philosophy for black existence in America. Living a life drastically different from Clifton is Ras the Exhorter, a Harlemlite who argues for black rights without the influence of white organizations. Yelling on the streets and swinging from ladders, Ras proves his bold philosophy of living and embraces his nature. When Ras encounters the narrator and Clifton on their brotherhood mission to Harlem, Ras criticizes them for their allegiance with white men of the Brotherhood because “brothers the same color. We sons of Mother Africa” (370). In this innate connection between black people and African origins, Ras champions for those who believe in separating from their white enslavers and fully embracing black culture. While the narrator and Clifton are wary of Ras, the Exhorter argues his credibility with the same black nationalist ideology. He says he speaks poor English because “it ain’t my mama tongue, I’m African” (372), and he agrees with the narrator and Clifton that “organization is good” (373) even if he asserts that instead of with the Brotherhood, “we organize black” (373). Although his speech jumbles and his words are brash, he is sane. He even shows he genuinely cares and wants the narrator and Clifton to leave the white Brotherhood when he tells them “‘you black and beautiful...you wasn’t them t’ings you be dead, mahn. Dead! I’d have killed you’” (373). Although this sounds like a death threat, Ras says the narrator and Clifton are protected by their blackness rather than put at a disadvantage by it. In Ras’s eyes, their black identity is potential for kingship and regalty. Finally, the Exhorter promises, “Ras would not sahcrifice his black brother to the white enslaver. Instead, he cry” (374). After his bawdy show, this moment in which Ras looks upon the narrator and Clifton as lost souls he wishes to guide melts the harsh exterior of the man whose name invokes kingship. To softer men, Ras appears a radical force with which to be reckoned—and he is. But he also shows himself as intelligent and as human. 

This can only carry him so far. Throughout the story, Ras, his ideas, and his Harlem territory are invaded by white men and their black helpers. He becomes increasingly agitated. After Clifton’s death and the Brotherhood’s lack of action, Ras snaps. He channels the angry energy of the crowd into a force for change, shedding the identity of the Exhorter and becoming Ras the Destroyer. True to the glory of black culture, Ras leads a crowd through the streets of Harlem from his regal height on horseback. The narrator witnesses Ras “dressed in the costume of an Abyssinian chieftain” (556), the outfit complete with a shield, a spear, and a fur cape. He expresses his African expression outwardly, and in doing so, he symbolizes a return to African roots right in the middle of Manhattan. His presence creates a fantastical and other wordly air like “a figure more out of a dream than out of Harlem, than out of even this Harlem night, yet real, alive, alarming” (556). This furthers themes of disillusionment and absurdity throughout the novel; when Harlem becomes a jungle, Ras sets himself free.

At this point in the novel, with his territory upheaved, Ras turns to violence, fighting police just as Clifton did before his death. Unlike Clifton, Ras fights with more than fists and “let fly with that spear” (564) which allows him to escape alive and still on horseback. However, like Clifton selling the Sambo dolls, Ras turns on the narrator—but perhaps not black men. When Ras spots the narrator, he orders the crowd to “hang him up to teach the black people a lesson, and theer be no more traitors...Hang him up theer with them blahsted dummies” (557). He calls for the narrator’s hanging not necessarily because he wishes him dead. Perhaps he even feels a semblance of the sorrow he expressed earlier in the novel at the idea of losing a black life. But he calls for death to make an example of the narrator who he sees as a traitor to black people. He calls for death because he does not want to lose other black allies to the narrator’s ill-chosen path. It it not personal; the narrator will hang like all the other historical victims of white abuse, and his body will be like the hanged mannequins, empty and unreal. Ras may feel some sadness. But if he wishes, he can presumably see the narrator in the hanging dolls, like the Sambo dolls, standing for nothing but lost causes. Whether or not Ras ends the novel with an ounce of happiness, one cannot tell. The last chronological mention of the Destroyer shows hims struggling to remove the spear the narrator launched into his jaw, never giving up his fight, as his rallied crowd run into the night to fulfill his call for the narrator’s blood. If he is in pain and misery, he at least made something of it.

This leaves the unnamed narrator, the man with whom the reader is supposed to sympathize. While other black figures such as Clifton and Ras make stands based on their original thoughts, the narrator shuffles through white sponsored education, works white jobs, and speaks white words for a white Brotherhood. He even only joins the Brotherhood because of the pay and the debt he owes Mary—not because he wanted to make change (297). But when Clifton, the narrator’s closest friend, is unjustly killed by the police, he acknowledges that “I’d been asleep, dreaming” (444). He organizes a grand funeral for Clifton where his speech moves the crowd. However, one may argue that the crowd could have been rallied by anything. The narrator describes an old man’s song enchanting the procession. As they walk, people drape signs that read “Brother Tod Clifton / Our Hope Shot Dead” (450). The anger began before the narrator opened his mouth, and it began with the death of Clifton; in this way, one could argue that Clifton, sparking the anger, was a bringer of greater change in death than the narrator could be in life. Without the death of a fairly innocent and agreeable man, no speeches, songs, or riots would be made. Here, the narrator’s speech is arguably a turning point for the narrator’s perception of the world, but not for his impact upon it. The speech opens him to a wider perception of what is right and true, but he only plays a role in helping others see it. 

All the same, as seen earlier in his weak reasoning for joining an organization for change, the narrator focuses on himself rather than tensions boiling among the people of Harlem. He is preoccupied with Clifton’s death, exploring the unknown and malleable identity of Rineheart, and experiencing the failure of yessing the Brotherhood. Ultimately, he gets caught up in his own identity and explorations, and he lets the emotionally charged Harlem linger. This leaves Ras to organize the anger into a riot. When the narrator finally reaches the scene, his precious words are useless; Ras accuses the narrator’s “lying tongue” (557), and the narrator knows he “had no words, no eloquence” (558). The Rineheart glasses break, and he must face the murky green identity that remains. In this moment, the narrator realizes he has been played by white men; he tells the crowd not to “kill me for those who are downtown laughing at the trick they played” (558). He argues that even if black men are to fight, they should not fight at the hands of white men like he did at the early battle royale. But he reaches this point too late. Much earlier, Ras insinuated that the bickering narrator and Clifton “look at you two and look at me—is that sanity? Standing here in three shades of blackness! Three black men fighting in the streets because of the white enslaver? Is that sanity?” (372) The narrator ultimately comes around to Ras’s expressed logic in the face of potential death. They may be different shades or ideaologies of black, but they are still black, and they should not allow white men to tear them apart. However, the narrator failed to realize this early on, failed to take a stance, and that squeezed him between beliefs of those like Clifton, who somehow comply with societal norms, and those like Ras, who challenge them. The narrator does neither. He is invisible to both sides, but he attempts for so long to appease both. He faces Ras and the people of Harlem, “those whom I had failed” (559), and his undecided nature runs him altogether out of society. He ends his story alone in a hole. Only there, in the darkness and in need of light, does he “burn every paper in the brief case” (568) gifted to him so long ago. His high school diploma. The false recommendation letters from his university. His Brotherhood name. The Sambo doll. All that and more burn away with the false identities he allowed others to construct around him. 

In the darkness, the narrator sheds old identities and asserts that “even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play” (581). He remains invisible, and he remains without a self-asserted identity, but he shakes off the roles assigned to him—that is a step forward. But whether this or his eventually true identity bring him any happiness, one cannot yet say. He carries hope, perhaps, which is more than Clifton and his compliance and is less destructive than the anger of Ras the Destroyer. But perhaps if Clifton existed in a world without anger of oppressed, he would have existed peacefully without falling victim to a race crime. Perhaps if people took Ras seriously, if he managed to channel his anger in a more presentable and less wild manner, he would have made a difference outside of race riots—that is, if taming Ras would still make him Ras. And perhaps if the narrator fed his anger a bit, if he found happiness or something to believe, he could birth a brighter world. Perhaps, with his pondering and realizations beneath the earth, he will, as he says, emerge with a new purpose. But ultimately, none of these three men were allowed to exist in American society as black men. They were not allowed any identity. Clifton was neither an advocate nor a salesman; Ras was neither an Exhorter nor a Destroyer; the narrator was neither an intellect nor an earthshaker. They could be nothing but black -- and perhaps this is what makes them all invisible.  

Beneath the Eye: Explication of Eduardo Corral's "Monologue of a Vulture's Shadow"

Beneath the Eye

Eduardo Corral creates his poetry from a place in between. His veins divided Mexican and American, his tongue forked Spanish and English, his writing seems to forge a path of discovery towards a place in which he belongs, whole and united. This is depicted in “Monologue of a Vulture’s Shadow” as Corral laments for a master — for a guide — who gave him reason to exist in this in between state he prefers. In this poem, Corral contrasts ethereal and secular language, imagines symbolism invoking the realm of the dead, and constructs a reflective plotline in order to analyze the identity for which he longs and the one that holds him to the ground. 

The speaker introduces himself as a voice of desire for something lost — his master, who is described as knowing “neither fear nor patience” (Corral 2). This contrast between the speaker, someone who wants to give himself back to the master, and the master, portrayed as unfeeling of two basic human emotions, invokes a sense of unbalance in the relationship, emphasizing the master and servant dynamic. The dehumanization of the master is furthered when he “spiraled above a woman” (3-4) which, in line with the title of the poem, creates the image of the vulture. In contrast, the woman is placed in a desert, a harsh land lacking life, whereas the master (and presumably the speaker) circled in the sky. In a Beckett-like fashion, the woman is “trudging” (5) while the master “spiraled” (Corral 3), insinuating that life on earth constitutes struggle in contrast to a cyclical, more eternal existence in a higher realm. Through the contrast in these verbs, Corral creates two planes of existence, sets the stage of the poem, and establishes roles of the characters. 

The first moment of action in the story lies with the woman in the desert. Upon seeing the master and his shadow up above, the woman looks skyward and “cursed us: / Black Torches of Plague” ( 6-8). In calling the vulture a plague, the woman further links two things that are symbolic of the greater power that is death. The woman, though, does not seem to fear the master nor his servant; again, she takes action upon herself. After her crude name calling, she dares to reach for the servant and “pinned [him] to her shoulders” (9). However, she does not have to reach up for the servant as she may the master; instead, she reached “out” (8) as if the servant were on the same plane as she. This, the darkness later described in reference to the speaker, and the implication of the title leads the reader to conclude that the servant, the speaker, is the vulture’s shadow, speaking his monologue. As a shade, the speaker is unable to truly be with the master among the clouds, and he can only exist so long as the vulture is close enough to the ground to reflect an image of himself. These direct actions taken by the woman serve to establish the pull of the more easily accessible realm of reality over the realm of the vulture, who does not make effort to pull the shadow all the way into the sky.

The weight of earth is furthered when the woman takes the shadow for her own. Still, she does not just capture him; she wears him across his shoulders as if to allude to the albatross of Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and acknowledge the burden she carries in separating master and servant; it is this sort of unholy crime. Upon his capture, the shadow servant “went slack” (10) as if being confined to the solidified earth and the living caused him to lose his semblance of life. In this way, the woman has decided which of the two realms the speaker is to inhabit — not the sky, the spiritual, but the earthly — and he is unable to properly function. It was his master that allowed him to balance in between the two, in the state he seemingly prefers. As a shadow, he traveled with the master vulture and experienced a semblance of flight, even if he could not get as high as the bird; with the woman, on the earth, he is locked up in her armoire, “perfumed” (14), when not in use. In this way, she retains ultimate control over the shadow, and as seen in her other forceful actions, she does so willfully. Unlike the master who, apparent in his lack of direct characterization and failure to make an effort to rescue the shadow, presents an air of indifference to the world, the woman repeatedly makes an effort to reach or control the shadow and that in touch with the ethereal. She jeers, she lashes out, and she takes prize of her prey by hiding him from the light. Again, this furthers the weighty gravity of the secular.

However, just because the secular pulls does not mean it is a better place. When the woman brings the shadow out of hiding, she wears him over her dress “with a cameo of a bird clutching prey” (16-17). In doing so, she uses the shadow as a costume, an attempt to liken herself to the vulture that is the speaker’s true master. However, rather that giving the speaker a connection to the sky, the woman uses him like a cape — like a shield from storm or sun. With the master, the shadow was a result of lack of sunlight; as a covering, he takes the brunt of the heat. To the shadow, this is reminiscent of times in which his master dove down closer to the earth “& I darkened the arroyos / & the jade geometry of fallen saguaros” (19-20). As arroyos are creeks devoid of water save for in time of storm, and the saguaros are toppled in unusual patterns, these two images together create the idea of an entity that has the power to overcome nature. The master, a sort of otherworldly creature at this point in the poem, may possess this ability; however, the speaker denotes the woman who is only mimicking the control over the flowing of a creek and the strength of towering saguaros just as she is only trying to portray that she can control the shadow. If she could control the servant as well as the master, it would simply follow her across the desert rather than have to be locked up or pinned down to remain at her side. This fact leads the reader to infer that secular humanity as represented by the woman does not have the control over the world we may like to imagine.

The shadow, meanwhile, can only reminisce on life with the master. He brings himself back to times when the vulture ventured so far from the desert that he “ceased to blacken the earth” (23). At this point, the master reached such heights that he became distant from earth to the point at which he no longer projected the image of the shadow; he reached a different realm that fails to connect with reality, and his image (and the speaker) dissipates in the light. When this occurs, it is as if the shadow has blanks in his memory. He must question “what became of [him]” (24) when his image was not imprinted upon the desert. This may lead the reader to conclude that without a connection to a higher being such as a spiritual god or realm, one does not live on. However, it is not as if the absence of the vulture master causes the shadow to cease to exist; it must be the absence of any master. When the woman steals the shadow away and hides him from the master, he still describes a conscious existence. The master is out of sight, and yet the shadow speaks his monologue about his world under the hold of the woman. She may not be his desired master, but she is a master in the way she controls him and mimics the duties of the vulture master; this is not enough for the shadow’s happiness, but it’s enough for his existence. In this way, the master and servant relationship is depicted as a necessity. While the speaker takes up the poem with praise for the old master who he believes will set him free, he fails to realize that no matter which realm guides him, he will never truly be liberated. 

Come the end of the poem — and the poetry collection — the speaker still does not come to this realization; the relationship between master and servant remains emphasized. As “the scent of decay always lured [his] master / earthward” (25-26), the shadow is reborn. It is because of a master once again that the shadow claims his existence. The fact that he is allotted existence due to the ethereal master’s desire for the aforementioned decay touches once more on the idea that the earth, the secular, possesses deathly attributes. However, this is the first note in the poem that the ethereal has any interest in a relationship with the secular; earlier in the piece, the woman cursed the vulture and his shadow, but no reaction was gleaned from the vulture master himself. Once his shadow is stolen by the earth, he makes no apparent effort to retain it. His connection to earthly decay depicts a draw between the master and the earth that he soars above, sealing the relationship between the two realms as somewhat partial towards one another — even if only for the sake of consumption and death.

All the same, it is made clear that the shadow still relies on the master more than the master could ever care for him; the shadow depends on the master for even the most basic needs for he claims that “as my master ate, I ate” (27). Consumption, a primal and universal act, unifies master and servant. Granted, the servant must rely on the master for permission to such an essential act, but they are brought together by the fact that they both deem the act necessary. This line, fitting at the end of the poem at the end of the poetry collection, serves to frame the book; the first poem, “Our Completion: Oil on Wood: Tino Rodriguez: 1999” begins the book with the line “Before nourishment there must be obedience” (1). By stating early on that nourishment, required of all living things, only follows when one obeys a higher power, this remains a thread through the collection and to the last line; it establishes that because the servant was allowed to eat, he was under commands he obeyed. This conveys a semblance of power in the sort of relationship that requires leader and follower, a codependent thriving of the two, locked together like the secular and the ethereal plane. Being linked to two sorts of existences, being a master at one hand and perhaps a servant at another, gives logic to an illogical, divided existence. The shadow, lulling in between the earth and the sky, finds reason beneath the eye of a master.