Response to Frost and "The Road Not Taken"

I like your interpretation of Frost's "The Road Not Taken." I think it very much makes sense considering that both roads look the same, as you point out.

I am reminded of the words of theologian Jonathan Edwards, who said:

And therefore I observe, that the Will (without any
metaphysical refining) is, That by which the mind chooses any
thing. The faculty of the will, is that power, or principle of mind,
by which it is capable of choosing: an act of the will is the same as an act of choosing or choice. - On the Freedom of the Will

It seems then that in making this series of uneducated guesses and hopes throughout life, we are exercising our free will, for free will is defined here as making a choice, although we may not know which choices were the best until after the fact. However, I have always wondered whether these choices really are choices at all.

The Naturalism movement in American literature thought that indifferent forces outside ourselves governed our behavior, thus making us products of our surroundings. As Donald Pizer writes in Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction, "The naturalist often describes his characters as though they are conditioned and controlled by environment, heredity, instinct, or chance." Thus, these so-called "choices," it seems to me, are not actually choices, but mere responses to external stimuli; life becomes not a series of guesses and hopes disguised as rational choices, but a wave we ride in which forces beyond ourselves are pushing us along. The real facade is not fooling ourselves into thinking we are making rational choices, but instead fooling ourselves into thinking we have any say in what paths we take.

I have long debated with myself which view of life I prefer to take, and I think I tend to agree with the Naturalists, who tried to study life objectively and wrote characters whose struggles with free will, an illusion they would say, were usually futile against an uncaring world. As Stephen Crane wrote in War is Kind," "A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 'However,' replied the universe, 'That fact has not created in me a sense of obligation'."

Robert Frost and "The Road Not Taken"

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if ever I should come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I----
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I remember discussing this poem in my 11th grade English class. My recollection is that we took the standard interpretation: when faced with a choice in life, take the road less traveled, the more courageous path, and you will be glad you did.

In sniffing around through some recent interpretations of the poem, I discovered that this is perhaps not what the author intended.

Look at the first three stanzas and you see that narrator sees no difference in the two roads. Both roads look the same. They both "equally lay/In leaves no step had trodden black." Therefore, he cannot consciously at that point pick the road less traveled because neither one looks less traveled than the other.

So he picks one at random, and it is only years later that he rationalizes in an act of self-aggrandizement that he consciously selected the road less traveled. It is easy to look back and romanticize our choices when we were probably just guessing at the time.

We fool ourselves into thinking that life is a series of rational decisions between good and bad choices whereas the truth is that most of the time we don't know which path is best and our choices are often just uneducated guesses and hopes.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

This be a young adult novel so you could probably file it under something quick and fun... Mix in some alternate history... some devilish vampires... time portals... dodo birds... and a really funky car and you've got this gumshoe sci-fi thriller... You've got to love the character names and the rocky horror Shakespeare... what a world... The main character, Thursday Next, knocks heads with Braxton Hicks, Jack Schitt, Bowden Cable, and a villan by the name of Hades... and that just scratches the surface... I know it is pulp science fiction, but like pulp (not a big fan of it even in my orange juice), it has some roughage... Check it out... and if you know of any utopian sci-fi let me know...

K-Dog

I've been reading Apathy and Other Small Victories, by Paul Neilan. What draws me to the story is its main character, Shane. I am always attracted to characters who are indifferent, aimless, and stricken with malaise, who populate the fringes of society and purposely act incongruently to any sort of conformity. Such is Shane.

My problem with the novel, however, is that it is too crude. There are too many outragegous, Gonzo-esque happenings. Shane is a suspect in a murder investigation, yet is apathetic; at work he sleeps in the bathroom rather than doing his job; his deaf friend teaches him to sign obscenities; and he steals saltshakers, often waking up covered in salt from the previous night's drunkenness - and this in no way captures just how crazy the story is.

So while I essentially like Shane, his likable qualities are overrun by an unstoppable onrushing of gags and punch lines that get less and less funny the more I read them. Neilan tries too hard with each sentence to be comedic, and for me the story becomes almost as dull as Shane's life is to him.

Reading O'Connor's "The Barber"

I've been reading from Flannery O'Connor's The Complete Stories. I just read one of her short stories called "The Barber." I am not sure what to make of it. Knowing that O'Connor is distinguished by violence in her writing, I expected something grotesque - but I was disappointed.

The plot revolves around a local election in the small country town of Dilton. There are two candidates vying for the Democratic nomination, and Rayber supports Darmon, whereas his barber and the others in the barbershop support Hawkson. Rayber is annoyed they would vote for someone like Hawkson, who is backwards, narrow-minded, and racist (basically a good ole country boy) - even the black George backs him. How could they vote for a tobacco chewing man like that?

Rayber, who is a college instructor and considers himself intellectually superior to the barber, mostly keeps his thoughts about the election to himself, prefering not to argue with "fools." But after their "ignorance" irritates him enough, he writes a speech conveying why Darmon is the better candidate. The barber remains unmoved, simply telling Rayber that all he wanted all along was for him, like everyone else, to think - to think his vote through and have reasons for supporting a candidate.

Rayber seems smarter than the other characters, and Darmon seems to be the best candidate, but Rayber has such a hard time handling the barber's insistence on voting for Hawkson. He is always rattled and perplexed; even when he gives his speech, his words come out "like freight cars, jangling, backing up on each other, grating to a halt, sliding, clinching back, jarring..." He cannot articulate himself smoothly or with precision, even going through several drafts before finishing his speech. If he is right, then why is he always so vexed?

Maybe O'Connor shows the frustration of being a minority, for Rayber is a liberal in a rural, conservative town. Or, she tells us that what matters is that we think for ourselves, not that we need to persuade everyone to our own perspective. I prefer to see it differently though. When Rayber reads his speech to Jacobs, a colleague at the college, Rayber asks him if he's ever argued with a barber. Jacobs says, "I never argue." He isn't sure Rayber will be successful, and even recommends, "Don't spoil your complexion arguing with barbers." O'Connor seems to say there's a pointlessness or ineffectiveness to arguing, and, indeed, Rayber's efforts are ultimately futile. I read that the Catholic O'Connor believed that secularlism fails to change the world, and I think Rayber is one of her examples.

Book Review

Shirley Jackson
The Haunting of Hill House
Penguin Classics

I'm not sure what to make of this novel. First of all, this is my first reading of Shirley Jackson other than the short story "The Lottery" so I'm not sure how to take her writing. All I can do is react honestly like I don't know her because I don't! The other thing is that I have no experience reading ghost stories, and that's what this story is supposed to be, other than Henry James and The Turn of the Screw. What am I to make of ghost stories in general? What to make of haunted houses?!

Psychic phenomena occur. What is the explanation? Is the house symbolic? All of the characters are strange and funny. Yes, funny. The two girls alternate between scared and being happy and laughing all the time. It's hard to take anyone seriously in this novel.

According to critic Laura Miller (in my printing), the prevailing mood is psychic and physical claustrophobia. In the final analysis, my prevailing mood, probably very non-standard, is one of comedy.

Dr. Montague is an anthropologist who studies supernatural manifiestions. Such an anthropologist would be laughed out of academia today. When Eleanor is first introduced, here is the second sentence:

"The only person in the world she genuinely hated, now that her mother was dead, was her sister. She disliked her brother-in-law and her five-year old neice, and she had no friends."

This strikes me as funny. In first describing a character, it's just funny to say in the second sentence who she hates.

At one point in the book, Dr. Montague remarks that he puts himself to sleep by reading Richardson's Pamela and that he means to try this on children. I agree: reading Richardson would put anyone to sleep.

The character Luke says that the weird goings on in the house allow him the luxury of drinking in the middle of the night.

The book is full of funny lines like this.

Although the ending for Eleanor is not funny, I see the novel as a whole as a comedy. I laughed throughout more than anything.

What I've Been Reading Recently

My friend Mike Denison has talked to me repeatedly about Larry McMurtry. He and his family went to Texas recently on vacation and they visited McMurtry's bookstores in Archer City. This is something I would like to do. It would greatly enhance my personal library to have a book purchased from Larry McMurtry.

So I've started reading Larry McMurtry in earnest (Oscar Wilde said it was important to be earnest). The most memorable sequence so far is his foursome from The Last Picture Show to the recently released When the Light Goes. If you've read the first three, which include Texasville and Duane's Depressed, and you like the character Duane Moore, and you want an update on the rest of the characters, you'll like When the Light Goes. I can relate to Duane because he is in my age category. In the end, this book is about moving on with your life through the ups and downs.

Dr. Paul Helminger, Department of Physics, Univ. of South Alabama, and I recently discussed David McCullough's 1776. Dr. Helminger likes the book. Even though I love David McCullough, I was underwhelmed by this book. Military history is not my thing.

Dr. Justin Sanders, also Department of Physics, Univ. of South Alabama, has been reading the Taylor Branch 3-volume history of the civil rights movement. He is into volume 2. I read volume 1 last year and was enthralled. Dr. Sanders has inspired me to get back to the series. Volume 3 has just come out in paperback.

This is the definite history of the modern civil rights movement. This is a great reading subject. All of us need to understand what went on in the 50's and 60's.

Julia Polk, Department of Mathematics, Okaloosa Walton Community College, recommended a book by suspense/mystery writer Lisa Gardner called Hide. I must admit that I do not as a rule like mysteries. But, to coin a phrase, rules are meant to be broken, and I loved this one! The story is carefully crafted and kept me guessing (not hard to do) till the end. It's a page-turner almost as if the pages turn themselves.

Jamie Rogers, who works at the Alabama Booksmith, the elite bookstore in the Birmingham area for discriminating readers, recommended Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. Not knowing anything about Shirley Jackson except her chilling short story "The Lottery," I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It's eerie, but it's also FUNNY. I was shocked and yet delighted at how much humor there is in the book. I'll say more about this book later.

Freddy Hudson II has taught To Kill a Mockingbird to his 9th graders at South Paulding High in Georgia. He and I discussed the novel recently. I was reminded of details that I had forgotten. The time will come come when I will visit with Harper Lee again.

As I write these words, I'm reading a biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson. More about that later.