Gunnar’s Flow Through Life (and Death)

Throughout The White Boy Shuffle, similarly to Invisible Man and Native Son, Gunnar does not have much (if any) control over any aspect of his life.  One hilarious line that demonstrates this is when Psycho Loco is marrying him off and says, “You don’t even have an alarm clock, so don’t give me no bullshit that I’ve altered your destiny” (165).    Gunnar does not even set an alarm in the morning to fit to any “schedule”.  All of his talents are taken advantage of by society’s “entertainment” and forces him through more plot turns out of his control.  The absurdity of the society his lives in creates this fluid plot completely out of Gunnar’s power.  

Several people commented in class how frustrated they were that Gunnar would want to take his life from this world when he “has so much going for him”.  One might say, “Gunnar is ‘successful’ in basically every aspect of his life (athlete, writer, husband, father) so why does feel like he must kill himself??”  I believe this could be the “natural” reaction Beatty wants the reader to initially question, but then Beatty wants us to actually think about how Gunnar killing himself is the ONLY option he has.   Just like many of the other “crazy” plot twists, the insanity of how society treats him is what determines his suicide.

On the last few pages of the novel, Gunnar directly address this when responding to Psycho Loco: “I’m the horse pulling the stagecoach, the donkey in the levee who’s stumbled in the mud and come up lame.  You may love me, but I’m tired of thrashing around in the muck and not getting anywhere, so put a n----- out his misery.”    We discussed this at length in class, but I think this is critical in understanding how he feels he has no option to “fight” or try to change society:  he has done everything he can, but still is thrashing in the mud of American racism that is not going away anytime soon.

Absurdity of Plot in Native Son, Invisible Man, and Their Eyes Were Watching God

            In both Invisible Man and Native Son, the entire plot relies on craziness to keep the narrator and Bigger running.  What exactly happened in the paint factory that caused a  “stinking[,] goo[y]” explosion (230)?   Why does a factory have a hospital?  How does the narrator “just happen” to run into Clifton in Midtown Manhattan?  How did Bigger accidentally strangle Mary?  How does literally everyone involved in Bigger’s life all come into his cell at the same time? The number of lunacies thrown within each novel is endless.  The purpose of these insanities is to not only functions for the story’s plot, but also to juxtapose the even more crazy way the narrator and Bigger are treated by society.  The Battle Royal scene is rooted in historical fact, yet it appears not any less crazy than the rest of the insanities thrown in throughout the novel. The juxtaposition of these scenes shows how the history of American race relations is possibly more crazy than the complete insanity of the other fictional scenes, like the Golden Day.

            In Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God we see a very different picture of her main character’s agency.  Janie, although always still constrained in many ways by society, is able to have some amount of choice in her life that is not evident in NS or IM.  She chooses to leave Logan and  the later to run off with Teacake.  In the case of Logan, she does not have many alternatives, but with Teacake she is the one that runs off with him.  Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is the only book we have read where the protagonist seems to have emotional attachment to other people.  In both NS and IM Bigger and the narrator both seem very alone in the world from the beginning to the end of the novel.  They each have acquaintances and family, but Wright and Ellison focus on the society’s impact on their lives as a more “historical” picture rather than on a personal level.  I think that Wright’s criticism of Hurston does a good job pointing out some of the problems in Hurston’s portrayal of the Muck and Eatonville’s citizens, but looks over the fluidity and joy of Janie’s character despite repression.