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JOHN BARTH'S INITIAL TRILOGY:
A STUDY OF THE THEMES OF VALUE

AND IDENTITY IN THE FLOATING OPERA.

THE END OF THE ROAD,
AND THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Déssertafion far the Degree of Ph. D.
MEET-WIN STATE UNiVERS-ITY
FHELI‘P ALLAN BILLINGS
1974

 

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ABSTRACT
JOHN BARTH'S INITIAL TRILOGY: A STUDY OF THE
THEMES 0F VALUE AND IDENTITY IN THE

FLOATING OPERA, THE END OF THE—
Wv, D TH VSDT—r—MEED F CTOR

By
Philip Allan Billings

John Barth's first three novels, The Floating Opera, The End
of the Road, and The Sat-Need Factor, form a thematic trilogy. To-
gether they make a coherent and complete statement on the possibility
of modern man's achieving a sense of value and identity in the nihil-
istic universe. The Floating Opera traces man's growing realization
in the twentieth century that he is a full-fledged part of the irra-
tional, relativistic universe and that, as such, he cannot be his own
source of rational , absolute values. .He cannot be his own God. When
the novel '5 central character, Todd Andrews, makes this discovery, he
ultimately decides to carry his thinking the next and last logical
step, to try to find out whether relative values, since there are no
absolutes, can. in fact, be lived by.

The End of the Road is the fictional exploration of this

"brave ethical subjectivism."1

It imagines. two forms of that sub-
jectivism: one, in the character of Jacob Horner, based on the theory

that personal existence precedes personal essence; the other, in the

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character of Joseph Morgan, based on the theory that personal essence
precedes personal existence. As its title suggests, the novel demon-
strates that both theories are ultimately destructive as well as

futile and, so, lead modern man to the cul-de-sac of rationalist

 

ethics.

The first two parts of The Sot-Weed Factor recapitulate the

 

background, formulation, and dead-end course of the essentialist and
existentialist forms of ethical subjectivism. Moreover, they broaden
this statement on value and identity by asserting that essentialism

is the way of innocence and existentialism the way of experience. In

its third part, The Sat-Weed Factor goes on to offer an alternative
"2

 

to "non-mystical value-thinking. Based on an intuitive recognition
of the limits of reason, the value of life, and the brotherhood of
man, this alternative does not provide the "Answer"; but it does hold
out the only possibility of man's learning to live productively and
responsibly, if not happily ever after, amidst many "answers."
Through his central character, Ebenezer Cooke, and through his most
prominent secondary character, Henry Burlingame III, Barth envisions
modern man intuitively transcending his ethical dilemma and achieving
a paradoxical synthesis of recognition of the loss of absolutes and
insistence on their necessity, a combination of experience and inno-
cence.

The particular combination upon which Barth focuses, the com-
bination embodied in his central character, is one in which innocence
predominates and a man chooses to act a§_jj;absolute identity and

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Philip Allan Billings

value existed; and the main symbol for this state of "Higher Inno-
cence" is a husband and a wife who, despite numerous reasons to the
contrary, remain true to one another and at last become one in the
act of love-making. This symbol is doubly appropriate, since, by
transcending the rationalism which has made his ethical problems
seem insoluble, modern man is able finally to achieve the irrational

tmt nonetheless real feeling of love for another human being.

1These are Barth's own words, taken from an article by

Gregory F. Bluestone--"John Wain and John Barth: The Agony and the
Accurate," The Massachusetts Review, 1 (Fall 1959-Summer 1960), 586.

21 id.

JOHN BARTH'S INITIAL TRILOGY: A STUDY OF THE
THEMES OF VALUE AND IDENTITY IN Iߤ_
FLOATING OPERA, THE END OF THE
ROAD, AND IHE SOT-WEED FACTOR

By

Philip Allan Billings

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of English

l974

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

 

Chapter Page
I. Introduction ..................... l

II. The Floating Opera_ .................. 10
III. The End of the Road .................. 6l
IV. The Sat-Heed Factor .................. 125

V. Conclusion ...................... 240
Bibliography .......................... 252

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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION

The relatively small number of critics who have written on John
Barth offer conflicting testimony concerning a number of important ele-
ments of his work, but they all agree that he is a writer who must be
taken into account by any serious reader of contemporary fiction. His

corpus consists of four novels: The Floatingerera (l956), The End of

 

[the Road (l958), The Sot-Need Factor (1960), and Giles Goat-Boy

 

(l966); a collection of short stories: Lost in the Funhouse (l968);
'and a collection of three novellaszg Chimera (1972).1 Each new book of
his catches_his readers by surprisei each is something the likes of
which they have never quite seen. His stories are full of raving mad-
ness and calm sanity (and vice versa), the most rigorous intellect and
Ithe grosseSt slap-stick, the funniest comedy and the saddest tragedy, '
a total immersion in the contemporary human scene and a positive aver-
sion to it. They take wild artistic risks of imagination, and at the
same time they seem to be conforming to a coherent, rational pattern.

One of his most quoted statements from outside the fiction itself,

 

1Allare published in the hardbound editions by Doubleday and
Company, Inc. The first three and the fifth are published in soft-
bound form by Bantam Books, Inc.; the fourth and sixth (Giles Goat-Boy
and Chimera) are published in paperback by Fawcett Crest—Books.

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“Scheherazade is my advant gardiste,"2

marks him as simultaneously
innovator and reactionary. One practical upshot of such diversity is
that the same two novels can seem to one reader "SOphomoric,"
"puerile," and "about as bad as novels can be,"3 while they seem to
another to prove that their creator is "the best writer of fiction we
have at present, and one of the best we have ever had."4 And then the
ambivalence is compounded when one notes that two fictitious editors
of one of those novels express almost the identical divergent Opinions.
The bare outline of Barth's biography does not shed much light
on his fiction, except perhaps to explain in a general way his literal
and metaphorical interest in the region of Maryland's Eastern Shore,
the phenomenon of twins, the workings of the law, and institutions of
formal education. He was born in Cambridge, Maryland, in 1930, the
second son of Georgia (Simon) Barth and Jacob Barth, a restaurateur
and Orphan's Court Judge. He was also the twin of a sister named
Jill.5 Barth's education consisted of twelve years in the public
school system of Cambridge, one term at the Julliard School of Music,
and six years at Johns Hopkins University, where he received an M.A.
degree in the College of Arts and Letters in l952. A year later he
left the Ph.D. program in Esthetics of Literature; and from that time

 

2John Enck, "John Barth: An Interview," HSCL, 6, 6.
3Robert Garis, "What Happened to John Barth?," Commentary, 42

 

4, 89.

4Robert Scholes, "George Is My Name," New York Times Book
Review (August 7, l966), l.

 

5Eric Rosenthal, "John Barth: A Novelist Nho Parodies the
Novel," Trenton Sunday Times Advertiser (March 24, 1974), 5 & 9.

until the present, he has combined his writing career with that of
teaching writing and literature courses at Pennsylvania State Univer-
sity (until l965), the State University of New York at Buffalo (until

1972), Boston University (until 1973), and, currently, his alma mater.
"6

 

John Barth's two critical essays, "Muse, Spare Me and "The Literature
of Exhaustion,"7 shed much light on his own fiction. They are, in my
opinion, the two best pieces of general Barth criticism; and anyone

studying his technical innovations must refer to them often.

Although there is much upon which the two dozen or so critics
who have turned their attention to Barth do not agree, they do generally
acknowledge that he is first and foremost an intellectual writer.
Furthermore, Barth's critics agree, though with varying degrees of
eXplicitness, that the ideas with which he deals relate to the ques-
tions of identity and value for the modern man. In a nihilistic, rela-
tivistic world, a world in which nothing has absolute or intrinsic or
fixed significance, how can a human being know who he is or what he
should do? How can he live meaningfully, constructively, potently?

By what means can he figuratively "live" at all? Because the pub-
lished works on John Barth have been almost entirely short articles

8

and reviews, they have not been able to do full justice to the depth

 

6Book week (September 26, 1955), 28-29.

7Atlantic Monthly, 220, 2, 29-34.

 

8Five dissertations.have been written on John Barth, one at
the University of Illinois, one at the University of Indiana, one at
Michigan State University, one at Ohio University, and one at
Pennsylvania State University. None of these dissertations, however,

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and coherence with which he develops his ideas relating to these prob-
lems. Nor has any of Barth's critics taken the broader view and docu-
Inented exactly how his ideas are devel0ped coherently from one book to
another. Gerhard Joseph in his monograph has come closest to this
sort of treatment; but in this case, too, the necessary brevity of the
piece does not allow for sufficient attention to the careful details
and subtle connections through which Barth works.9
My purpose in this dissertation is to contribute to a clearer
understanding of John Barth's fiction by studying in a manner that is
both broader and more precise than his critics have so far attempted
his ideas concerning the ethical and personal problems of modern man.
And I intend to accomplish this goal by analyzing the ideas which are
embodied in the major characters of the first three novels. Obviously,
my choice of the particular element of characterization and of those
particular novels as areas of concentration demands explanation. I
have chosen the element of characterization simply because that, it
seems to me, is the major vehicle through which Barth works out his
ideas. The combination of physical and mental traits which his char-
acters exhibit and the actions which those traits result in bear the
primary burden of conveying Barth's modern ideas about value and iden-

tity. The dimension of characterization which I will be studying is

that which is usually called "symbolic" or "allegorical"; however, I

 

has a direct bearing on my thesis; and none, therefore, will be
referred to in the following chapters.

9"John Barth," University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American
Writers, 91.

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find these terms too strong for the generally realistic context in
which the traits appear, especially in the first two novels, and for
the often subtle way in which the traits suggest or imply Barth's
ideas. So I have chosen instead to use for my basic terminology the

‘word "illustrative" as it is defined and used by Robert Scholes and

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Robert Kellogg in The Nature of Narrative. "Illustration," they

say,

does not seek to reproduce actuality but to present
selected aspects of the actual, essences referable
for their meaning not to historical, psychological,
or sociological truth but to ethical and metaphys-
ical truth. Illustrative characters are concepts
in anthropoid shape or fragments of the human
psyche masquerading as whole human beings. Thus

we are not called upon.to understand their moti-
vation as if they were whole human beings but to
understand the principles they illustrate through
their actions in a narrative framework (p. 88).

Most of the characters we will be studying are not, of course,
simply "masquerading as whole human beings"; they also have a mimetic,
or what Scholes and Kellogg prefer to call a "representative," dimen-
sion-~the kind that does "seek to reproduce actuality." Barth is
clearly a writer who tries to work in and bridge the gap between

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illustrative and representative characterization, and a good deal

could be said about Barth's representative characterization and his

l2

shifting attempts to make it congruent with his illustrative. But

 

10"Meaning in Narrative" (Oxford University Press, 1955).
82-159.

11Scholes and Kellogg suggest that Hawthorne and Joyce are two
writers who attempt the same sort of thing.

12For example, this sort of study, focusing especially on the
psychological aspect of the representative characterization, can shed

the goal in this dissertation is to focus solely upon those facets of
Barth's characters which directly reflect their creator's "ethical and
metaphysical" thinking. Where it seems appropriate in the context of
my analysis, I will sometimes use the words "philosophical" or
"ideological" or "thematic” in place of "illustrative," just as, under
similar conditions, I will often use the words "symbolize" or "stand
for" in place of "illustrate."

One reason for limiting my study of this kind of character-

ization to The Floating Opera, The End of the Road, and The Sot-Weed

 

fagtgr_is admittedly that of practicality. John Barth has written

over 2,500 pages of story peopled with hundreds of characters who
illustrate scores of ideas. An attempt to study all of these char-
acters and their interrelationships as they are put through their some-
times fantastically complicated paces would be, to say the least, volu-
minous. There is another, far more compelling reason, however, for my
limiting this dissertation in such a way. My intent is to show how
thoroughly and how coherently Barth has worked out in fictional form
his ideas concerning the modern problems of value and identity; and
nowhere does he develop these ideas so thoroughly and coherently, and
nowhere is it more important that he do so, than in these first three
novels. One is quite justified, in fact, in speaking of them as a
thematic trilogy and in thinking of this trilogy as the foundation

upon which all his later stories have been constructed. In the course

of these first three novels, Barth methodically raises, explores, and

 

much needed light on the phenomenon okaarth's movement away from
realism as a vehicle for his ideas.

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answers the question: how can a man live in the nihilistic, relativ-
istic, "modern" world? And in the three works that have followed,
this thematic pattern, though put into varying forms and given varying
points of emphasis, has remained basically unchanged.

Barth himself on more than one occasion has pointed to the
fact that he meant The Floating Opera, The End of the Road, and The_
Sat-Heed Factor to be such a trilogy. The clearest instance is in his
1963 interview in Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, where
he tells John Enck that his initial intention has been to write "a

"13 The fact that Enck's

series of three nihilistic amusing novels.
immediate response is to ask what happened after the second novel to
keep him from carrying out his intent reflects as well as anything the
inability of critics so far to comprehend these first three novels as
one illustrative unit. Later critics have less of an excuse than Enck

had, however, for Barth soon corrects him by asserting, "I didn't

leave off that series, actually: The Sot—Weed Factor is in that

 

series."14 Another place where Barth clearly points to the philo-
sophical interrelationship of these early novels is in a 1959 letter
to critic Gregory Bluestone, where he explains,

I deliberately had him [Todd Andrews, the central

character in The Floating:0pera] end up with that

brave ethical subjectivism in order that Jacob
Horner might undo that position in number two and

 

13
14

Enck, "Interview," 10.

Enck, "Interview," 10.

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carry all non-mystical value-thinking to the end of
the road.

The main philosophical thrust of his first two novels is explicit
here; and this statement, especially when it is read in the light of
Barth's later claim in the Enck interview, further implies that his
third novel will provide some alternative to non-mystical value-
thinking.

One possible reason for critics not taking Barth at his word
and exploring the illustrative unity of his first three novels is that
the title of the second, supported as it is by the often-quoted state-
ment in Bluestone, leads them to assume that the conclusion of his
second novel marks an absolutely total dead end. This assumption
probably is given added support by the further fallacious one that
Barth, like his first two narrators, is the epitome of the non-
mystical value-thinker and therefore ggnngt_have anywhere else to go
in number three. Another factor working against recognition of this
trilogy has surely been the close similarity in kind between the first

novel and the second, and the obvious dissimilarity in kind between

 

them and the third. The Floating_9pera and The End of the Road are

relatively short, basically realistic stories with, to use Barth's own

"l6

words, "Characters From Our Time, who speak real dialogue. The Sot-

 

Weed Factor, on the other hand, is a sprawling parody of an

 

15"John Wain and John Barth: The Agony and the Accurate,"
Mass. Rev., 1 (Fall 1959-Summer 1960), 586.

 

16Enck, "Interview,” 11.

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eighteenth-century novel, with characters who live in 1694 and speak
extremely mannered dialogue.

Another reason why critics have not fully perceived these
first three works as an illustrative whole has been, no doubt, that

the vast complexity and sheer strangeness of The Sot-Weed Factor have

 

in themselves discouraged all but the bravest (or perhaps the most
compulsive) from paying close attention to its ideological structure.
To explore this great labyrinth seriously for its philosophical cen-
ter and then to determine the areas in which it reiterates and con-
nects with its two smaller, simpler predecessors, has perhaps seemed
too formidable a task. Just such an exploration is what this dis-
sertation proposes, however, as the culmination of an attempt to show
that Barth's thinking in The Floating Opera, The End of the Road, and

The Sot-Weed Factor follows a coherent and complete course.

 

This study, then, aims at a better understanding of Barth's
thought in his first three novels and secondarily a better understand-
ing of his entire six-work corpus. In order to reinforce this second-
ary goal, I will conclude the dissertation with a short chapter that
suggests some ways in which Giles Goat-Boy, Lost in the Funhouse, and
Chimera follow from and build upon the ideas developed in the initial

trilogy.

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CHAPTER TWO
THE FLOATING OPERA

 

The floating_0pera is an extraordinary first novel. Written
when Barth was twenty-four and published two years later in 1956, it
evidences sharp wit; high seriousness; verbal dexterity (despite its
fictional narrator's claims to the contrary); pure storytelling abil-
ity; and, most importantly from the viewpoint of this study, an impos-
ing intellect. The_Floating Opera is basically a realistic novel; its

characterizations are basically mimetic or "representative, asking
that a reader interpret them primarily in a historical, sociological,
and psyChological context. Barth incorporates into these realistic
characters, however, a significant number of ideas; and it is this
"illustrative" dimension of characterization which this chapter will
explicate. In so doing, it will go much further than have previous
essays on Barth toward understanding exactly how in this first novel
he defines the modern problems of value and identity and begins to
move toward a solution to them.

But before I begin this study, two matters must be dealt with
by way of a preface. One is the matter of the two different editions

of The Floating Opera. Barth has written a revised edition of each of

 

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his first three novels, and it is these editions with which I will be

working. In the case of The End of the Road and The Sot-Weed Factor,

 

the changes have been minor ones; in the case of The Floating Opera,

 

however, they are major, and the result is that the revised 1967 edi-
tion is more “original“ than the first 1956 one. Barth's "Prefatory

Note to the Revised Edition" explains this phenomenon:

The Floaping Opera was written in the first three
mont s o 955; its companion-piece, The End of
the Road, in the last three months of the same
year. Ihe Opera was my first novel; I was twenty-
four, had been writing fiction industriously for
five years, and had had--deservedly--no success
whatever with the publishers. One finally agreed
to launch the O era, but on condition that the
builder make certain major changes in its con-
struction, notably about the stern. I did, the
novel was.published, critics criticized the end-
ing in particular, and I learned a boatwright
little lesson. In this edition the original and
correct ending to the story has been restored,

as have a number of other, minor passages. ng_
Floating Opera remains the very first novel of

a very young man, but I'm pleased that it will
sink or float now in its original design.

 

The other task I must perform here in the beginning, again by
way of avoiding some confusion later on, is to provide a short plot-
character summary of The Floating,0pera. This is necessary because it
is often impossible to deal with one character without alluding to
others who have not yet been introduced and properly to introduce whom
would retard the flow of the discussion. Also, a brief chronological
recounting of the novel's major events and personages will help to
counteract a feeling of disorientation which to some extent must arise
from the analysis of a story that is told in a most unchronological

fashion. A narrator who, under the guise of a bumbling, fledgling

12

novelist unable to resist a good yarn or an irrelevant digression,
spins a plot that is masterfully complex and unified, is part of the
novel's strength and charm. But it is also part of the critic's
problem.

The FloatinQAOpera, then, is a story told in 1954 by a fifty-
four year-old bachelor lawyer named Todd Andrews. Its central setting
is Cambridge, Maryland; its focus in time is a June day in 1937
(Andrews can never remember whether it was the twentieth, twenty-
first, or twenty-second); and its avowed purpose is to explain why he
decided on the morning of that day to commit suicide, why he acted as
he did during the course of that day, and why he decided at its end
not to destroy himself after all. These explanations take us back
through most of his life and introduce us to the characters who have
had prominent roles in shaping his personality. First is his father,
an unaffectionate, uncommunicative widower who encourages his son to
go to undergraduate and law school at Johns Hopkins; takes him back
into his home and into his small law firm for two years; and then, in
1929, commits suicide after having suffered heavy losses in the stock
market. Next is Betty June Gunter, a high-school classmate of Todd's
with whom he becomes friends at seventeen, and, on his eighteenth
birthday, loses his virginity. In the midst of their intercourse he
sees them in a mirror and begins to laugh hysterically. She storms
out of his bedroom and out of his life until they meet again seven
years later in her room in a Baltimore whorehouse, where she smilingly
rubs him down with alcohol, pours the rest of the bottle's contents

on his anus, and then tries to kill him with the bottle itself.

13

After high-school graduation, Todd enlists in the army; and
only a few months later he finds himself in a muddy Argonne Forest
shell hole experiencing for the first time utter, jaw-slackening,
Sphincter-releasing, mortal fear. Soon he is joined by a grisly
little German sergeant who jumps into the hole for shelter from the
firing all around. .Todd wins a brief struggle with the stranger,
forces him at bayonet point to experience the same mortal fear, and
then passionately embraces him and is embraced in return. The two
men enjoy a brief period of unspoken friendship and peaceful sleep;
but when Todd awakens he begins to feel the fear again. When the
German, too, stirs awake, Todd panics, runs his bayonet through the
man's throat, and bolts from the hole. Todd's other important exper-
ience in the armyis his fainting on a parade ground a year later,
being given a pre-discharge physical, and being told that he has a
heart condition, the result of which is that he may literally drop
dead at any second.

Not telling anyone of his heart condition, Todd spends seven
years at Johns HOpkins. During the first five, up to the incident
with Betty June in the bordello, he lives a furiously paced, rakish
life, knowing that each moment may literally be his last. After a
month in the hospital to recover from the five years of general phys-
ical deterioration and the wounds inflicted by Betty June's broken
bottle, and also to begin treatment of a chronic prostate infection,
Todd begins a period of almost saintly (though not religious) exis-
tence. It lasts until he discovers his father hanged in the basement

of their home. The important new person in his life during these four

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years is Harrison Mack, handsome son of an eastern Maryland pickle
magnate. The two young men meet at a party and become good friends
until Harrison goes off to work for the Communist party in Detroit.

In 1930, after Todd has moved into a single room in an old
Cambridge hotel and become a cynic, Harrison re-enters his life, this
time shorn of his radical social philosophy and accompanied by a beau-
tiful young wife named Jane. A close three-way friendship begins;

- and then, at Harrison's and Jane's instigation, a méppge_p_tppj§_soon
develops and lasts until Todd in 1933 intentionally insults the Macks.
In 1935, after he has begun handling litigation for Harrison concerning
his inheritance of the family estate (and after Jane has given birth
to a little girl, Jeannine, who may be Todd's),the friendship and the
adultery resume and continue up to the June day in 1937 upon which the
novel focuses. On that day, the Macks inform Todd of their plans to
tour Europe for a year or two and then move to Baltimore and of their
desire to end the affair as of that moment. After that day, he sees
the Macks only three times, and each meeting is brief and business-
related.

I The other characters who figure prominently in this story are
Captain Osborn, and Mister Haecker, two very old men who live in the
same hotel as Todd and with whom he converses at some length on matters
of life and death; and Jacob R. Adam, captain and proprietor of the
showboat which Todd intends to blow up that June day as a means of
suicide. Aside from these characters and events, the only other
illustratively significant facts that we know about Todd's life are

that from 1937 to 1954 he continues to live in his single room and

 

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15

practice law and that he spends nearly all his free time reading and
taking notes in preparation for the writing of this novel.

The Floating Opera which Todd writes has, of course, a pri-

 

marily "representative" kind of meaning. It contains this particular
cast of characters who look, think, and act as they do primarily
because that, to the best of Todd's knowledge, is the way the con-
ditions of his life "really" have been. The characters are invested
with ethical and metaphysical ideas only in so far as Todd rationalizes
about them in an effort to understand the phi1050phical basis for his

actions on that June day in 1937. In The Floating Opera which John

 

Berth_has written, however, the characters have a much more prominent
"illustrative" aspect. They are invested with philosophical signif-
icance in ways which both include and go beyond the narrator's ppgt;_
jpgtp.thinking and which thereby give his story a somewhat different,
somewhat broader kind of meaning. In order to fully understand that
meaning, this chapter will study the illustrative dimension of the
novel's prominent characters. It will deal first with the one who is
by far mp§t_prominent, Todd Andrews; then it will look at the others
with an eye not only for the ideas which they illustrate but also for

the relationship of those ideas to those illustrated in Todd.

II

The foremost idea for which Todd Andrews stands is that of

Reason. He is the epitome of the man who deals with life by means of

16

rationality and logic, the man of intellect. This is not to say, how-
ever, as he himself points out several times, that he is in the strict
sense a philOSOpher; but he does "tend to attribute to abstract ideas
a life-or-death significance" (p. 16), and the proudest of all his
assertions about himself is that he lives by principles which are
idiosyncratic but which nevertheless "usually hang all in a piece, so
that my life is never less logical for its being unorthodox" (p. l).
The passage which'perhaps best reflects his unacademic but enthusi-
astic and skillful use of the intellect is the one which recalls his
first realization of the story's central idea, that nothing has
intrinsic worth or meaning:

Doubtless (as I later learned) this idea was not,

original with me, but it was completely new to me,

and I delighted in it like a child turned loose

in the endless out-of-doors, full of scornful

pity for those inside. Nothing is valuable in

itself. Not even truth. I am not a philosopher,

except after the fact; but I am a mean rational-

izer, and once the world has forced me into a

new position, I can philosophize (or rationalize)

like two Kants, like seven Philadelphia lawyers.

Beginning with my new conclusions, I can work
out first-rate premises (p. 171).

 

This he does over and over throughout the novel in an attempt
to make his life submit to his penchant for rational order; and it is
the overall testament of the series of such attempts more than any one
passage like that above which marks Todd not just as p rational man
but also as tpe_Rational Man. During the height of the first stage of
his affair with Jane, he makes several outlines (the most accurate of
which, a twenty-four-point one, he gives us) pertaining to precisely

how the idea of the affair must have germinated in Harrison's mind,

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17

how it had proceeded and now stood with the husband, and how it would
develOp from that point. On the crucial June day in 1937, Todd under-
stands his life from 1919 to then in terms of five moments of strong
emotion (mirth, fear, frustration, surprise, and despair) and three
stances (rake, saint, and cynic). He is not comfortable with his
merely personal decision to commit suicide until he has been able to
suggest to Mr. Haecker that the idea of suicide is something that must
be faced by one who wants a rationale for living and until he has been
able, with "nostril-flaring" excitement, to perceive that decision as
the logical consequence of five sequential pr0positions. Not sur-
prisingly, then, he is not comfortable with his decision at that June
day's end until it, too, can be added to his sequence of propositions
in the form of a parenthesis tacked on to the fifth proposition.

The fact that Todd's attempts at rationalizing usually become
part of his written Inguiry, an on-going, necessarily endless attempt
to perfect communication with his father, suggests another way of
looking at Todd as an illustration of Reason. That is, a significant
part of him is always the Student, the person who sees the world as a
tutor of whom to make never-ending inquiries. Technically, his
Inguiry is into his father's life and death and into his own person-
ality; but since he believes that "to understand any one thing entirely,
no matter how minute, requires the understanding of every other thing
in the world" (DP. 6-7), it is not surprising that he maps out for
himself a very unstructured course of research. In fact, almost any
observation he makes in the-course of any day can fit into it. The

student conceit has so permeated Todd's character that when he

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l8

recounts even his most mindless experiences, as in the case of the
five moments of emotion, he does not say that he "experienced" them;
he says instead, "I learned mirth . . . I learned fear, etc.“

(p. 224). [The italics are mine.] Moreover, the very reason for
Todd's remembering this particular June day is that it tppgpt_him to
think more clearly.

Like most avid students, of course, Todd likes playing the
role of Teacher as well; and the reader cannot help but see him as
illustrative also of this aspect of the Rational Man--especially since
the prime target of his lecture is the reader himself. Todd has seen
fit, after all, to tell us about that enlightening day and all its
significant background so that we, too, might be enlightened concern-
ing the subject of suicide. His first page makes it apparent that he
conceives of this potential novel of his as an "explanation"; and when
he begins his last chapter with "That's about what it amounted to,
this change of mind in 1937," it is obvious that class is over, at
least for a while.

In addition to his readers, Todd chooses several characters
along the way to instruct in one sense or another, foremost among them
Harrison Mack and Mr. Haecker; and the philosophy which he expresses to
them marks him not only as the Rational Man but also as the distinc-
tively Modern version of him. Todd, although he never says so explic-
itly, isa thorough-going Existentialist for the better part of his
adult life. -Often his admonitions to Harrison or Mr. Haecker or the
reader sound like direct quotations from Jean Paul Sartre. To

Harrison: "We act as if we could choose, and so we can, in effect.

19

All you have to do to be strong is stop being weak" (p. 100). To Mr.
Haecker: "If you do [work out a rationale for staying alive], then
you must answer the suicide question for yourself before you start,
obviously" (p. 168). And to us: "There's little need for weakness,
reader; you are freer, perhaps than you'd be comfortable knowing"

(p. 100). Indeed, since, even when he is lecturing to other char-
acters, Todd is, of course, lecturing to us as well, and since his
entire novel is very much about the questions of weakness and strength
and rational reasons for living or dying, this existentialist aspect
of Todd Andrews's characterization makes it quite appropriate to
think of his entire story as an "existentialist novel.“

Other parts of Todd's characterization suggest that he illus-
trates the peculiarly American as well as the Modern version of Reason.
Born in 1900 (in one of the original thirteen states and into a
family whose name is an old one in the county), Todd's life until 1937
parallels in many significant ways the p0pu1ar interpretation of the
, history of his nation during those years. Like him, it lost its moral
innocence in World War I, lived desperately and irresponsibly in the
"gay“ Harding-Coolidge era, tried too late to recover from the ill
effects, lost its bearings in the stock-market crash, experienced a
period of cynicism, and then somehow kept on living despite the
rumblings of what was to become World War II.

Todd is illustrative in still a fourth way. He stands not
only for the Rational, Modern, American Man, but also for the Writing
Man. This is naturally most apparent in the fact that he is writing

a book called The Floating Opera--and in the fact that he never lets

 

 

 

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20

his readers fpgget_that he is writing that book. The first chapter is
liberally sprinkled with references to his activity, such as "I've
got this book started now," and "Good heavens, how does one write a
novel!" And throughout the novel similar instances of self-
consciousness, along with apostrOphes to the reader and overt con-
siderations of how much material should be in one chapter, how chap-
ters should begin and end, what order they should follow, and how his
"meager" vocabulary and "plodding, graceless" style can be made to
convey his story, constantly remind us that he is a man who is fas-
cinated with the challenges and implications of putting meaningful
words on a page. (It is particularly this phenomenon of the highly--
and often humorously--self-conscious first-person narrator which leads

many readers to see in The Floating,0pera the strong influence of

 

Tristam Shandy).

 

The whole business of Todd Andrews's Inquiry serves, of course,
to reinforce his function as Writer. It is not enough for Todd to
spend hours each day simply thinking or talking about his imperfect
communication with his dead father; he must go further and try, hypo-
thetically, at least, to remedy the problem. He must try by means of
written words to perfect the communication. And the three peach bas-
kets and one tomato carton full of notes that he had accumulated and
edited by 1937 are as nothing compared to what he has done since that
time in order to prepare for the writing of this novel, which is
actually a part of the Inquiry. Moreover, all this writing is done to
a great extent for its own sake, because he obviously no longer hp§_a

father to communicate with and because he knows that perfect

21

communication, except for brief, silent moments like that with the
German sergeant, is impossible. Todd persists in his writing project
for the very logical reason that "processes continued for long enough
tend to become ends in themselves" (p. 219)--and for another reason
which as much as anything I have so far mentioned marks him as a
Writer: "If for no other reason, I should continue my researches sim-
ply in order to occupy pleasantly two hours after dinner" (p. 219).

More Specifically, it is stp:y_writing that Todd seems to find
so pleasant. Although his book is sprinkled with short essays on
subjects ranging from law to Maryland beaten biscuits and although it
has an avowed ideological purpose, he chooses to write about that June
day primarily because it iS‘a good story in itself and secondarily
because it is a good vehicle for many other good ones: his war story,
his Betty June Gunter story, his Mack family-estate story, egg,
Clearly, Todd Andrews enjoys nothing so much as spinning a good yarn.
He has spent sixteen years pleasantly preparing to write this one.

The central character in The Floating Opera illustrates, then,

 

Reason, Modern Man, America, and the Writer--or to say it another way,
he illustrates the Intellectually Modern American Writer. But what
does he illustrate ppppt_this complex of ideas? His life up until
that June day, it seems to me, is the tale of a growing acceptance of
nihilism and all of its dark, alienating implications. The shocking
news of his heart condition; the excruciating pain and the seemingly
inexplicable attack in the whorehouse; the frantic undergraduate days
at Johns Hapkins which left him "pale, weak, and educated" and caused

him to lose "countless prejudices, much provincialism, [his] chastity

22

(what had remained of it), and [his] religion"; the saintly years of
law school and then practice with his father, the trauma of his
father's suicide ("Surely the dirt of the planet would cry the reason
for it, the justification that would brook no questioning. I waited.“);
the odd triangular relationship with the Macks; the cynical years of-
experience with the law in some of its "least efficient" and most irre-
sponsible moments, like the complicated Mack inheritance litigation--
each of these stages and events is another piece of evidence pointing
to the fact that the universe is totally irrational,

that absolutely nothing has intrinsic value. Now

that the idea was articulated in my head, it seemed

to me ridiculous that I hadn't seen it years ago.

All my life I'd been deciding that specific things

had no intrinsic value-~that things like money,

honesty, strength, love, information, wisdom, even

life, are not valuable in themselves, but only

with reference to certain ends--and yet I'd never

considered generalizing from those specific

instances. But one instance was added to another,

and another to that, and suddenly the total reali-

zation was effected--nothing is intrinsically

valuable; the value of everything is attributed

to it, assigned to it, from outside, by peOple

(pp. 170-171).

What has prevented his "generalizing from those specific in-
stances" has been an instinctive belief that there lay within himself,
at least, an absolutely valuable, absolutely rational core which pro-
jected itself onto the things of the world. He was his own God. All
the world's objects, actions, and relationships might be essentially
meaningless; but as long as he himself was not, the nihilism was not
total. All other human beings might be only "more or less intelli-
gent, more or less healthy, more or less dangerous, more or less ade-

quate fauna" (p. 65); and Todd Andrews might share a good deal of

 

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23

that same animality--as proven by his Betty June Gunter and his war
stories. But as long as the Intellectually Modern American Writer
could feel that he was also mppe_than an animal, as long as he could
compare himself not to a "nauseous" Danais butterfly but to another
"less nauseous one" which only outwardly mimics it (p. 138), he could
stand outside the whole human scene as rake or saint or cynic and con-
tinue to rationalize cheerfully.1
What happens to Todd the night before that climactic June day
in 1937, however, is that his last bastion against nihilism--himself--
is overrun. He is forced to face squarely, to experience fully, his
own basically irrational, totally mortal nature; and the result is a
despair so complete that the only solution to it seems to be suicide.
Todd's experience that night is a totally emotional one, and his
resolution the next morning is "entirely personal"; 50, in a broad
sense, the fact of the experience itself is proof that the universe
and the part or replica of it which is Todd are basically irrational.
Hence, he readily acknowledges that the philosophical justification
for suicide which he works up the next day is,.like his previous jus-
tifications for the attitudes of rake, saint, and cynic, an interest-

ing but inevitably futile exercise in post-facto rationalization. And

 

yet, even within the province of Todd's illustrative characterization,
the reader is not limited to this strictly rationalizing approach to
an understanding of what happened to Todd Andrews that last night with

Jane. Barth invests his central character with a physical trait which

 

1Richard Schickel, "The Floating Opera," ritigue, 6, 2, 59-61.

24

serves as_a perfect metaphor for the meaninglessness of the human
microcosm as well as of the macrocosm, and it is in terms of this
metaphor that Todd's description of his experience that June night
reveals Barth's conception of the Intellectually Modern American
Writer at what seems to be the end of his ethical rope. The trait
which serves this crucial metaphorical function is Todd's diseased
heart.

He is perfectly happy that evening until Jane mentions for
the first time ever his ugly fingers. The remark stings him, as he
says, "all out of proportion to [his] actual sensitivity to [his]

I fingers" (pp. 224-225), because it reminds him that the childhood
illness which clubbed his fingers is the same one which so weakened
his heart that it may cease beating at any moment. Having received
this vivid reminder of his heart condition, Todd is unable first to
make love, then to sleep, then to work on his Inquiry; and thus it is
that the ultimate knowledge and the ultimate despair are achieved:

My mood was black, I had little patience with
my work. It is only in very weak moments like this
that I call my project [the In uir ] silly; I sat
for an hour in the window, 100 ing over at the Post
Office and thinking how incomparably silly my thir-
teen years' work was. How silly, for that matter,
was my whole life during those thirteen years--one
feeble mask after another!

Ah, there was a symptomatic thought: it was, I
think, the first time I'd ever used the term masks
in referring to what I'd always considered to Be
the stages of my intellectual development. More-
over, it was not the thought of a cynic, for as
soon as it lodged in my consciousness it sent out
quick rootlets of despair to all corners of my
mind. Indeed, as I vaguely recognized at the time,
it was a sign that the mask of my cynicism-~I saw
then that it was a mask--was wearing thin, and no

25

longer doing its job. If it were, would I even
have thought of my heart?
And suddenly my heart filled my entire body.
It was not my heart that would burst, but my body,
so full was it of my heart, and every beat was
sick. Surely it would fail! I clapped my hand
quickly to my chest, feeling for the beat;
clutched at the window frame to keep from falling;
stared at nothin , my mouth Open, like a fish on
the beach. And this not in pain, but in despair!
Here is what I saw: that all my masks were
half-conscious attempts to master the fact with
which I had to live; that none had made me master
Of that fact; that where cynicism had failed, no
future mask could succeed; that, in short, my
heart was the master of all the rest of me, even
Of my will. It was my heart that had made my
masks, not my will. The conclusion that swallowed
me was this: There is no way to master the fact
with which I live. Futility gripped me by the
throat; my’head was tight. The impulse to raise
my arms and eyes to heaven was almost overpowering—-
but there was no one for me to raise them to. All
I could do was clench my jaw, squint my eyes, and
shake my head from side to side. But every motion
pierced me with its own futility, every new feeling
with its private hopelessness, until a battery of
little agonies attacked from all sides, each drawing
its strength from the great agony within me
(pp. 225-226).

 

Clearly, Todd Andrews's diseased heart is Barth's prime sym-
bol for the sum of Modern Man's knowledge of himself. The unmaster-

able "fact with which [he] live[§]" is that he is, at his figurative

 

heart, "sick." Behind all of the masks which make up the universe,
there is actually "nOthing." Todd's existence is dependent finally

not on a Reason but on a tpipgg a purely "animal" organ over whose
function he has absolutely no willful, conscious control. His basic
heart condition is the perfect reminder that Modern Man has found him-
self to be entirely mortal and inescapably driven by accidental forces;

and the peculiar complication Of that condition which may cause death

26

not just prematurely but momentarily further underscores the height-
ened aura of transience and precariousness which that mortal, deter-
ministic life takes on for the Modern Man who can no longer believe
in an "afterlife."

Todd's heart disease is the foremost emblem, then, Of "the
great agony within" the Intellectually Modern American Writer. Other
aspects of Todd's characterization also take on emblematic functions
which support this central one. Most Obvious among these, because
Todd himself points it out almost immediately, is the name ngd.
itself: "ng_is German for death," he tells us on the third page of
his novel, "ngg_is almost ng--that is, almost death--and this book,
if it gets written, has very much to do with almost—death." Todd's
thin body--he lost thirty-five pounds during his rake phase and now
carries only 145 on his six-foot frame--also strongly suggests the
almost-death,_the emotional emaciation, the inevitable movement toward
suicide, to which his rationality has led. Todd's practice Of law in
its own right, particularly his participation in the Mack inheritance
litigation and in another case, Morton pg, Butler, can be seen as
emblems of the absurd entanglements one encounters in trying to settle
the questions of truth and justice in an irrational universe. "In
any world but ours," Todd claims, "the case Of the Mack estate would
be fantastic; even in ours, it received considerable publicity from
the Maryland press“ (p. 85). Todd's Inquiry also is a convenient sym-
bol of modern human futility, especially as it regards the attempt to
determine the "real" cause of any human action and the attempt to

search for that cause with the written word.

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27

In addition to these illustrative traits, the two most impor-
tant symbols of the Modern American Mind's condition at this point in
Barth's treatment of it are Todd's sexual impotence and the showboat
which docks at Cambridge on that June day and from which he derives
the title of his novel. The literal cause Of his decreasing potency
is the estrogen-based drug that he has been taking since 1924 to treat
his prostate infection; but the human condition that is figured in
this sexual decline is the Modern American's decreasing ability to live
aggressively, passionately, fruitfully--in short, potently--in a world
tereft of absolutes.. And the words Floating and Qpe§a_suggest the
tmstable and unreal character which the world assumes for the person
vmo has given experiential as well as notional assent to nihilism.
Wheover, the words Floating and Opepa taken together have a more
explicit significance. "It always seemed a fine idea to me," Todd
tells us in his first chapter,

to build a showboat with just one big flat open
deck on it, and to keep a play going continuously.
The boat wouldn't be moored, but would drift up
and down the river on the tide, and the audience
would sit along both banks. They could catch
whatever part of the plot happened to unfold as
the boat floated past, and then they'd have to
wait until the tide ran back again to catch
another snatch of it, if they still happened to
be sitting there. TO fill in the gaps they'd
have to use their imaginations, or ask more
attentive neighbors, or hear the word passed
along from upriver or downriver. Most times

they wouldn't understand what was going on at

all, or they'd think they knew when actually

they didn't. Lots of times they'd be able to

see the actors, but not hear them. I needn't
explain that that's how much of life works . . . .
p. 7 .

28

These six factors, then-—his sick heart, his thin body, his

law practice, his Inguiry, his growing impotence, and his fascination

 

with the concept of a Floating Opera--are the major conditions of Todd
Andrews's life and the major metaphors for the condition of the Intel-
lectually Modern American Writer. So, quite predictably, most of
Todd's activities on that June day in 1937, can be seen as ways of
drawing each Of these conditions to a neat conclusion. The day begins
with and is predicated on his sudden realization that the only way to
deal successfully with his heart is to adopt the "stance to end all
stances." "There was no mastering the fact with which I lived, but I
could master the fact of my living with it by destroying myself, and
the result was the same--I was the master" (p. 227). With the act of
suicide, Todd will thereby, of course, be bringing to a logical and
literal end the wasting that began in college; but before he does so,
he makes it a point to mention how his thin, white body, especially as
it moves through the uncharacteristically dry "Wasteland" weather that
engulfs Cambridge that day, seems already to be as lifeless as a
desert-bleached bone.

The medical examination which he arranges for the noon hour in
reSponse to Jane's note suggesting that he find out why he had been
"Such a pansy" the night before has relevance for both body and impo-
tency symbols. On the one hand, the examination has the effect Of
drawing attention to Todd's body for the last time and, since the doc-
t°r apparently finds nothing wrong, Of pointing up the final inability
0f science to explain a deathliness like Todd's. On the other hand,

beCause it is spurred by Jane's note and because during it Todd won't

29

allow his prostate gland to be thoroughly checked, the examination

suggests that Todd is now fully aware that, for reasons other than

physical ones, he is no longer able to live "like a man." A few hours

later at the Macks' home, Jane Officially puts an end to their adul-

tery, and the private last word of her explanation is, "You were won-

derful a great many times" (p. 212). The clearly implied reason for

her leaving his bed and his life, "But you haven't been wonderful

lately, and I don't think you ever will be again," carries more weight

than all the labored, self-conscious explanation which she has just
been offering in Harrison's presence; and we are once again reminded
that Todd's days of spiritual as well as physical potency are at an
end.

The reason for Todd's visiting the Macks that afternoon is not
strictly to socialize but to test their "strength," to see if they

Share his‘absurd view of the world enough not really to care any

Ionger about the three-million-dollar Mack estate. A note he had

Received that morning has putit in his power to let Harrison win the
legal battle against his mother, and if'the couple proves strong
enOugh he will leave a note to his law partner directing him to pro-
cIEEd toward that end. Todd's observations prove inconclusive, however;
so’ by the flip of a coin, he chooses to make the Macks three million
dollars richer. and thus puts an end to a case which is the perfect
e"lb'l em of an irrational universe. Another such case, the Morton-
B”tier one, has been cleared up earlier in the day by Morton's simply

ca] ling it off out of court; and so it is that Todd, after leaving

the Macks', finds himself

30

as unburdened at that moment as must have been
Socrates when, Xanthippe at last departed, he
was free to face without distraction the hemlock
that lay at the end of his reasoning (p. 213).

Such freedom comes to Todd, however, only after he has returned
to his room and closed his Inguiry by putting his reasoning into the
form Of five logical propositions:

I. Nothing has intrinsic value.
II. The reasons for which people attribute value to
things are always ultimately irrational.
III. There is, therefore, no ultimate "reason” for
valuing anything.
IV. Living is action. There's no final reason for
action.
V. There's no final reason for living.
Ha\ring recorded what seems to be the last word in his rational explo-
rai:ion of his father and himself, Todd now is free to go to the boat
Show and to carry out the suicide plan which he had hatched that after-
noon while being taken, along with little Jeannine Mack, on a tour of
the Floating Opera.

Fittingly enough, the show is the very epitome Of the totally
il"rational universe that Todd has come to perceive, first outside him-
SElf and then within. The audience of seven hundred is there for a
Short period of mindless entertainment and so does not take kindly to
‘73. Wallace Whittaker as he grandiloquently recites Shakespeare's pro-
foundest lines on life and death--especially the ones beginning, "To
be or not to be . . ." They are entirely happy, though, when Jacob R.
AClam runs Whittaker off-stage and replaces him with an old-fashioned
minstrel show, filled to the brim with all the old slapstick and jokes
and featuring the rascally, illiterate Tambo and Bones who time and

again lead "the overeducated interlocutor into one trap after another"

31

(p. 239). When the curtain finally falls on this part Of the show and
the stage is taken by Burley Joe Wells and his earnest imitation of a

famous steamboat race, Todd slips unnoticed from his place with the

others. He goes below-deck.and opens the valve to the acetyline

stage lights which are not in use that night; then he turns on every
appliance of a gas stove but lights only one burner, lights several

lanterns and removes their chimneys, and then returns to his seat to

awahit the violent end. But the only explosion that takes place is the

imagainary one of Burley Joe Wells's neck-and-neck steamboats; so, Todd

leailes the Floating Opera with the rest of the audience, still very

mucfi alive.
Why his apparently fool-proof method of suicide did not work

he liever learns. But he does speculate:

There was still a possibility, Of course, that the
theater might explode--gas accumulated in the bilges
of a vessel is particularly volatile--but I rather
' suspected that either some hidden source of ventila-
tion (Capt. Adam had claimed the O era was safe) or
wandering member of the crew had foi ed my plan

(p. 246).
In this speculation, we can see a metaphorical acknowledgment

0'1 Barth's part of a previously underestimated life force in the uni-

Ver‘se and in its human inhabitants (and replicas). Mindless though

ItJTis FloatinQAOpera is, there is something about its very structure

that dies hard. And weesee this strong life force clearest of all in

Todd himself, who, though only the one attempt at suicide has failed,

makes no effort at another. Instead, he turns out of pure habit to

IriS; rationalizing and utilizes it to the end of remaining alive:

32

Why did I not, failing my initial attempt,
simply step Off the gangplank into the Choptank,
where no fluke could spoil my plan? Because,

I began to realize, a subtle corner had been
turned. -I asked myself, knowing there was no
ultimate answer, "Why not step into the river?"
as I had asked myself in the afternoon, "Why
not blow up the Floating Opera?" But now, at
once, a new voice replied casually, "On the
other hand, why bother?" There was a corner

for you! (pp. 246-247).
The Modern Mind, the American, the Writer-~as illustrated in

the: characterization of Todd Andrews here at the conclusion--thus

remains alive if not exactly well. From 1937 until 1954, he does not

Pat! his_skeleton with more flesh, and his impotence seems total; but
at least he can continue his daily dealing in legal entanglements;

anci he can, with the addition of a parenthesis to Proposition V--

"or~ for suicide"-—re-Open his Inguiry.

III

The characterization of Todd Andrews dominates The Floating
.Shagpa; but the novel contains a number of minor characters whose
ll'lustrative~dimensions are notable both in their own rights and also
11> the extent that they clarify and support the central illustration.
The first of such characters to whom we are introduced are Captain
Osborn Jones and Mister Haecker, an eighty-three-year-Old retired
Sailor and a seventy-nine-year-old retired school principal, who
I"eszide in the same hotel as Todd and are charter members of the

D0r~echester Explorer's Club, which he founded. As we see the two. old

 

 

 

33

men on that June day, they are neatly paired to stand for two old
(in the sense of "obsolete," for Todd) ways of coping with, of
"exploring," the phenomena of life and death in a Godless world.

Capt. Osborn's way is the Thoughtlessly Hedonistic: what he
hates most about old age is the loss Of physical and sexual prowess;
what he spends much of his time and energy doing is caring for his
bad leg and bad sinuses and generally trying to prolong his-physical
existence as long as possible; what he wishes for most ardently is to
be "forty again, with a season's pay in [his] pocket and all summer to
live" (p. 15). Mr. Haecker's way is the Thoughtfully Stoical: he
never mentions the physical pains of aging but tries instead to "make
the most ofit"; he spends most of hisrtime searching the classics,
especially Cicero, for intellectual and spiritual justification for
his condition and his method Of-dealing with it; rather than pine for
his more physically active past, he prefers to consider his present
"@lastof life for which the first was made." For him, old age is
a time to do even more of what he says he has always liked best--to be
31 One and contemplate. For the Captain, it is a time to do as much as
he still can of what he has always liked best--to admire beautiful
"Othen, get drunk, and take in whatever form of mindless entertainment
'3 at hand. And most of all, it is a time to swap sounds of any kind,
l‘Sl-Ially words, usually in the form of yarns, with his park-bench
FM(ends. For him, Todd observes approvingly, "death . . . would be
the hyphenated break in a rambling, illiterate monologue" (p. 47).

MTV- Haecker, on the other hand, keeps to himself, chooses his words

 

 

34

carefully, and uses them as a means of knowing or exploring rather
than of making; death for him will be surrounded by silence.
It is clear, as I have already implied, that Todd prefers

Captain Osborn Jones to Mister Haecker. The Captain's way of living
is ‘the way of the masses, of the innocently ignorant common man (both
parts of his name in themselves suggest this common, nondescript
cuaal'ity); Haecker's way of living is that of the man who knows the
hard realities but tries to side-step them by calling them by nicer-
sounding names. Todd's attitude toward their two approaches to a

Godless old age is clear:

 

He [Capt. Osborn] was fooling himself and not fooling
himself about it, so that ultimately he wasn't fooling
himself at all, and hence it wasn't necessary to feel
any pity for him. I felt much sorrier, in my unin-

~ volved way, for Mister Haecker, with his paeans to
old age and gracious death: he was really fooling
himself, and one could anticipate that he would
someday have a difficult time of it. In the mean-
while, he must Spend all his energies shoring up his
delusion, and do it, moreover, alone, for his intensity
and prudishness found him no friends; Osborn, on the
contrary, sniffed and wheezed and creaked and spat,
and cursed and complained, and never knew a gloomy
day in his life (pp. 47-48).

For the above reason and for their affinity as storytellers,
TOdd prefers, even "loves," Capt. Osborn; but that is not to say that
he finds Thoughtless Hedonism any more feasible for himself than
Thoughtful Stoicism. Both are obsolete for the intellectually Modern
Man, whose reasoning has gone beyond the stages of naive or willful

Ignorance of nihilism. Neither Osborn's way of spending that June

 

day, swapping stories with old cronies in the sun and then being

immensely entertained at the Floating Opera, nor Haecker's way,

35

remaining alone and morose in his room, can be Todd's way. Theoret-
ically, it is the slightly older Osborn whom he would resemble if he
had a choice, but in point of fact it is Haecker whom Todd does most

resemble. They have the same shattered delusion Of essential ration-

ality in themselves; the same "intensity and prudishness"; the same
childlessness; the same fascination with Hamlet's famous question; the
same sort of voluminous journal; and, at the day's end, the same dra-

matic and unsuccessful sort of suicide attempt to their credit. So it

is that when Todd lectures Mr. Haecker on how a man who wants to live
rationally mustface the question Of suicide first and how nothing in

life has intrinsic value, there is the very strong feeling that he is

talking to himself even more than to the old man. The crucial dif-

feY‘ence between Todd's and Mr. Haecker's methods of living and dying
I" a nihilistic universe is that Todd has the strength to face up to

the final results of his intellectual search, while Haecker, even at

the last, is an intellectual coward. He even hedges on his suicide

a'Ctemptuhe leaves two sleeping pills in the bottle beside his bed.

A second, clearly defined pair Of illustrative characters is

Batty June Gunter and the German sergeant. Todd encounters both when

he is eighteen, and they provide him with "two unforgettable demon-

strations of [his] animality" (p. 124). The idea of Animality, then,

is Obviously the focus of their illustrative dimensions; in each

encounter, Todd does exactly what the other character does, and what

- the other character does is exactly what animals do. In Betty June's

case, it is to copulate and, moreover, to assume the same position

 

 

36
while c0pulating as four-legged animals do. In the German's case, it

is to retch and to defecate and, moreover, to do so as a result of
pudre "animal" terror. Of course, Todd's killing the German also

serves as proof of his own Animality, but even here the German shares

that trait. He is, after all, a professional soldier, one officially

cognizant of and dependent for his livelihood upon the act of killing

In order to emphasize that the Animality to which Todd is
referring is that found in all human beings, Barth further develops

Iris (:haracterizations of Betty June and the German sergeant to invest

them with the idea of general Humanity. He manages this in a nega-

tive way by giving neither character any individualizing mannerisms of

Speech or thought or act. In a positive way, he works toward the same

end by blurring sexual distinctions and by emphasizing those functions
which a person could perform for or with Todd regardless of sex.
BEtty June, though definitely feminine, has "no hips or breasts to

Speak of" (p. 118); and in Todd's mind, retrospectively, the fact that
She relieved him of his sexual virginity is not as important as the
fact that she was a stimulating conversationalist and trusted com-
PEHion through many otherwise solitary winter months:

I discovered that I could converse more easily and
naturally with her than with anyone in my experience

. . . the things Betty June discussed were of a new
and thrilling order-~I felt mature and wise and con-
fident, discussing them, and I found myself able to
think more liberally, compassionately, and judiciously
than I'd ever thought before.

In fact, reader, I should say that it was at just
this point that I lost my innocence. Of what concern
is it that eventually I made love to her? . . . she
broke the seal of my mind, which had been before her
coming an idle enough instrument; took from me my ’
Spiritual virginity, which is childishness and naivete,

 

37
and opened my eyes to the world of men and women--
and this gently, and with warmth (p. 119).
When the two adolescents do finally make love and Todd happens to
catch a glimpse Of their c0pulation in a full-length mirror, what
makes such a hilarious impression on him, then and even now, is pp;

how he and Betty June look as individualized members of the Opposite

sex at the height of passion. It is how similar and unsexy both

"scrawny," "gangly" bodies together look as they perform an animal
function.

Similarly, the German soldier, though definitely masculine,
exhitnits traditionally feminine characteristics in being smaller and
weaker than Todd and in being embraced by him "as fiercely as any man
ever embraced hismistress" (p. 65). And, again, what Todd in retro-
spect is most concerned with as he relates this stage of the incident
1'5 not its sexual implications but its elements of human companion-
Shlp and communication. The German jumps into the shell hole pre-
clsely at the moment when Todd is most sure that he will be killed and

15 wishing most fervently for someone, anyone, to be his "friend"
thr0ughout the ordeal. When Todd holds the German at gun point for a
Period of time, the man loses all control of his voluntary muscles,
just as Todd had done earlier and as any other human being would do in
amoment of ultimate, mortal fear. And their passionate embracing
thereafter is not so much an end in itself as it is a prologue to an

ehnst perfect platonic relationship:

The German and I sat on Opposite sides of the
shell hole, perhaps five feet apart, smiling at.
each other in complete understanding. Occasionally
we attempted to communicate by gestures, but for

a. a: ‘- -‘nl-Ey

38

the most part communication was unnecessary. . .
Never in my life have I enjoyed such intense inti-o
macy, such clear communication with a fellow human
being, male or female, as I enjoyed with that
German sergeant (pp 65- 66).

Besides standing for the Animality which exists in Humanity in

general and in Todd in particular, this pair of characters also stands

'fow~ an idea that can best be termed "Otherness." Each also embodies

traits that-are strikingly different from Todd's; and his desire to
communicate with them takes on, as a result, the aspect of a desire to

perfect or to complete himself by incorporating qualities other than or

opposite from his own. His passing mention of the resemblance between

mating soft crabs which are often referred to as one (a "doubler") and
Plato's concept of the half-male and half-female proto-human comes to
mind here, especially since one of the "Opposing" characteristics of

Betty June--even of the soldier to some extent, as was just pointed

0Ut--is femininity. A second "Other" characteristic is experience.

TOdd is innocent in nearly every way; but Betty June is "sophisticated,
worldly, informed" (p. 118); and the German is considerably Older and

more grizzled than his counterpart in the shell hole. Also, neither

he nor Betty June is especially physically attractive, while Todd
locks like Gregory Peck.

Barth relates this concept of Otherness to the central one of
TOOd's Animality by juxtaposing to the many points of distinct dis-

shfilarity between him and this pair of characters a few points of

n0table Similarity. Betty June's scrawny build and the German's occu-

pation as soldier are the most prominent Of these common traits. What

Barth is suggesting through them is that the Otherness that the girl

"

 

39

and the soldier symbolize is not only that which is found in human
beings around oneself but also that which is found within. It is that
instinctive, animal, "foreign" part of a man's mind which works apart
frtnn and often in Opposition to his rational, civilized, knowable
part. It is, in short, the subconscious. Todd's attempts, then, to
enuarace first the girl and then the man are emblems of Modern Man's
attemptsto perfect himself, to make himself whole, by achieving
irrtinmte knowledge both of other human beings and of his own animal
nature.
What The Floating Opera has to say through these characteri-
Zairions about this attempt is, as I have already implied, not Opti-
Inistic. At first, Todd and Betty June's conversation and copulation
90 spectacularly; at first, Todd and the German "had been one man, had
understood each other beyond friendship, beyond love, as a wise man
understands himself" (p. 66). But when Todd looks into the mirror in
his bedroom and keels over in helpless laughter, Betty June bolts
injured and furious out of his life--except for the brief, nearly
deadly encounter several years later in a bordello. And after Todd
-Shoves his bayonet through the German sergeant's throat and scrambles
Out of the shell hole to safety, the entire gruesome scene, partic-
Ularly the small puncturing sound of the bayonet's entrance, haunts
him for life. Man's desire to establish a perfect relationship between
himself and another person is futile, and so is his desire to achieve
perfect understanding of his subconscious. Attempts to complete him-
self by fulfilling either Of these desires are doomed, no matter how

bright at the beginning, to failure; and the failure is not a healthy

 

 

40

or even a neutral thing. It is potentially catastrophic for all par-

ties concerned. we have already seen this lesson implied in the
enualem of Todd on that last night with Jane, when his "knowledge" of
her ends in frustration for both; his knowledge of himself leads to
his own‘uncontrollable animal heart; and, as a result, he awakens with
the decision to kill himself. We see this same syndrome and the same

inuilied lesson again in the persons of Betty June Gunter and the

German sergeant.

The most clearly delineated pair of illustrative character-
izairions in The Floating Opera is Harrison and Jane Mack. When we
first.meet them, they share not only a marriage but also a number of
Otheerrominent characteristics: physical attractiveness; intelli-
gence; aristocratic origins; athleticism; and, most important of all,
LOve. Todd makes such explicit and such frequent mention of this last
Characteristic that it cannot help but be regarded as a concept for
which the Macks stand. Todd tells us early in his novel and reminds
us often thereafter that Harrison and Jane "are simply full of love:
for themselves; for each other; for me"; and, of course, for their
1ittle girl, Jeannine. And whenever he mentions Jane and Harrison's
Love, it is juxtaposed to-his own lovelessness. "Each of the three of
us."he writes, "loved the other two as thoroughly as each was able,
amiin the case of Jane and Harrison, that was thoroughly indeed. As
fin~me--well . . ." (p. 19). He goes on, then, to eXplain how he can-
notrationally define or genuinely feel Loze: Thus, the Mack-Andrews

relationship is "equilateral" in one sense, as Todd claims (and as

41

their ages suggest: Todd is six years younger than Harrison and six
,years older than Jane). But in another sense the relationship is a
one-sided offer of Love that the Macks make simply because it is their
nature to do so.
‘ The course of the affair, then, can clearly be seen as illus-
trwative of the manner in which the modern mind, in the person of Todd

Andrews, deals with the possibility of Love, in the persons of Harrison B.

. , _.

arud Jane Mack, as the way out of its ethical predicament. At first,

Todd passively accepts it because it appeals to his curiosity and to

 

his tastes for flattery, sex, and novelty; but, when he becomes aware N
that Harrison and Jane take love very seriously, that they don't see
it as just another "unreal," ultimately unimportant fact of an irra-
tional cosmos, Todd gets very uncomfortable. He finds a way both to
Show and also to tell them that to him their love is worthless. He
tells Harrison that his earlier claim to being a virgin until he met
the Macks was a lie; and he tells him the further lie that he has been

taking out his fee from a black female client "in trade." Predictably,

 

Harrison and Jane.are radically offended and break off the relation-
Ship. When, two years later, they apparently have seen the error of
their ways and have found their affection for Todd irresistible, they
Once again make an overture of love and Todd once again accepts. This
time, however, there is a difference: "after its (the affair's)
resumption it was conducted in a manner more satisfactory to me. No
schedules, no demands, no jealousy, no fictions--all was spontaneity
and candor" (p. l6l). As this quotation suggests, though, Todd is too

egocentric and rational and simply loveless--he has a "heart

 

42

condition"--to reciprocate in any more genuine fashion than he did

before. If anything, he seems to give the Macks even less in return

f'cnc their love, as his increasing impotency with Jane symbolizes.

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that on that day in l937

the Macks officially and finally take their leave. Apparently, as

tflieuv have come to know themselves better in the last five years, they
have concluded that love, rationally indefinable and indefensible as

'it rnay be, is for themselves, at least, very important. If they are

to continue to be themselves, they need to continue to offer love and

to feel that it is being returned. When the latter condition of their

need is not met, the former comes eventually to an end; and, although
they'nmy not be able to explain their motivation adequately, they
nevertheless gladly cut all ties with loveless people like Todd
Andrews. When the Macks tell Todd they want to call off the affair
and leave Cambridge altogether and when they all but ignore him that
m°Slht at the Opera, the clearly implied message is, "We don't love you
anymore." In the image of Harrison and Jane standing side by side on
their front porCh late that June afternoon and not even noticing their
01d friend's last wave goodbye, Barth is offering an emblem of modern
maN's-losing the irrational possibility of Love as a solution to his
rationally created ethical predicament.

Another concept which the Macks as a couple illustrate is what
'lbdd, from his existentialist point of view, calls Weakness. To be
weak is to consciously assume a pose, to be inauthentic, to fool one-
self about how one "really" feels or how anything in the world “really“

stands. And the crux of the Weakness is always the word or deed which

 

 

 

43

presupposes that the term really as applied to feelings or things has
an absolute meaning. One is weak when, despite knowing better, one
assumes that any attitude or object or condition or principle has
intm~insic value. We have already seen this sort of Weakness in the
chaicacter of Mr. Haecker, who is fooling himself about the "real"
natJJre of old age and about his “real" attitude towards it. We find

a nchh fuller, more explicit develOpment of this idea, however, in the
Macks.

One area of their lives in which they manifest existentialist
Weakness is that which I have discussed immediately above, their atti-
UJtiee toward love. They act as if love were absolutely valuable, even
thOugh they know that they cannot demonstrate such a thing; and they
fllr“ther compound their error in the first week or so of the affair by
r‘e1"‘using to admit to themselves that they do love Todd. The sexual
1."tercourse that Jane and, vicariously, Harrison are having with their
new friend is exactly .','like playing tennis," they tell him. Kissing,
beCause it does not feel nearly so good in and of itself, is actually
a "more serious offense." Todd should not in any way "feel obligated."
The Macks soon overcome such self-deception, but they are much slower
t0 stop deceiving themselves that Todd should acknowledge the intrinsic
Value of their love for him. It is in order to separate himself from
such Weakness and perhaps also to help cure it that Todd tells

Harrison the lie about himself and his. female client. (Her being
tiLack and that fact's contributing to Harrison's sense of insult point'

up, incidentally, another source of Weakness in the Macks. Although

 

 

 

44

they speak often of their enlightened, liberal views on racial equal-
ity, they are, in fact, highly prejudiced.)

The other principal area in which Jane and Harrison are exis-
tentially weak is their attitude toward money, particularly toward the
Possibility of their losing the three-million-dollar part of the Mack

estate and getting instead the part which consists of 129 jars of

excrement. When the state court in l936 rules tentatively in favor of

the mother and the possibility becomes very real, Harrison breaks down
emOtionally, moans about plans that he and Jane had, admits that he is
inherently "weak," and claims that without the money he does not want
to live. Jane, too, cries at the bad news; and before leaving the
shaken couple, Todd in disgust makes it clear that he considers them
both "sissies" who do not deserve the money unless they change. No
thing and no one is inherently anything, he admonishes Harrison. It
takes only a simple, easy act of will to feel differentlyabout the
"whey. "All you have to do to be strong is stop being weak" (p. lOO).
83' the same token, no earthly object is "really" important enough to
but 'ld an entire life around. Money has no more intrinsic value than

excrement. And, although he does not sayso directly, Todd is clearly

implying that money certainly is not important enough to be the sole
reason for one's putting another person through'traumatic experiences

1 “i ke that which Todd's father put him through when he hanged himself

a‘I’ter the stock market crash. Harrison or Jane or anyone else who

pretends otherwise is being dangerously weak.
After the lessons which Todd teaches them in regard to love

(in 1933) and money (in l936), the Macks appear to be growing stronger.

 

 

 

45

The ménage a trois eventually resumeswith Jane's firm. "Let's get in

 

bed, Todd"; and thereafter there is no more talk from her or from

HarriSon about love. Also, since the day of the adverse state court

ruling, there has been no more talk of money or suicide. In order to

make a final determination of whether the Macks' Weakness has dis-

appeared, Todd on that June day puts them to a test. He sends a note

t0 Jane that morning, asking her to offer herself physically to old
Capt. Osborn. Harrison's and Jane's consent will prove that they no
lohger confuse love with sex and no longer attribute absolute value
to either; and, if they have overcome Weakness in that area of their
lives, there is good reason to believe that they have also overcome
it in regard to the three million dollars. That being the case, Todd
"i 1 1 leave one of his law partners directions for the implementation
or his ingenious scheme to insure their getting the money. '

Todd's final decision on the matter proves, however, to be
more problematic than he had suspected. We have already partially
noted-when we traced Todd's actions on that June day--Jane's imme-
di ate response to his prOposal. It is a stingingly playful promise to
comply ifhe will first get a physical examination to diScover why he
j s "such a pansy." Harrison's initial reaction over lunch is to sup-
l3""ess his instinctive anger by making a joke, biting his sandwich With
more than usual fierceness, and then changing the subject. Though
these two reactions appear to be manifestations of a new Strength,
they still leave Todd with some doubt; so he decides-to make his final

judgment on the occasion of his'visit to the Macks' home after he has

 

 

 

46

fulfilled the conditions of Jane's reply. After that visit, however,
Todd's decision is more difficult than ever; for Jane had been

neither angry nor insulted, nor had she felt-

obliged to carry out her end of the bargain.

She'd simply laughed at the whole thing. Was

this evidence of obtuseness, insincerity, or a

real and formidable strength? In fact, I no

longer knew how to feel about the Macks at all,

‘whether their new resolutions manifested a

conmonplace sentimentality or a strange integ-
rity. I had no feeling about them at all

(p. 215).
So, Todd flips a coin, and, despite the outcome, decides to

9iVe his law partner the instructions which will guarantee Harrison's
inheriting the three million dollars. "Harrison had survived a double
chance: that the coin would demand the destruction of the letters,
and that I would allow myself, a free agent, to be dictated to by a
m1.Serable nickel " (pp. 215-216). We can assume, then, that in Todd's
mind the Macks are worthy of being afforded at least the benefit of
tJ‘SE doubt in regard to the matter of Strength. They have, it appears,
1ear~ned to accept more readily, to acknowledge more genuinely, the
he] ativistic nature of the universe. They have begun not only to s_ay_
that there is no inherent value in the three million dollars or in
‘Jii'tee's sexual favors but also to agt_as if there were none. And their
(:tliiraged actions suggest that they have begun to develop the mental
cIOurage to perform the simple act of will which follows from recog-
hi ti on of the absence of inherent identity in themselves.
From the broader illustrative perspective, however, from the

V1 ewpoint of John Barth rather than Todd Andrews, there is ”no doubt

at all that the Macks have achieved a "formidable strength"--or, more

47

precisely, that Jane has. It is she upon whom Todd's attention is
finally focused and, therefore, upon whom the family fortunes finally

rest; and, ironically, Todd finds her reaction so “difficult to eval-
uate" exactly because it is the perfectly strong one. By simply dis-
regarding his request on behalf of the Captain, she has refused to

allowrher life any longer to be shaped, either positively or negatively,

by another person. She has at last taken her proper place among all

the other elements in Todd's‘rationally unknowable and immovable uni-

Jane has already attained the thoroughly existentialist view
She

Verse.
01’ reality which Todd will not attain for several hours yet.

ObV‘lously has asked herself in respect to having sex with Captain

0iiborn the same question that Todd finally asks himself in respect to

Corrliiitting suicide: not just "Why not?" but also "Why bother?"

Certainly, Jane's close six-year association with Todd has a

good deal to do with her achieving this degree of Strength; and, cer-

ta‘inly, she does not, even at the very beginning of that period, seem

Clui te as weak as her husband. But neither of these factors explains

her ability on that June day to become even strongerthan Todd- In
Order to understand this ability, we must recall the events in Todd's
w00m the previous night. Jane's remark about his clubbed fingers had

thrown him into a fit of despair over his heart condition and had ren-

dered him impotent once again. Even more importantly, we suspect that

She had been awake when, at the nadir of that despair, Todd had come

to her for solace:

the embarrassment that I feel at telling you how I
went shocked and trembling to the bed; how I bUried
my head blindly in her lap; how I lay there

48

shuddering until sleep found me, my knees clasped
to my chest, fighting despair as one fights
appendicitis--this embarrassment is not different
from that I'd feel at having to confess that I'd
buried myself in God (p. 227).

Clearly, if what has attracted Jane to Todd has been his seeming to be
essentially rational, to be, unlike Harrison, an omniscient, omnip-
otent God-figure, then this display on Todd's part obviously means
that her attraction to him and dependence on him are at an end. If
there is to be any God in her world at all from now on, it cannot be
that man who came trembling to her that night. Her God will have to
be herself.

Thus far, I have been analyzing Harrison and Jane Mack as an
1“Hustrative unit; but, as we have just seen in regard to the question
(3f: their existentialist Weakness, such a task becomes finally impos-
Sible. These two characterizations are by no means identical or
e"Hzirely interdependent. So, let us look briefly at Harrison Mack and
‘Jiirie Mack as individuals. In the case of the former, the most prom-
l hent illustrative facet is that of the Traditional American Man,
(:SDLJnterpart of Todd's strictly Twentieth-Century American Man. When
”VG! first meet Harrison, he certainly looks the part of the old-
‘Fashioned All-American Boy: he is the young, tall, clean, muscular,
fair-haired son of a living testimonial to the free-enterprise system.
tite ages some in the course of the novel, but he is still handsome in
1tltee same athletic way; and he still retains those features of person-
al ity which make him seem a kind of nineteenth-century, Teddy-

Roosevelt, pre-existentialist emblem of American Manhood. (Since

49

Harrison was born in 1894, Teddy Roosevelt probably was his boyhood

idol.) As Todd so aptly sums_him up, Harrison
was by no means either a fool or a weakling. He was
a reasonable, generous, affable, alert fellow. I
might even say that if this were a rational universe
and if-I could be any person I chose, I should not

choose to be Todd Andrews at all. I should choose
to be very much like my friend Harrison Mack

(p. 150).

The universe as The Floating,Opgra perceives it is n93_
rational, however; and Harrison, as we have seen, simply is not able
to grasp that concept. His physical characteristics underscore the
faCt that his mind is still in the nineteenth century. It sees the
n'"T'llism, the irrationality, the relativism of the world outside it-
se‘ 1:, but it cannot make the direct connection between that external

Condition and its own. Harrison has not become fully aware, as have
men who are entirely intellectual products of this century, that the
u" tameable, unknowable subconscious mind plays the dominant role in
(3“" personalities, and, consequently, that nihilism is the personal as
we] 1 as the universal principle. Harrison can accept the idea that
"t’lttiing in the universe has absolute value, but he cannot accept the
.i‘jfiééi that something which has value in his life is in no way an abso-
‘I‘Jltee. So he can proclaim in casual conversation that money and
sexuality, for example, as general concepts are ultimately unimpor-
tant; but when it is his money and his; sexuality that are threatened,
"GE ilCtS as if they were ultimately important. In giving Harrison Mack
physical traits which suggest not only the late-nineteenth-century man
bUt also the peculiarly American, Teddy-Roosevelt version of him, Barth

Seems to be implying that Harrison's sort of mind, the sort which, in

50

one critic's words, "sees the arbitrariness of the universe but shies

from its finality," is a peculiarly American phenomenon. It is not

surprising to find that the critic who made that observation is Barth

himself.2
Harrison Mack stands, then, for Traditional America; for the

Traditional American; and, thus, metaphorically, for any man whose

ethical thinking still assumes the existence of an identifiable, abso-

IUta, "real" self. Exactly what that self in his own case is, however,

Harri son 'no longer can say for sure; he is the old All-American boy
having a modern identity crisis. His good intentions and social con-
5C1 Ousness cause him to reject the role that he has been groomed to
may; the benevolent but hard-fisted captain of industry; and he can-
not seem to find another role adequately, genuinely, to adopt in its

p13ce. Instead, he merely imitates the more modern Todd Andrews.

when we first see Harrison in 1925, he is playing the Corrmunist that
Todd played for a short time at Johns Hopkins. But the masses dis-

1 1 1 Usion Harrison; and when we meet him again in 1932, he has returned

to capitalism, married well, and begun to be the non-religious sort of

83" nt that Todd was in 1925. (He has literally as well as metaphor-

iCa‘l 1y moved into Todd's old house.) By the novel's climax in 1937,

he ‘i s the cynic that Todd was in 1932.
Despite all of the trouble Harrison has had in actually defin-

1‘ng his personal essence, he still innocently believes in it; just as

he still believes in the existence of complete fidelity between

2Richard W. Murphy, "In Print: John Barth," Horizon, 5, 3

(January 1963), 37.

51

himself and Jane, despite her having spent, with his encouragement,
hundreds of nights in another man's bed. Neither he nor his wife
"really" loved Todd, he claims on that last afternoon at his home.

They just "thought" they did; they just "wanted reassurance." Never—
theless, Harrison senses that what seemed at first to be a traditionally
Perfect marriage went wrong when it encountered a person with more
modern ethical ideas; and he thinks that it is still possible, simply
by going to Europe for a year or so, to return to the condition of
inI'locent monogamy which he and Jane first knew.

Harrison's marital trouble, then, serves as a metaphor for his
ethical difficulty, and, hence, as a significant element in his illus-
tration of the Traditional American. The same can be said of Harrison's
19961 entanglements. As his name triply emphasizes (Harrison; M_at_c_k_ as
in the Scotch prefix M92: meaning M; and 13.), he is in the
at‘Chetypal position of the Son who must struggle "rightfully" to
inherit the Father's estate. And, of course, that estate is made up
0‘? ethical as well as material possessions, since those objects which
Father hands down to son imply the father's ideas about what is valu-

ab'l e. Each generation must actively strive to "earn" that part of the
1 eQacy of the previous generation which will be of real use to it and
to reject that part which will not. The son must try, in other words,
to inherit the ethical money rather than the ethical manure. Iron-

i Cally, to accomplish this feat, Harrison, the Traditional American
and. by metaphorical inference, any person whose ethics presuppose
the existence of a real self, must rely to a great degree on more

modern value-thinking. Harrison must depend on the cooperation of

52

Todd and, indirectly, of Jane if he is to win the legal battle, just
as he must finally depend on Jane's and, indirectly, on Todd's desire
to end their affair if he is to save his sense of monogamy.

DeSpite his identity crisis, despite the ethical insecurity
mirrored in his marital and in his legal difficulties, the Traditional
American in the person of Harrison Mack, Jr., is not without hope.
Todd and Jane do finally cooperate; and he does finally end up with a
,faithful wife and a family fortune--although his achievement in each
case is significantly qualified, as we have seen already and will see
(again shortly whenwe discuss in more detail the illustrative char-
acterization of Jane Mack. Also, Harrison does manage to maintain
that typically American innocence which may, after all, provide the
basis for a true sense of identity. This innocence has been a common
thread running through each of his false stances. To be sure, it has
made him continuously "weak," as Todd often points out; but, as Jane
observes on that last afternoon, it also has made each of his stances,
even his cynicism, "sweet" (p. 207).

The strongest test of his innocence, however, is yet to come.
After Todd's cynicism phase came the desperate decision to blow up the
whole Floating Opera, to bring to a brutal and not only his own life
but also the lives of crew, entertainers, and seven hundred of his
townsfolk--including even little Jeannine Mack. Since it is Todd's
sequence of ethical stances that Harrison has been imitating, there is
good reason to assume that a similar "stance to end all stances" lies
in store for Harrison. Such an assumption is given further support by

the fact that Harrison has chosen fascist Italy for his year's

53

vacation. Todd's final deliberate escape from ethical relativism into
radical egocentricity and mindless destruction can accurately be
described as "fascist"; and, because Harrison does not think that he
will find it difficult to "swallow Mussolini's boys" (p. 206), one
finds in Harrison at least a hint of that same sort of deliberate moral
escapism. Whether his version of fascism will somehow prove to be
both "sweeter" than Todd's and as inadvertently harmless as Todd's
remains to be seen.

As this discussion of Harrison has implied, there is in the
characterization of his wife a good deal that is illustratively com-
plementary, a good deal of the Traditional All-American Girl. This
strain is most evident in Todd's first description of her, which empha-
sizes the aura of wholesome physical appeal of which Miss Americas
are supposedly made:

She was indeed "Ruxton and Gibson Island," a com-
bination of beauty and athleticism. She wore a
starched sundress and looked as if she'd just
stepped from a shower after a swim. Her dark
brown hair, almost black, was dried by the sun,
as was her skin. That night she kept reminding
me of sailboats, and has ever since. I think of
her as perched on the windward washboard of a
racing sailboat . . . squinting against the sun
in a brilliant blue world--a sun that heats the
excellent timber beneath her thighs, and dries
the spray on her face and arms, and warms the
Chesapeake wind that fans her cheeks, fluffs
.her hair, and swells the gleaming sails
(pp. 25-26).

This, of course,.is only Todd's and our initial impression of Jane. As
her character is developed, she takes on traits both physical and men-
tal that make her stand for something considerably more comprehensive

than the All-American Girl. She is the very idea of Womanhood. In

1. Evaluu'n'lis 1.1%“.

54

stark contrast with the almost figureless Betty June Gunter, Jane Mack
has a voluptuous, classically female beauty. Our attention is drawn
first and most often to her "perfect breasts"; and her close and con-
stant association with the salty, fecund sea, her dark hair, her
lactively seductive role in most of the lovemaking scenes, her consid-
erable erotic skill, her aura of wantonness--all these suggest not
Miss America but Calypso, Dido, CleOpatra, and other exotic sirens.
To both Todd and Harrison, she is that mysterious, paradoxical Woman--
that possibility of love at the risk of pain, that eternal promise of
complete satisfaction and threat of complete humiliation, that tempt-
ing and frustrating combination of goddess and whore, mother and lover,
with which men through the ages have been simultaneously enamored and
appalled. She is that female "Other" whom man must embrace if he,
like Plato's proto-human, is to be truly whole. And what happens in
the novel is that Todd's embrace fails, while Harrison's succeeds.
The prize of Woman does not finally go, as we have noted, to the man
who can be her rational point of reference, her God; no man, Jane dis-
covers on that last night in Todd's room, can be that. The prize goes
instead to the man who has a healthy "heart," the man who can love her.
Barth takes his characterization of Jane Mack one step further
and makes her by the end of the novel stand for the peculiarly Modern
Woman, whose proper element is a thoroughly nihilistic universe. Hav-
ing usurped the hitherto "masculine" quality of rationality, she is
proving to be every bit as strong as Modern Man; and she is beginning
to make her own independent, existentialist way in the world. Beyond

the physical traits already mentioned in this connection, two more

55

deserve mention here. One is her getting her long, beautiful hair, a
traditional symbol of femininity, cropped on the afternoon of that
June day. The other is her giving birth to a daughter like Jeannine.
The little girl's appearance as well as her name link her very closely
to her mother, while her abundant "infant curiosity" links her to
Todd as the probable father. This link is dramatized in two specific
ways: in her favorite game of asking whyz_until she drives Todd to
admit every time that there is no final reason; and, more symbol-
ically, in her favorite pastime of sharpening his pencils down to the
very nubs. (Of course, the humorous Freudian implications of
Jeannine's sharpening Todd's pencils, especially while Jane talks with
him about their sex life, are clear; and they serve further to link
-the little girl, and her mother through her, to the concept of
Modernity.)

Jeannine has another pair of important illustrative traits in
common with Todd. One is that they both have been taken on a thOrough

guided tour of the Floating Opera and, symbolically, are not completely

 

aware of the nihilistic, relativistic nature of the universe. The
lessons that it has taken the mother almost half a lifetime to learn,
the daughter will know almost from the start. The concept of the
Modern Woman that has begun with Jane's generation will carry on un-
broken and pure into the next; and the outlook is intriguing and, on
the whole, optimistic. There is just one catch, though. The other
trait that Jeannine shares with her probable father is illness. On
that climactic day in 1937, she has a slight fever and her tonsils are

infected. It probably will not amount to anything serious, just as

56

Todd's slight tonsilitis at that same age probably did not. Todd's
infected tonsils probably were not related in any way to his heart

disease. Probably.

The last and most purely illustrative characterization is
Jacob R. Adam, builder, owner, and operator of the Floating Opera.
Since Barth clearly compares the showboat to the universe, Captain
Adam inevitably comes to stand for Barth's conception of the builder,
owner, and operator of the universe. The names Jacob and Adam empha-
size especially this character's function as the source of that part
of the cosmic Floating Opera which is the human race. But if they
also suggest the traditional Judeo-Christian conception of that source,
then it is sdrely in an ironic way; for Jacob R. (as in Rex?) Adam is
entirely different from a just, beneficent, approachable God who,
after he has created man, stands wholely outside him and intervenes
directly in his affairs. From the Judao-Christian viewpoint, he is,
in fact, a non—God--the very emblem of nihilism. He symbolizes the
omniscient, omnipotent force which logically must exist, or must have
existed, in order to explain how the universe was created and how it‘
is powered, but about which one can say with surety nothing else.

We see his omniscience and omnipotence manifested in the con-
fidence with which the wiry, sharp-eyed little man guides Todd and
Jeannine around his absolutely safe and perfectly functional showboat
and in the easy expertise with which he orchestrates his minstrel show.
We £12111; find in him, however, any goodness or any justice, any more

than we find their opposites. If they are both there, as his starkly

57

contrasting black and.white clothing suggests, then they cancel each
other out; and "good" and "evil" and "justice" and "injustice," all
stemming as they do from the same source, lose their meanings. At
any rate, we can never know for sure, because we can never experience
the "real" Jacob R. Adam. The garrulous, proud craftsman we meet in
the afternoon seems genuine enough, although even then he will answer
only the questions about himself and his ship that he himself raises.
He won't, for example, be seduced into playing Jeannine's why3_game.
And the Captain Adam whom we meet that night at the show is playing

a different role altogether; he is the hustling, witty, efficient,
anything-to-keep-you-good-folks-happy master of ceremonies. The con-
genial surface breaks qnly once, when he pulls T. Wallace Whittaker
off the stage amid a shower of hoots and coins; but we cannot be sure
that even this is not part of the act which goes on at a different
landing every night, a calculated ploy to stir audience emotion and
band them together with him in a show of force against too much pro-
fundity. And, again, when Capt. Adam then becomes Mr. Interlocutor,
he is ”transformed into an entirely different person--grammatical,
florid, effusive--so that one doubted the authenticity of his original
character" (p. 238).

Todd Andrews has, of course, the same doubts about his own
identity; and so Jacob R. Adam comes fully to stand for the ambiguous,
unknowable non-God of Todd's and of Todd's creator's world. He sym-
bolizes the truth that there is no Truth, the reality that nothing is
Real, the absolute that everything is Relative. He is the proprietor

of a spectacle that combines the most mindless entertainment with the

58

most intellectual problems; and the climax of both experiences is the
show's threatening every evening to literally blow itself up. The
noise and the smoke which pour from the stage to conclude the per-
formance of Burley Joe Wells, "World Renowned Imitator," are real
enough; but, despite the best efforts of men like Todd, the explosion
is only the imaginary demise of an imaginary steamboat and, at the
same time, the signal for one more "grand old-fashioned minstrel walk-
around." At least every performance §g_j§r_has followed this script.
If Modern Man cannot find a satisfactory way to live by "floating"
values, he may yet succeed in destroying the whole "opera." Until
that time, however, Captain Jacob R. Adam is still in business; and
his show is still worth the price of admission.

One more word should be said about this characterization.
Captain Adam also illustrates Barth's idea of the Writer--particularly,
the intellectually Modern American Writer and, even more particularly,
the version of that Writer who is John Barth himself. The fact that
Adam's show and Barth's novel have the same title points our attention
toward this idea; and what we find is a concept of the writer very
much like James Joyce's: a god-like creator who sits above or behind
all the elements of his story and pares his nails. Capt. Adam creates
and orchestrates all of the roles in his show; but he is not "really"
anyone of them, not even the central role of the master of cere-
monies which he himself plays. One knows a good deal about Todd
Andrews at the end of The Floating Opera but nothing about John Barth,
except that he can stage a fascinating verbal show and that, for the

purpose of this book, at least, he can create and maneuver

59

characterizations like Todd Andrews to illustrate certain ideas about
value and identity in a nihilistic universe. What Barth "really"
thinks about these questions we cannot know any more than we can know
what Jacob R. Adam "really" thinks about his show--or what God "really"
thinks about his. That kind of reality simply does not exist. One

imagines Barth near the end of The Floating Opera seeing himself, as

 

Writer, exactly as Todd saw Jacob R. Adam near the end of hi§_Floating
Opera: "From high on his chair Capt. Adam regarded his brood with an
Olympian smile" (p. 244). And one imagines that Barth expects to keep
that smile on his Writer's face, that he expects to continue staging
"philosophical minstrel shows" like this one,3 despite modern man's

best efforts to sink the whole ship.

IV

In The Floating_Opera, then, we have seen Barth investing his

 

main characters with ideas about existentialism, sexuality, violence,
America, and art--all of which relate to the central concern embodied
in Todd Andrews: the modern mind's nihilistic conception of the uni-
verse and its attempt to establish within that conception some basis
for value. As Todd gradually realizes that nothing has intrinsic worth
("‘meaning, that everything has only the worth or meaning that he

attributes to it, the question of what he should value shifts to the

 

3Barth claims that The Floating Opera began with his getting
the idea to write a "philOSOphical minstrel show"; so the phrase is his,
not mine. (Richard Enck, "John Barth: An Interview," WSCL, 6, 10.)

 

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60

question of who he is. And when he finally discovers that he is an
integral part of the nihilistic universe and has no absolute identity,
just as it has no absolute truth, he is nearly at the end of his road.
With no God either within or without, he has no “real" reason to do
anything, even to commit suicide; so he will "in all probability,
though not at all necessarily, go on behaving much as [he] ha[s]
thitherto, as a rabbit shot on the run keeps running in the same
direction until death overtakes him" (p. 251). Only one slim chance
exists of preventing the philosophical wound in the modern mind from
becoming figuratively and perhaps even literally mortal; and that

chance Barth explores in his next novel.

 

IHIU

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phi

CHAPTER THREE
THE END OF THE ROAD*

 

The obvious place to begin.a.study of John Barth's second
novel is a statement on the last page of his first. Todd Andrews says
there, "I considered too whether, in the real absence of absolutes,
values less than absolute mightn't be regarded as in no way inferior
and even be lived by. But that's another inquiry, and another story"
(p. 252). This possibility is the slim chance of remaining truly
"alive" that Barth has left the modern mind at the end of The Floating

 

Opera; and this possibility, though its assertion is toned down in the
revised 1967 edition from its original form in 1956, is what Barth
refers to in the quotation already cited in Chapter One: "I delib-
erately had him [Todd] end up with that brave ethical subjectivism in
order that Jacob Horner might undo that positiOn in number two and
carry all non-mystical value-thinking to the end 0f the road."1 This

7‘

chapter will clarify the manner in which The End of the Road does just

 

*The text to which all page numbers refer is the Bantam Book paperback
edition published in 1969. The hardbound edition is out of print,
and I have been unable to obtain a c0py from any library.

1Gregory F. Bluestone, "John Wain and John Barth:. The Agony
and the Accurate," The Massachusetts Review, I (Fall 1959-Summer 1960),
586. ‘ '

61

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62

that; and it will, like the previous chapter, focus on the novel's
illustrative characterization.- In showing how the ethical and meta-
physical ideas developed in the first novel are brought to a logical
conclusion in the second, this study will alsofdemonstrate how Barth
takes the second of his three fictional steps toward offering a solu-
tion to the problem of value and identity in a nihilistic universe.
The first step has been to define the problem and show why ethical
subjectivism is rationally the only possible alternative to living
like "a rabbit shot on the run"; the second will be to recapitulate
the definition and show why ethical subjectivism is rationally not a

possible alternative after all.

The End of the Road has a much simpler plot and a much smaller

 

cast of characters than its predecessor. Supposedly written in
October, 1955, by Jacob Horner, it is the account of his involvement
with four persons, particularly Renée and Joseph Morgan, during the
late summer and early autumn of 1953 when he was thirty years old.
Joe Morgan is a history professor at the state teachers college in
Wicomico, Maryland, where Jake takes a job in the English Department
that August on the advice of a strange and semi-legitimate doctor;
Rennie--the name by which everyone calls Renée--is Joe's wife and the
mother of his two children.

In much the same manner as with Todd, Jane, and Harrison in
The FloatinggOpera, though with less open initiative on the part of
the husband, Jake, Rennie, and Joe quickly become companions; and Jake
and Rennie soon have intercourse. Her guilt leads her to tell Joe,

and the perfect rational marriage which they had thought they had is

grief; tr

3:: ‘on a:

”r the "1'
ran ....

"l a.

i‘ '78::

 

 

63

seriously threatened. Throughout September, Rennie remains torn be-
tween Joe and Jake, with her situation exacerbated by Joe's insisting
that she continue to have intercourse with Jake so that Joe can revise
and correct his rational estimate of why she did it in the first place.
Jake, who cannot accept the idea of rationally determinable motivation,
reacts to Rennie's situation by whimsical and sometimes cruel incon-
sistency. In mid-October she finds that she is pregnant and decides
that she does not want to carry the baby; she will either get an
abortion or shoot herself.

Unlike Joe, Jake is unwilling to allow her to choose the lat-
ter alternative; he desperately works to arrange an abortion, first
with a legitimate doctor in Wicomico and then, when Rennie refuses
because it would mean having to give a false name, with the mysterious
"doctor" who had sent him to the college and who operates a "hospital"
not far from the town. Jake is present at the operation; and he
watches helplessly as, through a combination of negligence and acci-
dent, Rennie dies horribly on the Operating table. No charges are
pressed, Joe is quietly fired when word that Rennie died from an
illegal abortion reaches the college president, and Jake resigns his
job to join the doctor at his new location in Pennsylvania. That is
where he still resides two years later when he writes this novel.

The Doctor--Jake always uses a capital letter in referring to
him--is one of the novel's two other prominent characters. He is a
dapper, irresistibly canny and energetic middle-aged black man who
first discovers Jake in 1951, on his birthday, sitting completely

motionless for hours in a Baltimore train station. After getting him

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64

moving again, the Doctor insists that Jake come with him to his
"Remobilization Farm" in Maryland's Eastern Shore region and begin a
schedule of treatments for his "paralysis." Jake concurs, and it is
as part of his therapy that he takes the teaching position at
Wicomico State. The other important character is a forty-year-old
high-school English teacher in Wicomico named Peggie Rankin. She and
Jake first meet on an August day in 1953 at Ocean City and within an
hour are in bed. Their intercourse is too mechanical on his part and
too hysterical on hers to be satisfying for either; but, a few weeks
later, tremendously aroused by the first day's classes, Jake finds
Peggy, quickly breaks down her resentment, and takes her to bed again.
He ignores her phone calls for the next few weeks and then sees her
once again only in an attempt to find an abortionist for Rennie. He
offers marriage in exchange for the name of one; but Peggie does not
believe his offer and turns him down, at the price of a blow to the
face.

Jake Horner, Joe Morgan, Rennie Morgan, Peggie Rankin, and the

Doctor, then, are the central characters in The End of the Road. As

 

my synposis indicates, they don't "do" a great deal; here, much more
than in The Floatinggpera, the action is verbal and takes the form

of overtly philosophical debates or lectures on the novel's basic
metaphysical and ethical concerns. What the characters say, therefore,
in conjunction with their more physical actions and their physical
traits, gives them a very prominent illustrative dimension; and it is
the intent of this chapter to study that dimension not only to under-

stand this novel as it stands by itself but also to understand it as

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65

the second part of Barth's initial thematic trilogy. It is primarily

by means of investing the main characters in The End of the Road with

 

essentially the same ideas we found less obviously and less amply in

The Floating Opera that Barth is able to "take all non-mystical value-

 

thinking to the end of the road."

II

As in the previous chapter, I will begin my study of illus-
trative characterization with the novel's narrator and central char-
acter. The most obvious statement to make about Jake Horner in this
respect is that he, like his predecessor Todd Andrews, stands for the
intellectually Modern Man. For Todd, as we have seen, the word modern_
means he perceives that nothing in the universe has any absolute value,
either as a manifestation of an absolute God or in its own right. The
Modern Man is one who has concluded that none of the apparent facts of
the world are rationally explainable or justifiable, and he is fully
modern when he applies that conception to the fact of his own exis~
tence. Todd Andrews discovers, first experientially and then logi-
cally, as must always be the order of discovery in such an arbitrary
universe, that he is at heart not a rational god but a "silly," "sick"
mortal. And when he makes this discovery, he sits entirely motionless
for a long time on his window sill, staring out, and in, at "nothing."
Not coincidentally, then, the earliest act of.Jake Horner's of which

we are told is his terminating his life as a formal student (in the

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66

College of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins) and sitting motionless
in a train station through the better part of a day. His condition is
clearly the modern one: he perceives that there is no ultimate reason
either in the possible destinations which surround him or in himself
for choosing one destination over another or for choosing any destina-
tion at all. There is no ultimate reason anywhere for anything.

So Jake Horner takes up Modern Man's search for a solution to
the problem of value and identity in a nihilistic universe exactly
where Todd Andrews put it down. He begins by experiencing total
"nothingness," and then he tries rationally to describe and to live
with that condition. Jake Horner sits in the logical "corner" that
Todd Andrews left him--that there is no intrinsic, ultimate reason for
any kind of action, including suicide--and tries to function there in
some way other than that of a "rabbit shot on the run."2

All of the means by which Barth renders Jake an illustration
of Modern Man are too numerous to mention here, nor need they be men-
tioned in order to make the point. But a few of the most prominent
means obviously are necessary here not only to make the point but
also to show how Jake is more than just a carbon c0py of Todd. First,
there are the explicit statements which Jake makes on one or another
aspect of his modern problem.. The novel's very first words are one

such statement: "In a senSe, I am Jacob Horner." The book is dotted

with dozens of others: "when one is faced with such a multitude of

 

2"Jacob Horner, is supposed to remind you first of all of
Little Jack Horner, who also sits in a corner and rationalizes."--
John Barth (John Enck, "John Barth: An Interview," WSCL, 6, 12.

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67

desirable choices, no one choice seems satisfactory for very long by
comparison with the aggregate desirability of all the rest, though
compared to any 9n§_of the others it would not be found inferior"

(p. 3); "Only the profundity and limited duration of my moods kept me
from being a suicide" (p. 30); "I must say I take no great interest in
causes" (p. 35).

These statements of Jake's are supported by those of other
characters which, because they perfectly apply to him or because he
perfectly agrees with them, also mark him as Modern Man. Rennie says,
for example, "I think you don't exist at all. There's too many of
you . . . you're different all the way through, every time. You can-
cel yourself out" (p. 67). And the Doctor asserts (a la Whitehead),
"The worldjs everything that is the case,,and what the case is is not

a matter of logic” (pp. 81-82), and then speaks to Jake contemptuously

 

of "that vacuum you have for a self“ (p. 85). Explicit statements
like these occur throughout the novel; but, by the time Jake finally
explains what paralyzed him on that bench in the train station and
gives it a name, this discursive aspect of his definition as Modern
Man is complete:

it was there that I simply ran out of motives, as
a car runs out of gas. There was no reason to go
to Cincinnati, Ohio. There was no reason to go to
Crestline, Ohio. Or Dayton, Ohio, or Lima, Ohio.
There was no reason, either, to go back to the
apartment hotel, or for that matter to go anywhere.
There was no reason to do anything. My eyes, as
Winckelmann said inaccurately of the eyes of the
Greek statues. were sightless, gazing on eternity,
fixed on ultimacy, and when that is the case there
is no reason to do anything--even to change the
focus of one's eyes. Which is perhaps why the
statues stand still. It is the malady cosmogsis,

68

the cosmic view, that afflicted me. When one has
it, one is frozen like the bullfrog when the
hunter's light strikes him full in the eyes,

only with cosmopsis there is no hunger, and no
quick hand to terminate the moment--there's

only the light (p. 74).

At the risk of repeating some of what I said in my first para-
graph on Jake Horner and in my last chapter on Todd Andrews, it is
necessary, I think, to add a few words in further explanation of
Barth's term cosmopsis. When the classical Greek statues, in
Winckelmann's estimate, stared into eternity, they were struck sight-
less by Plato's infinite meaning. Once they had achieved the ultimate
goal of getting beyond the unreal material world and perceiving the
Reality, the Truth, at the heart of the cosmos, they had no more ability
or desire to see anything else. When Modern Man, on the other hand,
gazes on eternity, he is blinded not by infinite meaning but by
infinite non-meaning. Once he has attained the ultimate view of both
macrocosm and microcosm, what he sees is the paradoxical reality that
nothing is Real, the truth that nothing is True. The superficial
result of ultimate knowledge is the same for both Greek statue and
Modern Man:. "there is no reason to do anything-~even to change the
focus of one's eyes." But for the former, the catatonia is heavenly;
for the latter, it is hellish.

The last part of the long quotation above exemplifies a second
means by which Barth renders his central character illustrative of
Modern Man; he gives Jake the ability to conceive of striking and apt

metaphors for his condition. The bullfrog-hunting metaphor is but one

of many. On some days, his mind seems "as nearly empty as interstellar

69

space" (p. 36). On others it is "disengaged" like a clutched auto-
mobile engine and is full of "a kind of all-pervasive, cosmic aaaga:
aaaa, almost palpable and audible, which I can compare only to the
text 'I feel the breath ofother p1anetsblowing,‘ from Schonberg's
Second String Quartet" (p. 102). A key metaphor for Jake's identity-
less view of the human personality is the atom, which is no longer
thought to have a solid, indivisible center.' Also, the metaphorical
implications of his shying away from walking where there are no paths
laid down and his feeling anxious in rooms that are very bright and
empty are clear.

Other metaphors fix Jake's illustration of Modern Man more
strictly as his creator's than as his own. There are a number of more
or less static scenes which involve Jake and which, when considered in
and of themselves, serve as Barth's "allegorical tableaux" for Jake's

mental condition.3

His habit of sitting idly in a rocking chair--
suggesting his constant vacillation between alternatives-4is one;

his reading the Almanac--suggesting his acknowledging that the only
real way to know the world is to memorize "everything that is the
case"--is another. And the most impressive of all is the one we have
already seen-—his sitting literally paralyzed by cosmopsis while
"shortsighted animals all around" him hurry to and from their easily
chosen trains. '

The accumulation of these metaphors has the effect not only of

establishing.Jake's primary illustrative function but also of making

 

3Herbert F. Smith, "Barth's Endless Road," Critigue, 6, 2, 74.

70

a point about Modern Man which was not fully developed in The Floating
anra: the natural concomitant of his nihilistic knowledge-is his
lively imagination. On the one hand, this mental quality contributes
to the formulation of his knowledge by providing aesthetically appeal-
ing metaphors for the expression of it, as we have just seen. On the
other hand, and even more significantly, imagination has played the
major role in loosing the mind from the confines of "shortsighted"
habit, custom,.and regimentation. Thus, it has given Modern Man
increasingly free reign to discover and explore all the alternatives
to "the case" or to what could be "the case" in any given situation
which demands choice. The fact that each alternative can be equally
pleasing or displeasing to the imagination has nearly as much to do
with Jake's inability to take the world seriously or to make a deci-
sive move as does the fact that the alternatives are equally lacking
in rational value. We see from the opening chapter, when the Doctor
is talking about Jake's getting a job at the college in Wicomico, that
it is imaginationas well as knowledge which keeps him from making a
quick, easy reply:
Instantly a host of arguments against applying

for a job at the Wicomico State Teachers College

presented themselves for my use, and as instantly

a corresponding number of refutations lined up

opposite them, one for one, so that the question

of my application was held static like the rope‘

marker in a tug-o'-war where the Opposing teams‘

are perfectly matched. This again is in a sense

the story of my life, nor does it really matter

if it is not just the same story as that of a

few paragraphs ago: as I began to learn not

long after this interview . . . the same life-
lends itself to any number of stories--paralle1,

7l

concentric, mutually habitant, or what you will
(pp- 4-5).

That Jake Horner's illustration of Modern Man is similar to
Todd Andrews's is emphasized by Barth's giving the two characters
similar death-suggesting physical features. Jake's thin body, like
Todd's, is an emblem of the wasting, the loss of energy, which occurs
in a spiritual or psychic level as a result of cosmogsis. The most
prominent aspect of his physical diminuation is his muted sex drive,

which, again, has its counterpart in Todd at the end of The Floating

 

Qaaga, Jake tells us directly at the beginning of his story that he

is not highly sexed, and he demonstrates the fact thereafter by his
infrequent sexual encounters (his having intercourse with Peggie

Rankin and Rennie Morgan on the same day is a rare exception) and by
his prudish reluctance to relate the details of those encounters which
do occur. In Jake's weakened sex drive, Barth is mirroring, of course,
Modern Man's weakened sense of spiritual "manliness," his diminished
ability to live fruitfully, potently.

Furthermore, Jake, like Todd Andrews as he sat at the window
that last night with Jane, often has a blank, death-like stare. Even
when his eyes.are functioning in a more lively way, there is apparentlyf
something diabolically penetrating about them which is never mentioned
in connection with Todd. Our clearest evidence of this is Peggy
Rankin's averting her face near the climax of their first intercourse
and rasping, "God damn your eyes, God damn your eyes, God damn your
eyes . . ." (p. 29). What Jake's eyes have penetrated 59, of course,

is the hell of universal nothingness.

72

It might be thought that Jake, like his predecessor, stands
for the particularly American version of Modern Man, since he is an
American citizen and his story does take place in that country. His
imagination, moreover, matches perfectly the first part of Barth's
description of the peculiarly American imagination which we noted more
than once in the previous chapter: "the sort of ingenious fancy that
reimagines history and creation, sees.the arbitrariness of the uni-

."4 Jake's imagination obviously does not, however, fit

verse . . ..
the last.and most crucial part of that description--". . . but shies
away from its finality." It is precisely the "finality" which he fully
recognizes and accepts in the Baltimore train station; and as he slips
into a state of paralysis as a result, he is figuratively out-growing
his "American—ness."

Two important factors emphasize this broader version of Modern
Man for which Jake now stands. One is the accuracy with which he fits
Joe's description of passive and pessimistic ffaagfl_existentialism.
The other is his possession of and frequent reference to a statuette
of Laocoon, with all its Greek and near-eastern implications. With
these connections in mind, there is, as Gerhard Joseph suggests a hint
of an international theme in The End of the Road in general and in

5

Jake Horner in particular. But the important point from the per-

spective of this discussion is that these two allusions to parts of

 

4Richard W. Murphy, "In Print: John Barth," Horizon, 5, 3
(January 1963), 37.

5"JothBarth," university of Minnesota Pamphlets on American
Writers, 91, 17.

 

73

the world other than America help to make Jake's characterization
illustrative of all_modern men. His problem, which begins as one of
universal knowledge and finally reduces to one of self-knowledge,
transcends such parochial divisions as national boundaries; and it is
given its most famous contemporary expression in the writings of
Frenchmen--especially Jean Paul Sartre-~and runs through all Western
civilization back to the Ionian Greeks--especially Socrates.

The allusion to French existentialism has a second and even
more important illustrative function for the character of Jacob
Horner. Once Barth has established him as Modern Man, he embodies in
Jake his stated intention of "carry[ing] all non-mystical value-
thinking to the end of the road.“ Jake illustrates one possible
method of living by the "brave ethical sUbjectivism" on which Todd
Andrews ends the previous novel, one possible solution to the ques-
tion of how relative values might "be regarded as in no way inferior
and even be lived by"; and that method, that solution, is one which
can best be termed "Existentialist" in the generally French, Sartrean
sense. That is, Jake illustrates the human attempt to define oneself
and to live potently not in terms of some concept of personal
"essence,“ but in terms of pure physical "existence." The strange
Doctor who finds him catatonically immobilized in the railroad station
points_him in this direction; so, net surprisingly, it is to the Doc-
tor that we turn to find a more specific definition of "existence."
And what we find is the fact of gagjga, Immediately after rescuing

Jake from his first catatonic attack, the Doctor explains to him:

74

I claim that that inability to choose is only theo-
retically inherent in situations, when there's no
chooser. Given a particular chooser, it's unthink-
able. So, since the inability was displayed in your
case, the fault lies not in the—situation but in the
fact that there was no chooser. Choosing is exis-
tence: to the extent that you don't choose, you
don't exist (p. 83).

Predictably, then, the Doctor's main form of therapy for his
young patient (he already has many old ones) consists mostly of gim-
micks to help him avoid or simplify situations that involve difficult
choices. His first and foremost prescription is, "Above all, act
impulsively: don't let yourself get stuck between alternatives, or
you're lost" (p. 85). After two years of working with Jake, the Doc-
tor decides to concentrate on strengthening his ability to play a
number of roles so well that eventually, in any situation, he can
always make a choice and thus avoid paralysis. This form of treatment
is "Mythotherapy." It is so central to Jake's attempted solution_to
Modern Man's problem--and to the comprehension of all of John Barth's
fiction, for that matter-ethat the Doctor's lengthy explanation of it
and of its application to Jake Horner deserves to be quoted in large
part:

Mythotherapy is based on two assumptions: that
human existence precedes human essence, if either
of the two terms really signifies anything; and
that a man is free not only to choose his own
essence but to change it at will. Those are both
good existentialist premises, and whether they're
true or false is of no concern to us--they're
useful in your case . . . .

n life . . . there are no essentially major

or minor characters. To that extent, all fiction
and biography, and most historiography, are a lie.

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his_own life
story . . . . So in this sense fiction isn't a

75

lie at all, but a true representation of the
distortion that everyone makes of life.

Now, not only are we the heroes of our
own life stories--we're the ones who conceive
the story, and give other people the essences
of minor characters. But since no man's life
story as a rule is ever one story with a coher-
ent plot, we're always reconceiving just the
sort of hero we are, and consequently just the
sort of minor roles that other pe0p1e are
supposed to play. This is generally true . . . .

This kind of role-assigning is myth-making,
and when it's done consciously or unconsciously
for the purpose of aggrandizing or protecting
your ego--and it's probably done for this pur-
pose all the time--it becomes Mythotherapy.
Here's the point: an immobility such as you
experienced that time in Penn Station is pos-
sible only to a person who for some reason or
other has ceased to participate in Mythotherapy.
At that time on the bench you were neither a
major nor a minor character: you were no
character at all. It's because this has hap-
pened once that it's necessary for me to explain
to you something that comes quite naturally to
everyone else. It's like teaching a paralytic
how to walk again.

Now many crises in people's lives occur
because the hero role that they've assumed for
one situation or set of situations no longer~
applies to some new situation that comes
up . . . for you these crises had better be
met by changing scripts as often as necessary.
This should come naturally to you; the impor-
tant thing for you is to realize what_you're
doing so you won't get caught without a
script, or with the wrong script in a given
situation . . . .

It's extremely important that you learn to
assume these masks wholeheartedly. Don't
think there's anything behind them: e 0 means
I, and I means aga, and the ego by de inition
is a maEk. Where there's no ego--this is you
on the bench--there's no I, If you sometimes
have the feeling that your mask is insincere--
impossible word!--it's only because one of your
masks is incompatible with another. You mustn't
put on two at a time. There'S-a source of con-
flict, and conflict between masks, like absence
of masks, is a source of immobility. The more
sharply you can dramatize your situation, and

 

76
define your own role and everybody else's role,
the safer you'll be (pp. 88—90).
As a desCription of how persons do in fact operate, the Doc-
tor's mythic theory seems entirely viable; but as a prescription for

how one person ahaalg.operate, as a "therapy,' it has two major short-
comings. First, it is a formula for physical action in general but
not for ethical action in particular. It talks only vaguely of
"crises" and of roles which are "adequate" to meet them and of "wrong"
scripts; and the definitions of these terms that do come through (in
the last four words, for instance: "the safer you'll be") seem to be
purely egocentric and amoral. The Doctor speaks as if Jake could live
in total seclusion, as if action itself, apart from its effects on
other persons, were all that mattered--as if there were no difference
between choosing whether to take a train, for example, and choosing
whether to take a lover. Two years earlier the Doctor did advise
against Jake's getting intimately involved with another person; but

he made that prohibition sound too easy, and his sole interest at that
point seemed to be protecting his patient from a prime source of
potentially paralyzing complexities, not protecting other persons from
his potentially dangerous patient.

The second major flaw in Mythotherapy is its ambivalence con-
cerning the degree of deliberateness with which Jake will assume his
various roles. Without rescinding his foremost initial prescription,
"Above all, act impulsively," the Doctor also admonishes Jake to

”realize what [he's] doing." He says that Mythotherapy can be "done

consciously or unconsciously"; he predicts that it "should come

77

naturally" to Jake; he asserts that Jake must "learn to assume these

masks wholeheartedly." As a result of this vacillation between spon-

 

taneity and premeditation, Jake cannot be sure exactly how and to what
extent he should actually §§y_to practice Mythotherapy at all. To
serve as an aid, the Doctor offers not specific directions but only a
hypothetiCal model, an analogy between Jake's mental condition and the
physical condition of a paralytic who can deliberately re-learn the
instinctive act of walking.

Despite these two shortcomings, Mythotherapy in particular and
Existentialism in general seem at first to work for Jake. They trans-
late into a pattern of behavior that is simultaneously self-conscious
and impulsive, harmless and irresponsible. With tongue in cheek, he
teaches "the truth about grammar" and engages in various forms of‘
nonsense, like humming a Pepsi-Cola jingle every now and then in order
to provide a "test pattern“ for his existence. He assigns roles
quickly and arbitrarily, in the spirit of "good clean fun," to all who
briefly cross his path; and the only things that get hurt even tem-
porarily are the feelings of a forty-year-old pick-up. He never allows
his relationships with people to go beyond the stage of amusement and
disinterested curiosity. Also, he trusts in the characteristic short-
ness of his blacker moods to prevent his committing suicide. On the
whole, he keeps to himself; he keeps moving; and, thus, he continues!
to exist.

Soon, however, Jake's instinctive curiosity and desire for
human companionship lead him to the home of the Morgans; he consciously

chooses to wear the mask of friend; and his relationship with them

78

changes inevitably from one of whimsical disinterest to one of deadly
serious involvement.6 His first intercourse with Rennie marks the
figurative as well as the literal climax of that relationship. From
Jake's point-of view, the night of adultery with Rennie is a "para—
digm of assumed inevitability" (p. 99). His lust comes on him as
unexpectedly and as unavoidably as do any of hisother moods, and it
has disappeared as completely by the next morning. He assumes, of
course, that the same holds true for Rennie. The sex acts which are
the products of that lust are no more ultimately right or wrong than
they are ultimately ridiculous. The role of cuckolder, of "horner,"
which he happens to play that night is no more rationally justifiable,
no more worth taking seriously, no more "real," than the seemingly

infinite number of other roles which he plays.

 

6It is on this point that I disagree with Herbert Smith, who
maintains that Jake Horner's and Joe Morgan's ethics are not neces-
sarily in conflict and are potentially capable of "providing an ethical
stasis for each of the main characters." The real trouble, Smith

argues, is that the two solutions are "im erfectl a lied upon the
ethical vacuum that is Rennie Morgan" ("Endless," 75). Obviously,
Smith is correct in saying that neither Jake nor Joe stick entirely

to their inner-directed ethics; but to say only that much misses the
crucialpoint. Both characters must break or at least bend their own
ethical rules. Not to do so would surely keep them and others phys-
ically alive, but.it would also make them for all intents and purposes
isolates. It would not, to use Jake's phrase at the novel's end,
allow them to "live any longer in the world" (p. l97)--with "world" in
this context meaning the world of human relationships. The question
of whether modern man can live constructively in relationship to
other human beings, not of whether he can simply continue to draw
breath in solitary confinement, is the key one in The End of the Road;
and the question is put without explicit regard to the dégree of per-
fection with which Jake's ethics, and Joe's, too, are practiced--or
rather, the degree of imperfection with which they must be practiced.

79

In strictly therapeutic terms, however, that role is a mis-
take, because it leads to his nearly being paralyzed with indecision
again a number of times in the weeks to come. Jake's assumption of
the role of cuckolder, moreover, is a mistake in ethical terms, for
Joe and Rennie take the adultery seriously, whether they ultimately
should or not. It plunges them into weeks of torment and finally into
mortal danger in the form of Rennie's pregnancy and a loaded Colt .45,
with which she threatens to end that pregnancy if she cannot get an
abortion. Actually, there is mortal danger for all concerned, because
Joe claims that if Rennie kills herself he will probably shoot Jake
and himself as well.

In one of the novel's most vivid "allegorical tableaux," the
three characters sit in triangular fashion around a smoking stand which
holds the loaded gun and discuss, sometimes calmly, sometimes hyster-'
ically, what they ought to do next. When Rennie at one point dives
for the gun, Joe, in complete accordance with his principle that a
person must be treated as a free moral agent, does not move from his
chair; but Jake instinctively dives for the gun and at least temporar-
ilyprevents her suicide. He has no idea what he should do after
that, however,except for a vague feeling that he wants to try to take
his share of responsibility in the matter. When he asks Joe hOw he
can go about doing that, Joe's emphatic advice is to "take a position
and stick to it so we'll know who we're dealing with!" (p. 151). The
position whiCh Jake takes, finally, is that Rennie should have an
abortion under any circumstances rather than shoot herself and that,

therefore, he will do everything possible to arrange that abortion.

80

In making this decision, Jake is consciously forsaking his
Existentialist solution for its opposite, for what might be called
"Essentialism." Out of his yearning for moral responsibility, he is
consciously acting as if the part of his personality which made him
spontaneously dive for the gun, which at that one moment wanted Rennie
to live, is not just another arbitrarily assumed and discarded mask,
but instead is of his very essence. Jake intends to find out whether
a strong enough desire for moral responsibility can, in fact, bring it
to pass. He is going to attempt to give himself an experience that
will off-set the years of schooling which culminated in his paralysis
in the railroad station, an experience that will prove he is £93, after
all, as empty, as irrational and, consequently, as morally irrespon-
sible as the universe around-him. Seen illustratively, Jake at this
point is Man trying deliberately, even desperately, to divest himself
of that final stage of ethical knowledge that has made him fully
Modern.

Ironically, Jake's attempt to act "real," to stick to one role,
results in his enacting a frantic parody of his previous mercurial
role-changing and incorrigible dishonesty. In order to arrange Rennie's
abortion, he must race between Wicomico and Philadelphia to play both
Distraught Husband and Professionally Concerned Psychiatrist over the
phone, in writing, and in person; and he must lie to everyone in-
volved, including doctors, receptionists, notary publics, Peggie, and
his own Doctor.~ Even the Morgans, who have made it perfectly, des-
perately, clear that they can tolerate no more falseness in their

lives, get less than the truth from Jake. He assures them, for example,

81

that the Doctor is a "retired specialist" (p. 184), after the Doctor
himself has made it plain that he does not even have a license. When
the operation has finally been arranged, Jake is more than ever aware
that his Essentialism, his attempt to fly consciously in the face of.
modern knowledge and imagination, has failed. He is the same man with
the same lack of identity and value as before.

He does not wish, however, to revert completely to his earlier
Existentialism or to give up completely on either solution. The pas-
sage in which he describes his state of mind immediately after the
abortion has been finally arranged is of the utmost illustrative
importance:

Back in my room, the pressure off, I experienced
a reaction not only against the excitement of the
days just past but against my whole commitment.
It was not difficult to feel relieved at having
finally prevented Rennie's suicide, but it was
extremely difficult to feel chastened, as I
wanted to feel chastened. I wanted the adventure
to teach me this about myself: that regardless
of what shifting opinions I held about ethical
matters in the abstract, I was not so consistently
the same person (not so sufficiently "real," to
use Rennie's term) that I could involve myself
seriously in the lives of others without doing
damage all around, not least to my own tran-
quillity; that my irrational flashes of conscience
and cruelty, of compassion and cynicism--in short,
my inability to play the same role long enough--
could give me as well as others pain, and that
the same inconsistency rendered it improbable
that I could remain peacefully in painful posi-
tions for very long, as Joe, for example, could
remain. I didn't consistently need or want
friends, but it was clear (this too I wanted to
learn) that, given my own special kind of
integrity, if I was to have them at all I must
remain uninvolved--I must leave them alone.

A simple lesson, but I couldn't properly be
chastened. My feelings were mixed:' relief,
ridiculousness, embarrassment, anger, injured

82

pride, maudlin affection for the Morgans, disgust
with them and myself, and a host of other things,
' including indifference to the whole business.

Also, I was not a little tired by myself, and

of my knowledge of my selves, and of my personal
little mystery . . . my play for responsibility
had indeed exhausted me, and I was ready to leave
Wicomico and the Morgans. In a new town, with
new friends, even under a new name--perhaps one
could retend enough unity to be a person and
live in the world; perhaps, if one were a suf-
ficiently practiced actor . . . . Maybe I would
marry Peggy Rankin; take her surname; father a
child on her. I smiled (pp. 185-186).

This passage is important in that it summarizes much of the
Modernity which we have seen illustrated in the character of Jacob
Horner; but, more importantly, it indicates exactly why he has not
yet given up on either Existentialism or Essentialism at this point
in his life. The former solution is clearly the only one consistent
with his particular brand of knowledge and imagination; and the trou-
ble that Jake has got himself and the Morgans into is, strictly speak-
ing, the result of his being lured from that solution by need for
human companionship. The last few days' "excitement" ought to be suf-
ficient guard against similar temptations in the future. Even if it
is-not, though, even if Existentialism is not a viable way to live
with other human beings because the feat of both having friends and
"leav[ing] them alone" proves as impossible as it sounds on the sur-
face, all is not lost. A brief flurry of Essentialism can get Modern
Man off the ethical hook. While the last few days have not taught
Jake that essence does in fact precede existence, they have taught him
how to"pretend" that it does; and they have seemed to prove that such

pretense can in fact produce responsible,.life-affirming results.

 

.;F.\:‘
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83

Perhaps some combination of the two solutions, some blend of enough
Existentialism to allow one to be true to one's own mind and enough
Essentialism to allow one to become intimately and yet harmlessly
involved with others, can be achieved. Apparently, this sort of com-
promise is the formula for living potently in a nihilistic universe.
Had the story ended here, Modern Man would still have reason
to smile. But obviously it does aaa_end here. Jake is forced not
only to see but also to take part in Rennie's agony and death, and
that experience goes further even than to "chasten" him in the manner
which he had formerly desired. It teaches him in the most immediate
possible way that he can neither live irresponsibly nor pretend to
live responsibly in the world of human relationships, that both Exis-
tentialist and Essentialist solutions are inevitably fatal.

And so, after the entire episode is finished, we see Modern

Man defeated and alone:

I was frantic. Half a dozen letters I started--
to Joe, to the police, to Peggy, to Joe again--and
could finish none. It was no use: I could not
remain sufficiently simple-minded long enough to
lay blame--on the Doctor, myself, or anyone-~or to
decide what was the right course of action. I
threw the notes away and sat still and anguished
in my rocking chair. The terrific incompleteness
made me volatile; my muscles screamed to act; but
my limbs were bound like Laocoon's--by the ser-
pents Knowledge and Imagination, which, grown
great in the fullness of time, no longer tempt
but annihilate.

Presently I undressed and lay on the bed in
the dark, though sleep was unthinkable, and com-
menced a silent colloquywith my friend.

"We've come too far," I said to Laocoon. "Who
can live any longer in the world?"

There was no reply (pp. 196-197).

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84

Jake goes off, therefore, to join the Doctor at his new, hidden loca-
tion in Pennsylvania and thereby totally remove himself from the world
of human relationships. Theoretically, there may still be the chance
that the Doctor's schedule of therapy, whether it continues to be
Mythotherapy or a.new approach, can miraculously save him; but Modern
Man does not believe in miracles, and the novel's last word is
"Terminal."

One more idea must be added rather anticlimactically to the
subject of Jake Horner's characterization. We have seen that he
shares many illustrative traits with his predecessor, Todd Andrews;
but there are still a few others which must be noted. Jake, too,
stands for the Writer. One thing that suggests this is his acute and
in a sense absolute interest in language. We see this interest most
prominently in two discursive passages. The one hails the act of
“Articulation!":

To turn experience into speech--that is, to

classify, to categorize, to conceptualize, to

grammarize, to syntactify it--is always a

betrayal of experience, a falsification of it;

but only so betrayed can it be dealt with at

all, and only in so dealing with it did I ever

feel a man, alive and kicking (p. 119).
In the other passage, he elaborates on the subject of this necessary
betrayal of experience:

Assigning names to things is like assigning

roles to people: it is necessarily a dis-

tortion, but it is a necessary distortion

if one would get on with the plot, and to

the connoisseur it's good clean fun (p. 142).

This assertion makes us fully aware that it is not just the

Writer in general but particularly the Writer of Fiction whiCh Jake

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85

stands for. Clearly, he sees his life primarily as material for
stories, for plots; and the characterizations upon which those plots
depend are necessary over-simplifications and thus distortions of the
truth about human beings in exactly the same way as are the roles which
human beings routinely assign themselves and others in their lives.
Barth's view of storytelling, as embodied in Jake Horner, parallels'
his view of the human personality, as the Doctor gives it in the pas-
sage on Mythotherapy which I quoted at length above: “fiction isn't
a lie at all, but_a true representation of the distortion that every-
one makes of life" (p. 89).

What The End of the Road has to say about the Writer, the

Storyteller, is even more definitive than the assertion in The Floating

 

Qaaga, .First, to the extent that he is intellectually a man of the
twentieth century or is writing to appeal to that sort of man, the
Writer is going to have a difficult time writing traditional narration.
That is, he is going to have trouble writing the kind of stories that
have an implicit faith in cause-effect relationships that are ration-
ally verifiable, in empirically demonstrable connections between God
and man, thought and deed, childhood and adulthood, desire and act,
9353 The trouble lies, as we have seen, in the modern perception that
the "real" cause of any act is unknowable. This is why, on the Doc-
tor's advice, Jake limits his reading to plays, in whiCh we know for
sure only what the characters say or do. This is why he finds it so
"enormously refreshing" to tell the Doctor the whole story of his
affair with the Morgans "as long as-[he] stuck to the actual events

and made no attempt to explain anybody's motives" (p. 178). This is

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86

why, in the story he istelling the reader, he gives his characters
no histories and thereby obeys the general admonition which the Doctor
gives him on their first day-of therapy: "Ah, ah, no biography,
Jacob Horner . . . just clutters things up" (p. 78). And this is why,
after Rennie's death, Jake cannot be "simple-minded" enough to lay
blame--and why, therefore, he throws away-all his incomplete notes.
Barth's second assertion about the modern Writer is that
somehow, in spite of the exhaustion of the tradition in which he has
been raised, he endures. Perhaps because for him articulation is in
a very real if not an ultimately justifiable sense an absolute, per-
haps out of sheer momentum, perhaps as a bid for sympathy or an act of
absolution, perhaps for pure fun, perhaps . . . at any rate, the
Storyteller doggedly persists. Just as Jake Horner does not commit
literal suicide when the tradition of rational value-thinking which
he has inherited from Western culture reaches its terminal point for
him, neither does he commit literary suicide when the narrative tradi-
tion that is based on that rational value-thinking also reaches its
terminal point for him. Jake's urge to continue existing on the
purely physical level, to remove himself only figuratively from the
world, is perfectly paralleled by his urge to continue writing stories--
in particular, his urge to write Eaj§_story. He must keep making
written myths for the same irrational "reason" that he must keep
making the complex of myths that constitute his being. As long as the
words keep flowing, as long as the narrative heart keeps beating,
there is still the chance of his miraculously discovering some new,’

totally satisfying--even saving--mode of Storytelling.

87

The connection between literal stories and life stories is
more than metaphorical or coincidental. If the narrative instinct is
symbolic of the self-preservation instinct, then it is symbolic in
the Coleridgean sense of being a part of the force which it itself

suggests. Moreover, as we have already seen in The Floating Opera,

 

the relationship between the urge to write and the urge to live can be
a causal one. Todd Andrews does not kill himself after the events
which make up his story because he "needs" to write that story; and,

although that point is not made as explicitly in The End of the Road,

 

one cannot help but assume that a similar need has had much to do with
Jake Horner's staying alive for two years after he has made the prog-
nosis of "Terminal." For Todd there was obviously another story that
needed telling. For Jake, who now has in a sense told that story,
there is no other clearly ahead; and it is possible that he will put
the final period to his existence immediately after he has put the
final period to his page. It is possible, but not probable. One sus—
pects that so powerful a narratiVe urge will itself somehow lead him
to yet another story which "must" be told. After these first two

novels of Barth's, one can see why he has elsewhere said that the

 

situation of Scheherazade in the Arabian Nights tales is his favorite
metaphor for the situation in which the Modern Writer finds himself.
She not only lives to write, but she writes to live. She must con-
tinue to tell spell-binding stories for a thousand and one nights or
be killed by the king; and if she should die, the rest of the kingdom

most surely would follow.

88

III

Discussing Jake Horner's illustrative characteristics without
constantly alluding to Joe Morgan's has been as unfair to the novel as

it has been difficult for me. The pronouncement which The End of the

 

gaaa_makes on the state of Modern Man is more comprehensive than has
so far been suggested, and much of the added fullness is achieved
through Joe's characterization. His most prominent physical and men-
tal traits spin off from certain characters in The Floating Opera as
well as dramatically complement the character of Jake Horner; and, in
so doing, they indicate that Barth has invested Joe Morgan with an
ideological function of great importance.

Like Jake and like Todd Andrews before him, Joseph Morgan also
clearly stands for the intellectually Modern Man. As his wife points
out, he and Jake start from the same premises in the field of ethics:
that there is no God and that therefore nothing is intrinsically valu-
able. I do not need to belabor the point here, to rehearse all the
evidence that can be gleaned from all of Joe's abstract conversations
with Jake and Rennie in explaining the now-familiar reasons why he,
too, has had to "say good-by to objective values" (p. 47). The truly
extraordinary thing about Joe is not his thinking, brilliant as it is,
but the nomomaniacal way in which, to use Jake's expression, he lives
his ethical convictions "down to the fine print," applying them even
to the most mundane situations in his life and usually doing so by

way of heavy-handed instructions for his wife. The question of

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89

whether they ought to require their three- and four-year-old boys to
give each other their baths, for example, sparks this exchange:

"Don't think we drive them," Rennie said. "We
don't really give a damn. But I guess we demand a
lot tacitly."

Joe listened to this remark with casual
interest.

"Why do you say you don't give a damn?," he
asked her. .

Rennie was a little startled at the question,
which she had not expected.

"Well--I mean ultimately. Ultimately it
wouldn't matter one way or the other, would it?
But immediately it matters because if they
weren't independent we'd have to go through
the same rigmarole most pe0ple go through, and
the kids would be depending on all kinds of
crutches."

"Nothing matters one way or the other
ultimately," Joe pointed out. "The other
importance is all there is to anything."

"That's what I meant, Joe."

"What I'm trying to say is that you
shouldn't consider a value less real just
because it isn't absolute since less-than-
absolutes are all we've got. That's what's
implied when you say you don't really give a
damn" (pp. 42-43).

It is above all the frequency and the intensity of such "lessons" on

 

 

Joe's part which cause him not just to ha a modern man but to illus-

trate Modern Man .

Barth gives Joe Morgan no physical traits or conditions, how-

ever, to underscore his morally exhausted or impotent intellectual

modernity. In fact, his apparently happy marriage and his physical
appearance recall not Jake Horner or Todd Andrews before him, but
Harrison Mack--e5pecially Joe's physical appearance. His tall, mus-
cular, athletic body, his golden hair and pencil mustache, his clear
blue eyes--these traits in conjunction with his vocation as a

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historian and his avocation as a Boy Scout leader mark him not as a
twentieth-century man so much as a man out of the past, an anachronism.
In particular, they associate him, like Harrison, with the young-
Teddy-Roosevelt era of late-nineteenth-century America and all its
"manly" talk of and belief in putting optimism, self-reliance, and
pragmatism in the place of religion. His surname, too, alluding as it
does to the famous American banker of that era, places him in this
part of American history.
There is no real contradiction between the "modern” ethical
premises on which Joseph Morgan operates and his traditionally
American characteristics. The apparent contradiction has two causes,
and a clear understanding of them gets one to the very heart of
Joe's illustrative function. One cause is the inevitable ambiguity
in the word "modern." As I have used it, the word refers not simply
or necessarily to contemporaniety, but to nihilism; a man is "modern"
when he perceives that there is no God, that there are no absolutes,
that the ruling universal principle is determinism. Such a "discovery"
is, of course, a nineteenth-century one; and so the lectures on ethics
which Joe so readily offers, like the lecture to his wife inspired by
her saying "We don't really give a damn," are not at all in conflict
with those characteristics of his that suggest the late nineteenth
century. They are, in fact, very much in line with the distinctively
American, the "young-Teddy-Roosevelt," aspect of those characteristics.
This brings us to the other cause of the apparent contradiction
in Joe's illustrative function. He is made to stand for the peculiarly

American version of Modern Man, and that, as we have noted several

has before. means
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91

times before, means in John Barth's frame of reference that he is not
fully_modern at all. The typically American sort of mind is one
whiCh "sees the arbitrariness of the universe but shies away from its

"7 In practical ethical terms, this shying away from final-

finality.
ity assumeS'the form of one's not taking that last mental step toward
"nothing," not making the more strictly twentieth-century "discovery"
that the human mind is entirely part and replica of the Godless uni-

verse. When, in The Floating_gpera, Todd Andrews does achieve this

 

realization, it is no longer appropriate to think of him as the'
American; he is now the more generalized version of Modern Man.
Harrison Mack, on the other hand, though he gives lip service to
ethical relativity, never does take that last step; so he is consis-
tently American and thus, by definition, anachronistic, innocent.
Until the latter stages of that novel, when Harrison's deci-
sion to take a long trip to Italy smacks of conscious escapism, his
innocence seems entirely natural and unpremeditated. It is exactly
at this point where Harrison's and Joe's characterizations diverge,
however, where it becomes necessary to speak of Joe, as does one
critic, as "a refurbished Harrison Mack."8 In order to determine more
precisely the nature of that refurbishment and to shed more'light in
general on Joe's illustration of the Modern American, let us look at
a passage to which I have already twice alluded. It is Joe's longest

and most coherent assertion of his ethical position; and it follows

 

7Murphy, "In Print," 37.
8Joseph, "John Barth,“ 15.

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92

his recoUnting for Jake the time when he "pepped" his wife in the jaw
for apologizing for an act, and then popped her again when she apolo-
gized for apologizing:

"What the hell, Jake, the more sophisticated

your ethics get, the stronger you have to be to
stay afloat. And when you say good-by to objec-
tive values, you really have to flex your muscles
and keep your eyes open, because you're on your
own. It takes energy: not just personal energy,
but cultural energy. 0r you're lost. Energy's
what makes the difference between American prag-
matism and French existentialism--where the hell
else but in America could you have a cheerful
nihilism, for God's sake? I suppose it was
rough, slugging Rennie, but I saw the moment

as a kind of crisis. An how, she stOpped apolo-
gizing after that (p. 47).

Even if it were not supported by so many other explicit
descriptions of the Joe Morgan ethical "cosmos" that they seem the
products of a man who doth protest too much; and even if Joe did not
deliberately, almost defiantly, back up words like these with slightly
ostentatious but above all doggedly consistent acts like being a Boy
Scout leader or owning almost no furniture or teaching his small
children to bathe themselves--even if it stood alone, this passage
would constitute irrefutable evidence that Joe's ethical innocence is
entirely a willed stance. The self-conscious rationalizing which this
declaration fairly shouts is proof that Joe's "cheerful nihilism" does
not come naturally; it is a condition which he must struggle with all
the strength he can muster everyday to achieve. His old-fashioned
ethics are many more times as consciously assumed, methodically obeyed,
and enthusiastically promulgated as were Harrison Mack's. And, most

unlike Harrison's, they are emphatically, even violently, defended.

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93

One finally arrives, then, at an interpretation of Joe Morgan
not as an illustration of the Traditional American who is somehow
caught in the twentieth century, but as a fully Modern Man who is
desperately trying to 323 like a Traditional American. He is trying
to shy away from the finality of universal arbitrariness aftg§_he has
clearly confronted it; and the result is not a "sweet" innocence like
Harrison's but an intentionally exaggerated, somewhat ludicrous, some-
what dangerous, completely defensive Boy-Scout-turned-Super-Man dogma.
Because Joe talks very little about his past, we have no idea when or
how he first recognized his own personal form of nihilism that forced
him to construct such a dogma. We can be certain that there was such
an experience, however; for, from the moment when Jake and Rennie spy
on him alone in his livingroom and find him exuberantly executing
parade maneuvers and ballet movements, making silly faces and sounds
in front of a mirror, and then simultaneously masturbating and picking
his nose at his writing desk, it is clear that Joe has more than
intimations of his own.irrationality.

The passage in which Joe explains his reasons for slugging
Rennie points unmistakably, then, to the principal way in which he is
Jake's illustrative counterpart: Joe stands for another--in the con-
text of the novel thg_other--possible solution.to Modern Man's con-
dition of having to live by relative values. And the name Barth him-
self, through Joe, suggests for this second solution is American
Pragmatism. The broad outlines of this solution are clear, but the
particulars of how it may actually be applied to one's own life demand

further inspection. When the ethical muscles are flexed and the

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94

ethical eyes are sharp, what exactly are they supposed to do?

Exactly how do they keep one afloat? Toward what specific goals is
that all-important energy to be applied? The quotation's last two
sentences lead us to the answers. Joe used his physical energy in
this one instance (of which he is quite proud) to slug his wife for
apologizing; but the end towards which he applied his psychic energy,
for which the physical act is both a metaphor and a policeman, is the
Spotting and eradicating of the philosophic principle that lay behind
her apology:’ that a human being can do other than what he consciously
wanted to do. It is the dangerous surfacing of that idea in Rennie
that constitutes the crisis. As he tells Jake a short while later,
"it's silly for anybody to apologize for something he's done by
claiming he didn't really want to do it: what he wagtgg_to do, in the
end, was what he did. That's important to remember when you're reading
history" (p. 50)..

Jake's non-directive reply to this deClaration is in keeping
with his earlier claim that he is able to grant only notional assent
to Joe's position. What that position lacks, of course, that might
make it emotionally convincing is any regard for the early-twentieth-
century "distovery" of psychic complexity in general and, in particular,
of the subconscious. It is this part of the mind, the part from which
Jake's.many moods unpredictably spring and back into which they unpre-
dictably disappear, which gag_make us do something we don't want to
do, something irrational, something bizarre. Thus, it is awareness of
the subconscious that Joe must expend all that energy constantly to

deny. To acknowledge it as Jake does is to admit that human beings

PE
4 ";€
3’; .

95

and the relative values by which they must make their apparently inde-
pendent moral choices cannot be taken seridusly. For the most prag-
matic of reasons--a life without serious intent is not worth living

at all--a man like Joe must struggle bravely and unceasingly to

remain in the past, particularly at the turn of the century, before
Freud, and thereby to shy away from the ethical implications of modern!
psychology.

. Joe's choosing to be innocent of the subconscious and all of
what he calls the "psychological determinism crap" that it implies
allows him to act on the assumption that "a man can act coherently;
he can act in ways that he can explain, if he wants to" (p. 47). To
be more specific, the way a man accomplishes this kind of responsible
action isby locating within himself what he takes to be his"psycho-
logical gjygnsf (p. 46) and then making these the values from which
his actions rationally follow. A man has certain personal "essences"
which can be identified and then used as a guide to conduct. It seems
to me, then,.that another term which might well apply to Joe's general
solution to moral relativity, one which has the virtue of more clearly
setting him off against Jake Horner and his Existentialist solution, is
that of subjective "Essentialism." Joe lives by the theory that per-
sonal essence, not existence, defines human identity. Or, at any
rate, he lives by the theory that a person has to agt_as if it does,
because that is the only way to be a responsible, serious moral agent.
And a person mg§t_want to be that. As we have already noted, it is
precisely.this solution which Jake "borrows" from Joe when he goes

about arranging for Rennie's.abortion.

An 555

has; in the s:

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96

An Essentialist solution obviously does not guarantee happi-
ness in the sense of freedom from conflict and pain. As Joe points
out,

"In my ethics the most a man can ever do is to be

right from his point of view; there's no general

reason why he should even bother to defend it,

much less eXpect anybody else to accept it, but

the only thing he can do is Operate by it, because

there's nothing else. He's got to expect conflict

with people or institutions who are also right

from their points of view, but whose points of

view are different from his" (p. 46).
Moral seriousness alone, quite aside from happiness, is the raison
d'etre of Joe Morgan's ethical solution; and its driving forces are
innocence and energy. Not surprisingly, then, Joe's doctoral thesis
is "an odd, brilliant study of the saving roles of innocence and
energy in American political and economic history" (p. 66).

This illustrative dimension of Joe Morgan, the fully Modern
Man who has chosen an American Pragmatist and subjective Essentialist
solution, is fully developed in the first third of the novel, climax-
ing with the scene in which Jake and Rennie secretly spy on him through
the living room window.' At this point, we can already see that the
illustration has not been static, that Barth has already made two
statements about this sort of ethical cosmos. First, it has been
clearly and convincingly linked to the concept of fascism. The ruth-
lessness with which Joe not only practices but also enforces his
survival-of-the-fittest morality points our attention in this direc-
tion; and the association is confirmed when we recall that that is
exactly the direction in which Harrison Mack is headed when we last

see him in The Floating Opera. The link between fascism and Joe's

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97

subjective Essentialism is further strengthened by Joe's classically
Aryan features and by his interest in the Boy Scouts, which cannot

help but bring to mind Nazism and the Hitlerjungen° Clearly, Barth

 

seems to be saying, we have seen in this century the grave danger
inherent in this sort of ethical solution.

Second, even as Barth develops the Joe-Morgan cosmos in the
first third of the novel, he shows that that cosmos is not able genu-
'inely to improve the quality of human relationships--and for reasons
other than the ones Joe himself can so easily name in the above pas-
sage. We see this as Joe attempts to defend his solution, which by
his own definition need not be defended, to Jake and as he attempts
to force his solution, which by his own definition is applicable only

9 The problem here is that if other persons

to himself, upon his wife.
will not comprehend and live by the only code which allows you to deal
seriously with yourself, then those persons cannot be dealt with seri-
ously and you are alone. On the other hand, if you do succeed in
forcing your code on them, as Joe does with his wife, thenyou not
only have violated the code but also have erased the other person's
true self, his "psychological given," upon which the entire code de-
pends in the first place. Joe has obviously tried to compromise in
this regard by trying to make only gng_other person like himself and

by choosing someone whose “psychological given" appeared to be the

kind of strength he so prized.

9See my footnote number 6.

Ir,
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98

In the middle third of The End of the Road, in the wake of the

 

adultery, Joe is forced to admit openly and unequivocably, as he appar-
ently never has had to before, that his Essentialism is inadequate,
fallacious, and quixotic. When Jake quite explicitly brings up the
subject of psychological determinism in order to excuse his act with
Rennie, Joe is pressed to declare that "no ethical program can be
defended clear down the line" (p. ll4). And soon he must make the
further admission that his actual solution is to "assume that we're
free agents--Qretend we are even when we suspect we aren't (p. ll5)
and that what he has been demanding from Jake and Rennie under the
name of "explanation" is probably only "rationalizing after the fact"
(p. ll6).

Nevertheless, he still claims that one mu§t_indulge in such
rationalizing, such pretense; and when he concludes that Jake is
,unwilling to do so and that Rennie is unable to do so to his complete
satisfaction, Joe reverts to the strict egocentric nature of his own
code. He is against his wife's committing suicide, but he doesn't
move to prevent it; he takes a stand on the possibility of abortion
(he is against it for reasons that prove to be quite sound), but he
does not prevent Rennie from having one if she wants it. He allows
her to act consciously, and alone, like a free moral agent, even if
this means sitting passively by while she shoots herself in the head.
And that is exactly what might have happened the night they told Jake
of her pregnancy had Jake not dived to stop her. So, Joe allows her
to have the abortion that Jake arranges; and, after her death, he does

not force Jake to take public responsibility by telling the police

99

about his role in the murder. 0n the other hand, he faces up squarely
to the personal consequences of his Essentialism: the loss of his
wife and his job and, at least temporarily, of his children. At the
end he is totally alone. Clearly, Barth is asserting through Joseph
Morgan that Essentialism is as fatal an ethical solution as is Exis-
tentialism.

And yet, there is more to the question of modern value and
identity than that. Barth's comment on Joe's solution is not as bleak
as his comment on Jake's. A reader feels much more positive toward
Joe at the novel's end than he did earlier, and I think two factors
play a part in this feeling. One is that there is something sympa-
thetic in Joe's innocently holding on to a sense of essence in himself
even though he knows he cannot finally prove it and then unflinchingly
accepting the consequences, no matter how catastrophic. Undoubtedly,
this behavior smacks of the bull-headed and the quixotic, but cer-
tainly it is more admirable than Jake's desperate, dishonest, ineffec-
tive vacillation. When Jake brings Rennie's body back home, for exam-
ple, he is groveling and indecisive; but Joe is still acting swiftly
and still pushing his glasses back on his nose in that characteristic
gesture that symbolizes his efforts to "keep his eyes Open." And he
is doing so in spite of real emotion, as evidenced by his tears and
his quivering voice.

This, in turn, suggests the other favorable quality in Joe.
For a few weeks, at least, after he has finally stopped his post-facto
rationalizing of Rennie's adultery and decided to stay married to her

despite her now-mysterious personality, he and Rennie do seem to

100

achieve the genuine communication that has always been their goal.
This is what Joe claims has happened, anyway; and his claim is borne
out by the tranquillity of the Morgan home on Jake's last two visits
there. This seems especially true of the short scene at the beginning
of Chapter l2, in which Jake finally tells them that he has arranged
an abortion. It begins by Jake's noting, "it was not suggested that

I stay for dinner or anything else"; it runs through a few lies by
Jake regarding the Doctor's ability, then suspicion on Joe's part, and
then Rennie's consent; and it ends with Jake saying, "It was as though
I'd spoiled something." The inescapable conclusion is that the last
few weeks' relationship between Joe and Rennie has more to do with
real affection, real emotion, than any relationship of Jake's will
ever have.

Not because of but in spite of his conscious attempt at an
Essentialist solution, Joe achieves at least some measure of temporary
moral victory. Perhaps his innocence and energy are not entirely
willed after all; perhaps doe Morgan's traditional American ability to
see "the arbitrariness of the universe but [shy] from its finality"
is somehow real, somehow essential in him after all in a way that he
himself can feel but not explain. In the nihilistic universe of Ihg_
End of the Road, every assertion must be prefaced with perhaps; and
yet many phenomena remaid to be explained. One feels compelled to
explain, for example, the fact that, having seen precisely the same
"finality" which Jake saw, Joe chooses the opposite, innocent solution

to it, and the fact that, while less than two days of acting

lOl

responsibly "exhausts" Jake, Joe can be as energetic as ever after
years of such acting.

Perhaps, then, it i§_a very genuine "shyness" after all which
allows the All-American Boy finally to get the girl in this novel, as
he did in the first. Joe and Rennie's apparently perfect union is
only temporary, of course; and it does not create any great change in
Joe's ruthless consistency. Deliberately, while Rennie considers
suicide, he still gets work done on his dissertation; and his last
phone call to Jake, asking pleasantly what he plans to do now, sug-
gests that he is still practicing his American Pragmatism with a ven-
geance. But somehow he is less "dead" at the end of this novel than
is Jake. Although Joe has lost a staggering amount, he at least still
has the solace of fidelity to an ideal; and there is no indication
that he thinks he must remove himself bodily and indefinitely from the
world of human relationships, as must Jake. At the end of the phone
call, it is Jake, not Joe, who is left with a "dead instrument in the
dark" (p. l97).

As with Jake and Todd before him, one postscript must be
added to our discussion of Joe Morgan's illustrative dimension; for
there is no question that he, like them, is also the Writer. It may
at first seem that a novel and a dissertation are two very different
kinds of writing, and in a strict sense they are. Joe is first and
foremost the Scholarly Writer. But novels and dissertations, partic-
ularly dissertations in history, raise similar questions about the
writing of fiction in contemporary times. Both Joe and Jake are

writing stories about past events, "histories" that try to capture

102

what "really" happened. Both, because they are fully modern men, have
the same problem in determining human motivation. Jake simply tries
to ignore the problem, after discursively recognizing it, of course,
in order to get along with his plot; but Joe, as we have seen, fer-
vently believes that the mystery and complexity of the mind can be
fathomed, or rather, mp§t_be fathomed, even if it means retarding the
plot so much at times that one appears to be dispensing with it alto-
gether. It does not bother him at all that his thesis should take
years to complete.

A person must not write, Joe believes, must not act in any
way, until he is ready; and he is not ready until he knows “all the
facts and all the interpretations of the facts" (p. lll). And the key
to his finally achieving this seemingly endless task is the belief
that "what [a man] wanted to do, in the end, was what he did" (p. 50).
If this is "important to remember when reading history," as he claims,
then it is doubly important to remember when writing history. Of
course, Joe is being more than emphatic here--he is being defensive
again, because he believes in the concept of history itself, just as
he believes in the concept of moral responsibility. He is intelligent
enough to see that without the neat desires = deeds equation, there
finally can pg_no history, no stories which rationally explain the
human scene, just as there can be no moral responsibility. Life is
totally senseless confusion. One must say good-by to subjective as
well as to objective values.

One point that Barth is making through the characterization of

Joe Morgan, then, is that the Modern American Writer is caught in the

103

bind of knowing on the one hand that traditional narrative cannot be
written and realizing on the other that it has to be. Joe must men-
tally write a coherent, rational story of his own life and of Rennie's;
after finding out about the adultery, he must, to use Rennie's eXpres-
sion, "do a Marcel Proust on the thing" (p. l38). Similarly, he must
finish his dissertation. In both phases of his life, the bind is the
same--knowing that people are not rationally explainable but having to
pretend they are in order to survive. And he does survive, which is
the second half of what the characterization of Joe Morgan illustrates
about the Modern American Writer. Even if he still clings to tradi-
tional literary as well as ethical values, even if his solution to the
problem of writing narrative is exactly opposite to Jake Horner's,
somehow verbal energy alone can keep him, like Jake, alive. There is
little doubt that soon after Rennie's death Joe returned to his pen
and paper and note cards and wrote more vigorously and brilliantly--
and, in a sense, more admirably--than ever about the saving roles of

innocence and energy.

IV

Rennie Morgan's illustrative dimension is somewhat simpler to
describe than the two preceding ones. She, like Jake and Joe, is the
fully Modern Man; not only has she lost belief in a God, but she also
has, to use Jake's words, “peered deeply into herself and . . . found

nothing" (p. 66). What differentiates Rennie from Jake and Joe is

104

that with her illustration the emphasis is on "Man" rather than
"Modern." She is the common man, the average person, who is "caught”
between modern forces that she cannot entirely comprehend or deal
with. To put it another way, the way in which she herself at one
point and Jake at another put it, Rennie is the Human Personality torn
between the God of Reason or Being (Joe) and the Devil of Unreason or
Not-Being (Jake).

One method Barth uses to create this more generally Human
aspect of Rennie Morgan's illustration is to give her at least the
rudiments of a biography to serve as a context for her actions. This
biography, especially because it is so "commonplace" (p. 57), serves
to differentiate her from the two men in her life, who are given almost
no biography at all before their meeting her and thus must be con-
strued to a great extent not as persons but as ideologues sprung full-
grown from nowhere. Another way in which Barth emphasizes Rennie's
function of standing for the more generalized concept of Man is simply
by giving her the maiden name McMahon.

There are two other more pervasive, perhaps more subtle ways
in which Barth achieves this illustrative function in Rennie. First,
in order that she might more clearly stand for all_human beings, he
downplays and blurs her specific sexual features in somewhat the same
way as he does Betty June Gunter's in the first novel. He makes
Rennie large and strong for a woman (she is heavier than Jake), gives
her short-cropped hair, and endows her with a good deal more co-
OPdination and athletic interest than is common with most women. Not

unrelated to these traits is the fact that she does not play the

105

woman's traditional passive role in her first intercourse with Jake
and that the "tumblings and flexings . . . and such“ of the night are
"rather too athletic" for his taste. Even her mental qualities,
filtered through the mind of Jake Horner, become means by which she is
made to stand for men as well as--often, rather than--women. When
Jake first encounters her absolute honesty, his reaction is, "this
from a wife?" and then, "What was this beast honesty ridden by a
woman?" (p. 22). After Jake has come to know her better, he prefaces
the remark about her "modern" mind which I have already cited--"she
had peered into herself and had found nothing"--with the qualifier,
"alone of all the women I knew, if not all the people" (p. 66).

The second and more pervasive and subtle way in which Barth
makes Rennie illustrate a common, generalized version of Modern Man or
the Human Personality is by emphasizing the physical, non-intellectual
aspects of her character, those aspects which we see very little of in
the two men and which, in a sense, constitute a lowest common denomi-
nator for all of humanity. Barth accomplishes this emphasis primarily
by associating Rennie with animals, particularly with the horses that
she rides so well. At first the associations are casual; and once,
when the Morgans propose that she and Jake take up horseback-riding
together, even funny:

"Do you like horseback-riding, Jake?" Rennie

had happened to ask.

“Never rode before, Rennie."

"Gee, it's fun; you'll have to try it with

me sometime."

I raised my eyebrows. "Yes, I suppose it

would be better to do that before I tried it
with a horse" (p. 48).

106

But when they return from riding early one evening, peek in the front
window, and find Joe giving undeniable proof that he is a full-
fledged member of the irrational universe, Rennie is shattered; and
there is nothing funny about Jake's saying, "I stood beside her, out
of the light from the brilliant living room, and stroked and stroked
her hair, speaking softly in her ear the wordless, grammarless lan-
guage she'd taught me to calm horses with" (p. 7l). By the time he
is driving her to her fatal abortion, it is with deadly seriousness
that he observes, "I was very much aware of her as apart from Joe,
myself, values, motives, the world, or history-~a solitary animal in
a tight spot" (p. l87).

The effect of explicit associations like these is to make the
point that Rennie, through no fault of her own except that she is
"only" human, is not sophisticated enough to hold her own when caught
between the suprahuman modern forces embodied in Joe and Jake.
Throughout most of the novel, thgy_seem able, in a purely physical
sense at least, to live by relative values; and, even at the end, the
conclusions we draw about the literal fatality of their respective
modes of operation are based on what they do not to themselves but to
a "real human being." Joe and Jake do not physically die or even
decline in health any more than do abstract ideas. Rennie, on the
other hand, obviously does. Although she tries hard to adopt Joe's
and Jake's dogma that "less-than-absolutes" can be enough, she is easy
for them to trip up in any argument. Like her horses and like herself
when she is riding those horses, Rennie in her everyday life needs

absolute, externally imposed rules if she is to function gracefully

107

and efficiently. Without such rules she is "lost"; and, knowing this,
she has made Joe figuratively both her rider and her rule-book. That
is why she does not complain about his slugging her in the face when
he disapproves of one of her actions. She has had occasion to do as
much to her horses.

After Rennie peeks in the living room window, beholds her
husband's bizarre antics, and thereby loses the one absolute in her
life, she begins physically and emotionally to decline. Her inter-
course with Jake shortly thereafter seems inevitable, not only because
all acts in a thoroughly nihilistic universe are inevitable but also
because her physical intercourse with Jake is a symbol of her con-
scious acceptance of the existentialist cosmos that he represents.
Carnal knowledge becomes an emblem of metaphysical knowledge. Finally,
after the confession to Joe, the solid week of rationalizing, the
re-enactments of the crime which Joe forces upon her, the discovery
of her pregnancy, the two days on the brink of suicide, and the accep-
tance of the hastily arranged abortion, Rennie is that "solitary
animal in a tight spot." The description of her On the Doctor's table
is brutally vivid. She cries and squirms in pain as the Doctor un-
gently scrapes her uterus, she hemorrhages, she vomits into an ether
mask, and in a few seconds she has inhaled the vomit and strangled on
it:

And so this is the picture I have to carry with

me: the Treatment Room dark except for the one
ceiling floodlight that illuminated the table;

Rennie dead there now, face mottled, eyes wide,
mouth agape; the vomitus running from a pool in

her mouth to a pool under her head; the great
black belt lying finally unbuckled across the

108

sheet over her chest and stomach; the lower part

of her body nude and bloody, her legs trailing

limply and clumsily off the end of the examination

table (p. l9l).

Had she never met first Joe and then Jake, and finally, through
Jake, the Doctor, we would never have been left with that picture; so
the foremost conclusion to be drawn from Barth's illustrative charac-
terization of Rennie McMahon Morgan must be that the Human Personality
is in an intolerable dilemma. It is torn between two equally destruc-
tive and in the end fatal rational modes of operating in a completely
nihilistic universe. There is, however, still another facet of
Rennie's illustrative dimension; and it serves to qualify to an extent
this primary one. In the first three—quarters or so of the novel, her
condition is just as she says: "I'm lost, Jake! I'm not as strong as
Joe or even you. I'm not strong enough to get caught in this!"
(p. 124). She has a characteristic mannerism which, like Joe's
spectacle-punching, becomes symbolic of her situation (and which she
"borrows" from Todd Andrews that crucial night in his room), a habit
of whipping her head from side to side in a squint-eyed grimace which
expresses both pain and hilarity. It is the perfect emblem of Man's
being torn between the horror and the ludicrousness of a meaningless
universe, between Joe's seriousness and Jake's whimsy.
After she discovers that she is pregnant, however, Rennie does

not long stay so weak, so caught. She no longer whips her head from
side to side. When she and Joe come to Jake's room to tell him of the

new development, she is finally able to take a deliberate and calm

stand. "I don't want to carry this baby . . . I'm going to get an

 

109

abortion or shoot myself, Joe. I've decided” (p. l52). Later, when
Jake comes to their home with the fraudulent news that the abortion
has been honestly arranged, Rennie further clarifies and strengthens
her stand. With impressive dignity she states, ”I don't care who does
the job or how it's done or under what circumstances, but I won't tell
lies or assent to lies, and I won't pretend to be anybody but myself
. I don't want this baby, Jake. It might be yours" (p. l69).

Quite clearly, Rennie McMahon Morgan is no longer a passive,
morally whip-sawed creature. Like Jane Mack before her, only with
much more explicit authority, she has gone over to her husband's side
for good. She has chosen to act in a manner that I have alternately
called American, Pragmatic, and Essentialist. She has chosen to act
g§_if she could "really" choose. In those last days of her life,
moreover, she and Joe apparently share the perfect companionship for
which they have always yearned; and it has come to pass when, iron-
ically, she has stopped accepting Joe's dictums as God's law and has
begun to act as if she were a free moral agent. Even though Joe
does not approve her decision to have the abortion, he still can in a
sense approve her manner of dying because apparently its risk was
freely assumed. ‘

Again, as with the characterization of Joe, one cannot say
with certainty whether or not Rennie, by finally acting as if she did
have a "real," absolutely important self, comes to the conclusion that
in fact she does. From Jake's point of view--ethical as well as
narrative--one cannot know the Truth about this or any other human

action. Perhaps, then, she "really" does not want to carry the baby;

 

110

or perhaps, as an act of willed innocence, she is pretending that that
is the case. In either event, Rennie achieves a kind of victory for
Modern Man. She experiences, however briefly, an intimate, perfect
communication with another human being, the kind of communication
which none of Barth's central characters has known since the eighteen-
year-old Todd Andrews had his sudden, short-lived encounter with the
German sergeant. That Rennie's moment of perfect communication, like
Todd's, is attained at tremendous cost and is terminated by death does
not finally lessen its value. Her victory is unquestionably a tem-
porary, moral, phyrric one; but in a nihilistic universe in which any
mode of living exacts a staggering cost and everything finally dies,
temporary, moral, phyrric victories are all that men can have. Cer-
tainly, no close human companionship, no victory of any kind, is
achieved by Jake.

In speaking so explicitly and at such length on this aspect of
Rennie's illustrative characterization, I am perhaps over-emphasizing
a part of the novel which is based primarily on implication and sug-
gestion. Jake is able to observe only a few minutes of the Morgans'
final relationship; and, even then, he is incapable of determining its
exact nature. He can only note that the couple seems surprisingly
serene, that he is not asked to "stay for dinner or anything else,"
that his presence seems to have "spoiled something" between the two,
and that that "something" makes him feel "acutely uncomfortable."

The one occasion when we are told directly about the Morgans' new-

found happiness, their victory over nihilism, is when Joe tells Jake

111

"You probably don't realize that in a way Rennie
and I have been happier in the last few weeks
than we've been for a long time . . .

"For one thing, since this started I've shelved
the dissertation for a while, so we' ve had more
time together than usual. We've talked to each
other about ourselves more than we ever did before,
necessarily . .

". . .We certainly haven't been carefree;
but you can be pretty much happy without being
carefree. The point is we've been dealing with
each other pretty intensely and objectively--
exploring each other as deep as we can. That
part of it's been fine. And we've been outdoors
a lot, because we didn't want to ruin our health
over it. We've probably felt a lot closer to each
other than ever, whether we‘ve solved anything or
not" (p. l44).

The fact that Joe says all this in late September--ppjppg the
discovery of Rennie's pregnancy--suggests that Rennie's and Joe's new,
"victorious" relationship is mppe than a matter of her final choice of
Joe's solution over Jake's. The relationship actually starts when,
after the first few days of desperate, night-and-day analysis of
motivation, Joe and Rennie begin to see such activity as not important
enough to "ruin our health over,‘I when all their rational talk, whether
it "solved anything or not," began to make them feel a new degree of
closeness. A few lines after the above quotation, Joe is able for the
first time to call Rennie simply his "friend." The discovery of her
pregnancy temporarily disrupts this new friendship, but her firm deci-
sion either to get an abortion or to kill herself marks the beginning
of a return to that happy state. And the principal reason why her
decision should have that effect is that it is based not on a ration-
ally devised theory but on a profound feeling that she does not want
a baby which might be Jake's.

 

112

The upshot of all these considerations is that another word is
needed to define the principle primarily responsible for the Morgans'
implied victory over nihilism, not a rational, objective word like

Americanism or Pragmatism or Essentialism but an irrational, subjective

 

word like feeling or affection—-or 193g, In the Morgans, as in the
Macks before them, we see an illustration of modern man being pre-
sented with the irrational possibility of Love as a way out of his
rational ethical dilemma. Obviously, the Morgans are not as affec-
tionately demonstrative as were Harrison and Jane Mack; it is part of
the Morgan code to try to suppress emotionality. They are not, however,
entirely successful. Jake's first impression of them is that their
calm exterior is not natural; and in their superficially matter-of-
fact way, they do offer Jake immediate, spontaneous friendship. Also,
their speech reflects that they do take for granted, evidently from
personal experience, the notion that there i§_such a thing as love.
Weeks after the adultery, Rennie directly admits that she loves Jake.
(Of course, she admits also that she hates him.) And, although Joe
always claims to be searching for a purely rational cause for the
adultery, he, too, at one point openly acknowledges that he might
love Jake. "Did you ever consider," he asks Jake,

“that maybe I'm to blame for all of this? A lot of

things could be explained neatly if you just said

that for some perverse reason or other I engineered

the whole affair. Just a possibility, along with

the rest. What do you think?“ (p. l45).

The clear implication is that he may have desired his wife to

make Iove to Jake as a way of vicariously doing the same. Certainly,

the fact that Joe talks about adultery, with Rennie as the theoretical

 

113

example, on one of Jake's first visits and the fact that it is he who
suggests the horseback-riding in the first place both support this
possibility. Rennie herself suspects from the start that Joe's inter-
est in Jake is more than platonic and intellectual. She tells Jake at

an early riding session, "after your first few conversations he was F‘

a!“ _.
.' , :-

pretty much excited. What he told me was that it would be good for
me to get to know a first-rate mind that was totally different from

his, but there must have been more to it than that” (pp. 63-64). On

 

the heels of Rennie's admitting the possibility of such "perverse" I
love, Joe claims that if there wg§p_such perversity on his part it
was unconscious; but this claim obviously does not refute the pos-
sibility. By definition, love Springs from unconscious sources.

Joe Morgan implicitly, then, and Rennie Morgan explicitly
offer Jake Horner the possibility of Love. His reaction is almost
identical to the reaction of Todd Andrews when the Macks make the
same offer. He is flattered and intrigued by the phenomenon; but,
finally, he won't have any of it. Any possibility that he might accept
and reciprocate the affection disappears as soon as Joe hypothetically
proposes a permanent, triangular relationship among the three. Love's
close identification with sex in particular and with the subconscious
in general mark it for Jake as just another irrational and hence unreal
aspect of a universe that is not to be taken seriously. The "tender,
love-like feelings" toward Rennie which "announce their presence" in
him at one point are no more absolutely valuable or enduring than is
his "Rennie-torturing mood" at another. He can take the word lpyg_and

show logically that it is simply a linguistic distortion of reality, a

114

fascinating, necessary artifice but in no way ultimately important.
He does not know how to deal with the fact that he is "thrilled" by
Joe at one point (p. l46); so he simply ignores the feeling until it
passes. He does not know how to categorize the emotion he feels so
strongly for Rennie right before the abortion--"I didn't know how to
go about distinguishing compassion from love: perhaps it was only
compassion I felt for her”; so, again, he lets the emotion pass with-
out openly acknowledging or acting upon it.

As a result, the possibility of Love passes from Jake, as it
passes from Todd Andrews before him, because he knows and imagines too
much to accept and return it. He is not sufficiently innocent. Modern
Man, in the persons of Joseph and Rennie Morgan as well as in the
person of Jacob Horner, is defeated by a thoroughly nihilistic uni-

' verse no matter what ethical solution he adopts; but, in the case of
the Morgans, the defeat is at least slightly qualified by their having
been able genuinely to share and thus to brighten each other's lives
for a short while before the inevitable death. In the case of Jake
Horner the defeat is total because, from the beginning to the end of
his road, he has been alone and "in the dark."

Closely related to the above characteristics in Rennie are
those which indicate that she embodies an idea which I have called in
the previous chapter "Otherness." In Rennie's relationships with Joe
and with Jake, man is offered the possibility of achieving a genuine
sense of wholeness by joining his own generally male qualities with
"other," opposite, generally female ones. Rennie's sexual qualities

are not, after all, completely neutralized. She is physically

 

115

attractive to both men; and her final, fatal predicament is a pecu-
liarly feminine one. Also, she differs mentally from Jake and Joe in
the traditionally female way of being less rational and more emotional
then they. Moreover, in Rennie's relationship with Joe in particular,
there is illustrated the possibility of man's achieving a sense of
wholeness by coming to terms with the Otherness within his own per-
sonality, by establishing harmony between the conscious, "male”

part of his mind and the subconscious, "female" part. Emphasizing
this concept of intra-personal rather than inter-personal Otherness
are those physical traits which Rennie shares with Joe: the large
size, the light coloring, and the excellent coordination.

To a significant extent, then, Rennie Morgan is an illustra-
tion of Otherness, as were Betty June Gunter, the German Sergeant, and
Jane Mack before her. And, although it is not stated explicitly in
this novel as it was in the first, Barth's model for the wholeness
I which she offers to the man who can win her is Plato's half-male, half-
female proto-human. By having Rennie finally ally herself intimately
with Joe rather than with Jake, Barth is reminding us again that the
act which joins the opposing halves of Plato's proto-human is an
embrace. He is reasserting the contention that a true sense of whole-
ness, whether it is the result of coming to terms with the Otherness
without or the Otherness within, can be achieved only by the man who

somehow is able to remain innocent enough to love.

"h‘ 1*-

We.
.‘
1:.

116

This concern with Otherness is given even fuller treatment in
the characterization of Peggy Rankin. Distinctively female character-
istics are even more pronounced in her than they are in Rennie.

Peggie is shapely and small; she has long hair; she is associated with a
salt water (she and Jake first meet at Ocean City); and nearly all
of her appearances and phone calls revolve around her sexuality. In

all these instances, the similarity between her and Jane Mack in ng_ ['

 

Floating_Opera is close. Moreover, Peggy, like Rennie, is placed in

 

a predicament that is in our society exclusively a female one. When
Jake is falsely propositioning her after his first day of classes (on
the afternoon of the same day on which he commits adultery with
Rennie), Peggie cries, "What a horrible spot a woman's in!" (p. 98).
And in Jake's last visit with her, he uses her desperate desire to
marry and thus to stop playing the role of forty-year-old-pick-up as
both carrot and stick to move her to achieve his own ends.

Peggy's illustrative dimension is more fully developed, how-
ever, than to make her stand solely for the Otherness that is found in
persons outside oneself, especially persons of the Opposite sex. She
also manifests a number of traits which echo Betty June Gunter and the

German sergeant in The Floating Opera and which cause her, like them,

 

to stand for the Otherness in one's own mind, for the primal and
mysterious subconscious, the 1g, First, there are those features
which emphasize oneness with Jake: her slim build, her rather long

but not unattractive face, her profession as English teacher. Then,

117

too, she has features which suggest primitiveness: the dark hair and
tan, the fact that she is noticeably older and more "spirited" than
Jake, the fact that he associates her from first to last with simple,
brutish sexual function. Her last name neatly sums up these two
kinds of characteristics in Peggie: she is Jake's "Rank-kin." And

smile at her though he will, her attraction for him is so strong that, i
even after she has in no uncertain terms rejected him, he cannot step

entertaining the possibility of making her his legal, legitimate kin

 

by marriage: "Maybe I would marry Peggy Rankin; take her surname; (
father a child on her" (p. l86).

The pattern of interaction between Jake and Peggie is very
similar to that between Todd Andrews and the major characters who

stand for Otherness in The Floating Opera. First comes the spontaneous,

 

in a sense inevitable, physical coupling which suggests symbolically
that the merging of opposing halves into one whole 13 possible. Todd
wildly c0pulates with Betty June; he embraces the German sergeant as
if he were his mistress; similarly, Jake has intercourse with Peggie
in her motel room at Ocean City. Then, this merger is followed by an
encounter in which the narrator both inflicts and receives severe
pain, in which whatever hopes the narrator and the other character may
have had for a new sense of wholeness are shattered. Todd humiliates
Betty June in the bordello and as a result barely escapes with his
life; he shoves his bayonet into the German sergeant's throat and
thereafter is haunted by that soft puncturing sound; and, in the case
of Peggie Rankin again, Jake makes a "humiliating" and "false" promise

of marriage in exchange for the name of a competent abortionist and

118

then strikes Peggie a hard blow in the face when she either cannot or
will not produce that name. Both before and after her final refusal,
however, she is able to inflict some severe psychological blows of

her own. She intentionally leads Jake to think that she does know an
abortionist and thus to make his humiliatingly false protestations of
desire to "clean up [his] messes" and marry her. And her dramatically
prepared denial of aid is what literally precipitates Jake's desperate
arrangements with the Doctor, which in turn cause Rennie's death and
Jake's subsequent retreat from the world.

In the character of Peggie Rankin, then, we again find Barth
illustrating the idea that man cannot help but try to "know" what is
other than himself, but, paradoxically, that that attempt to embrace
Otherness, particularly the Otherness which is the dark, irrational,
subconscious side of his own mind, is not only futile but also fatal.
In her relationship with Jake, Peggie thus symbolically reiterates the
central assertion about modern man which Barth makes through every
central character in his first two novels. When and if a man out-
grows his ethical childhood, his first response is to turn to the
outside world. He attempts to determine what he should do in given
situations by acquiring intimate knowledge of the facts, both human
and non-human, that surround him--by learning to identify the essence,
the truth, the reality, the God, that seems inherent in those "other"
facts and then tailoring his actions accordingly. The search brings
a number of fascinating discoveries, but finally it proves to be
futile; and man concludes that the universe is Godless. He is forced

to turn inward, then, and try to discover whether knowledge of himself

 

119

can provide the absolute rules for conduct which knowledge of the
universe cannot. At first, when he views his conscious, rational
faculty, the one that is in charge of the whole investigation, as his
dominant if not his sole distinguishing trait, the new approach
appears to be working; but when he begins to be fully aware of his
"other" subconscious, irrational faculty and to see _1'_’g as the dominant P
trait, then the forces of determinism reign supreme and the concept of

identity along with the concept of value becomes ultimately mysterious.

 

Knowledge of the Otherness within finally confirms rather than denies (
knowledge of the Otherness without. A man's intimacy with either does

not teach him how to act; it teaches him that there is no reason to

act at all. It leads him to "nothing," to death, to “the end of the

road."

VI

Like the four other major characters in The End of the Road,

 

the Doctor has a strong illustrative function. He stands for the God
or Truth or Secret of the universe as did his predecessor in Ihg_
Floating Opera, Captain Jacob R. Adam. The "brisk assuredness"

(p. 75) with which the Doctor works and explains the workings of the
macrocosm as well as the microcosm, the bright light in which he

always "operates," the manner in which Jake thinks of him with a

capital D_and associates him with the words Gpg_and Lp§g_(pp. lBl-l82)--

all these traits initially direct us to interpret him in the

120

illustrative manner suggested above. Yet, paradoxically, what the
Doctor, again like Captain Adam, indicates about that God or Truth
or Secret in the universe is that it is not there, or at least not
there in the traditional absolute sense. All, the Doctor declares,
is relativity, impermanence, mystery. His headquarters and his
therapies continually change; Jake never does know his “real" name;
he never can tell whether the Doctor "really” believes anything he
says; he never is given the opportunity to directly question or dis-
agree with the Doctor. "That's my business, not yours," the medic-
mentor replies on the one occasion when Jake does try such question-
ing (p. 83).

Perhaps the best way to elucidate the idea which the Doctor
embodies is to enumerate the traits in him which attach generally to
two attributes. First is Ambiguity. Barth invests him with both good
and evil in the symbolic colors of black (his skin), white (his house,
room, chairs, and jacket), and gray (his mustache and sportcoat). The
therapeutic paces he puts Jake through are ”existentialist " in nature,
but he highly approves of Joe's "essentialist" manner of living as
well. In fact, as we saw in the first part of his explanation of
Mythotherapy, he questions whether those two terms, or any others for
that matter, are meaningful at all. The undeniable progress that his
patients make toward "remobilization" and the astounding insight and
sureness of his advice lead us to agree with Jake that he is amazingly
"part prOphet"; but the shady nature of his entire institution and
especially his part in the butchering of Rennie Morgan make us equally

ready to agree that he is "part quack."

 

121

In this last act, we see not only Ambiguity but also his
second general quality, Indifference. It is difficult to imagine a
more callous attitude under such conditions than the Doctor's; for,
from the moment Rennie enters so obviously afraid and suffering to
the moment she is carried out so horribly dead, all his interest is
directed at 931g and at his learning a lesson from the experience. g
But we have been prepared for this callous Indifference by the Doc- ;

tor's attitude toward his other patients throughout the novel. He

 

is entirely dedicated to treating their paralyses, or rather, as he i
would say it, “paralyzed them," but certainly not out of any feelings
of love or sympathy or concern. As nearly as one can tell, his sole
motivation is curiosity.

Old peOple, who constitute almost his whole clientele, present
him an interesting intellectual and physical challenge. They have
often ceased moving altogether not as a result of physical ailments so
much as of the mental perspective which their many years have given
them; so they are convenient symbols for the Doctor (and for Barth) of
the fact that there is, from the broader, longer point of view, no
ultimate reason to do anything at all. It is precisely because Jake is
pp§_old but still has this broader, longer point of view, this cos-
m0psis, that the Doctor finds his case "the most interesting . . .
[he's] seen in years" (p. 180). It is so interesting, in fact, that
the Doctor does show one apparently true emotion, anger, when Jake
threatens to ruin his carefully planned program of therapy by getting
so intimately involved with the Morgans. The Doctor risks his entire

career when he consents to do the abortion in order to salvage that case.

122

Ambiguity and Indifference, then, are at the heart of the uni-
verse--a black Doctor in a white room working assiduously and cold-
heartedly and illegally and effectively to keep the human race
literally moving; treating them with philosophy, drama, calisthenics,
and dozens of other "therapies" including love and prescriptive grammar
and the World Almanac; "at worst . . . some combination of quack and
prophet--Father Divine, Sister Kenny, and Bernarr MacFadden combined
(all of them quite effective people) with elements of faith healer and
armchair Freud thrown in--running a semi-legitimate rest home for
senile eccentrics" (p. 86). He is unquestionably a "most extraordin-
ary Doctor" who finally defies rational evaluation. The most appro-
priate comment one can make is exactly the one which Jake himself at
one point makes: "Well--this is absurd" (p. 78).

And in that comment we have the final description of the uni-

verse of The End of the Road and of the non-God at the center. The

 

Doctor stands for the idea of Absurdity itself. By allying Jake more
closely than ever with Absurdity at the novel's conclusion, Barth is
simply putting the exclamation point to his assertion that modern man
cannot deny his fatal knowledge. If he is going to find a cure for

the fatal disease of cosmopsis, if he is going to learn to "really live”
again, then he will have to do so in the very face of universal and
personal nothingness. And until that time, he had better realize that
he is no longer fit to exist in the world of ordinary human relation-
ships. The idea of modern intellectualists choosing to hide them-
selves away in institutions like the Remobilization Farm very much as

religious devotees have traditionally chosen to hide themselves away

 

123

in monasteries and convents is, of course, absurd. But then one
remembers the Doctor's reply when Jake once leveled that same charge

at him: "So?"

VII

John Barth thus employs characterization in his second novel

as his primary attack on the "brave ethical subjectivism" suggested
as a possibility on the last page of his first novel, and the rea-
soning by which he accomplishes that feat is expressed most clearly
and concisely in the atom metaphor which I alluded to early in my
treatment of Jake Horner:

the individual is not individual after all, any

more than the atom is really atomistic: he can

be divided further, and subjectivism doesn't

really become intelligible until one finally

locates the subject (p. l42).
The End of the Road dramatizes this thinking, first by examining two
basic and conflicting ways of living in response to the perception
that the personality as well as the cosmos is atomistic, or nihilistic;
and then by extending both ways to disaster. The first way, the one I
have called Existentialism, is to accept totally the inner nothingness
and, finding no meaning anywhere, to concern oneself only with action,
no matter how whimsical and irresponsible it may be. The other way,
which I have called Essentialism, is stubbornly to deny the inner

nothingness and, pretending that you are your own God, to operate in a

serious, responsible fashion. Once Barth has formulated these two

 

124

positions in the characters of Jacob Horner and Joseph Morgan, respec-
tively, he destroys them by two principal methods. On the one hand,
he creates a third character who stands for Man, Rennie Morgan, and
traps her helplessly and fatally between the two positions. On the
other hand, he has his Existentialist narrator and central character
temporarily try Essentialism (Jake decides "absolutely" that Rennie
should have an abortion and acts on that decision) and finally real-
ize that it does not work for him, that ppth_positions have been
responsible for his share in Rennie's death.

Other ideas are clear in Barth's characterization, particularly
the concepts of America and of the Writer; but they are subordinated to
this principal concern with modern man's ethical dilemma and with the
final termination of all "non-mystical value-thinking." The full fic-
tional explanation of an alternative kind of value-thinking is about
to come in Barth's third novel. We have seen it foreshadowed, how-
ever, in the characters of Joe and Rennie Morgan, as it was in a
fainter way in Harrison and Jane Mack before them. Much of what the
Morgans illustrate in this regard is implied, and it is impossible for
a person who knows these first three novels well to tell how much of
what he sees in one is actually there on its own and how much is the
result of reflections from the other two. My point in thisdisserta-
tion is that these three works of Barth's are essentially one. Suf-
fice it to say at this point, then, that the peace which Jake Horner
never finds and which Rennie and Joe Morgan do achieve for a short
time has less to do with pe0ple thinking about how they should
act than it does with people thinking that they love each other.

CHAPTER IV
THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

 

The Sot-Weed Factor is so different in kind from John Barth's
first two novels that, as I suggested in my introductory chapter,
critics apparently have not taken seriously Barth's claim that his

1 At least they have not taken

first three works are a thematic unit.
that claim seriously enough to explore fully the meaning of the third
novel in relation to The Floating_9pera and The End of the Road and

to determine what answer Barth offers for modern man's problems of
value and identity. Barth has left him with only a "brave ethical
subjectivism" in the first novel and then has taken that position to
its terminal point in the second,2 but has he given modern man an
alternative to that position in the third? ~Has Barth in fact proposed
a sort of "mystical value-thinking" to replace the obsolete "non-

mystical" sort? My answer to these questions is affirmative, and it

is the purpose of this chapter to deal in some depth with the manner

 

1

2Gregory F. Bluestone, "John Wain and John Barth: The Agony
and the Accurate," Massachusetts Review, l (Fall l959-Summer l960),
586.

John Enck, "John Barth: An Interview," WSCL, 6, 10 a ll.

 

125

126

in which Barth defines again the modern ethical dilemma and then for
the first time fully defines a solution to it.

As in the previous two chapters, I will approach the problem
of meaning in Barth's work primarily through the element of "illus-
trative" characterization because it is, I believe, the primary tool
with which Barth works to create his meaning. Such an approach on my
part will again run the risk of making the novel sound more purely
allegorical than it in fact is; but, in this novel, the risk is less
dangerous. Here, more than in the earlier works, the mimetic, "repre-
sentative," aspects of characterization are played down, while the
philOSOphical, "illustrative," ones become more prominent. The Sot-

Weed Factor is, of course, a "historical novel“ based on the life of a

 

real man named Ebenezer Cooke who wrote a real poem entitled The Sot-

Weed Factor. But, as Philip E. Diser has pointed out, the historical

 

facts with which Barth had to work are quite few and thus leave ample

3 Barth himself has happily admitted both at the

room for invention.
end of the novel and in other places that he played fast and loose
with Clio.4 It is apparent that Barth, like the central character he
creates, sees in history "no more than the stuff of metaphors"; so,
not surprisingly, Barth's answer to the direct question of whether Ihg_

Sot-Weed Factor is an allegory is, in his characteristically under-

stated way, affirmative:

 

3Philip E. Diser, "The Historical Ebenezer Cooke," Critigue,
lO, 3, 48-59.

4John Barth, "The Literature of Exhaustion," Atlantic MonthLy,
220, 2, 30.

 

127

I wouldn't be surprised. I had some things in mind
when I wrote it, and it is interesting and cheering
to find out later that I had more in mind than I
thought I had . . . one works by hunch and guess and
intuition, with some conscious patterns in mind,
too, and one has a character do this instead of that
because one feels this is appr0priate.5

The sheer size of The Sot-Weed Facto: makes finding and expli-

 

cating its_patterns of "appropriateness” extremely difficult. Its
756 pages are packed with scores of complexly related characters woven

6 For the

into a plot that is intentionally "fancier than Tom Jones."
sake of clarity and economy, then, I will concentrate on the two
characters who carry the great majority of the thematic weight,
Ebenezer Cooke and Henry Burlingame III. Even with this focus, how-
ever, one cannot help but touch upon the significance of many other
characters and the context in which they appear; therefore, a plot
summary is necessary at this point if my analysis is not to be con-
stantly bogged down in exposition.

Ebenezer Cooke was born in l666 on the Maryland estate of his
father, Andrew, a tobacco agent (a sot-weed factor). Born at the same
time was a sister, Anna; and the mother, also named Anna, died of the
difficult birth. After four years of being raised by a young French
nursemaid named Roxanne, the twins were taken from her and from the
estate (Malden) and were allowed to grow up almost entirely on their

own on the family estate at St. Giles, England. When Eben and Anna

were ten, Andrew provided for them a brilliant, energetic, affectionate

 

5
6

Enck, "Interview,“ 14.

Enck, "Interview," 7.

128

young tutor named Henry Burlingame III. The three became as insepa-
rable as the two had been previously; but, after six years, Henry was
abruptly dismissed and Eben shortly thereafter was sent off to Cam-
bridge. He proved to be an uninspired and indecisive student; and,
finally, after his former tutor rescued him from a state of literal
catatonia to which that indecisiveness had led, he left without the
degree. He was no more inspired either as a tutor himself for two
months or, after a year of idleness at St. Giles, as an apprentice
accountant for six years in a London firm to which his father had sent
him in order to prepare to manage and someday inherit Malden. It is
at this point, in the spring of l694, when Ebenezer is still unable to
find a satisfactory vocation and, because of the same sort of indeci-
sion, is also still a virgin, that the plot proper begins.

As the inadvertent winner of a winehouse wager, Eben ends up
alone with a beautiful Spirited young whore named Joan Toast. Instead
of making use of her for a fee, however, he chooses instead to ideal-
ize her and to dedicate his life to remaining virgin and writing
poetry in her honor. Joan's lover and pimp, John McEvoy, is so irate
at the loss of revenue that he informs Andrew Cooke of his son's sup-
posedly dissolute habits; and Andrew demands, on penalty of total
disinheritance, that his son leave on the next ship to America and
begin immediately to manage the Maryland estate. Eben ingeniously
Combines the practical exigencies of his father's demand with the
idealistic goals of his newly chosen vocation by asking for and
receiving from Lord Baltimore an official commission as Poet Laureate

0f.Maryland. Eben then bids an emotional goodbye to his sister and

129

boards a coach to Plymouth where the Poseidon is about to sail for
the new world.

On the coach he again meets his former tutor, disguised as a
Colonel Peter Sayer, who tells him of the fantastically complicated
adventures and roles which he has had to assume in the seven years
since they last saw one another in an attempt to trace his mysterious
parentage. (He was raised from early infancy by an English sailor who
found him floating in a canoe on Chesapeake Bay.) Burlingame's per-
sonal quest has become entangled with the highly complicated political
situation in Maryland, where governor Nicholson is fighting to save
the province from corruption at the hands of a villain named John
Coode. In order to accomplish the former personal task, Burlingame
needs to learn whether Sir Henry Burlingame, lieutenant of John Smith
on his famous l607 voyage up the eastern shore of the Chesapeake and

author of a little known Privie Journall, is actually his ancestor.

 

In order to accomplish the latter political task, Burlingame must lay
hands on the Maryland Assembly Journal of l69l, the year in which Coode
was acting governor. The Journal will allow the present governor to
prove against Coode the charges of graft, vice, and sedition.

Upon arrival at Plymouth, Eben is almost killed when he inter-
cedes in a tavern dispute between two of C00de's henchmen. Then he
loses touch with Burlingame and finds him again, this time disguised
as John Coode himself. Finally, Eben boards the Poseidon and finds
that Bertrand Burton, the valet whom he thought he had left in London,
has assumed his identity and that, if he does not want to be thrown

overboard, he must in turn assume his valet's identity. The crossing

130

goes even less smoothly than the brief stay at Plymouth. It is marked
by the virgin poet's apparently losing his whole inheritance through
Bertrand's philandering and wagering, his nearly drowning in a storm,
his being nearly raped by the crew, his being kidnapped by pirates, his
accidentally coming into possession of part of the Assembly Journal

for which Burlingame is searching, his discovering that on the oppo-

site sides of those pages is a Secret Historie of John Smith's l607

 

voyage which may well shed light on Burlingame's ancestry, his nearly
raping a girl on a whoreship who looks very much like Joan Toast, and
his and Bertrand's finally being made to walk the plank.

Instead of drowning, however, they are washed up on what they
take to be an island. After freeing a large black man whom they find
bound and washed up on the shore--the name he utters sounds like
"Drakepecker"--and then leaving him to care for a wounded Indian whom
they find in a cave-~he is Quassapelagh, king of the Anacostin tribe--
Eben and Bertrand make the further startling discovery that their
location is not an island after all but actually the eastern shore of
Maryland. One of the first persons whom they meet a little inland is
a syphilitic swine maiden named Susan Warren, who, except for her
sores and for ten years or so of aging, resembles Joan Toast. She
claims, in fact, that she knows Joan to be nearby; and, at Eben's
fervid entreaty, She promises to arrange a meeting between him and
Joan that night at the house of her employer, Captain Thomas Mitchell.
The anticipated reunion does not take place; but, after one more
instance of Eben's almost committing rape, this time with Susan Warren,

a different reunion does occur. The poet accidentally interrupts

131

Henry Burlingame, disguised as Tim Mitchell, the employer's son,
making love to a pig.
The_ex-tutor explains that he has become, in every sense Of

the word, a cosmophile: "I love the world, sir," he tells his shocked

 

friend, "and so make love to it!" He draws the clear distinction
between himself and Eben, who, in a Biblical as well as a literal
sense, "know[s] naught Of the great real world." Nevertheless, it is
Eben and his sister Anna whom Burlingame loves most.and would most
fervently make love to. Though becoming increasingly disillusioned
with Henry, Eben accompanies him to the home Of a Jesuit priest named
Thomas Smith. There they hear the story of a Jesuit missionary named
Fitz Maurice--he was executed by Indians in the early l6OO'S--and

then get possession Of another part of the Assembly Journal-Sggpep
Historie by means of another of Henry's disguises. The next afternoon,
Eben and Burlingame arrive in Cambridge just in time to witness the
regular meeting Of the Dorchester County court. Its blatantly corrupt
method Of Operation quickly enrages.the virgin poet SO that, in a
paroxysm of righteous indignation, he intercedes in the case of Smith
vs. Spurdance on behalf of the grievously put-upon William Smith.

When the judge hears Eben's full name, he acquiesces to his will,
takes the estate in question from Spurdance, and awards it to the
plaintiff. Only tOO late does Eben learn that Smith is a scoundrel

in the employ of Coode, that Ben Spurdance is an honest man in the

employ of Andrew Cooke, and that, in short, the estate which he has

just given away is his own Malden.

132

Matters become even worse for Eben when, after his disastrous
day in court, he gets drunk for the first time in his life and pub-
licly blames Henry for all of his miseries. In turn, Henry assaults
Eben with a vivid public account of his sister's lusty amorous tech-
niques. The poet swoons from the effects Of the disclosure and the
wine; and when he awakens he is in a corn crib, cold and naked and
feeling the first signs of "seasoning," the common name for the illness
which so Often afflicts newcomers to Maryland. Mary Mungummory, the
madame Of a four-wheel whorehouse, soon befriends him and, besides
giving him clothes, tells him the fascinating story Of her ex-lover,
Charley Mattassin. He was an Indian who, except for his dark skin,
resembled Burlingame in almost every particular and who was hanged for
murdering whites. Leaving the "Traveling Whore O"Dorset,"*Eben at
last makes his way to Malden. where, severely weakened by the season-
ing, he unknowingly commits two acts that seem to seal any possible
legal loopholes in the transfer Of the Cooke property. He signs an
indenture agreement under William Smith and then goes through a hasty
marriage ceremony with Susan Warren, whose employer is Smith's cohort.

Ebenezer comes near to death from the illness and from too
heavy a dose of Opiate medicine; but in the following weeks his new
wife nurses him back to health, despite the contempt with which he
treats her because he assumes that she has been part of the plot to
rob his family Of Malden. During the period of autumn convalescence,
Eben finally composes a long poem on Maryland, as he originally prom-
ised Lord Baltimore (actually Henry in another one Of his disguises)

he would do. The poem is not the elegaic Marylandiad which he had

 

133

originally envisioned and had worked on intermittently in the spring,

however, but a bitter satire entitled The Sot-Weed Factor, based upon

 

his own shocking initiation into provincial life. After penning the
last word Of-his poem, he wants to shoot himself; but his wife stays
him with the story of Joan Toast.

She tells him Of the young woman who had been so moved by
Eben Cooke's innocent, idealistic love for her that night in his room
that she left John McEvoy to follow Eben to Maryland and marry him,
the young woman who had chosen to cross the Atlantic on a whoreship
because it Offered the only Opportunity for her coming to her husband
in no more used a condition than when he last saw her, the young woman
who had been raped once by a syphilitic black and almost a second time
by Eben himself, the young woman who was so disillusioned by that exper-
ience that she sold herself into the bondage Of the first man whom she
met at the dock, the young woman who was soon so infected and so wasted
by Opium and ill usage that she looked ugly and Old and was considered
good for nothing but tending pigs and poxing savages-and marrying and
nursing a fool, the young woman who nevertheless still loves that
fool. Joan Toast, in short, is the woman who, under the false name Of
Susan Warren, stands before Eben at the very moment. All that she
asks Of him now is that he take the six pounds that she has earned
servicing Indians in the cold woodshed, wait a few hours while she
earns six more, escape with her to England on a ship that is about to
embark from Cambridge, and care for her like a sister in the few

months which she has left.

134

In a fit Of shame and horror so powerful that it makes him
retch, Eben begs forgiveness and pledges to do lovingly all that she
has asked; but, before she can return, he takes her money and his poem
and flees into the December night, intending to return to England
alone. At the Cambridge dock, Eben is accosted by Ben Spurdance, the
ex-overseer whom his court decision has ruined; and only the sword of
Burlingame, this time in the role of'a Nicholas Lowe, saves the poet
from serious harm. Burlingame's personal magnetism and his news that
Anna may well be in St. Mary's City convince Eben to ferry there rather
than to sail for England. Upon reaching that destination, the two
men separate in order for the cosmophile to look for Coode and the
poet to look for his sister; but what the latter finds instead is his
ex-valet Bertrand, who, since being separated from his master at
Captain Mitchell's, has been playing the Poet Laureate again to no
greater advantage than before. The man to whom he had wagered away
Malden on the crossing now expects him to marry his pregnant daughter.‘

Bertrand also tells Eben that he has recently seen Anna, who
looks much aged, and that she has gone to Malden thinking to find her
sick brother there. Deeply afraid that Anna, like Joan, will be put
to use in the den of prostitution and Opium that Malden under Smith
(and ultimately under Coode) has become, Eben takes Bertrand in tow
and hires a sloop captained by a man named Cairn and crewed by two
blacks to take them across Chesapeake Bay to Malden.’ A fierce storm-
drives them south Of their destination, however; and only Captain
Cairn's exceptional skill, the crew's indefatigable pumping, the

soundness of the sloop, and a great deal Of luck enable them to find

135

shelter at last in the Straights Of Limbo off Bloodsworth Island. The
escape is short-lived, though, for the island is the secret camp Of a
band Of Negro and Indian rebels. Soon Eben, Bertrand, and the Captain
are prisoners in a mud hut with a fourth white man who turns out to be
John McEvoy. Before falling prey to the rebels, McEvoy had followed
Joan to Maryland in a slave ship and been turned away in Eben's name
once and for all. He and Eben readily forgive each other for the
misfortune which each has caused; but such absolution seems to no
avail when, after a month Of confinement, the four are tied to stakes
in the middle of camp.

Their lives are at least temporarily saved when two Of the
three rebel leaders who come out Of their hut to supervise the burn-
ings turn out to be Quassapelagh and "Drakepecker"--actually Drepacca--
the two men whom Eben and Bertrand had saved when they first set foot
on Maryland's shore. The Indian and the Negro petition the third and
most influential rebel leader, Chicamec, the Old Ahatchwhoop king
whose militance against whites is legendary, to allow Eben and Bertrand
to go free. Chicamec grants the favor, but Eben does not accept it.
He maintains that, instead, all four whites must suffer whatever fate
he does, since he is responsible for their being there in the first
place. To that end he works out an agreement whereby he and McEvoy
may leave the island and, if they are able to find Burlingame and
persuade him to come there, Bertrand and Captain Cairn, too, will be
released. If Cooke and McEvoy cannot produce Burlingame, then they

will return and be burned along with the other two.

136

Such an agreement comes only after Eben is allowed to read
the sacred book of the Ahatchwhoops, which is, in fact, the last part

Of John Smith's Secret Historie. It tells how Smith's voyage up the

 

Chesapeake climaxed with his escaping the savage Ahatchwhoops by
tricking Sir Henry Burlingame into becoming their new king and then
abandoning him. The upshot Of the story is thatSmith's lieutenant
wg§_Henry Burlingame I and that the old Indian king named Chicamec is
also Henry Burlingame II. He had married a woman who was sired by the
Jesuit missionary Fitz Maurice on the night before his martyrdom; he
had tried to kill his fair-skinned third son by setting him afloat

on the Chesapeake shortly after birth; and he is undeniably the father
for whom Henry Burlingame III has searched so long and fruitlessly.
Eben's plan, though he does not, of course, reveal it to the rebels,
is tO have Henry go at least temporarily to Bloodsworth Island not
only as a means of saving the four lives but also as a means of pla-
cating the Old father who thinks he will be left without an heir.

Thus placated, and with a son like Henry to advise him, Chicamec will
be less likely to effectively lead the rebellion which could eventually
wipe out every white in Maryland, if not in all Of North America.

With this plan in mind, Eben and McEvoy set Off to find
Burlingame. The first person they meet is Mary Mungummory, on her way
to Church Creek tO inquire about a prospective whore to whom the citi-
zens refer sarcastically as the Church-Creek Virgin. It is clear now
that Mary's ex-lover, Charley Mattassin, was Chicamec's Oldest son;
and, when the three travelers stop for the night at the house of a

trapper named Harvey Russecks and hear his tale Of Billy Rumbly an

137

Indian who resembles Charley and Henry in nearly every particular, it
becomes clear that he is Chicamec's second son. Billy has recently
come to Church Creek a complete savage; and, in an amazingly short
time he has made himself into a perfect English gentleman and taken
for his wife the Church-Creek Virgin. (She, in turn, has quickly
made herself into a perfect savage squaw.)

Afraid that Billy's new wife is actually Joan Toast, deranged
by his cruel desertion, Eben hurries the next day to Church Creek.

But before he can find out anything on that score, McEvoy's dallyings
with the daughter Of the miller Henry Russecks (Harvey's brother) give
Eben the Opportunity for an intimate encounter with the miller's lusty
French wife, Roxanne. Eben politely rejects the Opportunity and uses
the time instead for verbal intercourse on the subject of his own
innocence, the last shreds Of which he intends to give to his wife.
When the miller comes upon the scene, the result is a desperate chase
that ends with his taking a bad fall; and when, after that, Roxanne
hears the full name of the man with whom she has almost gone to bed,
she suddenly falls as unconscious as her husband.

The poet finally does meet the “Englished” Billy Rumbly and
accompanies him to his home. There he discovers to his horror, that
Billy's "savaged" wife is not his wife, Joan but his sister, Anna.
Their long hours of subsequent conversation reveal that she has acted
as she has because Of her despair over the probability of never seeing
her brother again and because Of.Billy's close resemblance to
Burlingame; that both brother and sister are aware Of holding an

"unnatural" love for each other; and that Anna, like Eben, is still

138

technically a virgin. Both Henry Burlingame III and Billy Rumbly, it
seems, share with their brother Charley the frustrating condition of
having a sexual organ too small to penetrate and impregnate anyone.
Ironically, it is because of rather than in spite of this deficiency
that the men have developed such effective amorous techniques and
such insatiable amorous appetites.

By the time the twins have stopped talking, Billy Rumbly has
reverted completely to savagery. He goes back eagerly to the rebel
camp and forces Anna, who has reverted just as completely to civili-
zation, to go with Eben to Church Creek. First, Eben finds that the
miller has died; and then he makes the further startling discoveries
that Roxanne was his and Anna's nursemaid and that Henrietta, the
daughter, is his half-Sister. When Bertrand and Captain Cairn arrive,
having been freed immediately upon the return of Chicamec's son, Eben
and the whole company of friends and newly discovered relatives board
the Captain's leOp to sail for Malden, where, it is rumored, Andrew
Cooke and a man who claims to be his son are now residing. Before
they can leave shore, however, pirates seize the ship, sail it out
into the Bay until nightfall, declare their intention to rape and
butcher the women, and then force McEvoy, Bertrand, and Eben over-
board.

The three men swim to a tiny island. Finding a small skiff
and part of an oar there, they decide to try for land and risk drown-
ing rather than to huddle all night in their wet clothes and risk
freezing. After hours of desperate skulling and bailing on the rough

Chesapeake, the exhausted men finally reach shore; and, when they

139

stagger at last to the light by which they have been guiding, they
find that it emanates from the front room of Malden. Eben peers into
the window; sees that his father is, in truth, there; sees also that
the man whom he is calling his son is Burlingame; and once again
swoons.

Four days later he awakens to find that, along with Andrew
and Burlingame, all of the persons who have claims to the Cooke's
property are in the house. Moreover, all of the women whom he had
left on the sloop are present and well, having been suddenly and
ineXplicably set ashore. (Roxanne is sure that it is because the
pirate chief is the man who was her first lover.) Joan Toast, too, is
present; but she is far from well. Though she has spirit enough left
to say that she wishes never to see another man, syphilis and ill
usage have transformed her into a "bedlamite." McEvoy is recovering
swiftly from the night of exhaustion and exposure, but Bertrand is
moving swiftly and surely toward death. Happiest Of those in the
hOuse is Burlingame. Eben's resolutely innocent maintenance of iden-
tity and assumption of responsibility have solved the mystery of his-
parentage; and, in return, before he hastens Off to Bloodsworth
Island, he is prepared to apply his vast experience toward putting
Malden back in the proper hands.

This he accomplishes after Governor Nicholson, who also has
come to Malden, calls an impromptu court session in the diningroom.
By means of a brilliant grasp of the labyrinthine legal, political,
and personal complexities the case involves, Burlingame is able to

concoct for Nicholson an out-of-court-settlement strategy that will

140

simultaneously return Malden to the CookeS, strike a blow against
Coode's vice and sedition activities in the province, and recover

the final segment Of the Assembly Journal. This last piece Of evi-
dence, of course, will facilitate the arrest and conviction of Coode
himself. Even more fortunately, on the back sides of the Journal are
the last pages of The Privie Journall of Sir Henry Burlingame, which
tell of a secret eggplant aphrodisiac that can cure Burlingame of

his hereditary impotence.

The last snag in the proceedings is the fact that Joan has
stolen the most crucial pages of the Journall, those which pertain to
the actual eggplant recipe, and that in exchange for it she demands
Malden itself. At first, the price seems wildly excessive and
Andrew Objects vigorously; but Eben and Henry soon realize that it is
only a moral victory over men which Joan is after. Because Eben has
refused to have his marriage annulled, as he might well have on the
grounds that Joan Toast married him under a false name and that he
cannot legitimately be expected to consummate a marriage with a
syphilitic woman, he is still Joan's closest relative and thereby will
inherit all of her possessions when she dies. SO, Nicholson capitu-
lates to Joan's terms, and the result is a qualified happy ending.
Eben eagerly ascends the stairs to consummate his marriage, conscious
that in so doing he is exchanging the remnants Of his virginity for
the pox, ensuring his family's claim to Malden, and, most importantly,
Offering a measure of retribution for the misery he has caused Joan

Toast. Burlingame and Anna ascend the stairs too, in order,

141

Burlingame says, to chaperone the honeymoon couple; and Andrew calls
out for a rundlet with which to celebrate the occasion.

Three points ought to be made as an appendix to this plot
summary. First, it has had, of necessity, to ignore or tO imply only
briefly the rollicking good fun that is so much a part of The Sot-

Weed Factor. Unfortunately, my analysis will have to proceed in

 

roughly the same fashion, treating with a straight face a good number
Of hilarious incidents in order to get at the serious ethical con-
cerns which underlie them. Second, the preceding summary also has
had to skip over most of the numerous tales, lectures, discussions,
thoughts, and dreams which contribute so much to the motivation and
the significance Of the characters. Important passages of this sort
my analysis will most certainly not skip over.

My third point is that the meticulously knit comic plot which
has just been summarized and the meaning which that plot conveys are
fairly thoroughly unraveled in the novel's last chapter, which pur-
ports tO tell what "really" happened to the various characters after
that honeymoon night. In general, the lives of Eben, Anna, Henry,
and Joan do not work out as well as they might have hoped in March of
l695; nor do they work out as badly as they might have feared immedi-
ately before that time. Joan dies; Burlingame disappears; and Anna
and Eben live out their lives together, at Malden until l7l7, then
back at St. Giles. The note upon which Ebenezer Cooke dies in l732 is
weary, somewhat bitter, and, on the whole, inconclusive. The effect
of this last chapter is to make manifest a cardinal idea which Eben

expresses to Roxanne Russecks; namely, that final meaning is the dream

142

of art, not the condition Of life. For Barth, this truism applies
even--perhaps especially--to the final solution to contemporary prob-
lems of value and identity which he himself is Offering in this

third novel.

II

The Ebenezer Cooke whom we meet in the first chapter is, like
his earlier counterparts Todd Andrews and Jacob Horner, most con-
spicuously illustrative of the Modern Mind. Barth's definition Of

this concept in The Sot-Weed Factor is identical to the definition

 

we have already discussed in great detail. To state it once again,
the Modern Mind is one which perceives that chance, flux, and rela-
tivity are the reigning principles in the universe; that because man
is an integral part of the universe, they are the reigning principles
in himself as well; and, thus, that a man can find no ultimate reason
either within himself or without to do anything at all. The cause Of
this Modern Mind, again to recapitulate, is that man has simply
reached the outer limits, the point of diminishing returns, of his
knowledge and imagination. His rational faculty has grown so great
that it quickly spots the relativity underlying everychoice, and his
imagination has grown so great that it immediately provides equally
viable and attractive alternatives to that choice. The end result is

that he does not know anymore what he should choose; and, to the

143

extent that a man is identified by what he chooses, he does not know
anymore who he is.

SO, not surprisingly, we soon find out that Ebenezer Cooke
has, like Todd and Jake before him, known the condition of literally
not being able to move. Seven years earlier, he found himself one
day sitting at the window of his room in Cambridge, staring blankly
at the empty universe, "paralyzed." The abundant knowledge and imagi-
nation which had brought him to this impasse had sprung naturally
from his innate intelligence and fancy, and they had been aided
greatly by the "remarkable" education with which Burlingame had pro-
vided him. The tutor had worked on the theory that all facts and
ideas ought to be treated even-handedly and that one learns those
facts and ideas best through actively playing with rather than pas-
sively receiving them. Burlingame had applied his theory with such
thoroughness, enthusiasm, and affection that Eben not only had learned
a great deal but also had grown "quite enamored" of the world in
general. In short, learning had become for him pure fun, with the
result that

Ebenezer took quite the same sort Of pleasure in
history as in Greek mythology and epic poetry, and
made little or no distinction between, say, the
geography of atlases and that of fairy-stories

. . . he could not regard the facts of zoology
or the Norman Conquest, for example, with
genuine seriousness, nor could he discipline
himself to long labor at tedious tasks. Even
his great imagination and enthusiasm for the
world were not unalloyed virtues when combined
with his gay irresolution, for though they led
him to a great sense of the arbitrariness Of

the particular world, they did not endow him

aith a corresponding realization of its finality
p. 8 .

144

Predictably, then, when his tutor was abruptly dismissed and
soon thereafter he was sent to Cambridge where earnest, disciplined
scholarship was the order Of the day, Eben retreated from philosophy
into imaginative literature, found it increasingly difficult to make
any choices about a vocation, seemed to himself "consistently [no]
special sort Of person" (p. l2), did poorly on his exams, and finally
ground to a halt:

The man (in short), thanks both to Burlingame

and to his natural proclivities, was dizzy with
the beauty of the possible; dazzled, he threw up
his hands at choice, and like ungainly flotsam
rode half— content the tide Of chance . . .

Finally one day he did not deign even to

dress himself or eat, but sat immobile in the
window seat in his nightshirt and stared at
the activity in the street below, unable to

choose a motion at all even when, some hours
later, his untutored bladder suggested one

(p. 11).

The abrupt reappearance of Burlingame gave Eben a fortuitous
reprieve; and what followed in the next seven years was a series of
more or less passive attempts to find a cure for this modern, poten-
tially fatal disease. (Barth's previous novel called it cosmopsis.)
Initially, he simply gave over thinking altogether, fell under the
Spell of his former tutor, and committed the "bold" act Of going to
London with him and making the short-term goal Of feeding himself his
guiding principle. And in order to accomplish that goal, he adopted
the role Of Teacher pg§_§g, regardless Of the particular subject
matter taught. This solution sufficed for two months, but it lost its
appeal when Anna brought news Of Andrew Cooke's acute diStress over

his son's sudden disappearance. For better or worse, the Modern Mind

145

as illustrated in Eben has, as Anna explains, a father, a "link with
the past: [a] bond 'twixt him and the world he's born to" (p. 35);
and the goal Of lining his stomach appears insignificant in compar-
ison to that of preserving that ”link" so that he can somehow become
a worthy heir.

Eben's next attempt at curing his modern disease was a year
Of idleness at St. Giles. The year was passed with reading and light
exercise; close, unspoken communication with his sister; occasional
fruitless attempts at poetry; and day after day of "a kind Of nervous
exaltation," the result Of the pleasant but tentative nature of his
surroundings. "Although he could not look to his future with enthu-
siasm, at least he had not to bear the responsibility of having
chosen it himself" (p. 40). This irresponsible year Of leisure was
."perhaps Ebenezer's nearest approach to happiness" (p. 40). Never-
theless, it was by nature isolated, unproductive, and escapist; and,
since the goal of both Eben and his father is that he should live
productively in the real world, it is by nature only temporary and,
in a sense, not a "cure" at all.

Back in London again, this time apprenticed to a merchant in
order to learn the plantation business and, in his father's words,
"sweat Burlingame and the college out 0' ye," Eben once more "Fare[d]
Unspectacularly." The tedious, practical job of clerking he found to
be so thoroughly unappealing that he worked lazily and ineffectively
byday and idled away his evenings in winehouses and, after six years,
still found himself "no person at all" (p. 45). Clearly, Modern Man

as we find him embodied in the twenty-eight-year-Old Eben Cooke is as

146

(stymied as ever. Neither the general strategy of putting his plight

in the hands Of others nor the particular strategies Of concentrating
on the short-term goals of simply staying alive, escaping, or immersing
himself in mindless drudgery have provided even the first ounce Of

cure for his cOsmgpsis.

 

Eben's paralysis at the age Of twenty-one becomes in itself
a vivid emblem Of the dead end to which the mind has come in modern
times, and Barth has provided his central character with specific
physical traits which also are emblematic of this condition. Most of
these traits are described in the second paragraph of the novel's
first chapter, where Eben in l694 "Is Introduced and Differentiated
from His Fellows." The "pale" and "gaunt" aspects of his face and
the "raw-boned" body suggest the ethical starvation, exhaustion, or
depletion of his Modern Mind (as they did in his predecessors); and
his physical ungainliness, like Rennie Morgan's, is an effective
reminder Of his inability to act in a controlled, purposeful manner
in a universe that gives him no absolute rules for conduct. The facial
"discomposure" and the "surprise" of each bodily stance are symbolic
of the inconsistency that is characteristic Of his various personal
stances; and similarly symbolic are the facts that no one expression
or position is for long satisfactory or is truly indicative of an
underlying mood.

Another differentiating mark which also underscores the
ethical and personal inconsistency of.MOdern Man is Eben's "manner."
He is "bent to taciturnity . . . . Except for infrequent bursts of

garrulity" (p. 4). There is much to say, of course, on the subject

147

of Eben's manner. The narrator declares that the complicated reasons
behind that manner constitute the basis for the entire story; so, of
necessity, everything that is said in this chapter will at least
indirectly relate to it. For now, however, it is appropriate and
sufficient to remark only upon its inconsistency. Still another
physical trait Of Eben's which serves to illustrate his modernity is
his completely bald head. The loss of hair helps to reinforce the
concept of exhaustion and death and to remind us that his sort Of mind
makes him Older, in a sense, and less lively than his actual age would
suggest.

Still another trait serves to make the central character illus-
trative Of the Modern Mind, and that is the name Ebenezer itself. His
father bestowed it upon him, and it is he who later explains why.
Andrew's avidly Protestant young wife Anna contracted the seasoning
when she moved with him to Maryland; and, when she thought that her
illness was subsiding, she liked to refer to the Hebrews' rout Of the
Philistines and the prophet Samuel's words on the occasion, "Thus far
hath the good Lord helped us." SO, when she died of the combination
Of her illness and the birth Of twins, her bitter husband "recalled

. those verses in the Book of Samuel where God smites the
Philistines and Samuel dedicates the token of His aid--the stone the
Hebrews called Ebenezer." Andrew then continues:

"'Thusthen, boy, in bitterness and sacrilege, I

gave ye that name: I baptized ye myself, ere

Roxanne [the nursemaid] could stay me, with the

dregs Of a flagon of perry, and declared to the

com any of Malden, 'Thus far hath the Lord helped
us!‘ (p. 36).

148

Barth's illustrative intent is clear. Ebenezer is the token Of an
angry age in which man no longer believes in a God, either within
himself or without, to help him. He feels that he has been left
entirely on his own.

In a second dimension Of the illustrative characterization of
Ebenezer Cooke, he stands not simply for the Modern Mind but also for
the peculiarly American version Of that mind. He was born in America
and spent his first four years there, and the estate which he is
rightfully to manage and then inherit is in America. In addition to
these considerations, what marks him unmistakably as the American is
his innocence. He has, as we have already noted in another context,
"a great sense Of the arbitrariness of the particular real world"; but
he lacks "a corresponding realization Of its finality." This-descrip-
tion matches closely the allusion of Barth's, which I have quoted sev-
eral times in previous chapters, to the innocence which is based on
"the sort of ingenious fancy that reimagines history and creation,
sees the arbitrariness of the universe but shies from its finality."
And the fact that the allusion is followed by Barth's saying, "I'm
told this is an American characteristic,"7 leads one to interpret
Ebenezer Cooke--like Todd, Harrison, Joe, and, before his train sta-
tion catatonia, Jake--as illustrative Of the Modern American Mind.

We can see more clearly in this novel than we could in the

first two exactly why it is that Barth agrees with what he has been

 

7Richard W. Murphy, "In Print: John Barth," Horizon, 5
(January l963), 37.

149

told about innocence being a peculiarly American trait. An extraor-
dinary number of this country's original settlers were idealists like
Eben. The very fact that there pgs_an America meant that they gpglg
be idealists, that they did not hayp_to perceive their social or
political or even personal condition as being final. They could
always go west and create an alternative condition, a new world. And
this holds true, of course, not only for the original settlers of the
eastern states but also for the later settlers who pushed the country's
boundaries to the Pacific. We can see more clearly in this third
novel, tOO, that Barth's yoking the concepts of the Modern Mind and
the American into one illustrative unit has not been incidental. The
gradual decrease of unsettled American land and, thus, Of alternative
worlds, up to its terminal point in the early part of the twentieth
century provides an apt metaphor for the gradual decrease of alter-
native kinds Of rationalist ethics up to its terminal point at about
the same time. Corresponding to the Pacific Ocean is the discovery
of the subconscious mind, which proved that there is no final Reason,
Truth, or Identity within man himself any more than there is within
the universe.

Ebenezer Cooke, as we find him at the start of his twenty-
ninth year, stands, then, for the condition of the Modern American
Mind as Barth in the mid-l950's perceives it. Like Todd and Jake,
Eben has already undergone one nearly fatal siege of paralysis. If
Barth has in mind not only a mental process which each individual
Modern American Mind must go through but also a historical process

through which the best American minds have gone in this century, the

150

dating in The Floating Opera suggests that this process probably
begins around 1937, the era when traditional American optimism and
energy seemed to give way to cynicism, lethargy, and a total sense
Of "Depression.” Eben's paralysis is interrupted by the entrance Of
Burlingame, the man who, ironically, is the very embodiment Of those
factors which caused the paralysis in the first place. Again, there
is a close parallel here between Burlingame and the two characters
who afford a similar reprieve in the first two novels--Captain Jacob R.
Adam and the Doctor; and, again, a historical parallel is suggested.
This time it would appear to be the era Of World War II, when war, an
archetypal embodiment of the universal chaos whose full recognition
caused the era of Depression in the first place, is, ironically, the
very act which temporarily ends it.

In the seven intervening years between that time and the
narrative present, the Modern American Mind has tried only passively,
as we have noted, to find a cure for its condition. Eben's ability to
move at all, even in an aimless manner, is the result of momentum
rather than choice and, so, cannot last forever. (Todd Andrews's
metaphor Of a rabbit Shot on the run is appropriate here.) Eben's
condition, clearly, is as serious as before. He is so inept at his
job that he has not earned even one raise in six years, and yet he
cannot decide to do anything else. He thinks of himself as a poet,
but he has never written a word Of poetry because he cannot decide on
a subject. He is surrounded by willing women, but he is still a vir-
Qin because he cannot decide how or with whom to go about becoming

Otherwise.

151

This latter characteristic is the most important in Eben's
entire illustrative dimension, for it is far more than a simple effect
Of Eben's indecisiveness. It is also a perfect metaphor for that
quality. Eben's virginity suggests, on the one hand, the impotency,
the unfruitfulness, the potentially fatal inability to function "like
a man," which are the lot Of the modern mind which has exhausted its
rationalistic search for value and identity. Acutely attuned to the
relativity underlying every choice, it cannot make any choice at all;
and, thus, it cannot give issue to that which would confirm its exis-
tence. On the other hand, Eben's sexual innocence vividly reflects
his peculiarly American mental innocence, his inability finally to
embrace, to "know," anything in the real world around him. Just as
America is still unable to commit itself tO the conditions of life as
they actually exist, even though the time is long past when a seemingly
endless possibility of "new worlds" justified such an inability, so
also Ebenezer Cooke is still unable to make a physical commitment to
one woman, even though he has reached the relatively advanced age of
twenty-eight.

The Modern American Mind embodied in the Eben Cooke to whom
we are introduced in March Of 1694 is virgin, then, and is liable to
remain in that state until another siege of paralysis finally kills
it. ’But, as the "Momentous Wager" for the favors Of Joan Toast begins
that night in the tavern, the whore casually pats Eben's hand; and,
for the first time in his life, he is aroused:

the hand She touched tingled as if galvanized, and

on the instant Ebenezer felt his soul rise up in
answer. Had not Boyle shown, and Burlingame taught,

Jwflmflflu
r11. ...n. “T

152

that electrical attraction takes place in a vacuum?

Well, here was Boyle figured in the empty poet:

the pert girl worked some queer attraction in him,

called forth a spark from the vacuum of his char-

acter, and set him all suddenly a-burn and a-buzz

(p. 48).
"This prick-up," as the narrator goes on to say, did not "afford the
man identity"; but it did, at least, afford him a new generalized
feeling of potency, out Of which identity might come. Figured in
this scene, then, is the assertion that the key to remedying the
condition of the Modern American Mind lies somewhere, somehow, in the
attraction between men and women. Eben takes, or, rather, is taken,
the first tentative step in the direction Of productive living when,
for the first time in his adult life, a woman touches him.

The ability to choose does not yet visit Eben when the wager-
ing comes around to him; in fact, he "starches up" with indecision
twice and at last bolts desperately from the winehouse. Back in his
room, he curses the innocence which prevented his claiming Joan for a
night, which makes him even now prefer to fantasize about what he
gpglg_do with her rather than to return to the winehouse and actually
gg something with her. TO his utter surprise, however, Joan comes to
him. She has interpreted his vague babbling about the five guineas
in his room as the high bid for her, and she is very Obligingly his
for the remainder Of the night. But, again, Eben'sinability to
accept the "finality" Of the real world wins out, his compulsion to
idealize overcomes his lust, and he refuses to use Joan for any fee at

all. Instead, he makes her into the "savior and inspiration" of his-

life:

153

"For ne'er till you came to me this night have I
‘been a man, but a mere dotting oaf and fOp; and
ne'er till I embraced thee have I been a poet,
but a Shallow coxcomb and poetaster! With thee,
Joan, what deeds could I not accomplish! What
verse not write! Nay, e'en should you scorn me
in your error and ne'er look on me more, I will
love thee nonetheless, and draw power and pur—
pose from my love. For so strong is't, that
e'en unrequited it shall sustain and inspire
me; but should God grant thee wit to comprehend
and receive it and return it as then you would
perforce, why, the world would hear such verses
as have ne'er been struck, and our love would
stand as model and exemplar to all times! Scorn
me, Joan, and I shall be a Splendid fool, a_Don.
Quixote tilting for his ignorant Dulcinea; but
I here challenge thee--if you've life and fire
and wit enough, love me truly as I love thee,
and then shall I joust with bona fide giants
and bring them low! Love me, and I swear to
Ehee tais: I shall be Poet Laureate of England!"
p. 58 .

When Joan Toast, like the good whore she is, refuses Eben's
feeless Offer, his "inspired" response is, "So, you are unworthy! So
be't, if't must: I love thee no less for't, or for the sufferings I
shall welcome in they name!" And when she leaves in a fury, "he
scarcely note[s] her departure, so full [is] he of his love." He
feels "such dizzy power . . . such bursting life" that, for the first
time, he can choose a subject for a poem and then write it. After he
has penned the last word, he is giddy with accomplishment and expecta-
tion:

"Tis now but a question Of time . . . . Faith, 'tis
a rare wise man knows who he is: had I not stood
firm with Joan Toast, I might well ne'er have dis-
covered that knowledge! 'Twas the choice made me:

a noble choice, to prize my love o'er my lust, and

a noble choice bespeaks a noble chooser. What am

I? What am 1? Virgin, sir! Poet, sir! I am a

virgin and a poet; ess than mortal and more; not
a man, but Mankind! I shall regard my innocence as

 

badl
her

person
decisii
this n:

the to

Sir:
ens

“5"

Which

l54
badgeof my strength and proof of my calling: let
her who's worthy Of't take it from me!" (pp. 59-60).

Clearly, we see in this scene the Modern American Mind in the
person Of Ebenezer Cooke experiencing at last the ability to choose
decisively and tO act purposefully. Compelled to explain to himself
this new phenomenon, Eben can testify only that it was initiated by
the touch of Joan Toast and that it gave him the long-wished-for sense
of identity. Since no other woman had affected him in such a manner in
all his twenty-eight years, he concludes that Joan must be the one
woman in the world whom he is meant to love. And, since the practical
results Of his love for her have been the perpetuation of his virginity
and the creation of a poem, a virgin and a poet are what he must pg:
Joan has elevated the innocent fancy and the poetic urge in him from
the status of regrettable characteristics to that Of a "noble" iden-
tity.

When Eben exclaims, then, "What am I? What am I? Viggip,
sir! £933, sir!" he is illustrative of the Modern American Mind
embarking upon one Of the two courses of "brave ethical subjectivism"

which Barth has already explored in The End of the Road. It is Joe

 

Morgan's course--that of making certain "psychological givens" in
oneself the "subjective equivalent of an absolute.“ "Searching your
innards for your axioms" is the way Henry Burlingame later describes
it. The term which I will apply to this attempt at solving the prob-
lem Of ethical relativity is the same as that which I applied to Joe
Morgan's attempt: EsSentialism. From that chilly March night when

Eben indirectly turns Joan Toast out of his room in London to that

:na Dece
heonerat
iflid; ti
rare, the
faking o'

bethee

"MUTE r, ti:

during 1
serious
iii-Erin
1*0‘i‘3r,

the cou
{Sienn-
Eben's
"'tis 1

my J05!

155

cold December night when he very deliberately abandons her at Malden,
he Operates on the assumption that his new feeling of identity is
valid; that human essence does precede human existence; and, further-
more, that One's essence can be made one's guide to value. The
making Of that assumption, the deliberate acceptance Of what seems to
be the evidence Of one night and denial of what seems to be the evi-
dence Of the previous twenty-eight years, is, in truth, Eben's
"Momentous Wager."

The adventures which befall the newly declared virgin-poet
during the next nine months thoroughly demonstrate once again the
serious inadequacies of Essentialism as an ethical solution. Those
adventures begin the very day after the wager when Joan's pimp and
lover, John McEvoy, comes to complain about his loss of revenue. In
the course of their argument, McEvoy makes two key charges against
Essentialism, the first Of which is the charge Of pride. Against
Eben's claim that he alone truly loves Joan Toast, the claim which
lies at the very heart Of his "new-found essences," McEvoy answers:
"'tis your lpye_ye love, and that's but to say 'tis yourself and not
my Joan” (p. 62). What he is pointing out, of course, is the com-
pletely egocentric nature of what Eben has done. Consciously sup-‘
pressing his lust for a willing whore and conjuring up instead a creed
of courtly love for a "vision of all that's fair in womankind" (p. 62)
has been Eben's way Of trying to glorify rather than to rectify the
innocence in himself, the results Of which have been far from glorious.
up to this point. It is clearly an act Of narcissism rather than

devotiOn. Also, locating one's values entirely within oneself is a

sign of 1
beyond tl

8S an EC

1'8. he:
Joan quo
loan bin
him to a
taking,
after 3‘!
Wm to
into a

giit's

156

Sign of disdain for, a denial of worth in, anyone or anything else
beyond the limits of oneself. It is not so much an act of principle
as an act of vanity.

McEvoy's first charge is abundantly supported by all Of the
1's, gefs, and my's in the long passage from Eben's encounter with
Joan quoted above. It is clear there that he is obsessed not with
Joan but with the spectacular heights which her inspiration will allow
him to achieve. We Observe, too, that he hardly notices her leave-
taking, so full of himself is he, and that the one act he does commit
after-she has gone is an example Of vanity compounded: he writes a
hymn to his own innocence. In it this trait is idealized, Of course,
into a gift of which he is but the humble recipient; but, still, the
gift's function is an entirely selfish one:

Preserv'd, my Innocence preserveth Me
From Life, from Time, from Death, from History;
Without it I must breathe Man's mortal Breath:
Commence a Life--and thus commence my Death! (p. 59).

Among the numerous references to himself in the poem, there is but one
to Joan-r"The Love, dear Joan, I bear for Thee!" Yet, when the poem is
completed, something about it strikes Eben as vaguely wrong; and it is
not until he has replaced the word "Joan" with "heart" that he can
sit back and declare, "The piece is perfect" (p. 60).

These first proud acts on Eben's part prepare us-for a good
many more that are to follow as he leaves England and makes his way to
Maryland. His insistence on being not just a poet but a Poet Laureate,

even if only of Maryland, is the first such act; and it is his new

title which Singles him out for John Coode's men and thus causes him

cocstan
an atti
his val
“varle‘
latter
their

about

in the
is all
Finali
Harrei

SECre'

r HfiI-c (n n:

157

constantly to be in mortal danger. Eben's pride causes him to adapt

an attitude Of condescension and snobbishness on the ship, first with
his valet and then with the crew. He thinks of the former as a
"varlet" as compared with himself, a "god" (p. 124); and he sees the
latter as "subjects" who will someday reverently acknowledge him as
their "king" (pp. 228-229). Consequently, Bertrand has few qualms
about appropriating Eben's public identity aboard ship and putting him
in the galling position Of having to play the servant; and the crew

is all too anxious to further degrade him whenever the chance arises.
Finally, it is Eben's pride that makes him see the pathetic Susan
Warren as worthy Of superficially polite treatment and then of a lusty,
secretive "swiving," but as eminently ppworthy of "Officially" re-
ceiving in place of the beautiful young Joan Toast the precious gift of
his virginity. Reacting vigorously to Eben's proud duplicity, then,,
Susan Warren flees to prevent the swiving; and Eben does not discover
that she in fact j§_Joan Toast until it is tOO late substantially to
help either her or himself.

The other cardinal charge which Barth, through John McEvoy,
makes against Essentialism is that it is based on dangerous, self-
deception, that to be deliberately innocent is, in fact, to be deliber-
ately ignorant. McEvoy points particularly to the virgin-poet's
ignorance of the world outside himself:

"I shall tell ye a thing about yourself, Eben Cooke,
and haply ye'll recall it now and again: 'tis not
simply love ye know naught of, 'tis the entire great
real world! Your senses fail ye; your busy fancy
pTays ye false and fills your head with foolish pic-

tures. Things are not as ye see 'em, friend--the
world's a tangled skein, and all is knottier than ye

 

take it
shan't

“arifestat
frequency
The i nitia

hep-ares u

 

01‘ Joan To
hehconti
t0 he she'
IiSile is a

3:
Wild Whii
ei-‘iierh of
Offers ca
intErest
Occasiona
ho WOOIng
interest
ing to he
on the wt
Mitchell!
instanCeS
(”Bianca
both 0co-

“Worthy

158

take it for. You understand naught 0' life: I

shan't say more"(p. 62).
Manifestations of this sort of ignorance occur with at least as much
frequency in the ensuing nine months as do manifestations Of pride.
The initial example Of Eben's ignorance, the one which most clearly
prepares us for all of the others to come, relates to his perception
of Joan Toast herself. In the course Of his argument with McEvoy,
Eben contemptuously declares, "To you, haply, Joan Toast is a whore;
to me She is a principle." "TO me," the young Irishman retorts,
"she is a woman. To you she's a hallucination" (p. 64).

By providing Joan Toast as the initial example of the real
world which Eben is innocent of and by having provided earlier the
emblem of Eben's deliberate physical innocence, Barth once again
Offers carnal knowledge as a symbol of mental knowledge. Eben's
interest in mentally knowing himself has its counterpart in his
occasional recourse to masturbation. (His "knuckly hand . . . took
no wooing to make his quick mistress.") In contrast, his lack of
interest in mentally knowing another person is reflected in his refus-
ing to have carnal knowledge of Joan the night of the wager. Again
on the whore ship Cyprian and then again at the house of Captain
Mitchell, Eben neither mentally nor physically knows Joan. In both
instances his virginity, admittedly, is perpetuated by fortuitous cir—
cumstance rather than by his own will. Still, when the Opportunity on
both occasions has passed, he is grateful to have escaped from so

unworthy an Object Of knowledge. Had he npt_escaped,‘however, had he

actually
both of

Eben's E
on "knc
MO] kr
his twir
that pai
dtilber.
liOiess
0f manl
imp1ica

t0 the

Sense i
he SUDI

“1'7th

159

actually "penetrated" the disguise of Susan Warren, the fortunes Of
both Of them, as I have already said, would have gone far better.

The "knotty" outside world is not the only area Of which
Eben's Essentialism renders him ignorant. He knows nothing of his
pgp_"knotty" nature either. He certainly is not the “rare wise man
[who] knows who he is," as he perceives himself to be the night when
his twin."essences" are born, for he will admit the existence only of
that part of his mind which is rational and civilized. That is, he
deliberately refuses to recognize his own subconscious. John McEvoy's
profession, oriented as it is toward the irrational, animalistic part
Of man's mind, lends to all that he tells Eben about ignorance the
implication that his Observations apply to the inner world as well as
to the outer.

McEvoy's accusation Of ignorance on.Eben's part in this second
sense is borne out not only by Eben's initial reaction to Joan Toast--
he suppresses his lust for her--but also by his subsequent series of
adventures. The fear that makes him shiver and grow weak in the knees’
and lose bowel control on several occasions, the heightened sexual
desire associated with the thought Of raping a virgin on the Cyprian
and later with his inflicting pain upon Susan Warren, the strange,
vivid dreams of twin pink mountains and tepid green seas--experiences
like these disturb and Often shock Eben because they spring uncontrol-
lably from a part of him which his Essentialist solution does not
acknowledge and because their power is so great as to attest to their
being every bit as essential to his being as are the twin essences

which he has consciously chosen.

the two if
ante. E
trary, h'
ignorant:
Mcinea
more dii
inCreasi
urgenCy
tor the
inform
iengthy
Ciearly
in ESse
PiaCe c

160

Before Eben even leaves London, then, John McEvoy has appraised
the two major weaknesses in the Essentialist solution--pride and igno-
rance. Eben does not deny McEvoy's charges, of course. To the con-'
trary, his response is to justify, even to glorify, his pride and
ignorance in the name of Joan Toast, as did Don Quixote in the name Of
Dulcinea. But, as these traits make his "Going to Malden'l in Part II
more difficult and dangerous at every turn, as humiliation becomes an
increasingly familiar experience and knowledge beckons with increasing
urgency, essentialism becomes a less and less viable mode of living
for the Modern American Mind. Punctuating the series Of humbling and
informing incidents which take Eben from London to Malden are the two
lengthy conversations between him and Burlingame, which serve to keep
clearly before the reader the basic philosophical fallacies inherent
in Essentialism. In the first conversation, the one which takes
place on the Plymouth coach, Burlingame engages in “sophistical dis-
course" for the purpose Of challenging the authenticity, the permanence,
and the mutual compatibility of Eben's twin essences and of proving, in
general, that "all assertions of thee_and mg, e'en to oneself, are
acts Of-faith, impossible to verify" (p. 128). The poet cannot refute
this contention anymore than he could refute McEvoy's. He can only
respond by saying, "Such casuistical speculations lead only to the
Pit" (p. 128). With that reply, he reminds both himself and us of the
deliberate, desperate pretense to innocence which lies at the heart
Of his solution.

By the time Of the second long conversation between ex-tutor

and ex-pupil, however, the one on the occasion of the night-time

journey on
pretense i
ahlind r0
"Tis c
soul,
Cosmos
the ii
ind then,
d‘etre of
tinues;
"why i
then
One n
his (
and ‘
assei
\.

Cour.

aVile 0th

161

journey on horse-back from Captain Mitchell's to Father Smith's, that
pretense is fast eroding. "'Here we sit,'" Henry declares, "'upon
a blind rock hurtling through a vacuum, racing to the grave'"

"Tis our fate to search, Eben, and do we seek our
soul, what we find is a piece Of that same black

Cosmos whence we Sprang and through which we fall:
the infinite wind Of space . . " (p. 345).

And then, as if he himself has to remind Eben of the very raison
d'etre Of the Essentialist solution which he has chosen, Henry con-
tinues:

"Whyisi't you set such store by innocence and rhyming
. ? One must needs make and seize his soul, and

. then cleave fast to' t, or go babbling in the corner;
one must choose his gods and devils on the run, quill
his own name upon the universe, and declare, "'Tis I,
and the world stands such- -a- -way!" One must assert,
assert, assert, or go screaming mad. What ot ther
course remains?"

 

"One other," Eben finally is able to respond. "'Tis the one I flee

." (p. 345). He refers, of course, to the catatonic "Pit" in
which Henry found him at college. When the conversation is over, Eben
feels very close once more to the Abyss:

the wind appeared to howl not from the Bay but from

the firmament itself, the endless corridors of

space . . . it seemed that he was heels over head

on the bottom of the planet, looking down on the

stars instead Of up, and that only by dint Of

clutching his legs about the roan mare's girth

and holding fast to the saddlebow with both his

hands did he keep from dropping headlong into

those vasty reaches! (pp. 346- 347).

Eben manages to hold fast to his essences for less than one

more day before they bring down upon him and a good many others catas-
trophe in the form Of his judgment at the Cambridge court session. He

neither knows nor cares to know the facts Of the Smith ys, Spurdance

162

case; he thinks that a total newcomer like himself is better able to
judge it than are life-long residents of the county; and he is all too
eager to embrace the cliche, "Justice is blind." All of which is to
say that he is proud and ignorant; and, as a result, he performs the
act whiCh in one stroke forfeits his and Anna's inheritance; loses the
fruits of his father's life's work; and, unknowingly, seals the pathetic
fate of Joan Toast and endangers the province Of Maryland. Eben signs
"with a flourish" the document that seals the sentence; and, as he does
so, he wishes that "Burlingame, Anna, and his London friends were
present to witness this most glorious hour in his life." A minute
later, after Smith has grinningly informed him of his error, Eben
swoons away.

At this climactic point in Part II of The Sot-Weed Factor,
Essentialism as a possible solution to the Modern American Mind's
ethical problem has received its death blow. Not only has it caused
apparently irremediable harm to its practitioner and to others; but
also, on the most fundamental level, it simply has not worked. It
has not achieved its goal of keeping Ebenezer Cooke moving. The
virgin-poet lies as motionless on the tavern floor in Cambridge,
Maryland, as he had sat in his room in Cambridge, England, seven years
before. Clear as the failure Of Essentialism may be to the reader,
however, Eben himself stubbornly refuses to accept it, just as he has
always refused to accept any other finality in his life. When he.
regains consciousness, his peculiarly American innocence is still
intact despite the great loss it has occasioned. Since he has never

grown personally attached to Malden and since he still does not realize

the full
iers his
hide fro:

virgin-p

fiee run
hertal,
and by l
Poet ac
the far
Proof t

all his

163

the full measure of harm he has caused, Eben reckons that if he trans-
fers his share of the Cookes' London home to Anna and can manage to
hide from the wrath Of his father, all will yet 90 well enough for the
virgin-poet.

When BUrlingame and the other men in the tavern Offer Eben
free rum to drown his sorrows and welcome him to the ranks Of the
mortal, who, like Adam, have "set great store upon [their] innocence,
and by reason Of't have lost [their] earthly paradise" (p. 401), the
poet accepts their drink but not their conceit. He points proudly to
the fact that he is still technically a virgin and claims that it is
proof that he has not, in fact, re-enacted Adam's fall. The blame for

all his misery--he cannot see anyone else's--he places upon his

 

.attempted seduction by the devious, jealous, mortal world which, in
his mind, Burlingame has come to represent. In a fit Of drunken self-
pity, Eben identifies his sister's virginity with his own and publicly
belittles their ex-tutor for his inability to deflower her, despite
his expressed fondest desires to do so.

Forced at last to reply, Burlingame makes it clear to all at
the bar that his failure to deflower Anna Cooke, if there was indeed a
failure, has not been caused by her unwillingness. To the contrary,
she came to him repeatedly more than ten years earlier and begged to be
taken. Burlingame gives vivid account of the many times he, with hands
and mouth, "made her swoon with joy"; he recalls "her endless tricks
to conjure manliness"; and he remembers out loud the name Of her
favorite game--Riding to Gomorrah. Feeling as if he himself had been

robbed of his virginity, Eben falls into a fit of retching; and as he

164

is carried from the tavern, he hears Burlingame say, “Sleep ye now, my
Laureate; in all they orifices be my sins remembered!" (p. 404). The
next morning Eben awakens to find himself naked and up to his neck in
corncobs.

Humiliated and violated now past the point of ever playing the '
confident virgin-poet again, Eben is in a state of total despair.
Still, out Of bitter anger rather than Optimistic will ("anger's e'er
a physic for despair," the redemptioner who gives him a ride up the
Choptank River to Malden tells him), he remains truer than ever to
his twin essences during the dying months of the year. He refuses to
consummate his forced marriage to Susan Warren, and he writes his

stingingly satirical The Sot-Weed Factor. All the while, he is re-

 

covering from a particularly strong siege Of "seasoning," the illness
from which all newcomers to Maryland suffer. The fact that the dis-
ease carries such a name suggests, Of course, that the harsh treatment
Eben has just undergone Should be construed as a necessary process
Of curing or tempering him through trial and experience; but the rem-
nants of pride and ignorance in Eben blind him with self-pity and
he is incapable Of viewing his misfortune in this light. When he has
finished his angry poem, when he thinks that he has, in effect, had
the last word in his argument with the unworthy provincials Of Maryland
"Where no man's Faithful, nor a Woman chaste!," Eben calls resignedly
for a pot Of rum and a pistol with which to end his miserable treat-
ment.

But_it is Susan Warren with her pathetic story Of Joan Toast

who delivers the coupe de grace to Essentialism aS'a possible ethical

solution
e'en whc
eater, a!
that She
fUlly tc
pride u;
harh to
tnat ti“.
himself
ldeg 0.-

1113 0w

earii

165

solution for the Modern American Mind. The final revelation that the
woman who stands before him at the moment--"a pig-driver, an Opium-
eater, and the lowest sort of prostitute"--is, in fact, Joan Toast and
that she has come to this end largely on his account forces Ebenezer
fully to acknowledge for the first time that the willful ignorance and
pride upon whiCh his twin essences are constructed causes even greater
harm to another than to himself. He is forced to admit to himself
that there jsjsuch a thing as "another." There i§_a person outside
himself who is wholly different from and far more real than his own
idea of her, a person whose claim of worth is at least as valid as

his own. And there i§_a part of the human mind, a part of his own
mind, that will sometimes make a man act like an animal despite his
conscious aspirations to the contrary. All Joan asks now is that Eben
t:eat_the "otherness" which she represents as equal in worth to his
own. She proposes that he escape to England with her, allow her to
support them as long as she can with the money her professiOn brings
in, and then care for her in the last days Of her life. In other
words, She Offers Eben a second chance to put by his innocence.

Once again, however, as in the Cambridge tavern three months
earlier, Eben refuses.' With an act of will that is both awesome and
despicable, he rejects the humility and the knowledge which yet could
salvage a measure of redemption for himself. He accepts the money
for one ship's fare; he swears to heaven that he and Joan are man and
wife "forever and aye!"; he exclaims, "May some god strike me dead" if
he does not wait the two hours for her to earn the other fare; and

then, with no god to strike him dead despite his reiterated plea, he

166

absconds into the cold December night. Clutching to him his newly-
penned poem, the Sign of his one essence, and carrying in his mind's
eye the face of his sister, still somehow the emblem of his other
essence, Eben puts behind him Joan Toast, in her own words the "very
Sign and emblem" of the world (p. 468), and sets off on the first leg
Of a journey back to England and irresponsibility. Ironically, as he
Slips away from the lights Of Malden, he is becoming the very thing
which his twin-essences are predicated upon denying: "a piece Of that
same black Cosmos whence we spring and through which we fall."

At this point in The Sot-Weed Factor, then, at the end Of

 

Part II, "Going to Malden," Barth has taken Ebenezer Cooke to approxi-
mately the same end-of—the-road point as Joe Morgan. Ebenezer has
tried conSciously to fly in the face of his modern relativistic knowl-
edge and imagination, to embrace rather than to discard his peculiarly
American innocence and to discover whether, by asserting that innocence
with as much energy as possible, he can live productively, decisively,
manfully, in the world. Like Joe Morgan, Eben has remained true to
one woman--or, rather, to an idealized version of one woman--just as
he has remained true to one version, an idealized version, of his own
identity; and, like Joe, he has seen the values which result from his
fidelity to an ideal come into conflict with reality and result in the
death of his wife ("Susan Warren" refers to herself as the "corse" of
Joan Toast) and the loss of his worldly estate. His Essentialism
clearly has not allowed him to "live" in the world of human beings;

but at the end, even as he escapes from that world, he still clings

167

to it as the only solution he knows, the only one which rationally
makes sense.

There is a parallel, too, between Ebenezer Cooke and Jacob
Horner, who, not only because Of the failure Of his usual solution but‘
also because of the failure of the one which he "borrowed" for two
days from Joe, declares that he has reached his ethical "terminal."
But, beginning with Part III, "Malden Earned," Barth is breaking new
ground. He is attempting to suggest an alternative to "non-mystical
value-thinking." More accurately, perhaps, he is trying to suggest
for the Modern American Mind a kind of ethic which is different but
not really-separate from the Essentialist kind, an ethic to which
Essentialism is a necessary prelude. The urge to arrive at values by
solely rational, conscious means must be exhausted before it can be
replaced.g

Let us return, then, tO Ebenezer Cooke. As he arrives at the
dock after his short ride from Malden, he illustrates the Modern
American Mind at the point where Essentialism clearly has failed it,
where "searching your innards for your axioms" has had exactly the
Opposite effect from providing values which will allow one to live
responsibly and constructively in the world. So Eben is attempting to
escape from the destruction he has caused and the responsibilities he
has incurred; and, if his attempt should succeed, if he should
actually sail back to England on the ship (ironically, the Pilgrim)

that is about to embark from Cambridge, then he will be marking

 

8Barth, "Exhaustion," 31-32.

168

himself as a man who has nothing more to lose. He will have literally
lost the world.

It is perfectly appropriate, therefore, that before Barth
gets on with the series Of actions and thoughts which will decide this
central queStion of value-thinking for the Modern American Mind, he
presents Eben with the character of Ben Spurdance, a living example,
as the chapter title indicates, of "a Man with Naught to Lose."
Spurdance had been overseer at Malden before Eben's foolish court
verdict; and in just a few months his health and his fortunes have
plummeted beyond the point of recovery- He has let himself be beaten;
he has given up on the world of ordinary human intercourse. As a
result, his exiStence is governed only by chance and whimsy; and he is
given to unpredictable fits of rage that are as destructive to him-
self as they are to others. Eben himself would have been the victim
Of one of these fits had Burlingame, in the disguise Of Nicholas Lowe,
not intervened.' It is clear that in the not-very-distant future Ben
Spurdance will meet a violent death either directly or indirectly at
~his own hands. Against the back-drOp Of this vivid implication Of
what Eben will become if he gives up now on his attempt to find value
in_the world, with this brutal reminder Of the mortal stakes for which
the Modern American Mind is playing, Eben makes his decision to stay
in Maryland, and, by so doing, to start out on the road to regaining
his estate and his wife.

The complicated pattern Of action, storytelling, and thought
which makes up~"Malden Earned" comprises a lesson for the Modern

American Mind in how to give up Essentialism for a more effective

169

approach to value in a nihilistic universe. Burlingame had told Eben
months earlier, on the night when Eben had felt for a moment as if he
were about to drop from his horse "headlong into those vasty reaches,"
that Eben must "embrace [his] Self as Poet and Virgin, regardless, or
discard it for something better"; and it is precisely this latter

alternative which we see Eben exercising in Part III Of The Sot-Weed

 

532395, AS we have seen in Part II, the foundation of Essentialism
is a combination of pride and ignorance; so, before Eben can discard
that solution, he must first be rid of the last remnants Of those two
qualities.

This task begins, ironically, with the events which transpire
in the last chapter of "Going to Malden" and which culminate there in
his last deliberately Essentialist-oriented act. The process reaches
its climax a day later when, after listening to Burlingame's short up-
dating Of his campaign to arrest John Coode and to his lengthy lecture
on Anna and the scholarship she has done on geminology, Eben arrives
at St. Mary's City with "twelve perfectly astounding facts: to con-
sider:-

He had become the indentured servant of Malden's

master.

His father was in Maryland and en route to Cooke's
Point.

His wife Susan Warren was in fact his Joan Toast
of London.

But she was a slave to Opium, a victim Of the pox,
and a whore to the Indians of Dorchester.

Moreover she had been raped by the Moor.Boabdil,
and almost by Ebenezer himself.

He had in deserting her committed the most'
thoroughly and least equivocally dishonorable
act of his entire life~-indeed,'the very first
of any magnitude, not counting his thwarted

170

ill intentions aboard the Cyprian and at Captain
Mitchell's manor.

Lord Baltimore might not at all represent, as he had
supposed, the very essence of Good, and Coode the
essence Of Evil, but vice versa, if Burlingame
spoke truly; and Andrew might well be party to an
enormously vicious plot.

His tutor Burlingame had been, perhaps, a loyal friend
after all, and was inflamed with passion for
Ebenezer and Anna as one.

His Sister was at that moment somewhere in the
Province.

She was a virgin to that day, despite her intimacy
with Burlingame.

She loved not Burlingame but her brother, in a way
too dark and deep for her cognition.

And he himself had no direction, aim, or prospect
whatsoever for the future, but was as orphan in
the world as Burlingame, without that gentleman's
corporal, financial, intellectual, experiential,
or spiritual resources (PP. 500-501).

It is clear why the sum total Of these facts should have the
effect of "very nearly unhinging [Eben's] Reason" (p. 501): each fact
chips away substantially at either his pride or his ignorance. Up
until now, he has been able to react to each humiliating situation in
which he found himself by reasserting that, by virtue of Innocence
and Poetry, he was more than morta1--"not a man, but Mankind" (p. 60)--
and, thus, that he could not ggglly affect or be affected by the
affairs of mere mortals. As long as he remained virgin and poet, it
was only a matter of time until the world recognized his immortality
and made amends for its shabby treatment of him. Now, however, Eben
can see that, rather than his mortal life being fended off by his
essences, it has, in a sense, simply started without him. First
unknowingly, with his Cambridge court verdict, and then quite know-
ingly, with his desertion Of Joan Toast, he really hag affected the

affairs of mortal men and been affected by them; and the result has

171

been that both he and those he has affected are in a drastically worse
condition now than they were before.

Also, up until now, Eben has been able to react to charges
that he was ignorant and to manifestations Of that ignorance with the
claim that he was privy to the only kind of knowledge that really
mattered. He was the "rare wise man" who knows himself. Now, how-
ever, Eben cannot make even that assumption; for Joan Toast was the
pillar upon whom the entire edifice of his Essentialism rested, and
to find that she is far different from what he had assumed, that she
is a woman rather than a principle, is to bring down that edifice.
The fact that Eben, when he flees Malden, sees in his mind's eye the
face of his sister suggests that perhaps it is she, not Joan, whom Eben
has always loved and who has been the real inspiration for his vir-
ginity and poetry; but Burlingame's long discourse on Anna as he and
Eben ferry to St. Mary's City, in conjunction with his revelations
concerning her in the Cambridge tavern, prove that she, too, is a
woman, not a principle. The result is that Eben can no longer keep
from feeling that he has been totally ignorant, just as he can no
longer find any reason why he should have been so proud.

In St. Mary's City, he finds not his sister but his valet;
and Bertrand reveals that he has seen Anna only a few hours earlier,
that she looked Old beyond her years, and that she intended to go to
Malden where, she heard, her brother lay ill. This revelation serves
as the crowning blow to Eben's ignorance and pride, affirming, as it

does, that Anna is very human and is in mortal danger because Of her

172

brother's irresponsibility. In light of the fact that Malden has
become an opium and prostitution den under William Smith and the fact
that Joan Toast is probably so angry at Eben that she would take out
her revenge on his sister, it may well be that Anna will soon find
herself forced to follow in the footsteps of "Susan Warren." In a
rush to prevent such a development if he can, Eben takes Bertrand in
tow and hires a Captain Cairn and his crew of two blacks to sail them
across the Chesapeake to Malden.

The violent storm which engulfs the sloop reflects the tur-
moil which has been raging in Eben during the last twenty-four hours,
and his state of mind during the storm reflects the new mental con-
dition which I have been describing. With gale-force winds, high
waves, and torrential rains all around, it is impossible for him to
feel important or to pretend to be sure of his bearings. The world
outside himself--consisting of the three men who might save him with
their skill and hard work as well as the storm that might kill him-g
suddenly seems very real; the possibility of his death seems not only
very real but positively "Delicious"; and he no longer feels the urge,
as he did as a child and as he might have only recently, to pinch him-
self and awaken from a bad dream. In short, he is no longer a delib-
erate innocent. .His mind finally is prepared not only to recognize
the arbitrary universe but also to accept its finality.

After "three hours' dancing on the doormat of extinction,"
Eben and Bertrand are brought safely to shelter in the straits known,
appropriately enough, as Limbo. The sheer physical effort and sus-

pence have proven a kind Of purgative; and he finds the "Island Of

173

his spirit, though by no means tranquil, to be peculiarly serene
despite the buffet Of past fortune and the sea of difficulties with
which it [is] beset" (p. 523). Not coincidentally, he also finds
that for Henry and Bertrand, the two men who had most dismayed him
because they had demonstrated least respect for his self-proclaimed
essences, he now feels affection--"or at least the absence of its
contraries" (p. 523). His mental slate is wiped clean now, and he is
ready to try another approach to the problem Of arriving at values
that will allow him tO live responsibly in a relativistic universe.

Eben i§_successful, of course, in his second approach. By
the end Of Chapter 65, he has managed to be instrumental in righting
many of the wrongs that he had committed with his Essentialism and in
gaining a measUre of redemption for those the results of which are
beyond remedy. He has helped to save Maryland from the savage rebels
on one hand and from John Coode on the other; he has received Joan's
forgiveness and consummated his marriage with her; and, as the title
Of Part III indicates, he has, for himself and for his sister and
father as well, "Earned" Malden. One looks in vain, Obviously, for
absOlute answers to the question of how the Modern American Mind in
the person of Ebenezer Cooke goes about attaining sUCh productive
results; but answers, or at leaSt guides, of a relative sort egg to be
found, and it seems to me that they revolve around his learning in an
experiential sense to accept as truth three prOpositions.

First, he accepts the proposition that Reason is‘a limited
instrument. It cannot finally provide the key to value-thinking

because there are very real, very important areas Of life which,

174

beyond a certain point, simply are not amenable to it. Reasoning
beyond this point becomes mere abstract and tedious rationalization,
enjoyable perhaps in its own right but to no practical ethical pur-
pose. In “Going to Malden," Eben liked nothing more than taking

Henry on in one Of his "SOphisticated discourses"; but throughout
"Malden Earned" abstract questions Of all kinds diminish in interest
and importance for him. He will instead trace the complexities Of the
world around him--the complicated explanation of Burlingame's parent-
age, for example--as far as he can and as long as he senses that the
effort will produce a practical good for someone. His reaction to the
patently abstract arguments which other characters from time to time
initiate, no matter how ingenious or how theoretically relevant to the
present situation those arguments might be,is to venture no reply, or
to Offer a brief and consciously inadequate one and then quickly lose
interest, or to hope that at least the talk itself might serve to calm
someone's fears.

The only "big" question for which he can still work up enthu-
siasm is the nature and meaning Of innocence, for which he rightly
feels a very personal and practical concern. Yet, even in areas Of
this sOrt, Eben is now willing to admit limits to his rationalizing.
He has a very personal and practical concern for Burlingame, for exam-
ple; but, when questioned by the rebel.1eader on the subject, he now
is candid in admitting that his friend "hath passed into realms of
complexity beyond [his] compass" (p. 567). Perhaps the ironic title
Of Chapter 18 best captures Eben's and Barth's conviction that Reason

applied to the world around one is a limited instrument:

175

The Poet Wonders Whether the Course Of Human His-
tory is a Progress, a Drama, a Retrogression, a
Cycle, an Undulation, a Vortex, a Right- or Left-
Handed Spiral, a Mere Continuum, or What Have
You. Certain Evidence is Brought Forward, but

Of an Ambiguous and Inconclusive Nature. ‘

Just as Eben becomes fully aware that his Reason is bound from
without by these realms of complexity, so also he begins to know that
his Reason is bound from within by a realm of primal,.subcons¢ious
power. Previously, as we have seen--when he had tried to rape Susan
Warren, for example--this power had been a complete mystery to him:
"On the scales Of Prudence one pan lay empty, while Reason's entire
weight tipped down the other; what dark force, then, on the scales of
Choice, effected counter-balance?" (p. 322). Now, however, Eben is
able to recognize at least the outline and the source of that "dark
force." That term itself is revealing, since it points our attention
to the black- and red-skinned characters in the novel as those who
give strongest evidence of that force. They give so strong and so con-
sistent evidence to it, in fact, that they become symbols of the primal
subconscious, "savage," drives in man. Eben's month-long stay at the
rebel camp on Bloodsworth Island, then, is in a sense symbolic of his
gaining an amount of first-hand knowledge of the subconsciOus; and it
makes him more qualified than before to talk abOut the nature of that
"dark force."- Mary Mungummory, whose past experience with the swarthy
Charley Matassin and whose nightly watch over the sexual "circus" in
her whore-wagon makes her even more qualified, expresses best the

understanding which the poet attains:

"there's a piece 0' the savage in us all. 'Tis that
"and more: the dark Of 'em hath somewhat to do with't,

176

I know. What drives so many planters' ladies to
raise their skirts for some great buck of a
slave, like the Queen in The Thousand and One
Nights? Me thinks 'tis an itch for all we lose
as proper citizens--something in us pines for
the black and lawless Pit"(p. 591).

 

Whether such savagery is central or peripheral in civilized
man, Eben does not, of course, even try now to determine, as he most
surely would have in the past; but he does recognize two things about
his inner darkness. First, it must be nurtured to an extent and, at
any rate, will not be disobeyed, for it is the seat of all emotions
and thus the source of all life. It may be emotion which makes the
rebels want to kill Eben and his white companions, but it is also
emotion whiCh makes rebel and white alike want to stay alive. The
sexual passion that he felt for Joan on three occasions in the past
had much to do with sadism, but it also had much to do with his and
his species' survival instinct. It was the black Boabdil, for
example, who brutishly raped Joan Toast on the Cyprian, simultaneously
rendering her unconscious and getting her with child and giving her
syphilis; but it also was the pair Of blacks pumping like brutes dur-
ing the storm who saved Captain Cairn's sloop from sinking.

The second realization to which Eben comes about the subcon-
scious drives in man is that, though he muSt recognize and often bow
to them, he also must try vigorously to keep them in check. The forces
of civilization in man must finally win out over the savage. In this’
light the Negro and Indian rebels who, from their Bloodsworth Island
base threaten to kill or drive back across the ocean every white in

Maryland become symbolic Of the constant threat of the dark forces in

177

man overwhelming his Reason; and Eben's efforts to prevent the rebel
take-over serve as a metaphor for the effort which he has come to
believe that men ought to make to prevent subconscious domination in
their own minds. When Eben argues for Billy Rumbly, the "Unsavaged
Savage Husband," to return to his father Chicamec and work from the
inside to defuse the rebellion, he is also arguing for Anna, Billy's
"Unenglished English Wife," and for all men to recognize but also to
attempt to maintain control over the dark forces in their nature:

But 'tis not the English case I plead: "tis the

case of humankind, Of Civilization versus the

Abyss of savagery. Only think, sir: what you've

acquired in less than a fortnight wanted two

thousand years and more a-building; 'tis a most

sweet liquor, is't not? Yet the mash whence man

distilled it is two dozen centuries of toil and

misery! What, will you drink your fill and

throw away the flask, when your peOple hath such

thirst? I grant the English have used you ill,

but to drive them out is to drive yourself back

into darkness (p. 662).

That Reason is a limited faculty, then, bounded from both
without and within by forces which are, beyond a point, impervious to
its way of knowing, is the first proposition which the Modern American
Mind as illustrated by Ebenezer Cooke in "Malden Earned" comes to accept.

The second prOposition is that, despite apparent differences of
all kinds, all men are related. They are, in a real sense, one man.

The act of physical love links them to the same original source; and it
is through acts Of spiritual love, Often reflected in the physical, that
they can once mere be brought together. Again, Eben's efforts to head
Off Open warfare between the rebels and the English in Maryland provide

clear evidence of his new belief; for they are based in large measure

178

upon the assumption that the two sides are in actuality one, that both
are "humankind." Like Eben, Bertrand, and Captain Cairn on the one
hand and the two crewmen on the other, light- and dark-skinned men
are literally in the same boat and will be either lost or saved to-
gether in the same storm.

This new belief on Eben's part is originally affirmed at the
rebel camp when the fact-that he once saved the lives of a black and
an Indian turns out to be the key to freedom for him and his three com-
panions. Indirectly, at least, the belief is also reaffirmed when,
after Eben has left the island, that "Shameless Playwright," Life,
arranges for an amazing number of persons he meets to be his figurative
and sometimes literal relatives.9 The Church-Creek Virgin turns out to
be his sister; Henrietta Russecks, his half-sister; Roxanne Russecks,
his French nursemaid and figurative mother; Harry Russecks, the hated
Church-Creek miller whose death at first seems an occasion for nothing
but joy, his figurative step-father; and Harvey Russecks, his figura-
tive step-uncle. Complementing this discovery Of his own relatives
is another, of course--the discovery that a similarly incredible num-
ber of persons in the book turn out to be relatives OfHenry's.

The act of finding that a person is one's relative becomes, in
a sense, symbolic Of this belief in the unity of all men through love,
just as, in The Floating Opera, the act Of two crabs mating and being

called a "doubler“ becomes symbolic of approximately the same vision.

 

9“There are deep metaphysical reasons why we need more
Fielding-like books today, with plots where everybody turns out to be
related to everybody else" (Murphy, ”Print," 37).

179

Supporting the frequent discovery Of relatives in The Sot-Weed Factor
and serving even further to reflect this new conviction on Eben's
part are a number Of lesser symbols. To mention but two, there is
Henry's allusion to the fact that the morning star Phosphor and the
evening star Hesper are, in fact, the same star--Venus; and also
loveable Mary Mungummory, the Traveling Whore O"Dorset, whose wagon
is the scene where men Of the county nightly commune with each other
by making love to the same half-dozen women. Mary's horse, by the
way, is named Aphrodite.

The third proposition which Eben accepts as truth in "Malden
Earned" is the simplest one Of all and serves as a basis for the
other two. It is that life, sheer physical activity, is good and
ought as long as possible to be maintained. The preservation of human
life is the yardstick by which Eben measures the practicality Of his
rational faculty as applied to any particular tOpic; it is to save
their-lives that persons ought to recognize their relatedness and love
one another. Clearly, this third prOposition is yet another motive
for the poet's opposing the savage rebellion; he is on the most ele-
mentary level working to keep as many people of all colors alive as
is possible. The important aspect of this belief is that it applies
to life under the worst of conditions as well as the best. Even in
the black hold of Long Ben Avery's ship, for example, when it appears
that violent death is imminent for Eben and for every person for whom
he cares except Henry, Joan, and Andrew, Eben does not think anymore
Of "Delicious Death," as he did on the last occasion Of his being on

the Chesapeake. Periods of happiness may be brief and far apart, he

180

tells Anna, and happiness may never be unalloyed; but life is still to
be lived to its very end: "we must cling to life and search each
moment for escape" from our trouble (p. 686).

When, moments later, Eben is forced from Avery's ship into
the cold, chOppy Bay, he has no doubt that he should swim as far as
he can. SOmething in his very being, that same "mindless lust for
air" that would not let him hold his breath indefinitely as a child,
will not now let him willingly drown--even though he knows he probably
will anyway, even though he assumes that Anna, Roxanne, and Henrietta
are being raped and butchered at that very minute. And when he gets
to a small island where he will probably soon freeze, there is no
doubt that he will look for shelter and firewood and, finding none,
will try to the point of exhaustion to reach the shore in a little
dinghy. He will choose the positive heat of physical activity, no
matter how brief or apparently futile, over the negative cold of sure
death. Life being the "Shameless Playwright" that it is, there is
always the ghgnge_for a miracle, the chance that thepresent trouble
may be the last. At any rate, there is in Eben that "mindless lust
for air" that should not be denied.

Armed with knowledge of the limits of reason, the relatedness
Of all human beings, and the paramount value of life, then, in place
of Essentialism, Ebenezer Cooke is able to live reSponsibly and pro-
ductively in the world. It remains to be seen, however, how he attains
this saving knowledge and how he translates it into particular actions
in choice-demanding situations. TO deal with the matter of attainment

first--the events during the twenty-eight or so hours between Joan

loast‘s
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181

Toast's Shocking revelation and Eben's being taken captive by the
rebels obviously clear the way for that process. Each of the three
truths is humbling in nature, certainly no fare for the proudly
ignorant virgin-poet who existed before those events cleared his mind
in the manner which we have noted. But in order to determine what

it was that actively caused Eben to learn these three lessons, we must
look to the month following his capture in the Limbo Straits, for,
clearly, the act he performs at the end of that month's captivity
utilizes each Of the three lessons and is the key to Eben's final
success.

He finds himself, we remember, in the position of being
allowed to go free because he had saved the lives of two of the three
rebel leaders when he first set foot in Maryland and because he still
had in his possession the fish-bone ring one had given him at the
time., Bertrand, John McEvoy, and Captain Cairn, on the other hand,
are condemned to burn at the stake. The poet's decision is to refuse
the Offer and to insist that all four Of the whites go free. Refusing
to indulge in futile rationalizing in regard to which Of the four men
is moSt or least guilty, refusing to think of himself as separate from
the other men around him, and refusing to call life a prize not worth
the cost, Eben negotiates an agreement that, if he and McEvoy will
find Burlingame and convince him to return to Chicamec, the oldest,
most bitter rebel leader who is his father, then Chicamec will in turn
free Bertrand the the Captain. If Eben and McEvoy do not succeed in
sending Henry back, then they themselves will return and die with

their two companions. The unspoken part of the agreement for Eben is,

182

as I have mentioned several times already, his hope that Henry's
presence on Bloodsworth Island will at least somewhat mollify the
father and thereby help quench the brewing rebellion.

We can find the positive, active sources of the new beliefs
which result in Eben's making this kind of agreement in three places.
First, for the source Of the belief that the world is too complex and
mysterious to be interpreted fully by reasOn, we must go to the first
moment of insight which Eben experiences while he is tied to the
stake. It is occasioned by the mistaken appearance that McEvoy alone
will be freed and that he has somehow gained his freedom by bartering
the lives of the other three whites. At first Eben is angry, remem-

bering that it was McEvoy's letter to Andrew Cooke which began the
chain Of events which had led him to the stake:

But he soon overcame his anger, for despite the
extremity Of his position, or perhaps because Of
it, he was able to see that McEvoy had only been
following his principles honestly, as had Ebenezer
his own; one could as easily blame Old Andrew for
reacting so strongly, Joan Toast for occasioning
the wager, Ben Oliver for proposing it, Anna for
crossing alone to Maryland, Burlingame for--among
other things--persuading him to disembark in St.
Mary's, or Ebenezer himself, who by any Of a
hundred thousand acts might have altered the
direction of his life. The whole history of his
twenty-eight years it was that had brought him

to the present place at the present time; and

had not this history taken its particular pat-
tern, in large measure, from the influence Of

all the peOple with whom he'd ever dealt, and
whose lives in turn had been shaped by the
influence of countless others? Was he not, in
short, bound to his post not merely by the sum
of human history, but even by the history of

the entire universe, as by a chain of number-
less links no one of which was more culpable

than any other? It seemed to Ebenezer that

he was, and that McEvoy was not more nor less

183

to blame than was Lord Baltimore, for example,
who had colonized Maryland, or the Genoese
adventurer who had discovered the New World to
the Old (pp. 544-545).

It needs little explication, I think, to see in this passage
the seeds of the proposition that reason alone is insufficient to
decide questiOns Of cause and effect, of credit and blame, in short,
of ethics. Irrational, blind determinism would seem to be the ruling
principle in the universe; and, if there j§_a point where that prin-
ciple stops and free will begins, reason is powerless to determine
just where that point lies. Life is indeed, as John McEvoy had told
Eben some ten months earlier, "a tangled skein."

For the source of Eben's second belief, that all men are
brothers, are in a real sense ppe man, we need go no further than the
moment of insight which follows immediately on the heels of the first:

The point in space and time whereto the history Of
the world had brought him would be nothing perilous
were it not for the hostility of the Indians and
Negroes. But it was their exploitation by the
English colonists that had rendered them hostile;
that is to say, by a people to whom the accidents
of history had given the advantage--Ebenezer did
not doubt that his captors, if circumstances were.
reversed, would do just what the English were
doing. To the extent, then, that historical move-
ments are expressions of the will Of the people
engaged in them, Ebenezer was a just object for
his captors' wrath, for he belonged . . . to the
class of the exploiters; as an educated gentleman
of the western world he had shared in the fruits
of his culture's power and must therefore share
what guilt that power incurred. Nor was this the
end of his responsibility: for if it was the
accidents of power and position that made the
difference between exploiters and exploited, and
not some mysterious specialization of each group's
spirit, then it was as "human" for the white man
to enslave and dispossess as it was "human" for
the black and red to slaughter on the basis Of

affir.
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diin

184

color alone; the savage who would put him to the
torch anon was no less his brother than was the
trader who had once enslaved that savage. In
sum, the poet Observed, for his secular Original
Sin, though he was to atone for it in persOn, he
would exact a kind of Vicarious Retribution; he
had committed a grievous crime against himself,
and it was himself who soon would punish the
malefactor (p. 545).

The source Of Eben's assent to the third proposition, the one
affirming life as an unquestionable value, we find in a moment of
strong feeling, if not exactly of insight, which he experiences not
many minutes later. At this point in the confused execution pro-
ceedings, it seems as if the rebel leaders are willing to let all but
Captain Cairn live. Bertrand and McEvoy are already planning to
return swiftly to England "so that they might wish the rebels success
without wishing their own ill fortune." But Eben's thoughts are
different. He

had not lost sight of his late reflections at the
stake; yet though he could sympathize with the
plight Of the slaves and Indians and affirm the
guilt even Of white men who, like himself, had
condoned that plight merely in effect, by not
protesting it, he could by no means relish the
idea Of a wholesale massacre. On the contrary,
with his two near-executions to dulcify it, life
tasted uncommonly sweet to the poet just then, and
he shuddered at the thought of anyone's being
deprived of it (p. 548).

These three moments, then, explain how Ebenezer Cooke comes by
his new, successful guides for living effectively amidst total rela-
tivity. It is clear that they were attained in a non-rational, even
mystical manner; and the only footnote necessary for the full compre-
hension of their significance is the observation that the moments Of

mystical insight came for Eben only when he was literally at the stake.

185

As we have seen, the first begins with ”despitethe extremity of his
position, or perhaps because of it"; and the third moment pivots on
the phrase "with his two near-executions." The second insight con-
cludes with a short paragraph which not only sums up the important
ramifications Of these three moments in Ebenezer Cooke's life but also
employs the two small words which are used several times in this chap-
ter and whose aura permeates the whole of "Malden Earned":
Grasping the pair of insights was the labor
of but as many seconds, and though they moved
him as had few moments in his spiritual auto-

biography, all he said to Bertrand and McEvoy was,
"In any case, 'tis too late to split the hairs

of responsibility" (ET—5457'(Italics mine).
The Modern American Mind, Barth is suggesting here, may finally be
ready, as was Eben Cooke, for the experience of profound non-rational
insights into value precisely because it, tOO, is living in a time
when it is too late for any alternatives.

There remains the matter of how, exactly, Ebenezer Cooke's new
values get translated into action, how in particular choice-demanding
situations he is able now to avoid paralysis and make particular
responsible choices. He tells McEvoy soon after they have departed
from Bloodsworth Island that finding the way out of the predicament of

10 the path to "the storied Town . . . where Responsibility

choice,
rears her golden towers," is simply a matter Of "turn[ing] your moral-

ity of motive upon yourself and see[ing] that behind this false

 

10It is in this scene, I think, where we see the significance
of the name McEvoy. Ebenezer is talking to him like a §9p_here and
Offering him the way out of the difficulties caused by non-mystical
value-thinking.

186

predicament lies simple cowardice” (p. 581). One has only to choose

a cause with humility and knowledge as Ebenezer has just done and then
have the courage to "lay your flesh-and-blood privates on the line"
(p. 582). For a fuller and more dramatic demonstration of the phenom-
enon, however, we must look at the scene in which Eben chooses to
attempt and then succeeds in carrying out the seemingly impossible
task of getting Bertrand, McEvoy, and himself to land after they have
jumped from Long Ben Avery's ship and have swum to the little island
in the Chesapeake.

This episode is equal in importance to the one at the rebel
camp since it, too, is a life-or-death situation for Eben and since
his presence is necessary to favorably resolve the central issues Of
the novel. One thing which this episode demonstrates is the conten-
tion that life is not a matter Of performing one responsible action
from which all else follows inevitably, but is, instead, a matter of
having to perform responsibly time and again. Moreover, this scene
serves as a conceit for Barth's vision Of how the Modern American
Mind might live, might "stay afloat," in the relativistic universe.

The activity Of Boating has already assumed metaphorical
implications in several places in the novel--in Henry's last lecture
tO Ebenezer, for example, when he talks Of "right" and "wrong" being
concepts like "windward" and "leeward" which take their meaning from
the direction Of any one particular boat. It is during the violent
storm on the Chesapeake, however, that that metaphor achieves full
bloom, for it is then that Eben is given in the person Of Captain

Cairn a perfect demonstration of how a man may stay alive on the sea

187

1] When the gale engulfs his sloop, Cairn indulges in

Of troubles.
no casuistry about whether he should have left shore in the first
place or whether he should have been a seaman at all or what is caus-
ing the storm or how long it will last or what it may do to them. He
cuts through all that; and, with a full awareness of the danger but
with no fear Of death, he makes the preservation of life his only
goal. In the Open Bay where the winds are strongest, he calmly and
efficiently does what little he can in rigging a sea anchor and then
puts his trust in "the indefatigable Negroes at the pump and an appar-
ent general seaworthiness about the hull, not tO mention blind
Providence" (p. 517). When the boat gets blown near the eastern
share, the Captain's calm intelligence, acute senses, and solid knowl-
edge Of both his Ship and the shoreline finally bring not only himself
and his crew but also the passengers, for whom fate has made him
responsible, into a cove Of temporary safety. No man, Barth is imply-
ing, can be a better captain of his metaphorical Ship.

The lesson is not lost on his passenger, Ebenezer Cooke.
When, little more than a month later, he finds himself, McEvoy, and
Bertrand on a cold, windy island in the same Bay, the choice is
between sure death by staying on the island and freezing before morn-
ing and almost-sure death by trying to navigate in a small skiff with

only one oar the four or five miles Of rough sea between them and a

light which they hope is on shore. “What say ye, Eben?" asks McEvoy,

 

 

1]The significance Of the name Cairn here is clear. He serves
as a memorial for Eben.

188

purposely repeating the very words that less than a year ago had
paralyzed Eben when it came his turn to wager for Joan Toast:

The poet started, and saw by his companion's
grim smile that McEvoy had formed the question
deliberately. For an instant he forgot the
frightful cold: he was at table in Locket's,
where the eyes Of Ben Oliver, Dick Merriweather,
Tom Trent, and Joan Toast had joined McEvoy's
to render him immobile; again, as then, he
felt the weight of choice devolve upon him,
peg him out like a tan yard hide in all direc-
tions. It was a queer moment: he felt as
must a seasoned Alpinist brought back to a
crag whence he fell Of Old and barely sur-
vived; many another more formidable he has
scaled since without a tremor, but this one
turns his blood to water . . . .

With some effort, Ebenezer threw Off the
memory. ''I say we try for the house. Wind and
waves are behind us, and for better or worse we'll
have done with't in an hour" (p. 691).

Having chosen the warmth Of life as it is represented by the
light and the activity which the sea-faring will require over-the
coldness of death as represented by the island, Eben and his compan-
ions launch their skiff and form the same triangular pattern as we
saw before on Captain Cairn's sloop--two men bailing in hull and the
"captain" controlling as best he can from the stern:

Though he truly cared little now for his own
safety, the burden of responsibility weighed heavy
on the poet's heart. He knew so little about what
he was doing, and they carried out his suggestions,
on which their lives depended, as if he were
Captain Cairn! But however meager his seamanship,
it was apparently superior to Bertrand's and
McEvoy's. And however great the burden, it was
no longer an unfamiliar one: he grappled with
it calmly, as with an old, well-known Opponent,
and wondered whether his sensibility had perhaps
of late been toughened like the hands of an
apprentice mason, by frequent laceration (p. 692).

189

The next two paragraphs owe a great debt to Stephen Crane's
"The Open Boat" in conception if not exactly in content. They are a
hopeful but far from "happy" allegory Of the revitalized Modern
American Mind that has learned to navigate the seas of a thoroughly
nihilistic universe. Eben is firmly at the helm of his ship but at
the same time is entirely circumscribed by and dependent upon the
physical limitations of that ship. He is dependent, too, upon other
human beings even at the same time that he is responsible for them.
The early stages of the journey are relatively smooth like the early
stages of one's life; but soon he is in Open water where each new wave
of trouble falls so close upon the last that there is no time or need
to take the exact measure Of any one of them and there is no true
respite. But there j§_progress. Exhausted, "shocked," and "demoral-
ized" though he is, Eben finds the skill and resources to continue
toward the light; and with his companions' help and with luck, he
manages at last to bring the boat to shore. The light by which he
has been guiding turns out, surprisingly, to be not only a polestar
but also a destination. It turns out to be his home.

The vision with which "Malden Earned" closes, then, is one Of
Ebenezer Cooke finally earning his rightful place in the world, devel-
oping a productive sense Of identity and value, coming home. He no
longer needs the help of a God either outside or inside himself in
Order to act responsibly. It is a vision both of the modern intel-
lectual product of America and of America as a modern nation that has
exhausted the destructive "non-mystical value-thinking" Of its past

and has adopted at the eleventh hour a more constructive mystical

190

value-thinking. An ethic based on a theory Of personal essences has
been replaced by an ethic based on a firmer grasp Of the real world
outside and of the dark forces beneath the conscious self. In the
beginning Of "Malden Earned," Eben is fleeing Maryland and Joan Toast,
both emblems of that real world; but by the end he is Openly embracing
both and, in so doing, is contributing to that world's betterment.
He rectifies what he can of the disasters which his Essentialism has
inflicted; and, for those which are beyond rectifying, he simply asks
forgiveness and follows the Observation of John McEvoy that such mis-
takes are "like the sin 0' Father Adam, that we all have on our heads;
we ne'er asked for't, but there it is, and do we choose to live, why,
we must needs live with't" (p. 694).

In short, the story of Ebenezer Cooke in Part III of The Sot-

Weed Factor is the story of the Modern American Mind losing its

 

innocence.y And since innocence, as we have noted, is a traditionally
American trait, The Sot-Weed Factor is the story Of the Modern Amer-
ican Mind's having, ironically, to become le§§_American in the tradi—
tional sense, having to become more "worldly," in order to "live any
longer in the world." It is proud ignorance--innocence--which causes
Eben in the beginning to locate his values in himself and thereby to
wreak so much grief; and it is humble knowledge--experience--which
causes him in the end to Obtain redemption for that grief. Clearly,
Barth himself realizes the close association between Essentialism and
Innocence.‘ He makes Innocence one of Eben's essences; he reinforces
that essence with the emblem of physical virginity; he traces Eben's

decreasing regard for both essence and emblem throughout the course

191

Of the novel; and he puts a formal end to both with Eben's having
carnal knowledge of Joan Toast. Outside the novel itself, Barth goes
so far as to explain the difference between his first two and his
third books by saying, "What happened was I had thought I was writ-
ing about values and it turned out I was writing about innocence,
which I found to be a more agreeable subject anyway . . . .“12
To close this discussion Of Ebenezer Cooke as an illustration
Of the Modern American Mind, therefore, it is appropriate that we look
more directly than we have heretofore at what in "Malden Earned" Eben
does and says about Innocence. Much is crystalized, of course, in
his final statement to Anna before going up the stairs at Malden tO
consummate his marriage:
"That is the crime I stand indicted for . . .
the crime Of innocence, whereof the Knowledged
must bear the burden. There's the true Original
Sin our souls are born in: not that Adam learned,
but that he hgg_to learn--in short, that he was
innocent."
He sat on the edge of the couch and took
Joan's hand. "Once before, this girl had shriven
me Of that sin, and I compounded it by deserting
her. Whate'er the outcome, I rejoice at this
second chance for absolution"(p. 739).

These explicit sentiments are, however, only half of The Sot-Weed

 

fpgtppfs final statement on innocence. The other half is implicit both
in the deliberate, formal, even ceremonial manner in which he utters
those words and then performs that deed and also in the fact that it
is not until this late in the book that he does so. Since he has long

since lost any real innocence and real regard for the virginity which

 

12Enck, "Interview," 11.

192

is its outward sign, why has he not also long since lost that outward
sign as well? In order to answer this question and thus to explain
the novel's statement on innocence, we must go back some ways. Let
us look at the second of the two major moments Of insight that Eben
experiences in "Malden Earned." The first I have already cited in
the context of discussing the source Of Eben's new humility-and
knOwledge. The second occurs during a conversation with the good
trapper, Harvey Russecks. Eben has expressed his bitterness over
Maryland in general andher courts' treatment Of him in particular,
and Harvey has come swiftly and intelligently to their defense:

Ebenezer's cheeks tingled, not alone because
he felt that he had in fact overstated his indict-
ment: his day in the Cambridge court still
rankled in his memory, and the price Of it drew
sweat from his pores; but his wholesale rancor
had got to be something Of a disposition, and
he had been alarmed to recognize, as the trapper
spoke, that he fell into it of late, on mention
of certain subjects, more from habit than from
honest wrath. So grossly had Maryland used him,
he had vowed to smirch her name in verse to his
children's children's children; could such out-
rages dwindle to the like Of actors' cues? It
was by no progress of reason that he reached this
question, but by a kind Of insight that glowed
in his mind as the blush glowed in his face. By
its troubled light, in no more time than was
required for him to murmur, "I daresay" to Harvey
Russecks, he beheld the homeless ghosts ofsa
thousand joys and sorrows meant to live in the
public heart till the end of time: feast days,
fast days, monuments and rites, all dedicated
to gloriesand disasters of a magnitude that
dwarfed his own, and all forgotten, or rotely
observed by a gentry numb to the emotions that
established them.~ A aisquieting vision, and no
less so to the poet was his response to it. Not
long since, he would have gnashed his spiritual
teeth at the futility of endeavor in such a world.
Not improbably he would have railed at human
fickleness in allegorical couplets: the Heart, he

193

would have declared.was afaithless Widow: at the
deathbed Of her noble Spouse (whether Triumph or
'Tragedy) she pledges herself forever to his memory,
but scarcely has she donned her Weeds before some
importuning Problem has his way with her; and in the
years that follow, for all her ceremonious visits to
the tomb, she shares her bed with a parade of mean
Vicissitudes, not one Of them worthy even Of her
notice. Now, however, though such fickleness still
stung his sensibilities (which is to say his vanity,
since he identified himself with the late Husband),
he was not sure but what it had about it a double
rightness: "Time passes for the living," it seemed
to say, "and alters things. Only for the dead do
circumstances never change." And this Observation
implied a judgment on the past, its relation to and
importance in the present; a judgment to which he
currently half assented. But only half! (pp. 605-606).

There is no better passage to show Eben in the process Of
recognizing his own mortal limits, beginning to accept the imperfect
flux Of the world around him, and thus shedding his innocence. All
of this is clear. But what does Barth mean at the end by the implied
"judgment on the past, its relation to and importance in the present"?
And why does Eben "only half!" assent to that judgment? The judgment,
as I understand it, is that it is impossible to make the past a hard-
and-fast guide for the present, that the past has no direct bearing on
the present. Since the very element of the living is "time passing,"
any attempt to attach a fixed meaning to a fact in one's life, any

attempt to say, "This signifies such-and-such and nothing else and it

 

always will" is an act of innocence. That is, it is an act of pride
and ignorance and shares the futility and the destructiveness Of all
such acts. The split-second after one attaches absolute significance,
to some fact, it belongs to the past and must somehow be marked if it

is to remain in the memory. And for as long as life goes on, one's

OWE-5

 

na ri; ’

wedC'

 

hec

 

194

own as well as others' interpretations and Observances of such
markers--whether they be ”feast days, fast days, monuments, and rites,"
wedding rings, stories, or "cairns" of any kind--will inevitably
change and fade. A wish for things to be otherwise is a wish for
something life cannot give.

The above or something like it is, I think, the "judgment on
the past" that is elicited by Eben's moment Of insight; and I think
that he assents to the literal statement I have just made. What he
cannot assent to is the implied conclusion to that statement: there-
fore, one should not attempt to attach absolute significance to facts
and tO erect memorials either mental or physical to that significance;
to do so is to be innocent, and one should not be innocent. Eben
rejects this half Of the judgment to which his moment of insight leads
because it contradicts itself in a sense by placing an absolute nega-
tive value on that early stage Of every person's life when he cannot
help_but try to locate absolutes within himself, when he mpg; make
memorials of all kinds to events that have meaning for him. The judg-
ment assumes that there is an absolute negative value in the fact Of
innocence itself. When Eben's newly acquired relativistic method of
perceiving the world changes its focus from values to innocence, he
concludes that a man's period Of innocence, too, can have any number
of meanings. A man can make it have, for himself, of course, whatever
Significance he wants, just as Eben made his experience on Captain
Cairn's leOp during the violent storm signify a method of salvation

for him, McEvoy, and Bertrand a month or so later.

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195

Eben's first overt statement of this way Of viewing innocence
takes place during a conversation with John McEvoy and Mary Mungummory,
and it contrasts vividly with the more absolutist attitudes of those

two characters:

"Innocence is like youth,“ he [Ebenezer] declared
sadly, "which is given us only to expend and take its
very meaning from its loss."

"'Tis that makes it precious, is't not?" asked
McEvoy with a smile.

"Nay," Mary countered, "'tis that proves_its
vanity, to my way 0' thinking."

“'Tis beyond me what it proves,“ Ebenezer said,
"I know only that the case is SO" (p. 608).

With this short conversation for a prelude, we are able now to
understand Eben's rationale for maintaining his virginity long after
he has lost the quality for which it was emblematic. He Offers this
rationale during a conversation with Roxanne Russecks while Roxanne's
daughter Henrietta is sporting with McEvoy in the mill loft and her
husband Harry is being led on a wild goose--or rather, horse--chase
by Mary Mungummory. Roxanne is set on having some amorous dallying Of
her own with Eben, but he demurs on the grounds that he has taken a
vow Of chastity. She asks if he is a priest and he answers no:

He went on to eXplain to her how at the outset,
being a shy ungainly fellow, he had come to regard
his innocence as a virtue rather from necessity; how
not a year past (though it seemed decades!) he had
elevated it, along with a certain artistic bent Of
his, to a style of life, even identifying it with
the essence of his being; and how through a year
Of the most frightful tribulation, and at a stag-
gering expense not only of property but perhaps
of human lives, he had managed to preserve it
intact. It had been some while since he'd been
obliged to consider Seriously the matter of his
innocence, and though to enlarge upon its virtues
and shudder verbally at the prOSpect of its loss
had become second nature for him, he was surprised

196

to find himself dissociated emotionally from his
panegyric; standing Off, as it were, and
listening critically. Indeed, when Mrs. Russecks
asked with sharp interest for an explanation of
this wondrous innocence, he was obliged to admit,
both to her andfito himself, that he could call
himself innocent no longer except with regard to
physical love.

But the lady was not yet satisfied. "DO you
mean you've no notion of what your friend and
Henrietta have been about this last half hour?"

Ebenezer blushed, not alone at the reference
to the other couple, but also at the realization
(which he readily confessed to Mrs. Russecks)
that even in the physical sense his innocence had
come to be limited to the mere technical fact of
his virginity--which fact itself (though he would
not elaborate further) was not so unqualified as ‘
he might wish.

"The truth Of't is, then," Mrs. Russecks per-
sisted, "this precious Innocence you cling to
hath been picked at and pecked at till you've
scarce a tit-bit Of't left."

"I must own that is the case, more's the pity.

"And doth that wretched tatter mean so much?"

Ebenezer sighed. The critical listener in his
soul had posed that very question not many moments
earlier, during his speech, and had Observed by
way of answer a startling fact: his loss Of the
quality of innocence, it suddenly seemed, had been.
accompanied by a diminution of the value that he
placed on it; although he still sang its praises
from witless force of habit, he had been astonished
to remark, in these moments Of dispassionate
appraisal, what slight emotion he truly felt now
at the thought Of losing it altogether. Thus his
sigh, and the slight smile with which he replied,
"In sooth I have grown indifferent to't, lady.

Nay, more: I am right weary of innocence."

 

Still, he will not embrace her.

"What I prized before hath all but lost its
point," he said gently, "and when I think that
soon or late 'twill come, this end you speak of,
as sure as death will come, and belike in cir-
cumstances by no means so pleasurable as these,
why, then I wonder: What moral doth the story
hold? Is't that the universe is vain? The chaste
and consecrated a hollow madness? Or is't that
what the world lacks we must ourselves supply?

197

My brave assault on Maryland--this knight-errantry
of Innocence and Art--sure, I see now 'twas an
edifice raised not e'en on sand, but on the black
and vasty zephyrs of the Pit. Wherefore a voice
in me cries, 'Down with't, then!‘ while another
stands in awe before the enterprise; sees in the
vanity Of't all nobleness allowed to fallen men.
'Tis no mere castle in the air, this second voice
says, but a temple of the mind. Athene's shrine,
where the Intellect seeks refuge from Furies more
terrific than e'er beset Orestes--"

Ebenezer declared that although to present her then
and there with the final vestige of his innocence
would be a privilege as well as a joy, he was re-
solved tO deny himself a pleasure which, however
sublime, would be devoid of a right significance.

"When erst I entered the lists of Life,” he
said, "Virginity was a silken standard that I
aned, all bright and newly stitched. 'Tis
weatherblast and run now, and SO rent by the
shocks of combat e'en its bearer might mistake it
for a boot rag. Notwithstanding which, 'tis a
banner still, and hath earned this final dignity
of standards: since I must lose it, I'll not
abandon it by the way, but surrender it with
honor in the field" (pp. 627-629).

 

SO eloquent a statement hardly needs a gloss. Clearly, Eben
wants the loss of his virginity to be a ceremony in honor of “the
knight-errantry Of Innocence and Art." He wants it to be an affirma-
tion of belief that his actions during the last nine months of the
previous year, no matter how damaging their consequences, were not
in vain; and, in order to make that affirmation, in order to give his

loss Of virginity that "right significance," he must remain chaste

 

until finally he can make love with the one woman who inspired those
actions. By having Eben choose to remain faithful to Joan Toast,
here in the face of sexual urgencies and, later, as the court pro-
ceedings at Malden unfold, in the face of familial responsibilities,

Barth is asserting that innocence is cowardly but also brave, vain

198

but also noble, a "castle in the air" but also "a temple Of the mind,“
its demise necessary but also sad.

A postlude ought to be added to this assertion. Two qualities
other than lateness and ceremony distinguish Eben's honeymoon night.
There is also a marked aura Of heroism, since, by consummating his
marriage, he is securing the Cooke's Point estate for his family and
therein helping to secure the whole province Of Maryland against a
vicious plot; and, further, there is a palpable air Of martyrdom,
since, when he finally makes love to Joan, he will inevitably take
her pox. The best passage to explain these qualities of heroism and
martyrdom as they relate to the idea of Innocence is that which
renders Eben's thinking as he sits imprisoned in the black hold of
Long Ben Avery's ship and talks impassionedly with his sister:

The martyr, it seemed to him, was in a sense
unnatural, Since blind Nature has neither codes
nor causes; it was from this point Of view that
Andromache, like Ecclesiasticus, appeared the
more sophisticated moralist, and heroes Of every
stamp seemed drunkards or madmen. Yet the very
un-Naturalness, the hubris, as it were, Of hero-
ism in general and martyrdom in particular were
their most appealing qualities. Granted that
the Earth, as Burlingame was fond of pointing
out, is "a dustmote whirling through the night,"
there was something brave, defiantly human,
about the passengers on this mote who perished
for some dream of Value. To die, to risk death,
even to raise a finger for any Cause, was to
pennon one's lance with the riband Of Purpose,
so the poet judged, and had about it the same
high lunacy of a tilt with Manchegan windmills
(p. 685).

The term "high lunacy” catches perfectly the kind of ethical
thinking which Barth is finally envisioning for the Modern American

Mind. An equally accurate term, I think, is "higher innocence."

 

l .114.

 

199

Barth is recommending hypothetically not that such a mind try somehow
to remain in its original state Of innocence-~we have seen through
Eben that that attempt is destructive and futile--and not that it
somehow immerse itself totally in the state of experience--the world
Of "fallen" men has treated Eben no better than he has treated it--
but that it strive to transcend the two states and achieve a synthesis
of them which will be nobler than either. The Modern American Mind
needs to know more about the facts surrounding it both from within and
without; it needs to accept the reality of those facts; and it needs
to make do with finding in them only relative guides for action.
Having done all this, however, it needs also to retain, or perhaps, to
regain, its innocent "Dream Of Value.” The Modern American Mind must
learn to adopt a cause out of humility and knowledge rather than pride

and ignorance; but then, having adopted the cause, to fight proudly

 

 

for it not because it is but as if it were an absolute. As for the
personal cost Of trying literally to live metaphorically in this
fashion,ryfacting out of such quixotic “higherinnocence," Anna tells
her brother, "'Tis not worth [it]!" "Nor is aught else," Eben

replies (p. 686).

A footnote must be added to this discussion of Ebenezer Cooke,
for he, like Todd Andrews; Joseph Morgan, and Jacob Horner before
hinuillustrates the Writer--that is, the.Poet in the broad sense Of
that term. By making Poetry as well as Innocence one of Eben's
assumed essences, Barth keeps before us throughout the novel the con-

sideration that the claim to Truth has traditionally belonged to the

 

200

poet as well as to the innocent. All of this is figured vividly at
the end of "Going to Malden," where Eben makes his escape from respon-
sibility and as he goes holds tight to his first poem Of any honesty
and merit. In this act, we see the ambivalence Of Poetry, which can

take its maker and its audience from the world Of human responsibility

 

e.
for reasons both admirable and despicable, brave and cowardly. But i

the statement being made about Poetry here is quite unambivalent on

one point: at this stage of the develOpment Of the Modern American i_
Mind, verbal art ggp_still be made. 7

By the end Of "Malden Earned," however, there is ambivalence
on this point as well. The central question is this: if Poetry is
innocent at the core (as Innocence is poetic), then can it still be
written by a Modern American Mind which has lost its innocence? And
if the answer is yes, then what kind can be written? On one side of
the question, Barth Offers the Spirited rationales for the "knight-
errantry of . . . Art" and the "Dream Of Value" which we have seen.
And there could be no more spirited defense of the particular sort Of
poetry--narrative--that Eben inclines to than that made by Harvey
Russecks:

"NO pleasure pleasures me as doth a well-spun
tale, be't sad or merry, shallow or deep! If the
subject's privy business, or unpleasant, who cares
a fig? The road to Heaven's beset with thistles,
and methinks there's many a cow-pat on't. As for
the length, fie, fie!" He raised a horny finger.
"A bad tale's long though it want but an eyeblink
for the telling, and a good tale's short though
it take from St. Swithin's to Michaelmas to have
done with't. Ha! And the plot is tangled, d'ye
say? Is't more knotful or bewildered than the
skein 0' life, that a good tale tangles the
better to unsnarl? Nay, out with your story, now

201

and yours as well, sir, and shame on both 0' ye

thou'rt not commenced already! Spin and tangle

till the Dog-star sets i' the Bay; a tale well

wrought is the gossip O' the gods, that see the

heart and point 0' life on earth; the web 0' the

world; the Warp and the Woof . . . I'Christ, I

do love a story, sirs!" (pp. 588-589).
This defense, together with the fact that every drOp in the ocean Of
story which Eben hears proves not only pleasurable but also useful in
the unraveling of true identities and the righting Of fortunes,13
certainly speaks eloquently for the place Of Poetry in a post-
innocence mind. 0n the negative side of the question is the simple
but weighty fact that Eben never writes any more poetry after his
satire. Nor does he indicate that he ever intends to.

One way to resolve this apparent inconsistency would be to
claim that Eben proves to be not really a poet at all, just as he
proves to be not really a virgin. The verses he writes, like the
sexual organ he keeps sheathed, are emblems of essences which he only
imagines. To be a Poet takes more than a certain way Of looking at
language and life and a certain temperament that wants to create new
worlds. It takes the ability to create those worlds, to give that
sort of temperament original expression in a work of art; and Eben
never gives any real indication of that sort of ability, his The Sot-

Weed Factor being indisputably a second-rate poem. In fact, one of

 

the first things we ever learn about him is that he is "more ambitious
than talented" (p. 3). From this point of view, then, Eben stands for

the Poet as "seer" rather than "maker," for the spirit rather than the

 

fl

13See footnote 9.

‘1 1.»... .i:

..IHM

 

 

202

fact; and there is little doubt that it is the latter category in each
Of these two pairs that is the genuine article. Eben himself admits
as much when he looks back on his satire from a few months' perspec-
tive and considers it mere "versifying."

There is much truth in this line of argument, Of course; but
it alone does not resolve the apparent ambivalence concerning how and
what the Modern American Poet will continue to write after he has lost
his innocence. To begin with, one cannot accept wholeheartedly the
simple preference of the one definition Of "Poet" over the other. The
particulars Of that Old argument need not be rehearsed again here,
except to say that claiming a man is a poet only when he is in the act
Of putting words to a page is surely narrow and that therefore Eben
in "Malden Earned" may conceivably be seen as a Poet between words or
in preparation for his first real work. Or he may be interpreted as a
Poet who is understandably too swamped with perilous action and too
imaginatively exhausted for the moment to give his talent free reign.M
At least, there is nothing in the strictly fictional context of this
third part Of the novel to refute such views directly. It is impor-
tant, at any rate, for the reading Of Eben's whole illustrative func-
tion that his embodiment Of the idea of Poetry be taken seriously.
As fine a critic as Burlingame thought his The Sot-Weed Factor worth
publishing, perhaps a Sign of even better things to come; and we

should not underestimate how difficult it is to make even a

 

14This question, of course, relates directly to the validity
or lack of validity of Eben's Essentialism. Is a man a poet by
virtue of what he i§_or what he does?

203

second-rate piece Of art. Furthermore, the question Of what kind of
poetry, if any, the Modern American Mind which has lost its innocence
will continue to appreciate, to peep) is equally as important and
germane as what kind of poetry, if any, that mind will continue to
create.

The answer which Barth offers can finally be understood, I
believe, as consisting Of two parts. First, poetry, particularly the
narrative sort with which Barth shows foremost concern, will be much
more an end in itself for the Modern American Mind that has lost its
innocence than it was before. As Harvey Russecks's enthusiastic
tribute makes clear, the pleasure Of sheer story, apart from consid-
erations of meaning, will become a greater part of the Writer's (and
the Reader's) literary fare. The Writer will be on more familiar
terms with the idea of relative significance; he will be more willing
now to leave questions Of final meaning to "the gossip O' the gods";
and thus he, like Harvey Russecks, will be more attuned to the Spin-
ning of good yarns as a joy in its own right. The act Of storytelling,
then, will more than ever provide its own reason for being.

This is not to say, Of course, that the Writer will not §§y_to
invest his story with absolute meaning (or that the Reader will not
try to find absolute meaning). But it is to say-~and this is the
second half Of Barth's answer to the question of what and how the
Modern American Mind will continue to write after its loss of inno-
cence--that that act will now be one of "higher innocence." The

Writer will tell stories not because he is but as if he were privy to

 

the Truth, asif he believed that human events could be ordered and

204

related via the written word so to reveal "the heart and point 0' life
on earth; the web 0' the world; the Warp and the Woof . . . .”’
Through overt statement and so heavy a reliance on metaphor that it

draws attention to the very act of saying "as if," he will admit even
as he searches for Significance that it probably can't be found. He

will, in short, write a story something like The Sot-Weed Factor.

 

Ebenezer Cooke, Of course, is not capable Of this "higher innocence"
on a verbal level; but, in his self-conscious act of remaining sex-
ually faithful to his wife and thereby seeming, for a moment at least,
to give his life-story Meaning, he serves as a heroic exemplum for

the Modern American Writer.15

III

"There are more ways to the woods than one." Of the scores of.
aphorisms Offered us by the scores of characters in The Sot-Weed
£25595, this is the one which is most Often repeated. The resultant
emphasis encourages a reader to apply this aphorism to a whole host Of
considerations raised by the novel, but I think that it nowhere applies
with greater clarity than in the consideration of the illustrative
dimension Of Henry Burlingame III. In the broadest terms, he stands
for a way to the "woods" of responsibility in a nihilistic universe
which is exactly Opposite to but equally as successful as Ebenezer

Cooke's way. The fact that Henry Burlingame III is not the novel's

 

15Barth, "Exhaustion," 34.

‘ :
i v' Ti' 431032; A

 

 

205

main character surely suggests that his creator's attention is not
focused primarily on this way; nevertheless, it constitutes for Barth
a prominent consideration, one which both amplifies and puts into a
clearer context Ebenezer Cooke's way.

At the risk of belaboring the Obvious, let us begin, then, by
noting that Henry Burlingame III, like Ebenezer Cooke, stands first
of all for the Modern Mind. It is hj§_theory and practice of educa-
tion, after all, which to a great extent creates Eben's relativistic,
nihilistic, "modern" perception of the universe. It is Henry, not

Eben, who initially treats all knowledge as a game, makes no distinc—

 

tion between Objects or facts or philOSOphies on the basis of
inherent worth, and achieves so high a degree of knowledge and imag-
ination that he cannot see any final reason for choosing one course
of action over the alternatives. When Henry breaks in upon his ex-'
student at Cambridge and finds him literally paralyzed with indeci-
sion, with "cosmOpsis," to use Jake Horner's term again, we are not
surprised to hear Henry ask, ”Will it comfort you to learn that I,
too, suffer from your disease, and have since childhood?" (p. 14).
There are two notable differences, however, between these two
characters' versions of the Modern Mind.. One is that the wit and
imagination from which such a mind develops are more acute in Henry
than in Eben. "The truth that drives men mad" may be "caught and
looked on" by either "insight or instruction," Henry tells Eben
(p. 345); and the fact that Henry suffered from this modern paralysis
almost from the beginning, while it did not fully strike Eben until

he was twenty-one, suggests strongly that Henry's basic way Of

206

catching that truth was that Of the "insight"_of genius as opposed to
Eben's more common "instruction." Since one way to put the "truth
that drives men mad" is that mankind is left alone--that is,
Godless or "Fatherless"--in the universe, it is not surprising that
one of the first things we learn about Burlingame's personal life is
that he does not know who his father was. (He does not know his
mother, either, but the emphasis in his mind is always on the missing
father.) Thus, he not only "looks on" the nihilistic universe but
also feels himself to be an integral part Of it.

The other difference between Eben's and Henry's version Of the
Modern Man is that Henry is more sexual. He is from the very begin-
ning in touch with his most primal instincts in a way that it takes
Eben the entire novel even to begin to achieve; Henry is, in fact, as
much a genius in the area of human sexuality as in the area Of the
intellect. Again, we see the play on the word kpgw which we noted at
several points in the discussion Of Eben. Several facts from the
early part of Henry's biography serve to underscore this particular
characteristic, chief Of them being his early association with the
sea, which oozed forth the earliest forms of life and which is peren-
nially associated with the liquids Of the body. He was not born, it
appears at first, but was simply "fished like a jimmy-crab from the
waves Of the Chesapeake" (p. 134). His first memory is Of a sea voy-
age, his earliest and strongest yearning is to go to sea again, and he
is raised until that time by a sea captain and his wife named Salmon.

Complementing all this, moreover, is the fact that his first nursing

207

was on the milk Of a goat (p. 135), an animal renowned for its pro-
creative drive.16

The second primary aspect Of Burlingame's ideological func-
tion--that he, like Eben, stands for the American--again need not be
broadly dwelt upon. It is the educational theory spun out of Henry's
view Of the world which is a major cause Of Eben's distinctly American
inability to accept the finality of things; and the fact that Henry,
too, was born in the New World and Spends most Of his time and ener-
gies during the novel there lends support to this illustrative trait.
AS with Henry and his illustration Of the Modern Mind, his connection
with America is, if anything, even stronger than Eben's in that it
pre-dates it. Eben does not get back to the New World until he is
twenty-eight, while Henry was cavorting there as a neophyte sailor
less than a year after Eben was born. Thereafter, Henry was sot-weed
planter, pirate, and political agent there while Eben was still
laboring dully along in London.

Of course, Henry was cavorting in other parts of the world
as well; and all through the novel he declares himself a citizen of
that entire world, not just the part that is America. Still, it is
America, and Maryland in particular, which he takes as his favorite
symbol of the world and which he most articulately and thoroughly
understands:

"the Province is no Hell or Purgatorio, but just a

piece Of the great world like England--with the
difference, haply, that the soil is vast and new

 

16There is a foreshadowing here Of the hero Of Giles Goat-Boy,
an "Enos Enoch," a savior,"with balls."

 

208

where the sot-weed hath not drained it. What's
more, the reins and checks are few and weak; good
plants and weeds alike grow tall. 00 but recall,
if the peOple there seem strange and rough: a man
content with EurOpe scarce would cross the ocean.
The plain fact is, the greatest part are castaways
from Europe, or the sons Of castaways: rebels,
failures, jailbirds and adventurers. Cast such
seed on such soil, 'twere fond to seek a crop of
dons and courtiers!"

"Yet you speak as one who loves the place,"
said Ebenezer, "and that alone for me is warrant
I shall too."

Burlingame shrugged. "Haply so, haply no.
There is a freedom there that's both a blessing
and a curse. 'Tis more than just political and
religious liberty--they come and go from one year
to the next. 'Tis philOSOphic liberty I speak
of, that comes from want Of history. It makes
every man an orphan like myself, that freedom, 17
and can as well demoralize as elevate“ (p. 165).

It is Obvious that Burlingame's comprehension of America is from the
inside, as it were; that is, his status as orphan makes it largely a
matter Of identification rather than Of intellectualization, in the
same sense as his comprehension of the nihilistic, "Fatherless" uni-
verse. His last sentence notionly explains how his orphanhood becomes
an emblem of the universe as it is perceived by the Modern Mind.

America's inhabitants, like those of the world at large, are cut Off

 

17This passage clarifies two important aspects of Barth's
work. First, we see here a thematic rationale for his not providing
any of the characters in The End of the Road with significant biog-
raphies. Their very lack of them underlines their illustration Of the
American. Second, we see here the real significance Of the title of
this novel. It is called The Sot-Weed Factor not merely because it
concerns the adventures of a tobacco salesman or because its central
character wrote a poem by that name. It is so entitled because it
concerns the moral exhaustion of America. The "sot-weed factor" in
the universe is that factor which seems to wear out every New World
for mankind and for individual men as well and to force them finally
to accept the imperfect one they have. It is that factor, in other
words, which makes men lose their innocence.

 

 

iron th
gave th
undergc
all by

about ‘

Who k1

nothii

to fi
offer
truth
this
fath
no d
dEni

dire

ern

209

from the Old, traditional customs, beliefs, and "parentage" which once
gave them identity and value. Thus they, like Henry, are forced to
undergo the traumatic experience Of trying tO discover or to create
all by themselves these two qualities. As Henry elsewhere explains
about himself, and hence about America:
"But what a burden and despair to be a stranger to
the world at large, and have no link with history! 'Tis

as if I'd sprung de novo like a maggot out of meat, or
dropped from the sky. Had I the tongue of angels I ne'er

could tell you what a loneliness it is. (p. 130).

SO it is that Burlingame to a higher degree even than Cooke,
who knows who his father is, at least, even if he knows almost
nothing about him, stands for the Modern American Mind as Barth sees
it. Burlingame must try, therefore, even more desperately than Cooke
to find a way of acting productively, manfully, in a world which
Offers no absolute rules for conduct, a way of fighting Off "the
truth that drives men mad." Eben has at least a vague direction for
this life from the start: he should be preparing to inherit his

father's estate; he should be "Going to Malden." Henry has absolutely

no direction at all. He does, fortunately, have a number of resources
denied to his counterpart that will aid him in the attempt to find
direction. Foremost among these resources.are the two characteristics
to which I pointed as marks which distinguish his version of the Mod-
ern Mind from Eben's--his intellectual and sexual genius. Also not to
be overlooked are his two years of experience in sailing the seas, with
all of the connotations we have seen in that experience, and his one
year with a wandering gypsy tribe, with its usual suggestions of pas-

sion and outlawry.) Actually, it is hard to know exactly whether tO call

f

 

these two ado
later help hi
value and id
never really
been afflict
childhood.
preludes to
lem which i
The
Cambridge |
sixteen as
""5 Perio
StUdent wt
lADOrtant
Barth's a.
Here, the

and embra

and the s

 

210

these two adolescent experiences "resources" in the sense that they
later help him to determine and execute certain attempts at achieving
value and identity or to call them his first two such attempts. He
never really seems to have peep_an adolescent, and he claims to have
been afflicted with the potentially paralyzing cosmic view since
childhood. At any rate, the sailing and the gypsying are instructive
preludes to the solution to the Modern American Mind's ethical prob-
lem which he finally adopts in his adult years.

The same ambiguity applies to the five years he spends at
Cambridge before being expelled, if one takes twenty-one rather than
sixteen as the prOper demarcation between adolescence and adulthood.
This period at the university serves as the climax Of his years as
student which began when he read his first imaginative literature,

Don Quixote, at fourteen. At Cambridge, Burlingame makes a very

 

important decision. He is initially "taken in" (an intentional pun--
Barth's all-pervasive use Of metaphor invites such things) by Henry
More, the famous idealist philosopher, but he soon switches allegiances
and embraces, both figuratively and literally, the famous materialist
and the sworn enemy of More's, Isaac Newton:

"1 was out to learn the nature Of the universe from

Newton, but knowing I was More's protege, he was

cold and incommunicative with me. I employed

every strategy I knew to remove this barrier, and,

alas, wOn more than I'd fought for--in plain English,

Eben, Newton grew as enamored of me as had More,

with this difference only, that there was naught

Platonical in his passion" (p. 23).

With the very familiar play on the word know in mind, we

understand that Henry's choice of learning in the lap Of young Newton

211

rather than of old More marks a clear inclination on his part for one
kind Of knowledge over another, for the things of the world over the
ideas about them. For two years Henry keeps More as well as Newton

in thrall and plays one Off against the other, but finally they dis-
cover the game and in a jealous fury cast Henry out from the univer-
sity. The forced but not unwelcome change in the young man's life
provides him with his final lesson at Cambridge, that idealism and
materialism cannot dwell comfortably under the same roof. A person
must incline to one or the other; and, clearly, Burlingame inclines tO
the latter. It is a dozen years, however, before he accepts this les-
son fully enough to apply it to his attempt to find values that will
ward off the modern disease he shares with Eben and keep him moving

in what seems to be a productive way.

The next activity into which he plunges, after Andrew Cooke
finds him penniless in London and takes him to St. Giles, is that of
teaching; and its very appeal for him seems to lie in the Opportunity
to combine allegiances to both idea and fact. On the one hand, teach-
ing gives him the Opportunity to demonstrate and to revel in his amaz-
ing practical grasp of the world. There seems to be not one human
activity from dancing to philosophy that he has not thoroughly mastered,
and this includes the activity of teaching itself: "for the range and
depth of his abilities he was little short of an Aristotle“ (p. 6).

On the other hand, because he is such an excellent teacher, his voca-
tion at St. Giles provides a sense Of being on familiar terms with his
inner reality as well. SO, when he is sent packing from St. Giles, he

does not adopt an entirely new strategy for lining his stomach as he

212

has done at every other dramatic juncture in his life, but continues,
instead, to be a teacher in London.

There is, in fact, a great deal of Essentialism in Burlingame
during these four years, a great deal of attempting to deny his sense
of meaninglessness by consciously elevating his knack for teaching to
the status Of a personal essence. He is, if I may borrow and alter an
early phraSe of Eben's Henry Burlingame III: "Tutor, Sir!" The fact
that Burlingame knows a staggering amount really does suit him espec-
ially well for teaching; still, one Of the things he knows is that his
teaching success is as much the result Of accident as it is of his
having come upon the inner Truth. Pupils as good as Eben and Anna and
a teaching situation as free and personal as St. Giles's are a rare
good fortune for any would-be tutor. Moreover, he knows that there
are a host Of other activities at which he is or could be equally
successful. But he keeps at teaching as long as possible fOr the most
pragmatic of reasons; it allows him to keep himself fed, and at the

same time it is at least temporarily therapeutic. (The parallel here

 

with the Doctor in The End of the Road prescribing the "therapy" of
teaching at Wicomico State Teachers for Jake iSfObvious.

The passage which best catches Henry's mixed pragmatic and
tongue-in-cheek attitude toward his tutorial solution to cosmopsis
comes from the time when he is taking Eben from Cambrigge to London
and is trying to talk his ex-student into trying this same solution:

"Tis not my wont to look that far ahead," Burlingame
said. "Let us consider rather how you'll occupy

213

yourself in London. You must not sit idle, lest
you slip again into languishment and stupor."

"Alas,“ said Ebenezer, "I have no long-term
goals toward which to labor."

"Then follow my example," advised Burlingame,
"and set as your long-term goal the successful
completion of all your short-term goals."

"Yet neither have I any short-term goal."

"Ah, but you will ere long, when your belly
growls for dinner and your money's gone."

"Unhappy day!" laughed Ebenezer. ”I've no
skill in any craft or trade whatever. I cannot
even play Flow! y Tears on the guitar."

"Then Ttis plain you'll be a teacher, like

 

myself."

"'Sheart! 'Twould be the blind leading the
blind."

"Aye," smiled Burlingame. "Who better grasps

the trials Of sightlessness than he whose eyes
are gone?"

"But what teach? I know something Of many
things, and enough Of naught."

"I'faith, then the field is Open, and you may
graze where you list."

"Teach a thing I know naught of?" exclaimed
Ebenezer.

"And raise thy fee for't," replied Burlingame,
"inasmuch as 'tis no chore to teach what you know,
but to teach what you know naught Of requires a
certain application. Choose a thing you'd greatly
like to learn, and straightway proclaim yourself
professor Of't."

Ebenezer shook his head. "'Tis still lmpOS--
sible, I am curious about the world in general, but
ne'er could choose."

"Very well, then: I dub thee Professor of the
Nature of the World, and as such shall we advertise
you. Whate'er your students wish to learn Of't,
that you will teach them."

"Thou'rt jesting, Henry!"

"If't be a jest," replied Burlingame, "'tis a
happy one, I swear, for just so have I lined my
belly these three years. B'm'faith, the things
I've taught! The great thing is always to be
teaching something to someone--a fig for what or
to whom. 'Tis no trick at all." (pp. 27-28).

The self-consciousness evidence in such a passage suggests

that the tutorship solution is about to outlive its usefulness as a

 

therapy '
declarat
the begi
at it ti
to inci
undermi
Todd An
Cooke 1
becomes

return

214

therapy for Burlingame, just as Cooke's new-found awareness and proud
declaration of his virginity the night of the Momentous Wager signals
the beginning of its end. For one to ride a trait too hard, to look
at it too directly, Barth seems to suggest, is paradoxically somehow
to incite or engender in one its opposite, which as a result then soon
undermines it as one's "essence." So Todd Andrews the rake becomes
Todd Andrews the saint; so Ebenezer Cooke the virgin becomes Ebenezer
Cooke the husband; so, in this case, Henry Burlingame the tutor again
becomes Henry Burlingame the student, when his two favorite pupils
return to their sick father at St. Giles.

For Burlingame at this point, all the old solutions are worn
out; the old masks have been discarded. Furthermore, he sees that all
the old solutions have been to an extent but one solution--"incon-
stancy, fickleness, a periodic shifting of enthusiasms, though a vice,
may preserve a man from crippling indecision," he attests from first-
hand experience when he finds Eben paralyzed in his university room
(p. 14). Now, at thirty-three, Burlingame finds himself at the end
of thgt_overall "super-pragmatic" solution as well. Anna and Eben's
returning to their distraught father not only leaves Henry without the
only two human beings for whom he cares but also reminds him more
forcefully than ever before that he himself has no parent to demand
his return when he goes astray, to give him a toehold in history. He
is in every sense an orphan. We do not see his loneliness and despair
dramatized, since the novel's narrator follows Eben back to St. Giles;
but we do have Henry's description of them to Eben seven years later

on the Plymouth coach:

215

"Were I his DAndrew's] son I'd be disowned ere now
for flying in the face of his concern; but what a
priceless prize it is, Eben! What a wealthy man
I'd be, to throw away such treasure! The fellow
repines in bed for grief at losing you; he dic-
tates the course of your life to make you worthy
of your line! Who grieves for me, prithee, or
cares a fig be I fop or philosopher? Who sets

me goals to turn by back on, or values to thumb
my nose at? In fine, sir, what business have

I in the world, what place to flee from, what
credentials to despise? Had I a home I'd likely
leave it; a family alive or dead I'd likely scorn
it, and wander a stranger in alien towns. But
what a burden and despair to be a stranger in

the wOrld at large, and have no link with history!
'Tis as if I'd sprung de novo like a maggot out
of meat, or dropped from the sky. Had I the
tongue of angels I never could tell you what a
loneliness it is!" (p. 130).

At this point Henry's version of the Modern American Mind is
in exactly the same condition that Eben's would reach seven years
later when he bolted from the Momentous Wager for Joan Toast; that is,
it is in a condition of near-paralytic despair. A comparison of what
each near-thirty—year-old man does after retreating to his London room
is instructive. Eben falls to cursing the innocence that will not let
him claim Joan for a night and then to imagining in place of one real
encounter with her a number of impossibly exotic ones; but, when Joan
suddenly enters his room, strips, and beckons him to bed, he uses the
occasion not to terminate the innocence and imagination which hereto-
fore have been liabilities but to raise them to the status of personal
essences. Similarly Henry describes what hg_did at a similar juncture
in his life:

"I spent some hours grousing in my chamber, . . .

and at length I came to see this pompous name of
mine as the most precious thing I owned. Who

 

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216

bestowed it on me? Wherefore Burlingame Third,
and not just Burlingame?"
"'Sheart, I see your meaning!" Ebenezer said,

"'Tis your name that links you with your fore-

bears; thou'rt not wholly ex nihilo after all!

'Tis a kind of clue to the riddle!"

Burlingame nodded. "And did I not profess

to be a scholar? . . . Then and there I made

myself a vow," he said, "to learn the name and

nature of my father, the circumstances of my

birth, and haply the place and manner of his

death; nor would I value any business higher,

but ransack the very planet in my quest till

I had found my answer or died a-searching.

And search I have--i'faith!--these seven ears.

'Tis the one business of my life" (p. l3l .
Both men find escape from despair via two aspects of themselves which
have been explicit in their lives all along. For Eben it is innocence
and imagination; for Henry it is experience and energy. He may have
been fickle and inconstant with regard to the various modes of his
dallying with knowledge, but his genius for knowledge itself has never
wavered; and he may have shifted enthusiasms many times, but the
enthusiasm itself has remained constant. Two prominent physical fea-
tures symbolically reinforce these characteristics: his penetrating,
serpent-like eyes reflect his experience; and his strong, wiry, thick-
chested build, his energy. Also, his often-used surname (the narrator
never calls his central character "Cooke") emphasizes these charac-
teristics, with its first part suggesting "burly" and its second the
"game"-like aura of his quest for knowledge. (As a young tutor he
"rehearsed [Eben and Anna] in Descartes' skepticism as gaily as though
the search for truth and value in the universe were a game of Who's

Got the Button" [p. 7]).

217

For both men, then, their two most prominent traits overlap
to form one concept of identity. From this point on, however, it is
the differences between the two solutions which become especially
crucial. Eben interprets his title to refer to what he is; only
secondarily does his personal "essence" dictate that he do something
(write a panegyric on Maryland). Henry, working in the exact opposite
manner, interprets his name as an injunction to g9_something (to make
the search for his parentage "the one business of [his] life"); only
after that search will he find out who is. After eleven years of
action have failed to give Ebenezer a sense of value, he attempts
finally to locate that value in himself and to define himself by
being, After eleven years of being a teacher have failed to provide
Henry with a sense of value, he attempts finally to locate that value
in himself and to define himself by acting, He begins to operate on
the assumption that the act implies the actor, not vice versa as does
Eben; that personal "existence" does not follow personal "essence,"
but precedes it.

All of which is but to say, of course, that Henry
Burlingame III, like Jake Horner before him, becomes illustrative of
the "Existentialist" way for the Modern American Mind to try to live
by relative values. Just as its opposite, Eben's "Essentialist" way,
is at heart innocent and poetic, so the "Existentialist" way is exper-

ienced and energetic.18 And just as, in order to bear witness to his

 

i

18Explicit here is not only the familiar Romantic dichotomy
of Innocence and Experience, but also the more peculiarly Barthian
one of Innocence and Energy. which he first made clear in the title

218

Essentialism, Eben consciously adopts the two outward signs of vir-
ginity and versifying, so Henry indicates his Existentialism initially
by vowing to track his heritage back to Henry Burlingame I and II and
then later, in l691, by making a secOnd vow to lay hands on the
notorious outlaw, John Coode. It is the mysterious presence and/or
legend of this man which, for Henry, holds the "truth" about the uni-
verse in the same way that his mysterious ancestors hold the "truth"
about his self. To complete the symmetry of this patterning, Henry's
two activities, like Eben's two essences, eventually converge into

one. Henry finds that the Secret History and the Privie Journall he

 

needs in order to capture Coode are literally opposite sides of the
same page; that is, they are written in the recto and verso sides
respectively of the pages of the Assembly Journal.

All of this illustrative point-counterpoint is summed up quite
neatly and of course eloquently by Burlingame himself in a conversa-
tion with Eben from which I have already quoted extensively. It takes
place in an inn where the two, after being reunited at Captain Thomas
Mitchell's, have stopped to dine:

"Two things alone can save a man from madness."
He indicated the other patrons of the inn.
"Dull-headness is one, and far the commoner:

the truth that drives men mad must be sought

for ere it's found; and it eludes the doltish

or myopic hunter. But once 'tis caught and
looked on, whether by insight or instruction,
the captor's sole expedient is to force his
'will upon't ere it work his_ruin! Why is't

you set such store by innocence and rhyming, and
I'by searching out my father and battling Coode?

 

of Joseph Morgan's thesis in The End of the Road: The SavinggRoles
of Innocence and Energy_in American . . . History, ‘

219

One must needs make and seize his soul, and then
cleave fast to't, or go babbling in the corner;
one must choose his gods and devils on the run,
quill his own name upon the universe, and de-
clare "Tis I, and the world stands such-a-way!‘
One must assert, assert, assert, or go screaming
mad. What other course remains?

"One other," Ebenezer said with a blush.
"'Tis the one I flee . . . ."

"What? Ah, 'sheart, indeed! The state I
found you in at college! How many have I seen
like that in Bedlam--wide-eyed, feculant, and
blind to the world! Some boil their life into
a single gesture and repeat it o'er and o'er;
others are so far transfixed, their limbs
remain where'er you place'em; still others take
on false identities: Alexander, or the Pope
in Rome, or e'en the Poet Laureat of Maryland--"

Ebenezer looked up, uncertain whether it was
he or the impostors whom Burlingame referred to.

"The upshot of't is," his friend concluded,
"if you'd escape that fate you must embrace me
or reject me, and the course we are committed
to, despite the shifting lights that we appear
in, just as you must embrace yourselfas Poet
and Virgin, regardless, or discard it for some-
thing better." He stood up. "In either case
don't seek whole understanding--the search
were fruitless, and there is no time for't"

(pp. 345-346).

 

We have seen already that Eben's Essentialist way of "making
and seizing his soul“ is a miserable failure; not long after this
philosophic interlude, it causes him to sign away Malden, alienate
Henry, and betray Joan Toast. But what of Henry's exiStentialism?

00 its energy and experience prove any more successful a cure for the
disease of the Modern American Mind? Barth's answer is a clear No.

It seems to me that the reasons behind such an answer can be separated
roughly into three parts.

The first has to do with the general damage that such a solu-

tion does to one's human relationships. To know the world intimately

220

enough for this solution to have a chance of working, a person must

be so single-minded in his quest that he banishes from his life past
loves and friendships. As Ebenezer eventually understands, Burlingame
must, like Jacob, grapple with his dark angel "in the desert."

(Again, the connection here to Jacob Horner and also to Jacob R. Adam 5‘
is apparent.) The first effect of Henry's l687 decision to solve the 3
mystery of his parentage is his disappearance from the lives of all

his acquaintances in London, including Eben and Anna, the two persons

 

on earth whom he loves. And even when he is once more united with the '
brother and then later with the sister, his protestations of concern
and unswerving fidelity must always be balanced off in their minds by

the awareness that he has a "higher, overriding purpose in all he
does.

There is always the possibility, too, even if Henry did not
intend it, that his personal obsession might accidently do his friends
harm--as when his signing a petition with Eben's name and title in
order to perplex Coode becomes indirectly responsible for Eben's having
to walk the plank off the coast of Maryland. Moreover, Henry's con-
versation with Eben from the moment of their reunification in the
Plymouth coach up to their argument after the disastrous Cambridge
court is increasingly marked by a mutual disgruntlement which is at
least half due to Henry's insistent justification of his own solution
and denigration of Eben's. The "familiar, urgent spell of his former
tutor" which causes Eben to give up plans of a return to England and

to go to St. Mary's City instead has little open, unalloyed affection

in it any more. When Henry, in reciting to Eben a pandect of the

221

extensive study of geminology which Anna has conducted, refers at one
point to ”the murther of Love by Knowledge" (p. 496), we feel that he
knows all too well whereof he Speaks.

It is more than Burlingame's singlemindedness, of course,
that destroys their friendship by the end of "Going to Malden." It
is also the fact that, in order better to discover the Protean truth,
Henry himself must become Protean. By pledging his first allegiance
to the act of knowing the world, he makes it inevitable that he him-
self blend into that world. If he is to find the elusive Henry
Burlingame II and John Coode, then he, too, must become elusive,
embracing intrigue and deception and adapting disguise after disguise
as each new exigency demands: Peter Sayer, Tim Mitchell, Lord
Baltimore, John Coode himself--the list is appropriately exhaustive.
In adapting these different roles to meet different situations rather
than trying, as Eben does, to interpret different situations in a way
consistent with only one role, Henry is, of course, practicing what
Barth in The End of the Road calls "Mythotherapy”: "'role-assigning

. . done . . . for the purpose of aggrandizing or protecting your
ego.'" Burlingame's term for this strategy is "the game of govern-
ments" rather than Mythotherapy, and on the Plymouth coach he explains
its debilitating effects on human relationships quite succinctly:

"The truth is, Eben, no man save Richard Hill,
Lord Baltimore, and yourself hath known my
name since 1687, when first I commenced to
play the game of governments; and the game
itself hath made such changes in me, that
none who knew me erst would know me now,

nor do I mean them to. 'Tis better they
think me lost" (p. l64).

 

222

In the following months' activities covered in Part II, the
problem is further exacerbated. As Henry weaves his way in and out
of the poet's life, he plays so many different roles and seems so
thoroughly immersed in each that Eben is finally pressed to exclaim,
"I know you not from one hour to the next!” (p. 367). (The clearest
echo here is Rennie Morgan's telling Jake, "you're different all the
way through, every time. You cancel yourself out.") Burlingame'S'
reply to Eben is, "Nor should you try"; and only a few hours earlier
he has made clear exactly what he means by such a reply:

"your true and constant Burlingame lives only in
your fancy, as doth the pointed order of the
world. In fact you see a Heraclitean flux:
whether 'tis we who shift and alter and dis-
solve; or you whose lens changes color, field,
and focus; or both together. The upshot is

the same, and you may take it or reject it"

(p. 330).

Clearly, then, a second and more compelling reason why Exis-
tentialism makes friendship impossible is that it is impossible to
love someone whom you cannot identify—-to "know" someone you cannot
"know." Moreover, when an innocent like Eben tries to trust in a
friend who has become so thoroughly assimilated into the Protean world
of experience, the result, as we have seen, is that he gets hurt. The
hurt is not always unwitting, either, as in the case of Henry's sign-
ing the petition with Eben's name. At the Cambridge court, Henry is
unable to warn Eben from innocently signing away the rights to his
family estate because to do so would be to destroy his disguise as

Tim Mitchell which he needs for his own purposes. 50 it is entirely

apt that the title of the chapter in which Eben and Henry clash after

 

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223

the court decision be entitled: "If the Laureate is Adam, Then
Burlingame is the Serpent." Burlingame repeatedly exhorts Eben that
he must either accept or reject him, like the world, without insisting
on the whole truth; and Eben in each instance finally does accept him.
But, as I have suggested, it is with a decreasing amount of affection
and only as he himself, with some regret, begins to lose his inno-
cence.

During his seven years of Existentialism, significant changes
take place in Burlingame somewhat apart from his numerous disguises;
and these changes, I think, constitute a second way in which that sort
of solution to cosmopsis proves a failure. The constant alterations
in him which I have already mentioned may be thought of as linear, in
the sense that they imply neither a rising or falling of his fortunes
nor a logical, inevitable end to themselves. But another sequence of
alterations charts a definite downward path for Burlingame and, left
unchecked, would result in violent death for him and perhaps for many
others. The decline effected during this period of Existentialism can
perhaps best be described as the common intellectual syndrome of
extensive knowledge, perversity, and cynicism. A man sooner or later
exhausts all the areas of exploration traditionally considered proper
and natural; he turns in boredom to those areas that are beyond the
pale of "nature"; and eventually having exhausted them, also, he
cynically loses patience with the world for not having more to offer
and wants to be done with it. We have seen a fainter outline of this
pattern already ianhe Floating Opera's Todd Andrews, who learns that

he is only an animal like all other humans and who wants to blow up

224

the whole Opera; and in The End of the Road's Jake Horner, who also

 

sees only animality in human beings and ends up trying to escape
completely from the world.

The syndrome is best exemplified, however, by Henry Burlingame,
who not only lives it but who, through the all-pervasive metaphor of
sexual-intellectual "knowledge," describes it most vividly. In his
disguise as Timothy Mitchell, the "Laureate of Lubricity," whose amo-
rous advances are not limited to women or even to human beings and
whose favorite love partner at the moment is a fat sow named Portia,
Henry defends his "catholic” tastes on the grounds that animals are
not often choosy about mating with species other than their own. When
Eben challenges this rationale with, "These poor dumb creatures are
betrayed by accident, but man hath light enough to see Dame Nature's
plan," Henry replies:

"And sense enough to see it hath no object, save
to carry on the species . . . . And wit enough to do
for sport what the beasts do willy-hilly. I have no
quarrel with women, Master Poet: 'tis many a maid
I've loved ere now and doubtless shall again. But
just as Scripture tells us that death is the fruit
of the Tree of Knowledge, so Boredom, methinks, is
the fruit of Wit and Fancy. A new mistress lies
upon her back at night in a prOper chamber, and her
lover is content. But anon this simple pleasure
palls, and they set about to refine their sport:
from Aretine they learn the joy of sundry stoops
and stances; from Boccaccio and the rest they learn
to woo by the light 0' day, in fields and wine
butts and chimney corners; from Catullus and the
naughty Greeks they learn There are more ways to
the woods than one, and more woods than one to be
explored by every way. If they have wit and
daring there is no end to their discovery, and
if they read as well, they have the amorous re-
searches of the race at their disposal: the
pleasures of Cathay, of Moors and Turks and

 

 

225

Africans, and the cleverest folk of EurOpe. Is
this not the way of't, sir? When men like us
become enamored of a woman, we fall in love with
every part and aspect; we cannot rest till we
know with all our senses every plain and secret
part of our beloved, and then we gnash our teeth
that we cannot go beneath her skin!" (p. 326).

After a few minutes of verse like "Let me drink of thy Body's
own Wine" and a number of historical precedents for his own peculiar
tastes, all of which horrify Eben, Burlingame reiterates the first,
licentious stage of the pattern and then goes on to describe his
version of the second--perversity:

"I love the world, sir, and so make love to it! I
have sown my seed in men and women, in a dozen sort
of beasts, in the barky boles of trees and the
honeyed wombs of flowers; I have dallied on the
black breast of the earth, and clipped her fast;

I have wooed the waves of the sea, impregnated the
four winds, and flung my passion skywards to the
stars!"

So exalted was the voice in which this confes-
sion was delivered that Ebenezer shrank away, as
directly as he could, some inches farther from its
author, who he began to fear was mad.

"'Tis a most--interesting point of view,"
he said (p. 328).

The third stage of the decline, cynicism which climaxes in
death, Henry has not yet reached; but we see it foreshadowed in the
story of Charley Mattassin, the Indian who was Mary Mungummory's lover
and, we later discover, Henry's older brother. It is apparent that the
thirty-nine-year-old Charley whom Mary first "knew'I was at the second
stage of this pattern, as is the thirty-nine-year-old Burlingame now.
"Oftentimes," says Mary, "I felt his fancy bore a clutch of worlds,
all various, of which the world these books [everything from Euclid to

Boccaccio] described was one--"

226

"Which, while 'twas splendid here and there,"
the Laureate interrupted, "he could not but loathe
for having been the case.“

"That's it!” Mary cried, her eyes bright. "You
have laid your finger on its very root and fundament.”

Ebenezer sighed, recalling Burlingame. "I know
a man who hath that genius, and that very manner:
he loves the world, and comprehends it at first
glance--sometimes even sight unseen--yet his love
is flavored with contempt, from the self-same cause,
which leads him to make game of what he loves."

"And would you say,” pressed the poet, much
aroused, "that this cosmic love I spoke of was as
strong in his flesh as in his fancy? What I mean,
did he lust for aught that struck his eye, be't
man or maid or mandrake root, and yet deSpise the
world for its meagerness of bedfellows?"

”That and more," Mary answered, "for so pos-
sessed was he with this same lust and fancy, he e'en

deSpised himself that he could not fancy more.
(pp. 4l5-416).

The story of Charley Mattassin ends with his dissatisfaction
growing into a cynicism that becomes so great as finally to find
expression in a brutal murder; and from the moment he is arrested
until the moment he swings from the gallows, his sole gesture is a
"monstrous laugh" at "the whole of God's creation.” "My friend hath
not laughed after Charley's fashion and God grant he never shall,"
observes Eben, "but the potential for't is there; I see it plainly
from your tale. A certain shrug he hath, and a particular mirthless
smile" (p. 422).

The condition which causes those shrugs and smiles to turn
into that monstrous laugh; which engenders an insatiability so acute
that it must climax in cynical violence; and which, thereby, consti-
tutes the third and finally the key weakness in the Existentialist

attempt to achieve a sense of value and identity in a thoroughly

 

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227

nihilistic universe is the stark fact that has been the metaphysical
basis for each of Barth's first three novels: the world simply gnnnni_
be known. The phenomena which make up a man's life, including the
phenomena which are other men and himself, ultimately resist his best
rational efforts to penetrate and control them. That is precisely
what is nnnni_by saying that the universe is "thoroughly nihilistic."
Henry Burlingame has been admitting--even preaching--this truth-that-
there-is-no-Truth to Eben from March of l694 onward; while at the
same time, and for seven years previously, he has been trying by dint
of sheer experience and energy to prove otherwise. But in his
fortieth year he is forced finally to admit that his attempted solu-
tion has been futile from the start. The worlds within him and with-
out will not yield up to ngiing_any more than they will to 921292 a
truth by which a man can live responsibly and productively.

Two prominent metaphors reflect this third, insurmountable
obstacle to the Existentialist solution. One is the only partially

assembled Assembly Journall. After seven years of constant searching,

 

Henry by December of 1694 possesses only half of it, the first halves

of John Smith's Secret Historie and of Sir Henry Burlingame's Privie

 

Journall; and he has absolutely no idea how to obtain the rest, how
literally to "put two and two together." Also, he has no assurance
whatsoever that either Historie or Journall actually does hold the key
to his parentage. Thus, he is no closer than he ever was to finding
his father or John Coode or to achieving the personal ends to which

those two acts are the means.

228

The other metaphor for this failure is his extremely small
penis. All of his talk about impregnating nature in all her parts has
actually been wishful thinking, because he, like Charley Mattassin who
had the same deficiency, has never been able really to take a female,
has never been able to push through to the intimate core of even one
fact. His true genius has been in knowing and manipulating surfaces
rather than in penetrating to depths. The greatest frustration for
Burlingame, the epitome of all the world's facts which he cannot pene-
trate and make to produce something with his mark, is Anna Cooke.

On the heels of his passionate oration about loving the world and, so,
making love to it, Henry asks Eben, "D'you think I'd waste my seed on
sows, if I could sow a child in Anna Cooke? D'you think I'd flit

about the world, if I could take her to wife?" (p. 339). His inabil-
ity to impregnate anyone, especially Anna, reflects his final inabil-

ity to "seize his soul," to "assert,_assert, assert” his will on the

 

world and see that that assertion has born fruit. In this light, it
is wholly understandable why the method of murder which Charley
Mattassin chose was to thrust his long hunting knife up into a woman
where his penis had been denied access.

In Henry Burlingame III at the end of "Going to Malden," then,
we see an illustration of the Modern American Mind having come, by a
route exactly Opposite from Eben's, to the same dead end in its
search for value and identity. Knowledge and energy have proven as
ineffective as innocence and poetry in providing a method of living
purposefully in a godless universe. Just as Eben's Essentialism has

failed because he will not know the world, so Henry's Existentialism

 

 

has fail.
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Henry, d
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Part II

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229

has failed because he ggnngi_know the world; and just as Eben, despite
his best efforts, has been forced to begin accumulating knowledge, so
Henry, despite ni§_best efforts,has been forced to remain basically

ignorant. Moreover, Henry's last act in the period of time covered in

Part II of The Sot-Weed Factor, like Eben's last act, is simultaneously

 

the ultimate manifestation of his attempted solution and its death
knell.

Ebenezer deserts Malden and Joan Toast in the name of his
innocence and his art and, in so doing, commits his first conscious
act of infidelity. He is on his way back to Endland and what he
intends to be a life of complete non-involvement in human affairs; he
is fleeing responsibility when the whole point of his Essentialism has
been to allow him to define and assume responsibility. Henry's last
act in Part II (although it, like several other aspects of his char-
acterization which I have mentioned, does not become clear until
Part III) is to adopt yet another role--Nicholas Lowe. This time,
however, the role is meant to be real; he wants really to "be" that
person. He has made Nicholas Lowe his legal name, and his motivation
has been to terminate rather than to further the self-appointed tasks
of discovering his parentage and arresting Coode. So Henry is simul- .
taneously acting in accordance with and putting an end to the Exis-
tentialist attempt to define and assume responsibility. He, too, is
escaping:

"When I learned this [that he could not find the
other half of the Assembly Journal] I called my
search a failure, abandoned hepe of proving my

identity, and resolved to create one from the
outside in. I went to Colonel Henry Lowe of

 

230

Talbot, that once years ago I saved from Tom Pound's
pirates and, after explaining who I was, prevailed
upon him to save my life in turn by owning me as a
son. Thus was Nick Lowe born, from nothing and
without travail" (pp. 484-485).

In the first scene in "Malden Earned," then, in which Henry
Burlingame meets Ebenezer Cooke on the wharf at Cambridge, we see not
one but two illustrations of the Modern American Mind at the end of
its ethical road. When Henry warns Eben of the danger of a man's
reaching the conclusion that he has nothing more to lose (or to gain)
and of thereby becoming a violent madman like Ben Spurdance, we know
that he is warning himself as well. So the journey to St. Mary's City
is for both men the first gesture in a last-ditch effort to stay in
the world, of which Maryland is a fitting emblem, and to gain a sense

of purposeful living. In Burlingame's case, he is making one last

stab at finding John Coode and, perchance, the Assembly Journal and

 

Anna to boot, simply by going as Nick Lowe to the place where Coode
may be hiding and looking for him.

From the time he and the poet reach St. Mary's City until the
time Eben returns to Cooke's Point, Burlingame disappears from the
novel; and after his reappearance, he has little detail to report con-
cerning his recent activities. So any analysis of those activities as
they relate to a suggested cure for cosmopsis cannot be as detailed as
was the analysis of Eben. When Burlingame does not find Coode at St.
Mary's City and, moreover, loses Eben as well, he goes directly to
Malden; and there, playing son to Andrew Cooke so as better to help
him regain his estate and to size up the extent and nature of Coode's

vice ring which has usurped Malden, he waits for word of the twins.

231

And when Eben finally does arrive and, after regaining consciousness
four days later, tells the story of his adventure at Bloodsworth
Island, it becomes clear that the exact same process of accepting the
limits of reason, the brotherhood of men, and the goodness of life
which has given Eben the key to acting productively in a relativistic
universe has had the same effect for Burlingame.

Or it has at least provided him with nnii_of the key and raised
his hopes of finding the other half. Eben's consciously reckless
assumption of responsibility for the lives of his three companions at
the rebel camp has made him threaten to throw himself at Chicamec and
thereby commit suicide by way of the spears of his bodyguards if the
old chieftain does not allow all four whites to go free; and in Eben's
last exclamation before carrying out that threat he uses the name
"Henry Burlingame." This causes Chicamec to stay him and to show him
the sacred book of his tribe, which is, in fact, the second half of

John Smith's Secret Historie; and this book, in turn, confirms that

 

Sir Henry Burlingame nn§_Henry Burlingame III's grandfather and that
Chicamec in_Henry Burlingame II, his father. Furthermore, it confirms
that in the other half of Sir Henry Burlingame's Privie Journall, if
it still exists, there is related the recipe for a magic eggplant
aphrodisiac which can remedy Burlingame's physical "shortcoming." His
inability to find his father and his inability to impregnate a woman
are, as we have seen, symbolic of the inability of the Modern American
Mind to achieve by means of Existentialism, to "know," a sense of
place and a sense of purpose for itself in the world. Now the first

of those two prizes is his, and the second seems much more within the

232

realm of possibility. "Nay, how can you deSpair," he asks the still
disconsolate Anna, "after such a miracle as Eben's stumbling on my
parentage? Only let him gain his feet again and he'll solve that
other riddle for me: the Magic of the Secret Eggplant, or whatever!"
(p. 704).

Even with only half of the riddle solved, the half which for
eight years has been his motivating force, it is clear that Burlingame
feels a sense of identity and a sureness of action which he has never
felt before. He is eager to get to Bloodsworth Island to meet his
new-found family; but before he can go there, his presence is needed
at the trial which Governor Nicholson will hold in the front room.
The central issue before the make-shift court is the ownership of the
Cooke's Point estate, which three parties lay claim to: one, a shady
minister named Robotham who won the estate in a wager from, and whose
daughter is pregnant by, Bertrand when he was posing as Ebenezer;
another, William Smith, who won it by virtue of Eben's rash inter-
ference at the Cambridge court and who, along with his neighbor,
Captain Mitchell, and his unscrupulous lawyer, Richard Sowter, are
agents of Coode; and, the other, of course, the Cooke family. It is
not necessary to relate the incredibly complex legal, political, and
personal aspects of the case which Burlingame is able to grasp. The
crucial point is that he does grasp them and see in them a way to
reach an out-of-court settlement which will return Cooke's Point to
its rightful owners and get the final piece of evidence which Nichol-
son needs to convict Coode and deport his three henchmen. And in con-

fidently turning his genius to this task, Burlingame is demonstrating,

 

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233

just as clearly as did Eben when he had captained the skiff safely to
shore several nights earlier, that he has learned how to operate
responsibly in a relativistic universe. He has learned how to sub-
stitute supra-rational for rational value-thinking and thus to settle
the whole tangled ethical case, as it were, out of court.

In the end, of course, Eben does answer that other half of
Henry's-riddle. The trial turns up the last quarter of the Assembly
Journal and thus the last half of Sir Henry Burlingame's Pniyig_
Journall, but Joan Toast has stolen the two pages of it that contain
the actual recipe for the eggplant aphrodisiac and refuses to do her
sex the disservice of giving men access to so potent a weapon of sub-
jugation. She finally relents, however, because Eben's insistence on
consummating their marriage despite her wasted and diseased condition
holds out a glimmer of hope for her that men may not always be women's
enemy, that they may yet learn to use their sexual organs for love
rather than war. Burlingame reads the crucial two pages; and, with
his ex-student now having effected the completion of the two central
tasks of his life-~finding his father and getting hard evidence against
Coode--and, in so doing, having unlocked for him the secret of potency,
he triumphantly volunteers to carry Joan upstairs while Eben and Anna
follow. In the morning he will go eagerly to Bloodsworth Island to
meet his father and brother and possibly to forestall the rebellion,
and in the spring he will return and become Anna's husband.

. So, in Henry Burlingame III at the end of "Malden Earned," we
see another illustration of the Modern American Mind which has "found

itself." It has learned how to live purposefully, responsibly,

 

234

productively--in short, potently-~in the world. Its particular method
of living in that fashion is not the same as Eben's, just as its par-
ticular method of education was not the same. The penchant for knowl-
edge and energy which caused Henry to adopt an existentialist solu-
tion in the first place is still intact, and it will be sorely needed
when he tries to manipulate the various factions and forces on Bloods-
worth Island to effect the best possible conditions for whites, reds,
and blacks alike. Nevertheless, in Burlingame as well as in Ebenezer,
we see an emblem of the Modern American Mind which has found all that
it can and need know about value and identity; and we see, too, in
this characterization as well as in the other, the assertion that,
ironically, the Modern American Mind which has made this discovery has
lost its traditional innocence and become less American. In achiev-
ing its place in the world, in losing its "orphanhood," it has neces-
sarily forfeited the "philosophic liberty" that can elevate as well
as demoralize. There are restrictions now on what it can do and be,
and in those restrictions there is stability but also a note of melan-
choly.19
In so far as Henry Burlingame III illustrates not only a
modern intellect which is American but also America itself in the mod-
ern era, there is one more observation that should be made. Along
with the bitter-sweetness of this country's growing up, we also see
in the Burlingame of the novel's last pages a vision or maybe even a

prediction of America discovering that its origins are as much in the

 

19Richard Noland, "John Barth and the Novel of Comic Nihil-
ism," WSCL, 7 (Autumn 1966), 253.

 

 

235

red man's society as in the whites and returning for a while at least
to the former. More is suggested in this act, I think, than a national
discovery of the subconscious or an infatuation with primitivism. In
the character of Henry Burlingame, whose "ties to the cause of Western
Civilization (to say nothing of English colonialism!)“ are so "slight
and qualified" (p. 707), there is a vision of a country better able
than any of the other predominantly white ones to go beyond its
"parochial" interests; evidence a genuine sympathy for the dark nations
of the world; and, perhaps, effect a manner of aiding them without
exploiting them. As a result, America can head off a bloody confron-
tation with the darker, poorer, less-free nations of the world, a
confrontation which it could not win.

Keeping in mind Barth's comment to the effect that he had
thought that in The Floating Opera and The End of the Road he was
writing about values and had found instead that he was writing about
innocence, it is appropriate to conclude this analysis of Henry
Burlingame III by relating him to the state which I have called "Higher
Innocence." He himself says nothing explicit on the subject, as does
Eben; and neither Eben nor any other character explicitly applies the
subject to him. So my point here can be made quite briefly. It is
clear that Experience is more than one of Henry's two Existentialist
strategies; the Existentialist solution to modern ethical problems i§_'
Experience, just as the Essentialist solution in_Innocence. Thus,
through Henry Burlingame III even more than through Ebenezer Cooke,
The Sot-Weed Factor inevitably becomes a novel about Experience as

well as about Innocence. Noting the manner in which Burlingame is

 

236

constantly compared with Cooke, then, and noting further that for the
four years before his Existentialism Burlingame had tried Essential-
ism--tried to define himself by "being" a tutor--we must conclude that
with this characterization Barth is reiterating and deepening his
assertion that the road to value for the Modern American Mind goes
through Innocence and then through Experience until it reaches a
"higher ground" which is a combination of the two.

The resolution of the trial at Malden provides a perfect
emblem for this combination. On the one hand, Henry is completely
dependent upon the "higher innocence" of Eben's fidelity to Joan Toast
to effect the recovery of the eggplant recipe which holds the key to
his potency. On the other hand, Eben depends completely upon Henry's
experienced handling of the terrific complexities of the Cooke's Point
case to effect the return of his (and Anna's) rightful inheritance.

We can see this combination of Innocence and Experience not only in
the interdependence of Eben and Henry but also in Henry himself, who,
while he ngi§_in terrifically complex ways, also drops all disguises
and claims quite simply to ng_Henry Burlingame III.

Still, the two characters at the end of "Malden Earned“ are
quite different; and the kind of lives they intend to lead for at
least a short while after the honeymoon night bear little resemblance
to each other. Eben will be the faithful husband, firmly settled on
the estate which he has earned; but Henry, as Eben originally intended
when he struck the bargain with Chicamec, will be indulging as much as
ever in the "game of governments" among the various rebel tribes and

forces wherever they might be. Working from the inside through

237

"faction and intrigue," he may be as responsible as Eben for prevent-
ing open warfare between Savagery and Civilization. Henry will have a
new respect for what Innocence can do; and he may resort to it himself
occasionally—-by clinging, for example, to his new-found identity as
the son of Chicamec no matter what the circumstances. His final
embrace of the virgin Anna predicts this much. But, given his innate
genius for knowledge and energy and given the exigencies of his new
situation, Eben's way cannot basically be his. A more appropriate
name, therefore, for the state of the Modern American Mind which Henry
Burlingame III illustrates at the end of "Malden Earned" is not
"Higher Innocence" but "Higher Experience.“ As Eben's Innocence is
elevated by experience, so Burlingame's experience is raised by that

innocence.

IV

In his third novel, then, John Barth recapitulates and goes
beyond the themes of his first two novels. Primarily through the
illustrative characterization of Ebenezer Cooke and secondarily
through the illustrative characterization ofHenry Burlingame III, he
first raises the problem of how the Modern American Mind can live with
relative values. Then he offers two rational solutions to the prob-
lem, both dependent on one's determining one's own identity; that is,
both based on the theory that one can tell what to do by rationally

knowing who one is. The solution which receives most attention is

238

Ebenezer's--turning inward and making certain traits in oneself one's
absolutes. I have called this solution Essentialism, since it is
based on the theory that personal essence precedes personal existence;
and Barth explicitly states that such a solution is the epitome of
Innocence. The other solution is Burlingame's--turning outward and
gaining intimate knowledge of the relativistic world. I have called
this solution Existentialism, because it is based on the theory that
personal existence precedes personal essence; and Barth explicitly
points out that such a solution is the epitome of Experience.

By the end of Part II of The Sot-Weed Factor, both Essential-

 

ism and Existentialism, both Innocence and Experience, have proven
futile. They have not succeeded in giving Eben or Henry a sense of
identity and, thus, of value; and, moreover, they have caused great
harm to others. They have taken the Modern American Mind to the end
of the road of rationalist ethics. In Part III, then, Barth offers an
answer to this dilemma, an answer in the form of a mystically achieved
acceptance of human limitation and interdependence and an affirmation
of life itself. The key to living in a relativistic universe, he sug-
gests, is not any theory of Essentialism or of Existentialism, not
consciously chosen Innocence or Experience, but some combination of
the two which rises above either. In the double wedding at the end
of Part III, then, there are two crucial assertions in symbolic form.
First, in the virgin Eben's going up to embrace the whore Joan Toast
and in the worldly Henry's going up to embrace the virgin Anna, we

see an emblem of Innocence and Experience combining in ways which I

have called, respectively, "Higher Innocence" and "Higher Experience."

239

Second, we see in those two acts the possibility that there exists
for the Modern American Mind another kind, a higher kind, of personal

and ethical "knowledge," something which has more to do with love than

with reason.

CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION

It seems clear that John Barth has succeeded in his initial
intention to write a "series of three nihilistic, amusing novels,“1 a
trilogy on the theme of value and identity in modern man. The first
novel traces the discovery that man is a full-fledged part of the
relativistic, irrational universe and, as such, cannot be his own
source of rationalistic, absolute values, his own God; and it leaves
him with a "brave ethical subjectivism" as the only means of contin-
uing to live in the world. The second novel imagines two forms of
that subjectivism, one based on the theory that personal existence
precedes persOnal essence, the other on the theory that personal
essence precedes personal existence; and it shows both forms as
ultimately ineffectual and destructive.

The third novel recapitulates the background, formulation, and
futility of these two forms of ethical subjectivism; adds that the
former is the way of experience and the latter of innocence; and then
goes on to offer a kind of "mystical value-thinking" as an alternative.

Based on an intuitive recognition of the limits of reason, the broth-

erhood of man, and the value of living, this alternative does not

 

1John Enck, "John Barth: An Interview," WSCL, 6, 6, l0.

240

241

provide the "Answer"--the nihilistic universe nn§_no "Answers." It
does, however, hold out the possibility of man's learning to live pro-
ductively and responsibly, if not happily ever after, amidst many
"answers." Barth envisions modern man on the verge of individual and
collective extinction mystically achieving a synthesis of naive insis-
tence upon absolute value and knowledgeable recognition of its impos-
sibility, a combination of innocence and experience, which is "higher"
than either. The act of a man and a woman making love becomes for
Barth both the central symbol for this supra-rational union of oppo-
sites and also the practical result of such a union, since the ability
to love another human being can come only after one has transcended
his rational limitations.

Throughout this trilogy Barth relates several secondary lines
of thought to this primary one on the ethical condition of modern man.
Foremost are those which deal with the conditions of the modern
American and of the modern writer. Barth's description of both is
very similar to his description of modern man. Partly because the
American and the writer nng_modern men and partly because their par-
ticular origins and histories provide parallels to modern man's, the
'modern American and the modern writer also, find themselves in a
potentially fatal identity crisis; and the solution for them, too,
is transcending the very terms of their problem and achieving in their
affairs a Higher Innocence or a Higher Experience.

This trilogy is closely related to Barth's subsequent works:
Giles Goat-Boy, Lost in the Funhouse, and Chimera. At first these

works appear so various in form and subject matter as to defy any kind

242

of generalization. One can see in them, however, a number of themes
which Barth continues to reiterate and to develop; and none is more
prominent than that of modern man's realizing that his rational
attempts to define who he is and what he should do are exhausted and
finding that the solution lies in his ability to transcend reason.
Time and again Barth asserts that essentialism and existentialism,
innocence and experience--intellectually based categories and theories
of all kinds--must, after being explored to their terminal points, be
superceded through the mystical power of love.

As Barth himself has said in a number of places, he received

the inspiration for writing Giles Goat-Boy from reading certain re-

 

views of his third novel, which pointed out that Ebenezer Cooke fit

almost perfectly Lord Ragland's twenty-five-point definition of the

2 Barth came to regard the coincidence, he says, "as more

"3

"Hero."
inevitable than remarkable, apparently because in writing about
someone whose life offers mankind a model for escaping a fatal pre-

dicament, he saw himself almost by necessity imagining the Savior type
of the Hero. So, in order to underline the point that what modern man

both individually and collectively needs is a Savior--the very thing

in which he has lost the ability to believe--Barth made his next story

 

2The John Enck interview and one passage of overt autobio-
graphical literary criticism in "BellerOphoniad" are the two most
prominent examples of such statements. The next two footnotes will
refer to the passage in "BellerOphoniad." (The work of Lord Ragland's
to which Barth refers is The Hero.)

3P. 198.

243

"the conscious and ironic orchestration of the Ur-Myth which its pre-
decessor had been represented as being."4

It is inevitable, then, that the life of George Giles, pat-
ently fantastic though it may be, should strikingly resemble the life
of Ebenezer Cooke. Just as Eben goes off to the New World having
first-hand experience with his own "nothingness" but nevertheless
thinking that he has discovered in himself twin-essences which make
him more than mortal, so George leaves his goat pens and enrolls in
the University having learned on his pulses the truth of his keeper'S‘
favorite maxim, SELF KNOWLEDGE IS ALWAYS BAD NEWS, but feeling sure
nonetheless that he is a Grand Tutor (Savior). And just as Eben's
father has given him the assignment of managing Malden, so George's
Father, a giant computer named WESCAC which controls the entire Uni-
versity, has given him the assignment: PASS ALL FAIL ALL.

George's first attempt to interpret and fulfill this assign-
ment is based on innocence. Pride and ignorance lead him into impro-
vising the theory that clear distinctions must and can be made between
truth and falsehood, that "passage" and "failure" are opposites, and
that the former is always good and the latter bad. When he and others
‘whom he teaches actually practice this theory, however, the results
for the entire University are disastrous; and the Goat-Boy tries to
commit suicide. He is saved; and, after months of confinement, he
attempts again to complete his assignment, this time by means of the

Opposite theory born out of Experience. No longer claiming to be

 

4P. 198.

244

Grand Tutor and knowing now that the universe is "seamless" and
"irrational," George advocates the deliberately specious theory that
distinctions of any kind cannot and should not be made, that action
is all, that "passage" and "failure" are in fact the same equally
meaningless terms. But, again, when he and others try to practice
this theory, the results are again disastrous and George again tries
to commit suicide.

Saved once more, he, like Ebenezer Cooke on Bloodsworth
’Island, experiences a "despair [that is] indistinguishable from peace";
and, "full of that positive sensation," he confronts his mysterious
assignment anew with a concentration so intense that it transcends
reason alone. The paradoxes of PASS ALL FAIL ALL become paroxysms
until finally:

I gave myself up utterly to that which bound,

possessed, and bore me. I let go, I let all

go; relief went through me like a purge . . .

my eyes were opened; I was delivered (pp. 650-65l).
After this mystical experience, George has no more doubts about who
he is and what he and the rest of the University ought to do. Twice
before, once as an act of innocence and once as an act of experience,
he had descended into WESCAC's Belly as Grand Tutors are supposed to
do and has come out a failure. This time his passage through the
Belly is a success because he accomplishes it not armed with a theory.
but locked in loving physical intercourse with a woman. In the climax
of their love-making, he escapes all of the rational paradoxes of

space and time and discovers: "In the darkness, blinding light! The

end of the University! Commencement Day!" (p. 673).

 

245

Having left the Belly, George Giles ritualistically affirms
that the key to salvation is Higher Innocence. He makes a brief visit
to the goat pens of his youth to reaffirm his identification as a
"kid," he publicly and forever declares himself Grand Tutor, he drives
the False Grand Tutor from the Campus, and he begins his work of
certifying students as Candidates for Graduation. To questions con-
cerning the exact nature of Graduation, George offers no answer except
that one must try for it. One must, in other words, live a§_ii it
were possible. The prospects of a life characterized by that sort of
metaphorical viewpoint, by Higher Innocence, are not bright in the
usual storybook fashion; the Hero, the savior, always meets a tragic

end. But Graduation, Giles Goat-Boy affirms, is the only thing worth

 

striving for; and to the complaint that such high lunacy is not worth
the personal cost, we remember Eben Cooke's reply to his sister that
nothing else is either.

"Life-Story," like several of its companions in Lost in the
Funhouse, develops further the connection between the moribund con-
ditions of the modern writer and modern man which the first three
novels establish.5 It is a story about an author writing a story
about an author writing a story; and the author in each case is having
difficulty getting on with his work because, while he has a "vehicle"
for it--he is exploring the ramifications of his growing conviction

that he is the character in someone else's story--he cannot find a

 

5Barth is very insistent in his Author's Note to Lost in the
Funhouse that the stories are not a collection or a selection but a
"series . . . meant to be received 'all at once' and as here arranged.”

 

246

"ground situation," a reason why he or anyone else should nnn§_who and
what he is. "Another regressus in infinitum!“ each writer exclaims
in exasperation, another piece of conventionally modern "preciousness"
(p. 117). But, despite his desire to tell and to be in a far more
exciting, straightforward, unselfconscious narrative, he cannot keep
from getting bogged down in the very sort of impotent introspection
and rationalization which he detests. Only a dogged urge to write and
to read his next sentence keeps him from reaching for the bottle of
sleeping pills. Unable to make himself remain innocent enough to tell
the kind of heroic story he likes and unable to find in any of his
rationalizations the key to an equally satisfying kind, each writer is
threatened with an identity crisis which makes his life-story a com-
pletely aimless stringing out of words. Escape from his predicament
comes at last from an outside force. His wife bursts unannounced into
his room, kisses him, and playfully insists that he "cap his pen";
and in that loving act she symbolically offers the only meaningful
plot resolution which modern man and the modern writer can know.
”Menelaiad" also has much to say on the subject of the writer,
both in his own right and as a metaphor for modern man; but its pri-
mary interest is in further elaborating the metaphor of monogamy.
Menelaus is, as he announces proudly in his story's third line, the

"eternal husband." As such, he stands for the ability somehow to

remain true, to "hold on," to one ideal, to one value, not because it

 

in_but as if it were an absolute. That is, he stands for the quality

 

of Higher Innocence which we saw faintly in Harrison Mack's fidelity

to Jane, more prominently in Joe Morgan's fidelity to Rennie, and in

247

bold clarity in Eben Cooke's fidelity to Joan Toast in "Malden Earned."
Menelaus loses Helen in the first place when he cannot resist ration-
alizing his good fortune in being chosen by her, when he cannot accept
the answer "Love" to his constant question "Why?" For the seven years
following the Trojan War, Helen denies him her sexual favors and he
wanders aimlessly "at sea" because his common sense will not believe
her fantastic account of how she actually had remained true to him
during the ten years previous. Finally, when the Delphic Oracle

replies to his ”Why did she choose me?" with "No other can as well

 

espouse her? and to his "Who am I?" with a stark silence, Menelaus's

 

insistence on reason is exhausted (p. 158). He returns to Helen vow-
ing to "re-embrace his terrifying chooser, clasp her past speech,
never let go, frig understanding . . ." (p. 158);and, because he does,
the tale of Menelaus and Helen "rebegins." He becomes embodied immor-
tally in the form of his own story and, beyond even that, in "the
absurd, unending possibility of love" (p. 167).

In the last two of the three novellas which make up Chimera,
the two which came first in point of time, Barth returns to the theme
of the hero. "Perseid" is the story of a genuine hero who saves both
himself and the entire race from deathly immobility by magically find-
ing in the very terms of the apparently insoluble problem its solu-
tion, by reflecting Medusa's petrifying glance back upon herself. The
point at which "Perseid" picks up the life of the hero, however, is
in middle-age, after those immortalizing exploits have become history

and he himself has begun to ossify in the process of aging:

248

"The kids were grown and restless; Andromeda and I
had become different peOple; our marriage was on
the rocks. The kingdom took care of itself; my
fame was sure enough--but I'd lost my shine with
my golden locks: twenty years it was since I'd
headed Medusa; I was twenty kilos overweight and
bored stiff” (p. 71).

Perseus becomes, then, the emblem for all men who have arrived
at the middle of their lives and found themselves in a depression,
pining for the days of their youthful "heroics." Barth's prescrip-
tion for making the latter half of one's life as meaningful as the
former is, once again, not to attempt to solve the problem rationally
but to achieve a Higher Innocence and thereby transcend the problem.
When Perseus slays Medusa, he achieves the immortality of his own
spoken and written story; but, when he returns at forty to the rein-
carnated Medusa and, deSpite having just experienced the death of one
love relationship,is not afraid to embrace her with lovingly open
eyes, his story is translated into the very stars.

The last and longest novella in Chimera also speaks of hero-
hood and middle-age; however, as its correspondence to the tale of the
mythical serpent suggests, its effect is not reassuring but stinging.
Its central character has for his entire life attempted to imitate his
heroic cousin Perseus, with the result that after forty years he has
made himself not into a hero but into a perfect imitation of one. His
story is a "Bellerogngniad" (italics mine), and it serves as a power-
ful reminder that most men are not even demigods and that their

attempts to give their lives meaning and to achieve immortality are

doomed from the outset.

249

Despite his best efforts, BellerOphon's life amounts to "con-
fusion and fiasco" rather than heroic pattern (p. 297). He slays a
monster, the Chimera, that is harmless and probably imaginary; he
accomplishes his various tasks by tricks rather than by transcendance--
if, indeed, he can be sure that he did accomplish them; he has no more
idea at forty than he had at twenty who he is and what he ought to
do; and his life-story will be forever obscure. By this point in our
reading of Barth, we are not surprised to find that the final journey
upon which Bellerophon makes these stinging discoveries begins with
his taking permanent leave of his fine and faithful wife: fLet's see.
0: I wish I were good at loving peOple, which it seems I'm not. So"
(p. 263). It is finally the same deficiency in him, the lack of a
Higher Innocence, which prevents his being either husband or hero.

In "Dunyazadiad," the last novella written and the first
printed in Chimera, Barth once again speaks about the "exhausted“ con-
dition of modern storytelling and modern rationalist ethics through
the metaphor of male-female relationships; but, in this story perhaps
even more explicitly than in the others we have noted, the relation-
ships are a central theme in and of themselves. Dunyazade watches
every night for 1001 nights as her older sister Scheherazade beguiles
the king with a new amorous technique and then with a new story so
that he will not kill her as he has 1001 women on an equal number of

6

nights before her. After she has run out of invention, the king

 

6Barth has called this image of a young girl having to spin
yet another beguiling story every night for lOOl nights and finally,
through those stories, saving not only her own life but the life of
her country as well, "the aptest, sweetest, hauntingest, hopefullest

250

marries her; and Dunyazade is married to the king's younger brother,
who is believed to have killed a good many women himself. The ques-
tion then becomes, what kind of relationship does woman form with man
now that the slavery and carnage which have marked her treatment at
his hands seem to have run their course? Neither young woman is inno-
cent enough any longer to think that monogamy can work; and Schehera-
zade, therefore, chooses the way of experience. She forms a relation-
ship that is based on mutual infidelity. But Dunyazade, on the other
hand, with the eloquent coaxing of her new husband, chooses the way of
Higher Innocence. "What do you expect me to do?” she cries at first,
"Forgive you? Love you?”:

”Yes!” the King cried again, his eyes flashing.
"Let's end the dark night! All that passion and
hate between men and women; all that confusion of
inequality and difference! Let's take the truly
tragic view of love! Maybe it in_a fiction, but
it's the profoundest and best of all! Treasure

me, Dunyazade, as I'll treasure you.

"It won't work."

“Nothing works! But the enterprise is noble;
it's full of joy and life, and the other ways are
deathy. Let's make love like passionate equals!”-

"You mean as if we were equals,” Dunyazade
said. "You know we're not. What you want is
impossible."

"Despite your heart's feelings?" pressed
the King. "Let it be as if! Let's make a philo-
50phy of that as if!" (pp. 53-54).

With this last line, it seems to me, Barth captures the essence
of the vision which he first develOps in his initial three novels and

has been elaborating upon ever since. Either to totally deny or to

 

[image] I know for the storyteller."-—"Muse, Spare Me,” Book Week
(September 26, 1955), 29.

251

totally accept the nihilistic universe is to court lonely immobility

or violent madness; but simultaneously to combine and to rise above

the only two rational alternatives and to live metaphorically is to
achieve all the sense of value and identity that man can know. When
Dunyazade's new husband passionately bids her join him in making a
"phi1050phy of that n§_ii3" he is offering all contemporary women and
men whom she and he represent the only truly satisfactory method which
John Barth sees for living in the irrational, relativistic, "modern"
world. By "satisfactory," of course, he does not mean "eternally
happy." He means "full of life“--in the full recognition that no life-

story lasts forever and only a God could say for sure what one means.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barth, John. “The Literature of Exhaustion," Atlantic Monthly. 220
(August 1967), 29-34.

 

Barth, John. "Muse, Spare Me," Book Week. September 26, 1965, 28—29.

Bluestone, Gregory F. "John Wain and John Barth: The Agony and the
Accurate,” Massachusetts Review. 1 (May 1960), 582-589.

Diser, Philip E. "The Historical Ebenezer Cooke," Critigue. 10
(Fall 1968), 48-59.

 

Enck, John. "John Barth: An Interview," Wisconsin Studies in Con-
temporary Literature. 6 (Winter-Summer 1965), 3-14.

 

 

Garis, Robert. "What Happened to John Barth?" Commentany. 42
(October 1966), 89-95.

 

Joseph, Gerhard. "John Barth," University of Minnesota Pamphlets on
American Writers, Number 91. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1970.

 

Murphy, Richard W. "In Print: John Barth," Horizon. 5 (January
1963), 37.

Noland, Richard W. "John Barth and the Novel of Comic Nihilism,"
Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature. 7 (Autumn
1966), 239-257.

Schickel, Richard. "The Floating Opera," Critigue. 6 (Fall 1963),
53-67.

Scholes, Robert. "George is My Name," New York Times Book Review.
August 7, 1966, pp. 1 & 22.

Scholes, Robert and Robert Kellogg. The Nature of Narrative. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1966.

Smith, Herbert F. "Barth's Endless Road," Critigue. 6 (Fall 1963),
68-76.

252

253

General References

 

Barth, John. "Help," Esguire. 77 (September 1969), 108-109.

Barth, John. "My Two Muses," Johns Hopkins Magazine. 12 (April 1961),
9-13.

Bradbury, John M. "Absurd Insurrection: The Barth-Percy Affair,"
SOuth Atlantic Qnarterly. 68 (Summer 1969), 319-329.

 

Bryer, Jackson R. "Two Bibliographies," Critigue. 6 (Fall 1963),
86-89.

Byrd, Scott. "Giles Goat-Boy Visited," Critigue. 9 (Spring 1966),
108-112.

 

Dippie, Brian W. "'His Visage Wild; His Form Exotic': Indian Themes
and Cultural Guilt in John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor,"
American Quarterly, 21 (Spring 1969)} 113-121.

 

Elliott, George P. "Destroyers, Defilers, and Confusers of Men,"
Atlantic Monthly, 222 (December 1968), 74-80.

 

Fiedler, Leslie A. "John Barth: An Eccentric Genius," New Leader.
44 (February 13, 1961), 22-24.

 

Gross, Beverly. "The Anti-Novels of John Barth," Chicago Review.
20 (November 1968), 95-109.

 

Hassan, Ihab. "The Existentialist Novel," Massachusetts Review.
3 (Autumn 1961, Summer 1962), 795-797.

 

Hassan, Ihab. "Laughter in the Dark: The New Voice in American
Fiction," American Scholar. 33, 636-640.

 

Hassan, Ihab. Radical Innocence: The Contemporary American Novel.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press,2196l.

Holder, Alan. "'What Marvelous Plot . . . Was Afoot?': History in
Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor," American Qnarterly. 20 (Fall
1968), 596-604.

 

 

Hyman, Stanley Edgar. "John Barth's First Novel," New Leader. 48
(April 12, 1965), 20-21.

 

Keiley, Benedict. "Ripeness Was Not All: John Barth's Giles Goat-
qu," Hollins Critic. 3 (1966), 1-12.

 

 

254

Kerner, David. "Ps chodrama in Eden,” Chicago Review. 12 (Winter-
Spring 1959 , 59-67.

 

Knapp, Edgar H. "Found in the Barthhouse: Novelist as Savior,"
Modern Fiction Studies. 14 (Winter 1968-1969), 446-451.

 

Kostelanetz, Richard. "Dada and the Future of Fiction," Works.
1 (Spring 1968), 58-66.

Kyle, Carol A. "The Unity of Anatomy: The Structure of Barth's Lost
in the Funhouse," Critigue. 13: 3 (1972), 31-43.

 

LeClair, Thomas. "John Barth's The Floating Opera: Death and the
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14 (1970), 711-730.

 

 

McDonald, James L. "Barth's Syllabus: The Frame of Giles Goat-Boy,"
Critigue. 13: 5 (1972), 5-10.

 

Mercer, Peter. "The Rhetoric of Giles Goat-Boy," Novel. 4 (Winter
1971), 147-158.

 

Meros, Phyllis. "John Barth: A Truffle No Longer," New York Times
Book Review. August 7, 1966, p. 22.

 

 

Miller, Russell H. “The Sot—Weed Factor: A Contemporary Mock Epic,"
Critigue. 8 (Winter-Spring 1965), 88-100.

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Rovit, Earl. "The Novel as Parody: John Barth," Critigue. 6
(Fall 1963), 77-85.

Samuels, Charles T. "John Barth: A Buoyant Denial of Relevance,"
Commonweal. 85 (1966), 80-82.

 

Scholes, Robert. "Disciple of Scheherazade," New York Times Book
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Scholes, Robert. The Fabulators. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1967f'

 

SCPUIZ’ Max F° "P0P: 0p. and Black Humor: The Aesthetics of Anxiety,I
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Slethaug, Gordon E. "Barth's Refutation of the Idea of Progress,"
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Tanner,

Tanner,

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Trachtenberg, Alan. "Barth and Hawkes: Two Fabulists,” Critigue.

255

John C. "John Barth as a Novelist of Ideas: The Themes of
Value and Identity,” Critigue. 8 (Winter 1965), 101-116.

Toby. "The Hoax that Joke Bilked," Partisan Review. 34
(Winter 1967), 102-109.

 

Toby. "No Exit," Partisan Review. 36 (Number 2, 1969),
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Campbell. "The Gilesian Monomyth: Some Remarks on the
Structure of Giles Goat-Boy," Genre. 3 (1970), 364-375.

 

6 (Fa11 1963), 4-18.

Tratham, Campbell. "John Barth and the Aesthetics of Artifice,"

Contemporary Literature. 12 (Winter 1971), 60-73.

 

Weixlmann, Joseph N. "John Barth: A Bibliography," Critigue.

13: 3 (1972), 45-55.

 

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