Sunday, February 29, 2004
It happens that I am a second degree black belt in a martial arts style called ChaYon Ryu, and am a member of an inter-style group of female black belts which was formed to teach free community self-defense classes to women. When we first came together with this idea, we underwent a pretty serious amount of sensitivity training with the help of SACASA and other agencies around town. What does this have to do with Waterland, you may ask? Well, one of the sort of classic things that is discussed in these sensitivity training sessions, and in therapy sessions for women who are survivors of violence, and over and over for anyone who does any work in this field, is the idea of blame. Who’s fault was it? Who’s to blame? We tend to subscribe to a very direct correlation. If a jealous husband treats his wife poorly, and she takes lovers and engages in risky behavior, and walks home one night in the dark and a robber shoots her, who is to blame? The man who shot the gun is the only one who is responsible for shooting a gun (and this is an often-used example, for the curious). If you do something to me, no matter what I may have done before or after, responsibility for what you have done belongs to you alone. At least, that’s how we were trained to believe the real world works.
But Professor Berry has been at some pains to remind us that the world of Waterland is not the real world (and yes, I’m still having trouble with that one). Clearly, the characters at least perceive that they bear blame for actions that they did not directly commit. And the flow of events throughout the novel seems to suggest that characters feeling guilt often were, in fact, somehow responsible. But once you lose the direct correlation, where do you stop? Dick dies (presumably – thanks, Laura, for giving me a puzzle that’ll keep me up tonight…) at the end of the novel. He has killed himself by throwing himself into the water. My black belts would all agree that Dick is to blame for his own death. But what would the inhabitants of Waterland say? The young men from Arizona are to blame, for wearing uniforms which frightened him. His father is to blame, for not being his real father. Tom is to blame for so many reasons – for reading Dick the letter, for loving Mary, for helping Mary to conceive a child. Mary herself is to blame. She taught Dick about love, which taught him about loss, and about the significance of the conception of children. She and Tom are to blame again for causing Dick to kill Freddie, which in turn caused Dick’s implied fear of uniformed men. And then Dick himself is at fault again, for killing Freddie, which act kicked off a loop in the cycle that caused his own death (is this starting to look like another portrait of history yet?). Dick’s Grandfather/Father certainly deserves a share. He produced the beer that produced Dick’s death. And which, along with it’s bottle, aided in Freddie’s death. He produced Dick’s mother, and apparently had a hand in the production of Dick himself. How far back can we take this? What about Josiah Atkinson? He started the Atkinsons on the path towards brewing the beer that killed Freddie, that killed Dick. He started the family line that gave rise to Dick, who killed Freddie, who killed himself. He started the line that led to Tom, who let Dick know that his blame in the death of Freddie Parr was known by at least one other person.
Where am I going with this? Hell if I know. Can we blame the fens, for existing in their watery flatness, for giving rise to the phlegmatic Cricks? And if we can, what’s the point? Why do we learn history? Don’t give me any of that “to avoid repeating our mistakes” stuff. Then why? So that we know where to point when something goes wrong.
But Professor Berry has been at some pains to remind us that the world of Waterland is not the real world (and yes, I’m still having trouble with that one). Clearly, the characters at least perceive that they bear blame for actions that they did not directly commit. And the flow of events throughout the novel seems to suggest that characters feeling guilt often were, in fact, somehow responsible. But once you lose the direct correlation, where do you stop? Dick dies (presumably – thanks, Laura, for giving me a puzzle that’ll keep me up tonight…) at the end of the novel. He has killed himself by throwing himself into the water. My black belts would all agree that Dick is to blame for his own death. But what would the inhabitants of Waterland say? The young men from Arizona are to blame, for wearing uniforms which frightened him. His father is to blame, for not being his real father. Tom is to blame for so many reasons – for reading Dick the letter, for loving Mary, for helping Mary to conceive a child. Mary herself is to blame. She taught Dick about love, which taught him about loss, and about the significance of the conception of children. She and Tom are to blame again for causing Dick to kill Freddie, which in turn caused Dick’s implied fear of uniformed men. And then Dick himself is at fault again, for killing Freddie, which act kicked off a loop in the cycle that caused his own death (is this starting to look like another portrait of history yet?). Dick’s Grandfather/Father certainly deserves a share. He produced the beer that produced Dick’s death. And which, along with it’s bottle, aided in Freddie’s death. He produced Dick’s mother, and apparently had a hand in the production of Dick himself. How far back can we take this? What about Josiah Atkinson? He started the Atkinsons on the path towards brewing the beer that killed Freddie, that killed Dick. He started the family line that gave rise to Dick, who killed Freddie, who killed himself. He started the line that led to Tom, who let Dick know that his blame in the death of Freddie Parr was known by at least one other person.
Where am I going with this? Hell if I know. Can we blame the fens, for existing in their watery flatness, for giving rise to the phlegmatic Cricks? And if we can, what’s the point? Why do we learn history? Don’t give me any of that “to avoid repeating our mistakes” stuff. Then why? So that we know where to point when something goes wrong.
