Mythic Mailer in An American Dream: Difference between revisions

However, Orpheus cannot resist one quick look backward to check on her, and as he watches, she disappears, forever this time, back into the void. Rojack tries to muster the courage to walk the parapet again, an act he intuitively knows is essential to Cherry's well being. But like Orpheus, he will fail and, as a result, lose Cherry forever. Just as the voice in Star Wars comes clearly to Luke, so the voice seems emphatic to Rojack. "The message came clear, 'Walk the parapet,' it said. 'Walk the parapet or Cherry is dead.' But I had more fear for myself than for Cherry. I did not want to walk that parapet" (255). Rojack succeeds in walking the parapet once, but succumbs to the temptation to verbally attack Kelly and so forgets to walk it the second time. "'The first trip was done for you," said the voice, "but the second was for Cherry'" {261). The true hero, like Mailer's embattled god, is imperfect and sometimes fails. Campbell describes another mythic hero who sometimes failed: "Parzival fails in the Grail adventure, [sic) he fails because he's doing what he's been told to do instead of what his heart tells him to do" (214). Our fates are intertwined. Cherry dies when Rojack cannot sustain the courage to walk the parapet once more. His personal quest is only partially successful because he ignores his inner voice--the voice in his dream, the voice of his subconscious--and thus he does not complete the ritualistic demands of the myth.

Allan J. Wagenheim has noted the similarities between the Orpheus myth and ''<u>An American Dream</u>''. He describes the elevator ride to the top floor of the Waldorf as a recurrent echo of the descent into Hades (61). The comparison is blatant, despite the ironic reversal of direction. As Rojack pauses on his way to Kelly's apartment, he is paralyzed by pain. He describes the pain as causing a hallucination that "left me staring at the lobby of the Waldorf. But for a moment I had died and was in the antechamber of Hell" (206). More images of hell surface as Rojack journeys in the elevator. He feels "the air burning from the shaft, 11 where "fire had consumed the oxygen," and "the absolute of evil" was present (208). Later, Rojack's description of Kelly's apartment contains obvious mythic allusions to animism, nymphs and serpents. The room held a screen of "a tapestry of women in Elizabethan dress talking to a deer while a squire was in the act of encountering a nude maid who grew out of the trunk of a tree," a "harpsichord giving off the high patina of a snake," "ormolu cupids," and "Golden mermaids" (234). Mailer is setting us up for a mythic encounter between Rojack and Kelly.

In Barney Kelly, Mailer attempts to show us absolute evil which encourages and stimulates the potential evil in those around him. When Kelly greets Rojack who, in the past thirty-some hours has been through that subconscious crucible, he greets him with a hug, like an equal. Rojack describes his embrace as containing "some deep authority of feeling" (216). The satanic Kelly recognizes and salutes the newly won strength in Rojack. However, Kelly's mistress in this hell, Bess, whose name when pronounced sounds suspiciously like the hiss of a snake, warns Rojack that "'Barney's up to mangling you tonight"' (222). The father's desires echo those of his dead daughter--a wish to destroy Rojack's manhood and creativity. When Kelly's actions draw Rojack away from the parapet, his evil is encouraging the inherent evil--not listening to one's inner voice, that mystical Godhead--within us. Rojack begins a violent assault on Kelly, but stops himself as he realizes that destroying Kelly, unlike destroying Deborah, is not part of his personal quest.

After leaving Kelly, Rojack continues his quest. Like the eternal American cowboy he heads West, delving deeper into himself, knowing that "the only true journey, of knowledge is from the depth of one being to the heart of another" (11). In search of this knowledge, his Grail, he ventures South into the primitive origins of America. Like other heroes in myth--Wolfram's Parzival, Ovid's Orpheus, and Lucas's Luke Skywalker-Mailer's Rojack has dealt with the necessity of violence, the lure of sexuality, the importance of ritual, and the despair of failure. Failure is rife in the desert of New York City. Campbell describes the reason: "it's the problem of the Waste Land--people living life inauthentically, living not their life but the life that's put on them by society" (251). Rojack's tenacity and courage endure as he continues his journey towards authenticity. Bufithis places the mythic center of the novel squarely on Rojack's shoulders: "the cosmos can improve if Rojack acts bravely. Such is the mythical meaning Mailer attributes to Rojack" (68). In ''<u>An American Dream</u>'', Mailer, through Rojack, has reached new mythical heights.