Mythic Mailer in An American Dream: Difference between revisions

Norman Mailer's book An American Dream has been acclaimed by many critics, including the author himself, as possibly his finest novel. On the other hand, many scholars have attacked it for its unrealistic plotline and unbelievable characters. Reviews of the book were decidedly mixed. Life magazine call it "by conventional standards...a grotesquely implausible book, full of horrific occurrences and characters who appear to uniformly insane" (12). On the positive side, Joan Didion claimed "An American Dream is one more instance in which Mailer is going to laugh last, for it is a remarkable book"(39). Mailer scholar J. Michael Lennon writes that " The book's defenders, with few exceptions, [have] tended to see the novel as myth, fantasy, or allegory"(9).

<blockquote>In support of interpreting An American Dream as a myth, I begin by citing Joseph L. Blotner's description of mythic exegesis of literature: When meaningful, coherent, and illuminating parallels are discerned, the work may be interpreted in terms of the myth. Often what appears fragmentary or only partly disclosed in the work may be revealed as complete and explicit through the myth .... It is not an interior approach asserting that myth was present at the conception and execution of the work; it rather asserts that myth may be brought to the work at its reading. (548)</blockquote>

I believe that bringing a mythic perspective to An American Dream is the best way to understand it because myth forms the structural and thematical core of the book. Myths often appear to have unrealistic plots and incredible characters because they deal with the universal and the extreme. In this paper I will attempt to demonstrate this mythic relationship in three ways. I will begin by establishing that myth and Mailer's particular cosmology underlie and inform the romantic nature of this novel. Next, I intend to discuss how the mythic elements Mailer uses in this work contribute to the evolving myth of America. In conclusion, I will show how the novel's particularly American hero, Stephen Rojack, and his ultimate feat--his walk upon the parapet, relate to specific ancient and modern myths. In addition, I will note that although Mailer does not use only one myth to tell his story (he borrows from many myths), his protagonist Stephen Rojack follows the basic quest-myth or monomyth as described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

Before I begin, the mythic aspects of the plot should be noted. An American Dream follows Rojack through a violence ridden thirty-two hours as he searches for a way back to internal and external harmony. The novel's action takes place during the roughly one day-and-a-half following Rojack's murder of his wife. Mailer makes Rojack a rather ironic hero at the start. He is a former WWII war hero who has become a man of some stature in his community. Through his accomplishments while attaining the status of congressman, professor, and television celebrity, Rojack has attained the materialistic success associated with the American dream. He has plenty of money, friends, and possessions. However, at a party, Rojack, age forty-four, suddenly comes face to face with his lack of authentic heroic status and the futility of his existence. Through the voice of the moon, he hears the call of the true voice of nature which leads to a higher existence, but an existence that demands his sacrifice of the trappings of the American dream as he has accepted it. To add to Rojack's difficulties and confusion, the voice of the moon is dualistic. At one point, its message appears to encourage his suicide (his own inner voice tells him that his life is a fraud); at another point, its words seem to promise him unlimited spiritual fulfillment. Rojack hearkens to this second call which beckons him towards a quest--the pursuit of an alternative American dream--the unlimited opportunity to live an Edenic existence which transcends the innate corruption of human nature.

<blockquote>Mailer describes Rojack's journey in both fantastic and realistic terms. Critics have argued strenuously which is which. It is important while studying An American Dream to remember that Mailer is primarily writing a myth. Myth is the unifying principle underlying the romantic aspects of this novel. In this section of my paper I will show how both romance and realism contribute to the myth.</blockquote>

Ironically, most critics who are unhappy with the book mention its lack of realism. In some ways, Mailer uses the mythic aspects of An American Dream to explore his own concept of reality. Mailer basically thinks in mythic terms; he is a mythic realist (Adams 211). When asked about the basis of reality in this particular novel, Mailer replied:

There wasn't a single phenomenon in that book that I consider dream-like or fanciful or fantastical. To me, it was a realistic book, but a realistic book at that place where extraordinary things are happening. I believe the experience of extraordinary people in extraordinary situations is not like our ordinary realistic experience at all. (Adams, 211-12) To Mailer, intensifying the realistic action deepens the mythic dimension of his work. However, myth does not function easily in realistic genres. Ernst Cassirer writes that myth itself is "incoherent, capricious, irrational" (18). Laura Adams states that "one of the mistakes many critics made in first reviewing it [An American Dream] was to take it too literally" (210). Merrill agrees with Adams: "to read An American Dream as a realistic novel is to misread it altogether" ( 69). Such critics misunderstand how myth structures the book and deepens its universality.

Mailer puts mythic form into his novel in order to add universal significance to Rojack's quest. In both primitive and advanced societies, myth has addressed the human need to acquire a sense of meaning from a seemingly formless and chaotic existence. Joseph Campbell describes the inherent purpose of myth: "Getting into harmony and tune with the universe and staying there is the principal function of mythology" (1-2). Campbell's conception of getting in tune with the universe is not a scientific and rational process; thus myth necessarily appeals to our non-rational side. Mailer has long been concerned with the overly rational, scientific aspect of American culture. In some ways, An American Dream is a mythic weapon Mailer uses in his personal battle with our overly technological society. This use of his novel echoes Rojack's use of myth as a weapon against the evils of his society.

The most astute critics realize that Mailer is writing his myth in the tradition of the 19th-century American romantics, who were also concerned with the mixed blessings of scientific advancement. John Aldridge discusses An American Dream as working in

Mailer's characters are believable, although their actions are not always compatible with realism. However, Mailer believes that the characters in An American Dream are credible and that his plot is plausible. It is Mailer's melding of realism and romance that fuels the critical controversy. Ultimately, it is not the realistic Mailer, who produced The Naked and the Dead or The Executioner's Song, who is writing An American Dream, but the romantic Mailer, echoing the romantics of the American Renaissance. Using elements of this genre, Mailer feels free to indulge himself by developing his own cosmology while giving his mythic work a particularly 20th-century flavor. Aldridge insists:

Mailer presents his mythic truths by using elements of romance supported by mythic structure. The mythic truths of the work--getting in tune with the universe and listening to one's inner voice--support the mythic structure of Rojack's quest (although Mailer truncates this form when Rojack fails to return from South America). Romance, in its looseness and freedom, is more like classical myth than the novel, which pretends to be real, although Mailer puts elements of both into An American Dream. One of the improbable elements of romance Mailer uses is Rojack's arsenal. In his battle, the hero Rojack does not use a real bow and arrow as weapons; he uses "psychic darts." When he is sitting in the bar listening to Cherry sing, he discusses his weapons:

Stories that concern mythic heroes on quests battling psychic darts, dragons, devils, and talking moons set themselves up for incredulous critics. Many of the critics who argue that An American Dream is not a realistic novel believe that it is an allegory. Myth is often intertwined with allegory. According to Frye, all myths incorporate some allegory because in our attempt to explain myth, we allegorize (341). However, allegory is a direct comparison which dominates the structure of the work and is intentionally moralistic. Frye maintains: "Genuine allegory is a structural element in literature: it has to be there, and cannot be added by critical interpretation alone" (54).

Both myth and allegory employ metaphor. Allegory itself is often defined as an extended metaphor (Holman 10). Metaphor is used extensively throughout Mailer's work. Stanley Gutman emphasizes that "Mailer's essential medium is metaphor" (129). One consequence of this aspect of Mailer's work, especially in An American Dream, is that it could be incorrectly or incompletely interpreted as an allegory. Some scholars, such as Adams and Robert Begiebing, believe that the novel is an allegory, filled with complex yet reductive metaphors. Myth is naturally metaphorical, but Mailer is not trying to be purely metaphorical, and especially not purely allegorical. In an interview with Adams, he denies that such was his motive or his technique: "I don't believe a metaphorical novel has any right to exist until it exists on its ground floor. You know I never start with my characters as symbols" (210). Instead, Mailer intensifies his realistic plot to develop the mythic aspect of his narrative, and thus, the metaphorical strength of his characters. The characters are not allegorical personifications, but Mailer's idea of real human beings engaged in a very real battle between good and evil. In extraordinary situations one is forced to delve deep within himself, calling forth a stronger, more aware person in the process. In Mailer's private cosmology, it is universally important for each individual to emerge from the crucible of the subconscious for the better.

A look at Mailer's cosmology helps to explain the basic thematic patterns of his work, especially the mythic patterns in An American Dream. Mailer is often considered as having a personality which dominates and overshadows his writing or as "bursting with a passion too big for his pen" (Aldridge). His own personal quest transcends didacticism and emerges in the dialectic in his work. Although Mailer's philosophy seems intertwined with the mythology in An American Dream, we must be careful not to confuse the two. Chase discusses this potential problem:

The most important part of Mailer's cosmology is the awareness that there is a choice, that the choice has an effect, and that we must choose the best we can. Lennon further discusses Mailer's beliefs about the importance of choice. There is "an extraordinary emphasis on man's free will, his ability to rough-hew not only bis own destiny but to affect God's as well" (147). The existential nature of the choices tends towards the absurd and can lead to inaction. But, the resultant void would ensure the Devil's ultimate victory. In An American Dream, Mailer uses the mythic quest to raise awareness and to develop this existential dialectic. "Why write," Mailer asks in an interview with Lennon, "if you are not going to change consciousness?" (transcripts, 3). Lennon summarizes Mailer's private mythology on choice:

This utopian aspect of the American dream, the belief that "Weakness and flaws are construed to be outside in circumstances, not within; in the world around, in other people, not in the human nature that one shares" (9), has driven Rojack to his attainment of the materialistic American dream. At forty-four he discovers that this dream is, in reality, a nightmare, a spiritual wasteland. The corruption within the human spirit has led him up this false trail and left him without a center. At the time of his epiphany he says: "I was nothing but open raw depths at that instant alone on the balcony" (11). In order to succeed at the real American dream--to find spiritual fulfillment in a free atmosphere--he must plunge down within himself into those open depths, the realm of his subconscious which speaks most clearly in the dream. An American Dream concerns this juxtaposition: this sense of the corrupt American values system and the personal, humanistic dream synonymous with the freedom to pursue inner fulfillment. Inner fulfillment is accomplished through the unification of the subconscious and conscious selves. Only through this spiritual delving into the dreamworld of the subconscious will Rojack find the courage and knowledge necessary to aspire to the edenic American dream.

Rojack is particularly American in his pursuits. This country was settled by people who had dreams of personal autonomy and fulfillment and would push further West, often destroying whoever got in their way, whether it was native Indians, Asian laborers, or black slaves. This violence manifested the original sin brought over from Europe, an unrelenting pursuit of material success--the false American dream---which turned this country into a nightmare for many. Rojack is a realistic epitome of this nightmarish success story. In order to begin his pursuit of spiritual success, he commits murder. Ironically, this act again perpetuates the original, inherent evil of mankind in his new journey just as the pioneers brought with them their flawed human natures as well as their noble dreams to settle this land. Deborah's murder haunts Rojack's parapet ritual and results in its partial failure just as the violence in American prevents the country from attaining its potential spiritual success. Mailer's love and concern for his country are evident in most of his work, but they are especially dominant in An American Dream.

An American Dream is a dramatization of 20th-century New York City. This intensely urban conglomerate talks on mythic dimensions as the setting for Mailer's mythic dialectic: the existential strengths of good and evil. Chase addresses the need for mythic literature to encompass this dialectic: "the creative artist must recapture a certain magical quality, a richness of imagery, a deeper sense of primeval forces, a larger order of aesthetic experience" (110). In An American Dream, Mailer develops a modern myth which incorporates all these elements. By placing Rojack in New York City, Mailer puts his hero in a well-known urban area. This setting creates an antithetical environment from which Rojack can flee towards the ultimate spatial end, the jungles of South America. Tony Tanner emphasizes Mailer's incorporation of metaphor in the settings:

The setting in which Rojack conducts his battle delineates the quality of his materialistic life, successful by contemporary New York City standards. New York City is often considered by New Yorkers, at least, ( and Mailer is one) to contain the essence of America. In An American Dream, this essence is corrupt, so that Rojack is forced to flee the city and head West just as the pilgrims fled west from the stifling decadence of old Europe to the promise of the new land, America. In this country, New England has come to represent the old world. When Rojack heads West, he is seeking spiritual renewal in the innocence of our youngest region in terms of European settlement of the continent. In Missouri, a state from which 19th-century pilgrimages often started, he visits an old friend, a doctor, who invites him to observe an autopsy. The corpse is rotten and the gangrenous odor overwhelms Rojack. His description of the smell ominously echoes the rotten health of the country. The man had been suffering from cancer, to Rojack a disease synonymous with evil, but he had died from a secondary infection:

Rojack describes Cherry's tenement as full of unfiltered smells and sounds, not isolated by the artificial protection wealth ensures. Similarly, their lovemaking is unprotected by birth control devices. Mailer's novels have always overflowed with his particular brand of sexuality, and An American Dream is no exception. Whether the sexual act is potentially impregnating or sodomistic, loving or violent, has great bearing on its meaning in relation to the theme of this novel. Tanner discusses Mailer's use of sexuality in An American Dream:

Leigh explains the sex in An American Dream in mythic terms: "In An American Dream orgiastic sex plunges Rojack into epistemological and ontological depths and communion with the mysterious forces to which the individual is exposed" (105). Sexuality for Mailer has always featured heavily weighted mystic overtones. The possibility for procreativity influences the degree of goodness inherent in the sexual act. The more likely the act is to be procreative, the more moral it is. The women in the novel provide three different ways for Rojack to succeed in his quest. Leigh describes them best:

Allan J. Wagenheim has noted the similarities between the Orpheus myth and An American Dream. 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.

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 An American Dream, Mailer, through Rojack, has reached new mythical heights.