Mythic Mailer in An American Dream: Difference between revisions

<blockquote>the smell which steamed up from the incision was so extreme it called for the bite of one's jaws not to retch up out of one's own cavity. I remember I breathed it into the top of the lung, and drew not further. Pinched it off at the windpipe. . . . my friend apologized for the smell . . . . I must not judge from this what a body is like, he went on to say, because healthy bodies have a decent odor in death ... (265-266)</blockquote>

Rojack begins his quest for this innocence at a cocktail party in a ritzy part of the city, where he ends up vomiting over the apartment balcony, a sure sign that his life is making him sick. His retching seems to be a form of self-purging, getting sick in order to get well. After his spell of vomiting, Rojack must go down into the city to begin his adventure even as he goes down into the unconscious to explore himself. Several scholars, including Philip Bufithis and Tony Tanner, have noted how often Rojack "plunges" downward in the book. Bufithis describes the advent of his odyssey: "Rojack must plunge into an ordeal of mythological import" (71); while Tanner writes: "the hero of the book, Stephen Rojack, is twice very close to a literal plunge from lighted rooms in high buildings to dark streets below" (356). Leaving the party after plunging down ten flights of stairs, Rojack emerges in the cold March air.

Mailer's choice of March in establishing his setting is also indicative of the mythic import of the novel. Spring is a time of rebirth, and rebirth, especially the rebirth of a hero, is a major mythic theme (Friedman 309). Moreover, Rojack is literally exposed to the elements of nature because he has forgotten his overcoat. Shivering, he goes to Deborah's apartment, which is also on a floor high above the street, "a small duplex suspended some hundred or more feet above the East River Drive" (21). After he kills Deborah, he runs down another ten flights of stairs to the street where her body landed. It is significant that his dealings with evil are almost always on the top floors of up-scale buildings. The descent into hell, paradoxically, here becomes an ascent into the world where the Barney Kellys live.

It is outside, under the light of the moon, that Rojack first sees Cherry. This setting and the locale of their lovemaking, far away from Rojack's normal world, are significant to the rebirth myths. The moon has long been a symbol of women's fertility. The bar where Rojack discovers Cherry singing is "the rear of a large basement loft" (93), a setting appropriate to Cherry's stature as creative love in the story. To enter the basement Rojack must descend, just as he must dive within himself for growth. Creativity comes from the soul, from deep within human nature. Rebirth is creative. Phoebus Apollo is a mythic figure who is reborn each day as the sun rises. Rojack arrives at this club at dawn, the time of day when Phoebus is preparing for the rebirth of the sun, or himself, as he readies his chariot to draw the sun across the sky. Rojack emphasizes his rebirth while listening to Cherry sing: "Well, if Deborah's dying had given me a new life, I must be all of eight hours old by now" (93). This sense of rebirth again dominates as Rojack descends to the "lower" east side to Cherry's apartment where they make love. This descent again echoes the image of going down, plunging into the subconscious where Rojack experiences his spiritual rebirth through creative love.