Mythic Mailer in An American Dream: Difference between revisions

Leigh explains the sex in ''<u>An American Dream</u>'' in mythic terms: "In''<u>An American Dream</u>'' 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:

When our hero Rojack begins to feel the disquieting effects of the consciousness of new awareness, he initiates his quest. In a quest-myth, the apparent goal might be to slay a dragon or kill the minotaur; the overarching goal is, as Campbell describes it, "[g]etting into harmony and tune with the universe and staying there"{{sfn|Campbell|1990|p=1}}. Rojack's journey on the parapet echoes the myth of Parzival and the Holy Grail. Parzival's quest is to find the Grail and become its keeper. The Grail stands for a unity of self with the universe. Mailer is concerned with this lack of unity, man's separation from nature. Tanner correlates this concern with Rojack's walk upon the parapet:

In pursuit of a sense of wholeness, Rojack performs the ritualistic walk on the parapet which gives him the strength to journey onward despite failure. He gains the courage to descend again into the often nightmarish world of the subconscious where anything is possible, morality is intensely subjective, and the "conquering heroic self awakes"{{sfn|Frye|1957|p=684}}. This heroic self must acquire a new consciousness, which Begiebing calls "the heroic consciousness"{{sfn|Begiebing|1980|p=1}}. Begiebing elaborates on his definition:

<blockquote>In general, the consciousness Mailer and his heroes seek would integrate conscious and unconscious life, awaken metaphorical vision, and regenerate the resources of divine energy in human beings.{{sfn|Begiebing|1980|p=1}</blockquote>

How Rojack seeks to acquire this heroic consciousness controls the action in the book. The action culminates in Rojack's walk upon the parapet. His attempt to walk the parapet, buffeted by nature and lured, or taunted, by the moon, takes on the appearance of ritual in the mythic aspects of the novel. Rojack feels that his successful walk upon the parapet, high above the city, is somehow essential to his life. Cassirer's scholarship on ritual and myth contributes to our understanding of the importance of Rojack's walk on the parapet. The ritual in a society explains and precedes the evolution of the myth and is as important as the myth itself. Cassirer states: "in order to understand myth we must begin with the study of rites"{{sfn|Cassirer|1946|p=24}. Seen along one dimension, the walk on the parapet is an open clue from Mailer that this novel has mythic aspects. More importantly, the walk on the parapet is the climax of the book. The courage to complete the ritual is the courage to confront one's own existence. Frye writes: "in human life a ritual seems to be something of a voluntary effort (hence the magical element in it) to recapture a lost rapport with the natural cycle"{{sfn|Frye|1957|p=682}. Continually, when Rojack is on the parapet, he feels the force of nature, both positive and negative. The moon, a mythic symbol of nature's cyclical rhythm, appears to give him strength. Rojack's courage is faltering, when he hears an inner voice:

<blockquote>But something else said, "Look at the moon, look up at the moon." A silvery whale, it slipped up from the clouds and was clear, coming to surface in a midnight sea, and I felt its pale call, princess of the dead, I would never be free of her, and then the most quiet of the voices saying, "You murdered. So you are in her cage. Now, earn your release. Go around the parapet again," and this thought was so clear that I kept going ... each step I took, something good was coming in, I could do this, I knew I could do it now.{{sfn|Mailer|1964-65|p=259}</blockquote>

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"{{sfn|Mailer|1964-65|p=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'"{{sfn|Mailer|1964-65|p=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" {{sfn|Campbell|1990|p=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{{sfn|Wagenheim|1968|p=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"{{sfn|Mailer|1964-65|p=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{{sfn|Mailer|1964-65|p=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"{{sfn|Mailer|1964-65|p=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"{{sfn|Mailer|1964-65|p=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"'{{sfn|Mailer|1964-65|p=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" {{sfn|Mailer|1964-65|p=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" {{sfn|Campbell|1964-65|p=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"{{sfn|Bufithis|1978|p=68}. In ''<u>An American Dream</u>'', Mailer, through Rojack, has reached new mythical heights.