Mythic Mailer in An American Dream: Difference between revisions

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".{{sfn|Mailer|1964-65|p=18}} Laura Adams states that "one of the mistakes many critics made in first reviewing it [''<u>An American Dream</u>''] was to take it too literally".{{sfn|Adams|1975|p=210}} Merrill agrees with Adams: "to read ''<u>An American Dream</u>'' as a realistic novel is to misread it altogether".{{sfn|Merrill|1978|p=69}} Such critics misunderstand how myth structures the book and deepens its universality.

This freedom to act as an individual is a uniquely Western, and, more emphatically, American idea. Joseph Campbell discusses the difference between the Eastern mythologies and those of Europe. In the European myths, the emphasis was on an individual's own "potentiality",{{sfn|Campbell|1990|p=212}} while in the East, the emphasis was on the individual's role as part of the social order. In the European tradition, the individual, like Mailer with Rojack, must act outside the prevailing social mores in order to attain heroic status. Campbell writes: "Now there's the individual experience--refuting the values of the whole system".{{sfn|Campbell|1990|p=213}} By murdering Deborah, Rojack disregards contemporary social morality and substitutes his personal vision or values. He accepts responsibility for himself, thus taking the path to freedom.

Maxwell Geismar argues that "The American Dream has been our ruling myth, as a culture and in the literature which both reveals and helps to shape our culture".{{sfn|Geismar|1970|p=45}} However, according to Robert Heilman, the word "dream" itself has many connotations. There is the dream which is an end in itself; the dream that is analogous to idea; the dream as vision; the dream as illusion; and the dream as obligation.{{sfn|Heilman|p=4-5}} He concludes that the American dream is a vision with a dualistic nature.{{sfn|Heilman|p=9}} The dual aspects of the American dream include the idealistic ability to leave the corruption of the old world behind, combined with the limitless, democratic rise to "material or political or spiritual" success.{{sfn|Heilman|p=8}}

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",{{sfn|Heilman|p=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".{{sfn|Heilman|p=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. ''<u>An American Dream</u>'' 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.

New York City, considered by many to contain the essence of America, is the paradise lost, the urban wasteland in the novel. Rojack is the hero who recognizes its disguised corruption and sets out to conquer it through a personal quest of self-redemption. He is the American Adam who sees the battleground, recognizes the venom of the Kellys and their consorts, knows that cosmic paradise is far off and assumes responsibility for the battle to attain it. Mailer's hero believes in the "possibility of redemption, resurrection, recreation out of the mature wisdom gained in Adam's fall".{{sfn|Madden|1970|p=xii}} Philip Bufithis states it another way: "He has been launched into the world by a power greater than himself, and it is his purpose to help actualize that power through the exertions of his own creative will".{{sfn|Bufithis|1978|p=68}}) Like the great mythic heroes before him, Rojack is prepared to delve deeply within himself to find the strength to do battle with cosmic powers.

<blockquote>Myths and dreams are interdependent in the sense, first, that much of the content of dreams tends to become articulate in myth, and myths, or parts of myths, are retold in dreams. Secondly, though myths and dreams are intimately related to truth the relationships are not of the same kind. Myths contain truths, dreams are avenues for perceiving the truths which are later embodied in myths.{{sfn|Burridge|1972|p=129}}</blockquote>

According to Andrew Gordon, dreams "are not detached from the rest of our mental life, but on the contrary are psychical acts of the deepest significance, because they put us in touch with the shadow land of the unconscious".{{sfn|Gordon|1977|p=100}} Carl Jung defines this common dream world as the collective unconscious, "a sphere of unconscious mythology whose primordial images are the common heritage of mankind".{{sfn|Jung|1989|p=664}} When the dreams are filled with an imagery common to all human beings, they become archetypal. Thus, Jung's primordial images are called archetypes, each "a figure---be it a demon, a human being, or a process--that constantly recurs in the course of history and appears wherever creative fantasy is freely expressed".{{sfn|Jung|1989|p=665}} Myth has pervaded literature since man could fantasize.

No one knows exactly where myth originates. The aesthetic beauty of the ancient Greek and Roman myths attests to human beings' desire to create meaning and harmony in our existence. This need arises from our deepest emotions.{{sfn|Cassier|1946|p=24}} Different degrees of emotion lead to multiple levels of myth. Chase categorizes them in three ways: folktales and folklore, legends, and "the myth proper, an explanation or dramatization of nature or society".{{sfn|Chase|1949|p=36}} A modem myth would most easily incorporate this last category because the word "modern" implies a break from the past, whereas folktales and legends are often ties to the past.

''<u>An American Dream</u>'' 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".{{sfn|Chase|1949|p=110}} In ''<u>An American Dream</u>'', Mailer develops a modern myth which incorporates all these elements.  

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";{{sfn|Bufithis|1978|p=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".{{sfn|Tanner|1971|p=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.{{sfn|Friedman|1975|p=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".{{sfn|Mailer|1964-65|p=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",{{sfn|Mailer|1964-65|p=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".{{sfn|Mailer|1964-65|p=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.

Rojack's mental confusion during this act parallels his uncertainty about the meaning of Deborah's murder. In murdering Deborah was he choosing spiritual creativity or spiritual death for himself? His choice concerning his relationship with Cherry is clearer. While making love with Cherry, Rojack describes himself making a choice: a choice to love, to know what life is really about, to find the answer to his quest. "It was as if my voice had reached to its roots; and, 'Yes,' I said, of course I do, I want love,'".{{sfn|Mailer|1964-65|p=128}} They make love twice. After the second time, Rojack says: " ... now I understood that love was not a gift but a vow". {{sfn|Mailer|1964-65|p=165}} Rojack vows to continue his quest. Cherry's love gives him the strength to continue.

The other woman in the book with whom Rojack has sex is Ruta, Deborah's German maid. Sex with Ruta has the opposite purpose and result. After he murders Deborah, he is shattered by the violence of his actions and engages in what Bufithis calls a "demonic bout of sodomy" with Ruta.{{sfn|Bufithis|1978|p=65}} Rojack is torn by "conflict between creative and destructive power".{{sfn|Bufithis|1978|p=66}} He alternately has intercourse with her and sodomizes her. Rojack relates: "So that was how I finally made love to her, a minute for one, a minute for the other, a raid on the Devil and a trip back to the Lord".{{sfn|Mailer|1964-65|p=45}} At first, Ruta struggles with Rojack, but Rojack continues his act of buggary. Suddenly he senses that Ruta is a Nazi. When he accuses her of it, she confesses, while begging him not to stop his sexual assault. Rojack's continuation of his assault on Ruta echoes his assault on the Nazi soldiers which made him a war hero. Rojack seems to be wanting to aspire to heroic stature of a different kind in his sexual conquest of a Nazi.