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No Need to Know Where You’re Going If You Know You Need to Leave

WONDROUS CALS Book Club, 30-12-2024

Living while constantly aware of the many injustices and inequalities of modern society creates a constant strain on the minds of empathetic humans. With a developed idealism and enough education, most people find themselves wanting to change things for the better, while at the same time feeling that the task is impossible. The drive for positive change is met with the unmoving reality of an endless stream of disasters, wars, scandals and the systematic exploitation of the underprivileged. Nearly as long is the list of suggested solutions competing for people’s energy and resources. Although every solution contains some hope, there is also potential for confusion and disagreement amongst those aiming to improve the world, leading to infighting and further disillusionment. This state of alienation can lead to stasis, either through conscious withdrawal from activism for wellbeing or through being overwhelmed with the quantity and complexity of both problems and solutions. Nevertheless, many feel a drive to resist the status quo, even if they do not know exactly how to create a better alternative. Through an exploration of resistance across Bea Wolf, “Bartleby the Scrivener, a Story of Wall-Street”, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Dispossessed, the qualities of positive, self-assertive and joyful revolutionary action become clear, leading to an outlook that harnesses the energy of outrage to create a communal yet personal path towards changing the world. Even though it is an almost self-contained impossibility to imagine a future outside of the confines of this present, fiction allows for the bravery and confidence to defy the harmful elements of oppressive structures and set out on a path of resistance that is productive, shared, energised and rises beyond a cycle of repression. When the alternatives to an unjust world are not fully realised, compassionate and joyful revolution nevertheless allows for the setting of a new course that makes improvements possible while remaining open to course correction.

Bea Wolf, the retelling of the classic saga Beowulf by Zach Wienersmith and Boulet, shows the fighting of evil through the protagonist Bea Wolf. Like all other main characters, she’s a child who revels in adventuring, feasting on candy and soda, and resisting the pull of adulthood and adolescence. The joy of this resistance is visible in every panel where the young heroes are asserting themselves, whether it is through the building of the treehut called Treeheart, the liberation of animals from a farm or the discovery of toys, candy and water balloons (23). The joy of the revolt against the drab of society is threatened by the antagonist Grindle, an adult neighbour of Treeheart who symbolises all that is boring and stale in adulthood (29). His terrifying power is to age anyone he touches, so that “those who felt Grindle’s finger grew old – fog-eyed and furrow-faced” (33). The battle against Grindle shows the children’s resolve to hold on to fun as a weapon against the conformity, armed with foam-bolt guns, balloons and catapults (52). However, Grindle manages to defeat them: “Ten kids turned teenaged, tired-eyed, ever-texting. Eight turned middle-aged, aching, anxious, angry at the internet” (53). As Grindle manifests the children’s worst fears, the ageing magic shows the power of society to incorporate rebellion into the status quo. It is impossible for the warrior children to resist the inevitable growing up, but moreover, they are turned into bland, uninspired people who are unoffensive to Grindle’s sensibilities. They no longer enjoy life, just like Grindle, the “baron of boredom” (32), who can only find a static contentment in a perfectly cleaned and quiet house, but finds no happiness there. His overwhelming might causes the remaining children, including Roger, their king, to despair. During this “midnight of mirth” (59), they see no possibility to continue their resistance against the status quo, mirroring the hopelessness felt by many in the face of a relentlessly pessimistic world.

This paralysis is dispelled when Bea Wolf comes to Treeheart to offer her help to Roger. Just like in the saga of Beowulf, she is the mightiest warrior of the area and brings hope to a kingdom terrorised by a monster. Bea Wolf’s courage and past feats convince the children that parties are possible again, and in defiance of Grindle’s destruction, Roger throws another feast, showing the inspiration that can come from a figure that embodies idealism with joy. The children’s happiness is apparent in their star-pupilled eyes while they gorge themselves on a mountain of sweets (140), further illustrating the playfulness of both their revolution against Grindle’s killjoy overseeing and the story as a whole: reworking an ancient English text to be about children is in itself a joyful, fun act, infusing all of the weighty words and stylistic features of the original Beowulf with a humorous undertone. Bea Wolf, the text, resists the expectations and rules of literary conformity as Bea Wolf, the character, resists the confines of Grindle’s joyless conventionality. Challening him to a duel, she says “Make no more clouds. I have drawn rainbows here.” (148). Rainbows here symbolise the colourful and boundless state of play of the children, but also hint that the supreme state of the world after the revolution is a dreamlike, idealised world, not fully defined, but nevertheless felt and partially realised whenever people live their lives full of idealism. Trying to see behind Grindle’s spectacles, she instead sees only “a joy-void, empty as vacuum” (149), underlining how he has no goals or suggestions for positive change, but only strives to undo any threat to the status quo. He does not fight for anything, but fights against the fun of the children. When Bea Wolf manages to rip Grindle’s tie, he shrinks to a child himself, and becomes harmless. The symbolism of the tie as a representation of corporate conformity and adulthood emphasises how even Grindle, as intimidating and powerful as he is, is only a pawn in the larger forces trying to suppress the joy of the children. This becomes even more clear as Grindle flees to his mother, who is foretold to bring renewed darkness to the victorious children at the end of the story. However, the feats of Bea Wolf are handsomely rewarded by the just king Roger and become part of the mythology of the children, celebrating the day she overcame the oppressive neighbour who stifled their fun. In the end, Bea Wolf showcases the excitement of adventure that is the core of many stories, where heroes overcome great odds, to inspire a spirit of resilience against the monotony of every-day life. The children’s perspective on Beowulf demonstrates that the hero’s courage can be combined with the joy of children’s play to defy overwhelming odds, creating a part of an ideal world in the here and now, even when there is no outline for that ideal.

A similar appeal to joyful resistance is described in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. Despite the pain and harm that are inherent in the setting of the insane asylum, the revolution against the regime of the authoritarian nurse Ratched by Randle McMurphy is focused on humour, fun and rambunctiousness, which shows how their can be joy in revolution even if the rebel is ultimately destroyed. The story of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is told by Chief Bromden, one of the patients at the asylum who suffers from paranoid delusions and traumatic memories. Like most of the patients, he is docile and insecure, which is further exacerbated by the fear they feel because of the Big Nurse’s tyrannical treatment. Under the guise of care, she humiliates the patients to remain in control of the institution, enlisting the help of the aides and manipulating the doctors to enforce her will. Through the process of group meetings, she maintains a facade of political representation, but her overbearing directions to staff and patients leave her in total control of the ward. Harding, one of the patients, even says: “All of us here are rabbits (…). We need a good, strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place.” (Original italics, 64). The metaphors of rabbits and wolfs illustrate the hierarchy and helplessness that are fostered in the asylum under the Nurse’s rule, but also show that Harding is aware of the dangers this poses. After all, all rabbits can be torn to pieces by the predator, and they have no hope of defending themselves. However, despite the obvious unhappiness in the ward, nurse Ratched has convinced everyone there that the problem is with themselves, and that all of their discomfort is the right path to improvement. Resisting her is not only futile, but shameful self-sabotage.

Like in Bea Wolf, the situation changes with the appearance of the hero. In this case, Randle McMurphy arrives at the asylum, where he hopes to avoid the more uncomfortable punishment of prison by being treated as a “psychopath” (13), which he is told is “a guy that fights too much and fucks too much” (13-14). Even before the other patients see him, they hear his voice, loud and uncompromising, indicating that his political will will not be dominated. Immediately, it becomes clear that his charisma is a threat to the routines of the asylum. However, his most powerful tool for disruption is symbolic of the joy of revolution: it is his loud and genuine laugh.

Nobody can tell exactly why he laughs; there’s nothing funny going on. But it’s not the way that Public Relations laughs, it’s free and loud and it comes out of his wide grinning mouth and spreads in rings bigger and bigger till it’s lapping against the walls all over the ward. Not like that fat Public Relations laugh. This sounds real. I realize all of a sudden it’s the first laugh I’ve heard in years. (12)

His laughing is a shock to establishment, but also to the oppressed “rabbits”, who are at first confused and later emboldened by it. His laughing is not just an act of expression, but part of a larger attitude of playfulness and self-assertiveness. “Even when he isn’t laughing, that laughing sound hovers around him, the way the sound hovers around a big bell just quit ringing – it’s in his eyes, in the way he smiles and swaggers, in the way he talks” (12). The laughing represents an attitude of resistance, a signal to the world, enforced by the simile of the bell, that something has arrived or something needs to change. In being apologetically himself, enjoying himself despite the setbacks, he upsets the meticulous and oppressive order built by the systems of the Big Nurse. Where she has worked to reduce everything particular into a part of a large machine, mirrored by the narrator’s delusions of a mechanical Combine that eats away at every piece of individualism in the United States, McMurphy is a unique and personal element, inviting the other patients to assert themselves and express their own voices. This is not an unconscious act. McMurphy instinctively despises despotism and uses the language of the rough environment he has grown up in to analyse power structure of the asylum. He calls nurse Ratched a “balls-cutter” (60), an example of a type of person who rules over people unfairly. He recognises this type of person from outside the asylum: “Seen ‘em all over the country and in the homes – people who try to make you weak so they can get you to toe the line, to follow their rules, to live like they want you to” (60). He calls it “going for the vitals” (60), the life force, which is why his life energy is such as threat to her control. He encourages the others to fight back and stand up for their desires, such as watching the baseball game on television despite the change it requires to the routine, and takes them on a fishing trip where they can experience the outside world through danger, fun and contact with women.

When McMurphy’s resistance becomes powerful enough to inspire change in others, Chief Bromden realises it is because he has remained himself despite the outside forces that push people to conform. Despite the never-ending resources of society directed to submit the rogue elements, McMurphy keeps true to his character and enjoys it as well as he can. Bromden says:

There was times that week when I’d hear that full-throttled laugh, watch him scratching his belly and stretching and yawning and leaning back to wink at whoever he was joking with, everything coming to him just as easy as drawing breath, and I’d quit worrying about the Big Nurse and the Combine behind her. I’d think he was strong enough being his own self that he would never back down the way she was hoping he would. (…) He’s what he is, that’s it. (…) He’s not gonna let them twist him and manufacture him. (161).

Nurse Ratched tries all her tricks and succeeds in subduing him for a while when she threatens his chances of being released. The threat to his future freedom makes him less belligerent and even makes him accept the nurse’s domineering for a while. However, the friendship he has built with the others patients makes him rebel for their sake when he realises that they cannot fight back without him. His last big ploy is to sneak into the medicine supply and throw a midnight drinking binge in defiance. When the Nurse threatens all of them with severe consequences, she singles out one of the patients, Billy Bibbit, and uses her ultimate weapon over him: to tell his mother of his behaviour. This sends Billy into such a frenzy that he kills himself, which nurse Ratched hounds over McMurphy until he attacks her a final act of revolution before he is taken for a lobotomy that turns him into a “Vegetable”, comatose. Bromden realises McMurphy “made me big again” (287), but also sees how he pushed himself beyond what he could for the sake of his friends on the ward (319). While the Nurse uses his catatonic body as a warning to the others, Bromden considers what McMurphy would have done: “he wouldn’t have left something like that to sit there in the day room with his name tacked on it for twenty or thirty years so the Big Nurse could use it as an example of what can happen if you buck the system” (322). Determined, he kills his friend with a pillow before using his renewed strength to break out of the ward and start a new, free life. Although Bromden does not know what to do, he has learned he cannot abide by the dehumanisation that has limited him so far. His life after the asylum will be an alternative to the subjugation he has felt his whole life, even if he does not know what that life will look like, yet. Bromden’s defiance ensures that despite McMurphy’s demise, he still inspires change. His revolution had no defined goal that he tried to achieve, but was born from his recognition of the unethical treatment of himself and others around him. There is tragedy is McMurphy’s fate, but the resilience and attitude with which he defied the regime of the Big Nurse lives on in the other patients. The story of McMurphy’s sacrifice focuses on Bromden’s escape, and the ring of his laughing will echo throughout many of the lives of the patients, showing how not even death can still the ring of McMurphy’s revolution.

In contrast to the bold resolution of Bea Wolf and McMurphy, Bartleby, the hero of Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener: a Story of Wall-street, does not revolt through action, but through inaction. Nevertheless, his determination and self-sacrifice mirror both heroes, and though his revolution appears to have no goal except resistance, he presents an alternative to the status quo by means of his quiet, polite refusal to cooperate. When he first enters the scrivener’s office run by the narrator, he is described as “pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn” (9) – hardly the description of a figure who is bound to overthrow the social order. However, after initially working well, Bartleby refuses to assist in an errand with the singular phase “I would prefer not to” (10). The narrator is startled into acceptance by the hurry of his business and the politeness and oddness of the phrase, and when Bartleby refuses more and more work later on, it becomes clear from that “his decision was irreversible” (12), despite his gentle and meek attitude. Although the Narrator says he would have fired Bartleby if there had been any “uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner” (10), his manner instead dissipates all his tools of reasserting the hiearchy. In fact, it undermines his confidence in his own perspective: “when a man is browbeaten in some unprecedented and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in his own plainest faith. He begins, as it were, vaguely to surmise that, wonderful as it may be, all the justice and all the reason is on the other side” (12). Though the only violence or force that Bartlebly has employed is to be “violently unreasonable”, it is enough for the narrator to make him question his usual responses to insubordination. When Bartleby refuses to work at all, and even turns out to live in the office, the narrator resorts to the absurdity of moving his offices instead of setting Bartleby out of door (27-28). Here, the ungraspable power of Bartleby’s revolution becomes apparent, and in the absurdity of the situation, humour is revealed. When Bartleby is promptly sent to prison by the next tenant, the narrator cannot help but be entangled in Bartleby’s fate, and tries to make his imprisonment as comfortable as possible by paying a “grub-man” (32) to see him well-fed. However, Bartleby refuses to eat, dying soon after, leaving the narrator disturbed and guilty, feeling endless pity for Bartleby (34). Thus, without doing anything, Bartleby has upset the status quo at the heart of Wall Street.

In essence a tragic tale, the enigmatic nature of Bartleby allows for a wild range of readings, leading from those of civil disobedience, as set out by Melville’s contemporary Henry David Thoreau, to existentialist dread or an absurd joke. In any case, despite any communicated goal being achieved, Bartleby succeeds in withstanding the expectations of Wall Street, symbolising the churning productivity of the 19^th-century United States, which closely resemble the Combine as imagined by Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Bartleby has no strength, charisma or community to provide him with the power to overthrow the system he finds himself in, but the quiet yet undeniable statement that he “would prefer not to” draws an ultimatum that causes a revolution in the people around him. The cast of side characters takes over the use of the word “prefer” (20-21), even though one of them, Turkey, considers it a “queer word. I never use it myself” (21). The hierarchy of the office is overthrown, and though the narrator remains in control of the others, nothing he can imagine sways Bartleby. His ultimate summation, “you must” (22, original italics) yields no result, showing the absurdity of language acts and power structures in the face of blatant refusal to accept them. On the whole, Bartleby the Scrivener shows another face of the revolutionary hero by deconstructing the tools of the ruling class and countering them with gentle self-assertion. Bartlebly’s death, like McMurphy’s sacrifice, is not to be interpreted as losing the battle for self-determination. In fact, both resist past the point of death, showing that their revolution remains after their lives end.

Imagining a world after the revolution, Ursula K. Le Guin imagines two parallel worlds in The Dispossessed. When a revolutionary movement on Urras becomes a serious threat to the establishment, they offer the barren twin planet of Anarres, where the revolutionaries build an anarchist-communist community that, centuries later, brings forth the hero of the book, Dr. Shevek. Dr. Shevek is an outsider in both societies, but continues to strive for the best of both through he conviction that following his ideals is ultimately for the common good of both worlds. Although his urge to criticise both governments brings him into conflict, he feels he cannot do otherwise. The society of Anarres is based on the teaching of Odo, an activist from Urras that sparked the revolutionary movement. One of the central works of Odo, Analogy, works around the central metaphor of cells in a larger body. In it, society is compared to an organism, where individuals are its cells. This means that for society to flourish, individuals must be willing to work together for the well-being of the greater whole, which sometimes includes sacrifice. When discussing the state of their twin planet Urras, Shevek’s friends discuss how their society is afraid of “infection” by Urras’s corruption (43). Bedap, one of the friends, comments that “in a sick organism, even a healthy cell is doomed” (43), describing that there can be no ethical living in a society with unethical values or practices. This shows how the revolutionary and analogical thinking of Odo informs the perspective of the inhabitants of Anarres. Shevek strives to be a healthy cell, true to himself, in a healthy organism, which is how he and his friends perceive the world they work in.

However, the cell has another meaning in The Dispossessed, representing the restraints of imprisonment. This double meaning is woven throughout Shevek’s growing up, first started when his class is taught about the phenomenon of prisons, which do not exist on Anarres. In their youthful curiosity, Shevek and his classmates find a place that can be locked and imprison a volunteer to investigate this concept that is so foreign to them. After a night of imprisonment, during which the boy suffered from diarrhea, they all become sick with the idea of prisons and never speak of their experiment again (40). When one of them brings it up with others, they do not understand what he is talking about. Later, when Shevek travels to Urras, the concept of imprisonment becomes relevant again, as he is not allowed to travel from the university grounds except under supervision. He learns of modern revolutionaries and soldiers being imprisoned in the country he is staying in and reflects back on the boundaries that control people, both on Anarres and Urras. When he returns to Anarres, his thinking has changed. He now perceives the restrictiveness of collectivism on Anarres more consciously and can give words to the feelings of unease he has experienced his whole life. The double meaning of the cell is explored by Shevek explicitly when he reflects on his duties to society and his desires as an individual:

He recognized that need, in Odonian terms, as his cellular function, the analogic term for the individual’s individuality, the work he can do best, therefore his best contribution to his society. A healthy society would let him exercise that optimum function freely, in the coordination of all such functions finding its adaptability and strength. That was a central idea of Odo’s Analogy. That the Odonian society on Anarres had fallen short of the ideal did not, in his eyes, lessen his responsibility to it; just the contrary. With the myth of the State out of the way, the real mutuality and reciprocity of society and individual became clear. Sacrifice might be demanded of the individual, but never compromise: for though only the society could give security and stability, only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice – the power of change, the essential function of life. The Odonian society was conceived as a permanent revolution, and revolution begins in the thinking mind. (333)

Shevek realises through the analogy of the cell that his duties and desires are not opposites, but align in bringing the best to his community. As long as his desires do not hurt or exploit the world around him, following his intuitions and thoughts are the best means to contribute. A society that forbids this, even out of the idealism of Odoniasm, has changed the concept of the cell as a metaphor for healthy individuals into the cells of a prison, with walls that cannot be broken, another central metaphor of The Dispossessed. This distinction Shevek makes between sacrifice and compromise is the core of the fates of McMurphy and Bartleby. Both sacrifice their lives in pursuing their uncompromising spirit of revolution, which shows why they succeed despite their demise.

Ursula K. Le Guin is most explicit in her commentary on revolution, since The Dispossessed centers around the theme of individual responsibility to the common good. Where Bea Wolf, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and Bartleby the Scrivener all represent larger struggles against machinal oppression through individual revolution, The Dispossessed is explicitly about the social structure after the revolution. Its central lessons are that revolution is never finished and that every individual bears the responsibility of resisting structures that imprison people. When Shevek joins his old friend Dulap in a meeting of the Syndicate of Initiative in order to try and reopen Anarres to people from Unarres, the prejudice and habits of the Annaresti resist any change that might threaten the status quo (350-359). When the discussion derails into accusations towards Urrasiti “propertarians” and Shevek personally (358), he formulates his goal with the reopening of the settlement, which is to oppose the restrictions on Anarres:

“You see”, he said, “what we’re after is to remind ourselves that we didn’t come to Anarres for safety, but for freedom. If we must all agree, all work together, we’re no better than a machine. If an individual can’t work in solidarity with his fellows, it’s his duty to work alone. His duty and his right. We have been denying people that right. We ve been saying, more and more often, you must work with the others, you must accept the rule of the majority. But any rule is tyranny. The duty of the individual is to accept no rule, to be the initiator of his own acts, to be responsible. Only if he does so will the society live, and change, and adapt, and survive. We are not subjects of a State founded upon law, but members of a society founded upon revolution. Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution. ‘The Revolution is in the individual spirit, or it is nowhere. It is for all, or it is nothing. If it is seen as having any end, it will never truly begin.’” (359)

The language of evolution and survival mirrors Odo’s Analogy, but his insights have moved against the dogmatic Anarresti who force each other to conform to the rule of the majority. Revolution is not static, but ongoing, and it is every individual’s duty to resist opression, even if it is oppression in the name of shared betterment. This spirit of revolution, the individual’s dedication to justice, can be found in all the heroes of resistance: Bea Wolf, McMurphy and Bartlebly. They all resist as individuals, upsetting a status quo that limits, because it works as a “machine”, or as the Combine described by Bromden. Agents of machination and conformity can be explicitly evil, such as Grindl, or well-meaning, such as the narrator in Bartleby, but no individual should allow the rigidity of tyranny. Every individual is responsible for resisting oppression. Shevek, Bea Wolf, McMurphy and Bartleby all show paths that are true to their own spirit and successfully overthrow and undermine coercive and exploitative power structures, even if they do not always know how to define the ideals they are striving for. This shows that it is not necessary to have settled on a definitive solution to social problems before action can be initiated. In fact, it shows the opposite. Revolution against oppression is the duty of every individual, who can resist in the manner most suitable them. It is through the struggles of individuals that new alternatives become accessible to larger groups, who must then embody these alternatives in their own revolutions, sharing change until oppression has been eliminated.

As revolution is never finished, and the fight against oppressive power structures is perpetual, it is essential to find joy and freedom in revolution. In order to resist the constant threat to people’s freedoms, literature can picture heroes and revolutions that show the successes and sacrifices necessary to achieve the best possible world and thus inspire a spirit of joyful revolution in its readers, even when the end goals of revolution are difficult to imagine. Zach Wienersmith and Boulet show the determined rebellion of legendary children in their fight against Grindle, the agent of conformity and oppression, by flaunting their adventures and indomitable playfulness. They do not aim for a particular goal, but they recognise the restriction of their freedom and happiness, and break the hold Grindle has over them by playing, feasting and expressing their courage. Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest shows that rebellion can inspire change in even the most timid and downtrodden people when McMurphy’s laughter and outrageous behaviour free Chief Bromden from the insecurities and inhibitions that have been imposed on him by a dismissive and cynical society, represented through him overcoming the Combine and escaping from the ward of Nurse Ratched. While Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener seems a melancholic tale of a broken individual, Bartleby nevertheless embodies the same spirit of resistance when he asserts his right not to do what he is asked. His end is without compromise, allowing him to show the absurdity of the society around him. Finally, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed shows that even after the revolution has led to “an ambiguous utopia”, every individual is still responsible for being true to the ideals of freedom for everyone while contributing to the community. Together, these works show that what is required of everyone is not to know where their revolutions lead, but to persist, joyfully if possible, in refusing to accept a world that is not yet a healthy organism for every cell to live in.

Works Cited List

Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Viking, 1962. Berkley, 2016.

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Dispossessed. Harper Collins, 1974. Harper Voyager, 2011.

Melville, Herman. “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street.” The Piazza Tales, 1856. Melville’s Short Novels. Norton Critical Edition, 2002.

Weinersmith, Zach and Boulet. Bea Wolf. First Second, 2023.

Other Sources

Beckett, Samuel. Endgame. 1957.

Woolf, Virginia. “A Room of One’s Own.” 1928. A Room of One’s Own and the Voyage Out. Wordsworth Classics, 2012.

WONDROUS CALS Book Club 1, 30-12-2023

The feeling of loneliness is not most prominent when one is alone, but when proximity or intimacy is expected, yet absent. Loneliness is therefore most strongly felt in social contexts, where distance is not physical, but emotional. Feeling isolated or unaccepted can stem from different sources and manifest across a variety of mediums, such as language, experience, background and identity. The pain of loneliness within the family sphere, where a natural and loving connection is the norm, is a common theme across literary works. In their attempt to capture the universal patterns in loneliness within the family, stories such as Margaret Atwood’s “Widows”, Banana Yoshimoto’s “Kitchen”and Kurt Vonnegut’s Lonesome No More examine both the individual choices and the inescapable forces that create people’s isolation in one of the most intimate social units. Despite people’s unique existential experience, which separates even the most close-knit families, the uncrossable divide between individuals need not be a inevitable source of loneliness if families choose to recognise the limitations of sharing experiences, while still showing acts of care and intimacy.

In Margaret Atwood’s “Widows”, the reader is let into the hidden perspective of a widow, whose decision to not send her honest letter shows her hopelessness in communicating across the divide of experience. Nell, the writer of the letter, describes how she lives in isolation after losing her husband, Tig. She is concerned with cleaning up and spending time with other widows, all “a little obsessive” over the death scenes of their life partners (214). Intimate and candid, the letter is touching and generates sympathy and understanding for Nell, but she says: “ I don’t intend to share any of this with you. I don’t want you calling my younger friends and relatives in a state of concern and telling them something must be done about me.” (213-4) Assuming, perhaps rightfully so, that she will be misunderstood when opening up, she decides not only that it would be unwise to share her true state of being, but also that Stevie and others would never be able to understand. She decides unilaterally that Stevie’s attempts connect are “well-meaning”, from a “kind heart”, but ultimately pointless and insincere: “You asked me how I was doing, another social pleasantry. No one wants an honest answer to that one.” (213) This demonstrates how her isolation, caused by her unique experience of widowhood, is reinforced by her conviction that others would not understand her and would be better of not knowing her true feelings.

Even among her fellow widows, or “those who have lost their life partners” (214), Nell feels she cannot safely express herself, indicated by her refusal to tell anyone that she feels Tig is still present in an inexplicable way. After her husband’s death, she is aware of a “prescribed grieving process” that she is expected complete, to “come out the other end, all cheery and wearing bright colours and loaded for bear” (213). The expectation of her environment is that after a due mourning period, she will move on and stop to “cast a pall” (215). However, she is convinced she will not come out of mourning, which she tells the readers, but not Stevie:

No. Because it’s not a tunnel. There isn’t any other end. Time has ceased to be linear, with life events and memories in a chronological row, like beads on a string. It’s the strangest feeling, or experience, or rearrangement. I’m not sure I can explain it to you. And it would alarm you unduly if I were to say to you, ‘Tig isn’t exactly gone.’ (213)

Two essential divides between Nell and Stevie become apparent here: Nell’s perspective on the world, her experience, which she cannot communicate, and the idea that Stevie would be alarmed, which leads Nell to conclude that she should not even attempt to communicate. Together, they isolate her by reinforcing each other. Stevie cannot learn to respond effectively to something they don’t understand and might never understand, because Nell has already decided to the attempt will be futile.

This double isolation is not exclusive to Nell and Stevie, but is part of Nell’s unique situation, isolating her even from other widows. This leads her to seal the uncrossable divide of experience with her decision to not attempt any crossing. She states that the other widows would not appreciate her saying her honest thoughts out loud. However, she phrases this not as a choice, but as an impossibility: “I could not have said, ‘Don’t be silly. Tig is still here.’ (…) So we keep such notions to ourselves, we widows.” (216) It is a fact of widowhood that their experiences are kept silent and solitary. Even among people with similar experiences, it remains impossible to utter the feelings Nell experiences, generalised to all widows. They cannot connect across the difference in experience which separates them, even among themselves or when invited to by relatives.

Similarly, in Banana Yoshimoto’s “Kitchen”, the reader is shown the most intimate loneliness experienced by the main character, Mikage Sakurai, who is plagued by the feeling that every human being is ultimately alone. After the death of her last remaining family member, she feels an isolation that she links to an endless absence of light:

When my grandmother died the other day, I was taken by surprise. My family had steadily decreased one by one as the years went by, but when it suddenly dawned on me that I was all alone, everything before my eyes seemed false. The fact that time continued to pass in the usual way in this apartment where I grew up, even though now I was here all alone, amazed me. It was total science fiction. The blackness of the cosmos. (4)

This blackness and sense of being alone persists even when she is offered unexpected help by Yuichi Tanabe, a young man who knew Mikage’s grandmother from the florist he worked at. He invites her to come stay with him and his mother, and bemused by the self-assuredness with which he proposes this, she accepts. Although comforted by their well-lived kitchen, she still feels profoundly lonely. “Usually, the first time I go to a house, face to face with people I barely know, I feel an immense loneliness. I saw myself reflected in the glass of the large terrace window while black gloom spread of the rain-hounded night panorama. I was tied by blood to no creature in this world.” (10). However, despite Mikage hardly knowing Yuichi and his mother, Eriko, she feels welcome to stay there, and the change of atmosphere brings some relief. Staying the night on the sofa, she thinks: “Wrapped in blankets, I thought how funny it was that tonight, too, here I was sleeping next to the kitchen. I smiled to myself. But this time I wasn’t lonely.” (16) Although Yuichi and Eriko do not try to discuss Mikage’s sadness with her or claim to know what she’s going through, their presence and the quirky positivism of their lives helps to quell some of Mikage’s loneliness.

Over the next half year, Mikage is allowed to live with them, slowly recovering from her depression and becoming a part of their family. Their continued recognition of her pain and unyielding support is symbolized by the relationship with the kitchen. Mikage’s focus on the kitchen as a place of comfort becomes transformed as she starts to cook for the Tanabe family, a quintessential act of care that is the only payment they require for her staying there. Where before, the kitchen was the only place Mikage would not feel completely alone, it now channels the acts of reciprocity that can cross her sadness, because these acts are unspoken and a natural part of daily life. The meals she prepares are treasured by the whole family, and cross Yuichi’s emotional aloofness and the distance to Eriko’s dazzling night life. It allows Mikage to feel connected to these people she barely knew, to the point that she experiences the intimate moments of their life in the apartment. For example, one morning she sees Eriko water the plants, and listens to her talk about her past life, when, before the transition into becoming a woman, her wife died of cancer. There is a mutual acknowledgement that these experiences are impossible to convey fully, yet:

Her hair rustled, brushing her shoulders. There are many days when all the awful things that happen make you sick at heart, when the path before you is so steep you can’t bear to look. Not even love can rescue a person from that. Still, enveloped in the twilight coming from the west, there she was, watering the plants with her slender, graceful hands, in the midst of a light so sweet it seemed to form a rainbow in the transparent water she poured. (41-2)

Despite the recognition that Eriko’s former life and the suffering it brought are inexpressable, both Mikage and Eriko find happiness in the fact that the other person is present. The respectful understanding that the other person’s pain is their own does not prevent connection. In fact, it allows Mikage to feel part of a family, each with their own suffering and unspeakable experiences.

In part 2, “Full Moon”, Eriko’s death creates a divide of sadness between Yuichi and Mikage that threatens to disconnect them. However, despite the knowledge that the feeling of isolation might never be understood, acts of kindness and closeness still manage to keep them together. Mikage has moved out of the Tanabe apartment and has become a chef’s assistant when she belatedly learns that Eriko has been killed by a confused admirer. Yuichi, at first unable to inform Mikage because of emotional distress, finally calls her. Mikage’s first response is to come over, stay the night, and make dinner for him the next day. Again, proximity and an effort to care are the core of the response, even though Mikage is aware that the loneliness they both feel is impossible to share. She dreams:

Yuichi and I are climbing a narrow ladder in the jet-black gloom. Together we peer into the cauldron of hell. We stare into the the bubbling red sea of fire, and the air hitting our faces is so hot it makes us reel. Even though we’re standing side by side, even though we’re closer to each other than to anyone else in the world, even though we’re friends forever, we don’t join hands. No matter how forlorn we are, we each insist on standing on or own two feet. (66)

Their actions are limited by the events of their lives and the forces both inside and outside of them. On the outside, societal expectations and jealousy are voiced by a classmate of Yuichi, who urges Mikage to stay away from Yuichi (72-74). There have been rumours and complaints about her living in his apartment before, and they cannot become romantically involved because of the forces inside them: the grief and pain they both experience in their individual ways. They are unable to connect fully, kept apart by their unique suffering, even if it overlaps. Later, when Yuichi has fallen asleep after the extravagant dinner, Mikage breaks into tears: “Of course it wasn’t over having to wash all those dishes; I was crying for having been left behind in the night, paralysed with loneliness.” (67) The loneliness is not resolved by their mutual attempt at reconnection. Their individual feelings of grief prevent them from finding solace in each other.

However, Mikage overcomes the forces and emotions that keep Yuichi and her apart through a symbolic act of care, literally crossing a dark and unfamiliar distance to deliver a hearty meal to Yuichi, who has isolated himself. After their shared dinner, Mikage is asked to join her employer on a culinary journey to Izu. She agrees to go, overwhelmed by the grief she feels herself and the pain she feels from Yuichi. Hoping to put distance between pain and themselves, both Mikage and Yuichi travel away from Tokyo and find themselves in lonely inns, separated from everyone else. Having eaten little, Mikage leaves the inn late at night, and orders a katsudon meal. Waiting for her meal, she decides to call Yuichi, but realises “I had felt as if Yuichi were in some other world, at the other end of a telephone line. And that other world was darker than the place where I was. It was like the bottom of the sea.” (89) The distance between them seems endless, but still, Yuichi picks up, and Mikage says she “closed her eyes, just listening to that voice I missed so much. It was like lonely waves against the shore.” (90) These three images all emphasise the distance between them, revealing how even though they are as close as family, as close as lovers, their individual experiences separate them as the bottom of the sea and the shore.

After they hang up, Mikage eats the katsudon which is “outrageously good” (92). Then, she feels a single opportunity to cross the divide:

At that moment I had a thrillingly sharp intuition. I knew it as if I held it in my hands: In the gloom of death that surrounded the two of us, we were just at the point of approaching and negotiating a gentle curve. If we bypassed it, we would split off in different directions. In that case we would forever remain just friends. I knew it. I knew it with absolute certainty. (91)

She finds herself at a crossroads, where she could decide to act or to surrender to the hopelessness she feels: “Now I felt really alone, at the bottom of a deep loneliness that no one could touch. People aren’t overcome by situations or outside forces; defeat invades from within, I thought.” (92)

Motivated by this realisation, she orders an extra serving of the katsudon and hails a taxi to drive her through the icy night, to the inn Yuichi is staying. Since the inn is closed at night, Mikage climbs the back wall in order to reach Yuichi’s balcony. When he lets her in, she offers him the food, but it does not initially work to cross the divide. “Suddenly all the time we’d spent together, even the fact that we’d lived in the same place, seemed like a far-off dream. Yuichi was not in this world now. His cold eyes frightened me.” (98-9) Despite their physical proximity, they have not come closer across the gap of loneliness. It’s only after Yuichi’s sees the cut Mikage suffered while climbing to his balcony, and he finally starts to eat the katsudon, that they become closer. The efforts Mikage has made remind both of them of “more family memories” (100), which finally dissolves the barrier between them. Mikage thinks back to the details of living together and remembers:

When was it that Yuichi said to me, “Why is it that everything I eat when I’m with you is so delicious?”

I laughed. “Could it be that that you’re satisfying hunger and lust at the same time?”

“No way, no way, no way!” he said, laughing. “It must be because we’re family.” (100-1)

Notably, the concept of family becomes defined not through the absence of loneliness, but through the shared living through loneliness, recognising that each of the two has felt their own unique pain, and still still continuing to care for each other. Crossing the distance between the two inns represents the effort of trying to imagine the other person’s experience, even though Mikage is aware she can never know exactly what Yuichi is feeling. It’s not through the understanding of the experience, but the understanding of the distance that she shows her care for Yuichi. In response, Yuichi, not because he feels understood, but because understands the distance Mikage crossed for him, has a hope for returning to a shared life. After Mikage has returned to her own inn, and later finishes her work journey, the story ends with Yuichi promising to pick up Mikage from the station, another act of kindness and care that shows an effort to cross physical distance to represent an effort to communicate across the uncrossable divide between two people.

In both “Widows” and “Kitchen”, the untranslatable experiences of the main characters emphasise the forces that separate people, which are outside of human control. No matter the effort, Nell could not share her experiences with Stevie, nor could Mikage and Yuichi make each other know how they feel. The choices the characters make follow the acceptance that they are fundamentally alone, unable to cross the river, but where Nell has decided that others aren’t interested in her story and that any attempt at communication is therefore pointless, Mikage manages to see the worth in the attempt. The imagery of an uncrossable river and the depth of the sea both emphasise the distance between characters, even if they are part of a family. Though the river cannot be crossed, acts of care and kindness can come across, and through a recognition of the unknowable emotions in others, awareness of people’s situation can bring comfort and proximity. It requires an open mind, mutual effort and emotional proximity to communicate across the divide. This is what family is, in essence: staying together despite the divide. This explains why the combination of loneliness and comfort is often felt among blood relatives, where the divide might be big due to wide difference in personality, history and experience, and yet a connection always persists. Loneliness that rises from feeling the divide is common. Loneliness felt at the idea that the divide is uncrossable is common, too. Yet the feeling that comes from the persistent attempts at communication, the willingness to stay together and keep in contact even when the experiences can never be translated, is a sense of family.

In Lonesome No More, Kurt Vonnegut describes a bleak future where the narrator, Wilbur, runs to become the president of a splinted United States of America through one essential campaign promise: to eradicate loneliness by providing everyone with a family. In typically absurdist Vonnegut fashion, this is achieved by a “simple and workable anti-loneliness plan” (112): giving everyone a new middle name of a “noun, the name of a flower or fruit or nut or vegetable or legume, or a bird or a reptile or a fish, or a mollusk, or a gem or a mineral or a chemical element – connected by a hyphen to a number between one and twenty” (114). Everyone with the same name is of the same family and everyone of that group with the same number is a sibling. This way, every inhabitant of the United States would have “ten thousand brothers and sisters” and “one hundred and ninety thousands cousins (113). Although there is a plethora of disasters to overcome, with fluctuating gravity, the Green Death and civil war, the extended families create a shift in the way people see themselves and others. For example, when one family vehemently against war, Wilbur has a sudden insight. “I realized that nations could never acknowledge their own wars as tragedies, but that families not only could but had to.” (149). The proximity that is enclosed in the idea of family does not solve all problems, nor does it make every person understood, but it succeeds in awakening people’s best intentions towards large groups of people. Wilbur, who is half of a twin that becomes a telepathic genius when they are touching, is another symbol of how proximity and intimacy are able to transcend the divides between individuals, even if after their communion they do not remember their shared experiences. Through these extreme examples, Lonesome No More also reinforces the idea that the essence of family is the continued effort to care for another person across the many barriers between individuals.

In conclusion, the feelings of loneliness that occur within families are the result of a variety of forces and choices. Through different life experiences and different personalities, people’s inner lives are fundamentally unknowable and untranslatable, even if they are related or live in a shared space. The attempt to communicate across this uncrossable divide seems futile, as is concluded by Nell in “Widows”. She expects others to shun her for having the idea that her late husband is still present in some way and therefore censors her sincere expression of loneliness by not sending her original letter. She is unable to communicate and therefore chooses not to try. In contrast, “Kitchen” shows how despite the emotions and grief of losing family members being overwhelming and ineffable, the continued decision to care for each other and attempt to share proximity can prove enough to dispel some of the loneliness that can occur. Though the metaphorical river between people is uncrossable, even among family members, the acceptance of this divide should not discourage the attempt at mutual communication, but should inspire a kind of exchange that is open to the wisdom that one cannot know exactly what the other is experiencing. If this acceptance is combined with continued care and proximity, the loneliness within families can be assuaged across the uncrossable.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. “Widows”. Old Babes in the Wood. 2023. Doubleday, New York.

Yoshimoto, Banana. “Kitchen”. 1988. Translation: Megan Backus. 1994, Faber and Faber.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Lonesome No More. 1976. Vintage, 2008.