'Fire Burns and Does Its Duty" Jules Image Study

"Fire burns and does its duty" - Vinoba Bhave

The irony of Jules' attraction with this quote, is that Jules often uses it in reference with violence, and the man who said it originally was an advocate or nonviolence. To me, Jules frequent references and scenes including fire mean the creation of something new. Fire burns away the old, and in comes the new to take its place. It does its duty...

"The fire began to spread in several directions now, still skirting him as if aware of his power, but at the edge of his vision it was leaping and taking on an energy the match's thin flame never hinted at"

We get our first sense of unpredictability in Jules when he sets one of the barns on his family's farm on fire. At this point, Jules is about 10 or so years old. He is trying to prove to his little sister, Maureen Wendall, that he can control fire, and after pretending to do so he accidentally set the barn on fire. The weird part of this though, is that directly after sensing that something had gone wrong, he stays put and watches the fire come to life. This lack of self-preservation is a big quality of his...

"So this was what those photographs of burning planes were about..."

When Jules sees a crashed plane, it changes him. He became more aware of the world he was living in, more aware of the fact that he COULD die at any moment in time. He could see a dead person with his head chopped off, and knew that the fumes from the plane could poison him. After seeing him by himself in a barn, talking to himself, Loretta ponders that "He might have been someone else's child, a stranger's child".

"He thought suddenly of the flash of electricity that would kill him: he'd seen preparations for many electrocutions in the movies and comic books... the electric chair, with its clumsy, homely similarity to ordinary chairs, fascinated him"

Jules was a bit like this. You could think he was normal, would see him walk and talk like a regular human being, but you could never know what was going on his mind. He killed a man once, just because he could. He was lethal, different and had a purpose. He had a weird obsession with fire and death, it "fascinated" him, made him think long, rambling paragraphs about it...

"He was only himself, free. But it was possible that he had a devil in him; a devil was to his imagination a kind of persistent failing, a dragging over to one side, as when a car's tire's begin to go on one side and drag everything over that way, relentlessly. If he had a devil, the devil's name was Jules also."

Jules has a weird way of imagining things. The way his brain works is abnormally different than any other human being. He wonders about things, and questions their reality. Jule's characterization of the devil within him is different. It wasn't completely negative, more a different take on what the devil, and thereby evil, really mean. This wonderment is seen throughout and is a prime personality trait within him.

Disclaimer: photos belong to www.travelpod.com/.../1170666120/tpod.html, http://www.thejakartapost.com/files/images/1hercules2.jpg, http://www.gangsorus.com/images/electric%20chair.png, and http://www.redicecreations.com/specialreports/2006/01jan/devil.jpg respectively

This is the Image Study meant to be graded...

Characters of the "Anonymous, Backward, Exasperating" Variety

"For certainly her people were anonymous, backward, exasperating"
What that quote claims is true, the characters of them are of a different sort. They are wierd, they are quirky, they are mad, they are perky. They are all completely different from one another, yet they all have one thing in common: family. And that's what this is, isn't it? A story about one, big, happy family. They are all somehow interconected and the novel begins with...

Loretta Wendall is the first of four narrators. She was a "half-sullen, half-content dream" and an emotional rollercoaster. She is the mother to Jules, Maureen, and Betty Wendall, as well as Randolph Furlong. She begins our story with a murder, one that happened right next to her while she lay asleep. The man murdered is Bernie Malin, her first love and first time. Right after they made love for the first time, he was killed the next morning in her bed, by her brother, Brock Botsford. Who then fled the city and wouldn't be seen again until "Come, My Soul That Hath So Long Anguished", where he re-enters her life as an uncle to her children and caretaker to Maureen Wendall, another narrator and Loretta's daughter. Maureen was beaten nearly to death by her step-father, Pat Furlong, who was a jealous, possesive drunk who beat her when he found out that she became a prostitute, hiring herself out to random men in cars. Jules Wendall, Maureen's eldest brother and the other main narrator, also went through a similiar experience. He was shot by his one true love, Nadine. Nadine was the neice to his now- deceased boss, Bernard Geffen, who was a whirlwind of activity and always on the move. He was found stabbed to death unfortunately...

Betty Wendall is best characterized as so, "Jules and Maureen tended to ignore her. She had no dignity: she did not count". Little is heard of her, besides her wild-child ways and her aimless wandering of streets. The same can be said of Randolph Furlong too, the youngest of the children. He is so utterly forgettable and the only thing different about him is the fact that Pat was his father, as opposed to Howard Wendall, who was a former cop and the one who basically saved Loretta from ruin after the murder. She marries in hopes of securing her future and being in a steady environment, which is pretty much the opposite of what she recieves. Instead, she gets Mama Wendall, Howard's mother and had an "evil condition, brought so low in a household of enemies". She moves the family out to the country before evntually makingher way back to Detroit to leech off Loretta and Howard. Then, Howard dies, and Loretta is stuck to take care of Mama Wendall and the kids all by herself...

Maureen Wendall married Jim Randolph, her former college professor and a formerly married man with three children. He is the last of the narrators, although his part was very minor. It is because of him that Maureen turns her back on her family. It is unsaid what happens to them, if they reunite or not, but the book ends off with a little tete-a-tete between Maureen and Jules about the meaning of family. Jules says that he still plans to marry Nadine, describing her as "that woman, the one who tried to kill me", effectively revealing the extremes to which this family of ups-and-downs will go to for love...

"Because we are poor...

Shall we be vicious?" - The White Devil by John Webster

Going back to this quote, seen at the very beginning of the novel, I realize that it is oddly appropriate for this novel. them does attempt to answer the question, Oates herself saying it was to be an extended answer to that question. By doing a little research on The White Devil via Wikipedia, I found that it was a revenge play whose central theme was to explore "the differences between the reality of people and the way they depict themselves as good, 'white', or pure". So essentially, the term "White Devil" was supposed to be ironic and contradictory. The play itself is very similar to them in that both are based loosely off real events, but also through the themes they chase. That is it however with the similarities.

I believe the question is about more than that though. I feel that what it really means to ask is "Because we are poor, should we want for more?" Poor can mean any number of things, not just pertaining to money. It could be that you don't have the one you love most, should you be vicious and vindictive because of it? Oates answers that through the love story of Jules and Nadine, though it was more of a tragedy than anything else. Nadine, who loves Jules more than life itself, attempts to kill them both so that they could somehow die together . Because she felt that she was unloved by the one she wanted most, did she have the right to take it out on him? Its not something you can really answer, considering Nadine was crazy and Jules equally so for wanting her anyway. But that's love.

Then Loretta, was she wronged to have to have lived a life raising her kids, and herself, essentially alone? Then to have her kids leave her and then no longer want anything to do with her, is that what her life was supposed to be? Waking up next to a dead boy changed her life, and was she "vicious" because of it? no, if anything she was the best example of them all of how to roll with the punches life sent her way. She had four kids, two husbands, a father, and a brother, all of whom turned their back on her at one point in her life, yet she moved on with her life and was happier them then all because of it.

Really, the underlying moral to this American tale. Deal with what life gives you, because you can't do anything with the circumstances given to you. All you can do is try and change your life and the world around you. The race riots, moving, a new life in the country, they all have to do with change. And that truly is answer to the question "Because we are poor, shall we be vicious?". Because we are poor, all we can do is change.

Part III: Come, My Soul That Hath Long Languished...

The end of them, "Come, My Soul That Hath So Long Languished..." is a long development of the statement "Behind everything lay love, a hunger and a mystery." By this point in the novel, you have met all the characters that matter and all the ones who lead to something greater. It centers around the race riots of 1968, Jule's recovery from his tragedy with Nadine, and Maureen's pursuit of a married man, all these things underlined with some other meaning.

The race riots weren't just about racism, but also about change, evolution. Though it was very violent, sending the city of Detroit into anarchy and burning buildings, it was about making the world a better place for everybody. Equality in man, and all that. Chances of racism and white supremacy can be seen in all the characters, but Jules changes his ways by the end of the novel saying "it is only necessary to understand that fire burns and does its duty, perpetually, and the fires will never be put out". He talks about how this fight is one that will last a long while, which is evident in history today.

After Jules recovers from his incident with Nadine, he is a broken man. in his reflection he sees "a stranger, possibly an enemy". It shows that none of us can really know ourselves. One thing could disrupt an entire lifestyle, making one see things in a new light. Life "is the elaboration of justice out of man's control, it is in the hands of God". You can either accept things as they are, or become like Jules, letting things weigh down upon you until you become an empty shell, essentially dead.

Maureen pursues, and eventually marries, a married man with three kids. She took pride in the fact that SHE had the power to make him forget his family and love her. Its ironic, because in the process of acquiring this new husband of hers, she forgets her own family and begins to no longer

associate herself with them. The quote at the top of my blog says "But, honey, aren't you one of them yourself?". This is what Jules asks her at the end of the novel, after she refutes any claim with her former loved ones. It's true, that no matter how hard you try, you still have that link that ties you back to your family. You can't escape them, and you shouldn't have too.

them is more than just a novel following the lives of a fractured family from America, its a testimony to living life the way you want too. If you want to have the love of your life, them tells you that you can, but then shows you that there will bumps in the road. If you want to grow up and DO something with your life, them encourages and inspires you. It makes you want to rebel, and then gives you a worthy cause to rally behind. It is a trunk load of aphorisms, and worth its weight in history. them boldly states that "the scenery changes as fast as you can snap your fingers!" and then timidly asks "How can you live without getting free of yourself once in a while?"

Rhetorical Analysis: Jules, Nadine, and a little bit of foreshadowing...

Some background before I present my Analysis: Nadine and Jules are two characters in the novel with a bit more crazy in them then the other characters. They'd met after Jule's boss, who was her uncle, was randomly stabbed to death. Yet their first meeting was a bit more unconventional than that. After his boss died, Jules worked for a flower delivery company in Detroit, all the while obsessing over this mysterious girl he saw at his boss' brother's house. He decided one day to find her, and he did. At her parent's house that he broke into. After already being turned away. Twice. He professed his love for her, she professed her desire to leave her home, and they ran away together into the sunset. For about a month. Then, when he became ill one day in Middle-of-Nowhere, Texas, she left him, taking the car with her. They were both still in their teens. Then, after many years, Jule's found her again. She was married, beautiful, and, apparently, in love with him. You can believe that Jules loved her too. After the following passage, which I so beautifully analyzed, Nadine and Jules spend a weekend together in an apartment she rented "catching up". Then, when Jules attempts to leave, Nadine follows him out onto the street and then shoots them both, point blank. I found this to be romantic, in a Romeo-and-Juliet kind of way. Tragic, but poetic in the hands of Joyce Carol Oates. Though the image is shattered when you find that neither one of them die. That's how "To Whose Country Have I Come?" ends. Now without further ado...

"The apartment she (she is Nadine. Jule's already married lover) had rented was on the fifth floor of an old apartment building near Palmer Park. It was made of dark red brick, heavy and pompous, with small useless balconies of wrought iron. The balconies were symbolic, ceremonial. At the four corners of the building were grimy turrets, inexplicable. (The imagery provided by the description of the apartment building is dark and ominous. It doesn't exactly give you the impression that Jule's tryst with Nadine is going to go well. If anything, it signals some impeding doom... the number four, as in the four corners of the building, signifies something solid, something real. The inexplicable-ness of the the "grimy turrets" symbolizes the unknown, as does his lack of knowledge of architecture, seen in the next sentence.)To Jules they had a military look, but he knew nothing about architecture and could not have said what they were or what they had once been, in another century. They made him apprehensive. (Jule's apprehension shows that he must have some underlying feeling of unrest. This apprehension is seen throughout the rest of his time with Nadine, following this passage.) Only pigeons fluttered heavily about them, but he expected to see the nervous movement of weapons. His chest flinched at the thought of such death. Did he want to die shot down, or did he want to die in a hospital bed like his uncle? (This is a very important rhetorical question. It is a very obvious foreshadowing of Nadine shooting Jules at the end of 'To Whose Country Have I Come?'. He didn't have a choice as to how he would die. The irony is, not only did he not die after being shot point blank by his "one true love", he also experienced both being shot down and a long stay in a hospital bed during his recovery from BEING shot.) His imagination had been heated by the memory of movies, stark black-and-white deaths of men shot down; it was the price that had to be paid for being important. Jules was too important to himself, too much alone. (The irony here is that Jules is setting the scene. He is saying that those who are important pay the price by being shot, and then he goes on to state that he is too important to himself, too much alone. Later on in the novel he qualifies that statement by saying he "was too much alone without Nadine".) As a child he had sensed that in the movies a sudden noisy death would take place whenever a man was alone for two or three minutes; he unwisely left his companions, he whistled to himself as he opened a safe or changed his shirt, alone, and in a minute the camera would shift slyly to show a gun barrel... (This man that Jules is thinking about could signify Jules himself. Jules, unwisely, came to this apartment building by himself, telling no one where he was going, who he would be with, and how long he would be gone. He let's himself be alone with this lethal, crazy gal for too long, enough for us to get a glimpse of that gun barrel...)

This building impressed him. In the air, as if stirred by his presence, there was a sudden odor of dust; it was an odor he thought strange and elegant. (The dust symbolizes Jule's long standing relationship with Nadine. The dust is "stirred" by this new time in their relationship, after a long period of separation between the two. Oates description of the dust in the next sentence also shows what kind of relationship Jules and Nadine have. Almost every thought and emotion is clear to the other.) He had smelled dirt often enough but never this kind of clean, acrid, clear, invisible dust. He was accustomed to fast-moving, silent elevators, he was accustomed to escalators, to the functioning of efficient machines. The very slowness of this elevator charmed him. (The compare and contrast between the different types of elevators is used to enhance Jule's attitude towards girls besides Nadine. The fast-moving elevators is everybody else in the world and the slow ones are the novelties, the ones you don't see everyday. Nadine is not one of the "efficient machines", if you catch my drift. She DID try and kill bith herself and the man she loved."
pg. 397

Part II: To Whose Country Have I Come?

Part II of them begins after a horrible event in which a girl gets nearly beaten to death and after a period of separation, a boy comes home.

This boy, Jules, is a young man with whom only the present mattered. His thoughts on these things start to change as the story goes along because of different events in his life that begin to press upon him. He sees a dead man for the first time, gets, and then quickly loses, money, and falls in love for the first time. These events change him, as life is wont to do, and he fills his head with thoughts towards the future. How can I change the world for the better?

He speculates on the rich, "they're all crazy with it, in this town. They live out in Grosse Pointe or in Bloomfield and they want to keep something hidden somewhere else- they're willing to pay a lot for it". As it is, many people keep things hidden from the rest of the world, making secrets for themselves just so that they can hide them. They have thoughts contrary to the way of the world and keep those thoughts to themselves, always wanting to be like the others, conforming. Jules is different in his wanting to change the world. He lives life in anarchy, forgetting or opposing rules set by others.

Most of this part of the story is about making the most of what you have, or if not, changing what you have. Its about questioning what you have and why you were put in this place, in this situation, with these people. Its about growing up, which we all have to do, and changing. About discovering yourself and the world around you.

Author's Note

In the Author's Note preceding the novel them, Joyce Carol Oates introduces her story as "a work of history in fictional form". In fact, the story is based on a series of letters she received while she was a professor at the University of Detroit. She says that the stories "pressed upon mine eerily, so that I began to dream about them instead of about myself, dreaming and redreaming their lives".

Indeed, there is a point in the novel in which I began to feel her pain. Maybe it is when Loretta woke up to find her newest conquest shot in the bed beside her by her own brother, crying when she realizes that this is real-life and not a practical joke. Maybe it is when I was introduced to the character of Jules for the first time and realized that he is the life of this story. Or maybe it is toward the end of "Children of Silence", when Maureen, good, sweet, intelligent Maureen, begins to dream of money and prostitutes herself so that she can get it, consequently leading her to two years in a state of comatose after being nearly beaten to death by her step- father. Or maybe it is when I began to see all the connections between each of these characters. They live their lives apart from one another, yet always seem attached in some shape or form, whether it be in a dream or at a dingy kitchen table drinking coffee with a long-lost brother. But thoughts of their lives began to enter their way into my head, my mind not too far from the latest drama.

The underlying theme to the entire story is the way in which families connect with one another in poverty and unfortunate events. Set mainly in Detroit around the time of the "race riots", the story presses upon thoughts on racism, independence, money, life and the past, present and future. All the central characters seem to live in a state of mind where neither the past nor the future are a reality. They get past things, even traumatizing, horrible events, with a swiftness unlike any other. They live for the now, the present and what it can do for them. They have no eyes for the consequences of their actions only thinking about things happening that very second. It "is the only kind of fiction that is real" said Oates, and really, there is no other way to describe it.

Part I: Children of Silence

them is broken into three parts, each with its own central theme. "Children of Silence" is about a world in which the characters are surrounded by those who are silent, by those who are fixed in their lifestyles and are only looking for a way to stay the way they are. People who "were anonymous, backward, exasperating" in their silence.

The "Children" of the so-called silence were just learning to live, just now figuring out what was what in the world, greedy for attention and yearning in their curiousity. They moved along with the others, yet were different from them. Sometimes conforming to their ways, sometimes disguising themselves as one of them, but more often then not, they were loud in their difference, proud in their obscurity. They "saw them all with their frozen faces, her mother and father, her sister, her brother, her grandmother, her aunt... the faces of all the world- frozen hard into expressions of cunning and anger". In the view of the frozen faces around them, they "crept in silence among them and waited for the day when everything would be orderly and neat... beyond their ability to hurt". They adapted to the fixed, rigid feel of the lives around them, making themselves believe that if they too settled down into frozen lives, they would be happy. The children are unaware, at this time, of the consequences of living life in an enforced routine. They slowly adjust themselves to the way of the world, only to find that it is cruel, unfair, and most of all, all about money. They start to understand life's rules, and try to get from under its thumb. Loretta and her constsnt moving from place to place, Jules in his need to leave his family behind and make money, Maureen moving past what others expected of her and into her rebellious period as a prostitute, her obsession with money: the feel of it, the thought of it, hoarding it all away for future use.

They make new friends: Loretta's new husband, Jule's women, Maureen's "men". They do things diffrently from before, distance themselves from what they know, letting themselves forget the people who not only love them but rely on them as well. The children get past the silence of their pasts, loud in their independence. Louder and crazier in their antics, they become. Louder and louder still, if only to get beyond the frozen faces of those that surround them.

"- and the essence..." American Theme Post

" and the essence of it was that they had all come very close to the edge of something... and some of the older people had breathed this in and turned terrified and helpless for life, but they, the young, they with their new babies and their new husbands, were on their way up and never would the bottom fall out again. The government in Washington was like a net set up not ten feet below them, to save them." - page 45 of them by Joyce Carol Oates

A lot of the American population, even today, are unaware of global conflicts and discrepancies within the government. They only concern themselves with the things that happen with themselves and let others do the rest. They trust in their government to save them, should they ever need saving. Trust in the government to make their lives easier, yet also blaming them when things go bad. This is especially true of young America, the bright, promising and "independent" youth.

The older generations are aware of the hardships life brings, many "terrified and hopeless" in the life they live. They are constantly on edge, wary of the things that surround them, suspicious of the people unknown to them.

The young, in contrast, are happy and anxious for their freedom. They latch onto whatever promises them happiness, they forget what it was like for their parents, knowing that they will be different. Social climbers, constantly trying to move up in the world. Doing what they can to be better than the rest, more successful.

This sense of excitement and hopefulness for the future is a constant feeling in the young of the American population. They have yet to taste the real troubles of life, its unfairness and its cruelty, and they go at life with a flair for hope. They take themselves away from their families, away from their past and lead new lives.

"One warm evening in August..." Image Theme

"One warm evening in August 1937 a girl in love stood before a mirror. Her name was Loretta. It was her reflection that she loved, and out of this dreamy, pleasing love there arose a sense of excitement that was restless and blind - which way would it move, what would happen?..." - pg 3 of them by Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates begins them with the image of a girl looking at herself in a mirror. This girl is not in love with a man, not in love with a boy. She is in love with herself. She is in love with what the future could bring her, in love with what could happen to her on this day, Saturday. This image sets a tone for people who look toward the future for their happiness, not focused on the present and, in turn, sets a recurring theme for the rest of the novel.

At first it seems insignificant, this girl and her thoughts on her reflection. Her name is Loretta, Loretta Botsford, and she is no more special than any other girl. She takes pride in being like the other girls and is set in a routine that she has followed for years. Throughout the entirety of the novel, Loretta can be seen saying she will do something, but in the end, doing nothing at all. She is, like most people, full of hot air and talks just to talk.

The image of her getting ready for Saturday, pondering what will happen as the evening wears on, there is a sense of restlessness. As if there is a guarantee that SOMETHING will happen on this night. Loretta is neither the protagonist nor a sub character. She is one of the few characters who gets her story told from her point of view, one of the few characters with which the readers get to sympathise for despite her faults. Her ordinariness is what makes her key, as she is surrounded with the people whose views are extraordinarily different from her. She represents the everyday working class American of the 1930s and the 1940s: a gossip, a wife, and a mother. She is what the other characters get compared to throughout the story, as it is she who we are introduced to first. There isn't much depth to her, nothing original about her and because of this we feel sorry for her. For she is not very bright but not dumb either, not gorgeous but not ugly, and her emotions are up and down. She is a being of little, insignificant contradictions, a conformist to the ways of the world around her, never yearning to be different from any one person around her.


disclaimer: images belong to http://www.mythicimagination.org/newsletter_apr07_tronti.html and http://www.catherinegourley.com/bio__contact_info respectively