'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