Yonnondio, by Tillie Olsen, is a novel that gives voice to people who have been dehumanized and used to feed the insatiable appetite of the capitalist system. However, Olsen’s characters and their voices are not limited to the oppressed laborer of the depression era. Her characters embody and express the desires of every human heart. They share with the reader the need for safety, security, and a desire to leave something of ourselves behind. They also remind us of the frailties of human nature, the consequences of greed, the dominion of poverty, the cost of ignorance and hope deferred. One of Olsen's characters, Anna Holbrook, is a work of art, sculpted by Olsen, who represents the cries of the female heart as it is gripped by extreme hardship.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Idea #1
After “the mandatory bed rest after the clinic visit,” Anna awakens to the realities that confront her and her desire to help her children is resurrected. Kneeling down on the floor alongside to reassure her [Mazie]; smiling a tormented smile. “I’ve got to..” her throat constricting, “do something.” “I dont know,” twisting and twisting the rompers, “I…don’t …know.” Anna’s desire to help her children is resurrected. Unfortunately, Anna has exhausted her resources, leaving only frustrated desire and desperation. Sarah McLachlan’s song, Mary, captures the essence of desperation born of the frustrated desires of a diminishing woman. Just as Mary “hangs her head” and views her unrecognizable reflection in the water, Anna awakens from her illness to face her own desperate reflection in the reality of her situation. Mary reaches up looking for hope “with trembling hands” just as Anna wrings her hands as her mind desperately reaches for a way to satisfy her unfulfilled desires.
In her desperation, Anna once again turns to Jim and looks for hope in his unfulfilled promises.
Idea #2
Jim comes home to find Anna up and around and tells her to go back to bed. But she strongly objects and asks him who else will take care of their children. As Anna lays weeping, Jim climbs into bed with her and once again begins to make the same promises he has made in the past. The children see through their father’s lies and once agan hear the hollowness of these vows and that they are “only the attempt at comfort.” They listen as Jim is “stroking and kissing her [Anna’s] hair, silently making old vows again, vows that life will never let him keep.” This is a familiar scene that characterizes the cycle of abuse that has occurred throughout the novel—violence, promises, violence, promises, violence, promises. Anna believes Jim’s promises because she has no other options. Better Man is a song about a woman who is caught up in the cycle of abuse and must lie to herself because of her dependence upon a man who has destroyed her self confidence. She too is trapped in an endless cycle of abuse and left with only one option—trust the man who holds her captive.
However, Jim has to lie to himself as well.
Idea #3
“A new life in the Spring.” This is the dream that Jim Holbrook pursues throughout Yonnondio. However, the American dream is nothing but a nightmare for Jim Holbrook. The pursuit of this illusion promises equal opportunity and happiness for all. However, Jim obtains only frustration and sorrow that result in violent outbursts against his family and primitive acts of sexual aggression against his wife. In American Beauty, Lester Burnham has a midlife crisis after spending years caught up in the “American Nightmare.” He confesses that his only comforts are his daily secretive episodes of masturbation “where he fantasizes about a life that doesn’t so closely resemble hell.” He also expresses that his only hope of “salvation” for his acts of corporate whoredom would be to “begin firebombing.” Lester Burnham and Jim Holbrook are both victims of “the American Nightmare."
First 1:45 seconds.
While Jim is caught up in the “American Nightmare,” he experiences extreme feelings of powerlessness.
Idea #4
Throughout this novel, Jim Holbrook battles extreme feelings of powerlessness as he moves from job to job, trying to provide for his family. He works for large companies that exploit, oppress and dehumanize their employees, giving them no opportunity to break free of the cycle of poverty. These men are voiceless bodies, used to perform a task to provide wealth for those that do not have to get their hands dirty. Olsen speaks for the coalminers by writing an imaginary letter that states “Dear Company. Your men are imprisoned in a tomb of hunger, of death wages. Your men are strangling for breath—the walls of your company town have clamped out the air of freedom.” These men serve faceless taskmasters that send their messengers to do their dirty work. The Grapes of Wrath, which takes place during the Great Depression, captures the frustrating relationship between big business and the individuals that they exploit. In the film, a company “representative” is sent to throw an impoverished family off of its land. The men express their frustration at not knowing who or how to fight for their cause by stating that “they got someone that knows what a shotgun’s for” and “then who do we shoot?” The first 2:10 minutes of clip.
Jim and Anna’s unfulfilled hopes and frustrated desires negatively manifest themselves in the lives of their children.
Idea #5
When Anna retreats within herself and “becomes lost in a fog of pain that seemed the only reality,” Will’s reaction to this abandonment is to become an emotional vagabond, frantically searching for a sense of belonging. His realization that he could no longer rely on his mother for a sense of security, leaves him lost and angry. This unnatural and premature loss of his maternal ties changes him into a boy with “a lust for the streets,” “a lust to hit back” and “a lust not to care.” Will’s lust for the streets is his way of trying to fill the void which has been created by his mother’s emotional absence. He wants to feel something real that fills the void left by Anna’s abandonment. In the Ghetto, by Elvis, characterizes the desperation of an angry young man, born in poverty that turns his frustrated instincts onto the streets as he searches for what he needs.
From .35 seconds to 1:35 seconds.
Anna’s lack of nurturing takes its toll on Ben as well.
Idea #6
Hunger is a thread that runs throughout Yonnondio. Olsen uses physical and emotional hunger interchangeably. The children’s need for maternal nourishment cannot consistently be met by Anna. In one scene, Anna has withdrawn into a state of unconciousness where she fell “asleep right in her chair […] with her mouth open, and cryin as if somebody was hitting her, turnin her head and cryin.” Ben, stifling his pain, calls out to her “Ma,”... “ma”… “ma.” She “moans” and “her hands twitch at him.” Ben is left angry and hollow as he “feels so empty inside, like when he was hungry, but the idea of food made him shudder.” Ben rejects his need for maternal nurturing and recoils from the idea of seeking it from Anna. John Lennon’s song Mother expresses the ambivalent feelings of an emotionally abandoned son who needed his mother and has been left mourning his loss.
Although Anna’s path sometimes took her to a place of retreat where her children were left without a mother, the spirit of poverty certainly had her held in its sway.
Idea #7
Tillie Olsen unapologetically exposes poverty and the realities of its consequences in Yonnondio. After a trip to the library, Mazie and Will leave their books unopened because their values have changed. In one particular scene Olsen personifies poverty as a magician or witchdoctor working his magic as he casts spells on the children, changing them forever. She states “already the conjurer is working spells on Anna’s children. Subtly into waking and dreaming, into imagination and everyday doings and play, shaping, altering them. Even outwardly: Will’s eyes are narrowed now, his mouth drawn up at the corner, his walk […] loose; for the rest of his life, he will grin crooked […].” Poverty has distorted the psychological and physical growth of these children. It has thwarted their potential. Olsen characterizes the insidious power of poverty and its effect on human potential. Black Magic Woman by Santana, is a song about seductive and insidious powers that change the human soul.
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Idea #8
Property can be viewed as something “that serves to define or describe its possessor.” Anna is clearly the possession of Jim in this novel. Her purpose is to have sex with him, bare his children and take care of his house. When Anna attempts to exert some autonomy and refuses to have sex with Jim, he rapes her. Anna implores, “don’t Jim, don’t. It hurts too much. No, Jim, no.” Jim responds: “cant screw my own wife. Expect me to go to a whore? Hold still.” Anna’s role of defining Jim must be adhered to, even if the use of violence is necessary to accomplish this. Woman as the property of man is a universally and historically significant concept. In The Piano, a young American mute woman is a mail order bride and is purchased by a businessman in New Zealand. Her only way of communicating is by playing the piano. When she falls in love with another man and refuses to have sex with her husband, he chops off her finger with an axe and threatens to do it again if she does not behave the way he thinks a wife should. Interestingly, he does not cut off the finger with the wedding ring, which serves as a reminder of his ownership. She must define her possessor according to his desires or continue to be mamed.
The hardships and tragedies that the women in Yonnondio endure transform them physically and spiritually.
Idea #9
In one scene, Olsen compares the figures and stature of the women waiting outside the coalmines to broken classical Greek marble sculptures. These women are physically and emotionally marred by “the War to Live” and sculpted by the artist “Coal.” This is a vivid picture of not only the physical hardships but also the brokenness of spirit that these women have experienced as a result of the difficulties and tragedies that they have endured. Interestingly, these marble sculptures, however fractured, are still admired for the beauty and artistry that remain. The scars have become part of the beauty that they convey as they have been weathered by time and the elements. These women are human works of art that are weathered by tragedy and hardship but have endured. They are living sculptures that are a testimony to the enduring power of the human spirit and the beauty that can be found in brokenness. “Beauty from Pain,” by the Superchick’s, depicts how beauty can come from ashes and inner strength from tragedy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-GPbYcTDbQ
The beauty etched into the souls of these women have been immortalized by Olsen's characters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-GPbYcTDbQ
The beauty etched into the souls of these women have been immortalized by Olsen's characters.
Idea #10
Immortality may be defined as “a perpetual state of life.” The adult characters in Yonnondio are all striving to leave a legacy that they can be proud of. They want to achieve immortality by leaving something of themselves behind. This idea is clearly represented when Old Man Caldwell is on his deathbed and reaches out to Mazie. As he lay dying, he desperately searches the annals of his mind for something tangible that he is leaving behind. Unforturnately, he concludes: “I brought them nothing. To die, how bitter when nothing was done with my life.”
The sentiment is represented by Exciter in their song No Life No Future. Exciter’s lyrics articulate this universal desire to be remembered.“Dying ain't much, much of a life
When no one remembers or cares
Scratched from a list erased from time
No one would know you were there”
Emailed song
Conclusion
Yonnondio is a song that originated in the heart of Tillie Olsen. She sings a song of mourning for those that are represented in her novel. It is a tribute to those whose voices have been stifled by poverty and the exploitive powers of capitalism. However, her cries are also the cries of the human heart that has suffered in isolation. While Olsen’s characters are fictionalized, the weeping they represent is not. Even though Jim and Anna Holbrook may not be real and the people that they represent remain anonymous, Olsen has immortalized their suffering and given homage to their legacy by connecting her audience to them in their perpetual state of mourning.
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