There are a few themes in this book that could be representative of American literature. The first is the idea of freedom, that one can choose their own path and be their own person, as Arthur decided to be more black than white and Dylan tried to be a superhero, Aeroman. But also part of it was the cultural divisions, that despite the progress being made, people were still divided on race and gender, and to be different was not always good. The book also addressed the views on violence, sex, and drugs that the young generation got from the new media, from music and television.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Images
I felt like o
ne of the big images in the book was Abraham's "movie". His set of frames that, seen individually, seemed to have no difference from one to the next. I related this to the passage of time in the novel; all of this time passes, and much of the time between events is unmentioned, such that it gives the impression that from one moment to the next, it's hard to tell any difference until some major shift happens, so the book skips from one event to the next with little pretense.
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I felt that the flying man's silver ring was another important image. It seemed to represent a sort of freedom, of stepping beyond one's self and reality and doing things you never thought you could, of being allow
ed to be someone else and forget yourself. After giving his ring to Dylan, the flying man, Aaron, seemed to remember who he was, as if the moments he had the ring on were an unrealistic blur. He wondered where it had gone, but could not remember giving it to Dylan, and so it seemed he forgot himself when he wore it, making it a thing of power but also of danger.
Also important was the distinction between white and black. In the beginning of the novel, when Dylan was young, it didn't seem to matter. But as he got older, he began to be singled out, and it became more important that he was white. Arthur attempted to escape this by acting black, and in doing so he ended up not going to Stuyvesant, which seemed to have a considerable white student population. Dylan was bullied and picked on by other people, and so he began to hide and cower before others.___________________________________________
Girls also seem to be important to the novel. Being interested in them is treated as a passage of growing up, something normal and to be embraced. Sex is looked at by the characters as something that feels good and is fun, it seems, but one didn't necessarily even have any experience with it. It was a sort of honor thing, something that made others jealous of you and made them admire you.The End
Another rarely mentioned character in the book is Barrett Rude Senior. Mingus’s grandfather is highly religious, and fears that his son is consorting with the devil, because of the sounds he hears coming out of his son’s room. However, he’s also accused of sleeping around, which he tries to justify by saying that he was giving them the blessing of God.
Dylan is hanging at Mingus’s house, finalizing a deal the two of them had for Dylan to buy Mingus’s comic books, and the flying man’s ring. Barrett Rude Junior invites the two of them downstairs to watch a football game, and they acquiesce. At Barrett Rude Jr.’s bidding, they all get high, watching the football game. Suddenly, Barrett Rude Senior busts into the room.
He begins to argue with his son, and finally calls out Barrett Rude Jr. as being twisted, stating “I praise God every day your mother never lived to see it.” Barrett Ruse Jr. cracks at this and attacks his father, but lets him go. Barrett Rude Sr. disappears downstairs, but everybody is shaken by what happened. Barrett Rude Sr. comes back upstairs, this time with a gun. Mingus yells at Dylan to go home, and Dylan runs outside and onto the street.
The chapter ends with “He was on Dean Street, teetering on a square of slate, when he heard the shot.”
Musical Guns
Dylan is now practically the secretary of a band, called “Stately Wayne Manor”. “Dylan, he’s like Manor’s fifth member, he knows their tiny set by heart, hand-letters their posters, listens in confidence to their girlfriends’ grievances.
“Sometimes makes out with their girlfriends.
“Might one day get laid by their girlfriends.”
Not the average secretary. He’s at a battle of the bands competition with his band. There, he reveals that he has a new crush, Liza Gawcet. Dylan’s nervous about getting her alone to talk to her and hang out with her for once, but at one of his bandmate’s insistences, decides to take her to meet a local drug dealer. He goes alone with her to the drug dealer’s apartment, with his bandmates and their girlfriends not far away, and suddenly thinks twice about it because of the decoration. Suddenly, three men bust into the room, one with a gun. Dylan, Liza, and Tom, the drug dealer, are terrified. Dylan recognizes the man with the gun. It was a bully who’s been reappearing throughout the novel, seeking revenge for something Rachel did to him before after he stole Dylan’s bike. His name is Robert Woolfolk, and he’s slowly made his way up to being a common street thug. Robert recognizes Dylan, too, and is torn, because while he had threatened on several occasions to kill Dylan, he didn’t feel he could in front of his friends, who now knew that the two of them were acquainted, that Robert was associated with a white boy. Robert leaves without doing anything, but Tom yells at Dylan to get out, and Liza is terrified of Dylan too. Dylan is immediately sorry he decided to take Liza up to the drug dealer, but it’s too late.
Legal Intervention
Mingus was arrested during one of his solo “Aeroman” escapades, as Dylan discovered when his father showed him the newspaper. Dylan hunts Mingus down, because he was released, concerned mainly for the ring and for the fact that he had never before really flown in Brooklyn. When he finds Mingus, Mingus is stoned in his house, and doesn’t seem all that concerned about what had happened. The cops apparently thought Mingus had jumped out of a tree, and perhaps he had; I’ve been wondering if their thoughts that they were flying were just an illusion, conjured by their own belief that the ring was granting them powers of flight.
Arthur is there too, and for once he doesn’t seem to be worshipping Mingus, but rather making fun of him, proud that he can do so to a black kid and not get beaten up. The three of them got stoned, and that was the end of it.
Toxic Fumes
Dylan decides to visit Mingus, without Mingus’s new white shadow, Arthur. The first thing mentioned when Dylan is in Mingus’s room is Rachel, Dylan’s mom, how marijuana was her “totem fume”. Mingus’s room is filled with the fumes of marijuana, and Dylan first fakes smoking, but then he too begins to get himself high. After they discuss music from various artists, Mingus inquires about Heather, and at first Dylan is reluctant to say anything about her, but then relents and says he gave her a back rub. Mingus doesn’t believe that it ended there, and keeps pestering Dylan about it, until Dylan decides to demonstrate to Mingus what happened by giving him a backrub. He admits, during it, that he groped her, demonstrating that as well, but then lies and says that she let him get in her pants. He doesn’t, however, lie so much as to say that she let him have sex with her, but he does lie that she gave him a blowjob. Suddenly they’re giving each other handjobs, and the entire scene is very awkward, especially when Mingus’s father walks into the room, though he either just doesn’t care about what his son does or is too stoned himself to care.
In the next scene, introduced suddenly as is characteristic of this book, with little lead-up but rather a sudden shift in setting and events, Dylan is walking down the street and is suddenly harassed by two black boys. Then Mingus flies down and hits both of the bullies in the head before flying back up. He’s wearing the Aeroman costume, though he thinks it’s “Arrowman”. He succeeded in doing something Dylan never had, and all because Dylan, being white, was better as bait than as the hero.
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