Arbitrariness in "How"

Moore's how-to style of narrative seems to change with every story. Some have more choices than others, in a more choose your own adventure style, while others just tell you what to do. "How" is the first story that we get where Moore employs a narrative that has many choices for the reader to choose from.

The story starts off with, "Begin by meeting him in a class, in a bar, at a rummage sale." (55) giving the illusion of a choice that would determine the type of relationship present in the story. However, this doesn't happen. Instead of giving the main character in the story a choice in her life, we find that it is rather arbitrary. It doesn't matter where the characters met, what their jobs or hobbies are, or the time frame of the relationship, the relationship seems predestined to failure. This story is an interesting twist on the common cliche of one person falling out of love with their partner and then the partner getting a disease. There is a struggle in the mind of the person as to whether they should stay with and support someone who they really don’t love any more or if they should just leave. Moore presents this with a sense that any choice is arbitrary. At one point, the main character has a choice to sleep with another man, which seems to be a very important decision that one could make in a failing relationship, but in the end the outcome doesn’t change. In both situations, the relationship continues for a long while until the main character cannot stand to struggle anymore.

Moore seems to be using the lack of real choice to show that you cannot control everything. At some point, any choice that the main character makes won’t have any effect on her relationship. Even a choice that is as important as cheating on your partner really doesn’t affect much, other than when she gets home. We understand that her partner got a disease, but there is no way that the disease can be traced back to the background of either of the characters because there were so many choices that could be made. Moore wants the reader to understand that you can only control a small subsection of what happens in the world around you, and that you cannot blame yourself for things that are outside of your control.

In addition, the story ends with, “The sadness will die like an old dog” (64), which shows how everything will pass. Moore throughout the story is trying to get the reader to understand that whatever happens to make this situation happen, and whatever happens afterwards, as long as it is outside of your control to a certain extent, you won't need to feel guilty for the rest of your life. Many things in life are arbitrary, so control what you can and don’t let what you cannot control affect you more than it needs to.

Wright's influence on Baldwin

In "This Morning, This evening, So Soon" we get a black character that represents how Richard Wright's Native Son influenced the Baldwin's depiction of how black characters deal with race problems as well as how Baldwin wanted his characters to differ from Wright's representation.

In Native Son, Bigger Thomas represents what Wright envisioned a white man thought a stereotypical black man was like. Bigger is aggressive, not only to outsiders, but to his family and friends, and he doesn't really express his emotions to other people. Bigger runs with a gang of other similarly aged black characters who, at the beginning of the book, plan to rob a store, another seemingly stereotypical situation that an uneducated adult black male would face. When Bigger gets interviewed for a job as a driver, his personality completely shifts. He immediately becomes very subservient towards the white man who is offering the job, and he doesn’t even seem to be aware that he is acting differently. Another telling moment about how Bigger acts is how he responds to the friendliness of his employer’s daughter and boyfriend. Both of the white people in this situation are genuinely trying to be amicable, and even put Bigger at ease because they know about the problem of race in America and they want to do something to change it. Bigger reacts mostly with fear. He thinks that he will get hurt or something bad will happen to him if he takes the friendliness at face value because he isn’t used to anything of the kind.

The narrator in "This Morning, This evening, So Soon" differs from Bigger’s character in many ways. The first difference we get is simply that the character is very successful in his career. The narrator is able to travel overseas and escape the clutches of racism in the US. The narrator also has very developed emotions which can be seen in the scene on the bridge where he realizes he is in love, as well as his fears and disgust when he is going back to America.

One similarity to Bigger that Baldwin shows happened during the end of the boat ride when he is talking to the customs officers. The narrator thinks that something is off with the officers being nice to him. He thinks that their smiles are hiding something and he is not confident in his ability to skirt around topics that may make any racist tendencies flare up. The narrator’s reaction is very interesting because he has lived without racism being a major part of his life for so many years and yet, as soon as he returns, his thoughts about racism return even though the country may have changed. The alludes to Wright’s depiction as it characterizes the reactions to racism as well as understanding how to get around it as something that society molds into you from birth.

One of Wright’s main points in Native Son is that society firmly molded who Bigger was; he had virtually no choice in how he turned out. We see Baldwin’s defense of the ability of black people to define their own lives through the narrator. He is successful in his career and he is able to make the choice to leave and go back to America. He marries a white woman and has a very nice family. He is able to express his emotions fully to other people and he doesn’t represent a stereotypical black man. Baldwin takes aspects from the characterization in Native Son and then adds more layers and molds the characters to fit his vision of black characters. 

On Teddy's Character

In class while discussing the story Teddy, some people brought up that they didn’t particularly like how Teddy talked about his views. The main complaint was that Teddy acted as if his world view, including things like reincarnation, was the only correct way to look at life. Especially, during his conversation with Nicholson, Teddy cuts him off while he is trying to talk. He seems to think that what he is saying is more important that what the others around him have to say because he has had these spiritual realizations.

One of the main factors that should be taken into account when looking at what Teddy is saying to Nicholson is that Teddy really is the expert on what Nicholson is asking about. Although it may seem like Teddy is being high strung, I think that in subjects other than philosophy he wouldn’t think of himself as that great. Because Nicholson is asking about philosophical questions, I think he should expect Teddy to answer him like he knows what he is talking about. If you think of Teddy as being a teacher in the subject, I don’t think you would really want a teacher that isn’t sure about what he is talking about. Teddy is respected in the community so much that he conducts interviews in Europe as well as releases tapes containing these interviews. If Teddy didn’t know what he was talking about he would not be respected as much as he is.

Another reason that Teddy can be viewed as high strung could have to do with how you can’t prove the things he is saying. The fact the he is talking about metaphysical things such as how you leave the body when you die and then get reincarnated makes people really doubt what he is saying. The story never mentions how much Teddy is respected in the overall scientific community, and I don’t think he would be very well respected just because there is no way to give his ideas any efficacy. The story does tell us that some major players in the field of philosophy respect his opinion so much that they trust him to provide them with accurate information about when and how they will die which again shows how much the philosophy community respects him.

Teddy’s age also plays a large role in how we view him. The fact that he is only ten years old somehow makes it seem off that he is able to lecture on a subject that very few adults fail have any sort of grasp on. In addition, it seems impossible for a four year old to have these complicated hallucination that apparently mean a great deal and that very few people have. Teddy says that when he was six he was able to see that God was all around him in everything, and that his sister drinking milk was really just God flowing into God. Most four and six year old children still base most of what they want off of their instincts, so this makes Teddy even more incredible and impossible.

Teddy’s age also allows us to respect him more. Because he is only ten years old it has to be viewed as extremely impressive that he is able to grasp these complicated philosophical ideas. His age may impart some sort of jealousy on the part of a lot of people, but he does seem very mature for his age. Although he is able to tell people when they will die, he knows he should keep it to himself because it would ruin the lives of the people he is telling. His maturity also allows him to thread the needle in his parents’ complicated marriage as well as take care of his sister who, from what we get in the story, his parents are neglecting.

Overall, Teddy can seem high strung, but I believe it to be somewhat warranted because he is one of the most respected people in the field of psychology in the story as well as being able to grasp all of the complicated ideas that his position entails. Do you think that Teddy’s character was warranted by his situation, or was he just another annoying kid?