The Precariousness of Man as Depicted in Five Selected Stories

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
- Vincent van Gogh

When I was in my undergrad I had a classmate who was very silent, she went inside our classroom unnoticeably. Because of this we went through college with her just like a very fleeting image. She was not active in any extracurricular activities, even inside the classroom. But almost every Saturday, while I and my friends strolled at the park, we would see her dressed in very nice blouses and skirts, most of it designed with flowers. And we admired her for going to church perpetually, while most of us strolled during weekends. We once teased her to spare a Saturday to have a date with her boyfriend and she simply smiled for an answer. Months before graduation, we were shocked that she got pregnant.

Many reacted and even criticized her that her inner bitch overpowered her outer saint. Some even said that things have a way of uncovering itself. And others talked about silent waters run deep. And there she was a center of ridicule of the shocked classmates. What happened to my classmate was indeed unbelievable for our batch, but whatever made her acted that way we were absolutely out of it but surely some circumstances brought her into that situation.

Well that’s how precarious man is and we just have to accept such inevitable fate. By precarious I mean to say someone whose action is dependent on circumstances, uncertain, unstable, and insecure; someone who is dependent on the will or pleasure of another[i].

Going back to my classmate’s experience, perhaps her will to give herself is dependent on her partner. A lot of people forget what they have learned in the church if they are already face to face with experience, especially if these are out of the blue conditions. Often, we people tend to be so sure about our ideals and beliefs. We almost live life like a routine. We seem to be in constant. But surprisingly life gives us turns we do not expect, for the action of one man affects us and like a vine that sprouted from nowhere we discover new things about ourselves. And most of the time, these reactions are apart from what people expected of us.

We must remember that instead of helping his battalion in the war, Antony went to where Cleopatra[ii] is; this outraged his men for they lost the battle without his command. But Anthony didn’t care and followed his will. He is a soldier, a very good one yet he has forgotten his responsibility for his longing of Cleopatra. How stupid? How irrational? How inconsistent? So absurd! But simply man is but a man, a creation made with so much intricacy.

Now this precariousness of man is depicted in five selected stories written by different authors. For who could write about human experience but only a man. This essay elicits the precariousness of man and the forces that brought about it, as depicted in the stories.
In Guy de Maupassant’s Moonlight there was a priest named Abbey Marignan who was described as “a tall, thin priest, fanatic, excitable, yet upright. All his beliefs were fixed, never varying. He believed sincerely that he knew his God, understood His plans, desires and intentions”.

Knowing that in the time the story was written (which was 1884), we all know how powerful the church was and how great were its domains - that people associated to them should be an epitome of holiness (well, at least in the eye of the public.) Needless to say that Marignan is such a great display of that religious power. The priest that he is, he is schooled to promote holiness of which included discipline to all his parishioners. And since, he extends power to his subjects, it is proper to apply it to his kin. And basing upon the uprightness of Marignan, it is expected that he would conscientiously discipline them.

Now Marignan has a niece of whose character he hates. Not because she is immoral but simply because Marignan hated and despised women unconsciously believing that they are seductress and temptress of men. The sweetness of his niece was a threat for him, a threat that would break his authority for in his opinion women are traps for men to become captives of sin.

Time went by and his view on things had always been black & white. Things were fine with Marignan until he heard that this niece has a lover and they meet every night in the meadow. Knowing this, Marignan had a bad humor. He ignored and wanted to believe that these are hearsays but he couldn’t and he decided to go out.

As he opened the door to go out he stopped and surprised by the splendor of the moonlight. And when he continued walking he was totally mesmerized by the light that bathed the creations. His rage was loosing without knowing why and “a vague disturbance came over him.”

It was Marignan’s first gaze at the moon, though he sees it yet he had not gazed at it not until that night. He was caught by the sight of the moonlight. The moonlight that every night shines its light in his windows and watches him when he sleeps. The moonlight that had been so unnoticed by Marignan has become an intermediary between him and his god telling him that each that surrounds him has a purpose.

Abbey was changed because of his experience of beauty.

In general man is affected by the things he sees. In the case of Marignan, the beauty of moonlight brought out an open mind. The roundness of the moon & brightness of its light became like a ray that melted what has clouded his brain.

In this story, we see the instability of a man’s perception – how his attitude and perception is easily affected by beauty and how beauty becomes his teacher. As what Edward O. Wilson[iii] said, nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.

Another story which shows the precariousness of man is Ryonosuke Akutagawa’s Rashomon where a servant, who after many years of serving a Samurai, was dismissed from his job. Years were a proof of loyalty, how would a man keep a servant for years if there is no trust and wisdom between master and servant. But everything has changed because of an economic devastation.

Man’s precarious nature is found both in the samurai and the servant.

Knowing a samurai, whose code of ethics and honor is strongly upheld, whose principle of brotherhood is unparalleled and whose discipline is esteemed, he will not just abandon his servant, leaving him nothing, both in food and shelter. He is supposed to protect and feed him but he did not for he too has no more resources enough for his family. What is code of honor if one has no more to feed his family?

On the other hand, the servant, in the story, was described as an honest, loyal, and trustworthy yet through it all he was dropped like a hot potato. Later in the story we found him in the gate of Rashomon, torn between good and evil, torn between fate he didn’t imagine that he would experience believing that he had been a good man and his master will always keep him. But there in the stillness of the night, he was homeless all because he is no longer needed and can no longer be supported.

Further, we learned that he robbed an old woman’s kimono, without minding if she’ll die in the coldness of the rainy night. What happened to the once honest, loyal and trustworthy servant? Simultaneous with the lost of the job, it also disappeared leaving a heartless man whose morals were also as devastated as the economy of his town, whose morals where also abandoned as he was abandoned by the person he entrusted his life.

The happenings were not expected both by the samurai and the servant but yes it was there brought about by the devastation of the economy of Kyoto - a circumstance which lead two people to unleash their ruthlessness which were once imprisoned by their belief of truth and justice but still freed for survival. How ironic but it is important to remember what Charles Darwin[iv] said “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Truly in man’s quest for survival, he is determined to get over what has drowned him. Are we going to blame him for all his faults just for survival? I think not, for indeed who wants to die of hunger and of injustice.

In this story, the shakiness of man is shown by the Samurai’s defying of his honor as a soldier all because for his family and by the servant’s forgetting of his values for his life and these changes were all caused by poverty which is a result of economic devastation.

Though poverty in Rashomon caused abandonment, it doesn’t mean that success would naturally bring togetherness for it is shown in Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King, success can tore people apart. What were seemingly irrevocable promises (or contract) would be forgotten.

In the story we have Carnehan and Dravot who together dreamt to become kings. In contrast to Rashomon, poverty brought them together; their ambition to rule brought them together. In fact they played as “a priest attired in fragments of ribbons and rags stalked up to me, gravely twisting a child's paper whirligig. Behind him was his servant bending under the load of a crate of mud toys.” However, it was success that tore them apart.

In the later part of the story, the two men achieved their dreams and it was all because of their diligence. Their state changed because of their will to change and eventually they had it. Success is a very clear-cut thing; once you desire it and circumstance would be on your side then you’ll have it. If one is won over by the idea to fulfill a dream, he conscientiously restricts himself from unnecessary things in order to achieve his dream and this discipline was seen in both men. With persistence accompanied by luck, they succeeded and eventually ruled a kingdom. At first, it seemed that their pact was solid. Yet, Dravot forgot and ignored the contract and wanted a woman. In spite, the contradictions of Carnehan, he still continued his quest for a wife. This quest had led to their downfall.

Success had a different feel on Dravot, for it has unleashed in him arrogance innate in every man. For every man, is innately selfish according to Nietzsche[v]. This behavior is not a stranger to reality. We cannot blame Dravot or any man for acting so, for all we know man has never met contentment. When they made their pact, all they need is discipline and they had that. Now that one of them is already a king, he wants more and one of those is a wife which is truly needed by any man. Again, though we can get angry with Dravot because he took for granted the contract yet we cannot also blame him for indeed any straight man needs a woman.

In contrast, Carnehan was not moved by power perhaps because he was just a second-in-command. Success proved him a loyal friend for he never left his friend despite the insults he bathe him. Carnehann stood behind, humbled by awareness.

This story of friendship, strife and truce contrasts two reactions of man when he fulfills his dreams. It shows both the positive and the negative cognition of man on how to handle successes in life. Truly, men vary in their reaction with different things life offers. And this is another evident precariousness of man. His volatility is truly dependent on the circumstances behind him yet we cannot surely say about his reactions for indeed just like Dravot and Carnehan, people vary in their reactions to these circumstances.

Further, let me show you the unevenness of man in the story by Joseph Condrad entitled The Lagoon.
In the story were two brothers, Arsat and his older brother, who were soldiers, who never had troubles with each other nor to others, not until Arsat fell in love with a servant named Diamalen. The younger brother was so attracted by Diamalen that he sounds like a poet each time he describes her to his brother. Unfortunately, the wife of the rajah, Inchi Midah, did not want her servants to marry. Of which rule, I believe, challenges more the force inside Arsat. Later in the story we learned that the older brother helped Arsat to get the girl and together escaped from the Kingdom.
Arsat and his brother were soldiers. As soldiers, they are expected to protect the kingdom and not to betray the rules. The safety and peacefulness of the place lie in their hands. They are expected to be loyal and faithful to the state. Ironically, they caused trouble. These troubles started when, the brothers got Diamalen from Inchi Midah. These three people ( Arsat, the older brother and Diamalen) created chaos all because of love: Arsat’s brother’s love for him that he helped his brother with the elopement and Arsat’s love for Diamalen that he forsake his profession and even his brother for her.

Still later in the story, we knew that Arsat’s brother died in the battle because Arsat left him in the hands of the enemies because he was too apprehensive about the safety of Diamalen.
Arsat’s abandonment of his brother is astonishing. Arsat’s brother had been so good to him yet he paid him death. It seemed that Arsat forgot about everything that his brother did for him. But his action was brought about by circumstances which let him choose between death and life. And he chose death, for what’s important to Arsat was the safety of Diamalen to whom he is intensely in love.

Knowing that Arsat already have Diamalen, one should be completely happy but it did not happen to Arsat for he was guilty. His guilt was greater because the subject for his betrayal – Diamelen, ends up dying. He realized that his brother died in vain, for he could not enjoy the company of the fruit of their labor for very long. And one who betrayed a loved one, especially a loved one who helped his sibling out, must feel ashamed of his or her actions.

After Diamalen’s death “his penance is to return to his homeland and face the music… ". An evidence of anger occurs after Arsat tells his story when he said "with an intense whispering violence-' What did I care who died? I wanted peace in my own heart', for Arsat as a man who kept his guilt for so long would be going back to where everything had started.

In the story, we knew about how the emotions of Arsat changed from time to time. First he was calm, then passionately in love, then guilty and at the last part he wanted revenge. And these changes of emotion and attitude were caused by different circumstances which he himself experienced. And these changes of Arsat’s perceptions and feelings hold true to every human behavior.

Furthermore, the story which totally shows that this precarious nature of man is not made but born, is William Faulkner’s That Evening Sun. “The major or climactic incident in the story is the coming of Nancy’s husband who is probably going to slit her throat with the razor blade that dangles from his neck like a pendant. The reason for the impending murder: for bearing the child of a white man, Stovall, a bank cashier and deacon of the priest.”

The plight of almost all the characters in the story revolves around a kind of acceptable bias that black fears are not as worthy of notice or as acceptable as white ones. This short fiction is really a story about the south and its customs and biases. Though the end is never clearly written in the story, Faulkner is suggesting at the end that there could have been a better end for Nancy if only people had cared enough about a black washerwoman to take her concerns seriously and without regard to skin color or status.

Let me take it character by character.

As for Jesus, it had been said that he gives Nancy one-half of his money which proves that he is doing his part as a husband. But all because of Nancy’s lust for wine Jesus’ killer instincts were awakened. Who would know that his razor for self protection would be eventually the same razor he will use to kill his wife. Jesus, who is black man is already feeling inferior to the white and he was stark insulted when he knew that his wife’s unfaithfulness is schemed with a white man. In fact in the story Jesus said that white men can hang around his kitchen while he can’t hang around a white man’s kitchen. This line is evident that Jesus is already enraged by what’s going on.

For Mrs. Compson, as a white woman, she is not supposed to be jealous of a black woman but what caused her to was her alarm of her husband’s fondness for Nancy. So even if she is white, which meant she is much superior to Nancy, still one cannot take away the insecurity from her. Perhaps, she was thinking that it would be a great insult if she is replaced by a black woman. The thing that she feels is both pressure for her marriage and womanhood.

For the children, they do not fully understand what is going on. Quentin presents the story's details as he experienced them when he was 9 years old. Limited by his young age, his perceptions of Nancy's troubling circumstances reach dreadful significance at the end of the story, when he finally understands enough to know that Jesus is probably going to kill Nancy. His main concern, however, is not with Nancy's fate; rather, he is more anxious about his own personal welfare, worrying over such a mundane problem as who will do the family's laundry after her death. His selfishness indicates his acceptance of her death as insignificant. Likewise, he and his sister, Caddy, and their younger brother, Jason, do not understand the significance of most of the story's events, including why Nancy gets several of her teeth knocked out by Mr. Stovall, the Baptist deacon; why Nancy tries to hang herself; and what the "watermelon" is under her dress. Most important, the children will never comprehend the horror that she suffers. Why are these the reaction for the children. Obviously, their parents, friends and relative who are also white, let them believe and even showed them that black men are their servants. The children reacted base from what the adults around them show.

How about Stovall? Stovall who did not rightfully pay Nancy is a deacon. A deacon is a servant of the church during masses. But in spite his seemingly holy appearance; Stovall was lured by Nancy to exchange sex for money. And because he is white, he used his power and did not choose Nancy. We cannot hold Stovall solely responsible for the crime, for Stovall just acted out what he has seen in his society. Even if he is a deacon, he still human and above all he is a man easily lured by a woman. Stovall’s act is definitely unexpected, for a deacon knows the teachings of the church and cannot have an affair with a married woman and for being a cashier; it is quite questionable why he could not pay Nancy. But Stovall’s unforeseen actions only show the weakness in men and how their thoughts can be so inconsistent.

And finally we have Nancy who is destroyed, in one way or another, by fear. She is no longer capable of watching over the children (she has to lure them home to watch over her), and she is convinced that she will not be returning the next morning, no matter what Mr. Compson has to say about it. Realizing that she can no longer depend on nobody anymore Nancy bravely unlocks the door and face her upcoming death of which her being alone coerced her to face her opponent for she has nothing left but herself. What has caused all these were the betrayal of Nancy to his husband and Stovall’s lust.

It caused a lot of reactions from people surrounding them. But who are we to blame with the actions of these people. As for me, I blame it all to the kind of society they have, for indeed even before the years Nancy and Stovall were born, there was already discrimination among the Black Americans - an exploration of terror, vengeance, and solitude.

As a conclusion, Let me quote Henry James[vi] who said that “experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.”

Just like in the stories - Marignan’s experience of beauty, the servant’s experience of abandonment, Dravot’s experience of success, Arsat’s experience of intense love and the black men’s experience of racial discrimination – these experiences lead the characters into different plights of their lives.

I could ask my classmate why didn’t she use contraceptive or I could ask Antony to suspend his visit to Cleopatra and let the war finish, yet I couldn’t, for every man “has not only its own creative but its own critical turn of mind.” Truly, we are humans and what makes this world perfect is our imperfection which leads us to our complexity and precariousness.







NOTES:
1. Definition from dictionary.com.
2. Anthony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare’s dramas written between 1603 and 1607.
3. 1929 - , In 2005, Foreign Policy named him one of the world’s 100 leading intellectuals.
4. first of the evolutionary biologists, the originator of the concept of natural selection.
5. 1854 – 1900, German philosopher and classical philologist,
6. 1843 – 1916, noted American-born English essayist, critic, and author,
7. quoted from Tradition and The Individual Talent by Thomas Stearns Eliot, 1888 –1965, American-born English poet, playwright, and literary critic.

Sources:
a.)Books:

Tiempo, Edilberto K., et.al., Introduction to Literature, Manila, Philippines: Rex Book Store, Inc., 1997.

Valdez, Lerry G. L. Ed. Introduction to Literature. A Book of Readings. Iligan City: Julbert Press, 2005.


b.)Internet:
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/literature/Faulkner-s-Short-Stories-That-Evening-Sun-Analysis.
http://www.dictionary.com/
http://www.enotes.com/evening-sun
http://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1683263.html

c.) The Stories:
Moonlight by Guy de Maupassant
Rashomon by Ryonosuke Akutagawa
The Man Who Would be King by Rudyard Kipling
The Lagoon by Joseph Condrad
That Evening Sun by William Faulkner

Note: There might be sources I missed so before you sue me, e-mail or let me add you to my source first. ","