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The Significance Of Point Of View In Katherine Ann Porter'S 'Ship Of Fools'

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The Significance Of Point Of View In Katherine Ann Porter'S 'Ship Of Fools'

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Content This dissertation has been 65-10, 087 m icrofilm ed exactly as received ADAMS, Robert Hickman, 1937- TI-IE SIGNIFICANCE OF POINT OF VIEW IN KATHERINE ANNE PORTER'S SHIP OF FOOLS. University of Southern California, Ph. D ., 1965 Language and Literature, modern University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE SIGNIFICANCE OF POINT OF VIEW IN KATHERINE ANNE PORTER'S SHIP OF FOOLS by Robert Hickman Adams A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (English) June 1965 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY PARK LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 9 0 0 0 7 This dissertation, written by .................. R o be. r t . .Hi ckm an. .Adam s. .............. under the direction of hk?.....Dissertation Com mittee, and approved by all its members, has been presented to and accepted by the Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of D O C T O R OF P H I L O S O P H Y ...... C Dean Date XuixeJ . H . 9 . 6 . 5 . ............... DISSERTATION COMMITTEE TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION: PROBLEM AND TERMS ........... 1 ! II. POINT OF VIEW IN WORKS PRIOR TO | SHIP OF FOOLS............................... 31 III. POINT OF VIEW AS TECHNIQUE.................. 79 | IV. POINT OF VIEW AS CONTENT.................... 159 V. THE QUESTION OF FREEDOM...................... 217 VI. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION: POINT OF ! VIEW IN PERSPECTIVE........................ 230 I | APPENDIXES Appendix I: The Composition, by Point of View, of Ship of Fools...................... 241 i Appendix II: Metaphors and Similes, with Points j of View, Likening Man and Animal . . . 246 ILIST OF WORKS CITED................................... 257 Each . . . individual of the watching group kept strictly apart without any acknowledg ment of the others' presence, and each found a vantage point of his own; yet all of them gazed at a certain spot, like persons being photographed together. (Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools) CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: PROBLEM AND TERMS The following study is devoted to an examination of just one aspect of Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools— point of view. This means, to a degree at least, that it is a study of technique. Such an examination is appropriate for a writer who has, in her own words, spent her "life thinking about technique, method, [and] style," and has ! chosen James over Whitman as a guide, j holding as I [Porter] do with the conscious, disciplined artist, the serious expert against the expansive, indis- j criminately "cosmic" sort. ! Almost all critics have noted her "characteristically meti- ; 2 ^ culous workmanship." In Ship of Fools, even those ^Glenway Wescott, "Katherine Anne Porter Personally," Images of Truth: Remembrances and Criticism (New York, 1962), p. 28, and Ray B. West, Jr., Katherine Anne Porter. University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers, No. 28 (Minneapolis, 1963), p. 44. ^Vernon A. Young, "The Art of Katherine Anne Porter," New Mexico Quarterly. XV (Autumn 1945), 340. 1 2 ! ; | reviewers who were generally hostile often acknowledged it | a technical success: "she has almost . . . absolute control ] of the novel" one wrote; another thought that j I I its sheer craftsmanship sustained for almost 500 pages 1 can give practically any American novelist of the post- ' war generation lessons in unsloppy writing.^ To concern oneself with technique is not, however, to concern oneself solely with the way in which something is i said. It is to be involved simultaneously with what is said. Henry James stressed precisely this when he wrote that j i the idea and the form . . . are the needle and the thread, and I have never heard of a guild of tailors ! who recommended the use of the thread without the needle, or the needle without the thread.^ 5 In Lionel Trilling's words, form is "itself an idea." j ) i This paper is, then, a study both of how Porter speaks j and of what she says. Particularly must this be so, I ' think, in view of the aspect of technique chosen for study, j ^James Finn, "On the Voyage to Eternity" (rev. of Ship j of Fools). The Commonweal. May 18, 1962, p. 212, and Sidney Finkelstein, Rev. of Ship of Fools. Mainstream. XV (Septem- j her 1962), 42. j ^"The Art of Fiction," in Essays in Modern Literary Criticism, ed. Ray B. West, Jr. (New York, 1956), p. 46. ^"The Meaning of a Literary Idea," The Liberal Imagina tion (New York, 1957), p. 274. As James wrote of The Ambassadors, so Porter might have written of Ship of Fools; the business of my tale and the march of my action, not to say the precious moral of everything, is just my demonstration of this process of vision.^ ; When the writer forsakes a purely omniscient mode of narra- j tion and limits our view as he limits his characters' views,; he often widens our understanding of his own ultimate i statement. This is not surprising when one considers even briefly how important an angle of vision is; motion pic tures, for example, reinforce this truth powerfully for us j 7 I today. ! The justification for choosing point of view as a sig nificant element to study in Ship of Fools depends ulti- | s j mately, of course, on one's total reading of the book. It j is appropriate to note here, however, that the over-all ! topic of point of view in literature has been of consider- ^"Preface to 'The Ambassadors,'" The Ambassadors, ed. Leon Edel (Boston, 1960), p. 2. ^Testaments by film makers to the centrality of point j of view are common. V. I. Pudovkin has written, for in stance, that "each object can be seen, and therefore shot, from a thousand different points, and the selection of any jgiven point cannot, and must not, be by chance. This selec tion is always related to the entire content of the task . . ." (Film Technique and Film Acting, trans. Ivor Montagu ‘[New York, I960], p. 151). able interest to modern critics. Percy Lubbock spoke for i many who would follow when he wrote: The whole intricate question of method, in the craft of j fiction, I take to be governed by the question of point ! of view— the question of the relation in which the nar- ; rator stands to the story.^ i More exactly, "the disappearance of the author," illustrated prominently by the work of artists such as Faulkner and Joyce, has seemed increasingly remarkable to many.^ ®The following works contain helpful sections on the j general subject of point of view: Elizabeth Bowen, "Notes j on Writing a Novel," Collected Impressions (New York, 1950), pp. 249-263; Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, Under standing Fiction (New York, 1959), pp. 659-664; Bernard De j Voto, "The Invisible Novelist," The World of Fiction (Bos- ■ ton, 1950), pp. 205-225; Norman Friedman, "Point of View in | Fiction: the Development of a Critical Concept," PMLA, LXXj (December 1955), 1160-1184; Edith Ronald Mirrielees, "Points! of Observation," Storv Writing (New York, 1963), pp. 89-117 ; | Laurence Perrine, "Point of View," Storv and Structure (Newj York, 1959), pp. 302-307; Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, I Theory of Literature (New York, 1956), pp. 211-215. The following works treat specifically the use of a limited point of view: Joseph Warren Beach, The Method of Henry James (Philadelphia, 1954), pp. 56-71; Joseph Warren Beach, iThe Twentieth Century Novel: Studies in Technique (New York, 1932); Ellen Glasgow, A Certain Measure: An Interpre- Itation of Prose Fiction (New York, 1943), pp. 18-19, 41-43; Henry James, "Preface to 'The Ambassadors,'" The Ambassadors ■(Boston, 1960); Percy Lubbock, The Craft of Fiction (New York, 1963). ^The Craft of Fiction (New York, 1963), p. 73. Joseph Warren Beach, The Twentieth Century Novel: Studies in Technique (New York, 1932), p. 14. ! 5 ; j With regard to Porter's own fiction, commentators have recognized that "possibly her most distinctive trait as a writer is her mastery of a primary technique of fiction: i point of view." Ship of Fools is an exemplary case. Overj ! two-thirds of the book's 159 sections involve the use of a restricted point of view. And, as Miss Porter has said of 12 her novel, it is a book about "self-deception." That is, it is a book about partial vision. j A word concerning critical method is, in these opening pages, fitting. My approach is orthodox as it is eclectic; j I have made use not only of the text itself, but also of ; biographical details, interviews, and other writing by Porter. This must be mentioned because all but doctrinaire j new critics encounter a problem when studying Porter's i fiction. The fact is that, though famous for concision in writing, she has done an enormous amount of chatting about j her work and literature in general. Talking, she herself | : i 1 : ] -*--^Marvin Pierce, "Point of View: Katherine Anne Por- ! ter1s Noon Wine." Ohio University Review. Ill (1951), 95. ■^Katherine Anne Porter and Barbara Thompson, "An jlnterview," The Paris Review. No. 29 (Winter-Spring 1953), p. 113. has acknowledged, has "always been my sin.""1 ”3 Perhaps in- I jevitably, a good deal of the talking has been loose talk. Thus, for example, she told one interviewer that, while she I 14 wrote Ship of Fools, "my view of the world changed." Then she told another interviewer that, during that time, "It's astonishing how little I've changed: nothing in my point 15 of view or my way of feeling." While it is possible to smile at what may have been an attack of vanity, it is troublesome to deal with such contradictions when one is 16 ! attempting to develop a unified statement from her work. j l3"First Novel," Time. July 28, 1961, p. 70. ■^Katherine Anne Porter, James Ruoff, and Del Smith, j "Katherine Anne Porter on Ship of Fools." College English, j XXIV (February 1963), 397. i •^Paris Review, p . 112 . I i •^An example of this more troublesome variety of j blurred statement occurred in the Paris Review interview j when Porter attempted to speak to the question of human j (freedom: "To say that you can't destroy yourself is just as foolish as to say of a young man killed in the war at (twenty-one or twenty-two that that was his fate, that he wasn't going to have anything anyhow. I have a very firm belief that the life of no man can be explained in terms of |his experiences, of what has happened to him, because in (spite of all the poetry, all the philosophy to the contrary, |we are not really masters of our fate. Our being is subject jto all the chances of life. There are so many things we are (capable of, that we could be or do. The potentialities are jso great that we never, any of us, are more than one-fourth (fulfilled" (p. 96). The Significance of Brant's “ jj_==£_===|lQ8== i Porter introduces her novel, in part, as follows: ] j The title of this book is a translation from the German ] of Das Narrenschiff. a moral allegory by Sebastian Brant I (1458?-1521) first published in Latin as Stultifera j Navis in 1494. I read it in Basel in the summer of 1932 when I had still vividly in mind the impressions of my first voyage to Europe. When I began thinking about my i novel, I took for my own this simple almost universal j image of the ship of this world on its voyage to eternity.; i Is there then, it is natural to ask, a significant relation-J ship between these books that must, in the course of study- j i ing Porter's work, be explored? Generally speaking, it j seems to me that there is not; however, a short explanation is in order. I I —1 Brant's book consists of 112 very brief chapters. The~j~ t idea of a ship of fools is established in the prologue ("I have pondered how a ship/ Of fools I'd suitably equip . . ."), j 17 but it is mentioned only intermittently after that. Chapters stand as isolated moral lessons on particular human [failings. Though, as Edwin H. Zeydel notes, Brant's chief ! concern is man's "sensuality," his instruction nevertheless ■^Sebastian Brant, The Ship of Fools, trans. Edwin H. jZeydel (New York, 1962), p. 57. All subsequent references Ito and quotations from The Ship of Fools are from this edi- jtion. Page numbers will be noted parenthetically in the itext. . _ ______________________________ 8 X8 takes many directions. He inveighs against such tradi tional sins as "Greed" (66) and "Adultery" (136), hut he also devotes chapters to problems like "Complacency" (144) and "Ingratitude" (200). Some of the book is in fact little more than a crotchety listing of things that apparently irritate the author: there is a chapter on bad "Cooks and Waiters" (265), "Bad Marksmen" (248) who waste time at shooting matches, and so forth. Brant's work does forecast Porter's novel in vague ways. Both books are didactic, though Brant's most serious effort, to teach men to "fear God the Lord and serve him well" (192), is not congruent with Porter's. Both authors are scathing in their depiction of man's faults, even to using some of the same imagery. Brant notes, for example, much as Porter will later write about people like Rieber, Full many a litter breeds the sow, And wisdom lives in exile now? The swine on decent people frown, The sow alone now wears the crown. (239) Further, several of Porter's characters have a fleeting basis in Brant's volume. Professor Hutten is suggested by ■^Introduction, The Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brant, trans. Edwin H. Zeydel (New York, 1962), p. 10. the foolish scholar in "Of Useless Books" (62-63), the dis"- illusioned idealist Hansen by the lines, "Who takes the world upon his back/ Will soon succumb beneath his pack" (116), La Condesa by "Of Patients Who Do Not Obey" (148- 151), Dr. Schumann by "Of Foolish Medicine" (188-189), and Johann by "Of Hope of Getting Legacies" (304-305). There are also a few parallels between the woodcuts that accompany Brant's work and scenes in Porter's book. The crippled beggar in Veracruz, for example, is described by Porter much as a beggar is shown in a cut (100), lying in the I street amidst dogs. Porter in fact uses for a frontispiece j a cut that suggests the drowning incident in her novel. Differences between the books are, however, vast. Mark- Schorer has said that "the organizing source of her [Por- i ter's] conception" was Brant's Ship of Fools, but it is a difficult statement to support, and Schorer fails to do j 19 I so. An analogue that lacks unity can organize little. j Whereas Brant's book does not have a carefully focused | | central theme, Porter's book does. There is in his work, ! significantly, little attempt to distinguish the relative j j i | 1 Q ' 9"We're All on the Passenger List" (rev. of Ship of Fools), New York Times Book Review. April 1, 1962, p. 1. 10 ; i importance of avoiding adultery, complacency and bad cook- | ing. Furthermore, whereas characters are developed at i length in Porter's book, they are not in Brant's (unless thej fool in general is alleged to be one character). In summary, the new Ship of Fools is a closely drawn picture of a limited subject. It leads to definable ends. The German forerunner is its antithesis— a collection of unamalgamated fragments. One of Zeydel's introductory comments about it is telling. We need not, he says, "read the book from beginning to end to understand it" (p. 17). j ; i Thus, though it would be foolish to rule out the possi-i bility that some future critic may find an illuminating j relationship between the books, I must admit honestly that I have not. It seems to me that, in broad terms, Porter i has done just what she announces she has done, and rela- i tively little more— taken for her own the "image of the j ship of this world." j A Note on Past Criticism j I I Porter has enjoyed, at least until the publication of j i I Ship of Fools, an extremely high critical reputation. As late as 1960 James William Johnson, in an essay entitled "Another Look at Katherine Anne Porter" in which he summarized criticism of her work, could observe that "Since her first story, published in 1930, Miss Porter has never 20 ! gotten a completely unfavorable review." I Contrary to what one would expect, however, there has not been extensive critical and interpretive publication on : Porter's work. And a great part of what has been done is somewhat pedestrian. The malady is perhaps typified by the relatively great attention paid to cataloging "themes," which usually has meant the listing of subjects. One is occasionally and uncomfortably reminded of E. M. Forster's description of the study that classified novels by 21 weather. Edmund Wilson, for example, groups all the stories into three units— "stories of family life," "pic tures of foreign parts," and "stories about women"— and concludes that he feels Porter is saying something but that I 22 he is unsure about putting it into words. James William Johnson discovers six major "themes" in Porter's stories, i i "themes" such as "unhappy marriages" (pp. 602-605). And in i | | ^Virginia Quarterly Review. XXXVI (Autumn 1960), 598. j 2• ' ■Aspects of the Novel (New York, 1954), pp. 12-13. ! | 22"Katherine Anne Porter" (rev. of The Leaning Tower j and Other Stories), The New Yorker. September 30, 1944, pp. j 72-75. | his dissertation, Lee William Yosha finds four "themes" in the stories— people "in conflict" with "the past," "the j ] family," "a male constructed world," and "foreign attitudes." j The conclusion he draws is that "Miss Porter1s contribution : to the art of the short story is one of consummation rather 23 than invention." There are, of course, other conventional approaches to Porter’s art. Edward F. Murphy has written a dissertation outlining similarities between the works of James and Porter i (and, by implication, suggesting James's influence). He notes certain biographical similarities as well as like inclinations to religious skepticism and a reverence for art. Then he observes that these writers share interest in the subjects of the international situation, the artist, j and the problem of awareness. There are, unfortunately, ■ serious deficiencies in the study. Murphy fails to account j I for salient dissimilarities between James and Porter (such i i as the fact that one was chiefly a novelist while the other is chiefly a story writer) and he neglects almost totally the subject of technique. Furthermore, he makes some j | 23 CJSee the unpublished doctoral dissertation (University of Michigan, 1960), "The World of Katherine Anne Porter," pp. 6, 242. questionable simplifications about the content of their work. He writes, for instance, that the true dignity and greatness of man is achieved, according to the two artists, when he applies his reason to his predicament.24 Others have attempted to link Porter to a particular literary group or tradition. Ray B. West, in an inconclu sive and diffuse essay, claims to see Porter as a particu- 25 larly southern writer. Elsewhere he more convincingly attaches her to the tradition of Hawthorne and Melville.*^ Robert Kiely finds similarities between the work of Porter and that of other sometime Catholic writers, Evelyn Waugh 27 and Graham Greene. There have been several attempts to survey the whole of Porter's work in detail. Harry J. Mooney's The Fiction 24see the unpublished doctoral dissertation (University of Ottawa, 1959), "Henry James and Katherine Anne Porter: 'Endless Relations,'" p. 58. ^"Katherine Anne Porter and 'Historic Memory,’" Hopkins Review. VI (Fall 1952), 16-27. i | 26west, Porter, pp. 14, 45. Hawthorne and Melville are also cited as Porter's particular literary forebears by John P. McIntyre in "Ship of Fools and Its Publicity," Thought. XXXVIII (Summer 1961), 212. : I 27"The Craft of Despondency--The Traditional Novel ists," Daedalus. XCII (Spring 1963), 220-237. 14 and Criticism of Katherine Anne Porter is probably the weak est of these efforts, consisting as it does almost exclu sively of plot summaries with voluminous quotations from the 28 Itexts. What few generalizations are drawn about technique and content are obvious. Edward Schwartz’s dissertation, j "The Fiction of Katherine Anne Porter," is also wandering and very general and contains almost nothing on technique, j though it does have a certain amount of useful biographical | 29 ! and bibliographical information. Schwartz's chief weak- ! ness is in his tendency to make sweeping statements without : j the slightest reference to the text. The previously cited j University of Minnesota pamphlet by Ray B. West, despite its limitations, does give short explications along with plot : summaries. j j A few studies do attempt to come to an over-all under- | standing of Porter's work. The longest of these is a book ^^Rev, ed., Critical Essays in English and American j Literature, No. 2 (Pittsburgh, 1962). ( t ^See the unpublished doctoral dissertation (Syracuse, j 1953) . It should be noted that Schwartz expanded the bib- ! liography from the dissertation into Katherine Anne Porter; A Critical Bibliography (New York, 1953). This includes a short introduction by Robert Penn Warren and constitutes a helpful listing of primary and secondary material to the date of its publication. ! 15 j 1 ; by William Nance in which it is asserted that "At the heart | j :of Katherine Anne Porter's literary achievement lies the ! i principle of rejection." This appears chiefly, according to| i i Nance, in Porter's semi-autobiographical characters (the i Miranda figures, loosely defined) as they are "threatened by an oppressive relationship with other persons" (oppressive as the characters' principle of rejection makes "every rela-: j tionship oppressive") and reject that relationship for ; j "independence— isolation." Non-autobiographical protagon ists are unable to accomplish such a rejection, though they ; i i desire it, and end in an "unhappy or even mutually destruc tive marriage." Again, though here one must admire the ; effort to get to the bottom of Porter's beliefs, serious problems arise. Centrally, of course, Nance’s extreme j i i i conclusion— that her final "wisdom is . . . a complete re- i j jection of life"— is questionable. Beyond this, however, j the isolation of the motif was apparently guided by bio- j graphical correlations— Miss Porter's early elopement and } ! subsequent series of divorces— but there is never any justi fication offered for calling Laura in "Flowering Judas" autobiographical, for example. Furthermore, the idea of rejection is worked too diligently. Nance tries to make even Granny Weatherall fit his pattern by alleging, without ^evidence, that she despises men and has a "puritanical fear ! of sex." And he concludes, by an unreasonable extension of i | his thematic analysis, that "The key to her [Porter's] stylistic power would seem to have been . . . her instinct • -30 of rejection. Three other attempts to formulate a statement of Porter's vision should be mentioned. An essay by Edward i Schwartz, "The Way of Dissent: Katherine Anne Porter's Critical Position," generalizes that Porter is a humanist i without a theology. Schwartz establishes this by reference ; 31 to her essays rather than her fiction. In a short piece, j i i "Katherine Anne Porter: Misanthrope Acquitted," Patricia R. Plante suggests, on the basis of Ship of Fools, that ' Porter is at heart an orthodox Catholic and that her ! i near-despair at the sight of . . . ["man's failure"] . . . may be conceived in a love far greater than one j reflected from the type of superficial humanitarianism j missed in her. . . . j While one may agree with this latter idea, it is difficult j i to follow Miss Plante to the conclusion that Porter is an j i I 30grother William Leslie Nance, S. M., Katherine Anne Porter and the Art of Rejection (Chapel Hill, 1964), pp. 3, 7, 8, 5, 42-43, 213. 3^~The Western Humanities Review. VIII (Spring 1954), 1119-130. 1 7 ! orthodox Christian. She makes this generalization in one brisk and dizzying paragraph; there she finds Herr Graf a i profoundly right man and sees a suggestion, in the epi- J graphs to parts I and II, that "Man is a pilgrim on a voyage 32 to eternal [and not temporal] happiness." Finally, S. H. Poss has written an article on just four of Porter's stories: "The Circus," "Old Mortality," "Pale Horse, Pale ! Rider," and "The Grave." In this short essay he discovers : "a quasibildungsroman" and a quest for meaning that ends in i j an acceptance of inexplicable things as they are. A recon- j 33 1 ciliation with life is held to be Porter's final vision. : 1 Studies of Porter's method are rare. In a dissertation on what he terms "stoppages of narrative flow" (places where i the average reader might find difficulty following the t story) in selected modern short stories, Allen Wallace I Graves discusses three stories by Porter. He counts "stop- j pages" in five categories: limited presentation of facts, abstruse grammar and ^Xavier University Studies. II (December 1963), 89- :90. 33"Variation on a Theme in Four Stories of Katherine Anne Porter," Twentieth Century Literature. IV (April-July ;1958), 21-29. 18 j j j structure, difficult imagery, [and] peculiarities of psychic process and questions of significance. Oddly, this never once leads him into a discussion of point of view. His conclusion is that Porter's writing is not j especially difficult (compared with that of writers such as ; 34 William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf). A more enlightening study is Sarah Youngblood's essay on structure and imagery in "Pale Horse, Pale Rider." She comes to no startling conclusions, but simply and carefully demonstrates how the details of symbol and image help build the final plan of the s t o r y . j i i By far the most attention paid to Porter's method has j been, however, in the form of one and two sentence genu flections to her "style." Allen Tate has called it "beyond 36 doubt . . . the richest in American fiction." Robert Penh 3^See the unpublished doctoral dissertation (University of Washington, 1954), "Difficult Contemporary Short Stories: William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, Dylan Thomas, Eudora Welty and Virginia Woolf," pp. 147-161. 35"structure and Imagery in Katherine Anne Porter's 'Pale Horse, Pale Rider,'" Modern Fiction Studies. V (Winter 1959-1960), 344-352. 36"A New star," The Nation. October 1, 1930, p. 352. 1 19 | i 37 i Warren has termed it "enchanting." And so on. One critic actually did do an essay-length study of style in Shin of I Fools - but the result was a somewhat dismal catalog of parts- 38 of speech. Understandably, Porter has said, "I've been called a stylist until I really could tear my hair out" (p. 107). The matter of point of view has received very little i attention. The one exception is a fine essay by Marvin Pierce on point of view in "Noon Wine," In it he traces the! shifts in perspective with great care. His terminology is good and he frequently is able to reveal interesting detailsj ! about how the angle of vision changes (for example, he notes| I on pp. 95-113 that shifts to Mrs. Thompson's viewpoint al- j ways involve some sound, a detail reinforcing the fact of Mrs. Thompson's bad eyesight). ; To conclude this resume of criticism it seems in order briefly to glance at the reception given Ship of Fools, not j I i forgetting that the expectations this work had aroused prior 1 | i 37"]frony with a Center: Katherine Anne Porter," in | Realism and Romanticism in Fiction, ed. Eugene Current- ! Garcia and Walton R. Patrick (Chicago, 1962), p. 490. 3^Robert B. Heilman, "Ship of Fools: Notes on Style," Four Quarters. XII (November 1962), 46-55. 20 to publication were very high. As far back as 1945, when the word was already out that Porter was at work on a novel, Vernon Young wrote: One can safely declare that if, with her past excellen cies, she can contrive longer novels with greater social scope and dramatic complexity, she will be nothing less than the great American novelist that our age has de- ! manded. . . . (p. 341) In other words, Olympian standards were set for Porter's i book before it appeared. i The popular press was initially enthusiastic. Mark Schorer wrote for the New York Times that "It fShip of Fools 1 would have been worth waiting for another thirty years" and that it would "endure for many literary genera tions." He found in it "nothing (or almost nothing) harsh" and praised "characterization" and the "thematic unity" of 39 the book. The reviewer for the New York Herald Tribune echoed all this when he wrote that Ship of Fools "brings i jnone of the disillusionment usually associated with long 40 awaited things." These turned out to be the only 39"We're All on the Passenger List," New York Times Book Review. April 1, 1962, pp. 1, 5. | ^Louis Auchincloss, "Bound for Bremerhaven— and Eter- jnity," New York Herald Tribune Books. April 1, 1962, p. 3. I i 21 important statements of undiluted praise. Howard Moss, in The New Yorker. admired Porter's vision as "tough" but felt j the book lacked "a particular magic she attained so many ; 41 times on a smaller scale." Granville Hicks, writing for The Saturday Review, concluded that Ship of Fools. "for all its lucidity and all its insights, leaves the reader a 42 little cold" because it seems to offer no hope for man. ; James Finn, in The Commonweal, observed that the book was technically masterful but the thematic statement too bleak ! (pp. 212-213). Terry Southern of The Nation found both 43 ' technique and content dull. Writing in The New Republic. ! Stanley Kauffman voiced many reservations; he felt that even! 44 ' Porter's style had become inept. 41,1 No Safe Harbor," April 28, 1962, p. 72. 42"Voyage to Life," March 31, 1962, p. 16. One might | note here that the state of Porter criticism probably reached its lowest ebb in The Saturday Review when, in his j weekly column, John Ciardi remarked, "I'm still looking for j someone who read Ship of Fools and wasn't bored" (May 23, :1964, p. 11), and then printed reader responses such as, "Though Miss Porter's/ Words be jewels,/ I could not get through/ Ship of Fools" (July 18, 1964, p. 8). 43"Recent Fiction, Part I: 'When Film Gets Good,'" November 17, 1962, pp. 330-332. 44"Katherine Anne Porter's Crowning Work," April 2, 1962, pp. 23-25. I 22 | ! , | Scholarly criticism has generally been severe, though the reviewer for Sewanee Review praised Porter's depiction of the relationship between Jenny and David as having veri- i similitude to psychological fact, and a critic for Thought, i John P. McIntyre, found, contrary to most, that the book was! a positive one ("Ship of Fools persuades everyone that human 45 living requires decision and involvement"). More typi cally, Wayne C. Booth, writing in The Yale Review, felt that! the book had "no steady center of interest" and that the characters illustrated the same malady, a cold heart, with i 46 i monotony." The judgment of the revxewer for Maxnstream i was that "this novel is all finely wrought surface, with no 'depth" (p. 47). Daniel Curley observed flatly in Kenyon ; 47 | Review that "Ship of Fools is a bad book." It is so, he | I believed, because Porter had striven too desperately and j openly to make her point. She had indulged in allegory to | | the extent that her characters were only two-dimensional. j i I ^Smith Kirkpatrick, "Ship of Fools." LXXI (Winter j 1963), 96; "Ship of Fools and Its Publicity," p. 220. 46"Yes, Are They Really Novels?" LI (June 1962), '632-633 . : 47"Katherine Anne Porter; The Larger Plan," XXV (Autumn 1963), 672. i i ..” 23~1 i I ! I ; ! The same objection was raised in part by Theodore Solotaroffj |in Commentary in what is probably the harshest attack on the; : _ I book to date. His central objection, however, was ■ that no effective principle of change operates on the j action or on the main characters or on the ideas, and hence the book has virtually no power to sustain. . . . | The personages on the ship soon become predictable, j and . . . a sense of sameness spreads like a yawn. Further, in Solotaroff's opinion, the "technique is just | 48 I modish." j British reaction was similarly extreme. A woman re- j viewer for The Spectator called it "The Great American j Novel," though she conceded that those characters who were i 49 i ugly were perhaps too ugly. Many critics for the negative! i i i tended to simile and metaphor. Robert Taubman of The New j ' i ; | Statesman found Ship of Fools "solid enough, up to a point— j ' i solid and soft at the same time, like a fruitcake." The j problem, he felt, was in the characters who were no more j 50 I than "cut-outs." Anne Duchene wrote for the Manchester j i i I I 48"Ship of Fools and the Critics," XXXIV (October 1962), 279. 48Sybille Bedford, "Voyage to Everywhere," November 16, 1962, p. 763. 50"a First-Class Passenger," November 2, 1962, pp. 618- _ ____________________________ 24 Guardian Weekly that "though an elephant is pregnant an impressively long time the result, when it comes, is an elephant." The book, she thought, failed to go anywhere. '"Perhaps twenty years' rumination gave rise to too much cud, 51 coarsely speaking, and not enough spit." The Times Lit- i erarv Supplement found Porter's allegory simplistic (whether jPorter really understood the causes of Nazi Germany was questioned) and her characters caricatures. The verdict: | 52 ! '"The novel is a drastic failure." j : ! This study is not designed to arrive at an evaluation |of Ship of Fools. Because of the extreme reviews it is iperhaps legitimate, however, to make one or two observa tions. It should be remembered, I think, not only that | |pre-publication expectation was high, but that upon the i appearance of the book it received, from the perspective of i the academy, the kiss of death— it became a best seller. For these reasons, among others, there is a fevered abso lutism in many of the reviews that suggests the final loca- ! ition of the book will be somewhere short of either heaven 51"Twenty Years a-growing," November 8, 1962, p. 11. S 52»Qn G00a ship Vera" (anon, rev.), November 2, 1962, p. 837. 25 or hell. Certain attacks on it were so patently inane (Porter, for example, was directly and indirectly accused of anti-Semitism in her portrait of Lowenthal) that they i 53 have already died away. Other criticisms with some justi fication will, I suspect, be tempered, j 1 A Definition of Terms I In order to conduct the following study, precise ter- i I minology has been required to describe the narrative methods i I that are used by Porter. Developing proper nomenclature has not been easy since, although there are many terms in use on l (the topic of point of view, there is no widely accepted set | tof definitions that is adequately detailed. The attempt to pstablish and use tight definitions has also been hampered j I by the fact that Porter does not maintain one perspective S i with Jamesean strictness. She clearly does rely on limited j points of view, but she indulges in minor interruptions just I often enough to disturb the purity of a label. All of which has meant that, to a degree, generalization and subjectivity have been necessary evils. Whenever feasible, exceptions have been noted, though frequently to note all small ^Finkelstein, p. 46 ; Solotaroff, p. 283. exceptions would have meant a cumbersome and irrelevantly complex presentation that seemed too high a price for per- i feet accuracy. j The following, then, are classifications used in this study: | | 1. Third person limited: passages of this type, narrated in the third person, allow the reader to 54 j enter the mind and viewpoint of only one character. ! For example, Chapter 33 describes a call Dr. Schumann makes to La Condesa's cabin; we learn of the entire scene— of the heavy aroma of "Turkish cigarette smoke,1 ' f : 1 her drugged condition, her sexual advances— from the - 55 . i doctor's perspective. Diction and a few details may, i : | however, sometimes exceed one character's point of view ! ! | and thereby indicate the author's presence. Thus Chapter 68 tells, via Frau Rittersdorf's perspective, of her refusal to buy from Tito a ticket to the dance;' l . : i : i ^Though there is not a direct correlation between jthese definitions and those Marvin Pierce uses in his study,; j"Point of View: Katherine Anne Porter's Noon Wine." I do 1 wish to acknowledge indebtedness to his work. 55xatherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools (Boston, 1962), p. 117. All subsequent references to and quotations from Ship of Fools are from this edition. Page numbers will be j noted parenthetically in the text. i 27 I as she speaks to him we understand parenthetically that Frau Rittersdorf is "in full stride as mentor" (272), a remark apparently from Porter as it implies a more j thorough acquaintance with Frau Rittersdorf than Tito has. Short descriptive passages by the author that lead directly to or away from the character's point of view have, furthermore., also been considered, for the purposes of this definition, legitimate inclusions, i Chapter 26 is, therefore, designated third person limited despite the fact that the first two paragraphs j are outside of Lowenthal's experience. They describe ; a meeting between Lizzi and the Captain that will directly affect the Captain's subsequent meeting with Lowenthal. 2. Character-to-character; narration of this kind i is identical with that described above except that the reader is allowed to enter more than a single i point of view, though only one at a time. Chapter 147,; j for instance, enters the limited perspectives of Mrs. | i i Treadwell, Jenny, and Freytag. Character-to-character| | j narration differs from omniscient narration in the I I relative extent of the entry made into any one vision, j In the character-to-character method, each section 28 from a limited point of view is customarily full and sustained. There is, for example, usually no change of point of view within a single paragraph. 3. First person; a character within the story ad dresses the reader directly. Point of view is, logi cally, restricted to the speaker's. Though a form of this narration can be found in Ship of Fools in the diary of Frau Rittersdorf (it is of minor importance: the longest example occurs on 267-268), Porter uses it chiefly in short stories such as "Hacienda," where the > entire action is related by a woman who visits the hacienda. 4. Omniscient editorial: the author presents to the reader any or all facts, exterior or interior to his j i characters, and includes direct authorial interpreta tion and/or evaluation. Thus, in Chapter 49, one | paragraph begins from Johann's point of view, changes I I j to Concha's, and ends with a generalization directly j from the author about Concha ("She was . . . not yet ! | hardened altogether ..." [184]). j i 5. Omniscient neutral: as above minus the direct I i I f | authorial commentary (it is readily admitted that all I words are to some extent interpretive and/or 29 evaluative; therefore the distinction is a frankly relative one). Units of to a page of third person limited narration may occur within omniscient neutral j sections and, for the purposes of this definition, not alter the classification. 6. Objective: the author relates to the reader only ; what is visible or audible, almost as if she were a | conventional playwright. Chapter 38, for instance, j ' ; i simply describes what the Huttens say and do as they 1 I get up in the morning. It should be noted that such sections need not be absolutely free of metaphors and i ; ! similes if they appear to be central for the vivifi- cation of the exterior description. Thus, for exam- i ; I | [ plSj when Pepe goes back to Amparo "cautiously as a I cat" (128) one must decide whether Porter is saying ! he is animalistic and therefore objectionable, or is just trying to describe with a kind of impressionistic I ! i accuracy the lithe quality of his movements; in the I | i neutral context of the surrounding description, the i latter seems closer to the truth. j The attempt has been to treat a chapter as the smallest! I unit for definition whenever possible. In some cases, how ever, major breaks in point of view occurred at other than chapter divisions (as in Chapter 3, for instance) and chap ters themselves had to be broken up. As a general rule, what would otherwise be described as omniscient neutral chapters are divided if they contain more than one page of third person limited narration, and what would be charac- Iter-to-character chapters are divided if they contain more |than three pages of third person limited narration. CHAPTER II POINT OF VIEW IN WORKS PRIOR TO SHIP OF FOOLS ; It has been said that Porter's "successes [with the ishort story] have always stemmed from . . . [using a] , , . j | severely limited viewpoint. . . . I wish briefly to ex- 1 ; jamine the truth of this statement in order to establish a i icontext for detailed study of Ship of Fools. A realization | i ; 'of the degree to which point of view is manipulated in Porter's stories justifies paying it close attention in her | ! 2 hovel. And an understanding of how point of view is used | ^Daniel Curley, "Katherine Anne Porter: The Larger Plan," Kenyon Review. XXV (Autumn 1963), 691. | I ; | fear 0f duplicating the kind of mistake made by | jthose who have been inattentive to point of view is, on the j other hand, perhaps an even more impelling motive. One j feels, for example, that cognizance of the angles of vision j involved might have prevented the following: "Primitive people do not lack a sense of humor. In spite of the vio lence, a strong comic feeling pervades 'Maria Concepcion.' j . . . The story has some fine passages describing mental and emotional states, and some of these passages are comic" in the short fiction alerts us to both similar and new uses in Ship of Fools. j The first fact to observe is one of proportion. Among j Porter's twenty-six major stories, twenty-four involve the 3 use of restricted perspectives. Eighteen are narrated j , largely in third person limited. Three stories are told wholly, or almost so, in the first person. Conventional I omniscient neutral is used only twice. Another three ! i stories involve a mixture of viewpoints. | The tabulation above makes at least two things clear. First, Porter often employs point of view in unorthodox i ways. And, second, her use of point of view there does not parallel her use of it in Ship of Fools. For instance, i [ though there are certain editorial intrusions (usually small ones) made by Porter in the stories, they are never sizable (Winifred Lynskey, Reading Modern Fiction [New York, 1962], p . 450). •^This is counting as major neither the minute "retold" Arabic tale, "Adventures of Hadji" (Asia, XX [August 1920], 683-684), nor fragments of larger works, such as "A Bright Particular Faith A. D. 1700" (Hound and Horn. VII [January Jl934], 246-257) from Porter's projected book on Cotton Mather. It is, however, including two stories that are, inexplicably, omitted from almost all general discussions of Porter's work ("The Martyr," Century. CVI [July 1923], 410- ■413; "Virgin Violeta," Century. CIX [December 1924], 261- 268). _____________________________ enough to warrant labeling an entire story omniscient edi- j torial, as are whole chapters of the novel. Nor does the extensive use of third person limited narration in the stories, to take another example, have a proportionate counterpart in Ship of Fools. Despite the fact, however, that Porter's earlier fic tion does not stand as a precise, technical forecast of Ship of Fools, the major function of point of view in the | i stories is often broadly congruent with certain of its uses i I in the book. Specifically, characterization and interpre- j i tation frequently depend in both the stories and the novel ; j upon an adroit maneuvering of perspective. Our sympathy for; Dr. Schumann, no less than for Maria Concepcion, depends, | ! for example, upon third person limited narration that con vincingly reveals motivation. In the following pages we shall consider ten stories, seven of which are from the large group of third person limited works. Of the additional stories, one uses first person narration, one omniscient neutral narration, and one mixed viewpoints. In the final selection of examples, it should be added, consideration was also given to over-all merit. Stories Employing Third Person Limited Narration Included under this heading are the following: "Old I i Mortality," "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," "The Source," "The ; Witness,! ' - "The Circus," "The Last Leaf," "The Grave," "The ! Fig Tree," "Virgin Violeta," "Magic," "Rope," "He," "Theft,"j "That Tree," "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall," "Flowering | Judas," "A Day's Work," and "The Leaning Tower." Immediate-! | ly notable is the fact that nearly half of the above— j specifically, the first eight— are concerned in some way i with the fictional character of Miranda. Only one other j j story by Porter, "The Old Order," deals with her, at least j j by name. Because so many of the stories in third person j limited are linked by this subject matter, the first four I ! examined here will be from this group. They will follow I Miranda from early childhood through to age twenty-nine, \ ! 4 our final picture of her. ''The Fig Tree" Though it is impossible to know precisely, the heroine ^The order in which the stories have been published has not always corresponded to the order of the events de scribed. "The Fig Tree" appeared in 1960, "The Grave" in j ;1935, and "Old Mortality" and "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" in 1938. appears to be five years of age. She is taken for the isummer by her father and grandmother to the country to visit the grandmother's sister, Eliza. Before leaving their small] town residence, however, Miranda discovers and buries a deacj chick. To her horror, once it is buried she believes she hears, coming from beneath the ground, a small, injured cry.! ! Her father calls and, afraid to discuss her feelings, she is i forced to leave, believing the bird alive and suffering. Later, on Eliza's farm, she hears again the same sound. To : i Miranda's enormous relief, Eliza— a salty and affectionate i j old lady who Uses snuff and spends her time peering through j i a telescope and microscope— tells her not to be frightened. | | The noise is that of spring tree frogs. At the heart of the story is Miranda's discovery both I I of the fact of death and of the possibility that it may not j be final. On the one hand, her initial understanding of j i j death is inadequate. There is no emotional content in it. She knows it as it has been explained by her elders. Mama was dead. Dead meant gone away forever. Dying was something that happened all the time, to people and everything else.^ C Katherine Anne Porter, "The Fig Tree," Harper's Maga zine . CCVI (June i960), 56. All subsequent references to and quotations from "The Fig Tree" are from this edition. 36 When she finds the chick her response is matter-of-fact. The only problem, she believes, is that she may not be allowed to bury it. "Lazy," said Miranda, poking him with her toe. Then she saw that he was dead. Oh and in no time at all they'd i be setting out. . . . (56) I But once the chick is in the ground, death becomes something; more. It involves suffering— "the very sad little crying sound" she hears is "Weep, weep" (57). i Miranda's discovery, however, goes beyond this. In an ! anticipation of her final insight, she looks through Eliza's; i telescope at the moon, a common symbol for death, and ex- i claims, J "Oh it's like another world[" ; "Why of course, child," said Great-Aunt Eliza, in her ! growling voice, but kindly, "other worlds, a million other! worlds." "Like this one?" asked Miranda, timidly. j "Nobody knows, child ..." j "Nobody knows, nobody knows," Miranda sang to a tune in her head, and when the others walked on, she was so dazzled with joy she fell back by herself. . . . (59) Seconds later she learns from Eliza that "Weep weep" is the sound of "the first tree frogs" and that the sound "means it's going to rain" (59). Presumably the fig trees under which they are walking no longer stand for death (it is by Page numbers will be noted parenthetically in the text. 37 such a tree that Miranda discovers the chick; later, as a consequence, she shrinks from some "black figs" that are i offered her). She will, with the help of Eliza who has j j recently delighted in examining a raisin under her micro- i I scope, be able to see again what she knew at the beginning I of the story— that the figs in the country are not black but "soft greenish white" (56). The fruit stands finally not as a harbinger of death, but as a seed. In vague but important terms, life is understood to triumph. i This story is, then, one of education. As it is posed j at the beginning, Miranda must learn her ultimate destina tion. The Negro housekeeper tells her, "Now you're all ! i ready to set out." But Miranda can only respond, I "Where are we going, Aunty?" Miranda could never find out about anything until the last minute. She was al ways being surprised. (55) I A limited point of view is rigorously maintained. We I I i see everything through Miranda's eyes. This procedure is j i justified, as it often is in Porter's writing, by the fact that the story is centered upon a discovery made by the protagonist. The entire work builds toward new insight for Miranda, and a technique that allows the reader to experi ence both her ignorance at the beginning and then her shock of discovery, is obviously vital to the efficacy of the I 38 | j j 'narration. "The Grave" | ' ] Miranda is, by the time of this story, nine. She and j her brother Paul happen on the empty grave of their grand father. His body has been freshly exhumed so that it can be placed beside their grandmother's. In the excavation Miranda discovers a small silver dove, broken from the casket, and Paul finds a gold ring. The children exchange . treasures and walk on. Paul subsequently shoots a pregnant j I ; j rabbit and Miranda begins to understand, as Paul opens the j i rabbit, the secret of birth. Twenty years later, in a ; Mexican market, she observes some candy rabbits for sale and recalls the early incident. The point of view is again Miranda's, and it is again appropriate for a story of education. There is, however, j an interesting variation in "The Grave": the first and last 6 pages are from her perspective as an adult. In the begm- i ning this allows for a fuller setting of the scene than j ^ i ^The opening point of view, it must be said, is never conclusively established as Miranda's as opposed to the author's, but it seems reasonable to suppose that it is Miranda's since it is definitely she who speaks in the same authoritative tone at the end. 39 would be possible through a child's eyes. We learn, for example, that the grandfather has been "dead for more than ; ! i thirty years," a detail that would be meaningless to and j I 7 I hence unconsidered by a nine-year-old. The mature angle i of vision takes us, additionally, into the subject matter with directness and assurance: young Miranda is described as "Scratching around [in the excavation] aimlessly and pleasurably as any young animal . . ." (70). The comparison; I is apt because at the center of the story is her discovery ! | of the fate which men and animals share, participation in j j birth and death. When her brother explains, "They [the j young rabbits] were just about ready to be born," she ans- i wers significantly, "I know, . . . like kittens. I know, j like babies" (77). The mystical linking of womb and tomb, which it the theme (symbolized by the casket's silver dove I I that has "a deep round hollow in it" [70] suggesting a womb, and by her new knowledge of birth gained at the death of the 8 rabbit) is made as she likens man to animal. And when ^Katherine Anne Porter, "The Grave," The Leaning Tower and Other Stories (New York, 1944), p. 69. All subsequent References to and quotations from "The Grave," as well as "The Old Order," are from this edition. Page numbers will be noted parenthetically in the text. ®The adroit use of symbols in this story is explored 40 I adult Miranda, at the beginning, compares herself as a child ;to "any young animal," she alerts us to the importance of ! this equation. j i i It is a commonplace that often the best criticism of a | story is another story. This is particularly true as "The j Grave" (1935) relates to "The Fig Tree" (1960). It could be argued that the latter is forced. Miranda seems to realize too much too quickly. Her joy at the end is so secure that it appears to be that of an adult rather than a J child. In "The Grave," however, by altering the final anglq | of view in time, Porter allows for a more lifelike conclu- i : J j sion. Miranda learns of death and birth, but, at nine years old, this "worrisome affair" causes only "confused unhappi- j ness" (77). Not until she is twenty-nine does "the mingled sweetness and corruption she had smelled that other day in the empty cemetery at home" become focused enough to convey meaning and peace. With the memory of that experience, the dreadful vision [of the market] faded, and she saw clearly her brother, whose childhood face she had for gotten, standing again in the blazing sunshine, . . . ! a pleased sober smile in his eyes. . . . (78) lably by Charles Kaplan in "True witness [sic]: Katherine lAnne Porter," The Colorado Quarterly. VII (Winter 1959), 1324-325. Poss and Nance, cited in Chapter I, are also among a sizable group of critics who have dealt with this issue. "Old Mortality" j ; i ; As Charles Kaplan has summarized, "Old Mortality" is 1 i | about 1 1 the attempt of each generation to understand itself j by understanding its past ..." (320). Part I depicts Miranda (eight years old) and her sister, Maria, as they ■learn from their elders about the family's romanticized idol, their father's sister, Amy. She had tormented her suitor, Gabriel, for five years, and involved her brother | I I In a shooting in the process. Suddenly she had then mar- j : i ried Gabriel, only to die herself six weeks after the j i marriage. In Part II the girls (Miranda is ten) are taken i i by their father to a horse race where they meet Gabriel, ■ then a drunken failure. Part III of the story tells of j i Miranda, eighteen and unhappily married, meeting a distant | ; t relative, Eva, on the way back to Gabriel’s funeral. From Eva, Miranda learns of a darker side to Amy, and vows to strip away her own romantic inheritance. There are at least three ways in which the use of point. ; i of view is appropriate. Initially, this work, too, is one of discovery, and for that reason the largely restricted |view— Miranda’s— draws us into the story. The opening [sentences, describing the two little girls as they consider ja picture of Amy, emphasize the limits of their and our ; 42 i j jperspective (the italics are mine): I She [Amy] was a spirited-looking young woman. . . . She sat thus, forever in the pose of being photographed. j . . . Quite often they wondered why every older person who looked at the picture said, "How lovely"; and why everyone who had known her thought her so beautiful and charming.® We understand in Part I that they are living in a context that fosters myth. "There were never any fat women in the : i family" (4) their father declares adamantly. The girls are j ■left to wonder, "how did their father account for great- launt Eliza, who quite squeezed herself through doors . . . ?" j i (5). Amy's story, in this situation, is allowed to stand a^ I !"a sad, pretty story from old times" (4) . I Part II opens with intimations of a newly critical I S attitude. The girls are reading Gothic horror stories, butj | they recognize that, in the stories, "things happened as i nowhere else, with the most sublime irrelevance and unlike lihood" (40). It is during this time that they finally see Amy's idealized husband, "a shabby fat man with bloodshot blue eyes" (46), "Completely drunk" (50). And Miranda, who Katherine Anne Porter, "Old Mortality," Pale Horse. Pale Rider (New York, 1939), p. 3. All subsequent refer ences to and quotations from "Old Mortality," as well as "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," are from this edition. Page num bers will be noted parenthetically in the text. 43 has dreamed of being a jockey, sees a winning horse. It is j i : "bleeding at the nose" and "trembling." If "That was win- j : i ning," she decides, "she hated it" (49). The children j [learn that the ideal is at least frequently not fact (the context for this first discovery is ironic since they win a j bet on a horse at one hundred to one odds). j Part III begins humorously when Miranda sits on Eva's j jhat. It is an act of ignorance that forecasts the conclud- | jing sentence of the story, a statement directly from the ! i ! i I [author to the effect that it is impossible ever to be fully \ I ! knowledgeable. In this section, however, Miranda and we j ! j continue to learn. Amy was to some (Eva's statements are ; hot to be taken at face value since Miranda catches her i exaggerating known facts) "a devil and a mischief-maker" (7 0) and may, Eva hints, have been pregnant by another lover before marrying Gabriel. At this revelation, Miranda de cides to shun those who try to "forbid . . . [me] . . . making . . . [my] . . . own discoveries" (87), to stop being i "romantic about myself" (88), and to "know the truth about what happens to me" (89). We have seen that third person limited is appropriate [for a story about learning because it draws the reader into [the primary movement of the work. By the same token, it is [equally appropriate to abandon it When the author wishes to ; j * jsay that learning is, at least in some senses, impossible, j • 1 Thus Porter here appends two direct words at the end of the j : I story (the italics are mine): j At least I can know the truth about what happens to me, she [Miranda] assured herself silently, making a promise I to herself, in her hopefulness, her ignorance. (89) j This authorial undercutting, it should be noted, comes not as a complete surprise. There have been two brief intru sions of Porter's perspective not far back, both suggesting i limits in Miranda's sight (Porter says first that Miranda i is thinking with "arrogance" and "pride" [84]; later she observes that Miranda does not understand the nature of some j of her questioning [87]). The truth of Porter's final two j | words has also been suggested dramatically. Miranda's | elopement was an act of rebellion against her family and j the authoritarian rule that characterized her childhood. Her father had disliked it: "... there had not been [any welcome for her] since she had run away" (82-83). She had, in other words, evidently pursued in the past the same goals |to which she dedicates herself now. But she had managed only to resist in a way quite in keeping with the spirit of the family's pet, Amy. Elsewhere, man's general inability I to know himself also becomes apparent in Eva's confusion of ! 45 i ! [love and hate toward the family. On the one hand she is j [venomous in its denunciation— "the whole hideous institution should be wiped from the face of the earth" (81)— but by the ;time she sees Miranda's father she is "smiling merrily" | ‘ i (84). Miranda's attitude is clearly just as disordered. [While she wishes that her father would accept her, she also hates him (85). Self-knowledge is another delusion. It has already been implied that, while the point of ■view is generally limited in "Old Mortality," it is not ! ;always limited to Miranda. In the opening two sections we [see the story through the perspectives of the two sisters, Sometimes collectively, sometimes individually (in the latter instance, usually via Miranda). Significantly, this | [is also true of other stories— "The Source" and "The Wit ness"— dealing with Miranda's early years. It is telling because in the final section of "Old Mortality" and through out "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," where we see Miranda in later life, unified points of view are abandoned in favor of i Miranda's alone. The effect of this strategy in "Old Mor tality" is to reinforce our sense of Miranda's struggle, j [which is to discover who she is. As we move almost imper i l ceptibly in and out of the point of view shared by the girls: i during the first two sections of the story, we realize that 46 i [ -there is nothing particular to distinguish Miranda from aria. If she is to mature in her understanding of her own Identity she must differentiate herself from others. j Last, as a minor point, a restricted perspective is, in this story, used for humor. Porter's work does not con tain, relative to that of many modern writers, extensive j comedy, but what there is here is based on point of view. Miranda, for example, thinks of John Wilkes Booth as he was | i described by her Latin teacher— 1 1 dressing up and [after shooting Lincoln] leaping to the stage shouting in Latin"— and concludes, with no understanding of assassination, "how i • i could she disapprove of the deed?" (15). j i"Pale Horse, Pale Rider" j Miranda, twenty-four, works as a drama critic in a j mountain city. It is 1918, and she has met an Army engin- j ieer, Adam, who is on leave before going to Europe. They ispend time together as her work allows. The days are a jcollage of moments of unspoken affection set against the background of the war. Miranda eventually contracts flu, jan epidemic of which forms part of the over-all context of jdeath. Her irrational will to live saves her, but she I jawakes to learn that Adam has himself died of the sickness. I M j The crux of the story is the fact that death changes | i ] [permanently one's understanding of life. Everywhere people j talk shallowly of death because they have not encountered | | ] i | lit. Bond salesmen invoke the name of "Belleau Wood" (186) j without having been there, and women feel sorry for the hospitalized soldiers because "they're all crazy to get overseas and into the trenches as quickly as possible" ;(191). To this world Miranda returns, after her illness, | I "an alien" (257). Miranda's new insight, gained in the fevered uncon- j | sciousness of her disease, is that an acceptance of life is j hot a matter of reason and intellect. At the time when j ; I : j death is near, the will to live, seen by her as a tiny I | flame, refuses to capitulate (the italics are mine): that fiery motionless particle set itself unaided to | resist destruction, to survive and to be in its own j madness of being, motiveless and planless beyond that one essential end. (253) The peaceful vision that follows Miranda's compliance with I the will to live is wholly beyond ideas: "questioning i nothing," she sees "pure identities . . . without calling j their names . . ." (254)."^ i ! ■'■^This key passage has been variously interpreted, j Sarah Youngblood, for example, understands it as a ! It is fitting that an acquiescence to life which avoids: jconceptions be presented as much as possible in terms of perceptions. In this case they are images. Miranda I i looked upon a deep clear landscape of sea and sand, of j soft meadow and sky, freshly washed and glistening with j transparencies of blue. (253) In this and similar passages the use of a restricted point 1 of view finds one of its justifications. If there is to be ;a portrayal of a perceptual fact, it is surely desirable to i tnake it as direct as possible. Any paraphernalia that j suggests a conceptual filtering of the experience, such as j description of a "mystical experience" ("Structure and Ima- i gery in Katherine Anne Porter's 'Pale Horse, Pale Rider,'" j Modern Fiction Studies. V [Winter 1959-1960], 351). She jimplies that it is a vision of the eternal which thereafter ialienates Miranda from the temporal. The facts seem to me bo be otherwise. The "stubborn will to live" asks Miranda jto "Trust me" (253). She offers no protest so it appears jthat she does. She then has a vision of peace that, in view of the foregoing, logically seems to be of life (signifi- I ;cantly, it is a "landscape" [253]). The fact that its one j ;disturbing element is the absence of her lover further sug gests that it is an earthly rather than a transcendent Ivision since her fear throughout the story is that he will die. All of which is not to deny that Miranda seems fre quently to regret life after returning to it. She even speaks of herself as one who "does not mean to live" (258). The fact remains, however, that, like the major in Heming- jway's "In Another Country," Miranda does not become a nihil- list. She asks for cosmetics and a cane, and refuses to turn ito the dead. She thinks, "Oh, let me see you [Adam] once more," but then rebukes herself: "Oh, no, that is not the way, I must never do that" (246). authorial interpretation or even summary, vitiates the depiction. Related to the above, if death is to be understood as having a new reality, it must no longer be just an idea, lit must become, instead, specific. Consequently Porter has [Miranda repeatedly encounter death during sleep in horrible ! jpictures. It is a "stranger" on horseback with a "blank i ; jstill stare" (181), "a writhing terribly alive" jungle (232); j | land so on. Again, if the new truth is to be concrete, it i : I |is right that methods be avoided which would distance a [reader from experiencing it directly. i Similarly, one of the chief contrasts in "Pale Horse, [Pale Rider" is between generalities and what is true for an ! individual. Miranda listens to a speaker and thinks: j i [ j . . . buy Liberty Bonds. . . . Say that over, I didn't catch the last line. Did you mention Adam? If you , didn't I'm not interested. (222) : i |By having virtually the entire story from one perspective, I ' i j ' | Porter reinforces the significance of specific circumstance^ I i for a single character. The technique emphasizes the fact j j that the war is meaningful not in the abstract but in its | [ effect on a particular person. Third person limited, furthermore, helps Porter real istically to show the dreams that comprise a large part of the work. Most of them are nightmares and the method rein- ! forces the claustrophobic quality of such visions. Were we i | permitted, as Miranda is not, to step away from them, their i ! terror would be diminished. ; ! [ A thoroughly limited perspective facilitates, moreover,; 1 i t i a sustained portrayal of the heroine's unconscious thought. | j j This portrayal is important because the associational pro- i gression of the thought is part of what forces home the j | linescapability of death. Again and again an innocent ele- I ment, often the antithesis of death in her conscious mind, will happen to the fore in a dream and be altered into a symbol of annihilation. Miranda believes early that she can forget war "in sleep" (182), but this is disproved. When ! with Adam she thinks, making a pun on his name, that he is ■"like a fine healthy apple" (198). During sleep, however, • i the thought is resurrected and transformed into a disturbing ’ realization that, in the tranquil scene of which she dreams, "'There are no trees" (254). Elsewhere, in a joking effort 'to sustain her spirit, she suggests to Adam that she might i i pray to Apollo (239) . This innocuous fragment is expanded | grotesquely in sleep to an image of the murder of Adam by 51 singing arrows (242)."^ She is trapped, awake or asleep, j by the fact of death, and Porter's sustained entry into her | perspective makes possible a convincing depiction of her torture by association. "He" i The Whipples, who are farmers, have three children, among them a retarded son named He. Mrs. Whipple attempts for years to give Him special care. Her "life . . . [is] j ; i 12 ; . . .a torment for fear something might happen to Him." The reason for anxiety becomes clear in the course of many j | small incidents. Before her brother's family arrives for dinner, Mrs. Whipple discovers that He has dirtied himself: i i !"Get off that shirt and put on another, people will say I | idon't half dress you’ ." (67). Later, when He falls on ice and has a seizure, the doctor recommends that He be sent to ^Both of these examples are explored by Youngblood, pp. 351, 349. She explains, in relation to the latter, that j"Apollo is associated with pestilence and plagues, which in iGreek drama are often referred to as the darts or arrows of an angry Apollo." •^Katherine Anne Porter, "He," Flowering Judas and Other Stories (New York, [n.d.]), p. 63. All subsequent ref erences to and quotations from "He," as well as "Flowering Judas," "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall," and "Maria Con cepcion," are from this edition. Page numbers will be noted parenthetically in the text. 52 the County Home. She responds, however, "I won't have it said I sent my sick child off among strangers" (75). In j ishort, she lavishes her attention on Him because, as she | Jblurts out, "I'm not going to have people say anything" i(65). In the course of the narration, however, she is re- j vealed as so tormented by a fear of others' opinions and by ;her daily problem of providing for all her children that ■ I ■she stands as a partially sympathetic figure. In the end, j ; | ■as she accepts the doctor's advice and accompanies Him to i ! ithe County Home, she experiences a crushing insight. She jsees that He is crying; "He seemed to be accusing her" (77). i I 'For the first time in the story she is concerned with Him j ■rather than the neighbors. She herself cries uncontroll- i j jably, and the sudden genuineness of her feeling is attested i to by symbol. No one stares in accusation: They came in sight of the hospital, with the neighbor driving very fast, not daring to look behind him [into j the back seat where Mrs. Whipple and He sit]. (78) ] With the exception of the first page and half, the ipoint of view is Mrs. Whipple's. The opening paragraph is from the husband and wife's joint perspective, while the second paragraph is apparently from Mr. Whipple's and serves I as an early alert to the tension of the story: "Mrs. Whipple loved her second son, the simpleminded one. . . . 53 She was forever saying so ..." (61). I i Narration relates importantly to point of view in this instance. Unlike "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," this story con tains relatively little that is presented as definitely interior. Most of Mrs. Whipple's perspective is given in a j subtle third person form that nonetheless employs a good ideal of what is apparently Mrs. Whipple's diction and j | ; phraseology. There is a feeling conveyed by the blend that i much may be spoken aloud, but one can rarely be sure. As ! j I j |an example, when she and a neighbor watch Him climb a dan- I : i i j gerous tree, her response is related as follows: j i I i When he finally reached the ground she could hardly keep ! her hands off Him for acting like that before people, a i | grin all over His face and her worried sick about Him j all the time. (64) ! The ambiguity is cultivated. Phrases seem variously ad dressed to herself, He, the neighbor, and possibly Mr. Jtfhipple. Restated, Mrs. Whipple mumbles. "Whenever she ! was thinking, her lips moved making words" (66). As she ! jsets Him to leading a dangerous bull, she prays "under her breath: Lord, don't let anything happen to Him. Lord, you know people will say we oughtn't to have sent Him" (73). jShe wishes to explain her treatment of the boy, which is | not always generous, to those outside, and to herself and jthe Lord inside. Thus her mumbling captures the opposed i jdirections of her address, as does the ambiguous narration ! j i 13 i ithat seems to be both barely thought and spoken at once. i i I | It is, then, in the muttered character of the way we understand Mrs. Whipple's perspective that the whole problem as shown. If we had been taken solidly to the interior of jher thought, she might have obscured her culpability. Had | ! jwe been given only the exterior view, via dialogue, our ■ ! i i sympathy would not have been aroused. As her view is par- | i ; i J itially voiced we get a strong sense of her pitiful effort j ! ■ i ; i :to satisfy both herself and her neighbors. j ! ! I ; Flowering Judas" ; i : i j The justification for the use of third person limited j |is here very clear. Almost the entire conflict is inner. Laura, a twenty-two-year-old American girl in Mexico to work ifor the revolution, entertains, against her wishes, a mar ried revolutionary leader, Braggioni. He sings at length, but little is said. She reports that she has delivered to j | i | -^Brother Paul Francis Deasy, F. S. C., suggests jthough does not develop this idea when he points out that |an important motif in "The Grave" is "what is said versus what is felt" ("Reality and Escape," Four Quarters. XII j[january 1963], 29). ! one of their men, held by the enemy, a narcotic with which ! Ihe has subsequently killed himself. Braggioni goes home to | his wife, whom he has not seen for some time. Laura cannot Is leep. I The problem posed is one of Laura against herself. This is symbolized by Braggioni1s courtship of her which she detests but cannot successfully terminate. "Laura has begun to find reasons," the story opens, "for avoiding her | own house . . . for Braggioni is there . . ." (139). The j ftruth is that Braggioni is her double. Both have played Judas to their ideals as they have indulged themselves while! i ! I ! supposedly committed to the common good. Braggioni is fat and wears a "lavender collar, crushed upon a purple necktie, held by a diamond hoop" (143). He is "a professional lover Of humanity. He will never die of it" (152). For her part, Laura is in Mexico ostensibly to help human beings, but whenj she is near them she rejects "Kinship in one monotonous word. No. No. No" (151). Thus, these two who claim to be humanists emerge as nihilists: Braggioni dreams of the day i When "this world . . . shall be merely a tangle of gaping jtrenches, of crashing walls and broken bodies" (156). And i I j i I 56 i 14 [Laura is frigid. Restated in a central image of the i : ; i I i 'story, it is revealed that she has given a previous suitor [ i I : ! a sign such as Judas gave Christ, an apparent acceptance of ! | i ilove that was in fact a complete rejection of it. j "If you will throw him one little flower," her maid had | advised her, "he will sing another song or two and go away." Laura threw the flower. . . . (149) j Later she notes that "throwing the flower was her negation i i of all external events . . ." (150). The story is, then, a taut one of a person unable to j : 1 j | lescape from herself (symbolically, Braggioni) and the con- j ; tradictions of her life, summarized in the title. . . . she cannot help feeling that she has been betrayed irreparably by the disunion between her way of living j and her feeling of what life should be. . . . (142) To limit our view to Laura's view is really, therefore, j [not to restrict our knowledge of the conflict. Antagonist and protagonist are both encompassed in the single per- ispective. j As in "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," the accommodation is i i ] iclear between the point of view and the necessity of showing ■^This, I think, is to be understood as a tendency in Laura that is of symbolic importance rather than as a psy chological determinant that reduces the story to a case history. jthe heroine's stream of consciousness and unconsciousness. jThroughout the story we see her resist the truth. At a | icritical point during the evening "she thinks in spite of jherself" that "It may be true I am as corrupt . . . as jBraggioni ..." (145). But the force of this insight j Idiminishes. Then Laura, "who feels herself bogged in a |nightmare" (155) even when awake, literally has such a dream ; ! i ias she enters sleep. The remarkable conclusion of the story !shows Laura trapped by herself on all levels of conscious- f ! : i j ness. After Braggioni's departure she "puts on a white j linen nightgown" (159), symbolizing her virginal rejection ! j i I of gray life, and tries to sleep. She counts, "1-2-3-4-5" I (159), but in the twilight of consciousness, when the mind's; I 'control is weak, she suffers an agonizing moment of light. I i"It is monstrous to confuse love with revolution, night j Iwith day, life with death ..." (159). Afterward she sleeps, but her failure is then simply reformulated in dif ferent terms. She has brought Eugenio death, so, in her ; j Isleep, he brings it to her. Addressing her profoundly as i j"poor prisoner" (160), he offers her a distortion of the Holy Communion. He likens flowers of the Judas tree to the jblood of Christ and of himself, and commands her to "Eat i jthese flowers" (160). When she does, he accuses her: ! 58 I j i "Murderer I said Eugenio, and Cannibal! This is my body and! my blood. Laura cried No'." (160). An act that is to be one iof confession and forgiveness and brotherhood has been per- j | verted into a parody, just as Laura's life has been. ! I It should be noted, finally, that there is one para- | sgraph in the story from Braggioni1s perspective. His return ! i ;to his wife is described. This is not a tangent, however, jwhen we remember that Braggioni and Laura are parallel, and ■ J J ■that a description of one illuminates the other. In this j lease, Braggioni, an unfaithful person, comes to a faithful j i i i lone. His wife, who has "no reproach except grief on her j I : I face" (158), washes his feet. ; i : I The Jilting of Granny iWeatherall" i | Ellen Weatherall, eighty, lies in bed with an undefined illness. Her daughter, Cornelia, and a doctor come and go. The old woman's condition worsens as she alternately sleeps land wakes. She dreams of her full life with her deceased i t Ihusband, John, but also of her one defeat— she was jilted i first by another man. As she dies, with her family hazily grouped around, she prays for a sign from God, but there is j inone. "For the second time there was no sign. Again no i j jbridegroom . . ." (121). ! ' 5 9 ! j i | We are here limited strictly to the protagonist's view,! E |and again the method works toward Porter's ends. Specifi cally, it allows us to contrast Granny Weatherall's inner ; f j jspirit with the surface condescension of those with her. j This could have been done with an omniscient mode of narra- : ition, but it seems naturally to be reinforced by third per- ; ison limited. Any entry into the spectator's point of view, ; ! i jwhich might have been awkward to avoid, would weaken the i contrast. As it is, we see them only as they speak and act j before her, and the effect is to strengthen the story. We j ! ! ! I [understand that she is cut off from them but that her spirit. I I i _ . jis far from gone. Thus, for example, in the opening scene 'the doctor treats her as a child, saying "Now, now, be a good girl, and we'll have you up in no time" (121). Her thoughts, which we share, indicate perfectly that she is not about to relinquish her position as matriarch. "The | ■brat ought to be in knee breeches," she thinks; "... takej | your schoolbooks and go" (121). We must, furthermore, see her with the intimacy of third person limited if we are to understand her goodness of heart. Viewed from without it would be natural to con clude that she is just a troublesomely eccentric old lady. I [A case in point occurs when, in her delirium, she recalls 60 how she had earlier feared death but had subsequently "got j i over the idea of dying" to the extent that "Now she couldn't be worried" (124). She then remembers how her father, on ! ! J his one hundred and second birthday, announced to the press that his longevity was the result of "a noggin of strong hot jtoddy" (124) each day. "He had made quite a scandal and was yery pleased about it. She believed she'd just plague Cor- s ■nelia a little" (124-125). Whereupon she awakens partially, 'asks for some hot toddy, and says she is cold because "Lying i I !in bed stops the circulation. I must have told you that a I | | thousand times" (125). It is apparent that, seen from the I i Surface, she is a garrulous nuisance. If we link the tiny ! | yerbal exchange with the thought process before it, however, jwe have an engaging portrait. ! i j A lengthy interior view is also desirable so that the Jsignif icance of the two jiltings can be made clear. As in "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," a single perspective helps in an adequate portrayal of the protagonist's unconscious mind. Associational mechanisms again are important; here they show how heavily the first jilting weighs on the heroine. De spite her successful life and determination to forget the event, it still obviously lies just under her consciousness. Repeatedly her unconscious mind is drawn to it: 61 I want to pick all the fruit this year and see that nothing is wasted. Don't let things get lost. It's bitter to lose things. NoWj don't let me get to thinking. . . . (128) Furthermore, the immediacy of the method helps us understand j ithe magnitude of the final jilting as it allows us to share j l : I ! the depth of Ellen Weatherall's prior faith. There is lit- i i tie to be said of the following passage except that it ought not be changed: i i I Lighting the lamps had been beautiful. The children I huddled up to her and breathed like little calves wait- ! I ing at the bars in the twilight. Their eyes followed | the match and watched the flame rise and settle in a j blue curve, then they moved away from her. The lamp | was lit, they didn't have to be scared and hang on to mother any more. Never, never, never more. God, for all my life I thank Thee. Without Thee, my God, I could never have done it. (127-128) Finally, it should be noted that the whole story is a progression toward the legitimizing of what the protagonist I j resists: "The thing that most annoyed her was that Cornelia ! thought she was deaf, dumb, and blind" (125). We understand from abortive fragments of address that Ellen Weatherall gradually loses the tools of communication, and because of the method we share her growing sense of isolation. Were we allowed to leave her view, her predicament would seem far less pressing. 62 Stories Employing First. Person Narration Three of Porter1s stories are narrated in the first person— "Hacienda," "Magic," and "Holiday." The first, which deals with a Russian film company in Mexico, is widely conceded to be unsuccessful. Very diverse elements are not well unified thematically. The second story, "Magic," is i one of the shortest in the canon. A Negro hairdresser tells her customer of a prostitute who, trying to quit her job, was beaten severely by the madam of the house where she worked. The prostitute was then allowed to leave, but, because this affected business, the madam and a Negro maid, using black magic, cast a spell on her to make her return. Eventually she did. The first person narration is neces sary for the brutal irony on which the story rests. The hairdresser credulously ascribes to magic a reappearance i that is really a matter of economic survival. "Holiday" The narrator, making a retreat from undisclosed prob lems, goes to stay for a month with the Mullers, a large immigrant family in East Texas. While there she observes a silent and crippled girl, Ottilie, whom she first believes a servant because of the family's inattention to her. 63 Later, however, it becomes clear that Ottilie is a member of the family. Though the narrator thinks for a time that the others' indifference is cruel, she comes to understand that "they with a deep right instinct had learned to live 15 with her disaster on its own terms, and hers [Ottilie1s ]." Later, during a storm, Mrs. Muller dies. The family sets out by wagon to bury her, but leaves Ottilie behind. The crippled girl cries, and the narrator starts to take her to the burial. It soon becomes apparent, however, that Ottilie's need is only for compassionate attention. The story teller decides simply to take her for a rest by the river. The truth that "There was nothing . . . [she] . . . could do [in a large sense] for Ottilie" (56) is again recognized, but it is modified by the realization that she and Ottilie "had escaped [isolation] for one day" (56). First person narration here makes possible a useful beginning to the tale. By establishing an open and informal atmosphere (the story teller speaks casually of "this story I am about to tell you" [44]), the reader's customary demanc, •^Katherine Anne Porter, "Holiday," The Atlantic Monthly. CCVI (December 1960), 53. All subsequent referen ces to and quotations from "Holiday" are from this edition. Page numbers will be noted parenthetically in the text. 64 that a short story be indirect yet to the point is, in some degree, usefully circumvented. The impression conveyed is almost that this is not to be a literary effort but an un planned, oral presentation. In this spirit the author is free to begin by giving the reader a helpful, abstract statement of what the story is about. She says that she was having personal difficulties and, before going to the Mullers, had not learned "that we do not run from the troubles and dangers that are truly ours," but "if we don't run from the others, we are fools" (44). In most cases an opening of this sort would be a clumsy impertinence. It is not in this instance. The story, for two reasons, is filled with extensive passages that do not at once appear to be moving in any particular direction. One such reason is that Porter tries at length to convey a detailed picture of the landscape. Another is that much of the story deals with Ottilie's separation from the household, and Porter's method has been to describe events in which we might expect to find Ottilie, but from which she is excluded. The structure of the work is, then, potentially confusing. An opening the matic summary, facilitated by the informality of the first person narration, is thus a valuable element. Though the story is told in the first person, the 65 perspective is generally (though not wholly, as is illus trated by the opening passage) limited to the protagonist's j at the time of the action. Since this, too, is an account of discovery, the point of view is justified in the same way I j as it is in the Miranda stories. If a discovery is to be ; that, we as readers understand its weight more if we share | it. Particularly is this so in "Holiday," where the fami ly's language is foreign and Ottilie is dumb. When, for i example, the narrator learns that the crippled girl is a j Muller, it is through a picture (Ottilie had, at one point, looked like her brothers and sisters, but was later deformed by a childhood disease). And when she discovers that I | jOttilie does not really care about going to Mrs. Muller's burial, it is by holding her and watching her face. The i insights of the narrator are direct and initially simple, jand the closer we stand to them the more meaningful they I I are. There is also some justification for limiting our point of view to that of the visiting girl when one considers the character of the Mullers. They are united in their tribal skepticisms, as in everything else. . . . they were all, even the sons-in-law, one human being divided into several separate appearances. (49) . 66 Learning the entire story from the closely restricted per- i spective of an outsider suggests this cohesion strongly. Stories Employing Omniscient Neutral Narration The relative inconsequence of Porter's writing under i the above classification is notable. In only two stories @oes Porter use omniscient neutral narration, and one of these, "The Martyr," is short and perfunctory. A painter dies of over-eating while he assures himself and others that what is destroying him is his love for a past model. Char acterization is minimal, and the irony of the story is not particularly clever. "The Old Order" Once again the setting is Miranda's youth, though here Porter's concern is not with the girl. Instead we are given a lengthy description of how Miranda's grandmother and "old i Nannie," the colored housekeeper of the same age as the grandmother, sit together and recall their arduous past, tfe learn that the grandmother had, when young, owned the Negro. Later, as each had children, they nursed the other's offspring. Toward the close of the story there are details of how the grandmother, after her husband mismanaged financially, had saved her family by moving it to Texas. f We are also told of the grandmother's attempt to guide her I children's adult lives, and of her sudden death. It is difficult to say with certainty what the theme jis. Some emphasis is placed on the fact that in the old order there was a peaceful union of black and white. i During all their lives together it was not so much a i question of affection between them as a simple matter j of being unable to imagine getting on without each ! other. (41) j i i ] iThe subject is then largely ignored in the second half of I |the story, however, where the main emphasis seems to be on the indomitable strength of the grandmother. j Point of view is, in effect, omniscient. We switch i rapidly among the grandmother's, Nannie's, the children's, the author's, and other points of view. Far from there i j being a rationale for this method, it seems to me that the ;diverse perspectives may, at least in part, account for the ! 1 i jfailure of the story. There appears no more justification for the proliferation of viewpoints than there is for the wide assortment of facts and topics included. It is taxing to find any thematic relationship, for example, between Nannie's experiences as a slave and the grandmother's in bringing up her children. Generalizations are made and left 68 to stand without development. The grandmother thinks, for instance, of the day that "was the beginning of her spoil ing her children and being afraid of them" (55). Nothing in the story corroborates this belief or expands on its importance to the grandmother. Elsewhere, two sentences j raise a problem of enormous scale: not until she [the grandmother] was in middle age, her husband dead, her property dispersed, and she found her self with a houseful of children, making a new life for them in another place, with all the responsibilities of I a man but with none of the privileges, did she finally J emerge into something like an honest life: and yet she I was passionately honest. She had never been anything else. (49) But again, remarkably, this is all we learn of the topic. iWhile it would be presumptuous to say definitely that a i I [story handled in another way would have been more success- ! ful, it seems reasonable to guess that limiting the point i iof view might have helped shape the story more adequately. Finally, it is once more illuminating to compare stor- jies. Specifically, the grandmother in "The Old Order" is, in many ways, like Granny Weatherall. Both women feel a satisfaction in the gains they achieved for their families on the frontier. And both are separated from generations that have followed their own. Porter has further tried to show that the grandmother in "The Old Order" is, as is 69 Granny Weatherall, a sympathetic figure. Indeed, the authorj tells us openly during this latter story that she is "just, j humane, proud, and simple" (46)."^ But it is exactly this method of informing us that so basically separates these i i ! ^ : jstories . In the end, the heroine of "The Old Order" emer- jges, rather oddly, not as particularly "humane" but as a Ispecies of tyrant. We miss the long, wonderfully humaniz- 5 j ; i i jing, interior views that are given us of Ellen Weatherall, ■ | and in their place we have only short passages from the j 17 ' grandmother's memories. They lack, frequently, immediacy | : | jand warmth. She recalls how she "had tried to bring about j i ! better marriages" (44) for her children, and how, in rather | I | godlike fashion, she had arbitrarily fixed Nannie's birth- ;date (37-38). The author tells us directly that the grand- ! i I ; | mother "took pleasure in reassuring" Nannie about God's j ; j concern for Negroes, j -^This is one of three brief editorial intrusions. JThe others occur on pages 51 and 54. | | -^William L. Nance, S. M., observes that "There is . . . ia charm about Granny Weatherall which is lacking in the j . . . Grandmother [of "The Source" and "The Old Order" ]" j (Katherine Anne Porter and the Art of Rejection [Chape1 Hill, 1964], p. 42). He believes, however, that the dis tinguishing element is Granny Weatherall's sense of humor. 70 I ! | as if she, who had been responsible for Nannie, body ; and soul in this life, might also be her sponsor before i the judgment seat. (51) j ; i |At the end of the story there is another authorial note, I I ■ Istating that i The son had long ago learned not to oppose his mother. He consoled his wife by saying that everything Mother was doing could be changed back after she was gone. As this change included moving a fifty-foot adobe wall, | the wife was not much consoled. (56) j Now it may be that this despotic side of the grandmother's | | ! ^character is the point of the story, but if it is, it is | | pdd that Porter should try to counter it so directly at ! I l : i other times. What seems to me probable is that we get an | unintended impression of extreme harshness because, as is j i I ; i hot the case with Granny Weatherall, we do not see enough | bf her experience from within. We note only her power over I bthers without sufficiently understanding the motives behind her exercise of it. Stories Employing Mixed Viewpoints ! I Three of Porter's stories— "The Cracked Looking-Glass," | "Noon Wine," and "Maria Concepcion"— use a variety of per spectives. The first is composed of third person limited sections from a husband's and wife's point of view ■alternately. "Noon Wine," admirably dealt with by Marvin 1 \ 'Pierce, uses third person limited, character-to-character, and omniscient narration."^ I j i I i ;"Maria Concepcion" j ! A Mexican peasant woman, Maria Concepcion, stops at the; ! I house of her neighbor, Maria Rosa, to buy honey. Instead of making a purchase, she overhears her husband, Juan de Dios, ; i making love to Maria Rosa. Juan subsequently leaves his work with an American archaeologist, deserts his pregnant j | wife, and goes away with Maria Rosa to fight in the revolu- ! ! I , , \ [tion. After a year, during which Maria Concepcion's baby is. j j i i born and dies, Juan and Maria Rosa return and Rosa has a child. While Juan is drunk, Maria Concepcion stabs her rival to death. Juan then forgives her and she takes Rosa's j | child for her own. Though it is not particularly evident from the plot alone, chief among the conflicts in the story pis an implied one between Maria Concepcion's Catholicism, exemplified by her name, and her basically pagan character. ! The initial section, detailing Maria Concepcion's dis covery of her husband's infidelity, can be generalized as ! I \ \ 18 | "Point of View: Katherine Anne Porter's Noon Wine." Ohio University Review, III (1961), 95-113. 72 ; third person limited. Having her view is necessary in order that we sympathize, as Porter apparently wishes us to do, with the murder she commits. We must be inside her as she sees Juan with Rosa: "boiling water seemed to be pouring down slowly along her spine" (7). "Her ears [were] strum ming as if all Maria Rosa's bees had lived in them" (8). She burned all over now; as if a layer of tiny fig- cactus bristles, as cruel as spun glass, had crawled under her skin. (8) iThe same section contains, however, a good deal of intro ductory material clearly presented by the author. This, j too, is necessary because some of it is Maria Concepcion's \ j history, which would not have come up otherwise in the course of the story. And some of it is small but important ^ I I : detail, often in revealing juxtapositions, that Maria might | j not have noted about herself, detail suggesting the tension ! ! I in her between what is pagan and what is Christian (e.g., ! i "She . . . [was] . . . an energetic religious woman who could drive a bargain to the end" [4-5]; she had gotten j "married in the church, instead of behind it" and "was always as proud as if she owned a hacienda" [5]). Section two is omniscient neutral, which is appropriate! jsince the object is to summarize with dispatch Maria Concep cion's life during her husband's absence. Then, throughout 1 73 ! i i the remainder of the story, the point of view alternates ' ( j i largely between Juan's and Maria Concepcion's. The former's ! I j vision is needed if we are to understand his strange (by j t i Our standards) allegiance to and forgiveness of his wife. j : i Maria's is necessary if we are to feel the guiltless calm j | with which the story is concluded. She sits with Rosa's "child . . . cradled in the hollow of her crossed legs" (35), an image suggesting birth. j She breathed, . . . very slowly and quietly, each in spiration saturating her with repose. The child's light, faint breath was a mere shadowy moth of sound ! in the silver air. The night, the earth under her, j | seemed to swell and recede together with a limitless, I ' unhurried, benign breathing. (35) , j Among the stories examined, "Maria Concepcion" comes i perhaps the closest in technique to Shin of Fools. This j is so as the variety of points of view employed in the storyj forecasts Porter's versatile handling of perspective in the novel. Third person limited, valuable for providing an intimate understanding of Maria, is equally advantageous for j the presentation of complex figures like Mrs. Treadwell. The character-to-character narration (roughly speaking) at the close of the story, important because it permits us a sustained and full view from both sides of a newly complex relationship, is also crucial in Ship of Fools, where it allows Porter to juxtapose and thereby compare attitudes in : her travelers. Omniscient neutral, utilized in "Maria Con- ; cepcion" to give background material that would not logi- ically arise in dialogues or in Maria's thoughts about her- j i jself, is instrumental in the novel as it makes possible a rapid delineation of the many secondary characters, And, i just as omniscient neutral covers quickly the time of Juan's absence, so the same technique is obviously suitable for bridging and summarizing periods of relative insignificance j aboard the Vera. | ' Having observed that "Maria Concepcion" is similar, in jits diversity of methods, to Ship of Fools, it is then plain i ' I that the majority of stories, most of which are unlike j i"Maria Concepcion" in technique, do not precisely foreshadow | I Ithe novel. This is due, in part, to the specific require- ! ■ | jments of individual stories. For example, extensive use of | third person limited narration is warranted in "Pale Horse, iPale Rider" because, as noted, it contributes to the veri- ! similitude and immediacy of the protagonist's dreams. Since such dreams do not play a central part in Ship of Fools, the method is, in this one respect at least, unneeded. Conversely, point of view is used in some new ways in 75 ! I I | the novel because of its size and apparently rather differ- 1 ent purpose. Unification of such a relatively large work | j ]is, for example, an obvious problem; Porter therefore alter-] ; I jnates perspectives in Ship of Fools more than she does in Ithe stories so that she can show the same topics in many minds and thereby construct leitmotifs. Further, Porter seems to wish to make a more clearly evaluative statement in ithe novel, and to this end she contrasts one point of view i ; i with another for irony. Restated, she uses more narration j i that allows for several perspectives, less third person j i I limited narration, and no sustained first person narration, j j j j Moreover, as she wishes unmistakably to evaluate, she re- ] i sorts to omniscient editorial narration, a technique not psed in the stories. Within the above limits it is, nevertheless, possible to see how Porter's frequent restriction of point of view in her short fiction was probably a useful background for jthe composition of Ship of Fools. There are, at least, some i ! generally similar functions performed by limited perspec- ! tives in both the stories and the book. Sometimes these congruent uses are relatively peripheral: point of view i is, for example, occasionally narrowed for the purpose of lumor. And insights are made more our own when our perspective is bounded like the protagonist's. Just as we I share, with powerful directness, Miranda's final understand-| j I jing because we also share her innocence at the beginning, | 1 i Iso Dr. Schumann's discovery of his guilt seems a more genu- j linely new revelation because we have seen little more of j I the preceding and incriminating acquaintance with La Condesa! than he himself has seen. This similarity with the stories,| ; j however, is obviously of only moderate importance; Dr. ' I , I Schumann's relationship with La Condesa is almost the only ! i j major one on the ship seen from just one viewpoint. j More notable is the manner in which Porter uses a I i i I I limited point of view in certain of the stories and the I ; S j novel to depict and stress the significance of inner dis- I I ! cord. Restricting our perspective to Laura's in "Flowering j Judas" is appropriate, we observed, because it focuses our attention squarely upon the chief area of conflict— Laura i against herself; the same technique can be justified in i I Ship of Fools when Porter shows self-tormented people like | | Jenny and David. Additionally, limiting the point of view in some of the short works and in Ship of Fools helps with the realistic | Construction of random mental processes leading to new in- j sight. As we are allowed to follow, uninterrupted, the 77 j meandering path of a character's thought, his or her stumb- iling upon a major truth seems credible. This is so with j ; j jrespect to Frau Hutten's sudden and apparently accidental insight into the total failure of her marriage, just as it j is so for the discovery Laura makes on the edge of sleep. Also important both in the stories and the novel is the! I use of sustained passages from limited perspectives in order j to reveal a character as sympathetic. If judged by their j | j outward behavior, figures such as Granny Weatherall and j j i * * i • Maria Concepcion would be, as we have noted, far from win- I ! ning. Similarly, it is necessary for us to see, in depth, j i I ■the motivations of persons such as Dr. Schumann and Mrs. | Treadwell if we are to understand them as fundamentally j : I i |admirable. I To summarize, then, Porter utilizes restricted points of view extensively in the stories, though the applications jmade there of the technique do not precisely forecast the i I tasks to which point of view is later put in Ship of Fools. Generally speaking, the tendency in the stories is to employ more narration from a rigidly confined viewpoint than in 19 the novel. In both the short fiction and the novel, j | ^Marjorie Ryan, in an essay comparing the stories and however, Porter uses limited perspectives to emphasize interior conflict, to make accidental insight more believ able, and to delineate characters. (Ship of Fools, has written that the latter is significantly Idifferent as it places the reader at a greater distance froir the characters. Whereas in the stories we are often brought into a close and therefore sympathetic relationship with the protagonist, in the novel, because of the frequently "omni scient point of view . . . [and] . . . authorial comments," there is a feeling of "detachment" ("Katherine Anne Porter: Ship of Fools and the Short Stories," Bucknell Review. XII [March 1964], 60). CHAPTER III ; | ! I I POINT OF VIEW AS TECHNIQUE j Technique is, as we have just noted in the stories, inseparable from the statement made. For purposes of ; ! organized study, however, it is possible to distinguish i certain aspects of a method that are relatively near to or i | ^distant from the final thematic declaration of a work. The jfirst part of the following examination of Ship of Fools is, ! jin this sense, devoted to point of view as a device. - Before beginning, however, it is proper to describe, in j i 1 ;a general way, the nature of Ship of Fools. Divided into j three parts, the story opens in Veracruz, Mexico. Travel- j ers, waiting to board the German ship Vera for Europe, suffer indignities at the hands of the city's casually malevolent populace. Once they are aboard, problems that j ;are to dominate the voyage are established. The only Jew, jfor example, finds that he is to be the roommate of a German I racist. Without any major incidents, however, the ship 80 sails to Havana, where over 800 deportees are taken on as ! I ; isteerage passengers . ! i j Part II tells in detail of life during the crossing. | ! I j j jThere are numerous small episodes of bickering, flirtation, j lust, and excessive drinking. There is, additionally, some j i I j ’ violence. After mass is said for those in steerage, a communist organizer and his few followers battle Catholics. 1 As a result, the Captain has all knives confiscated, includ-j ing that of a Basque wood-carver. Later this same man, I ■ i i ^whether out of despair or courage no one knows, dives into j i ! the ocean after a dog, and drowns. At the Basque's funeral j i ! 1 V . . . !(the body has been recovered), the communist agitator is ! bludgeoned with a wrench by Christian opponents. On the i I upper deck, life is less overtly savage. It is discovered that a German, Freytag, has a Jewish wife, so he is expelled ■from the Captain's table. Later, two fiendish children, Ric Und Rac, steal and throw into the sea a pearl necklace be- j longing to an exiled Cuban noblewoman, La Condesa. i ' The ship stops, in Part III, at Santa Cruz on the island of Tenerife in the Canaries. Many of the steerage | passengers as well as La Condesa are put off. A company of I Spanish dancers subsequently loots the shops of the town for prizes to offer at a masked dinner and dance it is promoting on shipboard. The party is then held at sea and | forms a kind of climax to the book. In the course of it, ithe German racist, Rieber, is struck on the head with a beer ! bottle wielded by a Swede, Hansen. And a middle-aged Amer- | ican woman, Mrs. Treadwell, batters Denny, a drunken young American engineer, about the face with the heel of her shoe. Following this, there is quiet on a public level for the j remainder of the trip into Bremerhaven, j ; i It would be misleading, however, to give the impression! | ; that a few major outbreaks of violence are the entire sub- j ; I iject matter of the novel. Much of the book deals with [ i i j ; smaller and less dramatic conflicts. Dr. Schumann, the ship's doctor, finds to his dismay— he is married— that he | loves La Condesa. He manages to avoid a full confrontation with this fact almost until she leaves the ship, but he cannot escape a sense of remorse. Frau Schmitt, whose husband has just died in Mexico, discovers on the journey what it means to be alone and weak in an immoral world. Rieber tries the entire trip to seduce Lizzi Spockenkieker, i | ja manufacturer of women's underwear, but fails. Tyrannical I IProfessor Hutten faces a brief rebellion by his wife, but i i j they are reconciled sexually. Herr and Frau Baumgartner also feud— he, drunk, threatens suicide, and strikes her 82 when she refuses to believe him— but they too are pacified | by sex. Their son, Hans, is tormented by both of them. j Herr Glocken, a crippled hunchback, endures ostracism and j | | irandom cruelty. Johann, a young German, alternately j ‘ threatens and begs his fanatically religious uncle to free him from his position as servant and to give him money. The! boy ultimately wins, and buys the attentions of a young i i prostitute, Concha, whom he has admired. William Freytag, j | i i i on his way to Germany to bring back his Jewish wife and I 1 i ' I mother-in-law to Mexico, betrays the former in an abortive j j j jaffair with Jenny, an American artist. Jenny and her more | serious lover, David, another artist, quarrel periodically | during the trip. Though they enter Bremerhaven in apparent I accord, they clearly will separate. Mrs. Treadwell dallies | with a ship's officer but retreats from that and other re- j i lationships which might involve decisive commitment to others. Elsa, a fat eighteen-year-old Swiss girl, learns jthat she is ugly and will never be romantically sought out. j trhe list could be continued to include more minor charac ters, but the diverse, private, and unspectacular nature of much of the subject matter should be clear. Technically, judged by the definitions outlined in Chapter I of this study, Ship of Fools is composed of the 83 following number and kinds of chapters (chapters being an arbitrary term for the unnumbered units formed by the breaks Porter has put in the text): seventy-nine chapters are i jthird person limited, thirty-eight character-to-character, ■eight omniscient editorial, forty-four omniscient neutral, ! 1 i jand seven objective. But again, a caution: these figures j ; j ‘ are to be understood as an imprecise though broadly valid j f Summary of the methods of narration used in the book. There |are many borderline chapters over which it would be possible I i |to argue indefinitely. An Analysis of Point of View in Part I of Ship of Fools Our first goal must be to understand the extent to j ^7hich Porter uses point of view in her novel. To this end ! we shall look at the sequential development of an entire section of the book. While no attempt will be made to deal i i exhaustively with every page, a running survey should sug- igest the depth of Porter's commitment to the technique of manipulating perspective. On occasions, the commitment will be extensive, while on others it will not. An examination ^See Appendix X for a chapter by chapter listing of narrative methods. 84 of passages illustrating the variation is necessary for an accurate understanding of the scope of the topic. A sequen tial investigation will also, of course, begin to show the precise ways in which point of view is used. And the ends i to which it is put, such as evaluation, interpretation, icharacterization, and the linking together of pieces of the novel. | | Chapter 1 (pages 3-4) The novel begins: The port town of Veracruz is a little purgatory between | land and the sea for the traveler, but the people who i live there are very fond of themselves. . . ." The method is omniscient neutral, and with it the author is jable immediately to suggest the kind of clash of perspec- [ ! itives that will dominate the book. A group or individual | derogates another and confronts their rock-like self-esteem. The description of the citizens of Veracruz continues for the remainder of the opening page. Occasionally com ments are hostile: their supposition that they "are above and beyond criticism" is labeled a "charmed notion." And it is observed parenthetically that "the terms ["lavish and aristocratic"] are synonymous, they believe." On the 85 beginning of the next page, however, Porter suggests that i we may not be getting her direct evaluation as much as that j i | iof "the passing eye" (4) of the travelers. j i I ! i I The book begins, then, with a mixture of views. We i j i I are allowed to share some of the citizens1 complacent arro- j Igance toward visitors and "the polyglot barbarians of the 'upper plateau" (3), as well as some of the counter feeling i i j j ! 'that Veracruz is "merely a pestilential jumping off place \ into the sea" (3). By juxtaposing these perspectives, Por- \ ter takes us a first step toward an understanding of her \ i t |diagnosis of man as trapped through his egocentric vision. - i ; I ; (pages 4-5) j ' i ! ! The author next describes, for a paragraph, I j a few placid citizens of the white-linen class . . . i [who] . . . seated themselves at leisure on the terrace | | ^ i of the Palacio Hotel. The following paragraph then sketches a lone person in the square before them, an "emaciated Indian" who is eating a sparse ration "without enjoyment." Because of the proxi mity of those on the terrace to the Indian, and their prob able view of him, the reader naturally enough tends to suppose that the description of him, which is an exterior one, is from their perspective. But the second paragraph ends, "The men at leisure on the terrace did not notice . . j . [the Indian] . . . except as a part of the scene. ..." By building up the expectation of a point of view and then t i shattering it, Porter condemns the "white-linen class." We .feel instinctively that people should be concerned with the j suffering of others, and Porter's method establishes in us for two paragraphs a feeling that, to at least a minimal i | degree, these men are. Then she reveals that the Indian j i t3oes not actually have their attention, and we protest. I I | The men are further characterized and evaluated as j jPorter shows us what does manage to capture their attention. Having failed to note the destitute Indian before them, their gaze fixes "idly" upon some girls who walk by. j ! I ! I I When the last girl had disappeared, the eyes of the ! lolling men wandered then to the familiar antics of creatures inhabiting the windowsills and balconies j nearest them. (5) There follows a description by Porter of certain ani mals on the square in Veracruz. j | A . . . cat . . . [stared] . . . at his enemy the parrot, | that interloper with the human voice who had deceived I him. . . . The parrot cocked his . . . eye towards the ! monkey who jeered at him all day long in a language he ! could not understand. . . . The smell of cracked coconuts j in the vendor's basket on the sidewalk below tempted the monkey. He leaped downwards toward them, dangling in frenzy by his delicate waist, and climbed again up his own chain to safety. 87 Although all of this is restricted to one paragraph, what is clear is that Porter has carefully suggested each animal's limited point of view. The cat in its ignorance has mis taken the bird's call for a human voice; the bird cannot understand the monkey; and the monkey, in its excitement i lover the prospect of food, forgets he is chained. When put jin the context of a book full of people confined by their own perspectives, this early animal passage emerges as a : I meaningful epigraph. If man is to be more than a beast, j Porter seems to suggest, he must somehow learn to surmount, insofar as possible, the restrictions of point of view. ! i : i (pages 6-8) i 1 | | The remainder of chapter 1 is devoted to the consid- jeration, by those on the terrace, of a newspaper article i I describing a bombing. Revolutionaries had intended to jdestroy a landlord's home, but the charge had been mistaken ly set in the Swedish consulate. It had killed a harmless i Indian boy. Point of view remains essentially omniscient, though Porter's manipulation of perspective is rather typically more complex than that designation might suggest. Since encountering the businessmen we have tended to see things 88 I I i i from their angle of vision. We watch, for example, a dog chase a cat, and it is "a fine, yelping, hissing race" (6). ! | On the other hand, we have been reminded that, in fact, what we have is the author's description of what the men's j of view appears to be. Thus we learn that they j j"glanced at . . . [the beggar] . . . as if he were a dog i too repulsive even to kick," and "watched his progress idly j I without expression as they might a piece of rubbish rolling before the wind" (5). Almost never are we allowed within i i Itheir thought. ; When Porter begins to describe the men's reading of j j the paper, a subtle change occurs: They began reading the editorial notice. The editor i was quite certain that no one in all Mexico, and least of all in Veracruz, could wish to harm a hair of the Swedish consul, who had proved himself a firm friend of the city, the most civilized and respectable of all j its foreign residents. The bomb in fact had been in tended for a rich, unscrupulous landlord. . . . (6) Then follows a long passage that is, in effect, from the perspective of the revolutionary editor of the paper. When j Ithis is completed, the chapter closes with a brief exterior i description of a conversation among the readers about the article. What Porter has accomplished is a graceful and impor tant opposition of views. Though we had been relatively 89 within the perspective of the businessmen, she moves us totally into that of the revolutionist as she has the men study, without interruption, the lengthy editorial. Then i porter jars us sharply as she describes the exchange that ensues. At least one of the men owns "thirty-five houses jin the Soledad section," and to him revolutionists are "swine" (7). To the owner of a shoe factory, they are j " cattle" ( 8) . I By taking us into one side and then into the other, I without allowing interruptions, Porter has each expose, grotesquely, its own weakness. Irony is extreme because i overt criticism is omitted. Thus the editor writes: It was clearly the fault of no one that the festival planned in celebration of the bombing had taken place after all, in spite of the awkward failure of aim in those dedicated to the work of destruction. The prep- i arations had been made at some expense and trouble, the 1 fireworks had been ordered and paid for eight days be fore, the spirit of triumph was in the air. ! ample material compensation . . . would be extended to | his [the victim's] grieving family. Already two truck- I loads of floral offerings had been provided. . . . (7) i i i And, with similar asininity, the landlord wonders aloud why they have not been more ruthless in opposing the revolution: "Why not a carload of hand grenades? What is the matter with us? Are we losing our senses?" (8). Point of view is, 90 once again* adroitly used by the author to judge her char acters . Chapter 2 ! I | (pages 8-11) | Again the entire chapter falls under the definition of omniscient neutral* though many small sections are told from restricted points of view. The first paragraph* giving un generous opinions of travelers* begins from the perspective of some of the men on the hotel plaza, but alters to that of ! "The people of Veracruz" (8). Then* in a short second para graph* we see the travelers, "with contempt" (9), from the standpoint of the hotel clerk and waiters. In paragraph 3 there begins a long passage (extending to the bottom of page 11) from the collective viewpoint of those soon to board the Vera. We learn of all the things |they share, from being "imperfectly washed" to "a common hope" (9) that they will get onto the ship without further inconvenience. The significance of this section from their unified perspective is considerable. With relation to the book as a whole* a group view such as this becomes increas ingly rare. As the passengers lose their "anonymous" (10) status and begin to know each other, unanimity of vision 91 is lost. Men appear to be, like the animals in Veracruz, naturally quarrelsome. Furthermore, by telling us in such detail of the feelings and thoughts they hold in common, Porter strongly implies what her theme will be. She points I j | jout, for one thing, that they are selfish: S ! i | The first thought of each was that he must go instantly, ; before the rest of that crowd could arrive, and get his j own precious business settled first. . . . (9) | i 1 jEveryone, moreover, is "separate" (10) and feels pain at j i the indifference of others. Clearly, if all suffer and yet remain antagonistic, there is suggested a way in which life could be bettered. (pages 11-14) From the bottom of page 11 to the top of page 14, Porter returns us to the perspective of the desk clerk and waiters. From their coldly exterior vantage point we [have our first glimpse of some major characters, and begin thereby to sense the harshly critical tenor of Porter's book. The Huttens show ridiculous solicitude for their dog, Lizzi and Rieber enter in their customarily raucous manner, Frau and Herr Baumgartner stupidly fail to understand their son's desire to find a toilet, David argues with Jenny over 92 her manner of dress, and the Spanish dance troupe sweeps onto the hotel terrace demanding food. In most instances jwe immediately see them as bestial, usually because of the perspective we share with the hotel employees. Lizzi is "a peahen" (12), Rieber is "pig-snouted" (12), Hans Baumgartnerj j 1 i ! is "a monkey" (12), Jenny is "a mule" (13), and the Spanish : | dancers are a "noisy . . . flock of quarreling birds" (13). i iPorter thus appears carefully to have chosen the perspective femployed for the first introductions so that it will be i | representative of the generally critical attitudes that per vade the novel. 1 There are, here as elsewhere, some additions. The im- | pression is that we see the scene through the eyes of the j | clerk and waiters, but there are details included that go I i beyond this perspective. Jenny's hair, as an instance, was parted in the middle and twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck, rather old-fashioned looking in New York but very appropriate still in Mexico. (13) These infrequent supplements by the author, however, do not j seem badly to weaken the over-all impression that we are i within a limited point of view. i (pages 14-16) I j Our entry at this stage into Mrs. Treadwell's thought 93 constitutes the first close view we have of any of the major characters. Other central figures have appeared just prior to this, but from a distance.. Mrs. Treadwell will make a i key insight during the voyage, so to avoid an icily remote estimation by others is prophetic. Her relative signifi- j Icance and promise are intimated by the sympathy latent in : i |the technique. I j I There is a small episode, otherwise unnoted, recalled j j I by Mrs. Treadwell in this passage. A beggar had asked her | for "a little charity" and she had replied "that she would certainly . . . [give] . . . nothing of the sort" (14). We I ! i jare thus shown the exact response to human need that her j ; I discovery will challenge. The manner in which we enter and leave Mrs. Treadwell's Ipoint of view is itself significant both because of its ease and its typicality. At the beginning we have watched the Spanish dance troupe from the perspective of the hotel employees. The Spaniards finally shout "at the waiter" (14) for service, and we logically begin to suspect that those through whom we have been observing the scene are becoming too busy to watch it any longer. We are subsequently told of "an inconspicuous woman," which alerts us further to the fact that we may not be within the view of the waiters, a 94 fact established conclusively when we learn that she "re- 1 I garded the Spaniards with some distaste" (14). The shift j j is thus accomplished smoothly with the use of small clues j ! j to warn the reader, and a common subject— the dance troupe— j ! j for both the first and second perspectives. When Mrs. Treadwell's view closes, there is another j ■ ! characteristic juncture. "She drooped, rubbed her handker chief over her face, and looked at her watch" (14). We then [simply hear no more of Mrs. Treadwell. Her eyes fall on i | [something inconsequential, signaling vaguely an end to our ;sharing of her vision. We go on to observe the Huttens feed j Hebe, and to see a crowd stand laconically by as the Indian in the square is mysteriously arrested. A limited point of view fades, as it quite often does, into a bridging section jfrom Porter that simply describes an exterior scene (the arrest of the Indian, for example, is not explained; the ifaces of the police are "secret" [15]). i ' In the description of the Huttens feeding their dog, the use of a distant and neutral perspective can be justi fied on other and more obvious grounds as well. While they drop bits of their lunch into Bebe1s mouth, the Indian, with a "shrunken stomach" (15), looks on. After they leave, the "maimed beggar" eats the scraps, "gobbling and gulping" 95 (15). It is such a loathesome example of man's inhumanity j i that to have any direct evaluation, such as Mrs. Treadwell j f ! jmight make, would only weaken it. Leaving the reader to j ^formulate his own response to the scene is clearly effica- j icious. The picture is instructive, but to force us to sharej it with a repelled observer would be to lead us by the hand unnecessarily. i j At the end of the chapter the perspective apparently j j I harrows and becomes somewhat more that of the travelers. j : i i ! Rieber and Hansen argue over the significance of the Indi an ' s arrest. The silence that ensues among the other pro- [ i ■spective passengers is 1 1 a long hot sweaty sunstricken" (16) ione. i i i ! Chapter 3 I I (pages 16-17) j In paragraph one of this chapter we are introduced to ! probably the most crucial figure in the novel, Dr. Schumann, i i land Porter is clearly editorial in her description of him. He has "a fine aquiline nose, [and] a serious well-shaped head" (16). "Both [a dueling scar on his cheek and "his sixty years"] were becoming to him" (17). His eyes have "an abstract goodness and even sweetness in them" (17). 96 | I ! While some of these remarks might represent the opinion of | the travelers in general, their tone is so strong that they jmust be acknowledged as, largely, a direct intrusion by | I ;Porter. She alerts us thereby to his importance. j | (pages 17-18) ' j I i In the three succeeding paragraphs we see a number of | ; I ] I |the passengers from Dr. Schumann's point of view. Those to j whom we are introduced at the beginning are, on balance, ! ! jsympathetic— Glocken, Graf, Johann, Senora Esperon, and her Indian maid, Nicolasa. It is therefore appropriate that we | ! meet them initially through the doctor's commonly benevolent I |view rather than via some ungenerous perspective such as i j |that of the hotel employees. j Dr. Schumann's point of view is closed to us when he "lost interest [in observing people] and moved away" (18). There is some similarity between this and the ending of the first passage from Mrs. Treadwell's standpoint. Dr. Schu mann and Mrs. Treadwell both wish to remain uninvolved in others' lives, and the manner in which their interest in others fades suggests this. It is an important tendency for Porter to establish because it is as they resist it that they gain stature. Once more, then, point of view emerges,. 97 as it did in the stories and continues to do in the novel, as an instrument for characterization. j i | (pages 18-20) j i j The final section of the chapter is objective in tech- i j 5 j 1 jnique. The author describes, on a surface level, the ship i land a wedding party that arrives at dockside. j ; The simplicity of narration is deceptive, however, Since Porter uses the opportunity to suggest an allegorical i j iequation of the Vera and the world in general: I The ship was none of those specialized carriers of rare goods, much less an elegant pleasure craft coming down from New York, all fresh paint and interior decoration, bringing crowds of prosperous dressed-up tourists with money in their pockets. No, the Vera was a mixed freight- i er and passenger ship, very steady and broad-bottomed I in her style, walloping from one remote port to another, I year in year out, honest, reliable and homely as a German j housewife. (19) j The ship is, in other words, an embodiment of what is typi cal in mankind. It is the Vera, or truth, because it is a seagoing representative of life in general. Though a by stander on the dock could make this observation, it is not something that would naturally come into Dr. Schumann’s thoughts at this time. The view is too expansive for a man involved in embarkation and, as we soon see, in himself. Thus the broadening of our perspective away from his is 98 I i | useful if a generalization of the sort quoted above is to be made at the start of the voyage. j ! That we should first see the Mexican bride and groom j ; ! jin so distant a way is in keeping with their portrayal i throughout the book. On only one occasion are we permitted | jto share, briefly, their perspective. This is apparently, ; in part, because Porter wishes to suggest their seclusive- jness as newlyweds. And because they come to stand for the I harmonious possibilities in man; to have either or both of i i ■their perspectives appear as distinct, and therefore prob- ! I : • i ;ably in contradiction with others, would be to undercut this i i [position. Control of point of view, here away from that of J certain characters, is thus again used interpretively. i Chapter 4 | | (pages 20-23) We now arrive at a place where definitions are trouble some. Though, as Marvin Pierce has written, "to describe . . . [a] . . . point of view is better than to quarrel over 2 its name." Point of View: Katherine Anne Porter's Moon Wine." Ohio University Review. Ill (1961), 107. 99 The opening paragraph recounts, seemingly from an average passenger's standpoint, the actual departure of the ship. Then, in the second paragraph, Porter tells of the I Mexican communist's drunken entry into the first class bar, j j iand of his expulsion by a ship's officer. She includes, as j lit would be difficult to do from other than an omniscient | perspective, a continuing and pointedly ironic look at the i ! officer's greater difficulty in dealing with a Spanish ! prostitute. Paragraph three is from the common point of view of ,the travelers, though it signals the waning of such group ! I perspectives. Each passenger "discovers again what it was j ; ! he had lost for a while though he could not name it— his i | ^identity." Each finds, he believes, "that he had not always been a harassed stranger, a number, an unknown name and a caricature on a passport" (21). There is irony in this, because as each finds his individuality— we will observe | jthat most create it, ruthlessly, at the expense of others-- he progresses into illusion about himself: "the passengers j looked at themselves in mirrors with dawning recognition" (21), not realizing that, in the terms of this narcissistic image that permeates the novel, all mirrors distort. Hansen, in the remainder of the chapter, has a quarrel 100 with Lizzi and Rieber. Lizzi calls the Swede a Dane (na tionality is shown throughout the book as a religiously j cultivated claim to respect), and Rieber pettishly demands jthat Hansen move to another deck chair since he, Rieber, has been officially assigned the one in which Hansen sits. Point of view throughout this section is hard to determine. | [There is a one-sentence entry into Rieber's view ("How he I admired and followed the tall thin girls ..." [23]), but kiost of the rest is indistinct. It may be from Hansen's i i i perspective, or from that of the average passenger, or from Porter directly. We learn, reinforcing our initial impres sion from the hotel employees' point of view (cf. 12-13), I that Lizzi "cackled" (21) and that Rieber is a "pig-snouted little man" with "stubby light bristles" on the top "of his i bhaven skull" (22). As we understand Hansen to be writhing i under their onslaught, we naturally tend to assign these metaphors to him. The problem is that, after he walks away, we continue to hear of Rieber's "pink" color, "his snout" (22), and the fact that he grunts (23). Almost none of the scene involving Rieber and Lizzi is presented through their eyes, which is typical of treatment given them in the course of the novel. They come to repre- I I sent the depths to which the commercial and chauvinistic can 101 sink, and Porter apparently finds nothing redeeming in them. To avoid their view is, in this case, to imply it is unwor thy of consideration, and to withhold from them an oppor tunity to bid directly for our sympathy. As in preceding Ipages, perspective evaluates. i I ! Chapter 5 j ! i (pages 23-24) j i l I We are, in this chapter, introduced by the author to I i "The tall shambling young Texan" (23), Denny. He watches I two Cuban prostitutes— the point of view narrows to his-- and thinks contemptuously that "He knew their kind" (24). With his eyes still on them, however, he foolishly asks for more beer when he has some already, and his view is revealed immediately as restricted by his lust. Later in the book a prostitute refuses him; we then understand just how little he knows "their kind" and, again, how limited his vision is. Chapter 6 (pages 24-28) Denny's perspective continues to the middle of page 26. He reaffirms his belief in the validity of racial and national stereotypes (one of the commonest aberrations 102 in the passengers' vision), and goes to his cabin, where he finds he is lodged with David and Glocken. Following a typical bridge of external description and conversation, we enter David's point of view. He completes unpacking and goes on deck, where he meets Jenny and finds that she has struck up an acquaintance with Freytag. We sense the increasing separation between David and Jenny as we share David's limited perspective. His tendency is to (construe negatively what he only half knows. Thus, for i j jexaraple, though he and we have no idea of the content of jthe exchange between Jenny and Freytag, David thinks "she Iwas probably talking already about the most personal things" I (27). Distance of this kind becomes, as the book progress es, ever more clearly man's most serious illness. Here, as elsewhere, the unit of the chapter has been (employed to force unlike perspectives together and thereby i (to make each stand in clearer outline. It is difficult to imagine more diametrically opposed people than Denny and David. The first is an engineer, a bigot, unwashed, and obsessed by sex; the latter is an artist, a political liber al, a fanatic about cleanliness, and interested in sex only after appearances have been satisfied. Porter, of course, has made it easy to juxtapose conflicting points of view 103 within chapters by having so many unlike people assigned as cabinmates: e.g., Rittersdorf and Schmitt, Treadwell and Spockenkieker, Jenny and Elsa, and Rieber and Lowenthal. i Chapter 7 | (pages 28-31) i | | Mrs. Treadwell subsequently meets and sympathizes j jbriefly with Frau Schmitt, recently widowed, and then goes bn to her cabin, where she discovers that the other occupant i I Of her room is to be Lizzi. The entire chapter is from Mrs. jTreadwell's perspective, except for an authorial note to the 'effect that a sailor she greets will later pursue her roman tically . ! | ] As Porter takes us more and more into individual views, 1 these views are shown to be held together, in a rather mechanical sense, by shared subject matter. Mrs. Treadwell Observes, tangentially and femininely, that "the American girl Jenny Brown was already seated with the only present- I j able-looking man on the boat" (30). We have just watched David ruefully acknowledge that same meeting (though appar ently a little later), and the effect is to tie together both chapters. Similarly, and with more relation to the I I •theme, Mrs. Treadwell responds to her roommate just as David 104 has on the discovery of his. He has felt "disgust" (26), muttered "Jesus" (27), and left the room. Mrs. Treadwell feels, upon recognizing Lizzi, "a thin tremor of nerves all jover, a slight cold shudder from head to foot" (31). The | [resemblance, while not precise, which would be clumsy, is j i [close enough to link their points of view and the chapters | I j involved. Porter uses the same technique quite frequently throughout Ship of Fools. I | Chapter 8 | i | (pages 31-33) i I i i i i Chapter 7 closes from Mrs. Treadwell's perspective: j ["The woman Baumgartner was scolding a complaining, weak voiced little boy" (31). Chapter 8, in a typical transi tion, then enters the perspectives of the mother and son, I [the people who have just been observed from the outside. i Hans Baumgartner, who is sweating in a leather riding costume that he wants to take off, complains, "I'm dying," to which his mother replies tauntingly, "Dying 1 . . . A big boy like you talking such nonsense" (32). It is a frag ment that tends to connect the present chapter with the previous one. Frau Schmitt has told Mrs. Treadwell, in chapter 7, of her husband's death, and Mrs. Treadwell has 105 had the thoroughly somber insight, which she makes to her self, "that death, there beside them at the table, death was what they had in common" (30). Although these two ref erences to the same topic, when isolated and juxtaposed, i may appear to have thematic significance, they do not seem j i I to when in context. The remarks between Frau Baumgartner j j I : i and Hans are relatively isolated, short, and mundane. j Porter apparently has put the words in their mouths only to link the two chapters. It is a technical contrivance— j | one of a good many in the course of the novel— and it would seem to be distortion to try to make much more of it. For our purposes, however, what is important to notice is that, i without the sustained use of limited points of view, it might well have been hard to construct such a link. The wording counts— in the first case the wording of unspoken thought— as does the recording of rather incidental materi- i al. We have already observed how, for the credible manipu lation of interior diction and minor detail, it is often easier to avoid conventional, omniscient narration. By definition, chapter 8 is omniscient neutral, with the point of view alternating rapidly between the mother and son. Nevertheless, the stress is on the limited nature of the boy's view: 106 He waited timidly in the corner at the head of the divan, yearning for kindness, hoping his beautiful good mother would come back soon. She vanished in this frowning, scolding stranger, who blazed out at him when he least expected it, struck him on the hands, threatened him, ! seemed to hate him. (33) ! ! [Thus, as we are allowed to share his blurred vision and, additionally, are not shown by the author why his mother i ■ ! ibehaves as she does (we understand that she "enjoy[s] her { i | cruelty" [32], but this is not an explanation) the chapter j I t is reducible chiefly to Hans' view. Since the subject at j I i |hand is, generally, the boy's tortured position, the stress on this point of view can be justified as it brings us j closer to an understanding of the nature of some of his i (suffering. ! Chapter 9 i | (pages 33-35) I We leave the Baumgartners and, without any particular jtransition, enter Frau Rittersdorf's perspective for most i i of chapter nine. She establishes herself in her cabin and begins to make an entry in her notebook, a vehicle for first person narration that is employed more extensively later. As she writes, we learn certain carefully screened facts about what has happened to her. She had apparently planned 107 to marry an upper-class Mexican. The impression her phrase ology leaves is that she had, for some reason, refused him. She had "entertained the notion" of marrying the "candidate"! I | because of the "soft persuasions of friends" (34), but had ifinally declined. She eventually stops writing and her mind, i iwanders . As in some of Porter's stories, the limited per- ! j i spective then makes it easy for the author gracefully to | j ! , i enter the character's semi-conscious mind and reveal a deep-j ! I er truth. Frau Rittersdorf "fell into a daydream" (34); ! j oh why should this all rise again to plague her? Why had it seemed so likely at one time that he would ask her hand in marriage? I f | ............................................................................................................. she herself had gone so far as to choose— in her mind— the style of her announcement cards. . . . She clenched her teeth slightly, opened her eyes, closed the book. (34) porter thus cleverly manages throughout the chapter to stay I within Frau Rittersdorf's perspective while, at the same [time, she reveals the severe limits of the woman's conscious j point of view. j | Chapter 10 i i (pages 35-36) Frau Rittersdorf has just stirred herself on hearing the dinner bugle, and a scene with the Huttens opens as they 108 S hear the same noise (an auditory variant of the linking j j device, discussed earlier, in which passages from different viewpoints are joined by a commonly perceived scene). The couple discuss whether they should leave their seasick j bulldog. | i Narration is largely objective except for two strongly J editorial pieces of description: Professor Hutten is said j ! i to stand in front of his wife "as if he were getting ready j 1 i |to address his classes," and she is pictured as "sitting on j I j ■the floor, a solid mound of flesh" (35). The only major j j jviolation of the generally exterior view is an entry, in i jthe last paragraph, into Professor Hutten's mind. He catch- i | !es himself thinking that Bebe is a "problem," and he feels i | j"guilty" (36) over his betrayal of the dog. The irony of s I [this ludicrously warped attack of conscience is evident (though it becomes even more damningly clear as Professor fEutten is later cruel and remorseless with human beings, including his wife). Having watched only the surface, we are suddenly taken into the professor's mind; we see there, incontrovertibly, that what has seemed only quietly inane on the outside is a disease within. The swift change of Ipoint of view serves to bring the entire incident into I I I [proper focus. It is a simple technique for surprise and i _____ „ _______„ ___. _______________ ______ 109 contrast, and it is effective. Chapter 11 j i i | (pages 36-40) j From an omniscient and neutral point of view we observej the Lutz family discuss various topics ranging from the Idinner fare of the steerage passengers to the morals of i j |Elsa's roommate, Jenny. No effort is made by the author to enter, in an extended way, any particular character's per spective. One can only guess that Porter chose omniscient neutral narration because she wished to show the tensions | among them but did not conceive of the Lutz's place in the I I novel as large enough to warrant extensive interior views. jrhus, for example, we enter Elsa's, Frau Lutz's, and Herr , I Lutz's perspectives in two sentences: I His [Herr Lutz] daughter [Elsa] joined his laughter dutifully but a little uneasily; his wife treated the joke with the contempt it merited, keeping her face | still long enough for him to see exactly what she thought S of his nonsense. He continued his laughter long enough : to let her see that he could enjoy his little joke with out her. (37) They then hear the dinner bugle that has sounded ■ through the preceding two chapters, and the point of view slowly shifts to that of the passengers at the Captain's :able. We share the diners' delight in German food and 110 drink, their respect for the doctor's dueling scar (a sign that he is "a true German"), and their anticipation of the i"Fatherland" (40). In short, we are given our first inti- j mate view of nationalism. ! I Chapter 12 i i S ! (pages 40-44) | ! j \ | I As in the previous chapter9 omniscient neutral is again I i i i tased here, this time to describe the first sizable quarrel I | jwe see between Jenny and David. As the argument develops | I ,we begin to sense the importance that point of view will j ! I jhave as subject matter. In one exchange, Jenny remarks that! j i j jshe simply "can't learn grammar" (41), as David does, when she learns a language. His reply is acid: "If you could hear yourself sometimes, . . . you'd feel the need" (41). |A moment later she marvels at how distasteful Veracruz had iseemed: I "I had the tenderest memories of the place and now I hope I never see it again." "It seemed to me as usual," said David, "heat, cock roaches, Veracruzanos and all." "Ah no," said Jenny, "I used to walk about there at night, after a rain, with everything washed clean. . . ." (42) A great deal of the bickering throughout the novel will follow this pattern. The issue repeatedly comes down to a Ill question of standpoint. ! Omniscient neutral is, in this first portrait of Jenny | and David's struggle, a useful method to Porter. To judge from the book in its entirety, she does not wish to place | these two people on as low and irreparable a course as, for ; i i (instance, the Baumgartners. For this reason she has wisely | i 1 | , ! avoided allotting our first view of them to just one set of j (eyes, where extremes of prejudice are likely to go un- Icheckfed. Porter has instead chosen to show, for the most ! I i jpart, just the outside scene, the spoken dialogue. With the joption of omniscience available to her, however, she has jnoted at key places how their feelings coincide. They both fell silent . . . dismayed at how suddenly j things could get out of hand. . . . (43) i i ........................................................ They were both ashamed of the evil natures they exposed in each other; each in the first days of their love had I hoped to be the ideal image of the other. . . . (44) (Such feelings, when shared, are the first requisites of the (change that Porter seems to wish for her characters, and jher mode of narration at this stage makes possible the de piction of this important and promising overlapping of | views. ( 112 Chapters 13 and 14 i (pages 44-49) j | In these chapters Frau Rittersdorf meets briefly with : \ \ i fyj f ] jSenora Esperon and her son, Freytag and Hansen eye the j i i jSpanish dancers, and Frau Baumgartner sits with her drunken j husband. For the most part, Porter tells of this in omni- ' |scient neutral (though the episode with Frau Baumgartner is i i \ jlargely from her point of view) . We have parts of the storyi jpresented directly by Porter, and others through the eyes of Frau Rittersdorf, Senora Esperon, the ship's officers, Hansen, and perhaps Freytag. I It is in order at this time to observe that, while jthere are often particular and especially useful manipula- j jtions of perspective in Ship of Fools, there are also many passages where point of view is used quite conventionally. A manner of narration may be altered or carried on for no i more reason than that an episode must sooner or later be | jcontinued, or a character depicted in greater depth. Such is the case, it seems to me, with most of the remaining i omniscient neutral chapters in Part I. j | As a qualification to this statement, however, it | should be noted that the percentage of chapters employing 1X3 j an omniscient perspective falls, relative to those using limited points of view, in Parts II and III. As a general movement within the novel, this would seem vaguely to rein force the increase in human isolation that is described. j i i I i [ | Chapter 15 j I (pages 49-51) j | i i J Frau Baumgartner, at the close of the previous chapter, I ! I ihelps Herr Baumgartner away from the bar, and is humiliated ! I 1 ! I because she "felt sure that everybody was staring with con- j jtempt at her drunken husband . . ." (49). Chapter 15 then ibegins: "Herr Lowenthal . . . studied the dinner card . . ." (49). By not switching to a point of view that sup ports Frau Baumgartner's fear, Porter evaluates it and ! [implies that less suspicion of outside opinion could ease ;the harshness in some lives. Third person limited narration is clearly appropriate for our first extended view of Lowenthal. In this section he discovers that he is the only Jew on board, and his position is firmly established as that of the outcast. "No one spoke to him . . . ," and "there would be nobody to talk to . . ." (50). The only words we hear addressed to Lowen thal are Rieber's "'Good evening,' he said, with I sic 1 114 immense, cold finality of dismissal" (51). The picture is one of freshly established isolation, and Porter's use of the Jew's restricted point of view forces us to realize and | share it. ! | i i i j Chapters 16 and 17 | l (pages 51-52) ; Activities that go on at night aboard ship are de scribed objectively. The author then tells, in omniscient j neutral, of the arrival of the Vera in Havana. The mode of I harration is, obviously, once more chosen so that background |and secondary events can be covered quickly. ! Chapter 18 (pages 52-61) . Again the method is omniscient neutral (except for a baustic editorial fragment describing how Frau Hutten's i ["comfortable fat quivered with some intimation of suffering" [60]). There is, however, a useful limiting of point of view to the perspectives of Jenny and David during the first pages. They set out to see Havana by taxi, and their chauf feur, who drives at a high rate of speed, speaks so that they can pick up only fragments of his monologue: 115 "We are passing . . . Monument/' he shouted, as they rushed by an incoherent mass of bronze, "WHICH COMMEM ORATES . . ."he pronounced largely and carefully, then i fell to a mutter. (53) We, like the characters, are never allowed to learn more. The statuary— there is a great deal of it— remains humorous 1 because of the way in which Porter limits our understanding. And the humor has serious implications. If heroism on an i I operatic scale is ridiculed, there is a suggestion that j | nobility may rest with those whose virtue is strong but I I I remains obscure. On their way back to the ship, Jenny and David encounter, in significant juxtaposition to the sense- i less monuments, a great crowd of destitute people waiting to be loaded as steerage passengers. Jenny and David note [that these "people were not faceless: they were all Span- ! ish, their heads had shape and meaning . . ." (57). As the novel continues we are shown more fully the dignity possess ed by this group. Here again, it should be noted, Jenny and David argue, and the pattern of their conflict, discussed previously in relation to chapter 12, builds. Jenny exclaims, for instance, "I want good simple people who don't know a thing about art to like my work, to come for miles to look at it, the way the Indians do the murals in Mexico City." "That was a great piece of publicity all right," said 116 David, "you good simple girl. These good simple Indians were laughing their heads off and making gorgeously dirty remarks. . . ." (55) he tried to explain his point of view to Jenny . . . [but] . . . Jenny's mind refracted his thought instead of absorbing his meaning. . . (56) i I I Chapter 19 ! I (pages 61-64) I Freytag watches ill-behaved Cuban medical students, | land then contemplates the same steerage passengers, now on I jdeck below, considered already by Jenny and David. The I jentire section is third person limited, and properly so | j since the bulk of it is Freytag's stream of consciousness. iPorter clearly has almost no alternative but to enter Frey- i i Itag's mind if she wishes to show his character in any depth. | (lie is, with two partial exceptions, without confidants. There is no one to whom he can speak with complete openness and seriousness. He thinks, for example, about his "moral aversion to poverty," which he formulates in his mind as "an instinctive contempt and distrust of the swarming poor" (63). Jenny and Mrs. Treadwell, the two with whom he speaks in a qualified way, would not welcome an observation of this kind because of their political liberalism. But, even 117 I beyond politics, he is not able to be absolutely frank with | either woman. With Jenny he obviously calculates what he says in order to win her. And with Mrs. Treadwell he be lieves he must be reserved lest she interpret his behavior i [as a request for sexual intimacy. \ \ i There is, furthermore, one side of Freytag's mind that j : i jhe would refrain from showing even to any imaginable friend j i on shore— his incipient anti-Semitism. In order to see it, we must observe him as he accidentally exposes himself in I the wandering course of his thought. In this passage he meditates on his wife's ancestors, with just a hint of the feeling he later reveals: I Some of them turned Catholic or married Gentiles . . . and changed their names . . . and became really French; but Mary's branch were diehards [they refused to become Christians] and they started roaming again, through Alsace into Germany, God knows why. Pretty poor judg ment it seemed to him. (63) A limited point of view is again integral, as it was with Frau Rittersdorf's daydream in chapter 9, to the depiction of a character's unwitting self-disclosure. Chapter 20 (pages 64-68) The last chapter of Part I is entirely from Jenny's 118 perspective, though much of what is presented is simply dialogue. We first see her and Elsa as they overhear Concha land Manolo, dancers, arguing fiercely over Concha's sup posed earnings as a prostitute. Elsa concludes, after lis tening through the door, that "He [Manolo] doesn't sound like her husband to me" (65). The disparity is wide between her voiced naivete and Jenny's unspoken grasp of what they i have heard. Had we been given only dialogue, the contrast would not have seemed so great, and the characterization ! jachieved by the incongruity would have been lost. | The long look from Jenny's perspective allows us a 'very valuable insight into Jenny herself. We watch Elsa, as Jenny watches her, with sympathy. The older girl pities this "pained confused limited mind" (67), and as she does, jshe marks herself off as a character of the first impor tance . | The scene ends with a strong forecast of Mrs. Tread well' s conclusion about the need for love. "Suppose," argues Elsa desperately, "no one falls in love with me, what happens then?" "Nothing, I expect," admitted Jenny at last, complete ly cornered. (68) 119 In the preceding sequential inspection we have seen, then, the extent to which Porter makes use of point of view. We have observed how, at times, she maneuvers perspective | jin order to reveal some of her most important thematic con- i I perns, and at other times to contribute merely a peripheral ! j i jinsight. And even though at still other times she applies j jpoint of view to no very specific end at all, it has become i j i [evident that the careful manipulation of our perspective is,j ; I on the whole, of relatively great significance. j i j We have also seen, in the foregoing survey, some of i the specific tasks to which perspective is put. A scene that is potentially too obvious, for example, is made more subtle by adherence to a neutral angle of vision: the Huttens1 feeding of their dog before a hungry beggar is appropriately handled in this way. Elsewhere, Porter re stricts perspective so that sections of the novel are i linked: Mrs. Treadwell watches Frau Baumgartner and Hans at the close of one chapter, and in the following chapter jwe observe a private scene between the mother and son. Moreover, by switching from one point of view to another, Porter often allows for an apparently coincidental repeti tion of sights, sounds, and thoughts (e.g., the dance com pany, the dinner bugle, and the idea of death). 120 Centrally, we have observed Porter interpret by adroit ly measuring our perspective on the story. Sometimes omni scient narration has been appropriate: we share, at the start of the novel, the view held by travelers as well as 1 i those held by the people of Veracruz, and the early juxta- jposition is important. On other occasions a restricted I i I point of view has served the author's purposes: we are, | for example, introduced to relatively exemplary characters j | I ;via the generous perspective of Dr. Schumann, while we meet j i i jless praiseworthy characters through the critical gaze of jthe hotel employees . Having sampled the ways in which Porter uses point of view, it is now time to attempt an ordered resume of the applications made of perspective throughout the total work. I j | Point of View in Ship of Fools as a Whole | | Perspective is, as might be forecast from the detailed | jexamination of Part I, important all during Ship of Fools. In a summary of the uses to which it is put throughout the novel, some functions do not warrant extensive discussion J 9 land can be listed quickly. This is so either because the jimportance of a method is readily apparent, or because the [technique is infrequently used. An example of the former 121 is the way in which Porter constructs chapter 61— the chapter in which we see Freytag endure his humiliating and rude encounter with Lowenthal at the dinner table— into one of the longest and most strictly observed passages of third | jperson limited narration. The effect is to force upon us [Freytag's sensation of complete and desperate isolation. I ! Certain other functions of point of view are, as men tioned, relatively less common than others, but deserve • jnote. Third person limited narration, for instance, makes jpossible, in the course of the full novel, the discovery of i important truths. This is so because some discoveries are j formulated, as we have observed, within the character him- i : j [self, and to have the revelations seem genuine, the hap- : I : l hazard mental processes leading to them must be depicted. In short, chapters from limited perspectives are needed. I It is in such a section that we get beyond Mrs. Treadwell's I i reserve to the truth of her condition: "Oh God, I'm home- I sick" (212). And to Dr. Schumann's, which is a finally j I unavoidable guilt: ] I Dr. Schumann in his sleep rose and reached up and out before him and captured the dancing head [La Condesa's] still smiling but shedding tears. "Oh, what have you done?" the head asked him. (469) In yet another such third person limited passage we watch 122 Frau Hutten discover her situation? she thinks of their [hers and her husband's] daily life through the endless years with unfailing, lying tenderness. Frau | Hutten leaped innerly as if she had been struck by light ning. Lying? Where in God's name had her thoughts got ] to? . . . Oh how could she even for a breath of time have thought the word "lie"? (293) jit is this closely detailed picture of individual minds that i I ;also makes credible, of course, the development of certain j symbols (such as the battle envisaged by Jenny in her i I I clream), inasmuch as such symbols are thought to be more j j I [common on a subconscious level. j I I In a few cases, point of view is actually used to jieighten interest and suspense in a conventional, melo- i (dramatic manner. Rieber, for example, is singing "Sometime, someday" (418) with Lizzi in a prologue to the long-awaited i saturnalia (we see it through his eyes) . They toast each other and then— A large square hand with fingers the same thickness from ; one end to the other, a rude-looking thumb attached to a ■^Charles A. Allen has observed that three of Porter's most successful stories— "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall," f'Pale Horse, Pale Rider," and "Flowering Judas"— depend crucially on symbols ("Katherine Anne Porter: Psychology as Art," Southwest Review. XLI [Summer 1956], 225). It is further notable that all three stories contain long interior passages and that in each case much of the most important symbolism is established in these passages. 123 palm powerfully secured to a muscular wrist covered with a thatch of hair that gleamed red under the table light, j reached over Herr Rieber‘s shoulder and plucked the place card from its metal holder. Herr Rieber's skin crawled coldly. . . . (419) bfo one who has seen an Alfred Hitchcock film misses the I ^technique. We are looking, just as the intended victim is i ; i : ilooking, at the gloved hand as it comes over the window silli ' i or around the door jamb or over the arm of our chair. i I In other isolated instances, perspective is used for a | 4 I dark, grotesque humor. As we consider, from Rieber's point| j ^Opinions do vary as to the presence of humor in the novel. Glenway Wescott has written, "It occurs to me that there is a minimum of laughter of any kind in Ship of Fools" !("Katherine Anne Porter Personally," Images of Truth: Re membrances and Criticism [New York, 1962], p. 49). And ! jLouis D. Rubin has observed that "Miss Porter does not sati rize; she takes all the passengers aboard the ship with Jentire seriousness . . ." ("We Get Along Together Just Fine | . . .," Four Quarters. XII [March 1963], 30). Marjorie j Ryan, on the other hand, argues the reverse. The whole hovel, she says, is a humorous satire; even "the scene . . . in which . . . [Dr. Schumann] . . . accuses himself of ruining his life and doing La Condesa great wrong" has I"satirical overtones" ("Katherine Anne Porter: Ship of Fools and the Short Stories," Bucknell Review. XII [March |1964], 55). Mark Schorer asserts, less extremely, that in Ship of Fools "There is much that is comic, much even that lis hilarious . . ." ("We're All on the Passenger List" [rev. jof Ship of Fools 1. New York Times Book Review. April 1, jl962, p. 1). Louis Auchincloss also finds "parts of the book . . . uproariously funny" ("Bound for Bremerhaven— and Eternity" [rev. of Ship of Fools 1. New York Herald Tribune Books. April 1, 1962, p. 3). 124 of view, the purser's disinterest in helping him, we see |the whole passenger list ludicrously transformed. ] ! He [Freytag] had married a Jew and he was a Jew, that settled it . . . or maybe he was in criminal conspiracy ] with those foul Americans, who were probably part Jew- | ish themselves. As for Arne Hansen, that big nose of | his was not Nordic, let him call himself a Swede if he j liked. The purser, at any rate, was clearly a traitor | with Jewish sympathies himself; perhaps that Lowenthal had bribed him in the first place for the privilege of sharing a cabin with a German. (252) i The incongruity between fact and Rieber's view is so ex- ; 1 treme and, by this time, harmless (he has behaved boorishly j i i ; I |to the extent that even his fellow bigots no longer esteem | him) that Porter seems to have brought us through absolute j I i ! revulsion to a grim smile. Later, point of view is again used to ridicule the man. As we watch him start his final i i attempt to seduce Lizzi, we are presented with a comic switch from his to her point of view (the chapter is in character-to-character narration): i He . . . called her his little lamb. She stroked his ! i brow a few times, as if she were thinking of something | else. As indeed she was. She was wondering why, in j all this whirligig, Herr Rieber had never once mentioned | marriage. . . . Every other man she had known unfailing- I ly pronounced the magic word "marriage" before he ever | got into bed with her, no matter what came of it in fact. | This one had not, and until he did, well'. so far and | no further. (417) | The theme of noncommunication and isolation has reached the level of farce. There are to be noted, however, uses of point of view that are less tangential than those for suspense or humor. It is to these relatively major functions of perspective j i I ! i ithat we must turn now. \ To resist sentimentality An ever-present danger in literature is that the dis- j 1 itance between the subject and the audience may vanish. I ! i ! Clearly this risk is increased by any technique that is | (designed to make a character1s thought or behavior more I immediately our own, such as restricting our vision to his. i ilf we are allowed totally to identify with a character, a j iloss of perspective on the action as a whole is likely to result. This may mean that we end in sentimentality, an excess of emotion aroused in response to events described 5 by the writer. The problem for the artist then is to allow i 5 I The determination of what is or is not an excess of j jemotion rests first with the author. He must try to create in us a response that will match his estimation of the action's significance. If he believes, for example, that an individual man is supremely important, then his picture of that man's destruction probably should be a very stirring one. If, however, the author believes that an individual is only a part of a larger and finally permanent creation, ther a depiction of that man's ruin should kindle in us a less extreme reaction. Eventually, of course, the reader may wish to decide for himself what constitutes sentimentality. This will 126 a measured identification between subject and reader without ever permitting it to become excessive, as occurs at times, for instance, in Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward. Anael.^ We have seen Porter respond to the first part of the problem i ; i t ! |by using third person limited narration. She attempts to I ' I j |meet the second part by strategically abandoning such narra tion at times, and in other cases by avoiding it altogether. When Porter temporarily backs away from third person limited narration, she adopts one or both of two practices. ' ! In places she arrests a growing emotional intensity by [switching to another form of narration, one that deals I (largely with exterior matters and elemental subjects. Thus in chapter 61 Porter gives a long and agonizing account [of Freytag1s banishment to Lowenthal's table, all via involve an evaluation both of the author's reading of life [(i.e., whether one agrees with the author's estimation of a [character's significance), and of the consistency with which the author presents his reading (e.g., does the author say [that man is less than a god, and yet treat him emotionally as though he were a divinity? ^It should be noted that problems arise not only in relation to a reader's possible identification with a char acter. There is wisdom, for example, in Porter's unwill ingness to enter Lola's or Tito's point of view in the scene during which they sadistically mistreat their children (chapter 100). An intimate view of their mentalities would hardly encourage identification, but the sense of loathing it would inspire might be strong enough to be just as dis ruptive . 127 Freytag's perspective. By the time Freytag stiffly leaves Lowenthal's company the reader is suffering a claustrophobic fury along with Freytag that threatens to overshadow all jother matters in the novel. Deftly, Porter switches in | \ |chapter 62 to an omniscient perspective describing inane ! {surface activities at the Captain's table. The effect is | to calm the anger that one has felt grow on behalf of Frey tag throughout the previous chapter, not because Freytag I seems any less wronged but because his tormentors emerge, i seen largely from the outside, as so petty and foolish that to be denied their presence seems like a blessing. In other places Porter has retreated from the intima- I ] cies of third person limited into sections of almost pure dialogue— a technique used by other writers who have em- i ployed similar methods of narration and had occasion to ■ 7 fight sentimentality, such as James and Proust. As one might expect, this method has been used extensively (see i jchapters 33, 53, and 103) in the depiction of the relation- Passages of dialogue serve in other ways as well in Ship of Fools. In some cases such sections act as bridges between passages from different points of view. This is so, for example, toward the bottom of page 137 as the point of view shifts from David's to Mrs. Treadwell's. Or near the top of page 166 when it changes from Freytag's to Jenny's. 128 ship between the two people who are possibly the most sen sitive on the ship, Dr. Schumann and La Condesa. It is lused to a lesser degree in scenes between David and Jenny. Finally, as stated, Porter chooses never to go inside certain individuals' perspectives. In some instances this i can be judged a fortunate restraint against an emotional s ! ! [portrayal that could easily have become excessive. The 1 Basque wood-carver, for instance, is always seen from the outside. To unify the book i i j When asked once if writing Ship of Fools had seemed any different from writing stories, Porter replied, "It's just I a longer voyage, that's all. It was the question of keeping 0 everything moving at once." The cavalier nature of this ! response tended to play into the hands of her critics. polite ones noted that "the design of the novel fShip of Fools 1 is episodic."^ Or they retreated to vague conven- ^Katherine Anne Porter and Barbara Thompson, "An Inter view," The Paris Review. No. 29 (Winter-Spring 1963), 113- 114. ^Harry J. Mooney, Jr., The Fiction and Criticism of Katherine Anne Porter, rev. ed., Critical Essays in English 129 tionalities such as that it seemed "a novel of character rather than action."’ * ' 0 Most just said it badly lacked the i 11 junifying element of a plot. I Whether or not lack of plot is a weakness may be open jto challengej but the fact is that Ship of Fools does not i I build steadily through causally related scenes. Though i ihardly as thoroughly disjointed as Brant's The Ship of tFools. it bears perhaps more resemblance to the fragmentary Istructure of that book that it does to that of an orthodox 1 novel, such as one by Graham Greene. There are many epi- | sodes that lead nowhere. It has been said that the book is "a big collection of very short stories," and there is some 12 jjustification for such a remark. Many chapters end with i f ; a line that tends to close off the action and summarize the i I business of the episode rather than to suggest that there is anything further to be said. The chapter in which David and American Literature, No. 2 (Pittsburgh, 1962), p. 56. ^Howard Moss, "No Safe Harbor" (rev. of Ship of Fools). The New Yorker. April 28, 1962, p. 165. •^See previously cited critiques by Bedford, Booth, Finkelstein, Hicks, Nance, Solotaroff, and Taubman. •*-2R0:bert Taubman, "A First-Class Passenger" (rev. of Ship of Fools). New Statesman. November 2, 1962, p. 619. 130 and Denny exchange ideas and reminiscences on sex— the conversation crudely makes objects of people— ends with Denny looking at an ingrown toenail and saying, "I think i this thing is infected" (281). It is clearly a kind of symbolic summary and it seems to suggest a conclusion to jthe whole diagnosis that Porter is making. She herself apparently recognized this quality in the book. Eleven brief segments of it were, between 1944 and 1958, released separately.^ I | In 1940 Porter wrote, however, that her stories to that j date were "fragments of a much larger plan which I am still TO j For a discussion of the early publication of parts of Ship of Fools, see Sister M. Joselyn's essay, "On the Making df Ship of Fools." South Dakota Review. I (May 1964), 46-52. I While pointing out the relatively episodic structure iof Ship of Fools, it does seem important, tangentially, to resist the extreme position that the book is without plot, bne critic observes, when she alleges that it lacks plot, that Porter's vision "is not in terms of classical tragedy" (Sybille Bedford, "Voyage to Everywhere" [rev. of Ship of Fools 1, The Spectator. November 16, 1962, p. 764). It is [just in those terms— Aristotle's terms— that the existence Iof a plot, an action with a reversal and discovery, might be defended. As John Hagopian has written, "the basic ex perience presented in her fiction is the process of self ldi scovery" ("Katherine Anne Porter: Feeling, Form, and i Truth," Four Quarters. XII [November 1962], 2). That this ppplies well to characters like Schmitt and Schumann is not difficult to validate (see Chapter IV of this study). 131 14 engaged in carrying out." This 1 1 larger plan/1 linked frequently by congruent themes to the stories, has commonly been understood to be Ship of Fools (an understanding never denied by Porter) . The point is that even at that stage | , i i i I ! Porter had a design in mind. Her idea was that this pro- j | i iposed work would be more than just a collection of stories: jshe termed the writing of stories a severely limited kind | ■of production necessitated, up to then, by the chaos of the world in which she lived. j An examination of Ship of Fools reveals that the book is unified in a good many ways.. Some of these admittedly have little or nothing directly to do with point of view. i j There is, for instance, a unity provided by the setting. All passengers aboard the ship share much just because they | iare aboard. As a consequence it is not surprising that many chapters are linked simply by time and place (chapters 126 and 127). There is also a unity of theme, of which more will be said later. Parallelism likewise contributes heavi ly to the cohesion of the work. Certain characters are constructed so as to be similar (Jenny and Mrs. Treadwell 14"Introduction," Flowering Judas and Other Stories (New York, [n.d.]). 132 resemble each other; David and Dr. Schumann are also alike). Chapters are frequently joined by parallel incidents (118 land 119 by one character's mocking of another's preparation I i |for attendance at the costume party, and 128 and 129 by i I Isimilar concluding invitations to make "a tour of the ship" j | [433^ 434]). Larger sections of the novel are united by | ] jactions that happen both at the beginning and end of the j i book, forming a somewhat circular pattern (Rieber's com- j plaint to Hansen that he has taken his deck chair [22], and Hansen's statement to Rieber that he has taken his dinner | table [419]), or by events that occur with a degree of regu larity throughout the book (e.g., incidents of lust). In other cases, clearly contrasted elements, along with inten- i sifying each other for various purposes, serve to tie seg- i | ments of Ship of Fools into a unit. In chapter 37, for bxample, David gets up from bed and is sick to his stomach, yhereas in chapter 38 the Huttens awake, ask each other | j " H o w do you feel . . .?" (131) and find themselves cured of j seasickness. Chapter 73 presents Frau Hutten's intellectual rebellion from her husband, while 74 describes festivities i ' I among the steerage passengers where "the women . . . watched in stillness" (299). Chapter 116 ends with Amparo collect ing four marks from Frau Schmitt for a ticket, while 117 133 describes Denny ironically vowing to triumph over the Span- j iard he wants— "I'm collecting off that gal [Pastora] to- ! jnight" (405) . And there are, of course, many other devices Ithat are not used so often but which nonetheless serve to j i ;tie the book together. The epigraph to Part II ("Kein Haus,j i | jkeine Heimat"), for instance, is effective not only as it i I jforecasts the upcoming picture of vagrancy, but also as it j j i [picks up Elsa's line three pages from the end of Part I, ! ! "I am not at home . . . and I have never been . . (66) . ! I i [Foreshadowing is used as another kind of bond: at the be- [ginning of chapter 129, for example, "Mrs. Treadwell . . . | declined Denny's invitation [to dance], who thought she [would do to pass the time until he could catch Pastora" i | j(433), a refusal she acts out more vehemently in chapter |141. Certain other incidents, moreover, function as sum maries: as an illustration, Ric and Rac's game of dancing ! j"to get a good rolling fall" (308) clearly suggests the | nature of many relationships in the book. Despite the usefulness of the above listed techniques for the cementing together of parts of the novel, it is possible to contend that an adroit use of point of view has i been Porter's chief method. This is so in at least two senses, the first of which relates closely to what has 134 already been said. Specifically, it is necessary that the writer take the reader inside certain characters for a noticeable length of time in order to establish effectively [ jcertain forms of parallelism. Such is the case when the i •parallelism is in the diction of a character's thought; it i i I i is difficult to indicate, in a sustained way, the diction ofi I i i ; various characters when presenting their alternating and j various thoughts in an omniscient mode. A limited perspec- j fcive is also useful when the parallelism rests on a topic | J | that could be raised again and again on the surface through clialogue only with great improbability; the need arises to enter one consciousness for lengthy enough periods of time so that the parallel item appears to arise in a credible and unforced manner. j The topic of drowning should suffice to demonstrate i the usefulness of- third person limited sections for building i parallelism. Echegaray's fatal dive can be called one of i I jthe three or four major and exterior acts of the book. The i subject of death by water, however, recurs frequently in che thoughts of the passengers. At times it is overtly I mentioned: La Condesa remarks to Dr. Schumann, in innocence i ’ | of Echegaray's drowning, which has just occurred, "Imagine, if the ship should sink, we should go down together 135 embraced, gently, gently to the bottom of the sea . . i (316). Elsewhere, however, the idea of drowning is shaped within a character1s very limited stream of semi-conscious vision. David, completely drunk, seems to sink "through I iqualmy waves into bottomless deeps of drowning and yet . . . j l , : i |[he cannot] drown" (475). At yet other places there are | lonly glancing references to the topic, and these are formu- jlated in what appear to be the very words in which a charac- i Iter thinks (one can never be completely sure, since Porter's; | | method is to mix her own and her characters' diction). Thus Elsa listens to Graf speak; to her his voice seems "a weak j Whisper almost drowned by the sound of the waves" (301). And Freytag thinks of how, in his view, Jenny's I ; I little moral earnestness rose now and then to the sur- | face of her light chatter, like cloudy bubbles on a pool, I causing you to wonder . . . what drowned thing was send- I ing up gaseous signals from the bottom. (412) As indicated, construction of this part of the pattern de- i pends on being within one consciousness for an appreciable period, a period long enough for the author gracefully to move into the character's ideas and ways of expressing them. Other instances of the appearance of the topic are of a more sustained kind. On several occasions people weigh, with varying degrees of seriousness, the possibility of drowning 136 themselves. And here too, as mentioned, this kind of re- j I | flection cannot plausibly be repeated aloud many times, even by such generally melodramatic and self-pitying passengers as ride the Vera. The weakest of such individuals, Herr iBaumgartner, does say what he is thinking (453), but his j i i Igenuine deliberation over the issue occurs later and is jinner . Believably, others who consider drowning formulate the idea solely within their minds, and in a self-surprising i way that could be presented credibly only in a long narra tion of their thought, a narration not far from stream of consciousness. Thus we see Freytag's encounter with the idea as follows: j i S "Can I be thinking of suicide?" he asked himself after | a short interval of rigid blankness; for all the time | when he believed his mind was empty, he had seen him- | self going smoothly as a professional diver headfirst I in the depths, sinking slowly and slowly to the very | ocean floor, and lying there flat, for good and all, eyes wide open, in perfect ease and contentment. (232) We learn of Lowenthal that He went to the stern of the ship and leaning his head on his arms he brooded over the water in silence and wished for death, or thought he did. (95) Finally, although we have stayed with the subject of drown ing, it should be said that the same kind of parallelism and relation to point of view can be found in the repeated topics of racial prejudice, a desire or lack of desire for 137 involvement^ and so on. | | In a somewhat similar way, having sections from various third person limited points of view (not necessarily in these instances turned predominantly inward) allows for a kind of repetition of one figure or object through many jangles of vision. Customarily this involves something that is less central in a direct sense to the theme of the book i ! i ! j [than is the above-mentioned parallelism. In the more sus- ! i I Itained instances, the result is a kind of unification by ! ! 15 jleitmotiv. We have already remarked, for example, the jsounding of the dinner bugle through several early chapters. Another illustration is Bebe on the loose. First, in a scene (in chapter 73) from the Huttens' point of view, we discover his escape from their room. Later, from Elsa's I point of view (in chapter 75) we see her almost trip over him. | In desperate haste she ran up the deck past the dancers, ■^The effect is that of rhythm as described by E. M. Forster in the chapter "Pattern and Rhythm" in Aspects of the Novel (New York, 1954), pp. 149-174. It is interesting to note that Pudovkin early saw, in terms of the film, that alterations in points of view might facilitate the creation of leitmotivs, and lists the creation of such as one of the uses of "relational editing" (Film Technique and Film Act ing. ed. and trans. Ivor Montagu [New York, I960], pp. 75- 76) . [and] dodged the white bulldog Bebe, who appeared at that moment coming down the steps from the boat deck. . . . j (302) j In the next chapter (from Mrs. Treadwell's point of view) |Mrs. Treadwell's officer remarks, "I wonder what that dog is ! | ( j doing out by himself?" (303). Shortly thereafter, a section! jfrom Jenny's and Freytag's perspectives (in chapter 76) on ithe dance floor concludes: I I I I "Oh, take care," said Freytag. "There's Bebe, what's he ! doing here?" and there he was indeed nearly underfoot. He dodged too, they avoided each other and he wandered on. (308) Two pages later, in a section from chapter 78, Concha speaks to Johann: I she said warningly, "Oh, take care'." as they almost stepped on the fat white bulldog wandering aimlessly by himself through the dancers. (310) i [Finally he strays past Graf, from whom he receives a pat on Ithe head, and on into the clutches of Ric and Rac (chapter 79). A comic dog thus stabilizes the scene of whirling dancers as he wanders in and out of the vision of many in the room. And again, having the unifying item presented largely from limited points of view gives the coincidence of their successive notice plausibility. It would be clumsy and obvious to describe, using ordinary omniscient narra tion, this repeated and very incidental attention given Bebe. I Other examples of the above technique could be cited | in equal detail. While the Spanish dance company loots the | jshops of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, it progresses in rather i 1 similar fashion through the views of Jenny and David, Denny, Rittersdorf, Jenny-David-Freytag-Treadwell, Schmitt, the Huttens, and finally Glocken. The effect is to tie together |the potentially disparate shopping and sightseeing excur- 1 sions, spanning four chapters, of many people. A similar function is performed in a less concentrated way for the jbook as a whole by the bride and groom as they intrude some- ; ; Iwhat mysteriously and always briefly on the consciousness ! ! of almost all the main characters. i : j j | The second major way in which point of view is employed j j |to unify parts of Ship of Fools is in what Stanley Kauffmann i I i has correctly labeled Porter's "vaguely cinematic methods I : (we are 'inside1 A and walk past B; we then go 'inside' B | ' i - 16 1 Sand watch A walk past)." Repeatedly, as observed m Parti | I, Porter does use variations of this technique to bridge ! Katherine Anne Porter's Crowning Work" (rev. of Ship of Fools). The New Republic. April 2, 1962, p. 24. At various times Porter has tried to earn money by writing film scripts in Hollywood. She has always given up in disgust. There is thus irony in the filming of her novel, 140 scenes and even whole chapters. Thus, chapter 51 ends with Dr. Schumann and La Condesa barely noticing Ric and Rac go by, while the next chapter describes what the children sub sequently do; chapter 63 closes with Freytag thinking of j how he detests Lowenthal, and 64 is from within Lowenthal's j I perspective; and chapter 89 finishes with Manolo consider- i ing "the American painters" (338), while chapter 90 is al ternately from the points of view of Jenny and David; and ! so on. Since the technique is simple, little more need be |said about it except to reiterate that it does occur fre- i j quently in Porter's novel. To Characterizer Interpret. , and/or Evaluate As with the unification of Ship of Fools, there are many elements of method involved, obviously, in the delinea tion of the characters in the book. What they think, de cide, say, and do all helps create our picture of them. Porter has taken great care with details; La Condesa's constantly wandering and grasping hands suggest her struggle for human contact; Dr. Schumann's weak heart seems to stand for his tendency not to commit himself decisively; Baum gartner's love of alcohol summarizes his inability to face himself; and David's insatiable hunger appears to symbolize 141 his tendency to live on and in a sense consume the affectionj I of others. In a somewhat less direct manner, point of view is also of importance with regard to characterization. Though it i clearly cannot itself define a character, its skillful mam- ! i I ipulation can help substantially. Even, for example, the j ; avoidance of a person's vision may be revealing. Thus as |Elsa takes her stroll around the deck (chapter 27) with her ! I i Ifamily and Hansen, we see very little of it through Elsa's i i ieyes. We know that her interest in romance is keen and that jshe recognizes Hansen as a prospect, but nonetheless the i | ichapter is devoted mostly to talk of business between Herr ILutz and the Swede. By largely omitting Elsa's point of |view until after the walk is almost oyer, even though we i know that her response to it must be intense throughout, [Porter has given us a telling picture of Elsa's exterior | inconsequence and minimal impact on those around her. All that is important is the talk of the two men. It is possible to see even in the amounts of third person limited narration allotted to certain characters a suggestion of their natures. Specifically, just the quan tity of the story that we see through Jenny's eyes is, in the book as a whole, almost two-thirds again as much as 142 17 through David's eyes. When one considers the way in which these two people are always presented as a locked unit, however disastrously (symbolized by Jenny's memory of the Mexican man and woman together in a death struggle, and by I | i Ric and Rac's dance), it is remarkable that there is so j i ! ; I jlittle balance in the amount that is observed through each j of their perspectives. Having more of the action described through third person limited narration from Jenny's perspec tive, with the intimate and direct contact that this gives ! jthe reader with her as viewer, tends to reinforce, I think, j |the fact of her choleric and emotional character. And to i suggest, by contrast, David's somewhat phlegmatic and colder temperament. j j Porter also manipulates point of view so that her char acters frequently are saved from being too simple. Graf is an exemplary case. In chapter 135 there is a long third j person limited section from Johann's point of view in which r j his fury breaks over his despised uncle. We see the old ^This figure is based on a rough tabulation of the ^.umber of third person limited pages for each character in jthose chapters designated third person limited or character- to-character. By that count, approximately fifty pages were allotted by Porter to Jenny and thirty-three to David. 143 man with all of Johann's loathing and hate and frustration. And we remember the dark motives attributed to Graf not only by Johann but by numbers of others on the ship as well. It is to Porter’s credit as a portraitist that she includes at ;the end of the encounter between the boy and Graf a para- ! i graph (443-444) from the latter's perspective that, while |it may not convince us of his beliefs, conclusively vali- ! idates his sincerity. To have, furthermore, a story with a very limited set- j ting told in many short, third person sections affords use- i I ful opportunities for characterization. Because all in the j novel are confined to a small area, the same subjects tend [ ; ■ i jto come in many peoples' minds. And as we consider those j i [subjects from different perspectives we share each viewer's understanding of them with a maximum degree of intimacy and intensity. The differing visions, by their very directness, command our sympathy and allegiance. The effect is to force i |with particular emphasis a realization of differences and i i Iso to outline more strongly the nature of each contending vision and viewer. As an example, in a short chapter that is largely from Elsa's perspective, Porter writes the fol lowing : Amparo carried and waved freely a black lace fan with a 144 red cotton rose pinned over a torn place. Anybody with eyes in his head could see why the rose was there— anybody could see. (127) Then Amparo walks off the dance floor with Hansen, very ;obviously for illicit business, and Porter switches away ifrom Elsa's point of view in order to close with a worldly j | I j ’ | jsigh by Frau Rittersdorf. "I don't think that is a very ipretty sight," she remarks to Mrs. Treadwell, whereupon Mrs. jTreadwell replies archly, "Why not? I think they look very well together" (128). Elsa's innocence and Mrs. Treadwell's! jadedness are both established. Elsa does not see fully why Amparo has the red rose, while Mrs. Treadwell sees and is i tired of seeing. This same type of characterization by the I close juxtaposition of different visions occurs as the reader follows through, from the individual perspectives Of several of the characters, such issues as Freytag's dis missal from the Captain's table and the death of Echegaray. Porter has, then, established a kind of convention of j jswiftly alternating short sections of third person limited, 'and by so doing she provides for extremely strong contrasts of feelings and ideas. Chapter 113, as an instance in point, forces us to share Dr. Schumann's lonely, agonizing, and increasingly deep sense of guilt. The chapter closes with his envying of Johann his "preposterous innocence" 145 (402). Chapter 114 then begins through Glocken's eyes: He [Glocken] was troubled with his recollections of the day past in Santa Cruz, not the town nor the people in ! it, but himself and his own unhandsome part in events | witnessed by passengers who would be sure to despise ! him for lack of presence of mind, for cowardice, even, j (402) ; i I | iDr. Schumann, whose torment is an inner accusation, and I i I i 'Glocken, whose worry is society's estimation of him, both i jemerge in clearer outline as they are measured against each j other. And once again it is doubtful that this kind of ! j ! (strong and useful juxtaposition could often occur in regular | lomniscient narration without appearing to be contrived and jforced. The convention of rapidly alternated units from | ;varying, limited perspectives is thus a helpful one. ! With the above example I have been forced to come es- i [pecially close to losing the only partially satisfactory i t distinction between point of view as technique and content. Whereas the characterizing passages at which we had previ ously looked were relatively neutral, the contrasting of Glocken and Dr. Schumann clearly is not. There is a judg ment implied of Glocken. This brings us to what is, clear ly, one of the major uses of point of view in the novel— to help Porter make the sort of thematic assertion she wishes I to make. In a large sense the whole construction of the book accomplishes this, and since the book is cut into many j small fragments from different perspectives, point of view will lead us finally into the author's central statement. But she evaluates and interprets throughout Ship of Fools, not just by causing large patterns to emerge (patterns which will be studied in the next section), but often by manipu lating point of view in individual situations to expedite iher own ends. It is this latter attention to detail that needs now to be examined. ! Before considering this particular use of point of 'view, however, it seems wise to acknowledge and begin to j i deal with a large and rather remarkable division in the [understanding of Porter's work. This cleavage has to do i i With whether Porter evaluates and/or interprets at all. j ] ! Many critics have alleged that in her stories Porter j comes to no conclusions. She does not give us, Edmund Jwilson has written, ! illustrations of anything that is reducible to a moral law, or a political or social analysis, or even a prin ciple of human b e h a v i o r .I® Another critic has quoted Porter's own words about Katherine ^"Katherine Anne Porter" (rev. of The Leaning Tower and Other Stories). The New Yorker. September 30, 1944, p. |72 . ___________________________ ______________________ 147 Mansfield's work as applicable to herself: j I She states no belief, gives no motives, airs no theories, | but simply presents to the reader a situation, a place, ! and a character, and there it is. . . Smith Kirkpatrick has said as much of Ship of Fools: "The hovel comes to no conclusions, answers no questions. . . j ] g o | j." Astonishingly, in contrast to such statements, other j icritics have blamed Porter for being too didactic. i ! i i ! One needs to read only the first ten pages to see that j Miss Porter re-creates "persons and events on their own j terms" (Chicago Sun-Times) about as much as her title j would indicate, | 21 Theodore Solotaroff has written. Harry J. Mooney has I jsuggested that in Ship of Fools "Miss Porter has made no effort to maintain towards her characters . . . [a] . . . neutral position . . ." (p. 57). Though I do not wholly accept the remarks of the second group, it does seem to me that they are closer to the facts. I Porter, like her acknowledged exemplar in this case, Brant, has not forsaken half of literature's traditional function I IQ ^Hagopian, "Katherine Anne Porter: Feeling, Form, and Truth," Four Quarters. XII (November 1962), 1. ! ^^Rev. of Ship of Fools. Sewanee Review. LXXI (Winter 1963), 98. ^-*-"Ship of Fools and the Critics" (rev. of Ship of Fools). Commentary. XXXIV (October 1962), 279. 148 of delighting and teaching. In the particular case of Ship of Fools it seems to me that this is especially evident and that just a comparison between it and the stories suggests Ihow much the novel does attempt to say something definite. f |For example, whereas Porter has included few villains in j her stories (there are occasional ones, such as the war j j [bond salesman in "Pale Horse, Pale Rider"), Ship of Fools does contain many negative, two-dimensional figures. Char- j jacters such as Captain Thiele and Siegfried Rieber are j i i I ! ! . ! thoroughly obnoxious. Their presence very strongly suggests interpretation by Porter. Similarly, the evaluative title ! | Of the novel is without parallel in her other fictional j : i jwork. Even the vast range of characters, all in approxi- I j i bately the same circumstances, tends as never before to jencourage comparisons and value judgments. Indeed, the j Choice of genre itself is suggestive when seen in the per spective of Porter's introduction in 1940 to Flowering Judas and Other Stories. She had at the start of the war referred to her stories as "fragments" and said that they were all J she was then able to create (though it is significant that I | jeven then she asserted that they were done in "faith" and were attempts "to grasp the meaning" and "Understand the | 1 jlogic" of events). A 5 00-page volume is considerably more j 149 than a fragment; surely the implication is that Porter feels her own understanding of life more settled, and that we may i 'expect to see a more definite statement emerge from the i i i jbook. Porter has, furthermore, made some revealing remarks j I about other writers' material, remarks that clearly have an application to her own work, particularly her novel. With I reference to F. Scott Fitzgerald she said to The Paris Re- iview interviewer, Not only didn't I like his writing, but I didn't like the people he wrote about. I thought they weren't worth | thinking about, and I still think so. It seems to me f that your human beings have to have some kind of mean- ! ing. I just can't be interested in those perfectly stupid meaningless lives. And later, remarking on a section from William Styron's Set This House on Fire which had appeared in an earlier issue pf The Paris Review; . . . there is nothing in the world more meaningless than the whole escapade of this man going off and winding up in the gutter. You sit back and think, "Well, let's see, where are we now?" All right, it's possible that that's just what Styron meant— the whole wicked pointlessness of things. But I tell you, nothing is pointless, and nothing is meaningless . . In short, though this is an issue to which we shall return An Interview," p. 100. 150 j i later, Porter does evaluate and interpret what she de- 23 scribes. And, as with the other topics examined, she uses many methods to do so. Chiefly, of course, she evalu ates by the way she combines people, character traits, and so on. Thus, for example, racists are invariably shown to j be persons, either in or out of the academy, of generally crude sensibilities and little intelligence. At other times| Porter simply intrudes her own comments, though it should be noted that such instances are not at all the rule in the book. Howard Moss is quite close to the truth when he jwrites, "Miss Porter is a moralist, but too good a writer t to be one except by implication" (p. 172). She interprets iDavid's and Jenny's relationship succinctly but never men tions them, for instance, when speaking of Ric and Rac1s dance ("triumphs were largely theoretical, since they were i jevenly balanced in body and soul" [308]). Or she examines am clearly involved here, as I will be on a few later occasions, in the so-called "intentional fallacy" (see W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., and Monroe C. Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy," in Essays in Modern Literary Criti cism. ed. Ray B. West, Jr. [New York, 1956], pp. 174-189). It does not seem to me that there is often an absolute cleavage between what an able writer sets out to do, in general terms, and what he accomplishes. His statement of intention is, while not a final basis for interpretation, frequently a helpful clue. 151 the lot of man and the nature of his politics when, in one paragraph, she describes a cat approaching "the offal at . . . [a] . . . butcher's feet," and in the next establishes an imagistic parallel: an Indian boy has been killed by a | bomb intended for someone else— "one hand [of the boy] lay | spread delicately upon a lump of clotted entrails beside j him" (6). Again, however, point of view is one of Porter's chief tools. We understand her vision as she controls and opposes the vision of others. Sergei Eisenstein, the first major jaesthetician in films, was speaking of the novel when he j I wrote: I I It is exactly what we do in the cinema, combining shots that are depictive, single in meaning . . . — into in tellectual contexts and series. By what . . . is montage characterized . . .? By colli sion. [And] . . . from the collision of two given fac- I tors arises a concept.24 ^^Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form and the Film Sense, ed. and trans. Jay Leyda (New York, 1960), pp. 30, 37. It is probable, judging from the short story, "Haci enda," that Porter came to know of Eisenstein's filming in Mexico while living there herself. A curious appendage to our discussion of the general applicability of Eisenstein's idea is found in a poem that Porter wrote after returning from her Berlin experience in the early 1930's. Entitled "After a Long Journey" and ded icated "to Gene . . . Berlin, Fall, 1931," it describes a 152 Though it is not only the juxtapositions of points of view that concern Porter— these are obviously of major signifi cance, to be sure— the importance of angles of vision is as 25 central to the statement of Ship of Fools as to Potemkin. Not all critics have allowed this, however. Daniel Curley has written the brief for the negative: Once the voyage gets under way, there is no controlling point of view whatever. The point of view changes from page to page, seldom holding steady for so much as six pages together. We discover that there are at least ten i major characters who share their conflicting visions j with us, to say nothing of another ten who play lesser | roles but who likewise see, from the charmed ground of ivoyage that parallels that of the Vera (even to details jsuch as that of the women water carriers on Tenerife). But additionally it includes a passing reference to "Russian films" and the following prophetic three lines: "All, all such memories are rayed metal, a star with a cutting edge,/ That shears one moment from another. Must we lose them all/ Or shall we do a montage of them, and frame it?" (Mademoiselle. November 1957, p. 142). o c Elizabeth Bowen, an excellent commentator on the writing of novels, has observed: "The cinema, with its actual camera-work, is interesting study for the novelist. In a good film the camera's movement, angle and distance have all worked towards one thing— the fullest possible realization of the director's idea, the completest possible surrounding of the subject. Any trick is justified if it adds a statement. . . . The novelist's relation to the novel is that of the director's relation to the film. The cinema [sic], cinema-going has no doubt built up in novel ists a great authoritarianism. This seems to me good" ("Notes on Writing a Novel," Collected Impressions [New York, 1950], p. 257). 153 their own ways and feelings, all the others as barbarians. In the end everything cancels out, and the author can be said to be in control only to the extent that she makes sure nothing positive r e s u l t s . 26 Others, notably Mark Schorer, have insisted on the reverse, and it is this position that seems tenable. Porter, Mark i jschorer has said, moves constantly from character to character, the drama tic point of view continually shifting, yet the control ling point of view, her [Porter's] perfectly poised ironical intelligence, is constant and in complete author ity. (p. 1) Many times Porter uses the limited nature of a per spective to forward her own interpretation. Repeatedly she employs what she depicts as man's tunnel vision to diagnose | ^nd, at times, indict him. The diagnosis is worked out in I many ways, but often involves a person's restricted and ignorant statement about something that is flatly contra dicted by fact in an adjoining section. That is, people's i f limited points of view are manipulated so as to produce i i jirony. Thus Freytag tends, in his anger, to dismiss Jenny as a flighty, thoughtless person, and, in reaction, to idolize his wife. At one point his imagination carries on a panegyric of Mary that includes a detail which seems to “ ^"Katherine Anne Porter: The Larger Plan," Kenyon Review. XXV (Autumn 1963), 688-689. 154 him indirectly to substantiate her quickness of mind and i ! feeling: "she awoke screaming in nightmares" (140). The next chapter begins almost immediately from Jenny's view and with the following detail (later expanded to important proportions): "She had awakened early out of a nightmare j j . . (142). Restated, Porter says that some of what separates people is not fact but an inability to locate fact. In a rather similar kind of construction Porter has David say, at the beginning of Part III, that his ideal is something tough and grand— Toledo steel, and granite, and Spanish leather, and Spanish pride and hate, and Spanish cruelty— they're the only people who know how to make an art of cruelty . . .I'm sick of things all runny at the edges. . . . (363) Far from coincidentally, a page back, at the close of Part II, we have witnessed Spanish cruelty. David has not. We have watched Lola steadily press her nails into her son's flesh and pull his eyelids back, while Tito beats his daughter about the head "with his fist" (360) and twists his son's arm "very slowly and steadily until the shoulder . . . [is] . . . nearly turned in its socket" (360). Clear ly, David does not know what his statement means because Porter has not allowed his vision to include the scene in the purser's cabin. By juxtaposing that scene with David's speech she shows unmistakably that part of David's and man's 155 problem is in his inability to see what he needs to see. Again and again this same issue is brought up by Porter; at an early party, David's attention was fixed on those who were not danc ing: the born outsiders; the perpetual uninvited; the unwanted. . . . (125) i | i 1 And he thinks of Elsa and of Glocken. The construction of I ! • I Ithe chapter, however, is interesting. It includes a section! of David's confined perspective, but also the lonely thoughts of the Baumgartner family. They too, though David jdoes not know it, are "outsiders" and "unwanted." Again, the limit on man's knowledge is stressed. j At other times the restrictions of point of view tend to be less interpretive than plainly crucial. While Bebe is recovering from his near drowning, Frau Hutten senses that her attentions to the animal are being mocked by the Spanish dancers, and she thinks bitterly, i There . . . [are] . . . many good people . . . in the steerage who better . . . [deserve than the Spaniards] to be on first deck. (79) The irony is damning. There are people on the lower deck and a dog on the upper. Porter has so constructed the novel that in Frau Hutten's view the dog is always human. And that same view has never focused for more than a fleeting time on the lower deck, where human beings live like beasts. 156 In a similarly acetic incident, Hans Baumgartner chants, "I want to go, mother— I want to .go," to which Porter has i Frau Baumgartner reply blindly, "Go where? . . . We are going to Germany, isn't that enough for you?" (12). j Occasionally, just to enter a character's mind and see j his unchecked thought is to expose and, by implication, to judge him. Porter's evaluation of Freytag, partially in vestigated earlier with relation to chapter 19, relies heavily on this method. Outwardly he is the victim of racial prejudice. He speaks at length to Mrs. Treadwell about the guilt of most of the others on the passenger list, and about his own innocence. But then, in a long reverie i from his perspective, the truth is accidentally brought forth: You [Mary, his wife] are no longer a Jew, but the wife I of a German; our children's blood will, flow as pure as i mine, your tainted stream will be cleansed in their German veins— Freytag pulled himself up with a sharp turn, and wiped his streaming face. (134) i Narration from a limited perspective also permits, as outlined in the discussion of unifying devices, the sus tained use of a character's interior diction, and this too is useful in drawing for us the nature of the character. Denny's thoughts run to the following, for example: there's a funny side to everything, a man has got to laugh off a lot of things in this world or he'd go nuts. | . . . (332) | Or: "Keep your shirt on, you big bastard" (371). What better way to depict a thoroughly plebeian mind than to have it operate (think seems an incorrect word) in almost unre- ' ✓ i jlieved cliches? j i | There are, finally, other less specific ways in which ) a careful use of point of view leads to the author's own perspective. Clearly it is not coincidence that our views of Dr. Schumann and Jenny are often from within them. As observed before, were we forced to judge them by their be havior alone, they might fail to gain our sympathy. Dr. | jSchumann does not stop the attack on Freytag and contributes jto the degeneration of La Condesa. Jenny's sometimes bitter s jtongue and giddy behavior are not particularly winning ! j jeither. What saves us from evaluating them only in relation to these facts is that Porter leads us, by planned entries into their perspectives, to understand that they are dis satisfied with themselves. The importance of this has been noted by Marjorie Ryan with respect to Porter's short stories, but it is equally applicable to Ship of Fools: We share [the italics are mine] and understand their anxieties and fears, and their failure to understand, 158 27 much less conquer, the evil they meet. After writing her novel Porter was asked the usual j interview question: with whom did she identify in the book's long list of characters? In light of the way in which she manipulates individual visions throughout the book so as indirectly to communicate her own, her response i I I 28 jis meaningful. "I am nowhere and everywhere." 27"Dubliners and the Stories of Katherine Anne Porter," American Literature. XXXI (January 1960), 472. ^Quoted by Rochelle Girson, "The Author," The Saturday Review. March 31, 1962, p. 15. CHAPTER IV i | POINT OF VIEW AS CONTENT i j The Problem S | ! Early in Ship of Fools Frau Baumgartner and her son argue. She asserts that he is dressed satisfactorily; she is too busy to oversee a change of clothing (32). He pro tests that his leather suit is too warm. This sort of clash is, when amplified, the central problem to which Porter addresses herself in Ship of Fools— the problem of egocentricity and its manifestation as a thoroughly narrowed view designed for personal comfort. From the beginning to the end of the novel Porter is concerned with selfishness and its most disturbing symptom, a needlessly and destruc tively limited vision. The result is, she shows, isolation. An astronomical distance separates the crowded upper deck passengers from each other. They are all, in varying de- ! grees, like Frau Rittersdorf, who sends herself flowers: "To my dearest . . (33). The situation is, in Porter's i ! 159 160 words, that "they all . . . [see] . . . the same thing, each with his own different way of seeing" (388). Which in turn j tieans they end as Mrs . Treadwell did on the night of the party; she "sat in the middle of her narrow bunk as if it I i yere an island, and played an intricate game of solitaire . . (205). | ! | Let us look now in detail at this pattern as it is j ! i ; i developed in the text. j I Maoism: the general disease There is hardly a page in Shin of Fools that does not contribute to Porter's diagnosis of man as self-centered. i He is by inclination gluttonous; many of the scenes in the j hovel are of meals, and the description of them is frequent- ! jLy disgusting. "Everyone on shipboard lived for food . . ." S ^103). Sensuality pervades much of the book. The full or : | part-time pawns of sex are many. Rieber, Lizzi, the Hut- tens, the Baumgartners, Graf, Johann, Freytag, Elsa, those :.n the Spanish dance company, La Condesa, Hansen, Denny, David, Jenny— all in varying degrees are driven at one time or many times by lust. | But the egoism shown is not always expressed so animal- ! istically. Often it appears in the form of melodramatic 161 self-pity, as when Herr Baumgartner, at center stage, announces he will drown himself, or when Frau Schmitt bare ly greets Mrs. Treadwell before explaining abruptly that her husband has died and the whole trip is "only grief and disappointment." ; a She spoke in a low voice without complaint, but as if j she wished even the merest chance acquaintance to iden- j tify her at once with her grief as the only fact of any I importance to be known about her. Her pale blue eyes asked frankly for pity. (29) Most frequently, however, the self-centeredness of Porter's characters emerges in sins of omission— that is, in their lack of concern about the welfare of the others around them. Jenny, one of the least guilty of this, none theless voices a common sentiment when she observes, "We're all on our way somewhere else and we'll be glad to see the last of each other" (401). This fact repeatedly finds ex- I I ipression in small ways: | Mrs. Treadwell noticed that at least half of them did ! not salute each other, not from distaste but from in- | difference. . . . (139) I Or: Migration officials . . . were not in the least concerned whether the travelers gained their ship or dropped dead in their tracks. . . . The officials did not care . . . they had enough troubles of their own. (10) In view of the historical setting of the book and the boat's 162 destination, the issue is occasionally ominous. Mysterious ly, the Indian in Veracruz is arrested; "The travelers watched the scene with apathy. . . . what happened to any one in this place . . . was no concern of theirs" (16). j | iWhen the wood-carver, in tears, has his knife confiscated, j "the other people . . . [pay] . . . no attention" (175). I | Of the open banditry executed in Tenerife by the Spanish | i dancers, Dr. Schumann summarizes, "At no time did anyone j | [of the passengers] feel it was his business to interfere j or even to take particular notice" (473). It is to Mrs. Treadwell, however, that the most telling lines are given. Accidentally she has brought ostracism to Freytag by re- | vealing to others that his wife is a Jew. Mrs. Treadwell tries to justify herself: I wasn't your friend. . . . I was not your enemy either. I just hadn't thought of you at all. . . . I had drunk a whole bottle of wine that evening. Out of boredom, i out of stupor, out of indifference, . . . (257) j i From a slightly different perspective, it is possible to note throughout the book that centers of authority are again and again shown as corrupt. That is, centers of responsibility are corrupt. Father Carillo does not wish to minister to the poor (he "packed up his altar [following the saying of mass to those in steerage] as if he were 163 removing it from a place of pestilence" [150]). The Cap- I I tain, instead of trying to care for his passengers, wishes j even for their annihilation ("He . . . entertained himself j i 1 with dreaming . . . that he was turning one of those really j i i elegant portable machine guns on a riotous mob somewhere" j [the nearest such mob being in his own dining room] [426]). j 1 Symbolically, the ship is populated by orphans. This is i i literally true in the case of a person like David: I j His father had . . . been . . . incapable of even the j lowest form of loyalty to anything or anybody. . . . He had finally looped out with a girl half his age. . . . (129) i It is figuratively, however, that most are without parents. i [ : I Elsa admits to a feeling of never having been at home (66- j 67); Johann senses his mother sold him ("And what did my mother care what happened to me? She wants only the money" [14]); in the midst of Frau and Herr Baumgartner's argu- i ments, Hans sees that "they had forgotten him entirely" (283); of the Cuban medical students it is observed, "they are the lamentably overindulged sons of well-to-do parents who have not taken their parental duties very seriously" (107); and Ric and Rac, of course, "disobeyed them all [the whole dance company] impartially and were equally slapped about and dragged along by all" (14). Fathers and mothers, 164 to summarize, do not assume duties that are theirs. They care little or not at all about those for whom they are responsible. This extreme self-regard which is so thoroughly drawn by Porter is summarized in a recurrent image, that of Nar- | cissus. Repeatedly we watch characters in Ship of Fools | t gaze at themselves in mirrors: "Taking her mirror, . . . i I [Frau RittersdorfJ . . . regarded her profile with approv- j i | al" (34); "Denny . . . looked at himself in the mirror \ . . (78); "she [Mrs. Treadwell] sat before the spotty little looking glass of the washhand stand, looking deeply into her own eyes . . ." (206), and, later, "Mrs. Treadwell . . . observed critically her reflection in the broad look ing glass on the landing" (413); "Lizzi smirked, leaning into the looking glass . . ." (213); and, as Frau Ritters- dorf thinks (revealing her own as well as Frau Schmitt's concern), "Frau Schmitt . . . monopolizes . . . the looking glass" (274). The final result of the condition indicated by the ■^The one exception to this generalization about parents seems to be La Condesa. She appears genuinely to have cared for her children, judging by the intensity of her grief over their outlaw status (119). 165 Narcissus image is, as noted, isolation. This fact too is i caught in one of the often repeated devices of the novel, the soliloquy. Instead of speaking with others, characters frequently speak only with themselves. Monologue replaces dialogue. Jenny has “colloquies with . . . [her] other self" (93). Almost all we learn of Graf as a three-dimen- j ] sional character is via interior monologue; even when he j I speaks aloud it is "as if [he were] talking to himself" j : \ (73). Much of what we see of Freytag is his "silent, in ternal conversation with his absent wife Mary" (133) on topics we understand he will never bring up to her face. Lowenthal retreats "into the dark and airless ghetto of his soul . . . ? for he was never alone in that place" (95). All of which is epitomized by Frau Rittersdorf's notebook, that voluminous outpouring which will obviously never inter- jest another soul. Egoism and point of view So far the central issue of Porter's novel has been formulated in general terms, and no mention has been made of point of view. It would be difficult to examine it further, however, without reference to the topic. The ego- centricity and resulting distance between people is most 166 often seen when problems of point of view call it to the fore. As John P. McIntyre correctly states of the charac ters in Ship of Fools. "The . . . obsession with self re- 2 suits in a narrowing of consciousness," And this narrowing ;of point of view brings with it separation. Graf, for | example, suggests to Johann,1 1 let us say a prayer together" j | (the italics are mine). But, as he begins, Johann can only j i I think, "Concha would be waiting . . ." (485). Both the old pan and the boy are selfish and their points of view have jcontracted to the stage where, in terms of significant com munication, they could as well be on opposite sides of the Ltlantic shouting at each other. | | Before turning to major ways in which point of view is linked to egocentricity and isolation, it is worth noting | jthat the careful scrutiny of such a connection will help j resolve at least one criticism of the book. Porter has been upbraided for "her relentless comparisons of almost all her characters [in Ship of Fools 1 to a whole menagerie of ani- 3 mals and birds. ..." Only one commentator has had the 2,1 Ship of Fools and Its Publicity," Thought, XXXVIII (Summer 1961), 216. ^Theodore Solotaroff, "Ship of Fools and the Critics" (rev. of Ship of Fools). Commentary. XXXIV (October 1962), 167 patience to see through this issue; Robert Kiely observed; Occasionally Miss Porter assigns her characters a place on the evolutionary scale in her own narrative voice. . . . But more often Miss Porter allows the characters to speak or think for themselves, to formulate "inde pendent" opinions about one another, to perform the brutal and defensive act of dehumanization [i.e., con structing similes that equate man and animal] on their 4 own. ^ More specifically, of the 224 metaphors and similes in the i novel that liken man to an animal, twenty-three are from Porter's point of view (eleven of them derogatory, and 5 twelve of them essentially neutral). Clearly, the impor tance of these rhetorical devices is in the perspective of those employing them. As they are largely from the charac ters 1 points of view, they become prime evidence for those persons' egoism and hostility toward one another. But in what other and central respects are the self ishness of man and his isolation connected to point of view^ 285. 4"The Craft of Despondency— The Traditional Novelists," Daedalus. XCII (Spring 1963), 226-227. 5See Appendix II for a detailed examination of such similes and metaphors in Ship of Fools. This essentially dramatic handling of man-animal metaphors can profitably be contrasted to the lyric or first person use that occurs in the poem "Ship of Fools" by Archi bald MacLeish (Songs of Eve [Boston, 1954], pp. 54-55). 168 We see immediately that third person limited chapters often j j reveal, for instance, the most self-blinding and self- centered visions of all. In them the perspectives of others are avoided and the person's view of himself is laboriously jfiltered and rearranged so as to be as flattering as pos- ! jsible. Thus, when Graf thinks of his supposed ability to jheal, he cites to himself, as evidence of success, a trans parent failure. J i "It is not decent for an Indian woman to let a man see her having a baby," they told him. "A modest woman would rather dieL" At last he had gone in boldly, pushing them aside, asserting a man's authority over them, and they gave way before him as God meant them to. He had laid his hands upon the distorted suffering belly where the child kicked and heaved in his struggles to be born, called upon God to admit this new soul to life and to His heaven at last, and the child was born safely with three tremendous tearing pains in a very few minutes (182) Two facts are clear from the passage. First, Graf is moti vated at least in part by pride; his role as healer makes him a lord over others and confidant of God. And, viewed critically, the birth was probably brought on by the woman's fright at the sudden appearance and behavior of an eccentric old man, rather than by any sense of Christ's presence that he might have brought with him. In a similarly dubious manner he concludes that he saved a girl from death because He had seen . . . [the] . . . girl, recognizable by her 169 two long red braids flying and shining in the sun, leaving the hospital. . . . (183) In this case, too, the preliminary remarks indicate a pride ful approximation to Christ. And, obviously, there are a good many little girls with two red braids. "The doctors i I ' | jwere bitterly jealous of his power" (182), Graf thinks. j lOne can only imagine what the doctors thought, but it is j i | clear that theirs were not the exalted visions harbored by i Graf of himself in his reveries. Other illustrations of egoism emerging as a radically distorted view in favor of self are easy to find. One of the most pathetic occurs in Herr Baumgartner's "to be or not to be" soliloquy at the jship's rail. He thinks of the great injustices done him by his wife, and builds a rhetorically impressive case for suicide. He seems ready to jump. j . . . she had jeered at him, and mocked him onward. Ah, ; it was the end. He could not endure it. No, and he I would not either. What madness could have come over j him that he had even for a moment dreamed of leaving ; his innocent, promising son, his only child, an orphan, and so badly provided for, after all. (455) Herr Baumgartner, who never cared greatly for his son, is forced to see himself as a heroic altruist in order to sur vive. Point of view is altered so that it constitutes a life buoy. Usually an egocentric point of view leads, however, to 170 a kind of death by isolation. The distancing vision (rarelyi even partially true to fact, which accounts for the heavy tone of irony throughout the novel) may take the form of a simply indifferent one. Thus, when Elsa is disturbed by iher feelings for the young Cuban student and asks her par- | I ents if she may leave the dance, her mother suggests she is j ! sick and doubtless needs "a good purge" (178). Later at j i another party, after she is dutifully invited to dance once i by a laconic ship's officer, and then abandoned, she makes | her way to her parents on another deck only to be greeted as follows: ! "You seem out of breath, Elsa? Have you been dancing | so hard as all that?" [without waiting for any response] "Ah, good, good," said her father, "our Elsa must not be the kind of girl who sits against the wall." (302) There is, separating child from parents, an ignorance due on the parents' part to egocentric indifference ("Her j[Elsa's] father and mother were so engrossed in their chess game they barely nodded at her as she sat down near them" [302]). Elsa and Herr and Frau Lutz do not see the same facts because, on the latter1s part, they cannot be both ered . It is often, however, an actively hostile point of view, based on a generous estimation of self, that results 171 in separation. But mathematically to tabulate instances of ! this sort would be inappropriate since they are of all magnitudes and kinds. The only course open is, therefore, the discussion of a sufficient number of examples. Mrs. Treadwell's pinchmark illustrates the least im- j i portant variety of distance via an uncharitable vision. We j i know how she received it: a beggar woman gave it to her i (14). We learn later, however, of at least one exterior view. Dr. Schumann (with not very characteristic harshness) thinks, "a large irregular bruise on her arm . . . , most likely the result of an amorous pinch . . ." (18). A simi lar example is Freytag's ridiculously vain worry that his argument and reconciliation with Mrs. Treadwell "might lead in her mind to notions of further intimacy" (261). She has just reflected that he is "as impossible in his way as that tiresome Denny." There are yet other instances of uncharitable points of view leading to separation that are, while not of enough seriousness to dominate a whole scene, nonetheless of major importance when understood as part of a pattern in the per son's or persons' behavior. Thus David thinks bitterly of Jenny, She [Jenny] would sit and listen with an eager look to j that big dull Elsa mumbling along— as if Elsa were tell ing the most marvelous thing in the world. (221) i 'in point of fact we know that Jenny has listened to Elsa | | jout of pity rather than interest in the marvelous (chapter : |50), and that most recently she found herself with Elsa I ■ because she had to find relief from "David's silence and sulkiness" (185). Jenny for her part is almost as ready to ! see in David, without a basis in anything but her own re- ■ i ' ; sentment, undesirable attributes. She thinks, for example: ; he [David] can’t feel pain either in himself or for | others; he can't cry for anything and he doesn't care j how much trouble he makes for everybody. (400) At this stage we already know that David is far from being iinert; he appears rather to be an idealist who is suffering j ■ I (intensely from what he considers Jenny's inability to care ] jstrongly for other people (when she explains to him that with other men "It wasn't love, it was fox fire," he j i jthinks, "She could never understand why . . . the whole ! ! i wrong lay precisely there. It should have been love . . ." [149]). David and Jenny are not, it hardly need be added, the only couple split by a mutually held and revitalized depre catory vision of one another. Mary Freytag accuses her husband of not caring to be with Jews ("It's so strange that. 173 i you never meet any Jews when you travel alone" [133]) when he has married one, and he responds, involving himself in jthe same absurdity, by thinking, "it was the Jews who drew 1 jthe line and refused associations and friendship" (133). Similarly, Frau Baumgartner spends her days seeing her hus- ; j band as a drunk, while he regards her as a heartless tyrant;; I ; both succeed in the realization of their visions by acting i , |and speaking as if they were incontrovertibly true. ! By contrast with these rather minor displays of hostile1 | i and divisive points of view (that are nonetheless important i as they form a pattern), there is another more central class! I i bf such expressions. In these cases the incident is by it- , i i j self of major emotional importance to the character or char-, acters involved, and thus tends to play a decisive part in j jthe scene in which it occurs. This is true, for instance, with a so far unmentioned section in chapter 75. Between •the time Elsa fails to attract any further partners on the i i kance floor and her return to her indifferent parents, she meets Graf. They hold an ironic conversation in which Elsa feigns illness in order to cover her embarrassment at the lack of a dancing partner, and Graf tries to lecture and heal her. After speaking of God's love he announces, "I must touch you" (302), and does so, clasping her throat 174 and then letting his hand slide across her breasts.^ Under-! .standably, Elsa recoils. Graf’s response is immediate: "'God forgive you, you hard-hearted girl,' he said sternly." And as he leaves, Elsa sees "tears sliding out and down his cheeks." Now if there is one thing Elsa is not. it is j | "hard-hearted"; she is a sentimentalist, to judge by her ' announced response to the romantic German movies. The notice she takes of his crying, despite her wish to run, is itself a testimony to this fact. But from the moment of I his egocentrically defensive accusation onward, they will never exchange a word. Another such finally divisive scene occurs between Frau Schmitt and the Baumgartners. They are I j speaking of Graf: Herr Baumgartner suggests he might be a ' saint of some kind. To this Frau Schmitt remarks innocent ly, from her Roman Catholic perspective, "He is a Lutheran, j. . . how could he be a saint?" (158). In response, Frau Baumgartner snaps back, "We are Lutherans. . . . We have our saints also." Though Frau Schmitt attempts with genuine humility and good will to clarify what is just a difference 6 It should be noted that a consideration of limited point of view as content is not necessarily confined to material in whole sections of narration from restricted perspectives. As limited vision is a subject (rather than technique) it may be evidenced in dialogue. 175 between a precise, technical definition, and a broad one, Frau Baumgartner refuses to give way in her negative per spective on the exchange. She chooses to see Frau Schmitt's comment as an insult. Apparently in her frustration with I her husband, she needs a triumph somewhere, and this gives j her a self-satisfying excuse to be rude to a timid person. Thus the chapter is closed and possible communion between two people is ended "finally and forever" (159). Until now we have concerned ourselves largely with instances of egocentric points of view that lead to an almost wholly inaccurate understanding of fact, and thus separate individuals. There is also another and, I find, i i more profound type of distortion illustrated in Porter's novel. It does not result in such extreme ironies, but is based on struggle that takes place in more realistically gray circumstances. In these cases the hostile point of view that isolates is one that converts a half truth to a whole one. The selfish vision is not a fiction but a dis tortion. The Captain, for example, sees La Condesa's political knowledge and motives in the following way: My own opinion is, she is one of these idle rich great ladies who like excitement, who get into mischief and make more mischief without in the least understanding what they do .... (107) 176 While it is clear that La Condesa's eccentric behavior .is. calculated to provide relief for her ennui, it is also evi- I dent that this has not always been her governing motive. She has, we learn, made self-sacrificing attempts to hide her sons during the revolution (235). The Captain's ungen- i jerous view therefore has only partial justification in fact.j |Similarly, Lowenthal is rejected by Denny (97) because he j sells religious objects in which he does not believe. But in Lowenthal's view "There is nothing personal in it at all. . . . if I don't sell them, somebody else will" (97). And, though we might wish that a man believe in what he sells, it is hard to dismiss Lowenthal as being worlds lower than his shipmates (as Freytag does [256]) in view of the picture 7 we get of the organized religion upon which he preys. For the priests it apparently could also be said, "There is ^Like Brant (who wrote that if Christ returned, "At first the priest away He’d send" [p. 163]), Porter deals narshly with organized religion. It is corrupt and of no particular significance ("religious services in the morning . . . ; horse races at two o'clock" [136]). The outwardly pious, "the godly wearing Sunday faces" (149), seem most Dften like Frau Rittersdorf: "She crossed herself several times although she was a Lutheran. It was a gesture she felt becoming to her, and it warded off bad luck" (33) . The two priests on board clearly do not enjoy attending the poor, and do so only enough to involve them in unchristian vio lence (which violence elicits from one of the priests a "sardonic hoot that was nearly laughter" [329]). 177 nothing personal in it at all." A certain brutal validity lies in Lowenthal's contention that "it's just straight business" (97) . This same egocentric tendency to see a half truth as ja whole one is part of more central character relationships | j a s well. Lizzi sees Graf as follows: j ! i I i j you know that little sick man in the wheel chair? Well, j if you don't watch carefully, he will reach out and touch and stroke you— that is, if you are a woman. He j will pretend he is curing you of whatever ails you. The | old hypocrite. . . . (207) Johann for his part thinks: "this selfish greedy old man |who . . . [pretends] . . . to be such a saint and . . . [is] j j . . . pure devil" (440). The exterior verdict then, based to a degree on the relish of a gossip for verbal destruction and on the frustration of a boy's lust, is that Graf is insincere. We see, however, in his reveries about his own conversion (181) and in his final, anguished prayer ("0 God, I am blinded in your light. Remember me for one merciful moment . . [444]) that, mixed with what may have been unrecognized sexual desire, there was religious devotion. Mrs. Treadwell is, in like manner, the victim of Freytag's self-aggrandizing point of view. He speaks in completely absolute terms about her "mean treachery" (254) in reveal ing his marriage to a Jew. Though, as we have seen, she is 178 "treacherous" in the sense that she was indifferent and i i thus incautious, the context of her statement to Lizzi was anything but treacherous— she was attempting to defend Preytag by silencing finally Lizzi's bigoted chatter about Freytag being himself a Jew (214). Later Freytag indulges j j in more of the same kind of self-gratifying, absolutistic | interpretation (self-gratifying as it returns him to the position of a pure martyr): "In spite of her brief tears he [Freytag] did not believe she [Mrs. Treadwell] felt any | true remorse . . (262). "Any" and "true" are his indul gences . We know, as he should by observation, that although after the argument her remorse cools, she does at the time i j feel guilt and regret. Mrs. Treadwell . . . understood his suffering as real and terrible, admitted her fault, and took on . . . penance. . . . Of course it was her fault. (258) I Once again Freytag has egocentrically shaped his vision so | that it warps a partial truth into a full one. Probably the most notable instance of an ungenerously distorted point of view causing separation (in spirit) is in the final parting of Dr. Schumann and La Condesa. We understand that their views of the relationship have been vastly different: La Condesa calls theirs "innocent love," to which Dr. Schumann replies, "I have not loved you 179 innocently . . . but guiltily . . (369). This would seem, however, to be an instance where point of view is j disparaging only in relation to self and thus we might suppose that it would not be divisive. The ironic fact is, though, that this generous difference in perspectives leads to actions and angles of view that reflect a degree of self-| centeredness. Dr. Schumann decides that he must attempt as best he can to disguise his feelings (he kisses her only once, while! she is in a narcotic sleep [368]) and then, inconspicuously, to see to her safety. Thus he writes a note for her to j Ipresent to other doctors when she needs drugs (368), and I | later sends a letter ashore to her in which he inquires after her address and health. He sends her his own office address, in his home city, with his I telephone number [and] the address of the International Red Cross headquarters in Geneva. . . . (373) i It is in her reaction to this letter that we are suddenly g allowed to share her point of view. Dr. Schumann had O La Condesa is unique in being the only major character whose point of view we are not allowed to share (except for two fleeting and unimportant passages [202, 355] that give us her view but not any of her thoughts). Daniel Curley has remarked about "her strange and highly verbalized rela tionship with the ship's doctor" ("Katherine Anne Porter: The Larger Plan," Kenyon Review. XXV [Autumn 1963], 695) 180 "hoped for a reply to the ship before it . . . sailed at four o'clock" (374). Instead the assistant purser reports to him, "Madame thanked the police agent, and said there was no answer" (375). Clearly, she does not thank Dr. j I Schumann; her opinion of the parting is negative. One can I ! i only imagine that the stiff phraseology (e.g., "an earnest j request that Madame write to him at once" [373]), the ironicj I solicitation (she was to "let him know where a letter [the italics are mine] might find her at all times" [373]), and the disingenuous complimentary closing ("He signed himself her assured and devoted servant" [374]), so suggestive of the timidity of that kiss, all led her to cut off the rela- i tionship. Her final position, "no answer," stands as an accusation. From her point of view he is cowardly. The fact is, of course, that Dr. Schumann would admit to the accusation. He thinks of himself as just that: "What a coward . . . " (373). But put in absolute terms, and "no answer" is in those terms, it is not correct. Seen from within his orthodox perspective, the perspective of a and it is all of that. Not only are we never permitted in side her mind? she also remains playfully elusive behind her coquette's rhetoric. She warns Dr. Schumann truthfully, "When will you learn not to trust me in anything?" (204). 181 ! i lifetime, his action has not been wholly timorous (though not so brave as to warrant a "relief of conscience" [374] as he briefly hopes). He has admitted his feeling for her | (368-369) and plans even "to provide for her and see that ishe . . . [is] . . . cared for and protected . . (374). jAnd he has recognized an obligation to his wife, as well as I j ■his need of her. He thought of his wife with habitual fondness, of her known strength, always the same, her unexpected and | constantly changing weaknesses and whims. She was the | center, the reason, and the meaning of his marriage, | around which his life had grown like an organism; she ; ■ was not to be disturbed for anything. (374) ] ! jln other words, Dr. Schumann is not all coward. As the i previous quotation indicates, his action is a mixture of altruism and egoism. This mixture La Condesa, in her dis- ! appointment, will apparently not allow herself to see (if j i jone must leave what one admires, it is easier to loathe it)J The artifice of abstraction i As Porter discusses the distortions of selfish per- j j spectives, she emphasizes excessive abstracting. Nothing twists partial truth into inaccuracies more quickly, accord ing to Porter, than generalization. Egoism in point of view i is, from the start to the finish of the novel, often camou- jflaged (and, one suspects, aggravated and compounded) by 182 a zeal to categorize and label. With the labels there is isolation; there is nothing to be learned from what has beer absolutely grouped. People are robbed of their individual ity and become, instead, things to be manipulated or coun tered by rule. John P. McIntyre has correctly understood this facet of the book. When the power of reason divorces itself from experience and the lived detail, it conjures up chimeras and makes of men monsters. Preferring the heresy of abstracting to real images of life, the rationalist evinces his apartness, his separateness. . . . Ship of Fools force fully demonstrates how the heresy of abstraction compels intolerance. (pp. 213-214) | There are, to be sure, people who appear to know better i than to indulge in this "heresy." Frau Schmitt is one: she had never been very clear about the meanings of words. Truth was anything that had happened, and a fact was anything that existed. (290) Others at times evince a proper corrective view: David [thinks, for instance, "A man, a woman, meant nothing to him. Jenny was the question . . ." (340). But these people and insights are a tiny minority. In most cases abstraction is used as an effective disguise for a hostile vision. Typi cally, Rieber is publishing a magazine which is concerned with "the New World of Tomorrow" (212). It is to feature articles "from every point of view" on such problems as the Jews. The irony is grotesque. The mere fact that the topic 183 is the problem of the Jews is itself a limiting point of 9 view. j Nationality, race, religion, and politics are by far ! the most common of troublesome classifications. Porter, ! | speaking of the ship on which she herself rode to Germany, | ! the vessel she later transformed into the fictional Vera. j has remarked: That ship was like a basket of snakes on a hot stove. People were drawn together by religion, separated by language or nationality; drawn together by nationality, separated by caste or politics . The accuracy of Porter's simile is apparent when we enter Denny1s consciousness. ! He [Denny] was in a bad position. Here was an atheist [Hansen] on one side, talking like a Bolshevik. And here was a Jew [Lowenthal] on the other side, criticiz ing Christians . . . that is, Catholics. Well, he didn't like Catholics any more than he did atheists, on the other hand he didn't like the idea of a Jew talking against Christians .... Denny began to feel tired in the head. (333) ! i Probably no one on board is quite as bad as Denny ("They're 9 Surely the last word on this topic goes, however, to William Faulkner's Jason Compson for his ungrammatical though definitive remark, "I have nothing against jews as an individual. It's just the race" (The Sound and the Fury [New York, 1956], p. 209). ■^Katherine Anne Porter, James Ruoff, and Del Smith, "Katherine Anne Porter on Ship of Fools." College English. XXIV (February 1963), 396. 184 . . . dirty Reds" [60], "I despise . . . those Catholics" [96], etc.), though those who generalize in a similar fashion are many. Herr Lutz reminisces about hotel keeping in Switzerland: i ! it was the Germans and the British and the French and I the Spanish and the Central European Jews and oh, my I God, in the old days the Russians who drove us to our graves. (101) Mrs. Treadwell concludes that Freytag is "too handsome in the wrong kind of German way" (139). Lowenthal groups all gentiles as "Them" and "They" (336). The purser shouts, in hate, "That Bolshevik— those Catholics!" (331). Father Carillo expounds at length on "syndicalism, anarchism, re publicanism, communism, . . . [and] . . . atheism, above all atheism," and links these to the "Tenerifans," "Astur ians," "Andalusians" and "a sprinkling of Basques" (172). Indeed, before the book is under way Porter allows us i j to begin seeing how the egocentric point of view held by the majority of the upper class on the boat expresses it self. Unlike the neutrality at the opening of "Noon Wine" ("Time: 1896-1905— Place: Small South Texas Farm"), the setting for Ship of Fools includes a listing of characters 185 that reads roughly like a Nazi Great Chain of Being.^ The Germans are grouped first, with the Captain at the top, then the doctor and purser, the middle class citizens, the de fective (Glocken) and the dying (Graf), the servant (Johann)!, i I and finally the man who married a Jew, followed by an actual Jew. Then come the Swiss, who may speak German. Then the j Latins, with those of purest blood first (Spanish, Cuban, Mexican). Then the Swede and the mongrel Americans (with the chemical engineer first among the Americans), listed just above the indistinguishable "eight hundred and seventy-six souls" "In Steerage" (xii). What more telling way to start the book than to differentiate people in this i manner. Moral ill health is diagnosed prior even to the beginning of the story. Not all divisive abstractions are constructed on the bases discussed above. Denny comes to generalize, "all Women, the whole dirty mess of them. . . . One as much a i J bitch as the other . . (313). And the people of Veracruz think of travelers as a’unit: ^■''Marvin Pierce notes the neutral quality of the open ing to "Noon Wine" in "Point of View: Katherine Anne Por ter's Noon Wine." Ohio University Review. Ill (1961), 98. 186 If any exceptions to these rules [about the nature of travelers] occurred, they were quite simply ignored; all strangers as such were odious and absurd. (8) But the effect of such generalizations— appearing uniformly i to be part of hostile points of view— is always the same, to separate. David thinks synoptically, When the fishwife streak in Jenny's nature took hold, and her entire being fused all its elements into pure mindless femaleness . . . , David's central knot of tension loosened, he felt pleasantly released from the burden of taking her seriously, of trying to answer . . . (137) The selfish use of others' limited vision Before leaving the subject of egoism and point of view, mention should be made of the frequency with which charac ters in Ship of Fools purposefully exploit for their own ends the limits of others' perspectives. Repeatedly Porter depicts people being victimized because of their restricted vision. Commonly this takes the form of deception and dis- 12 guise. IP At times Ship of Fools seems to parallel Dante's Inferno in interesting ways. As Dante reaches the lower levels of Hell, the temperature drops and he encounters those guilty of the sins of the Leopard, or fraud. Simi larly, Ship of Fools builds toward the Spanish dancing company's grand night of fraud, and the climate changes from hot to cold (the story begins in "almost unbearable heat" [11]; after leaving Tenerife, Jenny notes that "the ship had 187 Characters often act for appearance alone. The image, : i I not the fact, is important. Freytag continues his meal with Lowenthal because "he intended to preserve the very best of appearances to the end" (242). Mrs. Treadwell suggests Freytag eat with her after their quarrel, "just so all these strangers . . . will see . . (261). Frau Rittersdorf is j jpained by her encounter with Tito because the "scene could hardly be more conspicuous" (271). Denny refrains from telling David what he thinks of Pastora since "he [Denny] wished to maintain the view of his character he hoped he had built up in David Scott's mind" (277). David scolds his mistress, Jenny, for slapping "herself high up on the inner thigh": "do you ever think how you look?" (353). Frau Schmitt, on her way back to the ship from shopping in Tenerife, eats candy on the street ! as invisibly as she . . . [can] . . . knowing well that I only persons of inferior breeding would be seen eating in the streets. She could only hope she was not seen. (390) Lowenthal even plans a little act for bystanders: He [Lowenthal] would say to him [Freytag] sometime on crossed some line in the night, it was not summer any more, but early fall" [403]; as they arrive in Bremerhaven, "the day . . . [is] . . . dark and cold, with lightly floating snow" [494]). deck, before a lot of people, loud enough for them to j hear: "You mustn't take wrong what I said, Herr Frey tag. You're more than welcome to sit at my table, if you haven't got any place else." (264) David is capable of a more sinister and covert dissembling: He [David] did not forgive her [Jenny]; he would take J j her by surprise someday. . . . Feeling within him his | coldness of heart as a real power in reserve, he smiled | at her with that sweetness which always charmed her, reached out and laid his hand over hers warmly. (43) j i Directly related to these frequent deceptions is Por- 13 ter's sustained emphasis on masks. Smith Kirkpatrick has remarked, As the title says, the voyagers are all fools. . . . Miss Porter reduces the foolery to the oldest mark of the fool, the one thing that all fools in all time have had in common: the mask.^ The primary instance of the use of masks occurs at the party for the Captain. When evil incarnate plans the fun, "every body . . . [will] . . . appear masked and change places at [ [table" (270). This is simply to say that everybody will 13 ■ Linked to the stress upon masks is another recurring reference, one to plays. Herr Baumgartner is "like a man in a play" (124); Freytag's suffering is to Jenny "a touch theatrical" (304) and his appearance "reminded her of an actor" (370); Freytag is not, Jenny thinks, "meant to be a hero of drama" (307); David thinks of Jenny's "well-played acts of complaisance" (398); and people at the Captain's table behave "as though they were in a play" (247). ^•4"Ship of Fools" (rev. of Ship of Fools) . Sewanee Review. LXXI (Winter 1963), 94. 189 follow the Spanish dancing company's daily example (Jenny thinks, "Their frowning faces, their gestures . . . all seemed too farfetched and overrehearsed to be probable" [108]), which they already do in good measure. Lizzi, for j example, i j • painted and powdered her face half a dozen times a day, | putting on her mask as carefully and deliberately as an actress preparing to face her audience. (206) Herr Baumgartner enjoys wearing a mask to entertain children 15 (122), though it eventually scares them. In fact, all through the book there is an equation made of the travel ers' faces with masks: in the Americans' faces "almost nothing of their characters was revealed" (18); David's "face . . . gave absolutely no sign when he was hit" (42); "the students . . . [exchange] . . . odd malicious glances elaborately wiping away smiles under their napkins" (105); ! David observes of Jenny and Freytag as they dance that |"their faces were only two fatuous masks" (126); and the women of the dance troupe paint themselves so that their ■^Children, except Ric and Rac, appear to be too honest and straightforward to understand the nature of masks. They take them literally. Initiation into the adult world is thus epitomized by Elsa's introduction to cosmetics: "I [Frau Lutz] will buy you a box of face powder when we get home. After all, it is perhaps time for you to be a real young lady ..." (99). 190 "smiling faces . . . [are] . . . masks" (428). The most extreme and ironic masking is, clearly, that done by Mrs. Treadwell following the Captain's party: Mrs. Treadwell leaned very close to the looking glass and studied her features thoughtfully, and began to amuse herself with painting a different face on her own ! . . . Amparo perhaps. (461-462)^ i As a final note, the selfish use of another's circum scribed view is not necessarily limited, of course, to disguise. Jenny tries quite openly to exploit David's ignorance of his own drunken behavior at a dance the night before (147), just as he taunts her later about her "con venient" "alcoholic blank" (477). I In summary, then, Porter depicts man as destructively egocentric. His selfishness finds expression in a point of view that denies or distorts facts, a point of view that isolates him. A Partial Solution Ship of Fools is not, it should be remembered, a phil- ^It is interesting to note the frequency with which such a scene— the contemplation of a mask before a mirror— reappears in contemporary art. Somewhat similar ones occur in Ingmar Bergman's film Three Strange Loves and in Michel angelo Antonioni's L'Avventura. One thinks also of Georges Rouault's frightening print, "Who does not paint himself a face?" 191 osophical tract. If it diagnoses and prescribes, it does so largely by implication. Porter's method is indirect and certainly not as orderly as philosophy's. Because of this, no one should expect from the book a full, independent, and cohesive pronouncement about life. There are elements in the novel (e.g., guilt, as we shall see) that are solidly a part of the story but which, by the standards of the more disciplined studies of philosophy or theology, seem inade quately developed. To begin, we must speak of only a partial solution to the distance created by individually varying points of view because there is an amount of this distance which appears, ! in terms of the novel, not to be open to reform. It is in the nature of things; it is what, in its most serious mani festations, might qualify Porter's vision for the adjective "tragic." Normally foolish Professor Hutten thinks of the situation with some clarity, of the mysteriously variable distribution of common traits in human nature which created the individual being— . . . causing all these endless and incalculable points of view. . . . (343) There is more involved, of course. The possession of only two eyes and two ears obviously restricts our understanding 192 17 of all that is in time and space. In Ship of Fools these ineradicable limits to man's vision and knowledge appear in many incidents of varying centrality. The occasion can be minor and even humorous, j I |as when Frau Rittersdorf supposes in ignorance that Jenny's last name is Angel and David's Darling (84). This is not an egocentrically warped view of facts. It is just a mis- | understanding of them, a misunderstanding that can and will be clarified, but against which there is no antidote. Many of the ironies in the book are based on similar points of blindness. Tito and Lola are not believed when they say i they know nothing about the theft of La Condesa's pearls ("The purser did not for a moment believe anything but that they were doing a fair job of acting, but not good enough to fool him" [359]). Because the pearls appeared to be "only beads" (360), Ric and Rac have mistakenly thrown them away. In another instance Dr. Schumann, not having heard a loud groan emitted by Graf seconds earlier, walks by and comments to him, "You are looking very well, this morning. 1 7 Taking note of such insurmountable limits is not very unusual in modern art. Luigi Pirandello has done so in the theater (It Is So flf You Think Sol) and Kurosawa in the film (Rashomont for example. 193 I hope you are enjoying your voyage" (372). And when Frau Rittersdorf is sick in Tenerife: "I must be having an attack of some kind," she said aloud, in German, and the [Spanish-speaking] waiter answered agreeably, "Si, Si, Senora, naturalmente1" (384) At times, the irony is pitiful. People suffer a hopeless seclusion as they cannot know what is in another's mind. David watches Jenny draw, unknown to him, a caricature of himself: She was so happily absorbed and soothed in the execution of her little murder, her features assumed the sweet serenity and interior warm light that David loved to see. . . . (339) . . . a smile curled delicately at the corners of her mouth, not ecstasy, but something tender and pleasant and happy. (340) Elsewhere, when David and Jenny argue about whether Freytag needs consolation, they observe him, though they fail to do So accurately: 1 I i On the other side of the bar, plainly to be seen by them both, the object of their quarrel or rather the pretext for it, Freytag, was having cocktails with Mrs. Treadwell, the two of them quite untroubled and good-looking, asking for nobody's officious help or pity. Jenny's . . . be lief in her own view of things, vanished. . . . (266) The fact is, of course, that Freytag and Mrs. Treadwell are involved in a conversation that masks complete isolation ("She [Mrs. Treadwell] smiled in his [Freytag's] direction, 194 j 1 looking through him as through a pane of glass" [262]). ; | Sometimes, as noted, the nature of this fated division j by point of view is major. We have already observed the incident in which David opts for Spanish cruelty because he is not permitted to see what it is. The problem involves 1 i j an ignorance not open to change— the relevant facts are, in j an immediate sense, unavailable to him. At its extreme, the separation is tragic (using the term orthodoxly). If we may assume that Herr Lutz is capable of affection for j his daughter, and this seems justified in view of his genial attempts to save her from her mother's ironbound conserva tism, he provides us with an example. At his invitation, he and his daughter dance, because, in her mother's words, "when you are seen dancing, someone else will invite you" (299). But as they dance, i j Elsa longed to cry out, "I am not a mealsack, I am not | a broom, this is no way to dance, you are making us | ridiculous, nobody but you would dance like thisl" Her father's face was merry and full of love. . . . (300) A comparison with "The Leaning Tower" It is helpful to conduct an examination of the theme of Ship of Fools with a somewhat similar, shorter, earlier work in mind. Porter's "The Leaning Tower" (1941), a story of a 195 young painter, Charles Upton, bears remarkable similarities to Ship of Fools. The setting is Germany, 1931. Random details have a striking likeness: During his [Charles's] voyage on a German boat, the German passengers had taken occasion to praise each his own province in the matter of speech. Lizzi observes, | | : Frau Rittersdorf . . . speaks a vile Miinchener accent; the Captain speaks Berliner style, atrocious; the purser speaks Plattdeutsch, the worst of all except some of those sailors from up around Konigsberg who talk like mere Baltic peasants! (213-214) j 1 Charles, like Jenny and David, "should never have come here. I would have gone to Paris, or to Madrid" (LT 155). The story features a similar description of the German middle class (there are "round-headed men with great rolls of fat across the backs of their necks" who exude an appearance of "sluggish but intense cruelty" [LT 159-160]). The pig metaphor, so frequent in Ship of Fools, is important in the story (e.g., corpulent shoppers, admiring a display of pork in a butcher shop, stand "in a trance of pig worship" [LT 160]). Germans are, as they frequently appear in the novel, is "The Leaning Tower," The Leaning Tower and Other Stories (New York, 1944), p. 150. All other page references to "The Leaning Tower" will be from this text and will occur in the form of parenthetical page references preceded by the abbreviation "LT." 196 rationalists ("1 Nonesense1 was one of Kuno's favorite words, especially just after his return [to the United States] from, abroad [Germany]" [LT 211]), and materialists ("they can't get their minds off of money for a second" [LT 211]), and racists ("the true great old Germanic type is lean and tallj and fair as gods" [LT 224]). In fact, the entire story j parallels one of the major plots of Ship of Fools, that of | the artist (American) trying and failing to create in the hate-filled context of a German middle-class sty. If there is a difference between the two works, then, what is it? In terms of content, the variation is between the novel's pessimism and the story's unqualified despair. Charles ends in "a cold sweat," "rolled into a knot" (LT 245-246) on his bed, feeling "an infernal desolation of the spirit" (LT 245). ] There was something perishable but threatening, uneasy, hanging over his head or stirring angrily, dangerously, at his back. (LT 245) In technique the contrast is just as crucial. "The Leaning Tower" is from only one perspective, Charles Upton's, whereas there are many points of view in the novel. Method is equally important because, though no one character on the Vera arrives in Bremerhaven with a substantially more positive outlook than Charles Upton's, the reader of Ship 197 of Fools does. He is not left only with the ill-defined | 1 feeling of frustrated dread that closes the short story. This is largely so, it seems to me, because of the multi plicity of third person limited perspectives in the novel. We have been shown a pattern of views, from within and without, rather than only a single perspective. We have seen both sides of separations instead of just one. Having these sides enables us to recognize common denominators j upon which man could capitalize, and repeated mistakes that I i he could mitigate. Additionally, the diversity of views in the book makes possible the presentation of a convincing over-all thesis by Porter since her assumption has so clearly been, unlike that behind "The Leaning Tower," that there exists more than one side and hence more than one approach to a problem. If there are only good people and evil people, then there is I |little to do, if one identifies with the good people, but tense for the first blow. If, however, evil is distributed, albeit unevenly, one can always turn to the hopeful task of self-correction. A prescription; commitment The partial solution that Porter suggests, in terms of 198 Ship of Fools, is that man attempt to see himself with greater severity and those around him with greater generos ity. The problem is, as we have noted, distance, and much of it is man-caused; as Frau Schmitt finds, "it seemed all i too often that no one really wished even to try to be a j little charitable" (159). Men's points of view have hard- j ened into ones that flatter the self while blemishing j 19 others. Only when a change takes place, the author im- i plies, will men be able to know each other and communicate directly. It is when Mrs. Treadwell abandons her harshly defensive view of Freytag that disguise fails. After "Mrs. Treadwell . . . gave way and consented to see him in his own light" (258), She took a little looking glass and powder puff and lipstick out of her handbag, and for the first time in her life applied make-up in public. (259) The deception and distance of the mask is overcome (to put it on in front of someone is to abandon it in relation to that person) when the viewpoint behind it becomes more altruistic. In one sense, then, the solution Porter puts forward Importer, in "After a Long Journey," speaks of "a point of view/ Petrified on its feet" (Mademoiselle. November, 1957, p. 143). 199 is the one David enunciates after his swift taxi ride with Jenny past Cuban monuments: "more and more I am convinced it is a great mistake to do anything or make anything for the view of strangers" (54). There is pathos in the state- j ment because it is made by a puritan with a keen sense for j jappearance (e.g., women should not, unless they are Mexican j i | j peasants, slap their thighs), but this does not mitigate ! its validity in terms of the book. What is needed is for man to stop constructing deceitful fagades. i In another sense, however, Porter intimates that the solution lies in something beyond a negative. "Love" is obviously a word that she is loath to use, but she is just as obviously determined to use it and make it mean something. A. good many critics have isolated the idea as the major preoccupation of Porter, and, properly understood, this i i seems correct. George Greene believes, for instance, that Ship of Fools is primarily an exploration of "the scope and 20 sanctions of human love." Ray B. West asserts that while Miss Porter portrays [in Ship of Fools 1 much of modern life as sterile and impotent, . . . she also suggests, p n Brimstone and Roses: Notes on Katherine Anne Por ter," Thought. XXXVI (Autumn 1961), 427. 200 21 as does Eliot, the fructifying possibilities of love. j But how are we to understand this word? Probably few writ ers have recognized more acutely that there must be a reno- 22 vation of its definition if it is to be more than a trap. ! Porter has included in her novel a mass of evidence to the i 2 3 i effect that the concept of love has been abused. Many j PI • . . . i Katherine Anne Porter. University of Minnesota Pam- | phlets on American Writers, No. 28 (Minneapolis, 1963), p. i 43. | Harry J. Moony has observed that "most of her [For- ! ter's] stories deal with the failure of love" (The Fiction j and Criticism of Katherine Anne Porter, rev. ed., Critical j Essays in English and American Literature, No. 2 [Pittsburgti, 1962], p. 5), and this has indeed been the point of emphasis in many interpretations of the stories. William Bysshe j jStein explores what he asserts is "the betrayal of the ho- ; jlistic ideal of Christian love" portrayed in "Theft" | ("'Theft': Porter's Politics of Modern Love," Perspective. j XI [Winter I960], 223). Ray B. West examines "Flowering Judas" in somewhat the same terms (Katherine Anne Porter. p. 10). | ^Though Porter might even in theory object to the idea, of definition. She has written in a poem, "Bouquet for October," the following: "It is not timely to say once for all/ What love is. (Once for all words engraved/ On monu ments celebrating potbellied kings, high bosomed ladies,/ Philosophers, clowns, slender pages with crossed ankles,/ Knights clasping with smooth knuckles/ Blunted answerable arguments of heroics;/ Above all, on the tombs of States men.)" (Paaanv. Ill [Winter 1932], 21). P 3 • Not the least to abuse love have been the critics. Edward Schwartz, for example, has written probably the most warped discussion to date of "Pale Horse, Pale Rider." "Miranda has figuratively poisoned the well and caused it to dry up by denying her lover a rebirth through sex, and 201 j characters at some time express disgust with the word. ! Jenny observes, "David . . . won't even talk about it. . . . j David hates love worse than I do, even," and later she re marks acidly, "Love, this ship is simmering with it. I'm sure it's all Real Love . . (169). Mrs. Treadwell thinks; ! with equal cynicism of her youth when she was taught that j i "there was always to be love— always love" (208). When ! I Concha berates Johann, "And you talk about love 1" he re- ! plies "furiously, 'I never said that word)'" (310). Simi- ; f larly, when Mrs. Treadwell refuses her officer, he remarks j with great bitterness, "Do you want me to . . . say I love j ! ! you? I never knew what people meant by that word" (460). ! i \ ! What Porter condemns, as Brant does, is romantic j 24 love. It is, in Porter's view, a kind of sickness, much jher family, an heir, (The terrible truth seems to be that the 'Boche' is within Miranda . . .)" (See the unpublished doctoral dissertation [University of Syracuse, 1953], "The Fiction of Katherine Anne Porter," pp. 176-177). ^In "Of Amours" Brant writes that "lovers act like children." "Whom once these sharp guilt barbs do hit,/ Deprived are they of sense and wit/ They dance about like fools insane" (The Ship of Fools, trans. Edwin H. Zeydel [New York, 1962], pp. 88-89). ; Porter has attacked romantic love in her nonfiction as well. She has, for example, written in her essay "The Necessary Enemy" (The Days Before [New York, 1952], pp. 179- 184) that romantic love has no place in marriage. Porter's emphasis upon "the fallacy of romantic love" 202 as Marcel Proust diagnoses it (and for about the same rea sons) . Romantic love creates a situation in which problems of point of view are aggravated to an extreme degree. This is so because, as illustrated in Ship of Fools, romantic love is in fact largely only intensified egoism. The per- j sons involved see each other primarily in terms of self- ! j satisfaction, the proof of which is in the wholly condition al quality of the relationships. Romantic love depends upon, seeing the other as ideal. When that person appears as less than ideal, the love is weakened or dies. Jenny summarizes j I j this position when she asks, "what was there to love in j i him?" (146). Love is contingent upon its object being de- j I | sirable from the lover's point of view. The reductio ad absurdum of this occurs when Rieber is cracked over the heac. with a beer bottle and Lizzi suddenly announces, "how could j I have been so deceived? I never loved him, I see it now'." I (463). Romantic love emerges in Ship of Fools, then, as a destructive mirage. It is point of view warped by egocen tric desire. There is nothing wholly perfect in existence has been examined by Shirley E. Johnson ("Love Attitudes in the Fiction of Katherine Anne Porter," West Virginia Uni versity Bulletin; Philological Papers. XIII [December 1964], p. 83). 203 ! I (even David, the idealist, recognizes late that "there j couldn't be any such living girl as he had dreamed Jenny was . . [450]) and therefore romantic love, a self- centered drunkenness leading not only to a belief that there | is such but also that it can belong to one, is a trap. j"When you are in love it is nearly impossible to make your- j ! ; jself see straight" (167) Jenny observes. And when it is i I jover one thinks as Freytag thinks of his wife, "He had been i deceived . . ." (135). And of others, each one unbelievably enchanting for that brief time when he was hot after each in turn, bedeviled and | blinded with illusion. (165) By inversion, then, Porter recommends love'defined, i 1 within certain limits, as unconditional commitment. She 1 calls for more of what Jenny feels toward her family (a family whose attitude is "suspicion of the worst based on i insufficient knowledge of her life"): It was no question at all whether they were the kind you would have chosen, would have preferred, at any rate; they were the family you belonged to. . . . (186) Mrs. Treadwell summarizes the desperate and uncompromising nature of this love when she thinks: Love me, love me in spite of all!. Whether or not I love vour whether I am fit to love, whether you are able to 204 love, even if there is no such thing as lovej. love mel (480)25 What is needed, in many cases, is commitment to another despite how that person may appear from one's own point of i view. Or, restated, not loyalty that is blind to imperfec- j I i tions, but loyalty that is constant in the face of imper- j I fections. An amount of qualification is, of course, necessary here since Porter clearly does not recommend sympathetic j allegiance to men like Rieber. There are immoral excesses j I that are intolerable. Nor does Porter support Professor j i | Hutten1s demand that his wife never express "disloyalty to j I my ideas" (297) because "a wife's first duty . . . [is] j . . . to be in complete agreement with her husband at all times" (295). Such a request is corrupt as it suggests a need for loyalty in only one direction, and in foolish i excess. Within the above limits, however, the important thing I to note is that Porter calls for a new degree of commitment. P R This passage has been cited as key to the book by many critics. Ray B. West, for instance, says that it is 'Perhaps the nearest Katherine Anne Porter comes to ex pressing what the story is about" (Katherine Anne Porter. . 40) . 205 Whether the other person returns love, is gracious, beauti- j ful, witty, brilliant— these factors, once loyalty is pledged, should cease to be weighed. Whereas romantic love j ! survives, Porter says, only so long as its object appears | i to conform to the ideal, genuine love should outlast the ! t certain knowledge that the ideal is nowhere present.^ Only i * i with love defined in this way can there be an erasure of j distance between points of view such as occurs in the case j | of the bride and groom aboard the Vera: j "We're going to live together until the end of the world'." They laughed together for happiness, without a trace of irony. . . . (440) A prerequisite: the realiza tion of one's own guilt To return, however, to our first statement of the theme, we said that Porter recommends to men that they view (themselves with greater severity and others with less if the distance between persons is to be reduced. The question would then seem to be, what is to motivate the change? There is apparently no compelling divine revelation in ^^Porter1s definition of love is, clearly, a partial one. A full definition would probably also include discus sion of a desire to please the beloved. And notice of the fact that, in order to love, there must be adequate devel opment of self. 206 support of generosity. And the easiest way of viewing 27 things is demonstrably the most self-centered way. One's ^There is one class of passengers on the Vera that does not seem seriously bothered by point of view divisions. As a critic has observed, the problem of the book is the "alienation of all people from one another, except, pos sibly, for the 'primitives'" (Sidney Finkelstein, "Ship of i Fools." Mainstream. XV [September 1962], 46). The fact is that, save for the revolutionist and his few followers, the j steerage passengers seem to have one point of view. This i is reinforced as the reader is never allowed inside the ; perspective of any of the lower class deportees. Instead j we observe what Glenway Wescott has called their "collec tivity" (Glenway Wescott, "Katherine Anne Porter Personal ly," Images of Truth [New York, 1962], p. 47). We watch them return to "their [the italics are mine] own earth" (365) and, as they depart, witness scenes such as the fol lowing: "A boy of about twelve years with a fierce, burning smile turned about as he reached the upper deck, and saw them [the first class passengers], 'Ole, Ole,' he called out, raising a clenched fist and shaking it in the air. 'We are many more than when we started!' One of the mothers lifted her worn dark face and called back in triumph, 'Yes, and men, too, all of them'. ' A great rollicking torrent of laughter rolled through them all" (366). In other words, primitive man is not yet infected by civilized man's notion of individualism. The steerage life is communal. This unity may, in part, explain Porter's generally favorable portrayal of primitives. In Ship of Fools they are depicted as superior in body and spirit to most on the upper deck (see, for example, chapter 55 describing their after-dinner entertainment). Porter has, of course, shown an interest in primitive art all her life; she reports that as a young girl she made money singing "old Scottish ballads in costume," and that she "went to Mexico to study the Aztec and Mayan art de signs" (Katherine Anne Porter and Barbara Thompson, "An In terview," The Paris Review. No. 29 [winter-Spring 1963], 94, 97). She brought, in 1922, one of the first exhibits of Mexican folk art to the United States (Wescott, Images of Truth. p. 31). 207 own point of view tends naturally to be gentle with oneself: i ! Frau Rittersdorf, for example, "resolutely . . . had omitted all mention of . . . [her dance with Tito] . . . from her diary" (268). And when one's own perspective is generous ! toward oneself it is often commensurately accusatory toward others: Professor Hutten not only believes he did not leave the cabin door open and thus allow Bebe to escape; his re- i i sponse to the fact of the open door is a question to his j i wife— "How could you have done that?" (297). What, then, ; offers hope of change? It is time to ask whether there are discoveries made in Ship of Fools, and if so, whether they are significant— t significant in the sense that they promote a reconciliation with and commitment to life. That is, whether the discov eries lead to a more actively generous view of others and therefore to less isolation. i Most discoveries in Porter's novel do not meet con structively the major problem of the book. They are only simple and firm realizations of the prevalence of suffering All of this is not to say that she keeps no guard against sentimentality. David is given some powerful in vective against Jenny's tendency to "go fake primitive" ("We love their beautiful straw mats because we don't have to sleep on them") (56). 208 and loneliness. Jenny, as an instance, comes to conclude: i We [David and i] will go on for a while, and it will be worse and worse, and we will say and do more and more outrageous things to each other, and one day we will strike the final death-giving blows. There is nowhere to go back and begin again with this . , . there is no j place to go. (146) j i Similarly, Elsa learns only that 1 i It's no use, nothing helps. I can't find anything . . . | that tells me how to live when I am so ugly and stupid and nobody wants to come near me. . . . (484) And for Frau Schmitt "the great lesson life had been pre- j paring for her" is that j i she must be quiet, keep to herself, express no opinions, bear no witness, carry no tales, make no confidences, nobody cared, nobody cared, there was nobody. . . . (356) i i Clearly, discoveries such as these do not reduce but instead entrench isolation. The goal is a discovery that will harmonize individual with individual, that will unify points of view. Some in- | | isight must be made into scenes such as the following one: | "Jenny angel, you're looking lovely, you really are," [cf. 416] he [David] said seriously as if he did not expect her to believe it. But she did, she believed it with all her heart, and saw him transfigured as he always was in these mysterious visitations of love be tween them— reasonless, causeless, having its own times and seasons, vanishing at a breath and yet always bringing with it the illusion that it would last for ever. . . . (422) In the final analysis Porter seems to suggest that the 209 reconciliation which is not illusory will be based on a I recognition of guilt. Only in an incontrovertible facing of one's own culpability is there hope for more than fleet ing or accidental generosity in the evaluation of others. I 28 ' Many see all sins except their own. Freytag says of ' j Lowenthal that "he will never acknowledge that any wrong j i I ; jhas been done to anyone but himself" (262) when we have just seen Freytag guilty of the same thing (257-258) in front of Mrs. Treadwell; later he charges Hansen with disguising a "personal grudge" beneath his high-sounding abstractions, an accusation of such significance that Porter intervenes ! i directly to comment. j ; i This elementary fact of human nature came to him as a personal discovery about others, he did not once include himself in it. His own plight was unique, peculiar to himself, outside all the rules. His feelings about it were right beyond question, subject to no judgments except his own. . . . (411)^9 28 In the section entitled "Of Chiding and Erring One self," Brant writes, "A fool is he who chides in you/ What he himself would often do . . ." (The Ship of Fools, p. 110) . 29 * It remains puzzling to me why interpreters of Por ter 1s novel have failed to see in Freytag a negative figure (one has even called him "one of the two most sympathetic Germans" [Wayne C. Booth, "Yes, But Are They Really Novels?" The Yale Review. LI <June 1962>, 633]), He believes "in his own innocence" (163) tenaciously but without justifica tion. He claims to love-his wife and defines the love in 210 In other words, an egocentric point of view is a snare, and s i a reconciling discovery will involve cognizance of and tri umph over it. Only an active conscience can do this. There is one exemplary case in Ship of Fools where a Iprofound recognition of guilt occurs and results in a j | 3 0 i stronger and more generous commitment to others. Dr. extreme terms: "he believed love was based on faith, [and that] complete loyalty [was] its first attribute. . . . Any smallest betrayal of the loved one, whether the act came early or late, was total betrayal from the first, and it destroyed not only the future but the very past itself, for every day lived in confidence had been a lie and the heart a dupe. To be unfaithful even once was never to have been faithful at all . . ." (167-168). Then, after failing to have intercourse with Jenny only because of her drunkenness,! he says to her easily, "it was perhaps a little dull and certainly absurd and nothing for either of us to think about again" (483). It is in view of his inert conscience that the parallel between him and Dr. Schumann is doubly incrimi nating . Both are Germans who want only to get home to their wives (Freytag "was very simply transporting himself . . . until . . . he should set himself down in the house where jMary was . . ." [133]; "if only I [Dr. Schumann] can live (long enough once more to see my wife ..." [196]) and both damage their purity of purpose in transit. Dr. Schumann admits the damage. Freytag's point of view remains, how ever, egocentric to the end. He believes in his innocence and leaves the ship an example of the most extreme kind of alienation (not all of which is his fault, to be sure). O f ) Several critics have spoken of the unique position Dr. Schumann holds in the novel. Stanley Kauffmann is, however, alone in observing that Dr. Schumann is unique be cause he learns something ("Katherine Anne Porter's Crowning Work [rev. of Ship of Fools 1. The New Republic. April 2, 1962, p. 24). Others such as Harry J. Moony (The Fiction and Criticism of Katherine Anne Porter, p. 58), James Finn 211 | Schumann, beset by a longing to withdraw from the lives of j I ! his shipmates (he feels in regard to La Condesa, for in stance, "a great temptation to give her up, to make no fur ther attempts to help her" [171]), has at the same time j repeated and gradually intensifying realizations of guilt, j He early thinks, after denouncing La Condesa's tormentors j I to Frau Schmitt with a harshness at which he himself is I ! surprised, that j The feeling which inspired . . . [the words was] . . . | suspect. He made a little Act of Gontrition in the depths of his mind. . . . (192) Later, after a meeting with La Condesa, "he felt not the | right contrition, that good habit of the spirit, but a per- \ j \ I ! sonal shame ..." (238). And he begins to see the trap j I i which he must avoid, the trap of "denying his feelings to ! ! himself, blaming her for everything, and hating his own j ! i evil in her" (238) . In the crisis with La Condesa he comes ! i to know his own guilt keenly, and as he does so, to commit himself. After speaking with Father Garza, Dr. Schumann ("On the Voyage to Eternity" [rev. of Ship of Fools 1. The Commonweal. May 18, 1962, p. 212), and Anne Duchene ("Twenty years a-growing" [rev. of Ship of Fools 1. Manchester Guard ian Weekly, November 8, 1962, p. 11) simply note that Dr. Schumann seems one of the few admirable figures, without taking pains to examine his place and importance in the scheme of the book. 212 was not consoled or reassured, and knew that he could never be by any means he was able to imagine now. She was a burden on his conscience he was condemned to carry to his death. He gave a deep-drawn sigh, but not of resignation, and said most cheerfully, "Griiss Gott" to that poor wretch Herr Glocken. (350) He then inquires out of pity after Glocken's health and offers to examine him. "'Now?1 [Glocken] . . . said unbe- I I lievingly. 'Now,' Said Dr. Schumann" (351). Later, of course, his remorse over his treatment of La Condesa results in his plan of further care for her (374). What is most clear is, in summary, that guilt reduces isolation as it makes a man's estimation of other people become more gener- I ous: ! i j his . . . guilt drew him slowly into a vast teeming shapeless wallow of compassion for every suffering thing, a confusion so dark he could no longer tell the difference between the invader and the invaded, the violator and the violated, the betrayer and the betrayed, the one who loved and the one who hated. . . . (373) Dr. Schumann is, to be sure, not completely alone in his discovery. His is unique, however, in depth and dura tion. Mrs. Treadwell, as we have already seen, does accept guilt for Freytag's suffering, and the result is a lowering of the distancing mask for a short time. She also feels remorse over her neglect of her parents ("why didn't I come home?" [210]). Nonetheless, a final evaluation of her 213 behavior is difficult to make. She retains a strong ten dency to withdraw ("I get so tired of moral bookkeeping. . . . Why does it concern me what they do?" [415]) though it is possible to see in her beating of Denny a kind of positive act. Unlike the wistful sympathy of Frau Schmitt and hopelessly abstract social commitment of Jenny ("She had picketed dozens of times with just any strikers who happened to need pickets, and she had been in jail several times, and really, it was just a lark!" [164]), Mrs. Tread well's fury is commendably translated into action with a concrete end. On the other hand, the act is reduced as it |lacks focus on the central issues; it may very well be more i therapeutic for Mrs. Treadwell than corrective for Denny, and thus not be particularly altruistic at all. If there is guilt felt by others, it is either unde veloped or fleeting. Jenny, for example, does show signs of an awakening ethical sense (when Freytag assures her suavely after the party, "You haven't got anything to be sorry for," she replies curtly, "Oh, what do you know about it?" [482]), but in the book we never see this feeling en larged upon. Frau Schmitt also has some insight into the problem of egoism: "One man's desire must always crowd out another's, one must always take his own good at another's 214 expense" (152). But she closes her thought with what ap pears to be only a reflex phrase, "God forgive us all" (152)1 She is, moreover, not sufficiently aware of any guilt to surmount her timidity and act in defense of others. Before leaving the topic of guilt it should be made i clear that Porter seems to give no theological rationale j for it. Erich Heller has written that in the case of Kafka. 1 9 I i "the conviction of damnation is all that is left of j I 31 * faith." For Porter, all that remains is the slightly j milder though no more explicable conviction of accountabil- ■^"The World of Franz Kafka," The Disinherited Mind (New York, 1959), p. 207. 32as a matter of fact, Porter like Dante shows that a belief in accountability can be based heavily on an acute observation of life itself. That is, both writers show thatj vice often comes back in kind; the vice itself becomes the torment. As Robert Kiely has written, "One of the peculiar pleasures in reading . . . [Ship of Fools 1 . . . is to see foolish or vicious characters eventually become victims of follies very much like their own" ("The Craft of Desponden cy— The Traditional Novelists," p. 227). This may take humorous form as when Lowenthal sees the Mass in progress and spits upwind only to have it carried back into his face (153). Or when the Spanish dancing company is forced to pay a high taxi fare ("We are being robbed" [392]) in order to make good their escape from Tenerife. At times, however, the fault is related to point of view and has more somber implications. Herr Lutz, for instance, had moved to Mexico because he hoped to capitalize on others' ignorance: "In Mexico, the pamphlets said . . . the suckers just poured in 215 Ship of Fools is clearly a pessimistic novel. It is j largely, though not wholly, devoted to showing life as, in Mrs. Treadwell's words, a "beastly little business" (208). Those who have any further understanding of its nature are few (Jenny and David, central and sympathetic figures, seem j headed for the wall). We are never allowed a picture of j I redemption, apparently because those making redeeming dis coveries are so outnumbered and because general isolation has progressed so far. On the other hand, the statement of the novel is, we have seen, less bleak that that of "The Leaning Tower"; ! Ship of Fools does not, as one critic said, project "an j abysmal view of life" or, in another's words, an "unrelieved. 33 doomsday vision." Having noted that two characters in the in the book do make significant discoveries, it is important. i to observe the relationship in which these two people stand to others. Specifically, Jenny seems an early Mrs. the year round . . . you could charge them just what they were used to paying at home or even more" (101). Herr Lutz was then himself made the victim of his own ignorance as he believed the pamphlet (it contained no reference to politi cal upheavals). ■^Finkelstein, p. 46; Curley, "Katherine Anne Porter: The Larger Plan," p. 678. 216 i i Treadwell. Both women want to go to Paris, both have fallenj ! in love with the wrong people, both have picked up the same j sort of man on shipboard (Freytag is 1 1 like a sports jacket I or whisky advertisement" [27], and the officer is "sleek, neat, immaculately correct and inhuman looking as if he were: poured into a mold" [434]), and both close their acquain- j i ; 34 tance with Freytag "by walking away rudely" (483). David,; on the other hand, resembles Dr. Schumann. In certain de- ! * i f ! tails they are alike (e.g., they both sleep soundly, cf. ppJ 147, 193), but it is in broad outline that they are most similar. Each tends to be a passive, withdrawing idealist. And each exhibits a determined fidelity— Dr. Schumann re- i j jfuses to leave his wife just as David refuses to renounce Jenny ("David is going to be . . . faithful to death" [169] Jenny thinks). The final point is, of course, not simply i I i |that Jenny is like Mrs. Treadwell and David like Dr. Schu mann, but also that they are, as we have seen, different. The older people are wiser. The implication is that the limits of point of view can be altered in time. ■^Daniel Curley notes that Jenny Brown's "future is clearly foreshadowed by Mrs. Treadwell" (p. 691), though he does not judge this to be at all hopeful. CHAPTER V i THE QUESTION OF FREEDOM j i To assert that man is answerable for his behavior pre- j j supposes that he is capable of regulating it. Critical j I opinion is severely divided over whether Porter actually j i makes such an assumption. Thus, despite the fact that the i E issue of human freedom is not directly part of the topic of point of view, we must nonetheless turn to it if Porter's belief in guilt is to be established as genuine. j I i ! On one side are those who see Porter as a moralist. j Glenway Wescott has asserted that, along with her dedication to literature, "her most distinctive characteristic is her . burning interest in . . . ethics and personal responsibili ty."^ Robert Penn Warren believes all of her work revolves about two propositions: the necessity for moral definition, and the difficulty of ■'•"Best Years," Newsweek, July 31, 1961, p. 78. 217 218 ] I 2 i moral definition. j Vernon Young has termed her stories a "literature of moral 3 subtlety." Closely allied with these critics are those who say they believe they see in Porter's work at least some ! i opportunity for characters to change. Marjorie Ryan, for I | example, alleges that Porter's short stories differ from 4 Joyce's in exactly this respect. Edward Schwartz finds j Porter "dissatisfied with a purely deterministic conception 5 of reality." Characters in Ship of Fools are, according | to Patricia Plante, "sinners . . . presently inhabiting . . . [a hell] . . . of their own making."^ Louis Auchin- closs believes that ! i there is no feeling in the book that the fools are doomed to be fools. They can be what they wish— all ^Introduction, Katherine Anne Porter: A Critical Bib liography. by Edward Schwartz (New York, 1953), p. 9. ^"The Art of Katherine Anne Porter," New Mexico Quar terly. XV (Autumn 1945), 326. 4"Dubliners and the Stories of Katherine Anne Porter," American Literature. XXXI (January 1960), 465. 5See the unpublished doctoral dissertation, "The Fic tion of Katherine Anne Porter" (Syracuse University, 1953), p. 230. ^"Katherine Anne Porter: Misanthrope Acquitted," Xavier University Studies. II (December 1963), 89. 219 7 but the maimed beggar. For the other side Howard Moss writes unequivocally 8 that, in Ship of Fools. "Need turns people into fools." [Harry J. Mooney concludes that characters in the novel j are so completely the victims of their own compulsive j behavior that the reader feels that they cannot act j in any way other than as they do.^ i i j Robert Kiely writes: In this static universe Fof Ship of Fools 1. we don't j expect David Darling and Jenny Angel to stop torturing j one another or Herr Professor Hutten to pronounce an ! unpedantic word; we don't expect La Condesa to stop i taking drugs, Herr Baumgartner to stop drinking, or j William Denny to stop chasing prostitutes. In short, j we expect no one to change.10 Granville Hicks' verdict is that Porter implies in her novel i | j i i ! that "there is no possibility of change." Sybille Bedford, n "Bound for Bremerhaven— and Eternity" (rev. of Ship of Fools). New York Herald Tribune Books. April 1, 1962, p. jll. j ^"No Safe Harbor" (rev. of Ship of Fools). The New Yorker. April 28, 1962, p. 169. ^The Fiction and Criticism of Katherine Anne Porter, rev. ed., Critical Essays in English and American Litera ture, No. 2 (Pittsburgh, 1962), p. 59. -*-°"The Craft of Despondency— The Traditional Novelists," Daedalus. XCII (Spring 1963), 229. Voyage to Life" (rev. of Ship of Fools). The Saturday Review. March 31, 1962, p. 16. 220 j believes that Porter does not construct her novel "in terms | of . . . Jamesian decisions, her cards are already stacked 12 I t At first thought it may seem that we are back discus- i sing exactly the issue of whether Porter tries to teach or j just describe. Logically we are, but in the perspective of | ! literary history we are not. American literature has sever-j I al figures (e.g., Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser) who claimed only to be reporting, and in some cases appeared to write in that manner as they amassed great quantities of factual detail, but who clearly made suggestions as well. I Naturalism's I j ! t quasi-scientific approach not only permits but, in theory at least, actually prescribes a neutral attitude in the sphere of values. In practice, however, most naturalists are not sufficiently detached or logical to stay put in such an ultra-objective position. Because of this illogical but literary possibility, and the split in criticism, I wish now to survey the evidence pro and con (excluding textual evidence already covered, such as ip Voyage to Everywhere," (rev. of Ship of Fools). The Spectator. November 16, 1962, p. 764. ^3Philip Rahv, "Notes on the Decline of Naturalism," in Realism and Romanticism in Fiction, ed. Eugene Current- Garcia and Walton R. Patrick (Chicago, 1962), p. 185. 221 the reality of guilt and its implication of freedom) and see i if a reasonable conclusion can be made. j [ Porter's Apparent Belief in Determinism ----------------- j i In Ship of Fools the suggestions of bondage are pro- : i fuse. The largest group of people on board, those in steer-j i i j jage, seem to be in "complete enslavement" (57) and as though they are behind "the bars of a cage" (175). The upper clasd passengers speak of themselves in similar terms (Frau | Schmitt concludes that "This is a terrible, evil world and she . . . [is] . . . helpless in it" [405]; Jenny remarks i "I'm . . . a prisoner in myself . . ." [432]). The ship— "such a little ship, like a prison almost, so few places to go" (253) becomes a symbol for the restrictions upon man. Repeatedly we are told of people walking around the Vera as they might a prison yard; Porter frequently gives us the exact number of circuits as if to emphasize their captivity (the Huttens go "seven times around the deck" [79], then Frau Rittersdorf goes "nine times around the deck" [85], and so on). More important, little progress is evident in the novel. One of the first incidents in the book presents us with Porter's evaluation of the efficacy of revolution. 222 Those who are "adamant in their determination to put an end to social and economic wrongs" (7) murder one of the inno cent poor and then, in order not to waste money ("the fire works had been ordered" [7]), celebrate. In other terms, | the trip described by Porter goes nowhere. Symbolically, the passengers never leave Veracruz as the dance company, j embodying all the ruthless hostility of that city (the dan- j cers are the only ones to "come out to take part" [13] in ! I i the city's festivities), travels with them. Jenny remarks ; ? ! I that it "would be such a nice voyage if only we knew where j | we were going" (148); the inescapable fact is that, while j she had wished to go to Paris and David had wished to go to [ ! ! Spain, they go to neither place. Instead they land in Ger- j i many, where they will see more people like those who have been on the ship. It is as Jenny thinks of her whole life: I "I never meant to be here, and I believed I was on my way ! somewhere else altogether different" (93). Opening por traits of characters are almost all just as definitive by the close of the book. And the last paragraph describes human need still unmet: a boy, "who looked as if he had never had enough to eat in his life, nor a kind word from anybody" (he suggests another David in the making), speaks a greeting "as if the town were a human being" (497). It 223 has been alleged by Edwin H. Zeydal that Brant in his book makes the first literary reference to Columbus' voyage west 14 to the new world. As this reference occurs in a section warning against tourism, it constitutes an ironic backdrop for Porter's analogue, a story of a journey back across the j Atlantic, apparently with the message that there is nothing i 1 : new under the sun. Man's life looks to be static. Put another way, would-be creators create nothing, and hence potentially important evidence of freedom never appears. | Just as the Huttens are sterile, Jenny and David, who think j of themselves as artists, produce nothing on the voyage. Finally, the emphasis on man's limited perspectives | i appeared to support an interpretation of Porter's work as deterministic. If one is ignorant, one is unfree. We have noted, moreover, that in some cases blindness owing to point i I of view seems to be in the nature of things. The very con- i ! I cern that Porter shows for depicting man's disorderly mind itself suggests her conviction that he is unconsciously vulnerable (e.g., the Captain thinks, "He knew well what ■^Brant wrote, "They’ve found in Portugal since then [the days of Pliny and Strabo]/ And in Hispania naked men,/ And sparkling gold and islands too/ Whereof no mortal ever knew." (The Ship of Fools, trans. Edwin H. Zeydel [New York, 1962], pp. 222, 378). 224 human trash his ship . . . ," and then he has to stop his thought and add "all ships— carried" [425]). It does not seem coincidence, for example, that Frau Baumgartner is apparently more fond of her son than of her husband ("Once ! upon a time there was a little brother and sister who lived j in the Black Forest. His name was Hansel— Hans, like you; i and hers was Gretel, like me" [456]) and that Herr Lutz is ! more generous and lenient than Frau Lutz with Elsa. [ Porter's Apparent Belief in Freedom The central textual evidence for Porter 1s belief in j i | freedom has already been cited. Major and sensitive charac-j i I ters— Dr. Schumann, Mrs. Treadwell, and even Jenny--learn of an inescapable guilt. And, as this realization is solid ly made, we have noted dramatic examples of a reduction in distance. There are yet other elements in the novel that suggest a belief in freedom. To some extent, just the setting--a small ship— tends to magnify the necessity of moral action to a degree that intimates it must be possible, or else why describe the situation? As Freytag observes, people on voyage mostly . . . [go] . . . on behaving as if they were on dry land, and there is simply not room for it on a ship. Every smallest act shows up more 225 clearly and looks worse, because it has lost its back- j ground. The train of events leading up to and explain ing it is not there; you can't refer it back and set it j in its proper size and place. (132) j i Further, as mentioned elsewhere, the multiplicity of per- | i spectives and the parallels that arise among them suggest j strongly how close to a breakthrough men are in their search for community. Finally, Porter loads the book as she puts the determinist1s alibi for evil in the mouth of one of the greatest fools in the novel. It is Professor Hutten who j I i says, men do evil through ignorance, they must not be con demned. It is because their education has been neglect ed, they were not subjected to good influences in their youth. . . . (290) j I ! | i Evidence outside the text for Porter's belief in free dom is strong. We have her testimony on several occasions to the fact that she considers literature to be involved I with morality and, thereby, with decisions. Her praise of Henry James is not based only on his technical excellence: he was a wonderful moralist and I'm not interested in any artist who isn't a moralist. I think the basis of 1 R great art must be . . . a tremendous moral sense.3 ■^See the appendix, "Henry James and Katherine Anne Porter" (p. 236), to the unpublished doctoral dissertation (University of Ottawa, 1959), "Henry James and Katherine Anne Porter: 'Endless Relations!'" by Edward F. Murphy. Murphy transcribes, from a kinescope, an interview with 226 And, speaking of the trip that led to her writing of Ship of Fools, she has said, I came to see that something happened aboard that ship that was quite stupid, that it wouldn't have happened if any of the people opposed to it had taken hold and not let it happen. A Reconciliation Porter's position, relative to the question of human i i freedom, would seem then to be moderate, one "neither j I stunted by naturalism nor bloated by romanticized aggrava- j tion" (Young, p. 341). As Robert Penn Warren remarked of Mr. Thompson in "Noon Wine," so man in Porter's work gener- 17 ally appears "innocent and yet guilty," free and not free. i Glenway Wescott has said of the same story that it envisages j right and wrong, both on the personal level, where some thing can be done about it, and in the sense of the Porter that took place on the program "Camera Three" on WCBS-TV in New York (Sunday, April 13, 1958). It is interesting that, elsewhere, Porter defends Hardy's work by trying to establish that he was not a de- terminist ("On a Criticism of Thomas Hardy," The Davs Be fore [New York, 1952], pp. 23-35). ^Katherine Anne Porter, James Ruoff, and Del Smith, "Katherine Anne Porter on Ship of Fools." College English. XXIV (February 1963), 397. Irony with a Center: Katherine Anne Porter." In Realism and Romanticism in Fiction, ed. Eugene Current-Gar- cia and Walton R. Patrick (Chicago, 1962), p. 494. 227 | f J sublime, the insoluble (p. 44), j and this too seems close to the truth. In her own somewhat j i I I confusing and, here, paradoxical manner, Porter has said as i much directly: Every once in a while when I see a character of mine just ! I going toward perdition, I think, "Stop, stop, you can i always stop and choose, you know." But no, being what i ! he was, he already has chosen, and he can't go back on it now. I suppose the first idea that man had was the idea of fate, of the servile will, of a deity who de- j stroyed as he would, without regard for the creature, ^g j But I think the idea of free will was the second idea. j I don't think that this \Ship of Fools 1 is a pessimistic book at all. I am not trying to make anybody out a | saint or a sinner, but just showing human beings with j failings, and prejudices or with burdens a little more j than they can bear, burdens that have made them what j they are and through which they are trying to struggle. j | Some of them make it and some of them don't.-*-® j | In terms of the novel, the idea of limited freedom is perhaps best illustrated in the treatment of the topic of joriginal sin. On the one side, Dr. Schumann's belief in itj i i I (he speaks of "our highly debatable innocence" [199]) is j i borne out dramatically by the presence of Ric and Rac ("the j focus of most of the speculations about original sin," as -*-®Katherine Anne Porter and Barbara Thompson, "An In terview," The Paris Review. No. 29 (Winter-Spring 1963), p. 102. ■*"®Rochelle Girson, "The Author," The Saturday Review. March 31, 1962, p. 15. 228 20 Theodore Solotaroff observes). They as children seem i already to epitomize the vices of their elders; when they escape into a stored lifeboat to commit incest [198] they j 1 ! i create a symbolic microcosm of the entire Ship of Fools. I i jHowever, just as inescapable corruption is apparently vali- j i dated by the twins' presence, so is innocence and moral possibility by the Bride and Groom. In the one scene where ^ we observe them for any length of time from within, their \ points of view quickly become synonymous (chapter 134). ! r 21 But we rarely see them from within. They stand as symbol^ for human potentiality ("both [were] very beautiful in pure white" [86]), in their own way as impossible, and impossible i I I j; jto portray convincingly, as Christ. Thus we end with a formula vaguely like Reinhold Niebuhr's in his discussion of original sin— that there is "responsibility despite in- i [ I 22 [evitability." j 1 i j j ^Q"Ship of Fools and the Critics" (rev. of Ship of .Fools.), Commentary. XXXIV (October 1962), 285. ^There seems no justification for assuming, as Daniel Curley does, that this is just an artistic oversight ("Kath erine Anne Porter: The Larger Plan," Kenvon Review. XXV [Autumn 1963], 695). ^The Nature and Destiny of Man (New York, 1949), p. 255. It is well to point out that Porter does not consider 229 Porter, then, apparently opts for a midway position. Man has freedom but it is limited. In Andre Gide1s The Counterfeiters. Edouard, a novelist writing about a novel ist, objects to naturalism as too restrictive. His inter- i | locutor finally asks if he wishes to abandon factual real- i ity. He replies, and his words summarize Porter's job, that i i Shis protagonist | ' | wants to abandon it; but I shall continually bring him back to it. In fact that will be the subject; the struggle between the facts presented by reality and the j ideal reality. ^ \ Original Sin in literal terms. She has written, "of course, I belong to the guilt-ridden white pillar crowd [of South erners] myself but it just didn't rub off on me. Maybe I'm just not . . . Puritan enough to feel that the sins of the father are visited on the third and fourth generation" (Paris Review, p. 93). 23Andre Gide, The Counterfeiters, trans. Dorothy Bussy (New York, 1957), p. 174. This passage is also quoted as an important and balanced one by Philip Rahv in his article on naturalism. CHAPTER VI j i SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION: | POINT OF VIEW IN PERSPECTIVE i ' | , I : Porter has written a novel of very wide scope, a novel ! i dealing with a great number of disparate people and issues. She has, additionally, embodied in the book more definite conclusions about man's corruption and potential than in j any of her previous fiction. To accomplish this she has j | skillfully used point of view in some of the same ways in which she used it through her earlier short stories. And she has devised new techniques that have allowed her to interpret her materials more clearly and to meet problems ! i i i jraised by the larger format. i | Twenty-four of Porter's twenty-six major stories ex hibit some type of restricted perspective. The method serves a variety of ends in these works. Certain uses to | which it is put are relatively significant only in the stories: third person limited narration, for example, lends 230 231 verisimilitude and immediacy to the description of crucial dreams in "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," "Flowering Judas," and "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall." Other applications of | point of view forecast techniques employed in Ship of Fools. | i Limiting our vision to the protagonist's brings us, for jexample, closer to whatever new insight the character | jachieves. Miranda's early innocence and later revelations f are made our own by this process; we follow and share Dr. I Schumann;s growth in much the same way. Porter also empha- j i sizes, by restricting out view to a single character's, that the chief ground of conflict is, at times, within. The nature of Laura's struggle, in "The Flowering Judas," t ; is revealed in this manner, as is that of Mrs. Treadwell in Ship of Fools. On occasion Porter narrows perspective to make possible a sustained and credible picture of random I jmental processes leading to important discoveries. Laura, | : 1 1 f i when the author shows her accidentally confronting the truth about herself as she falls asleep, is again exemplary; in the novel, Porter depicts Frau Hutten suffering a similarly unforeseen confrontation with the facts. Finally, point of view is often restricted in the stories, as it is in Ship of Fools, so that the protagonist is revealed sympatheti cally. Were we to judge Miranda, Granny Weatherall, or 232 Marfa Concepcion— or characters such as Jenny— on the basis of only fleeting entries into their minds, or on the strength of what they do and say aloud, our evaluation would | at times be harsh. Porter saves these characters from this | ! judgment by allowing us to see their lives wholly or largely through their own eyes. We understand their motives fully, and are commensurately tolerant. j j Though technique and content are finally inseparable, as is implied in the foregoing discussion of the stories, it is possible to see, in Ship of Fools, both how Porter finds point of view helpful mechanically, and important as ; I a major element to be dealt with in the human condition. Porter uses point of view as technique in several ways, some of which are relatively secondary. Occasionally, for example, she uses it to create humor: Rieber and Hanser are, periodically, amusing because they see so little. i i i Point of view is of considerably more significance, however,! ! when Porter attempts, through judicious manipulation of it, to resist sentimentality? specifically, at appropriate times she abandons limited perspectives, which promote reader identification with the fictional viewer, in favor of an omniscient standpoint or the simple presentation of dialogue. This is particularly evident in her treatment of 233 figures who are acutely sensitive, such as Dr. Schumann, j La Condesa, David, and Jenny. I Porter's application of point of view to the problem of unifying the novel is also of major consequence. By j ! employing many short sections from restricted perspectives, \ she has made it possible convincingly to embed parallels I i and leitmotivs. Certain topics, such as that of death by drowning, arise, unforced, again and again in the minds of i I j knany characters; or an identical sight, such as that of ; i Bebe, may occupy the casual attention of a whole series of I ! viewers. To similar ends, Porter maneuvers perspective in order to link units of the novel in a "cinematic" fashion: I ! . ! chapter 63, for example, concludes with Freytag thinking about Lowenthal, while chapter 64 is from Lowenthal's point of view. I i Finally, Porter uses perspective to characterize, in terpret, and evaluate. As noted, some of the ways in which she does this are evident in the stories. Some, however, are not. For instance, in Ship of Fools Porter frequently juxtaposes sections from different points of view so that one will contradict and undercut the other. Thus, a passage from Jenny's point of view closes with her searching for David: 234 if she saw him [she meant] to put her arms around his neck and kiss him . . . for she could not in the least control her terrible rushes of tenderness for him. (220) | Then a section from David's view begins: David, after his appalled glimpse of Jenny and the new company she appeared to be keeping [she has spoken absentmindedly to Glocken], went back to his cabin. . . . Who wouldn't she take up with, he wondered. (221) j The answer, which Porter makes unmistakable by her position-; ing of the two views, is that Jenny would have "taken up j | with" David, despite his inadequacies, had he been generous j enough to permit her to do so. A person's isolation is, ; I frequently, his own fault. | i Not all interpretive uses of point of view are so central, in terms of the entire book, as the foregoing one. I ! Occasionally something as minor as the way in which we leave a perspective may help Porter to characterize: we first abandon Mrs. Treadwell's and Dr. Schumann's points of view when, typically, they lose interest in watching those around them; neither, we learn gradually, wishes to become involved with others. Elsewhere, Porter evaluates a char acter simply by avoiding his or her perspective: we see very little of Lizzi through her own eyes, and, as a conse quence, there is nothing to mitigate our judgment of her outward behavior. In yet other places, Porter's employment 235 j ! I of a limited angle of view makes possible the revealing use j of a character's interior diction; we know Denny, at least in part, because we know the hackneyed terms in which he thinks. i Point of view is significant as content, according to j jPorter, when it is warped into a disastrous manifestation ; ] ; I of human egoism. In Ship of Fools we observe almost every- ; ! one arrange his own vision so that it is self-satisfying, | ! commonly with the result that it is also hostile to others, i i | and therefore isolating. Herr Baumgartner, for example, I | I i convinces himself that his failure to commit suicide is an I i act of altruism; then he returns to his cabin, where he j j strikes his wife and terrifies his son in the name of his altruism. Sometimes a character filters his observation to the i extent that what he sees is wholly unrelated to fact. On ! other, less obvious occasions, he converts a partial truth to a whole one. La Condesa's final, absolute rejection of Dr. Schumann exemplifies such a distortion: Dr. Schumann is, we see, neither wholly admirable nor wholly contempt ible . Related to man's comforting distortion of fact is his tendency to generalize beyond justifiable limits. Excessive 236 j abstraction— Rieber1s hate of all Jews, the Captains 1s dis- I like of the lower classes, and so forth— -disguises an ego centric viewpoint. And, as we watch Denny, for example, ' jattempt to decide whether he likes a Jew because he and the |jew share a dislike for Catholics, we understand that ab stractions not only conceal but aggravate distance due to point of view. Porter is also concerned with the way in which man | ! ■exploits the limited vision of others. Typically, Jenny ] ! i i : juses David's ignorance of his drunken behavior as a weapon ! i jagainst him. And then he does the same thing to her. Re- I | lated to this, much activity aboard the ship is calculated j j |to dupe onlookers; a common image throughout the book is j that of the mask, an image that reaches its final propor- j tions during a violent costume party based on fraud. ! Porter suggests that a lessening of distance between i inrten is possible, though its complete erasure is not, since nan has only limited freedom. She implies that individuals must work to be stricter in their evaluation of themselves and more understanding in their views of others. A discov ery of guilt advances this change in perspective; certain knowledge of one's own culpability is an impelling motive for leniency in the assessment of one's fellow men. Restated. Porter aligns herself with some of the most 237 thoughtful of writers— Dante, Shakespeare, Joyce— in callinc for commitment to others despite their petty failings. Like the writers listed above, Porter puts limits upon what | loyalty should overlook. But her stress is clear: the i Ship of Fools is populated by people who make their rela- i I ! jtions with others too conditional. Porter, with Shake- jspeare, appears to condemn "Love/ Which alters when it alteration finds. ..." ! i j This is not to say that, in the general context of i - ! modern literature, Ship of Fools makes a radical statement. ; i i Neither the method used nor what is said is without paral- j j [ jlel. Point of view, as noted at the beginning of this | i study, has been the subject of widespread experimentation j in our century. Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. for example, a book that precedes Porter's by thirty-five years,i I ; [is composed of passages from alternating, restricted per- j ! spectives. Moreover, the content of Ship of Fools is, when abstracted, comparatively orthodox. Faulkner, Proust, Mann, and many others have attacked self-centeredness and indif ference to the suffering of others. But, though the novel is conventional when seen in the perspective of modern literature generally, it is a clear deviation from the norm with respect to Porter's own career. 238 Manipulation of point of view, while a standard technique in her stories, is put to some relatively new uses in Ship of Fools. And, partially as a result, the content of the i I jbook emerges as more openly evaluative. A P P E N D I X E S ! A P P E N D I X I THE COMPOSITION, BY POINT OF VIEW, OF SHIP OF FOOLS I ! APPENDIX I i i THE COMPOSITION, BY POINT OF VIEW, OF SHIP OF FOOLS i Below is a listing of chapters in Porter's novel (page i numbers are in parentheses) followed by an indication of | the type of narration in the chapter. As stated elsewhere, some of the designations are very arguable. Chapter 1, for j example, is written largely from an antagonistic perspec- | tive; it might be alleged that the negative remarks are ' i : i joften directly from Porter, though I have decided on balance! that they seem more to reflect the point of view of average travelers. At times exceptions have not been allowed to ! I ! I i jfigure in the ultimate designation because, in the context ! i j jof the whole chapter, they are insignificant. Thus, in jchapter 25 there is a six-line paragraph apparently from Freytag's perspective, but the chapter has been labeled third person limited since the remainder of the eight pages is from Jenny's angle of vision. 241 It may be asked why, if Porter does not maintain very j strict points of view, an attempt should be made to examine the book in those terms. The answer is that, though only | moderate precision can be achieved, an effort at definition ; is worthwhile because the effect on a reader of many of the j chapters in Ship of Fools is of a limited perspective, de spite the fact that careful observation reveals departures from the perspective. If definitions can be applied with I enough accuracy to reveal the basis for this effect, they j seem warranted. ! The total number of chapters using each mode of narra- tion is as follows: seventy-nine are third person limited, I _ | jthirty-eight character-to-character, eight omniscient edi- i ! torial, forty-four omniscient neutral, and seven objective, j Below is a key to the symbols used in the list: ! ; i 3L— third person limited CC— character-to-character OE— omniscient editorial ON— omniscient neutral 0--objective A parenthetical "OE" is placed after the major desig nation if the section contains a notable editorial fragment (which is nonetheless not governing in importance in terms of the entire section). 1. ( 3- 8) ON (OE) 46. (163-170) CC 2. ( 8- 16) ON 47 . (170-177) CC 3. ( 16- 20) OE , 3L, 0 48. (177-179) CC (OE) 4. ( 20- 23) ON (OE) 49. (180-185) 3L, OE 5. ( 23- 24) 3L 50. (185-189) 3L 6 . ( 24- 28) cc 51. (190-194) CC 7 . ( 28- 31) 3L 52. (194-196) OE 8. ( 31- 33) ON 53 . (196-205) 3L 9- ( 33- 35) 3L 54. (205-215) 3L 10. ( 35- 36) OE 55 . (215-222) CC 11. ( 36- 40) ON 56 . (222-225) 3L, ON 12. ( 40- 44) ON 57. (225-227) CC (OE) 13 . ( 44- 46) ON 58. (227-232) ON, 3L 14. ( 46- 49) ON, 3L 59. (232-234) 3L (OE) 15 . ( 49- 51) 3L 60. (234-238) 3L 16. ( 51) O 61. (239-244) 3L 17 . ( 51- 52) ON 62. (244-252) OE, CC 18. ( 52- 61) ON (OE) 63 . (252-263) 3L, CC 19. ( 61- 64) 3L 64. (263-264) 3L 20. ( 64- 68) 3L 65 . (264) 0 21. ( 71- 75) CC 66 . (264-266) ON 22. ( 75- 78) 3L 67 . (266-267) 3L 23 . ( 78- 82) CC 68. (267-274) 3L (OE) 24. ( 82- 86) 3L 69 . (274-279) 3L 25. ( 86- 94) 3L 70. (279-281) CC 26 . ( 94- 98) 3L (OE) 71. (281-284) 3L 27 . ( 98-103) ON 72. (284-286) 3L 28. (103-108) ON 73. (286-299) ON, 3L 29 . (108-109) 3L 74. (299) 0 30. (109-111) 3L 75. (299-302) 3L 31. (111-116) 3L 76 . (302-308) CC, 3L 32. (116-117) OE 77 . (308) ON 33. (117-122) 3L 78. (308-312) ON, 3L 34. (122-127) CC 79. (312-313) ON 35. (127-128) 3L 80. (313-315) 3L, ON 36 . (128) 0 81. (315-317) 3L 37 . (128-131) 3L 82. (317-319) 3L 38. (131) 0 83. (319-322) ON 39. (131) 3L 84. (322-324) CC (OE) 40. (132-136) 3L 85 . (324-325) 3L 41. (136-142) CC 86. (325-327) 3L 42. (142-149) CC 87. (327-330) 3L 43. (149-152) o, 3L 88. (330-334) CC 44. (152-159) 3L, 3L, ON 89. (334-338) CC 45 . (159-163) ON 90. (338-341) CC 244 91. (341-344) CC 136 . (447-449) OE 92. (344-346) CC 137 . (449-452) 3L 93 . (346-348) CC 138 . (452-455) CC 94. (348-351) 3L 139. (455-459) ON, 3L 95 . (351-352) ON 140. (459-462) 3L 96 . (352-355) 3L (OE) 141. (462-467) 3L 97 . (355-356) ON 142. (467-470) 3L ] 98. (356-357) ON 143 . (470-472) ON, 3 L 99 . (357-359) ON 144. (472-475) CC 1 100. (359-360) 0 (OE) 145 . (475-478) CC 101. (363-364) 3L 146 . (478-479) 3L 102. (364-366) ON 147 . (479-484) CC i ! 103. (366-369) 3L 148 . (484-485) 3L ; 104. (369-371) 3L 149. (485-486) 3L (OE) 105 . (371-375) CC 150. (486) OE 106 . (375-378) 3L, ON 151. (486-489) ON ! 107 . (378-382) ON 152. (489) ON 108 . (382-386) 3L 153 . (489-490) 3L 109 . (386-390) ON 154. (490-492) 3L i ; 110. (390-392) 3L, ON 155. (492) ON 111. (392-395) ON 156 . (492-493) 3L 1 112. (395-401) CC 157 . (493) ON 113 . (401-402) 3L 158. (493-496) ON 114. (402-403) CC 159 . (496-497) CC, ON 115. (403) 3L 116 . (403-405) ON 117. (405) 3L 118. (405-407) CC 119. (407-408) 3L 120. (408-410) CC 121. (410-413) 3L (OE) 122. (413-416) CC 123. (416-421) CC (OE) 124. (421-422) c c (OE) 125 . (422-424) 3L 126. (424-428) 3L (OE) 127 . (428-432) ON (OE) 128. (432-433) ON 129 . (433-434) 3L 130. (434-435) 3L 131. (435-436) 0 132. (436-437) CC 133 . (437-439) '3L 134. (439-440) CC 135 . (440-447) 3L, CC APP E N D I X I I METAPHORS AND SIMILES, WITH POINTS OF VIEW, LIKENING MAN AND ANIMAL APPENDIX II METAPHORS AND SIMILES, WITH POINTS OF VIEW, LIKENING MAN AND ANIMAL A great deal has been written about the comparisons j 1 made in Ship of Fools between humans and beasts. Probably the most questionable remark is Wescott’s that rhetorical j comparisons are not made ("she [Porter] rarely indulges [ini i i 2 1 Ship of Fools 1 in figures of speech"). Another sort of j inaccuracy, as should be evident from the list below, is J l S j i iRobert Kiely's that "We are not presented with animals of ■^Sister M. Joselyn has dealt with the issue at some length in an essay, "Animal Imagery in Katherine Anne Por ter's Fiction" (in Myth and Symbol: Critical Approaches and Applications, ed. Bernice Slote [Lincoln, 1963], pp. 101-115). Though she acknowledges, in passing, that not all comparisons are from Porter's point of view (p. 106), she concludes that Porter is saying that man is bestial (p. 114). ^"Katherine Anne Porter Personally," Images of Truth; Remembrances and Criticism (New York, 1962), p. 56. 246 247 grace or beauty— no stallions here, no deer nor doves. . . i 3 ." However, the most frequent error has been, as noted j previously, that of ascribing all the comparisons directly i ! i to Porter. The index that follows is primarily designed to ; j correct such misinterpretation. It should be established tangentially that, aside from ! similies and metaphors, Porter does on occasion suggest in i other ways that man is an animal. The description of the j | quarreling cat, parrot, monkey, and dog (5-6), for instance, j seems to be a picture of man as we see him in the novel. | ! ! And elsewhere Professor Hutten remarks, "leave all such j nonsense as seasickness to our good Bebe who has no intel- S I ' ! i lectual resources," whereupon the Professor falls "face downward on the couch, retching" (100). The implication of such comparisons does not appear to be, however, that men and animals are by nature identical, but that man has not j properly understood and developed what is uniquely his. j As a matter of background it is appropriate to note that Porter’s short stories also contain a fair number of metaphors and similes equating humans and beasts ("weak or ~*"The Craft of Despondency— The Traditional Novelists," Daedalus. XCII (Spring 1963), 226. 248 vicious people [in Porter's stories] are figuratively ani malistic: they are 'penguins' or they have 'rabbit teeth' I i 4 j or 'skunk heads'"). And the same is true of Brant's The j j Ship of Fools, though his use is somewhat more commonplace j I (e.g., "Behold the fool, the base cuckoo"; "he . . . grov- ! jeled like a beast"; "A mangy horse for long can't bear/ The I : curry comb upon his hair./ Toss out to many dogs a bone,/ The one that's hit will howl alone ..." [pp. 341, 342, ! 358]) . The precise determination of the point of view in cer- j jtain metaphors and similes is no easier than is that deter- j jmination for an entire section. Sometimes a judgment has, | of necessity, been made from inconclusive evidence. An isolated reference to Lizzi as a horse ("she gave a kind of whinny" [59]) is assigned, for example, to the general per spective of most of the ship's passengers. This particular | decision seemed warranted by a consensus of imagery in rela tion to her, and the particular phrase's isolation in an otherwise plainly neutral section. Finally, I would like to preface the following table 4 James William Johnson, "Another Look at Katherine Anne Porter," Virginia Quarterly Review. XXXVI (Autumn 1960), 510. 249 with the observation that I do not customarily like tables in English studies. Literature is not mathematics. In order, however, to correct inaccurate statements about the metaphors and similes, statements involving the subject of this paper, the facts are relevant. With regard to the list itself, the actual word that occurs in the text is some form of the underlined word in the column (which words, for the sake of. uniformity, are always listed in the singular). The page number of the comparison appears at the left. If it is not put in paren theses or bracketed, it is a simile or metaphor that is de grading to man. If the number is inside parentheses, the comparison is complimentary to man. And if it is in brack ets it is, in context, more or less neutral. The name that appears to the right of the number is that of the person or persons from whose point of view the comparison is made. I I animal 83 — Rittersdorf 243 — Freytag (91)— Jenny (401)— Schumann [93]— Jenny 434 — Treadwell 108 — Professor Hutten (131)--Indian nurse ape 166 — Jenny 191 — Schmitt 177 — Freytag [199]— La Condesa bantam 206 — Treadwell 300 — Elsa 216 — Captain bat 250 buzzard 316 — Schumann 450 — Pastora bear calf 127 — Elsa (199)— Schumann 179 — Frau Lutz 217 — deck officer camel 332 — Denny 426 — Captain I beast cat 116 — La Condesa 47 — Hansen, Freytag 119 — La Condesa 77 — David ; 236 — Schumann [128]— Porter 274 — Rittersdorf 176 — Schmitt 1 305 — Freytag 189 — Elsa i 348 — S chumann 206 — Treadwell 463 — Lizzi [353]— Porter (twice) ! 466 — Treadwell [448]— Porter j bee 466 — steward [485]— Porter i [326]— Garza i bird cattle ! 8 — Veracruz business men 8 — people of Veracruz 60 — Rittersdorf 13 — waiter 119 — La Condesa [177]— Porter 160 — Hansen (258)— Freytag 172 — Captain [278]— Denny 216 — Captain [292]— Frau Hutten 358 — Purser ' [304]— Amparo j 349 — Schumann cobra 1 371 — Jenny 214 — Treadwell ! 393 — Frau Lutz [295]— Frau Hutten 399 — Jenny (433)— general onlookers cock 22 — Hansen blue iay 486 — Porter cockroach bull 62 — Cuban students 103 — Cuban students (and 195 — Porter elsewhere by impli 223 — Pepe cation) burro covote 11 — deck officer 313 — Denny 251 crab 218 — deck officer crow 388 — shopkeeper 429 — Porter deer (377)— David [486 ]— Porter doc ; 5 — Porter [52]— Jenny 92 — Jenny 126 --David [147]— Jenny [175]— Schmitt 261 — Freytag 287 — Rittersdorf 332 — Hansen 333 — Lowenthal [365 ]— Treadwell (401)— Schumann (463)— Treadwell faun (447)— Rieber fish 100 — Herr Lutz 133 — Freytag (twice) fly [163]— Freytag, Jenny fox [194]— Porter [245]— Porter 431 — Spanish dance troupe goat 304 — Amparo 392 — Lola 434 — Treadwell (448)— Rieber grasshopper [341 ]— David hawk 14 — Treadwell herd 78 — Denny 126 — David hornet 391 — Glocken horse 18 — Schumann 61 — Treadwell 223 — Pepe 285 — Rieber (309)— Schumann 353 — Jenny hyena 254 — Treadwell 274 — Rittersdorf insect 317 — Herr Lutz kangaroo [54]— Jenny and David lamb (192)— Schumann (417)— Rieber frog (225)— Amparo 323 — Porter macaw 77 — David 252 macrcrot parrot 63 — Freytag [55 ]— David 402 — David macro ie 424 — Porter 273 — Rittersdorf 394 — Herr Lutz peahen 12 — desk clerk mare 348 — Cuban students 117 — Porter 448 — Porter [417 ]— Rieber jsia monkey 12 — desk clerk 12 — desk clerk 16 — travelers (twice) 12 — waiter 22 — Hansen 103 — Elsa 45 — Esperon 171 — Schumann 51 — Lowenthal 193 — La Condesa 97 — Lowenthal's grand 203 — Schumann mother 214 — Treadwell 239 — Freytag (225)— Amparo 264 — Lowenthal 330 — Jenny 273 — Lizzi 342 — Professor Hutten 287 — Rittersdorf 343 — Professor Hutten 331 — Denny (425)— Captain 337 — Spanish dancer 348 — Cuban students mountain croat 359 — Lola (380)— Denny 461 — Treadwell 470 — Lowenthal mouse 471 — Lowenthal 274 — Rittersdorf 493 — Lizzi mule picreon 13 — desk clerk 163 — Freytag* Jenny 322 — cabin boy [185]— Porter 392 — Lola (418)— Rieber ostrich P.tPRY 379 — David [36 0]— Porter ox rabbit 224 — Amparo 206 — Treadwell (344) — ■ Schumann 360 — Porter [476]— David 253 rat 259 — Freytag 382 — Rittersdorf 425 — Captain roadrunner 280 — Denny serpent 278 — Denny (432)— general onlookers sheep 4 — people of Veracruz 1186 ]— Jenny 289 — Schmitt 412 — Hansen s ilkworm [486]— Porter snake 224 — Porter 269 — Rittersdorf 358 — Purser spider [398]— David stork 23 — Rieber 337 — Lowenthal swan (223)— Pepe swine 7 — Veracruz business men 96 — Lowenthal's grandmother 97 — Lowenthal 255 — Freytag (eight times) 344 — Captain 373 — Schumann (against selfl 423 — Lowenthal terrier 71 — Ric and Rac tiger (184)— Concha 388 — Manolo vermin 366 — Treadwell's officer viper 199 — young officer 277 — Mexican Indians 455 — Herr Baumgartner vulture 325 — Garza walrus 127 — Elsa wasp [18]— Schumann weasel 360 — Porter wildcat 348 — Schumann 381 — Denny wolf 383 — Rittersdorf worm 488 — Jenny 254 The following is a list of metaphoric verbs that are not simply extensions of comparisons established in the vicinity. The italics are my own. "a familiar voice brayed"— 419— Rieber "She . . . cackled"— 21— Hansen "Lizzi, . . . cackling"— 95— Porter "Lizzi ....... cackling"— 233— Captain "Fraulein Spockenkieker and Herr Rieber, . . . cackling"— 376— David "a male voice . . . crowing"— 194— Porter "she . . . nuzzled him"— 309— Johann "Manolo's voice purred"— 65— Jenny "she purred"— 309— Johann "Herr Rieber, . . . snarling"— 195— Porter "gurgling, lapping noises while everybody waded into the soup"— 247— Porter "whinnied Lizzi"— 287— Rittersdorf "she gave a kind of whinny"— 59— general onlooker "Lizzi, . . . whinnving"— 95— Porter The following is a list of miscellaneous similes and implied metaphors. The italics are my own. "in such stuffy little dens"— 219— Jenny. "Take this swill away"— 424— Lowenthal 255 "fingers curved like talons"— 441— Porter "the sharp talons on that Spanish dancer's slipper"— 469— Schumann "her arms spread like wings"— 377— David i LIST OF WORKS CITED LIST OF WORKS CITED Allen, Charles A. "Katherine Anne Porter: Psychology as Art," Southwest Review, XLI (Summer 1956), 223-230. I _________________ . "The Nouvelles of Katherine Anne Porter,1 ' University of Kansas City Review. XXIX (December 1962),j 87-93 . Auchincloss, Louis. "Bound for Bremerhaven— and Eternity," (rev. of Ship of Fools), New York Herald Tribune Books. April 1, 1962, pp. 3, 11. Beach, Joseph Warren. The Method of Henry James. Phila delphia: Albert Saifer, 1954. ______________________. The Twentieth Century Novel: Studies in Technique. New York: The Century Company, 1932. Bedford, Sybille. "Voyage to Everywhere" (rev. of Ship of Fools). The Spectator. November 16, 1962, pp. 763-764. "Best Years." Newsweek. July 31, 1961, p. 78. Booth, Wayne C. "Yes, But Are They Really Novels?" The Yale Review. LI (June 1962), 630-637. Bowen, Elizabeth. "Notes on Writing a Novel," Collected Impressions. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950. Brant, Sebastian. The Ship of Fools, trans. Edwin H. Zey- del. New York: Dover Publications, 1962. Brooks, Cleanth, and Robert Penn Warren. Understanding Fiction. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1959. 257 258 Ciardi, John. "Trade Winds," The Saturday Review. May 23, 1964, p. 11. _____________ . "Trade Winds," The Saturday Review, July 18, 1964, p. 8. Curley, Daniel. "Katherine Anne Porter: The Larger Plan," Kenyon Review. XXV (Autumn 1963), 671-695. Deasy, Brother Paul Francis, F. S. C. "Reality and Escape," Four Quarters. XII (January 1963), 28-31. DeVoto, Bernard. "The Invisible Novelist," The World of Fiction. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950. Duchene, Anne. "Twenty years a-growing" (rev. of Ship of Fools), Manchester Guardian Weekly. November 8, 1962, p. 11. Eisenstein, Sergei. Film Form and the Film Sense, ed. and trans. Jay Leyda. New York: Meridian Books, 1960. Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956. Finkelstein, Sidney. "Ship of Fools" (rev. of Ship of Fools), Mainstream. XV (September 1962), 42-48. Finn, James. "On the Voyage to Eternity" (rev. of Shin of Fools), The Commonweal. May 18, 1962, pp. 212-213. "First Novel." Time. July 28, 1961, p. 70. Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1954. Friedman, Norman. "Point of View in Fiction: the Develop ment of a Critical Concept," PMLA. LXX (December 1955), 1160-1184. Gide, Andre. The Counterfeiters, trans. Dorothy Bussy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. Sirson, Rochelle. "The Author," The Saturday Review. March 31, 1962, p. 15. ____________ _________________ 259 Glasgow, Ellen. A Certain Measure: An Interpretation of Prose Fiction. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1943. Graves, Allen Wallace. "Difficult Contemporary Short Stor ies: William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, Dylan Thomas, Eudora Welty and Virginia Woolf;" Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Washington, 1954. Greene, George. "Brimstone and Roses: Notes on Katherine Anne Porter," Thought. XXXVI (Autumn 1961), 421-440. Hagopian, John V. "Katherine Anne Porter: Feeling, Form, and Truth," Four Quarters. XII (November 1962), 1-10. Heilman, Robert B. "Ship of Fools: Notes on Style," Four j Quarters. XII (November 1962), 46-55. j Heller, Erich. "The World of Franz Kafka," The Disinherited Mind. New York: Meridian Books, 1959. Hicks, Granville. "Voyage to Life" (rev. of Ship of Fools). The Saturday Review. March 31, 1962, pp. 15-16. James, Henry. "The Art of Fiction." In Essays in Modern Literary Criticism, ed. Ray B. West, Jr. New York: Rinehart and Company, 1956. _____________ . "Preface to 'The Ambassadors,1" The Ambassa dors - ed. Leon Edel. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Com pany, 1960. Johnson, James William. "Another Look at Katherine Anne Porter," Virginia Quarterly Review. XXXVI (Autumn 1960), 598-613. Johnson, Shirley E. "Love Attitudes in the Fiction of Katherine Anne Porter," West Virginia University Bulle tin: Philological Papers. XIII (December 1961), 82-93. Joselyn, Sister M., 0. S. B. "Animal Imagery in Katherine Anne Porter's Fiction." In Mvth and Symbol: Critical Approaches and Applications. ed. Bernice Slote. Lin coln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1963. 260 Joselyn, Sister M., 0. S. B. "On the Making of Ship of Fools/1 South Dakota Review. I (May 1964), 46-52. Kaplan, Charles. "True witness fsic 1; Katherine Anne Por ter," The Colorado Quarterly. VII (Winter 1959), 319- 327 . Kauffmann, Stanley. "Katherine Anne Porter's Crowning Work" (rev. of Ship of Fools). The New Republic. April 2, 1962, pp. 23-25. Kiely, Robert. "The Craft of Despondency— The Traditional j Novelists," Daedalus, XCII (Spring 1963), 220-237. | Kirkpatrick, Smith. "Ship of Fools" (rev. of Ship of Fools). Sewanee Review. LXXI (Winter 1963), 94-98. Lubbock, Percy. The Craft of Fiction. New York: The Viking Press, 1963. Lynskey, Winifred. Reading Modern Fiction. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962. MacLeish, Archibald. "Ship of Fools," Songs of Eve. Bos ton: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1954. McIntyre, John P. "Ship of Fools and Its Publicity," Thought. XXXVIII (Summer 1961), 211-220. Mirrielees, Edith Ronald. "Points of Observation," Story Writing. New York: The Viking Press, 1963. Mooney, Harry J. , • Jr. The Fiction and Criticism of Kather ine Anne Porter, rev. ed. Pittsburgh, 1962. (Critical Essays in English and American Literature, No. 2.) Moss, Howard. "No Safe Harbor" (rev. of Ship of Fools). The New Yorker. April 28, 1962, pp. 165-173. Murphy, Edward F. "Henry James and Katherine Anne Porter: 'Endless Relations.'" Unpublished doctoral disserta tion. University of Ottawa, 1959. 261 Nance, S. M., Brother William Leslie. Katherine Anne Porter and the Art of Rejection. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1964. Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Nature and Destiny of Man. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949. "On the Good Ship Vera." Anon, rev., The Times Literary Supplement (London), November 2, 1962, p. 837. j | Perrine, Laurence. "Point of View," Story and Structure. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1959. j i i Pierce, Marvin. "Point of View: Katherine Anne Porter's j Noon Wine." Ohio University Review. Ill (1961), 95-113. J i Plante, Patricia R. "Katherine Anne Porter: Misanthrope j Acquitted," Xavier University Studies. II (December j 1963), 87-91. Porter, Katherine Anne. "Adventures of Hadji," Asia, XX (August 1920), 683-684. _______________________ . "After a Long Journey," Mademoi- i selle. November, 1957, pp. 142-143. ________________________. "Bouquet for October," Paaany. Ill (Winter 1932), 21. ________________________. "A Bright Particular Faith A. D. 17 00," Hound and Horn. VII (January 1934), 246-257. _______________________ The Days Before. New York: Har court, Brace, and Company, 1952. _________________ . "The Fig Tree," Harper's Magazine. CCXX (June 1960), 55-59. ______________________ Flowering Judas and Other Stories. New York: Random House, [n.d.]. ________________________. "Holiday," The Atlantic Monthly. CCVI (December 1960), 44-56. 262 Porter, Katherine Anne. The Leaning Tower and Other Stor ies . New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1944. . "The Martyr," Century. CVI (July 1923), 410-413. ___________________. Pale Horser Pale Rider. New York: Random House, 1939. Ship of Fools. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1962. "Virgin Violeta," Century. CIX (December 1924), 261-268. ___________________, James Ruoff, and Del Smith. "Kath erine Anne Porter on Ship of Fools.1 ' College English. XXIV (February 1963), 396-397. _ and Barbara Thompson. "An Inter view," The Paris Review. No. 29 (Winter-Spring 1963), 86-114. Poss, S. H. "Variations on a Theme in Four Stories of Katherine Anne Porter," Twentieth Century Literature. IV (April-July 1958), 21-29. Pudovkin, V. I. Film Technique and Film Acting, ed. and | trans. Ivor Montagu. New York: Grove Press, i960. | jRahv, Philip. "Notes on the Decline of Naturalism." In Realism and Romanticism in Fiction, ed. Eugene Current- Garcia and Walton R. Patrick. Chicago: Scott, Fores- man and Company, 1962. Rubin, Louis D., Jr. "We Get Along Together Just Fine ," Four Quarters, XXI (March 1963), 30-31. • • • Ryan, Marjorie. "Dubliners and the Stories of Katherine Anne Porter," American Literature. XXXI (January 1960), 464-473. __________. "Katherine Anne Porter: Ship of Fools and the Short Stories," Bucknell Review. XII (March 1964), 51-63. 263 Schorer, Mark. "We're All on the Passenger List" (rev. of ; Ship of Fools). New York Times Book Review. April 1, 1962, pp. 1, 5. i Schwartz, Edward. "The Fiction of Katherine Anne Porter." > Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Syracuse Univer sity, 1953. j _________________ . Katherine Anne Porter: A Critical Bib liography. with an introduction by Robert Penn Warren. j New York: The New York Public Library, 1953. | i _________________ . "The Way of Dissent: Katherine Anne Porter's Critical Position," The Western Humanities Review. VIII (Spring 1954), 119-130. Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. Hardin Craig. Chicago: Scott, Foresraan and Company, 1951. j j Solotaroff, Theodore. "Ship of Fools and the Critics" (revj of Ship of Fools). Commentary. XXXIV (October 1962), ' 277-286. i ; I Southern, Terry. "Recent Fiction, Part I: 'When Film Gets j Good,'" The Nation. November 17, 1962, pp. 330-332. Stein, William Bysshe. "'Theft': Porter's Politics of Modern Love," Perspective. XI (Winter 1960), 223-228. | Tate, Allen. "A New Star," The Nation. October 1, 1930, j i pp. 352-353. Taubman, Robert. "A First-Class Passenger" (rev. of Ship of Fools). New Statesman. November 2, 1962, pp. 618- 620. Trilling, Lionel. "The Meaning of a Literary Idea," The Liberal Imagination. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1957, Warren, Robert Penn. "Irony with a Center: Katherine Anne Porter." In Realism and Romanticism in Fiction, ed. Eugene Current-Garcia and Walton R. Patrick. Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1962. 264 j Wellek, Rene, and Austin Warren. Theory of Literature. : New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1956. Wescott, Glenway. "Katherine Anne Porter Personally," | Images of Truth: Remembrances and Criticism. New j York: Harper and Row, 1962. I West, Ray B., Jr. Katherine Anne Porter. Minneapolis, 1963. (University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers, No. 28). _________________ . "Katherine Anne Porter and 'Historic Memory,'" Hopkins Review. VI (Fall 1952), 16-27. i j Wilson, Edmund. "Katherine Anne Porter" (rev. of The Lean- J ing Tower and Other Stories), The New Yorker. Septem ber 30, 1944, pp. 72-75. Wimsatt, W. K., Jr., and Monroe C. Beardsley. "The Inten- j tional Fallacy." In Essays in Modern Literary Criti- j cism, ed. Ray B. West, Jr. New York: Rinehart and | Company, 1956. j Yosha, Lee William. "The World of Katherine Anne Porter." Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Michigan, 1960. J Young, Vernon A. "The Art of Katherine Anne Porter," New j Mexico Quarterly. XV (Autumn 1945), 326-341. Youngblood, Sarah. "Structure and Imagery in Katherine Anne Porter's 'Pale Horse, Pale Rider,'" Modern Flctior. Studies. V (Winter 1959-1960), 344-352.

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Creator Adams, Robert Hickman (author)

Core Title The Significance Of Point Of View In Katherine Ann Porter'S 'Ship Of Fools'

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Literature, Modern,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Lecky, Eleazer (committee chair), McElderry, Bruce R. (committee member), Van Alstyne, Richard W. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-171353

Unique identifier UC11359645

Identifier 6510087.pdf (filename),usctheses-c18-171353 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 6510087.pdf

Dmrecord 171353

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Adams, Robert Hickman

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA