Tropic Of Orange

In this short blog I would like to briefly discuss the presence of globalization in Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of Orange. As Frederick Jameson writes in Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, outlining perhaps the single inescapable quality that all post-modern texts contain. He says “every position on postmodernism in culture- whether apologia or stigmatization- is at one and the same time, and necessarily, an implicitly and explicitly political stance on the nature of multinational capitalism today” (3). That is to say, capitalism has circumnavigated and conquered the entire globe. Its effects on the individual are life defining and ethereal. It is impossible to escape its influence. The narration which describes the migration of the Tropic of Cancer is brought on due to economic motivations. It is the force of capitalism which acts like a magnet for cities, bringing people from all over the globe who have come in search of economic opportunity but have quite often been confronted with poverty and alienation upon arrival. Because the novel describes Las Angeles in the 1990’s, it is by default also describing the effects that late capitalist, globalized economies bring upon populations.

Yes, globalization brings with it cultural diversity, a dramatic increase in the amount of foreign restaurants one can eat at, a wide variety of music from all over the world, but not everything that comes with globalization is good news. With it comes it comes legal persecution, discrimination, fear, and poverty. Or, as Claudi Sadowski-Smith describes in her book Border Fictions: Globalization, Empire and Writing at the Boundaries of The United States, “Emi’s graphic death at the hands of police during the homeless riots and Rafaela’s rape by the drug and organ smuggler Hernando in Mexico symbolize the kinds of violence that women often face in the global economy” (64). Drugs are being smuggled through every corridor. Baby hearts are being carried surreptitiously across the world. Little boys, in search of fortune and freedom, jump off ships in the middle of the ocean to avoid capture. They are all in search of a new home and they have arrived, here, in America, and have found the ground to be unsteady; elastic. The opportunism they have chased have led to dead ends, the x on the map turns out to have already been dug up by the time one gets there.

Much of the novel takes place on one of the highways of Los Angeles which has been completely shut down due to accidents caused by the orange. Although it is in the heart of the city, it is full of derelict cars and the disenfranchised of the city have taken up shelter in the lanes. In many ways, this stretch of the highway is a limbo. There is no commerce or capitalism in the highway. Every thing is free, everyone is getting along, and even broadcasting their opinions and stories. This is the place where the homeless, the immigrant, and powerless and can come together. But as the novel shows, this type of world is an anomaly and something that can not last long in this globalized system.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

In a television interview in 1990, Gabriel Garcia Marquez describes some of the reasons, motivations, and consequences of writing and publishing his book One Hundred Years of Soitude. In the interview, he says “ The banana events are perhaps my earliest memory. They were so legendary that when I wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude I wanted to know the real facts and the true number of deaths. It was a problem for me…when I discovered it wasn’t a spectacular slaughter….I couldn’t stick to historical reality…The legend has now been adopted as history.”

Only a dozen or so people really died in the historically true strike, which took place in Colombia in 1928. As I am not at all familiar with Colombian labor history, I at first reading, took Marquez for his word that the crimes of American greed were just as destructive and apocalyptic as Marquez describes it. Perhaps because the image of trucks full of dead bodies has been a sad and tragic motif throughout the 20^th century.  But the characters in the book itself have not lived through world war two and have not been exposed to images of mass execution like those of us today. To those in the book who did not bear first hand witness to the events, it seemed incomprehensible and ludicrous that so many could die. And in some ways this is quite true. It is ludicrous that so many could be murdered but also disturbingly and tragically possible. 

            But why did Marquez lie about the events and inflate their magnitude? As Marquez himself said, when he first grew up the events were already legendary. The cultural memory of the event described it as just so horrible. It is not necessarily that Marquez is lying, as much as it is him telling his cultural point-of-view of the events. Of course, the banana massacre is not the only event in the novel which is based on historical evidence but at the same time is exaggerated.  Aureliano Buendia goes off on 77 wars which seems like quite the exaggeration. Ursula appears to be one hundred and fifty years old at least by the time she dies. Many of the events that seem grand, biblical, magical are perhaps that way in the book because that is how the culture of Colombia and Marquez’s family remember the events.

The Plague

In this short blog, I would like to briefly describe how Camus' philosophical essay Myth of Sisyphus relates to his fictional novel The Plague.

Sisyphus

So, the myth goes like this. Sisyphus has been condemned to a life of infinite labor, repetition, and futility. He spends all of his time and energies rolling a boulder up to the top of the mountain, only for the boulder to fall down, and then he has to repeat the process, again, and again, ad infinitum. Yes, at first glance, this seems like a tragic figure, or a darkly comic figure. Sisyphus's life doesn't seem like one to be coveted. Camus would have to disagree. Instead of these things, Camus writes "The struggle toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." In Camus' eyes, every human is in a way, Sisyphus. Our lives are just as absurd and quotidian and repetitious as his. Because pushing a rock up a hill for your entire life may seem difficult and tiresome and scary, but it is better than the nightmare of sitting on a boulder at the bottom of the mountain, devoid of hope, and better also than sitting on a boulder at the top of mountain, devoid of any desire.
As this regards to The Plague, I'd argue that the main protagonist, Dr. Rieux embodies this ideal of a "happy Sisyphus." The Plague lasts for what feels like an entire lifetime. Everyday more and more people come to him, looking for help, stricken with plague. Some get better. Most die. Dozens. Hundred. Thousands. Tens of thousands. And through it all, Dr. Rieux never stops trying. His life is in many ways, far more depressing than Sisyphus's. Dr. Rieux is not battling against a boulder, he is battling against death, every hour of everyday.
Camus' essay begins with the phrase "There is only one truly serious philosophical question and that is suicide." And in many ways, this is the question that lies at heart of The Plague as well. The way I see, suicide is another way to describe succumbing to death, letting it win. A Doctor, in many ways, is the opposite of a suicide. He is actively battling against death. This is the basic principle at heart the heart of perhaps all of Camus' work: fuck death.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

The title of Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel “Their Eyes Are Watching God,” perplexes many readers  before and even still after reading though the novel. Who is they? Why are they watching? Can they even see God? The book begins with an archetypal “Watcher” staring off into the horizon of the sea, gazing at all of the wishes of his heart sailing away in passer-by ships. But this Watcher is not staring at God, he is staring at himself and his own desires, all the while, “being mocked by death.”

So, if this Watcher in the first paragraph is not the reason for the title, then what is? Later in the novel, during the horrible storm, Hurston writes the title phrase out in the book. She writes “They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.” At this point, they are trapped inside of a rickety house and the most terrible storm either have ever seen is coming up to their front door.

Is God A Storm?

This is a moment of almost total helplessness. To say “Their eyes are watching God,” is almost a resignation. It’s as if to say, you have lost all control and now leave up your fate to chance, or God. It is a mantra for the fearful and the powerless. And yet, it is the title of the book, which follows the story of a woman who learns to stop being so fearful and powerless.

The novel ends with her Janie taking the place of the Watcher from the first paragraph. She is standing by the coast and looking out. “She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.” Does this sound like a narration of a woman “watching God.” I don’t think so. Rather, this final passage sounds like a woman who is looking into herself, seeing the bountiful memories and experiences she has bore witness to and now holds around her like royal clothing. In a way, Janie lays in stark contrast against the title, as if the title were something she was battling against throughout the novel. She stops watching God, and is able to see herself.