ADTDA (3): Politics of the family, 72-75
Paul Nightingale
isread at btopenworld.com
Mon Feb 26 23:46:26 CST 2007
The new section returns to Merle's pov and begins with his feelings ("an
unmanly warmth about the eyeballs") for his daughter; his response to her
sleeping form, however, is inseparable from his sense that she is
unknowable.
The chapter as a whole has changed tack, leaving the Chums, Lew, eventually
Chicago; in doing so it focuses on the father-child relationship. The novel
offers images of paternalism/patriarchy in the narratives that surround
Randolph/the Chums, Scarsdale Vibe, the Archduke, even Professor Vanderjuice
as the Chums' mentor. Such narratives offer representations that invoke
father-child. In Ch7, for the first time--significant, perhaps, in light of
upcoming Traverse narrative(s)--the characters concerned are actually father
and child, their bond emphasised by the absent mother (and earlier
representations, of course, are also dependent on the absence of females).
On 72, as she sleeps, Merle imagines Dally's thoughts, that is, what he
thinks she must be thinking of; and this in turn is inseparable from his
wish to be protective. Not for the first time in the novel, the question of
status is raised, authority challenged.
So it is hardly surprising that the next page-&-a-half should focus on Merle
as breadwinner. This aspect of their life has been glossed over to this
point; and here Dally must be his assistant. Hence their relationship, once
stories about Erlys have run their course, is normalised. Skip appears
(mid-73) as a free spirit to be caged, and puts into words what Dally
cannot. It (or 'he') is a kind of son and brother; it/he also invokes Erlys
insofar as Merle (top of 74) wants to avoid chasing it/him away (although
it/he never becomes it/she).
Having 'lost' Skip to "family" ties ("[h]ard to explain") Dally then thinks
of her own half-siblings, children born to Erlys and Zombini: "It never
occurred to her not to share these thoughts with her Pa."
Cf: the opening paragraph of this section (72), Merle effectively shut out
by her (childish) dreams. And then, the final lines (75), Dally approaching
adulthood.
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