Since we're reading The Symposium in Philosophy, which is all about love, I've been thinking a lot recently about definitions of love. So it's interesting that my daily considerations of a new definition of love in Philosophy so nicely coincided with two different (but both relatable/realistic) depictions of love in these two short stories. I thought I'd try to break down the psychology of each in the context/language that we might use in Philosophy class. For some reason, the definition that Phaedrus presents of love in the context of two unequals, the lover and the beloved, works really well to understand what's going on in each of these short stories.
Traditionally, the "lover" instigates the relationship with the "beloved," who is the person with less power and acts in response to the lover's attentions. The lover should the older of the two, with more experience, and wants to teach the beloved something about how to be virtuous and how to love...because love is about striving to improve another person for their own good (thus the lover must be more experienced than the beloved so that this can be possible). And in Greek society, male-male relationships in this way were quite common: at least among the upper classes, these lover-beloved relationships formed schooling for youths after the equivalent of elementary school.
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McPherson: All the Lonely People
Dennis holds an image of love as a relationship between two unequals. But he turns this idea somewhat on its head: he imagines that those being sought after (which he terms "the hunted," and would potentially parallel "the beloved") as the more powerful in the relationship than those he terms "hunters," who seemingly spend all their time sniveling after the attentions of the hunted. (As an aside, McPherson's terminology also turns biology on its head :D). Dennis wants to be one of the hunted. But perhaps Dennis' definition only concerns sex.
Taking a step back, we see that Dennis sees others suffering and has the uncommunicated capacity to feel pity (or disgust) for other people's social positions in society (like Alfred, Gloria, and even Gerald, perhaps) much more than many of the other people in the short story seem to. If Dennis had the hope that he could try to improve these people's virtue or cared for these people, he would have all the qualities necessary to be a fantastic lover, once he had gotten a little older.
Dennis's problem with himself is that, though he seems to have the capacity for love on a nonsexual level, he doesn't recognize this nonsexual capacity for love as a legitimate means for love. He wants himself to fill the role of the beloved, and initially refuses the attentions of those who hunt him. He is looking to be hunted by a different kind of hunter.
So perhaps this is the a coming of age story, in which Gerald fills the role of Dennis's potential role model, and in which Dennis begins to question his choice of role model. Perhaps Dennis is realizing that love is much more than sex; that, perhaps, love can be something other than sex, or that the true definition of love doesn't have to have anything to do with traditional, societal definitions of love. In fact, according to Plato, it shouldn't: the masses let their apetites and emotions rule over reason. This would make for a very loose reading of the closing line, "I began to wonder about the way I am." But then again, Dennis never says much about what he thinks about himself...he only says what he thinks about others...and it is from this that we gain knowledge about what he thinks about himself...and here he is questioning that...and I am reading into the heavy implications that Dennis's closing questioning has something to do with his sexuality.
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Kenan: Run, Mourner, Run
Dean is clearly in the position of the beloved, a gay man like Dennis (well--Dennis is beginning to consider a possibility). But unlike Dennis, he is willing to accept the affections showered upon him by male lovers. In fact, he goes overboard: he plays their affections to his advantage. He is corrupted by being a beloved. Perhaps it is not his fault: the issue could be that he has never experienced a lover that really loved him in the sense that they wanted to help him improve as a person, and instead he has only encountered people who want sex. Or, perhaps, Dennis doesn't have the innate capacity for improvement.
So he has the opposite problem of Dennis. Dean has a plethora of sex, but what he really needs (wants?) is a relationship that provides him with something more than sex. In this context, it makes sense that he takes Terrell's offer to blackmail Raymond. Terrell speaks as a lover to Dean as the beloved, and Dean does not refuse the offer, because Terrell is doing something that can allow Dean to improve as an individual (well....okay....Dean's judgment is a little off on this one.....).
With this view of events, Dean's problem is that the very person he's blackmailing is the first person who loves him as a person. Dean says, "Don't nobody give a shit about me. My mama, maybe." And Ray responds, "Well, I wouldn't put it exactly like that." It is immediately after recalling this encounter that Dean wonders, for the first time, if he had "thought of...how he was to betray this mesmerizing man." Once the events actually take place, Dean realizes his mistake: the beloved can never be more powerful than the lover, because it is the lover who is in charge of the affections to which the beloved responds.
Dean becomes engaged, perhaps overengaged, in self-reflection. If we set the short stories side by side, Dean's thoughts are taking place at the time equivalent to what might be Dennis's thoughts about a week after his story is complete. As Dean thinks through, he is interestingly contemplating what he might have done as a person, what personal defects (never sexual) might have prevented him from gaining the fulfillment of a permanent lover who wants something more than sex. Like Dennis, perhaps, he has now recognized in the present (perhaps after his experience with Raymond?) that what goes into love is much more than sex.
Unfortunately, Dean's story closes with little hope. Dean doesn't seem to have too many qualities of a lover -- and he can't really develop them, because he has never been the beloved of a long-term lover who wants to improve him as an individual. Likewise, it's going to be pretty difficult for him to gain a lover. And while he might be the beloved of his mother, he is unable to pay back her affections...and he doesn't do the little she asks of him (to come inside for dinner), because he's lost in thought about the past. In many ways, this is the most depressing of the novels we have read thus far -- there is literally no way that Dean can improve his situation.
I agree that Dean does discover that he "wants/needs" love rather than the furtive encounters with men that he's had up to this point--which are all described as emotionally void, vaguely shameful affairs. But he doesn't seem to know that he wants this until after he's spent some time with Ray--it's what makes him think he's capable of playing this role in the plot in the first place, since it's "just sex," and he can talk himself into the idea that a guy like Ray has it coming to him (like when he's trying to "remind" himself of all the racism he's been raised with, to try to convince himself that he doesn't care about Ray). When he falls for Ray, finds him "mesmerizing," it's clear that he never saw this coming--never even grasped it as a possibility. It does seem like some kind of love is possible for him (although how long-term a relationship can we really imagine developing between Ray and Dean? Ray is married and established. He's unlikely to leave his wife for Dean), but this is short-circuited by the moral tangle he's gotten himself in, agreeing to set Ray up for blackmail.
ReplyDeleteThat's the real tragedy of the story for me: how Dean finds love where he doesn't expect it, and the irony that he only finds this while taking part in a morally reprehensible plan which ends up making it impossible to pursue.