Week 8b: The Many Interpretations of Prodigal Summer

When I started thinking about this paper, I felt really confused about how the readings all related. But I decided that I am going to write my paper about Hyde's "Trickster" and how this archetype manifests itself in the relationship between Eddie and Deanna.  In Hyde's definition of the character of the trickster, it is a boundary crosser that breaks many physical and societal lines. In my opinion, both Eddie and Deanna fill this description. Eddie creates a bridge between Deanna's life in the mountains and the life of a hunter and Deanna bridges the gap between human civilation and raw wilderness. Since, Hyde uses the coyote as an example of a trickster I also want to think about whether the coyote could be a symbol in the novel, used as a hint that these characters fit into the trickster mold. Another part of Hyde's trickster is the hunger and desire that drives him/her. I think that the metaphorical hungers of both Eddie and Deanna drive them to try to cross the boundaries.

 Paula Gunn Allen describes how “westerners have for a long time discounted the importance of background.  The earth herself, which is our most inclusive background, is dealt with summarily as a source of food, metals, water, and profit, while the fact that she is the fundamental agent of all planetary life is blithely ignored” (243).  I believe that Prodigal Summer approaches background and foreground in a way that is similar to the Native Americans in which there is a mutual relationship between the foreground and the background.  Rather than writing about a central character, Kingsolver weaves together the stories of several lives.  These lives are constantly dictated by the forces of nature, and the author is constantly stresses the impact of nature on their lives.  Nature is not just the background, but it dictates the story by influences the character’s choices and behavior.  Something that I found interesting was the constant use of cycles.  Life and death, the moon, the growing seasons, the cycle of food in nature—these cycles stressed how everything impacts each other, and that ultimately a choice made by a human will come back impact him/her in the future.  The beginning and the end of the book also stressed the importance of cycles.  There is a parralel between Deanna and the female cayote at the beginning and the end of the book.  This demonstrates the similarities between humans and nature, and that in the end we are all at the mercy of mother nature, no matter how much we attempt to control our lives.    

When I think of the opinions that people form, I first think of the choices that they have to make to form those opinions. People must choose what pieces of evidence they use to form their opinions, how to structure their opinions based on which pieces of information they find important, and finally how they present their opinions to the world. What I found odd in the novel was the fact that someone as opinionated as Deanna would isolate themselves from the rest of the world and then almost judge from atop her mountain about how other people live their lives. In the end, I think that the choices that Deanna makes about her opinions have faults, not because they dont have logic behind them, but because she fails to look at all points of view when considering her opinions. At the same time, her choice in the way to have her opinions presented is also odd. Her main opinions are presented in her thesis that is rarely read by anyone and isnt even located in a place that Deanna travels to often. She sees her work as being important, but she doesnt attempt to make that known. This trouble with choices goes back Barry Schwartz's ideas on choice. While Deanna might seem to be happy in some regards about her lack of choices for her place of living and her choice of clothing/materials/transportations etc., her choices she about the thing she holds most dear (the coyotes) are more complex, and therefore she is less happy with the result.   

 As I was reading the part of Prodigal Summer when Deanna and Eddie were preparing this freshly-killed turkey, I saw this connection between something that Pollan mentioned in the Omnivore's Dilemma. Deanna talked about the food chain, not only in the context of the food they were about to eat and the way that it was obtained, but also the idea of the predator and the prey. The killing of the turkey reminded me of Pollan making his dinner from what he had personally hunted and gathered. The fact that Deanna was a sort of animal activist yet also didn't mind that Eddie had killed the turkey was what struck me the most. The reason why Eddie caught the turkey in the first place was to give Deanna a meal, something she hadn't had in a while. She was used to eating her "birdfood" and her eating the turkey represented her way back into the norm. Pollan argued in making the dinner from scratch, helps one to reconnect to not only the origins of a food, but also of a human being.

 I'll go with knotty problem.  This entire novel vexed me incredibly~ it took a full two hours of Jane Austen therapy to stop me just being annoyed. I don't dislike the book entirely~ if Deanna and Eddie had died.... or had just not been written about I would have liked the book much better.  That entire section of the novel was ridiculous.  When they weren't frolicking about the bed sheets (or tree trunks) they were wandering the wilderness.... the author has obviously never gone mountaineering before.... *disdaining huff* but whatever.  I'm amazed how up in arms I became over this...  Anyway, I will dwell on Garnett and Nannie Rawley, I think, because their back-and-forth is a conversation that goes on constantly in my hometown Williamsburg, VA (except that, in most cases, the argument is whether science should 'exist' at all, rather than who has claim to the title).  The self-importance of Garnett... and of Nannie, for that matter, is really interesting to me.  I don't think their conversation was ever as intellectual as it could have been, and I'd like to take their talking points and attempt to go one deeper.  More than the implications of being part of a food chain~ what motivation does a human have to distance him/herself, transcend the food chain, or remain firmly in it?  Why kill out of suspicion?  What qualities/reactions tend towards happiness, as far as embracing ecological situations?  Why strive or try to define happiness when the most basic of natural principles, prey and predation, is a conscious reality? fra la... fra la... and schma....