Connecticut - Revolutionary Road

"To hell with reality! Let's have a whole bunch of cute little winding roads and cute little houses painted white and pink and baby blue; let's all be good consumers and have a lot of Togetherness and bring our children up in a bath of sentimentality -- and if old reality ever does pop out and say Boo we'll all get busy and pretend it never happened."

Connecticut is New York's suburb. That's what a lot of people joke about whenever the state is brought up, at least. According to 2010 Census Bureau information, approximately 118,000 Connecticuters commute to a different state to work, the vast majority of them going to New York City. Three of Connecticut's western counties (Fairfield, New Haven, and Litchfield) make up part of the Tri-State Area along with New York and New Jersey, and the affluent families that can afford to live there make it one of the most expensive areas in the country to live in.

As one of the six New England states, there are definitely parts of Connecticut that don't feel like an extension of New York City. Usually this refers to the parts of the state that lie north and west of the capital city of Hartford, or areas that are more culturally and economically similar to neighboring Massachusetts and Rhode Island, respectively. However, try as they might to be included, whether or not Connecticut is "really" a New England state is a source of smack talk between Connecticuters and their neighbors. One New England tourism website even made local headlines by forgetting to include Connecticut as one of the New England states. On the other hand, similar websites have sometimes forgotten to include Vermont and Rhode Island, so it could have just been a fluke. Or was it done on purpose?

Regardless, there's no denying that Connecticut has an appeal as a safe place for people wanting to get away from the hustle and bustle of New York City and into a more relaxing and routine suburban lifestyle. It's that exact lifestyle, specifically the battle to maintain your individuality while living around conformity, that is the primary theme of Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road.

Set in western Connecticut in the 1950s, Revolutionary Road follows Frank and April Wheeler, a young married couple that appear to be living the ideal American Dream lifestyle. They had moved out of their drab New York City apartment, bought a house in the quiet, rural Connecticut suburbs, and are now in the process of bringing up two kids in that same peace and quiet. Frank has a steady job in New York that he commutes to by train. April is a homemaker who wants nothing more than to please. Life seems good for the Wheelers.

This little bit about the Wheeler family is all backstory up to where the novel begins. The novel actually starts at a time in the Wheeler's relationship when everything is far less ideal compared to the picture they give their neighbors. Frank is bored with his job and envisions himself doing grander things for a living, blaming his inability to act on those dreams on living in suburbia. According to Frank, living in the suburbs means living around people who are content to live the most mediocre lives they can, and these same people stifle the creativity and growth of unique individuals like himself. He begins to feel like he's held down by his home and family, which makes him despise April. He eventually begins an affair with a secretary at his office, giving him the outlet for the excitement that he's been craving.

April, who feels as though she's the one who's been keeping Frank from achieving his own brand of success, proposes that the family all pack up their home and move to Paris. She has it all figured out; once they arrive, she would become the primary breadwinner and give Frank the time he needs to discover himself and find his true passion. Frank jumps on the idea, agreeing that life in the suburbs just doesn't fit a brilliant, self-proclaimed genius like himself. This decision puts a new spark in their marriage, and for a while, their relationship actually fits the image that they show the rest of the neighborhood.

Life has other plans for the Wheelers. April becomes pregnant with a third child. Frank's career has taken a turn for the better when he's offered a promotion and he actually starts to enjoy his job. April, distraught at the idea that she might be holding Frank back further and jeopardizing their plans to move to Paris, breaks the news that she's going to abort the baby. This once again starts an unraveling of the Wheeler's relationship. Frank insults April by suggesting that the only reason she's behaving this way is due to a psychological need to please and be accepted by everyone on account of her loveless childhood. April shocks Frank by telling him that the only reason she didn't abort their second child was to prove to herself that their first "wasn't a mistake."

Frank resumes his affair with the office secretary, while a confused and bewildered April has a one-night stand with their neighbor and family friend. Later on, Frank confesses to April about the affair,  but April responds  by saying it no longer matters because there's no love left between them.

The novel reaches its end when Frank leaves for work after trying to make things up with April once more. She attempts to perform an abortion but is unable to control her bleeding. She manages to dial 911 and is later rushed to the hospital, but dies due to blood loss. Frank, overwhelmed with both grief and guilt, takes the kids and moves back into the city.

"You're painfully alive in a drugged and dying culture."

Throughout Revolutionary Road is the struggle to maintain a sense of individuality in the face of constant pressures to conform and settle for what some perceive to be mediocrity. A setting of a generic suburb outside of the bustling landscape of New York City fits this theme well; moving to the suburbs and settling down with a family and a stable, but sometimes uneventful career is often seen as the time when a young person puts away their adventurous, carefree, maybe even reckless lifestyle and becomes an adult.

This balance of individuality and conformity is faced both by Frank and April, and its their acceptance of conformity that more or less leads to their downfall. Frank's ego and self-aggrandizing fall short of the benefits of getting a promotion and staying where he is. April throws away her individuality early on and forces herself into making a sacrifice for Frank's betterment and security, only to be told later that her efforts were for nothing and later unwanted. Conforming and the suburbs win, but at what cost?

Throughout the novel, the Wheelers interact with a rather annoying and elderly woman named Helen Givings. The Givings have a son named John, who prior to the events of the novel had been committed to a psychiatric hospital after being declared insane in court. At the time the Wheelers decide to move to Paris, the Givings ask the two if they and John can have dinner with them, the intention being to introduce John to people his own age and introduce him back into society. The Wheelers agree and immediately hit it off with John, largely due to John's excitement over them moving to Paris and his agreement with Frank that culture in the suburbs leads to mediocrity.

When April becomes pregnant, Frank announces to the Givings during another dinner that they're no longer moving to Paris on account of her condition. John is confused; babies are born in Europe all the time. He accuses Frank of becoming just like everyone else, willing to throw away their dreams for the sake of comfort. April is also spared no criticism as he accuses her of throwing away her own life and dreams to make Frank stay with her. To John, and likely to the reader, the Wheelers and the Givings are the ones who are truly insane.

"It's a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares anymore; nobody gets excited or believes in anything."

Revolutionary Road  was first published in 1961, a good 14 years after famed real estate developer William Levitt  opened the first planned subdivision that would spawn the suburbs we know today. Throughout the 1950s, the creation of these suburbs exploded as a post-war economy benefited the middle class and gave them opportunities to pursue their own land and single family homes.

This wasn't met without criticism; early critics noted that such communities lacked the same cultural diversity that you could find within the cities. Suburbs were often "redlined" by developers, blocking African American and other racial or ethnic minorities from owning homes in the same communities as white families. Everyone living in a similar, viewable house started the mentality of needing to "keep up with the Joneses," and a new level and intensity of consumerism in household goods took off. A later essay by Jennifer Price would classify the suburb as the natural habitat of the plastic pink flamingo, referring to the popular lawn decoration at the time.

Richard Yates took part of this criticism in the form of a novel that was likely way ahead of its time. The subdivision as it was first introduced has changed, but the idea of leaving the crowded city for your own space likely isn't going anywhere. It wasn't until some 6 or 7 years after the novel was first published that the counter culture movement took root and young adults began to protest their parents' "conservative" lifestyles, but these same people later grew up and moved to the suburbs as well. The 80s saw the rise of the yuppie, characterized by the constant pursuit of material wealth and McMansions.

It wasn't until Millennials and Generation Z took a more active interest in living in cities that the demographic and wealth divide between cities and suburbs started to decrease. It's these generations that can mostly be credited for revitalizing formerly decaying areas like Brooklynn, Chicago, and Detroit through gentrification. Driving to work is out; walking, riding a bike, or taking the train or bus is in. Amazon's criteria for where to put their second headquarters included the overall livability and transportation available within an urban core, as that's where their new employees would likely want to live.

Will these generations stay within urban areas as they begin to have families? Some are already starting to say no, they'll leave for the suburbs like everyone else . Will they face the same challenges and risks of losing their individuality as the Wheelers did? This is hard to say. Many urban elements have moved into the suburbs and are considerably more diverse than they originally were, but the pressure to compete with your neighbor, keep "different" neighbors out, and limit the development of land and new businesses, will likely never go away.

Colorado - The Shining

"This inhuman place makes human monsters."

Each book covered in this blog to date has some kind of feature or theme that ties in well with the state its set in. Call of the Wild featured the ruggedness and importance of survival of the fittest in the still-prominent Alaskan wilderness. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings showcased the struggles of growing up black, poor, and female in rural Arkansas, a state that features some of the more iconic and violent struggles of post-Civil War race relations. Where a novel is set not only gives a reader an idea on where the story takes place, but also how that setting affects its characters, plots, and themes.

By contrast, there's nothing too unique to Colorado in The Shining. It's a story that could easily take place in any grand resort or hotel in any other part of the Rockies or some other mountain range. The hotel that was used the exterior shot in Stanley Kubrick's famous film adaptation is located in Oregon, and there's no reason why the Torrance family, the central characters of The Shining, couldn't have left a town like Portland or Eugene to take care of a mountain resort through the winter season instead of Boulder.

The reason for a Colorado setting actually comes from a random choice from author Stephen King himself. After publishing Carrie and Salem's Lot, King was looking for a different location as a setting for his next novel rather than his native state of Maine. What he ended up doing is something that we hear about as a way to escape without giving much thought into destination: he opened up an atlas, closed his eyes, and pointed to a random location. He pointed to Boulder, Colorado.

King and his wife would then travel to the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park and check in at the end of October. This late arrival that approached the end of the hotel's operating season meant that they would be the only two guests in the entire building. Take a look at the hotel and you can see why this could be somewhat unsettling; the original hotel hosted 48 rooms and featured a lavish dining room and orchestral hall, all empty aside from the hotel's staff, King, and his wife. After having only one choice of meal, listening to canned orchestral music while he and his wife ate, sitting at a full bar by himself, and having a nightmare about his toddler being chased throughout the hotel's empty hallways, King had the basic plot for The Shining in mind.

"Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win."

Jack Torrance is the patriarch of the Torrance family, which includes his wife, Wendy, and son, Danny. Jack is a struggling author having to take odd jobs to help his family get by until he can publish his next piece, but perhaps more importantly is the fact he's a recovering alcoholic vulnerable to anger management issues. It's this alcoholism and anger that caused him to lose his job as a teacher in a prestigious Vermont prep school. Even worse, it's this condition that caused him to break a young Danny's arm in a moment of particularly violent rage, which has placed a permanent rift between himself and Wendy.

Jack's friend back in Vermont is able to land him a job interview for the position of winter caretaker at the historic Overlook Hotel, a mountain resort that closes during the usually nasty winter season. The manager expresses reservations of both Jack's alcoholism and Jack announcing that his wife and son will be moving into the hotel with him. The manager tells Jack about how the previous caretaker, a man named Grady, succumbed to cabin fever and brutally killed his wife, daughters, and self. After Jack assures the manager that the solitude will help he and Wendy with their marriage, as well as give him time to work on his new play, he lands the job.

Meanwhile, back at the Torrance's residence in Boulder, Danny experiences premonitions guided by his "imaginary friend," Tony. Danny sees his father violently swinging some kind of mallet around, threatening to bludgeon Danny to death.

The novel kicks off when the Torrance's arrive at the Overlook. Jack is given careful instructions on tasks to perform throughout the winter, the most important of which is to manually release pressure in the basement's boiler. Failure to do so will cause the boiler, and likely the hotel, to explode.

In the meantime, Danny is getting acquainted with the hotel's head chef, a kind man named Dick Hallorann. Dick explains to Danny that he possesses telepathic abilities that allow him to see visions from both the past and the future, which he refers to as "shining." Dick warns Danny that the Overlook Hotel has quite a sordid history, but comforts him by saying that the visions Danny will likely see aren't really there, but are more like pictures in a book.

This comforting advice does help Danny for a short time. He experiences several visions in different rooms, ranging from seeing blood and brain splatters on the walls of the presidential suite to seeing the corpse of a woman in a bathtub. However, when Danny goes through a particular ordeal where the woman in the bathtub is able to do physical harm to him, he realizes that his presence in the hotel is causing the various ghosts and haunts to become stronger and more real, likely due to his shine abilities. Danny, despite being terrified, says nothing to his parents. In addition to the horrifying premonitions and ghostly encounters, his shining ability has let him see that his father is worried about keeping a job, and his mother is worried about the possibility of needing to file for divorce.

Throughout the winter and the novel, Jack begins to slowly lose his mind. The transition starts when he discovers a box of old newspaper clippings featuring some of the Overlook's major events and sketchy history, which starts to transform his passive interest in the hotel into an obsession. He begins to become frustrated by Wendy's and Danny's interruptions. He becomes destructive, destroying an old CB radio and removing sparkplugs out of the hotel's snowmobile, removing the only connections the Torrance's have to the outside world. He starts to relive some of his memories about his abusive and alcoholic father and the incident that caused him to lose his job back in Vermont. All of these instances combined start to make Jack crave alcohol once more.

Jack finally falls off the wagon once he discovers that the bar in the hotel's ballroom has been fully stocked and is even operated by a bartender. Once Jack is good and drunk, the hotel's ghosts fill the ballroom. The ghost of Grady, the former caretaker, explains to Jack that all of his problems can go away if he simply killed Wendy and Danny. Jack is initially able to resists, but finally succumbs to the hotel's influence and begins a violent rampage against his family with the intention of bludgeoning them with a roque mallet.

Wendy and Danny are able to lock Jack in the kitchen's walk-in pantry. Danny tries to muster his shine to send a distress signal to Dick, who is all the way in Florida.

The ghost of Grady appears once more and explains to Jack that the hotel isn't interested in him, but Danny. Danny's presence in the hotel has indeed strengthened the spirits and the hotel itself, but his mental will was too strong to take over. The hotel had to resort to possessing Jack, whose weak mental state after years of alcoholism, depression, frustration, and fatigue have made him an easy target. The hotel unlocks the pantry door and Jack escapes to finish the job.

Danny confronts his father, who is now fully under control of the Overlook. Danny has a brief premonition of a way to escape: he reminds the hotel creature that the boiler hasn't been unloaded in quite some time. The hotel creature panics and flees to the basement, giving Danny and Wendy an opportunity to meet up with Dick, who just arrived to the hotel after a strange battle with the hotel's hedge animals. After overcoming the hotel's attempts to influence him to kill Wendy and Danny, Dick drives them all to safety. In the meantime, the hotel creature is unable to vent the boiler in time, which causes the it and entire hotel to explode in a ball of flame.

"God wiped snot out of his nose and that was you."

It's not possible to write about The Shining novel without inevitably comparing it to Stanley Kubrick's horror classic that everyone knows. Starring the incredibly talented Jack Nicholson, the film has become a staple of American horror cinema and continues to earn top marks from critics and audiences alike. However, one person did have a problem with the film when it first came out and still does to this day, that person being Stephen King himself.

Like all film adaptations of books, Kubrick's version of The Shining made a few artistic changes to its source material. The biggest change probably has to be Jack Nicholson's portrayal of Jack Torrance. By the time filming began, Nicholson already had a well-established reputation in Hollywood as an actor who could portray antiheroes and antagonists with great skill. The man has an ability to ooze creepiness off of him, a talent which has made him famous throughout his decades-long career. Nicholson used this talent well in the Kubrick's adaptation, showing off generous amounts of sinister grins, smug and bitter dialogue, and general nastiness, all of which helped make the movie the success it is. By the time Nicholson appears on screen, you know you're supposed to hate Jack Torrance, and you do in short order.

The Jack Torrance in King's original novel, while definitely sinister and full of his own demons, is much more sympathetic than Nicholson's portrayal. King's Torrance knows his faults, and throughout the beginning and middle of the novel tries his darnedest to correct them. He loves Danny with all of his heart and wants to provide a good life for him. He spends much of the novel wracked with guilt over the incident that lead to him breaking Danny's arm. He is constantly worried, if not terrified, that Wendy never really forgave him for the incident and is only sticking around for Danny's sake. When King's Torrance finally snaps and succumbs to the hotel, you actually feel sorry for him and hope that things will turn around for the better.

In contrast, you never root for Nicholson's portrayal, and King knew that casting Nicholson would make it clear to the audience early on that this is someone you're supposed to hate. It's for that reason that King argued for the casting of a more "everyman" type actor and gave the recommendations of Jon Voight and Christopher Reeve, someone who would make falling apart more unnerving and unexpected.

Another major difference with the film is how it portrays why Jack Torrance falls apart and the actual influence of the hotel. In the film, Jack's anger and frustration come mainly from his writer's block and cabin fever caused by being cooped up too long. His alcoholism is only mentioned once or twice and takes a backseat to his other issues of dealing with a nagging wife and son, in addition to not being able to work. He's able to see the various ghosts of the hotel, but it's never made clear whether they actually exist or if they're just manifestations of his inner anger (diehard fans will point out that every scene where Jack talks to a ghost features some kind of mirror or reflective surface.) In the novel, Jack's source of weakness comes almost exclusively from his past as an alcoholic, the strain it places on his family, and his guilt associated with it. He is actually influenced by the borderline sentient hotel itself. The ghosts are real and have a clear goal in mind, that being to possess a mentally weakened and self-loathing Jack to "capture" Danny's shining abilities for the hotel and its ghosts to feed off of.

In a way, it's not too surprising that Jack Torrance was written as a sort of self-insert for Stephen King. At the time of writing The Shining, King was also struggling with his own alcoholism and the way that it affected his family along with his psyche. While the ghosts of the Overlook Hotel were real, so too were the feelings of guilt, stress, and hatred that accompanied a longtime alcoholic trying to keep his family together, all of these feelings that King had to have known too well. As he writes in the novel, ghosts and monsters live inside of us all. Whether we overcome these influences is up to us.

California - East of Eden

"A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?”  

There's no need to go into detail with how much of an international landmark the state of California is. Ranked as the fifth largest economy in the world, beating out the likes of the UK, France, and India, it's a destination that's known throughout the globe as one of the dominant economic and cultural hubs the United States.

A feature that seems to be underappreciated is how unique California's geography is compared to the rest of the United States. Almost the entire coast is lined by rugged mountain ranges and rolling hills that contrast with the gradually sloping coastal lines of most other states. For example, Cone Peak, one of the many located within California's Big Sur region, is only about 3.25 miles away from the coast as the crow flies but is over 5150 feet above sea level. It's these conditions that create the year round mild weather and temperature that California is known for, and this combined with the fertile valleys nestled between the coastal and central ranges of the state make for some of the nation's most productive agricultural hot spots.

One of these valleys would be the Salinas Valley. Bordered by the Gabilan Range to the east and the Santa Lucian Range to the west, it's referred to as "the Salad Bowl of the World" given the predominance of agricultural industry in the region. It would also become the setting for several novels by native author John Steinbeck, including Tortilla Flat and Of Mice and Men.

Where the Salinas Valley made its impact most on Steinbeck was its location. As mentioned above, the valley is bordered by the Gabilan and Santa Lucian ranges, both rugged landmarks that Steinbeck would describe as being vastly different. In the Gabilans, one could see mountains that were "light" and "full of sun and loveliness," while the Santa Lucians were "dark and brooding." The location of Salinas Valley thought of by Steinbeck as a neutral ground between good and evil, with its inhabitants stuck in a modern day Garden of Eden and between two forces that could alter their fates. It's for that reason that the Salinas Valley would be chosen as the setting of Steinbeck's most famous work and California's novel for this blog, East of Eden.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is an epic family saga about two generations of the Trask family. Both generations feature a set of brothers, whose lives and events would serve as a modern day allegory to the Bible story of Cain and Abel. There are of course multiple other characters, all with their own unique feature and plot lines. For the sake of containing the length of this blog post, only the key events involving the Trask family will be covered in much detail.

Before diving further into the characters of the book, it helps to understand or have a refresher of the events that were written about in Genesis.

Cain and Abel were the first sons of Adam and Eve, born outside of the Garden of Eden. Cain, a farmer, and Abel, a shepherd, both presented an offering to God. God would acknowledge Abel's offering but not Cain's, which would cause Cain to become jealous and angry over what he considered preferential treatment to Abel. Cain then brought Abel into a field, "rose against" him, and killed him. God, angry at what Cain had done, issued the following curse (from the King James version:)

"When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth."

Cain would then plead with God, saying that the burden would be too big to bear, that anyone who would find him would surely kill him due to this curse. God would place a mark on Cain to show the world that whoever would kill Cain would face God's vengeance sevenfold, giving Cain the protection he needed. Cain would then settle in the land of Nod, to the east of Eden.

The first generation of the Trask family, which the first part of the book focuses on, consists of brothers Adam and Charles and their Civil War veteran father Cyrus. The Trasks live on a farm in Connecticut, where Cyrus raises and disciplines his sons with a strict set of military exercises. Charles, the younger but stronger brother, aims to please his father in whatever way he can. He also has a violent streak; when Adam beats Charles in a game of horseshoes, the latter attacks him in a rage.

Tensions come to a peak when the brothers each give Cyrus a gift for his birthday. Charles gives Cyrus a pocket knife that he saved a considerable amount of money for, while Adam gives him a stray dog he found while wandering in the woods. Cyrus treats the knife with indifference, but is overjoyed with the dog. Charles later confronts Adam outside of the house, where he then attacks him once more. After knocking Adam to the ground, Charles goes so far as to retrieve an ax to kill his brother, but Adam is able to escape before Charles has a chance to carry out murder.

A series of events leads to Cyrus securing a job in the War Department in Washington and enlisting Adam into the army, while Charles stays behind to tend to the farm. He does the job well, but starts to live an aimless, joyless life. He writes frequently to Adam in hopes that he they can patch things up. He frequently prowls around the hotel in town, where a secret brothel is run out of the top floor. Eventually, Adam returns to the farm, and the two are able to start over.

Two other events cause the relationship between Adam and Charles to become strained, finally to the point of being severed permanently. The first is when they find out that their father has died and left them a large inheritance of $100,000. Charles is able to piece together that Cyrus had committed fraud against the War Department, which makes him see his inheritance as dirty money. Adam sees it as a gift to make up for their father's behavior and begins to fantasize about buying land in California, a place he had spent some time in after his stint the army. The second incident involves Adam taking care of and then marrying a woman named Cathy Ames, whose story is fleshed out parallel to the happenings of the Trask brothers. Charles, a disgrace and fallen man himself, is able to see past the facade that Cathy, who at this point is described by the narrator as being a monster from the day she was born, puts on around the naive and trusting Adam. When he tells Adam about Cathy's likely evil and sinister intentions, the two face yet another altercation. Adam and Cathy marry and then set out for California, never to see Charles again.

This first generation of Trask brothers parallel the story of Cain and Abel in a way that's almost on the nose, starting from the moment they give Cyrus gifts for his birthday. Charles, like Cain, gives Cyrus a tool that he toiled hard for while Adam, like Abel, gives an animal that he watched over. Adam, while he avoids being murdered in Charles's fit of rage, is sent to fight in the army and encounters several near death experiences. Charles is sentenced by Cyrus to stay behind and care for the farm, where he lives alone and lurks around town. There's even a moment where Charles is clearing a field of several large boulders and is smacked by a loose rock on the forehead, leaving a permanent mark behind. This scar would be a source for shame of Charles, much like the mark Cain bore.

The second generation of the Trask family begins when Cathy gives birth to twin boys. Finally freed from her pregnancy burden after a failed attempt at abortion, she leaves Adam in a grand way: she announces she's leaving, that Adam can't stop her, and then shoots him in the shoulder. She then runs off into the city, where she tricks a brothel madam into handing the business over to her. Cathy changes her name to Kate and spends the rest of the novel running a sadistic and debased empire.

Adam becomes distraught by Cathy's departure and goes without caring for his sons. This ends when Sam Hamilton, the man who helped Adam drill water wells on his land, and Lee, a Chinese house servant, encourage him to raise the boys in a loving home and protect them from knowing about the evil of their mother. The boys would be named Aron and Caleb, or Cal.

From a young age, the relationship between Aron and Cal mirrors that of Adam and Charles before them. Aron is passive, while Cal is boisterous and often bullies his brother. Unlike Adam and Charles, though, the two both have a good relationship with their father, who is set to make good on his promise to protect them from knowing about Cathy. He tells them that she died when they were young, and that she's buried back in Connecticut.

Adam receives news that Charles has died, and his fortune is split between Adam and Cathy. Cathy has no interest in the money, and Adam decides to invest his earnings by buying the local ice plant and putting $15,000 into an early form of a refrigerated railcar. The plan fails spectacularly, which makes the Trask family the brunt of jokes all over the city.

Ashamed by his family and annoyed with his brother's newfound since of piousness and superiority, Cal begins to feel aimless, much the same way Charles did before him. By pure coincidence, he discovers that Cathy, or Kate, is still alive and that she is actually his mother. She speculates that the two are a lot alike, which Cal denies.

While Aron is off at Stanford, Cal works with one of Sam Hamilton's sons to devise a scheme that will recover the money Adam lost in the refrigeration business. World War 1 has just started, and the scarcity of beans has caused the commodity to skyrocket. They're able to invest in the crop, and before long, Cal fully recovers the $15,000 his father lost and plans to give Adam the gift at Thanksgiving. Towards the end of this period, Aron returns from Stanford for the break, which leaves Adam overjoyed.

Much like what happened between Adam and Charles, the two boys have gifts for their father. One of them has returned home, the other has a handful of cash. Cal hands the father his money, and of course, Adam's reaction does not go as planned. He says that Cal will return the money, as it's clearly dirty and if not, was earned through exploitation. To make matters worse, Adam tells Cal that if he really wanted to please him, Cal needed to be more like his brother, who has actually given Adam pride in what he's done.

Things tumble out of control from here. Cal, in a fit of rage, takes Aron to see Cathy for himself. The news that his mother is not only alive but a morally depraved mistresses influences Aron to run away from home and enlist in the army. He would be killed during combat.

The news of Aron's death causes Adam to have a stroke, leaving him severely disabled. Cal, wracked with guilt, wanders all throughout the town. It's not until he's encouraged by his girlfriend and Lee that he returns to Adam and asks for forgiveness, which Adam grants him.

Cal's and Aron's connections to Cain and Abel are just as clear here as they were for Adam and Charles. Both boys strive to please their father, while only one is successful in doing so with the "gift" that he gives. Cal's reaction to this rejection leads to a series of events that eventually results in Aron's death. One moment even has Cal answer his father's question of where Aron is with "Am I supposed to look after him?", alluding to Cain's famous question of "Am I my brother's keeper?" when God asks him where Abel is. Aron's death leaves Cal with remorse and a sense of aimlessness, though his remorse is overcome with his father's forgiveness.

“Don’t you see? The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open.”

There's a scene that takes place between parts one and two of East of Eden that is really deserving of its own post separate from this one. Shortly after Sam Hamilton and Lee convince Adam to raise his then unnamed sons, the three have a conversation about the main source of the novel's allegories, the story of Cain and Abel. The topic of the conversation morphs into the broader ideas of mankind's struggle over evil, as well as our responsibility and capacity to do so. Lee, who had spent time analyzing and studying scripture with Jewish philosophers, explains to Adam and Samuel that different translations of the Bible show God giving Cain different instructions on handling his own sins.

As all versions of the story describe, Cain reacts to God's preference to Abel's gift with extreme anger. Prior to killing his brother, God approaches Cain and speaks to him about overcoming sin. Depending on which version of the Bible you read, God's words to Cain are either an order for him to overcome sin, a promise that he will, or, as Lee points out with the use of the Hebrew word "timshel," a reminder that he has the capacity to choose. Cain, of course, chooses to take the path of sin and receives an everlasting punishment from God because of it. At the same time, God grants Cain an act of mercy by marking him so no other harm can come before him. It's this compassion that somewhat foreshadows how a similar act of compassion would be given to those who have sinned, that being the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

East of Eden ties not only into the grander events of Cain and Abel but also into this choice of overcoming sin or falling to it. This is especially clear with the events following Cal's attempts at regifting Adam's lost money. He didn't have to seek revenge on Aron, but he chose to, and suffered the consequences because of it. The events that followed change him for the better, and it's when Adam forgives Cal on his sick bed that he's reminded that he has the choice to continue triumphing over his personal demons. There are other examples throughout the novel as well; even the setting of Salinas Valley, with its sunny mountains on one side and the gloomy mountains on the other, acts as a metaphor for constantly being between good and evil.

Red also has the capacity to choose, and sometimes chooses wrong.

"Just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born?"

Like a lot of other things in East of Eden, there's a particular character that's deserving of her own post. This is, of course, referring to Cathy Ames. From the time she's introduced at the start of the novel, Cathy is clearly nothing but evil incarnate. As a young girl, she falsely accuses boys of attempting to molest her, and takes pleasure in watching them get whipped by their fathers as punishment. She locks her parents in their own home and sets fire to it, painstakingly staging her own murder to trick the town into believing she was gone forever. Her cruelty towards Adam and her twin boys becomes clear when she attempts to abort them on her own, and especially when she shoots Adam on her way out the door. Her sadism comes out in force when she tortures the brothel madam that even considers Cathy as her daughter, and then takes over to run the parlor with a new focus on tormenting "clients."

What's interesting to note here is that while one of the major themes of East of Eden involves that choice between good and evil, Steinbeck wanted to make sure you know that there's no desire or capacity to do good in Cathy. She's the embodiment of the serpent that tempted Eve, and the comparisons are quite literal on occasion. There's one scene where Cathy disturbs Samuel with the way she eats, using her front teeth to chew and flicking her tongue as she swallows. When Samuel helps deliver the twins, she bites him on the hand, which becomes severely infected. Maybe some people truly are just naturally evil.

Opposite of Cathy is Samuel, who for much of the novel is portrayed as a God character. He's a benefactor to the entire Salinas Valley, and keeps his family in debt because of it. After his death his family more or less falls apart, as practically all of his children succumb to their personal weaknesses in the same way the Biblical Adam and Eve did upon leaving the Garden of Eden. Lee, the Chinese house servant that lives with Adam to help raise the boys, acts as a connection between man and God when he mediates discussions between Samuel and Adam and later as a moral compass for Cal.

As Lee mentions during their discussion on Biblical interpretations, the battle between good and evil is one of mankind's oldest stories, if not the oldest. East of Eden captures that battle in a dynamic family setting, showing us how even when we're so far removed from Biblical times, our lives are just as dogged by rationalizing our actions and picking what we can hope is the morally correct choice. This is something that we all will live with from our first steps to our dying days. Hopefully our choices will always be the ones that not only avoid harm to others, but also to our own humanity.

Arkansas - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“The caged bird sings with a fearful trill,
of things unknown, but longed for still, 
and his tune is heard on the distant hill, 
for the caged bird sings of freedom.” 

Every state in the union has a history of racial animosity, violence, or institutionalized racism dating back to colonial times. Some states more than others have a particularly sordid reputation and history of civil rights abuses dating well beyond the Civil War, into the 20th century and even into today. One of these states would be Arkansas.

1919 was a year already plagued by racial violence and riots throughout the country, but the most violent of these incidences would happen in Phillips County, Arkansas. Approximately 100 black farmers met at a church near the town of Elaine to meet with the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America and discuss ways to reach fairer land settlements with white land owners. Two deputized white men arrived, presumably to spy on the meeting due to the fear that there were plans of a "black insurrection." Shots were eventually fired, and one of the white men killed. This quickly tumbled into the Phillips County sheriff leading into town an armed posse that began shooting black men on site; estimates range that anywhere from 200 to 800 black men were killed, along with 5 white men. 122 men, all black, were indicted for various levels of murder by a white-only state grand jury; 12 were sentenced to death after deliberations lasted less than an hour. The NAACP appealed many of these cases and had the original sentencing overturned by the Supreme Court, although many had to flee the state to avoid another wave of vigilante justice.

Perhaps more famous, or infamous, is the story of the Little Rock Nine. Following the landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown v Board of Education, the Little Rock School District approved a plan to integrate its public schools to comply with the ruling. The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, opposed this plan and enacted the National Guard to prevent nine African American students from entering Little Rock Central High School. President Eisenhower would then mobilize members of the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army, which both provided an escort to the nine students and federalized the National Guard, removing the 10,000 member body from Faubus's control. Faubus would continue to battle desegregation, and with the help of the state legislature passed a bill that closed all Little Rock public schools during a period now known as the Lost Year. When schools re-opened, black students were met with a renewed sense of animosity from their white counterparts. To them, it was the black students that were at fault for the schools closing, rather than the systemically racist government that ultimately made that decision.

The issues of racial strife and self-segregation continue to have their presence in Arkansas. Bill Clinton has been jokingly referred to by many as the "first black president" given his growing up in the majority-black city of Hope. The city of Harrison is the location of the national headquarters for the Ku Klux Klan and recently made headlines for billboards promoting white pride organizations. Arkansas's history and racial characteristics inevitably made its way into literature that is based in or around the state, such as the works of Maya Angelou.

As a piece of autobiographical fiction (that is, an autobiography with elements similar to fiction novels,) Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings gives readers a dramatized yet real-life glimpse into the challenges of growing up black in rural Arkansas. Set between the time when Angelou was 3 to 16 years old, the novel follows her and her brother as they experience various coming-of-age situations that challenge their senses of identity and status in a time and setting where racial tensions were still very prevalent.

"If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult." 

The novel starts with Angelou and her brother, Bailey, living with their grandmother they affectionately refer to as Momma in the rural town of Stamps, which is so racially segregated that Angelou was unaware white people existed for the first several years of her childhood. From an early age, Angelou and Bailey have never known a real home. They were sent to Stamps by their parents following their divorce, left as the charge of a porter hired to take care of them. The porter eventually abandoned them somewhere in Arizona, where they then had to hitch trains with only a piece of paper with their final destination written on it and stapled to their clothes. Angelou is bullied by the other black children in Stamps, despite Momma being the de facto matriarch of the black area of town. Her handicapped Uncle Willie, who lives with them, is also the brunt of jokes on account of his disability. Combined with Angelou and Bailey being distraught and confused as to why or how their parents could send them away, the young Angelou struggled with feeling like she ever truly belonged in Stamps.

Making matters worse is Angelou's realization at a young age that life as a black person in a racially segregated town presents unique challenges and burdens. A former white sheriff stops by Momma's general store one night to warn the family that an all-white mob are looking for a black man who acted inappropriately with a white woman, and were placing the blame on Uncle Willie on account of being an easy scapegoat. The family has to quickly hide Uncle Willie in a vegetable bin, lest he be beaten and likely lynched by the mob. Another incident shows Momma, although widely respected throughout the town as a successful businesswoman in the black community, being verbally harassed by a group of white children with one girl going so far as to flash her privates at her. These incidents begin to build a frustration in Angelou and Bailey with the "burden" of being black. All of these frustrations, along with the feeling of abandonment by their mother and father, leads Angelou to destroy the doll of a white, blonde girl her mother sends them for Christmas one year.

This feeling of isolation doesn't limit itself to Stamps. Angelou and her brother eventually move to St. Louis during the middle of Prohibition to live with their mother Vivian. Although kind and affectionate towards Angelou and Bailey, Vivian's friends are involved in organized crime, and their "meanness" personally affects Angelou and limits her ability to consider St. Louis home. This is made worse when Vivian's live-in boyfriend begins sexually molesting and eventually rapes Angelou. Mr. Freeman, the boyfriend, is tried and convicted for rape, but is soon found beaten to death. It's quickly understood that Freeman's outcome was at the hands of her mother's friends. Angelou's thoughts that she might be the only person responsible for these events causes her to go voluntarily mute, her reasoning being that confessing and testifying to the rape lead to the death of a man, so speech should be limited so bad things don't happen again. This eventually frustrates her mother, who decides to send Angelou and Bailey back to Stamps.

Although Angelou begins to develop during this second period of Stamps, having overcome her muteness with the help of the town's own black aristocrat and making her first real friend aside from her brother, it's not until Angelou and her family move to San Francisco that she begins to feel like she finally belongs somewhere. With World War 2 just having started, San Francisco experiences a radical shift in demographics: white men are sent to war, the Japanese are displaced due to the government's internment programs, and African Americans move in to take advantage of the new employment opportunities. Angelou makes history by being the city's first black streetcar operator, which gives her a newfound sense of purpose and responsibility that she had never experienced before. She excels in her studies and graduates early at 16. Her mother's new boyfriend becomes the closest thing to a father-figure that Angelou ever had. The novel ends with her becoming pregnant after a curious fling with a stranger, and the newfound role of motherhood fills her with amazement and the greatest feeling of belonging of all.

"The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all these common forces of nature at the same time she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power. The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence."

Viewed from a wide lens, there's quite the contrast between I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and another book mentioned on this blog: To Kill a Mockingbird. While both books follow the stories of young women experiencing prejudices and growing up in the rural south, the similarities more or less end there. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout has the benefit of growing up white with a prominent and highly respected lawyer for a father, and her experiences with prejudice are limited to the ones that Atticus introduces her to or she accidentally stumbles across with her brother. Angelou doesn't have this luxury. The prejudices she experiences are encountered first hand, whether they happen to Momma, Bailey, Uncle Willie, or even herself. Scout had the benefit of growing up during the Depression in a stable household with friends and neighbors. Angelou never felt like she had a home until late into her teenage years, which had burdened her with a debilitating sense of displacement.

Angelou's childhood in Stamps is a constant stream of events that make her realize at a young age that being born both black and female is a curse. As mentioned above, she has to help the family hide Uncle Willie from a white mob. She watches as Momma, the woman who she thought everyone respected and looked up to, is accosted by white children who otherwise had nothing to their names besides being white in a segregated town. At the age of 10, she takes up a housekeeping job with a white woman who treats her as a servant, even going so far as to take Angelou's sense of identity away from her by calling her "Mary" rather than Maya. At her 8th grade graduation, a white public figure brings up how the white schools have received additional funding for state of the art science equipment, and the black schools are turning out nationally famous athletes.

There is one significant similarity between the two books, and that's how both Scout and Angelou come to realize the strength of their relatives. Just like Scout learns that Atticus is something more than just her father, Angelou realizes the same with Momma. Although distraught about how the white children treat Momma, she's amazed at how Momma handles the situation by ignoring the children and humming a Gospel tune to herself. When Angelou has to be taken to a white dentist for a toothache, Momma reminds the dentist that it would be a mistake to turn them away given how much money she, a black woman, had loaned him, a white man, in the past. This incident causes Angelou to look at Momma like "a superhero" who's more than a caretaker, but also an inspiration.

"I wouldn't miss Mrs. Flowers, for she had given me her secrete word which called forth a djinn who was to serve me all my life: books."

Something that's a repeating theme in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the importance of literature as an emotional outlet. From a young age, Angelou turns to reading as a way to escape her feelings of displacement. When she moves to St Louis, she avoids the uncertainty of living around her mother's mobster friends by staying shut in at the library, reading fairy tales that give her courage. When she enters her state of muteness following the trauma of her rapist's trial and murder, Bertha Flowers, Stamps's black aristocrat mentioned earlier, takes Angelou under her wing and instructs her to read books to herself aloud and discuss them with her later. Like for many of us, words in a book take Angelou to places she would have never gone before, and were the one constant thing in her life that she could depend on. It's no doubt this love of reading is what shaped her into the author and poet she would become internationally known for later.

I was originally hesitant to include I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in the list of books I would read, given how I was hoping to limit it to fiction books and this is technically an autobiography. I'm very happy that I didn't choose something else. Books like this give us a window to view into the lives and experiences of other people not like us, and just as Maya Angelou read books at a young age to picture herself as a hero in fairy tales or to visit places she had never thought of before, so too can we use books for the same purpose.

On another note, the book is ranked #3 in the American Library Association's list of most frequently challenged or banned books, so at least consider taking a look at what the scandal is for yourself.

Arizona - The Bean Trees

“In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.”  

When I was first putting this list together, I assumed that for Arizona I would be reading some iconic western novel that was later adapted into a movie starring John Wayne and then recently remade once again into a box office flop. Like Kansas and flat prairies, Florida and white beaches, and Idaho and potatoes, there's no denying that Arizona has a cultural image of being a vast, barren landscape that's nothing but deserts and tumbleweeds. This conception has made it the prime setting for gritty westerns for decades, which reinforce that image to someone who's never seen the state.

It wasn't until I got into college and met someone from Flagstaff that I learned there were certain areas in the state with mountains and hills covered in towering pines. A few years later, Jessica and I drove through Flagstaff ourselves and actually encountered a sudden ice storm that shut down stretches of the highway. It even snowed while we were at the Grand Canyon, and heavily. Did you know that nearly 29% of the country's lettuce supply comes from Arizona alone, and 95% of that lettuce is grown in only one county?

The Bean Trees is a story that's made to be set in Arizona, but not in the clichéd way that we might expect from decades of Hollywood storytelling. There are no gun fights, no campfires, and no important trains to catch or hold hostage. Instead we get a heartwarming, and often bittersweet, story about individuals who rely on a strong group of friends that become more of a family to get by.

Originally published in 1988 by Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees is told from the perspective of a young woman named Taylor Greer. Born and raised in eastern Kentucky, she realizes that if she doesn't get out of her town and soon, she's likely going to end up like the other girls she knows and the women who came before them; that is, pregnant and married (in that order) at a young age. She saves some money and buys a worn out Volkswagen, setting her sites west for Oklahoma and Cherokee Nation. Based on her grandfather's stories, Taylor should have enough Cherokee blood for her to join the reservation and start over there, but after seeing the barren flatness of the Oklahoma prairies she decides to drive as far west as she can until the car breaks down. She makes it to Tucson before the car gives out from two flat tires.

Of course, the road trip isn't without major events. In the parking lot of a bar in Oklahoma, before leaving to head further west, Taylor is followed to her car by a woman. The woman opens the passenger door and lays something on the seat, then turns to go. Taylor realizes that the woman has left a baby girl behind. She attempts to stop the woman, who only says that the baby's mother is dead and she would like Taylor to care for it. Taylor drives away with the baby girl, effectively becoming her foster mother. Later on, the baby earns the nickname "Turtle" given her clinginess and strong grip, similar to how strongly a snapping turtle will latch onto something.

Taylor and Turtle's arrival to Tucson kicks off by meeting a woman named Mattie, who owns and runs an auto shop with a huge mural of Jesus Christ on the side, humorously named "Jesus Is Lord Used Tires." Mattie and Taylor foster a relationship when she gives Taylor a job at the store, and introduces her to a couple named Estevan and Esperanza. Taylor lands a roommate named Lou Ann, another native Kentuckian with a baby, and meets some of Lou Ann's more eccentric neighbors. Throughout the novel the backstories and the developments of these characters are fleshed out; Taylor goes from being a feisty individual to one who begins to appreciate and rely on her new community, while Lou Ann's self-doubt following her husband's abandonment is replaced by a new sense of self-empowerment. Most of these changes come from the shared experiences and encouragement of this group of strangers that eventually become more of a family.

The central conflict of the novel involves Estevan and Esperanza, who Taylor eventually learns are political refugees from Guatemala. Both were educators who had connections to the teachers union, a target of the government. Rather than disclose the names of their fellow union members, they fled, ensuring that they would be assassinated if they ever returned. The other focal point of the novel regards Taylor's efforts to raise Turtle, who has been diagnosed with "failure to thrive" due to her history of being both physically and sexually abused, and her efforts to adopt her legally. Both conflicts are resolved towards the end of the book, with Taylor becoming Turtle's legal mother, and Estevan and Esperanza making their way to a safe house and legal aide in Oklahoma.

The plots mentioned above, along with interactions with other characters, are a period of great growth for Taylor and what drive her character to be developed. Right from the start, she experiences a mix of painful irony and coincidences that shake up her expectations she had of how her life would be when she left Kentucky. Her main reason for leaving is to avoid the trend of becoming pregnant, only to be saddled down with a baby before she even arrives to her final destination. She wanted to settle in Oklahoma, but had to keep going once she realized it wasn't what she expected. Due to a traumatic event from her childhood, she experiences great discomfort and anxiety around tires, but gets a job in Tucson at an auto shop (this particular savior being Jesus Is Lord Used Tires.) As briefly mentioned above, Taylor moves from having expectations of going alone to realizing the importance and benefits of having a strong network of friends and family by her side, especially when it comes to the health and well-being of Turtle. This kicks off one of the first major themes of the novel: the struggle between maintaining individuality and community.

“We do have some strong traditions of community in the United States, but it’s interesting to me that our traditionally patriotic imagery in this country celebrates the individual, the solo flier, independence. We celebrate Independence Day; we don’t celebrate We Desperately Rely on Others Day. Oh, I guess that’s Mother’s Day. It does strike me that our great American mythology tends to celebrate separate achievement and separateness, when in fact nobody does anything alone.”  

All characters rely on the efforts of others in some form or capacity throughout the novel. Taylor takes advantage of the mall's free daycare while she works her day job, stopping by occasionally to give the impression that she's actually shopping. Lou Ann benefits from a sense of sisterhood with Taylor and her neighbors which, along with getting a new and exciting job, helps her move on from her husband's abandonment. Mattie, who uses her tire shop as a safe haven for refugees, including Estevan and Esperanza, eventually relies on Taylor to help move them into Oklahoma. I think this is an important part to point out; throughout much of the book, Mattie is the character most shown to have everything together, but still has a moment where she depends on others.

Of course, Estevan and Esperanza rely on this community most of all given their asylum status, and Kingsolver uses their situation to bring up the plight of immigrants that are seeking refuge from political violence but feel as if they have nowhere to go without volunteered compassion. But the novel also draws some parallels between those scenarios to Taylor's life in her new city. Kingsolver makes it a point in the novel that she and Turtle are more or less refugees, arriving with no prospects or connections, who were just so lucky to have their car breakdown in front of the shop of a very kind and helpful woman who takes on the role of their "sponsor." Without Mattie, Taylor would likely have struggled to find her footing in Tucson. Maybe there's a possibility that she would have eventually given up and tried to return to Kentucky. It's the kindness and generosity of the strangers that she meets and later befriends that give her new life and home meaning.

This isn't to say that Taylor completely loses her sense of individuality. She still has the feisty personality that she left Kentucky with, especially when she's talking with Lou Ann and trying to build her self-esteem. There's a rather humorous exchange where she compares her thoughts on men to something she read in an toilet installation manual:

"Here’s what it said on the package; I kept it till I knew it by heart: ‘Please Note. Parts are included for all installations, but no installation requires all of the parts.’ That’s kind of my philosophy about men. I don’t think there’s an installation out there that could use all of my parts.”  

There's also a theme in The Bean Trees about the importance of the environment which, if you weren't really sitting down to think about, could be pretty easily overlooked. The reason this might be is because it's not your traditional environmentalist message of "everything is being destroyed and we have to save it," but rather "everything that might seem ugly has beauty in it." The back of Mattie's tire shop is cluttered with used car parts, but also has a space for a quaint little garden. Taylor and Lou Ann often bring their children to a park that's known by the kids as "Dog Doo Park," but is also full of wisterias that flower and then develop pods, which captivate Turtle (Turtle confuses these pods for beans, explaining the novel's title.) One scene of the novel involves Mattie driving Taylor, Estevan, and Esperanza out into the desert to witness the first storm of the year and to "smell the rain," which Taylor describes as remarkable. Where there is literally nothing, all of a sudden something incredible happens.

Red, surrounded by bean trees (Note: not actually bean trees)

I loved reading this book. The bonds that the characters develop with each other are all very heartwarming, and the more explicit details of Estevan and Esperanza's backstory are devastating but in a way that makes you care for them and appreciate the other characters' efforts to help them even more.

The one major complaint I have is that despite being the catalyst to Taylor's new life, Turtle almost seems like a forgotten character. To be fair, there's only so much story you can make out of a character that for most of the book can't even speak. On the other hand, we learn at one point in the book that Turtle was almost kidnapped at a park while her baby sitter was distracted, which causes Turtle to enter a state of shock and lose progress in her speech development. This just about ends as soon as it begins, because Turtle snaps out of it rather quickly and goes back to being herself as if nothing had happened. There's an argument you could make here that Turtle now knows that she's surrounded by people that love her and this gives her the courage and strength to return to normalcy, but the whole incident comes off as an afterthought made to add more drama to an already good story.

Despite this criticism, The Bean Trees packs a great amount of story into a relatively short book, clocking in at around 230 pages in hardcover print. It's a book well worth reading and experiencing for yourself rather than from someone else's perspective, much like the state of Arizona.

Alabama - To Kill a Mockingbird

"Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird."

Some novels are truly timeless. Despite when they were published or in what setting they take place, they remain just as a highly regarded today as when they were first released. Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is one of those books, and while it was entirely a coincidence that it happened to be the book that matched the first state in an alphabetical list, and therefore the first book to read for this challenge, I can't think of a more fitting way to begin a lengthy list of novels.

First published in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird would be Lee's only published work for the majority of her life, up to the release of a newly discovered manuscript for a "prequel" novel called Go Set a Watchman in 2015. Depending on who you ask, this latter book doesn't count as one of her works; there's a solid case to be argued that the manuscript was published by money-hungry agents with dubious intentions, possibly without Lee's knowledge given her poor physical and mental health.

To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in fictional Maycomb, Alabama, a quiet little town grappling through the midst of the Great Depression. The story follows the Finch family, made up of the narrator, Jean Louise (known as Scout), her brother Jeremy (known as Jem), and their father Atticus, a prominent lawyer and state legislator. Scout and Jem experience the typical things young kids their age experience: both meet a new friend who comes to visit them during the summers, Scout struggles to adjust to a structured schooling environment managed by an inexperienced teacher, and Jem has to deal with an annoying sister who doesn't understand that he has better things to do than play with her. But the two also encounter multiple instances that challenge their childhood innocence, namely the racial strife that rocks the town and causes an ugly side of human nature to present itself.

The main conflict of the book revolves around the prosecution of an African American man named Tom Robinson, who was accused of raping of a white woman, Mayella Ewell. Atticus is named as Tom's defense attorney, making him the target of racially driven animosity. This is hard on Scout and especially on Jem, who up to this point has never experienced the hatred his family has received nor the systemic biases that African Americans faced in the early 20th century Deep South. At one point, we see that Atticus finds the ordeal difficult in more ways than one when he tries to comfort an upset Jem.

“There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's never possible.” 

Where To Kill a Mockingbird stands out, in my opinion, is that Lee is able to tie what look to be small, inconsequential subplots to the overall theme of innocence lost. Both Scout and Jem are forced to confront uncomfortable situations that neither had to experience before. For Scout, this includes her aunt's efforts to transform her from a tomboy to a young lady, hearing about the sexist behavior towards her older neighbor and friend Maudie Atkinson, and the slow realization that her friend Dill is sent from relative to relative due to being unwanted. Jem, as punishment for vandalism, is made by Atticus to read to an old and cantankerous old woman named Mrs. Dubose. When it's revealed that Mrs. Dubose had been a longtime morphine addict and had managed to get clean before passing, Atticus explains the reason for making Jem witness her slow demise:

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

Scout receives her fair share of advice as well, particularly in regards to being a young woman. Maudie Atkinson provides a female counterpart to Scout as Atticus does to Jem, providing moral clarity to racial and other social issues. She's a woman who enjoys gardening, which causes her to get accosted by what she refers to as "foot-washing Baptists" who believe her partaking in pleasureful activities is a sin. Early in the book she gives some foresight to how the white people in the town will approach Tom Robinson's trial:

"Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who—who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results."

And yet, despite all of these events that turned their worlds upside down, there is still so much optimism that the characters have for the world. Atticus shows his children that there are still good people in the world, those with integrity and a strong moral compass. The Ewells lose their credibility after the Tom Robinson trial, peaking when the patriarch is killed after trying to harm Scout. Atticus stays up all night to watch over his children, which is where the novel ends.

I've read To Kill a Mockingbird three times now, I believe. The first time I read it was in the 8th grade, when, truth be told, I think is too soon for kids to fully grasp the themes of the book. We would have been about the same age as Jem, but unless you experience the world in the way that he does, what can you really take away from the book? At that time I was still a relatively sheltered kid whose biggest concern was peer pressure and wanting to know how well I would adjust to high school. I never had to deal with someone hating my father because I was never in the same places he was. I read the book again in high school on my own free time, but I can't say I gained too much more from it that second time, either.

Now that I'm older, this book means so much more than it did all of those years ago. Meeting new people who have had their own personal experiences with racial prejudice, along with reading reports on the news about people wrongly accused and scapegoated fr the color of their skin or some other reason they can't control, has made the book far more impactful. It made me think back to my own moments of piecing together that the world isn't what I though it was. And yet, despite this, there are still close friends and family that make the world a great place.

Fortunately, to my knowledge, my father also has no enemies.

The List - 50 Books for 50 States

I love traveling throughout America. Even though every state is one part of the same country, each state really does have something unique to offer. It's why even though I might be busy with other things, I don't mind too terribly if I'm asked to go out of town for work. It's why I love turning on the option to avoid interstates when I use my GPS. 

I figured earlier this year that if I loved seeing America, why not do something symbolic like read a book for each state? That's how this project got started. Aside from bragging rights ("I'm just saying guys, when's the last time you read a book that took place in Idaho?") and a good time killer, this was also a personal love letter to Americana. 

A project like this is made far easier by planning what you would like to do in advance. If I wanted to pick a book that took place in each state, I wanted to have a list set in stone. I did this for two reasons: I wanted to commit myself to something and make it less likely I would change my mind, and I didn't want to be bogged down by indecision when I was ready to start something new. Some states, like New York, have a lot of options. Other states, like Idaho, I really had to dig through Google for.

After spending a couple of hours, I managed to put together a list I'm happy with. These were chosen by recommendations made for similar challenges, along with information from websites like goodreads.com. Some recommendations were removed in favor of other books, whether I thought one might be more interesting or if I felt one wasn't the best example of a "classic"; I really wouldn't call Twilight timeless. Some states I added two books given the length of one or both books. 

The list, presented in alphabetical order, is as follows: 

• Alabama - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 
• Alaska - The Call of the Wild and White Fang by Jack London 
• Arizona - The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver 
• Arkansas - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou 
• California - East of Eden by John Steinbeck 
• Colorado - The Shining by Stephen King 
• Connecticut - Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates 
• Delaware - Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk 
• Florida - Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston 
• Georgia - The Color Purple by Alice Walker 
• Hawaii - Hawaii by James A Michener 
• Idaho - Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson 
• Illinois - The Jungle by Upton Sinclair 
• Indiana - The Friendly Persuasion by Jessamyn West 
• Iowa - A Thousand Acres by James Smiley 
• Kansas - In Cold Blood by Truman Capote 
• Kentucky - Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe 
• Louisiana - A Confederacy of Dunces by James Kennedy Toole 
• Maine - The Cider House Rules by John Irving 
• Maryland - Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler 
• Massachusetts - The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne 
• Michigan - The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
• Minnesota - Main Street by Sinclair Lewis 
• Mississippi - The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner 
• Missouri - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 
• Montana - A River Runs Through It by Normal Maclean 
• Nebraska - My Antonia by Willa Cather 
• Nevada - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson 
• New Hampshire - A Separate Peace by John Knowles 
• New Jersey - Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth 
• New Mexico - Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather 
• New York - The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald 
• North Carolina - Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier 
• North Dakota - Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich 
• Ohio - Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson 
• Oklahoma - The Outsiders by S E Hinton 
• Oregon - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey 
• Pennsylvania - The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold 
• Rhode Island - The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
• South Carolina - The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd 
• South Dakota - Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown 
• Tennessee - A Death in the Family by James Agee 
• Texas - Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry 
• Utah - The Executioner's Song by Normal Mailer 
• Vermont - Pollyanna by Eleanor H Porter 
• Virginia - Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson and The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron 
• Washington - Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson 
• West Virginia - The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls 
• Wisconsin - Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder 
• Wyoming - Close Range by Annie Proulx 

At the time of posting this I've already read eight books, from Alabama to Delaware. I'll still give my thoughts on these, but the posts might be shorter than the upcoming ones since I don't have the books with me anymore. This is the one downside of libraries!