Uncle Wiggily is probably the saddest story we have read so far. There's a ton going on just under the surface (which happened a lot in Catcher, and I'm starting to think it's a pretty ubiquitous in Salinger's literature) which really brings the story to life. In the end, it's the awareness of Eloise of her frozen, paralyzed state that really drives home the existential upper-class asphyxiation of her situation which makes this story so dang sad. Is there anything worse than being fully aware of your desolation, and yet being completely paralyses in regards to changing your situation?
When Ramona enters the story, things really begin to unravel (before that it was just two friends getting drunk, nothing inherently sad about that). This is because Ramona is Eloise's constant reminder of her emptiness. Ramona has innocence. Ramona love. Ramona has control (she is, after all, the one imagining her close relations... probably in an attempt to fill the void that Eloise has left by not caring about her...). Eloise wants to grab Ramona's shoulders and shake her--tell her that's it is all a lie! That life actually sucks and you'll just lose those closest to you and settle for less and be unhappy about it for the rest of your life, etcetera etcetera. But... I think Eloise also realized that things don't have to be that way. And that's what drives her crazy (I'm sure copious amounts of alcohol didn't help much...). Because if Eloise accepts the fact that life doesn't have to be that way... then, hell, why isn't she (Eloise) changing her life?
This sits at the back of her mind. Eating at her. Until she breaks and cries at Mary Jane that she (Eloise) used to be good. But now she's not. Something changed, and instead of trying to fix things, she has only hurt those who are changing their circumstances (Ramona).
I totally agree. I think Romona is a vehicle that Salinger uses to bring out the bad things in Eloise's mind. Her character shows the reader really just how much Eloise is struggling and what really is eating away at her mind.
ReplyDeleteAnd really, if Eloise knows things don't have to be that way, why doesn't she just change them? I'm sure it would be difficult but worth it in the long run for her.
I also think it is significant that Ramona reminds Eloise of Lew, who she doesn't have particularly strong feelings for. Because of this, she is subconsciously discarding her importance, which is probably what causes Ramona to make imaginary friends. In this sense, I feel bad for Ramona, since she really didn't do anything to deserve this, and Eloise didn't either. As you said, it's a really sad story about the upper-class asphyxiation of her situation.
ReplyDeleteI agree. Ramona represents what Eloise does not and cannot have. She also is something in the way of Eloise re-building her life--perhaps if she and Lew had not had a child, it would be easier to leave him and start over. She had mentioned what seemed to be envy at Mary Jane about her job, but that might have just been polite conversation. Regardless, I think that she is devastated for having lost Walt, and extremely unhappy with her life as it is at the moment, and feels that she does not have much opportunity to change it.
ReplyDeleteI agree that this is a deceptively sad story. The tone feels relatively light for the first half or so, even though Eloise is so bitter and cynical (or even *because* she is--it's a similar dynamic to _Catcher_, where the world-weary cynic's pose seems knowledgeable and self-aware, and *funny*), there's a lightness to the dialogue. Eloise has perfected irony and humor as a psychic defense mechanism--her humor is different from how she describes Walt's more whimsical and compassionate weirdness.
ReplyDeleteThis all comes out in her desperate question at the end: the sense that she *was* a "good girl" is connected in her mind to the time when she (apparently) just came to NY from Boise, and had an out-of-style dress that made her seem goofy and naive in New York. Well, now she's apparently fully acclimated to the blase, East Coast irony that New York apparently generates in people, and we can see that as a kind of tough facade (which allows her to crack jokes about how you should never tell your husband anything, for example, when in fact she's lamenting the *loss* of a man she *could* "tell anything" to). There's a loss of innocence here, a cost to creating this nonstick ironic facade. And Ramona--with her child's ability to blithely start over with a new imaginary "man"--maybe upsets her in part because she recognizes the person she has become (jaded, sarcastic, mean to her maid, etc.).
Eloise definitely longs for the past. When she's in the present, it's easy for her to be aggressive and hard-as-nails. But when she remembers what she doesn't have anymore, she is more vulnerable. She can't shake off the emptiness she has without Walt.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Alyson when she puts it perfectly: "Romona is a vehicle that Salinger uses to bring out the bad things in Eloise's mind. Her character shows the reader really just how much Eloise is struggling and what really is eating away at her mind." One addition that I find significant is how Ramona treats her male imaginary friends. She quickly moves on from Jimmy Jimmereeno to Mickey Mickeranno when Jimmy is "run over and killed." Ramona has no problem moving on from one "beau" to another. On the other hand, this is an issue that Eloise has struggled with for years. She has never been able to forget Walt after his tragic death and fully love Lew. When Ramona switches imaginary boyfriends, she brings this issue to Eloise's attention and causes Eloise's anger.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting how Romona's role in Salinger's story both makes the reader question Eloise's parenting, ie. reflecting badly on her character, while also leading us to sympathize with Eloise and her situation. They way Eloise speaks/ yells at Ramona in contrast to how Mary Jane acts around her initially made me dislike Eloise's character. She seemed very uninterested in Ramona's life, which initially led me to believe that she was a little egotistical. But Eloise also feels trapped in the past, unable to forget and move on from Lew, and her daughter is a constant reminder of how the world is changing around her and she just can't seem to move.
ReplyDeleteIf this story was just skimmed over, one wouldn't be able to catch the dark and light tones that Salinger has set forth for us. Seemingly all of Salinger's stories have deep meanings, but one just has a read carefully to catch them, and even more carefully to understand them.