"Three rows down from me, Coleman, his head tipped slightly toward hers, was talking to Faunia quietly, seriously, but about what, of course, I did not know.
Because we don't know, do we? Everyone knows... How what happens the way it does? What underlies the anarchy of the train of events, the uncertainties, the mishaps, the disunity, the shocking irregularities that define human affairs? Nobody knows, Professor Roux. 'Everyone knows' is the invocation of the cliche and the beginning of the banalization of experience, and it's the solemnity and the sense of authority that people have in voicing the cliche that's so insufferable. What we know is that, in an uncliched way, nobody knows anything. You can't know anything. The things you know you don't know. Intention? Motive? Consequence? Meaning? All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing."
-The Human Stain, 208-9
Analyze this quote in terms of the novel at large. Things to focus on might be: 1) The role of speculative narration and mirroring (w/r/t Nathan Zuckerman). 2) How this quote shapes the narrative. 3) How the role of the speculative narrator complicates/adds to the reader's conception of Coleman Silk. 4) The knowing/not knowing paradox.
This quote, gives better understanding of the perspective that Nathan Zuckerman is writing this narrative. Before this moment in the book, I assumed (for the most part) that this story was being told from an omniscient perspective. This quote changes that. In this chapter, we see the tone of how the story is told change from (assumed) omniscient, to speculation. This change in “tone” actually, begins after Coleman’s trip to Athena and his phone call with his son. After this point, Nathan informs the reader that he wasn’t there with Coleman when this incident occurred and Coleman hadn’t even told him about the incident at the college. Nathan pieced together that moment at the college by the accounts of two people who also weren’t there. So we have an account of an event that may not have necessarily have occurred the way the reader was told it occurred. From that moment on, Nathan’s voice really becomes a force in the story. Throughout most of the book before this point, it almost felt like Coleman was telling his story directly to the reader or that we were being told this story from a true omniscient narrator that was not a part of the story in anyway what so ever. This feeling drastically changes and now we are completely aware that Nathan is indeed telling this story, another man’s story, a story he doesn’t completely “know” everything about. After Coleman shuts Nathan out of his life and ultimately after his death, all we truly have in this story is Nathan’s perspective. Now that the reader is aware of this fact, it is difficult to completely take the events that Nathan recounts as undisputable facts because as Nathan says himself ‘No one knows’. So how can the reader completely trust Nathan’s account? The answer is you cannot. In all honesty, Nathan’s account of the events themselves may very well be 100% accurate, however there things within the events that Nathan just cannot be 100% right about. When Nathan first saw Coleman and Faunia at the rehersal, he made it very clear that he had no idea why they were there. This clearly fall under the category of the “unknown”; “The things you know you don't know. Intention? Motive? Consequence? Meaning?”. Nathan “knew” that they were indeed at the rehersal, but he “didn’t know” their motive in being there. So, here we are presented with the complex of the story: we know the events that took place, but do we truly “know” why they took place?
ReplyDeleteGood points about narration, CJ, especially when you pinpoint the foreshadowing that this will be a speculative narrative. Here's something to ponder: What's the difference between a speculative (using aspects of metafiction and mise en abyme) narrator and an "unreliable narrator?" Does speculative fiction allow the reader deeper insight into the mind of the author? Or into the mechanics of narrative craft?
ReplyDeleteSarah Brumfield
ReplyDeleteNathan Zuckerman, the narrator and a character, is telling this story from bits and pieces of what is supposed to be Coleman Silk’s real life. But, Zuckerman really knows very little about what/who Coleman Silk really is. All of the things we learn and come to feel for Coleman are the things that Zuckerman feels for him, what Zuckerman speculates about Coleman, Iris, Faunia, and every other character. . A character in the story, Zuckerman, cannot truly be in the heads of the other characters as the narrator. So, it is obvious that what we are reading comes from Zuckerman’s imagination. The entire book is all Nathan Zuckerman’s guessing and what and who Coleman Silk really was. He was a Jew, a black man, a white man, a liar, a lover, respected, disrespected, angry, happy…. Everything Silk is at one point in the story is contradicted in another. Coleman seems to be all over the map.
Mirroring also has a very large significance in this story. Roth uses mirrors of characters almost as character foils to show the reader what a person truly is, even though they are ignorant of it. For example, Nelson Primus and Coleman. Throughout most of his grown life, Coleman wants to be anything what he truly is, a partially black man. He is a prestigious professor and dean of a college, a husband, a father to four white children, and a friend. He did everything he possibly could to keep his true identity secret, even marring his wife for her questionable hair. Coleman, though, was not all of these things, while Primus was. Primus was the dictionary example of a respected white man with a good life, minus the lies.
In The Human Stain you never quite know what or who someone really is unless compared to their mirror. Other times you are never sure at all.
Craig Naccari
ReplyDeleteBy positing this paradox, Roth both undermines his narration while humanizing it. The traditional role of narrator telling a story from a vantage never exists in The Human Stain and by exposing its weakness, Roth strengthens the reader’s bond with the narration.
Roth points out that in life, the vast majority of what is witnessed in the world is largely unknown. Why then should fiction deviate. Nathan Zuckerman doesn’t understand his world any better than we do ours. He is seeking out answers only to discover new questions.
In fact the entire novel examines people who we yearn to understand. From Coleman’s janitorial love interest to her shattered war vet, we are constantly given glimmers of insight into characters, drawn to explore more, and then find something we did not expect. Still we don’t know the whole story.
The characters find out pieces of the story to be assembled as they see fit just as we do. The narrator is not God, he is a story teller. Instead, the reader is allowed to construct his own ideas, aided by glimmers of insight, only to see them dashed on the next page. The more we learn about a character, the more we realize we don’t know anything about him. This allows Coleman Silk to survive as a character even after his death. We can never know everything about him. If we did, then we would be him. The idea of Coleman Silk is more complex than his tissues. He has depth which can never be fully understood, as does everyone. By attempting to unearth the soul of a person, as Nathan Zuckerman does, one discovers that he can’t know the answers to his questions. The answers lie within the person and the person cannot be understood. We can only examine a person’s stain and then try to understand it.
Kelli Cortez
ReplyDeleteIt’s interesting that Zuckerman presents this aspect of the “Everyone knows…” quotation. It was these words that rekindled the flame in Coleman. It was these words that sent Coleman into his lawyer’s office in such a fury. It is these words now that convey a wholly different tone. Zuckerman is the narrator; he’s the one telling this story. It is important to realize that this is a story. Zuckerman is making it up, filling in the blanks with his own mind. He is speculating based on the events he was privy to. His partaking in this aside to Professor Roux and the reader is his way of saying, “No one knows, I don’t know.” It is this “almost truth but still fiction” that leaves the reader wondering, “Is this really what happened?” We can never know what really went on between Coleman and Faunia. We can never know what events have shaped their lives, their death.
This quote shapes the narrative by exposing all of the characters for what they really are; by exposing people for all they really are. We think we know everything, but we really know nothing. Coleman thinks he knows all about Faunia, and Faunia thinks she is always in control. What neither of them knows is what is going to happen next. That’s the infallible question we as humans ask ourselves on a daily basis. These characters go along in their lives feeling secure in their own fantasies that they have dreamed up; their own realities. Sure, we can all make our own truths; however, these truths remain baseless because we can never know.
Nick Filardo
ReplyDeleteZuckerman’s speculative narrative is placed in perspective in the quote by realizing that this is all just one possibility out of an endless number of them. Zuckerman really cannot know what Coleman Silk’s motive could have been or Delphine Roux’s. He acknowledges that Coleman’s reasoning behind the affair with Faunia can only be known by him and we can only guess at it. In the beginning of the novel I had believed that everything told was a known fact learned directly from Coleman or the other characters. The speculation in this narrative actually creates an interesting angle to which the narrative proceeds with each character’s inner thoughts and drives revealed. Nathan no longer had insight into Coleman’s life since he had been alienated from it. He had to try and delve into what he believed Coleman’s choices represented. A reader can take Nathan’s view and suspect that Delphine has framed Coleman and only to bury his reputation even further into the treacherous hole caused by the “spooks” incident at Athena. This is an easier assumption as opposed to Coleman in the light of a reckless thief because of Nathan’s description of Coleman from the beginning as an “outgoing, sharp-witted, forcefully smooth big-city charmer” (Roth 4). Nathan’s strong positive impression of Coleman is present even through the “spooks” incident and his affair with Faunia.