One Jason

Most of the second half of Black Swan Green shows Jason’s path to self-confidence. By degrees, he frees himself from his bullying “friends” and lets his real self come out. The culminating scene of this arc is during “Goose Fair”, when Jason visits the Hall of Mirrors.

For much of the book, Jason is preoccupied with hiding his true thoughts, hobbies, and tastes because he’s terrified of how other boys at his school will perceive him. We described this in class as “self-editing”, which is a totally perfect term for it. However, during the fair he finally comes to the conscious realization that this is enormously unhealthy and unsustainable:

“How about an Outside-You who is your Inside-You too? A One-You? If people like your One-You, great. If they don’t, tough. Trying to win approval for your Outside-You is a drag, Jason. That’s what makes you weak. It’s boring.”

It’s interesting that Jason doesn’t just have an Inside-Me and an Outside Me, though. He has multiple individual “inside” voices, too – Maggot, Unborn Twin, etc. They represent parts of Jason that he thinks are shameful, but not in the same way that he thinks poetry and hats are shameful. Those are things that Jason likes, but feels like he can’t acknowledge to other people; Maggot and Hangman are the things he doesn’t want to see as part of himself, so he gives them other names. After the Hall of Mirrors, when Jason has his “one-me” moment, he stops talking about Maggot’s voice in his head, or Unborn Twin’s. There’s just Jason. Hangman’s still there, but Jason begins to learn to work around his stammer – in a way that doesn’t involve trying to fight it ( treating it as a separate entity) but rather accepting it and giving himself permission not to speak like he thinks other people want him to. Jason’s transition to a “One-You” isn’t just reconciling his inward and outward selves, but also learning to deal with his negative thoughts and impulses in a way that isn’t destructive.

Darkness is the Only Solvent

The first quote from Housekeeping that really stood out to me was the part when Ruth and Lucille were out by the lake, and Ruth feels the night all around her:

“Lucille would tell this story differently. She would say I fell asleep, but I did not. I simply let the darkness in the sky become coextensive with the darkness in my skull and bowels and bones. Everything that falls upon the eye is apparition, a sheet dropped over the world’s true workings. The nerves and brain are tricked, and one is left with dreams that these specters loose their hands from ours and walk away, the curve of the back and the swing of the coat so familiar as to imply that they should be permanent fixtures of the world, when in fact nothing is more perishable.”

This is one of those things that I’ve felt before, but never been eloquent enough to put into words. Ruth’s use of the phrase “walk away” ties her perception of the world/universe in general together with her own life experience. Her grandfather, her mother, her aunts, Lily and Nona – nearly every adult in her life has walked away. Her specific mention of “swing of the coat” reminds me of Sylvie, and of the archetypal hobo who would supposedly come into town and steal children away.

                The way that Ruth says, “...and the swing of the coat so familiar as to imply that they should be permanent fixtures of the world” shows that she has come to trust Sylvie despite everything else in her life, even though she still rationally knows that Sylvie will leave her some day (whether by abandonment or death).

“Darkness is the only solvent.”

This was the part that really got me – I know when I’ve gone outside at night, and I’m by myself, I’ve felt exactly what Ruth is feeling in this passage. The world feels much larger, somehow.