For those of my listeners who do not know, it is a tradition to recite the prayer of Saint Michael at the end of Mass in the Catholic Church.  As a convert to the faith, I had to learn this powerful prayer, so I could join the chorus of those petitioning Saint Michael to “defend us in battle” and to “cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.”  It is a prayer that pulls no punches and rightly so.  We are, after all, in a spiritual war against an enemy that is wily, nefarious, and persistent. Even Dominican friars express this truth in where they choose to carry their rosaries: at their sides, an emulation of where warriors used to carry their swords. But even so, we have Saint Michael, a “prince of the Heavenly host,” who by the power of God can put the evil one and his legions where they belong. 

Of course, the prayer naturally prompts one to consider exactly how we are attacked.  It is rarely, in my estimation, full frontal.  Satan works in suggestion and nuance – slippery as a snake – in order to get hapless victims to take the bait and choose darkness over light.  He preys on our sin proclivities, and many times we lose the battle.  Thank God for the sacrament of reconciliation. 

Catholic apologist and all-around thinker, G.K. Chesteron had much to say on the topic of sin, though, true to form, it was framed with a hefty amount of wit.  He writes that “a dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”  To be dead, in this case, is to be spiritually lost and intellectually flat.  It is to be the antithesis of being inquisitive.  It is to shirk the responsibility of critical thinking.  It is to defer to what others – anybody, especially if they are so-called influencers – think.  It is to go with the popular flow.  No questions.  No pushback.  Going along to get along.  You know the drill. 

I will not enumerate the countless examples of foisted opinion we see in our society today – notions planted in the heads of millions via social media, popular music, TV entertainment, and even educators – because I imagine that you, dear listeners, already have some examples at the ready.  You, too, see the nonsense being peddled as truth, as fact.  Chesterton certainly made this observation over a hundred years ago when he penned this line: “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”  What are the pseudo-intellectual fashions of our day?  How do they turn off our ability to think critically?  Indeed, what are the social consequences of asking questions about the new orthodoxy?  Hear this: the measure of violent indignation as a result of asking the wrong questions directly corelates with the fashion’s untruth.  The bigger the lie, the angrier the response from those who wield it. 

As such, perhaps Satan’s other monicker – the father of lies – tells us everything we need to know about our current day and age.  We do battle by telling the truth.  Plain and simple.  This would seem to be an easy fix; however, one glance at our society would tell us a different story.  “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting;” writes Chesterton, “it has been found difficult and left untried.”  Saint Michael’s battle is difficult, but he is in it for the long-haul, to put it mildly.  The same battle is difficult for us, but many fall to the wayside, give up, or not even bother to step into the ring.  Let me be clear.  I do not say this judgmentally.  Life can be hard.  Life is hard.  We are all, for the most part, doing our very best.  But Chesterton’s insight on the nature of the Christian ideal is particularly telling.  It goes against the flow.  It is countercultural.  It requires living things to go against the current.  And how?  Where can we possibly find the strength?  Like Saint Michael, like Chesterton, like any of us who love the truth and hate all things false, the answer is “the power of God.”  The answer is in front of us, but it is never from us.  The latter creates pride, and we all know the result of that. 

At the time of my writing of this episode, philosophy professor Peter Kreeft’s book A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist has only 134 ratings on Amazon.com.  This, I contend, is not a reflection of the quality of Kreeft’s writing nor of the content he explores but, rather, what is typically chosen as casual reading.  The book, as my old college roommate used to say, is a thinker.  I made notes in the margins.  I reread passages to understand them better.  Kreeft covers a lot of territory.  The book is essentially a dialogue between an absolutist professor and a relativist journalist: the former believes that there is a definitive right and a definitive wrong while the latter, certainly expressing the zeitgeist of our current age, believes the opposite – right and wrong are what you make them.  The absolutist, ‘Isa, asserts to the relativist, Libby, that “moral relativism denies an absolute law for man.  It says good and evil are man-made.”  As such, what is bad today may very well be good tomorrow depending on how the winds blow.  It does not take an intellectual of Kreeft’s ability and stature to see this throughout our society.  Consensus on what constitutes good and evil remains elusive.  Indeed, we seem to all be bearing witness to the very twistedness of mind that was admonished in the Book of Isaiah: "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"  If anyone is wondering, we are there, dear listeners.  Without a doubt.  Irrefutable.  Kreeft, therefore, is practically prophetic as his book came out in 1999.  Twenty-five years later, where are we? 

Perhaps some clarity can be had by noting the conspicuous absence of the four cardinal virtues, the first three constituting the fourth.  Wisdom, courage, self-control together make up justice.  Wisdom, to quote Kreeft, “means knowing the truth, especially the moral truth, the truth about the good to be done.  Courage means the will choosing the good even when it hurts, the will following the reason instead of the desires when reason says X is good and the desires say X doesn’t feel good, when it gives pain instead of pleasure.  And self-control means not following passion when passion says X is fun and reason says it’s evil.”  Only by adhering to these virtues can a person ever hope to realize or bear witness to justice.  Justice is knowing what is right and wrong and calling a falsehood a falsehood even if it makes you unpopular.  That is how to build and sustain a strong society.  The contrary would only have disastrous consequences.  “If reason doesn’t rule passion,” Kreeft writes, “passion will rule reason, and then reason becomes rationalization—rationalization of [one’s] passions, a slave of [one’s] passions.”  It would not be too far afield to call this reality dystopian.  Awful.  Hellish. 

This is the endpoint of relativism.    Servitude to our base desires.  And to be even more specific, our sexual desires. 

Interestingly, Kreeft notes that “the driving force of moral relativism in society seems to be almost exclusively sexual.”  He continues by saying that “once you’ve lost God, once you’ve become a secularist, you have only two substitutes, only two experiences that can still give you the mystical thrill that God gives: Sex and death.”  While lying and stealing, abject violence and murder are rarely glorified, all aspects and variations of sex get a pass.  This is the chink in the armor.  This is where we are most vulnerable, and the enemy – Satan – knows it. 

Kreeft offers a passing suggestion for what to do, which is to aspire toward sainthood, but I would like to offer a thought or two of my own.  It begins with an outdoor concert in a crowded park and a little girl frantically looking for her father. 

My wife and I knew the girl was in distress.  She was crying.  In a panic.  Everywhere she turned, she did not find who she was looking for.  I spoke with her gently as my wife went off, looking for security or her dad, whoever came first.  I tried to calm her by asking questions: Where did you last see him?  On the playground?  How old are you?  Are you in Pre-K? 

Teary-eyed and a little calmer, she replied, “No, I g’adiated.” 

Many of us, like the little girl, are lost, looking for our Father.  And while we might be tempted to rest on the laurels of our accomplishments – years lived, schools attended, experiences had – the fact remains that there is only one Presence that can assuage our fears and bring us peace.  If we are able, we help others in the search, but ultimately, we must recognize that we are prosecuting our own.  We are seeking.  Not a new idea or trend or fashion or a cause that, yet again, pushes the limits.  In our hearts, we are all absolutists because that is how we were made.  For something real, something sturdy, something reassuring.  Just like the hug we watched the little girl receive from her daddy who stooped down to brush aside the tears and look her in the face.  I am here.  I have always been here. 

https://www.amazon.com/Refutation-Moral-Relativism-Interviews-Absolutist/dp/0898707315

Love You Forever – written by Robert Munsch, illustrated by Sheila McGraw 

In 2007, my oldest daughter, then a newborn, was gifted with this classic children’s book. The story’s arc is simple, yet the message remains powerful. A mother rocks her child in various stages of his life, singing the same lullaby: I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, As long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be. Of course, she, too, experiences various stages of life. In the beginning, she is a new mother. As time goes on, she ages, yet her maternal dedication never wanes. Even when her son grows up and moves across town, she drives in the middle of the night to his home so that she can sing to him. In the end, she grows very old and sick, and it becomes the son’s turn to rock his mother and sing to her. When he returns to his own home, the son, now a full-grown man, stops at the top of the stairs and pauses before going into his own daughter’s room to continue the beautiful tradition. To her, he sings the same words: As long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be. 

Even now, on the verge of my fiftieth year, I cannot make it through this story without my eyes welling up with tears. It hits me hard. Perhaps the reason is that I have much to look back on. My three daughters are teenagers, and my own mother is far more distant than just being across town. I have lived many milestones at least enough to know that they come and go quickly. The years, the experiences, the ups and downs are right in front of me, yet they remain so difficult to believe. Did it all really happen? Am I really where I am now? 

When my girls were in preschool, I once theorized that life might be akin to this experience.  God carries us into the classroom and sets us down. For a time, we play. We learn. We make friends and mistakes. We get to be creative, and we get to learn about some rules. We do our best. We enjoy our snacks. But eventually, God returns at which point we raise our arms in the air, beckoning Him to pick us up, and He does. Our time is finished. He pulls us back into his warm embrace. 

This world is our school, but it is not our home. Perhaps this explains why the book continues to have such an impact. The characters and the scenery change throughout, but the song remains the same. It is eternal. Love is eternal. We all know this to be true deep down. To be sure, those who have been, let’s say, enrolled in this school longer have an even better grasp of how true it really is. And what this inevitably generates is a gratitude borne out of being relieved by it all. Yes, the years stack up. Yes, I am immeasurably grateful for the experiences. But the end is love. Forever. It does not perish. 

What would our world look like if more of us lived this truth? Would the trivial details matter as much? Would we spend our time differently? Would our priorities be the same as they seemingly are now? I have my answer. I would think that you have yours. 

https://www.amazon.com/Love-You-Forever-Robert-Munsch/dp/0920668372

In his New York Times bestselling book The Road to Character, David Brooks explores the Adam I and the Adam II archetypes – the two opposing sides of our nature taken from the two accounts of creation in the Book of Genesis.  Adam I is all about building a resume.  His focus is external.  It is about position.  About promotion.  Degrees earned.  Awards won.  Being the perfect company man.  Adam II, on the other hand, is about the internal.  He wants a robust moral compass.  He seeks to better understand traits like dignity, honesty, purpose, and the sacred.  He thinks about meaning.  From the depths of his soul, he wants to know why.  In a series of focused biographies, Brooks measures his subjects against these archetypes in order to understand how true character is built.  It turns out that it takes time and a good measure of failure.  What is more, it can be achieved because of personal flaws, not despite them.  Dwight Eisenhower could be short tempered.  George Eliot was needy.  Dorothy Day lived the life of a Bohemian before she found the Catholic Church and her vocation to help the poor.  The same could be said about Augustine.  The subjects are many, and the imperfections, categorically all over the board.  Through his profiles, however. Brooks makes the powerful case that we can, indeed, rise above ourselves to achieve some level of personal mastery that makes us role models for others on the path toward character.  All we need to do is think of others more than ourselves and constantly reach for holiness.  Adam I has his place in the world; Adam II should nevertheless remain the singular aim. 

Brooks, however, leaves his readers with a shrewd observation.  In this day and age, Adam I is dominant, and Adam II is dismissed.  The superficial seems to dominate the culture.  Our young even buy into it, and we wonder why suicide is on the rise.  In them, Adam II was never encouraged.  Character was never thrust forth as something to pursue building.  They swipe.  They tweet.  They post silly and even degrading images.  And all the while, from parents to teachers to bosses to the media juggernaut, they are told how perfect they already are, told not to change, told to stay the way they are. 

What does this mean?  No struggle.  And no struggle means a loss of the opportunity to build character. 

My grandfather used to tell me that at a very young age he decided to root hog or die.  What this meant was that he was going to give it his all, and if he failed, he failed with his head up.  He had character.  He was a man of immense dignity and humility.  A physician.  A Catholic deacon.  An Army officer,  And, most importantly, a father.  But also a man with flaws.  Just like the rest of us. 

I am fairly convinced that many of the students who take me their freshman year have been pushed through high school.  They just sort of land in my classroom.  Some look at their cellphones the whole time.  Others just stare.  Few take notes.  The book appears to be optional in their minds.  I do my best to reach them, of course, but increasingly I am beginning to wonder if I am up against something very large and formidable: an Adam I culture where the push is to check the boxes and build the resume.  College is just one box to check.  Asking the Adam II questions is unnecessary, at best, and tedious, at worst.  They just want the grade.  There is nothing to think about. 

Brooks’ book, then, is a rallying cry to a society fatally distant from the Adam II mindset.  While there are still those who really do crave character, and a good many, I hasten to say, do attend my classes, the deficit is apparent.  We see it in the values society holds up.  We see it in how the young are unmoored.  The cellphones must be put aside for the real conversations to finally take place. 

https://www.amazon.com/Road-Character-David-Brooks/dp/0812983416

Thinkers at the time of the Enlightenment or Age of Reason were engrossed with the project of imposing order onto the universe.  With the God-given faculty of reason, they argued, humankind, above and beyond every other creature, could navigate the world with greater insight and influence.  They saw themselves, in other words, as Adam-like in the sense that their mission was to "tend the garden": keep it trimmed and tidy, give it language, name everything that can be named.  This was in the 18th century.  Revolutions were inspired by this movement.  Monarchies were rejected.  Heads were severed from their bodies in France. 

Enter Washington Irving’s 1820 short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in which a daydreaming schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, happens upon the horrifying specter of the Headless Horseman.  While attending a harvest party at the home of his love interest, Katrina Van Tassel, Ichabod first hears the tale of the Hessian trooper from Brom Bones, another of Tassel’s suitors.  Lanky, bookish, and physically unimpressive Ichabod Crane, though, is no match for the brawny Brom Bones.  As such, he is jilted and decides to leave the party and trek through the dark woods toward home at the witching hour – the time when the Headless Horseman is said to roam the area looking for what was taken from him.  Their encounter is inevitable.  Petrified, Ichabod Crane spurs his mount, a sad-looking horse named Gunpowder, into action, and the Hessian gives ghoulish chase.  The pursuit is intense.  The only hope is to reach the wooden bridge mentioned in the Brom Bones’ telling of the story.  It is where the headless rider must stop.  He cannot go beyond it.  Sure enough, Ichabod Crane finds the bridge and crosses it; however, the Headless Horseman rears back on his own terrifying mount and hurls his severed head at him, knocking him off Gunpowder. 

Ichabod Crane’s fate is mysterious, and Irving seems to be keen on keeping it that way.  There is no clear resolution.  There is simply a shattered pumpkin and a missing protagonist.  Ichabod Crane’s whereabouts remain unknown, and there ends the story. 

This alone makes the tale very appealing.  It is a favorite around campfires and at sleepovers.  Given the date of the short story’s publication, however, I wonder if there is more to be said. 

The Enlightenment sparked the American Revolution.  In “Common Sense,” firebrand Thomas Paine even made the argument that our separation from the English crown was quite reasonable – the proper thing to do.  After the Revolutionary War, though, a new worldview emerged.  While Enlightenment thinkers championed reason, the Romantics championed emotion, the very thing that set apart Ichabod Crane from the rest.  He was fond of literature – an American Don Quixote whose world was entirely made up of fantasy and fanciful thoughts.  Like it or not, the pendulum was swinging, and those with Romantic bents were taking center stage.  While the Republic was inspired by Enlightenment ideals, it quickly became a lab to explore other facets of the human experience, namely what the embrace and celebration of emotion can do to advance human civilization. 

Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” therefore, becomes an elaborate analogy of America’s relationship with the Old World.  The Hessian is the Old World, representing reason, logic, the mind, the head.  Ichabod Crane is a brand-new America, representing dreams, feelings, the things of the heart.  What happened to him in the end is anybody’s guess.  Perhaps Irving was saying the same about America.  We outran our past and crossed the wooden bridge.  Who could possibly know what awaits us? 

I first read James Fenimore Cooper’s classic The Last of the Mohicans when I was around twelve years old.  Somebody had gifted me a set of abridged versions of a selection of American classics, and I devoured them one after the other.  It was not until I taught a section of Cooper’s work to my Honors students that I learned that the 19th century author was doing something quite clever in his telling of how a trio of backwoodsmen, two of them Natives, come to the assistance of two English sisters who are clearly out of their depth in the wilderness among hostiles against the backdrop of the French and Indian War.  Chingachgook is the father of Uncas, and they are the last remaining members of a lost tribe.  The third member, Hawkeye, while Caucasian, dresses and speaks like his Native compatriots, making him decidedly a mix.  Magua, the antagonist in this quintessentially American tale, creates quite a lot of havoc, resulting in two deaths, Cora, one of the sisters, and her would-be lover, Uncas.  For Cora’s part, she serves as the sentimental heroine.  Her death is tragic, and it underscores the senseless violence that was so much a part of European expansionism.  Uncas, however, serves an entirely different function. 

Literary types are usually quick to notice when the number three is at play.  Why?  Christian symbolism pervades the Western canon.  We built our culture upon story, and the Christian story happens to be the most dominant.  As such, my students and I were especially interested in Uncas’s death.  What did it mean?  Was there a deeper significance?   

In the New Testament, Jesus tells his followers that He must go so that the advocate or Holy Spirit can come.  It is all a part of a grand scheme – something mere humans cannot grasp but one we must trust nevertheless.  What if Cooper was drawing a parallel between the Christian mission and the American mission?  Uncas, the son, had to die.  And who was the American spirit?  Hawkeye.  Clearly Hawkeye.  And the reason was expressed in how he comported himself.  He was, after all, an amalgam en persona of the Old and New Worlds.  He was, in other words, the archetypal American: strong, worldly, the best of both cultures.  Just as the nation was still in its fledgling stage, Cooper was making the assertion that we already had an identity – something to remind us of who we all are.  This was in 1826, after the War of 1812 and before the war between the states: two events that could have very well done in America before it ever got started.  Early Christians, as well, had looked into the abyss just as The Way, as it had been known, had just taken flight.  But despite various persecutions, the faith thrives.  The Church remains.  The Holy Spirit is present.  Perhaps, then, we should read Cooper’s nudge for what it is.  If we, too, want to continue as a nation, it might be wise to recall the American spirit, embodied in Hawkeye, and realize that America was forged by the wilderness – endured its relentless assaults – yet emerged articulate, brave, and ready.  A new creation.  Twofold.  Endowed by God and the ruggedness of His world. 

According to Jewish mythology, Adam’s first wife was not Eve.  The Adam from the Book of Genesis was first wed to a woman named Lilith; however, she was not quite on board with her expected station in the Garden, so she was summarily banished, ejected, kicked out.  The insurrection in heaven had already taken place, which meant that Lilith, in her exiled state, was not exactly alone.  She was among fallen angels or demons who, like ravenous sharks, circled Eden, looking for ways to get in.  To spite Adam and, of course, God, Lilith, at this point, chose to copulate with these creatures.  The results?  The things that go bump in the night.  If you subscribe to the myth, there is room to subscribe to the existence of vampires and werewolves – hideous offspring of a vindictive woman and her once-angelic, now defiled hook-ups. 

I share this story to put the worldview of early Europeans settlers to the so-called New World in its proper context.  In his letters to the King and Queen of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, Christopher Columbus described the land he stumbled upon in idyllic terms.  The forests were lush and filled with resources and game, the weather, temperate; the natives, compliant.  He had, in a phrase, rediscovered Eden – a happy bit of news to a Europe wracked by disease, war, and poverty.  The New World, as a result, took on two new monikers: the New Eden and the New Jerusalem.  It was a chance to start over, to start afresh, and zealots representing the world powers of the 15th and 16th centuries were quick to get a foothold. 

John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” sermon is well-known for articulating how many Europeans saw themselves acting out a Divine mission.  The New Jerusalem would be home to a new type of people, not those imbued with old ways of thinking that would simply serve to replicate what they were fleeing from in the Old Country, but those who would be determined to elevate the human experience by living out their spiritual selves.  This explains the fanaticism of the Pilgrims.  God had provided a way, and they only had to take hold with both hands. 

The reality of the conditions in North America, however, very quickly prompted them to reconsider their characterization of the New Jerusalem.  Not surprisingly, the answer was already present.  The barrier between what was Holy and what was not was compromised.  It was a repeat of the story of Lilith.  The demons were among them as were Lilith’s horrifying progeny.  Life was so hard, in other words, because of pride.  They could not escape their nature.  No ocean was large enough to separate them from the fallenness that was inside of every human heart. 

Our prelapsarian selves – Adam and Eve before the fall – characterize our American ideals.  These are determined by what we could have retained, what we might regain, still; however, as I look around at the chaos of our times, I have to wonder how much Lilith still speaks.  Yes, Adam and Lilith and, later, Eve were all given the gift of free will, just as we all have the same gift.  We are free to love God or not, which, itself, is the very essence of love because we get to keep our agency.  However, with Adam’s first wife, it is difficult not to ignore what can only be described as spite.  When Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden, they loved God and kept moving forward.  When Lilith was banished, she made it her mission to create more evil. 

Where does this leave us?  I cannot be sure.  I can only look at myself and at the people around me to see what we do with our sin.  The New Eden, the New Jerusalem never existed.  The City on a Hill was only wishful thinking.  What might really define America moving forward are the choices we make.  Are we Adam?  Are we Eve?  Our first parents who, despite their loss, bravely pushed forward.  Or are we Lilith?  Ready to turn sin into more sin until this sin literally walks among us, terrorizing the innocent, pulling the whole lot to deeper, more agonizing depths. 

Years ago, when I was teaching in Spain, I discovered a museum that altered my understanding of what it means to be an artist.  Born in 1863 in Valencia, Joaquin Sorolla was a well-known painter, plying his craft just as the Modernist movement was picking up speed.  I had expected to be immersed in a world of experimentalism and the avante garde; however, I was quickly corrected when I was exposed to the fruits of his labor.  I stood in the building that had once been his home and beheld breathtaking works that celebrated the family – his family: his wife and his children.  There was a painting of his young wife lying in a billowy white bed with their baby daughter and paintings of children playing on the beach.  Later in the self-guided tour, I came across paintings of his wife when she was older and his daughters, no longer children but young women.  He had painted his life – captured on the canvas those special milestones that seem to come and go so quickly – and it was beautiful.  I was touched.  A man who had died long before my birth gifted me and anybody else with eyes to see a glimpse into his father’s soul.  The love he had for his wife and children was evident.  I was lucky to be tuned into his heart. 

For as long as I could remember, the artist had always been the renegade, the outcast, the critical thinker who tore through popular narratives and exposed falsehoods, mocked the haughty.  The artist had an edge and was easily recognizable.  The artist stood out.  The artist performed.  The artist did not look typical, and the artist was certainly not domesticated.  He was boozy, womanizing Hemingway.  She was wounded, suicidal Plath and Woolf.  He was psychedelic Thompson and Kerouac and Leary.  She was timid, aloof O’Connor and Dickinson.  Who was Joaquin Sorolla but a doting husband and father?  Yet artist.  Accomplished, impactful artist. 

James Joyce, born in Ireland in 1882 and author of A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, adored his children.  He did not shirk his responsibilities as a father, yet his art certainly pushed the boundaries.  It was meant to agitate. He was firmly in the Modernist camp.  

J.D. Salinger, on the other hand, all but ignored his children as he typed away in a shed in his backyard. Salinger’s work Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey took off where the Modernists left off and issued a scathing critique of the fakeness of modern society with its silly conventions and escapist habits. According to my old definition, he was the consummate artist. I wonder if his kids felt the same. 

All three men – Sorolla, Joyce, and Salinger – were dads, and each approached his art uniquely. Sorolla leaned toward his family, Joyce seemed to straddle two worlds, and Salinger was completely consumed by his demons to the detriment of his offspring. Before I stepped foot in the Sorolla museum in Madrid, I had one definition of what it means to be an artist, and in retrospect, it was not a good one. That artist was selfish and even self-important – always on the lookout for an audience. Joyce took a step, in my estimation, in the right direction, but it was a Spanish painter who showed me that a plain ol’ dad could and should say something, too, about other, arguably more important dimensions of the human experience. Parenthood. Raising children. Loving them dearly. The self-sacrifice that husbands and fathers are called to make daily. I did not partake of these paintings in one of the grand museums of Spain but in a building that Sorolla along with his wife and children once called home. My wife, three daughters, and I live in a house in a suburb of Atlanta. It is where I write, where I wrestle with the thoughts I have. Un artista. Soy escritor. 

One day, inexplicably, Gregor Samsa, the protagonist in Kafka’s 1915 novella, wakes up to find himself transformed into a bug. Common depictions have him as a cockroach. No matter the case, the metamorphosis is shocking yet quite telling. Samsa is, after all, a salesman who works a dead-end job to provide for his family. In many ways, his lot is one we can all relate to. Days turn into weeks, and weeks turn into months, and all the sudden you are a year older, still plugging away at the same job. Kafka, I am sure, is not suggesting we all adopt the rambling life, flitting from job to job and even relationship to relationship; however, he is certainly offering commentary on a society that looks more like a capital-building machine with men and women as cogs and nothing more: a soulless existence, inconsequential as an insect. Nobody ever wants this condition, yet so many happen to inhabit it. And why? Like Gregor Samsa, we do it for money and take what solace there is from our hopes and dreams. It cannot always be this way, we say to ourselves. Yet another year goes by...and another...and another. 

Gregor’s fate, in light of this condition, is telling. Increasingly unable to see him as a person, his family turns on him by removing the furniture from his bedroom – an act that shows their denial of his humanity – and refusing to give him food and water. Gregor eventually dies of neglect and starvation, and his family sets their sights on the future: one where Gregor’s sister will find a suitable husband and presumably enter the grind herself. It is a ruthless punctuation to a jarring story. In the end, Darwin has his say. Survival of the fittest. Gregor Samsa was dehumanized by his living conditions and was summarily rejected by other human beings who happened to be members of his family. 

On one hand, this could be a critique of capitalism. Gregor’s surprising transformation into a bug mirrors the transformation many have from an aspirant with hopes and dreams into a mere money-maker, living paycheck to paycheck and wondering what it – life – is really all about. On the other hand, however, Kafka may be challenging his readers to take a deeper plunge. The Modernist movement had found its stride by 1915, and artists of all stripes were in the throes of a single mission: to reject all things traditional, identifying many social codes and expectations as tools of the bourgeois to maintain a status quo that kept them decisively in charge. Gregor Samsa’s position as proletariat or lower class is evident, and arguments along the lines of social class can certainly be teased out of the story. What if the message, however, is more than something about class friction? What if Kafka is saying something about the Modernist movement itself? 

Perhaps the metamorphosis was caused, not by capitalism, but by blind commitment to rejecting tradition? We derive meaning from relationships, after all, even if the ties in those relationships aren’t personal interactions per se but conventions forged over time. We have relationships with ancestors who lived a hundred years ago, for example. We may not even know their names, but we live out the values they passed on. What happens when we don’t? What happens when we edit out those values, choosing instead a blank sheet on which to compose our own values? Base proclivities can be strong. The animal inside each of us – Freud might call the Id – is fierce and defiant. Without tradition, it is unfettered. Without values, it is unleashed. In this framework, the hedonism of the 20th century and now should make sense. In 1915, the metamorphosis into a bug was horrifying. Now, many young people are calling themselves furries and identifying as animals. The new metamorphosis is being championed as liberating, but I have my doubts. The spiritual malaise Kafka and his contemporaries experienced is, today, more pervasive. The cockroaches are many, and they do not even know why they are so sad. 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was not the only female writer to challenge the Doctrine of the Spheres.  The torch that was lit by Mary Wollstonecraft in her notable work “Vindication of the Rights of Women,” which was published in 1792 was carried forth by a number of aspiring liberators of the so-called weaker sex.  The Bronte sisters, Kate Chopin, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, Fanny Fern, even Wollstonecraft’s daughter, Mary Shelley all got in their digs.  What is useful about Gilman’s work, “The Yellow Wallpaper” published a hundred years after Vindication is how on the nose it is about illustrating a common assumption of the two sexes at the time.  By nature, so went the doctrine, men were more reasonable – even-tempered.  In contrast, women were inclined to be more emotional.  They more easily succumbed to fits of hysteria.  This is where we get the word hysterectomy, after all.  By removing the uterus, surgeons would render women calmer and, hence, agreeable.  This was the common view, and society conducted itself with this always in mind.  Reason led the way while emotion stayed home with the children. 

I am not here to challenge traditional gender roles.  Men and women are made differently – made to complement one another.  Where one is lacking, the other compensates and vice versa.  Equally yoked, it is a beautiful partnership.  My concern, here, emerges out of the fact that I am the father of three teenage girls.  In graduate school, I studied feminism with everybody else and was able to grasp the ins and outs of the cause.  But only intellectually.  I do not move about this world as a woman and so could not fully grasp what that experience must be like.  The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is sent to a room to convalesce after suffering from what is described as a nervous condition.  She is kept separate from everybody else and is, therefore, free to let her mind wander.  She keeps a hidden journal, but soon enough, begins to see another woman in the wallpaper stooping down and creeping – a recurring sight that eventually drives the narrator insane.  In the end, her husband, realizing the state of his wife, faints in the doorway, causing the narrator to have to quote unquote “creep over him every time.”  The finale is unsettling but likely purposefully so.  The true woman must creep about; the facade woman must surrender to being the husband’s charge. 

Clearly, there is a sense of responsibility the husband has for the mentally infirm wife; however, it is also clear that this responsibility can sometimes look like ownership.  I am able to grasp this in the abstract, but understanding this in the realm of everyday living has been a challenge, namely because I am beginning to see how my own daughters move about the world – how, at times, they are ogled and other times, I am told, boys their age and even older feel perfectly comfortable invading their personal space as if it is their natural right.  One half of the doctrine, in other words, is the nose I used to wipe.  It is the chubby child I used to feed, the fleshy hand I used to hold.  Indeed, it still is the blossoming young women I counsel, protect, teach, and provide for. 

The feminists of the 19th century and beyond did good work in leveling the playing field so that women could truly be who God designed them to be: not in the shadows any longer but fully expressive with full access and horizons just as wide with potential as the horizons men see.  Their efforts are worth commendation.  I look at my daughters and rest in the fact that many battles have been fought and won just for them.  But I see with my own eyes evidence that a few more adjustments might have to be made.  I see the stares of the men.  I see my daughters avert their eyes and quicken their pace.  They do not creep.  They brace themselves against a version of reason: assertive, wiser, nothing they ever asked for.