Monday, March 3, 2014
Karlenzig Post 4
A lot is revealed about Jack through his thoughts surrounding the Great Twitch. The Great Twitch is another subconscious effort Jack is making to try and sooth his anger and loneliness. The Great Twitch is born from necessity. Just like the Great Sleep, the Great Twitch is an idea born to shield Jack from the harsh realities of adulthood. After the affair between Anne and Willie, Jack is devastated because he realizes his true love for Anne (and for Willie, in a different way). However the Great Twitch is a Jack's method of denying this love and creating a false sense of reality in which there is no purpose in life but to reproduce. "The twitch is simply an independent phenomenon, unrelated to the face or to what was behind the face or to anything in the whole tissue of phenomena which is the world we are lost in" (Pg 437). This "independent phenomenon" (which is reproduction) is unrelated to anything else. Essentially Jack is making an excuse losing the love of his. He is also making an excuse for his general attitude towards life: his laziness and passivity. In fact, the Great Twitch's ideas date all the way back to Jack's marriage with Lois. Jack saw Lois as a machine rather than a person. Everything besides sex with her was irrelevant. After his trip out west Jack claims to feel the same way about Anne, but he is clearly lying to himself.
The reason Jack is so interested in the lobotomy performed by Adam, is because Jack is wishes to lobotomize himself. The Great Twitch is Jack's way of cutting the memory of Willie and Anne's affair out of his brain. "for he is born again and not of woman. I baptize thee in the name of the Big Twitch, the Little Twitch, and the Holy Ghost. Who, no doubt, is a Twitch, too" (Pg 445). In a jokingly manner, Jack verbally baptizes the man who has just undergone a lobotomy. For he too has been altered by the theory of the Great Twitch. Although Jack seems to be joking around with Adam about this baptism, he is actually quite serious. Subconsciously (yes, Jack's subconscious is quite active) Jack is baptizing himself and giving himself a new beginning.
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I think you're point about Jack wanting to lobotomize himself is very interesting. It's a very interesting concept and looking back on it, it may be valid. The way that Jack never takes action against anyone or for anything may suggest that he has already lobotomized himself in his brain. However he does do things that may suggest that he isn't brain dead, like the way that he holds off telling Willie the dirt on the Judge till he knew it was true. Another example of when Jack took action was when he told off the cop while around Anne.
ReplyDeleteWow, your post is really insightful. The lobotomy idea shows you have a really concrete grasp on Jack's story and personality, so kudos for that. The way that you explained it now makes it seem like perfect sense to me. When Jack says "then the little pieces of brain which had been cut out were put away to think their little thoughts quietly somewhere among the garbage," (p. 444) he is describing how he wants the little thoughts about Anne and Willie to be taken away and discarded. Watching the lobotomy also becomes very personal to Jack because of the smell of burning flesh. For most people, smell is usually considered the strongest memory-triggering sense, and his vivid memory of the burning stable brings the experience into his own mind powerfully.
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