Rosemary the Risk-Taker?

 Something that has repeatedly come to my attention throughout reading We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is how much of a follower Rosemary turns out to be. I don’t mean this in a negative way, just in the fact that Rosemary is not someone who takes charge. She can be bold and brave but only when others are before her. In her younger days, she is outspoken, but she needs Fern in order to be that way. She uses Fern much like a security blanket. Rosemary can stand up for herself, so long as she has someone to fall back on. When Rosemary speaks, it is because of something Fern has done. When she acts out, it is because she's following Fern's lead. 

So after Fern’s departure, when she has no one left to push her, she falls silent. For years, Rosemary spends her days learning how to be silent and staying that way. She doesn’t speak because she has no one to push her to speak. Her one streak of boldness occurs when she travels to the farm with Lowell and helps him break into her old house, but again, it is because Lowell pushes her to be daring. Rosemary doesn’t do anything bold with her first two roommates in college because they themselves are not risk-takers. If Rosemary is not pushed, she falls out of the picture. She certainly does not have the initiative to push others.

When Harlow comes into the picture, Rosemary sees an opportunity. A Fern-like opportunity. I think a big part of the reason why Rosemary does not completely lose her mind when she comes home to find Harlow in her apartment is because, when Harlow is around, Rosemary feels valued. Rosemary lets Harlow into her life because Harlow is bold. Harlow is as free-spirited as Fern was. Harlow turns Rosemary into a risk-taker- I am fairly certain that she wouldn’t have gone out to bars or taken pills (and she definitely would not have gotten arrested) without Harlow there to put the pills and drinks in her hand, or to be the one to initiate throwing the dishes. Harlow is an essential part of the plot because, without her, Rosemary may have never begun the process of looking back on her life with Fern.  

Two Different Problems

As I was reading the story, a question which kept popping into my head was whether Fern or Lowell’s disappearance was more traumatic to Rosemary. How did their disappearances differ and how did they shape the present Rosemary’s psyche as well as how each of these disappearances illustrated some of Fowler’s central arguments.  It is debatable which of these had a greater effect upon Rosemary since Fowler doesn't really spell out which was more influential, but I think it is an interesting topic to discuss and think about as it seems to complicate some of Fowler’s arguments.

On page 59 Fowler seems to spell out the order of things. Rosemary loves Lowell the most out of her family members, but does this correlate to Lowell’s disappearance being more drastic? It seems to me that this contradicts an argument that Fowler is trying to make in the novel: That chimps aren't so different from us. Would it not make sense for Rosemary to love Fern most if this were the case? I would think that being raised and playing together growing up would create a stronger bond and thus stronger love between Rosemary and Fern. However, perhaps the book is suggesting they are not the same. Perhaps Rosemary loves her brother more because the human to human bond is inherently stronger.

So maybe the argument that Lowell’s disappearance was emotionally harder for Rosemary to handle could be made. Throughout this reading Rosemary struggles to adjust to college life with the memories of Fern in the back of her head. She has a break down in front of her roommate Todd while watching The Man in the Iron Mask, a story about two brothers one of which is king and one of which is imprisoned his entire life (134). This of course makes Rosemary think of her own relationship with Fern. She has another mental breakdown when Dr. Sosa described the sexual tendencies of chimpanzees (149). She has yet another episode when she is arrested a second time. In her drug induced state she couldn't stop thinking about her sister (174). Rosemary seems to be able to suppress her feelings for Fern until some outside source stimulates her thinking about Fern being locked in a cage in an unfamiliar place.

She doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about what her brother Lowell is doing, though she does recall a number of memories of him and once he starts appearing in places Rosemary becomes curious. Lowell and Fern’s absences have affected Rosemary in different ways. Even though Rosemary stated earlier in the novel that she has always felt closer to Lowell, I think Fern’s disturbed her more since Fern left against her will while Lowell’s departure was his own choice.

The Cost of Imitation

Imitation: the action of using someone or something as a model. Rosemary’s life: an imitation. She grew up a pawn in her dad and his grad students’ psychological experiments with her sister Fern, a chimpanzee. Rosemary and Fern were attached at the hip. They became more and more alike as their time together went on. Fern’s actions became more human-like, and Rosemary’s actions became more chimp-like. When Fern was taken away from Rosemary’s life, Rosemary didn’t really know how to act. The experiments were over, and the habits she had gotten from them were no longer acceptable. She was told to talk less, and she couldn’t show the same types of affections towards people.

With Fern no longer around, Rosemary learned to act more like Lowell and her mother. She talked less and became engulfed in her own personal bubble. While her mother “emerged from her bedroom only at night and always in her nightgown” and Lowell escaped the house as often as he could, Rosemary was left alone, or sometimes with her babysitter Melissa (p.60). Rosemary had nobody to grieve with or explain things to her. She couldn’t act the same at school as she had at home with Fern, so she began to live a silent life, one in which she behaved only as she thought others wanted her to or expected her to.

When Rosemary meets Harlow, all of this imitation wears off. Harlow is a wild, accepting girl that wants a friend, and Rosemary becomes that friend. Rosemary finds herself falling back into her habits of talking nonstop and acting more free and wild; she becomes herself again, the self she was with Fern.

I find imitation to be one of the biggest themes of the novel. It restricts Rosemary from being all that she wants to be. In fact, she doesn’t even really know what she wants to be. But with Harlow around, Rosemary finds herself wanting more, looking for the things that she has wanted all along. Rosemary starts the quest for all that she has lost… “In my head, I finished the grid I’d started in the holding cell, the grid of what was missing and for how long. One, my bicycle; two, Madame Defrage; three: the journals; four: my brother. Five: Fern” (p.181). This quest is for more than that. It’s Rosemary’s quest to finally find herself.

The Importance and Insignificance of Memory

*This draws upon material from most of the book, including up to page 248

One interesting part of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is the role memory plays in the story. Most of the story is told from two time periods, those being Rosemary’s time in college and her time as a youth. Thus much of the story is a retelling of Rosemary’s memories and her feelings about them now. Yet despite the volumes of memories described throughout the book, Rosemary is very unclear about how precise memory can be, and she discusses this uncertainty throughout the course of the story.

Some instances show that memory is quite precise and powerful. Rosemary goes into exquisite detail about a memory of her mother reading to her and Fern, a memory she says occurred at age three. Details include Fern drifting into sleep, “one eyelid fluttering, one ear blooming like a poppy from her black fur” (94). These are precise descriptions from a very early age, and Rosemary has no reservations about them being genuine. The power of this memory comes from Rosemary’s explicit sense of betrayal that follows several sentences later when she is scolded for asking too many question, for she assumes that Fern wanted to know too but was simply unable to ask. Fern, in Rosemary’s mind, is unjustly sharing in the benefits of her curiosity without taking any of the disadvantages. Another example of precise memory is the last memory Rosemary has of Lowell before he leaves. She recalls that she went into his room, where “Lowell was lying facedown on his bed, feet on his pillow, head at the foot” (116). She also remembers him yelling and cussing at her, his face “red, wet, and puffy as a cloud” (116). Her ability is instantly recall this memory shows that the power of memory can sometimes be instantly at her beck and call, yet this is also shown to elude her at other points in the novel.

The most telling example of faulty memory is when Lowell tells his sister why Fern left, the reason being that she “made Mom and Dad choose,… you or her” (222). Rosemary doesn’t recall this, as she later explains that her memory of the incident that made Fern leave “is only as vivid to me as the one it replaces” (248). This is based off the Sigmund Freud theory that “we have no early childhood memories at all”, and instead only have fabrications that suit our current needs (247).

If Rosemary can recall a memory as important as the last time she saw Lowell, why can’t she be sure about the same experience with Fern? This draws serious debate about whether early memory is valid, and if this is even important or not. Rosemary’s memory is both detailed and foggy, with no explanation found for this in the severity of the events. She remembers trivial and important memories well, yet forgets both just the same. The meaning of memory is complicated, and the entirety of the story hinges upon it.

Harlow the human animal

             Throughout the book, Fowler ascribes chimp-ish traits to quite a number of the characters. One in particular that I believe gives us greater insight into the meaning of the “human animal” is Harlow. Fowler uses imagery and symbolism to prove that the distinguishing characteristics between “humans” and “animals” are not nearly as significant as we would like to think they are.

              Fowler uses imagery in the first scene to draw comparisons between Harlow and a chimp. In this scene, not only is Harlow breaking dishes, flipping over chairs, and making noise, but Rosemary also describes an appearance that calls to mind a chimp, “Long dark hair that fell in a messy braid…beautiful biceps” (7). Even in the next chapter, Rosemary is amazed at how flexible and long Harlow’s arms are that she can maneuver her hands around to her front side, even while in handcuffs (11-12). The connection between these descriptions of Harlow and a chimp though, is certainly not one makes upon first reading, but I believe that because it is not, it lends itself more towards Fowler’s point. Humans behave like animals all the time. In keeping with the book’s theme of removing context, imagine me describing a scene where a creature with messy brown hair and big biceps terrorizes a local cafeteria, assaulting people with broken glass, flipping over chairs, then is taken by security personnel to be locked in a cage. You’d probably think I was talking about an animal, right? Many would argue that because of chimps’ sometimes violent nature they are inferior to humans, but in this scene Fowler proves that the only reason some are able to count this as a distinguishing characteristics is because they justify this own nature within themselves as temporary emotions, not their basic nature.

              The next example I will discuss is Lowell’s relationship with both Fern and Harlow. When Fern is taken away, the person immediately most negatively affected is Lowell. Whatever connection he had formed with Fern was enough to cause him to discard his very promising life and rededicate it to animals, in particular Fern. Because of this, I believe that when Lowell begins flirting with Harlow, “He held her hand for a minute, stroking over her palm with his thumb” (194), it is because he is attracted to her chimp-nature. Lowell is fascinated by Harlow and Madame Defarge. It appears to me, and I suspect to Lowell, that Harlow uses Madame Defarge as a conduit for her human expressions, which is why Lowell reaches past Defarge to touch Harlow, the animal. By temporarily separating her human part from her animal part, Harlow shows that she is indeed a human animal.

              I believe the term human animal is used to signify that one cannot logically separate the two. She points out that humans do not possess enough significance to warrant such individuality as to classify living beings as either human or animal.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves Parts 3 and 4

A lot happens to Rosemary between the pages of 104 and 209 in We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. She goes to college, meets her friend Harlow (a character I thought about as her foil), is reunited with her long lost brother, Lowell, and finds out the truth about Fern. What I found most interesting while reading this section of the book was the way in which Rosemary's unconventional childhood colors her adulthood, even from her teenage years. She seems to always have a certain darkness or self-doubt about her, like she blames herself for the fallout of her family. On page 125, she runs into her brother's ex-girlfriend who gives her information about his disappearance and a tidbit of info about Fern's whereabouts. After hearing it, Rosemary says, "It's hard enough here to forgive myself for the things I did and felt when I was five, hopeless for the way I behaved at fifteen." She goes on to say that, "Lowell heard that Fern was in a cage in South Dakota and he took off that very night. I heard the same thing and my response was to present that I hadn't heard it." Someone who feels so much guilt about their actions from when they were five, and even 15 years old, seems to be quite troubled. We later see when she begins college at UC Davis that she has a hard time relating to the other students on her floor. "Checking into the freshman dorms, I made a decision never to talk about my family," she says. Her peers deem her as incredibly "normal", which she decides is a great achievement. Still, this backfires, and she says, "weird is the new normal and, of course, I hadn't gotten the memo. I still wasn't fitting in. I still had no friends. Maybe I just didn't know how. Certainly I'd had no practice" (132). She accredits her lack of social skills to her upbringing, and here we note once again how her childhood has hindered her adult life. The level to which she is emotionally scarred from her childhood is extremely deep. It seems to affect her in ways she isn't even aware of, like when she breaks the plate in the cafeteria upon first meeting Harlow. Good or bad, she acts in ways that are directly related to her previous experiences with Fern, Lowell, or her parents. This makes me wonder, how much of adult behavior is the product of childhood experiences? We all know that our upbringings shape our views and ideas about the world, but how much of who we are has to do with how we were raised? Clearly, Rosemary's case is very specific, as few people were raised with a chimpanzee. Still, there are quirks and idiosyncrasies about everyone's childhood. This assigned section essentially made me wonder, how much of our personalities do we create, and how many of our decisions do we really make for ourselves? Better yet, how much of us is just the byproduct of the way our parents raised us?