Dependent Relationships

            One thing that struck me while reading this first section of A Visit from the Goon Squad was the way in which relationships are described between different characters. Specifically, there are three pairs of characters in the novel that seem to have a kind of strangely dependent relationship. In all three cases, one character seems to rely on the other for comfort and support. The first relationship this comes up in is Sasha and Bennie´s. After he allows Sasha to read his list of embarrassing/ shameful memories, Bennie admits that “what he felt for Sasha was love, a safety and closeness” (Egan 38). Bennie depends on Sasha as a constant in his life, as someone who represents the love and stability he once had in his marriage to Stephanie. Next we see a similar dynamic between Scotty and Jocelyn. We learn that as a teenager, Scotty was “waiting for Jocelyn, who´s known Scotty the longest and makes him feel safe” (Egan 42). After his mother´s death Scotty comes to count on Jocelyn as a kind of surrogate/ safety blanket to help him cope. Finally, we see this same quality in Lou´s relationship with his son Rolph. During one of the several conversations they have while on a safari in Africa, Lou reflects “that his son is the one person in the world with the power to soothe him” (Egan 63). Lou sees his son as the only calming relief in his otherwise dysfunctional life. 

            I´m not really sure what this actually means in terms of how we should view the characters or why this really caught my attention, but it´s interesting that the dependent character in each of the relationships is the one who, according to typical societal stereotypes, should be the strongest. Bennie is Sasha´s boss: society would view him as the more powerful. Scotty is a more talented musician than Jocelyn and he has a “magnetic” personality: he should have the upper hand. And Lou is Rolph´s father: he should obviously be the more stable one in the relationship. But in each case the perceived “inferior” person has the power to relax and sooth the other. It´s also interesting to consider that even though we as the audience know that Sasha, Jocelyn, and Rolph are all deeply troubled individuals with their own demons, they are all still seen as a source of stability and calm by one of their fellow characters.

Lou: Leaving Destruction in His Path

Like the other protagonists in A Visit from the Goon Squad, Lou struggles with demons and transgressions, yet he alone seems to have no concept of shame. Everyone in Lou's path--lovers, friends, and even children--suffers the consequences whenever he attempts to gain the world for himself. Rhea and Mindy, two lovers, are each objects he uses to feel powerful. Lou meets Rhea and Jocelyn for dinner, placing an arm around both of them in a "fatherly" gesture (50) but leaving Rhea to wonder where she really stands with him. Is he still only pursuing Jocelyn, or has Rhea now entered the race as well? He later speaks to Rhea alone, saying she is beautiful and that "the world is full of shitheads...and I know that Lou is one of those shitheads. But I listen" (57). Rhea knows she is simply a pawn in Lou's twisted game and that he says sweet nothings to every woman he objectifies (including Jocelyn, her best friend), but she is flattered by Lou's attention and does nothing to halt his power play. Likewise, Lou's girlfriend Mindy basks in her status, even though she herself believes the arrangement will end thanks to the couple’s "structural incompatibility" (65). While with Lou's family on a safari, she is not only his bedmate but essentially the nanny to his children, Charlie and Rolph. She never complains about this arrangement--although she does note Charlie's resentment toward her on page 64--but Mindy is not even old enough to be their mother. Mindy might wish to help heal the neglected children but, barely an adult herself, does not know where to begin.

Perhaps Rhea and Mindy tolerate Lou's unforgivable acts because each is not as directly affected as someone else in Lou's life. For Rhea, it's Jocelyn who bears the brunt of Lou's blows; for Mindy, it's Rolph. Jocelyn first meets Rolph while hitchhiking at seventeen, and she is still wandering aimlessly through life in her forties. When Lou leaves Jocelyn, he takes the parties, extravagance, and music with him: "Everything went past, without me" (86). Unlike Rhea, Jocelyn does not have the opportunity to grow up, start a family, and carry on in life, at least not without significant emotional scarring. In Rolph's case, this scarring is so severe that he takes his own life in his father's house at twenty-eight (82). I was initially shocked when I read about Rolph's suicide, but this event does seem to correlate with the way Lou continuously pushes his children aside in favor of his business conquests. Rolph must become so distrusting of others--as he does of Mindy upon his father's condemnation on page 78--that he loses all hope. Maybe Rolph sees what Lou fails to see until his final days: every action causes a reaction and affects those who love you. And no matter how much you try to justify the destruction you have caused, your loved ones, like Jocelyn, might turn against you, or, as Rolph did, against themselves.

Curious Moments in A Visit from the Goon Squad

         I am currently tracking the words curious and curiosity through the novel.  I have read up to page 234, and so far have only been able to find these words three times.  The first occurrence was on page 26, where Bennie is wondering: "Could this be a side effect of the gold: curiosity?"  I think this is a small but important revelation on Bennie's part.  In this moment he connects with his son and instead of attributing it to his parenting skills or the way he interacts with Chris, he immediately wonders if the gold flakes are to thank for this newfound interest Chris has in his father.  This demonstrates Bennie's willingness to grasp for anything that could pull him out of his slump.  He is depressed by his strained relationship with Chris, failed marriage, past embarrassments, and the music industry as a whole.  

         The next appearance of the word curiosity occurred soon after on page 28.  This time it was used to the describe Bennie's feelings when seeing Sasha outside the family home of a band Bennie was looking into.  Once again, the use of the word curiosity seems to point out an important revelation.  This is the first time Bennie thinks about Sasha's life outside of work and considers his feelings toward her.  He acknowledges that he cares for her and takes the time to appreciate how much she does for him on a daily basis. 

          The last incident involved both keywords, and these words were used when describing Bosco.  On page 126, Stephanie and Jules had just arrived at Bosco's apartment and were surprised to find him awake and alert at ten AM.  I think that this use of curious and curiosity foreshadows the outcome of this business meeting.  Bosco is immediately drawn to Jules and at the end of the meeting he hires Jules on as his lead writer in covering his self-named "Suicide Tour," which in itself represents a huge change in the life outlook for both Jules and Bosco. 

           All of these instances represent important moments of thought for characters within the book.  I have noticed that many of these character are unaware of their emotions or position within relationships, and the usage of the word curiosity or simply curious seems to appear at key times when they do have small moments of clarity.  During these moments several of the characters seem to acknowledge changes within their lives or reflect on their emotional involvement with other characters. 

Fern's Departure Impacts Rosemary's Personality

Sorry for posting so late, my account wasn’t letting me get into the blog. Either way, what I found extremely interesting was how Fern’s departure affected Rosemary personality throughout We Are Completely Beside Ourselves.

After Fern is sent away to Dr. Uljevik’s lab, Rosemary talks about how different life is after the experiment is over and how “no one cared anymore about my creative grammars, my compound lexemes, my nimble, gymnastic conjugations…I was just a little girl, strange in her way, but of no scientific interest to anyone” (108). She goes from being observed at all times and having everything that she says be important scientific data to being told to say one thing whenever she thinks of three. This lack of constant attention is something extremely difficult for Rosemary to deal with and the adjustment is something that ends up haunting her for numerous years.

This new way of behaving is a challenge for Rosemary and she struggles to interact with humans throughout her childhood. As a result, her best friend ends up being the neighbor’s dog Snippet. Rosemary talked about how she loved Snippet because the dog listened “to every word I said” (61). Rosemary is comfortable being a gregarious and talkative individual as that’s how she grew up acting during the experiment (when life was joyful and exciting). And even though Fern couldn’t speak back to Rosemary, Rosemary was completely content with doing all of the talking. However, she notices that her talkative personality doesn’t work with humans, as they either find her annoying or her big mouth gets her in trouble. All Rosemary wants is a person who will not criticize her for her past and someone who is willing to listen to her thoughts. She can’t find anyone in her town willing to do that, so that’s why Rosemary prefers to interact with animals. Animals will not judge her for being the “monkey girl” or for talking too much. 

Granted, Rosemary does find one friend who is willing to listen to everything she has to say. However, this boy does not speak English and never responds to Rosemary’s conversations. Once the boy learns to speak English, he runs off (like most people in Rosemary’s life) and never shows up again. Rosemary soon learns that for people to stop hating her, she needs to be stop talking. If she stops talking and annoying people, then it won’t give people a reason to hate her. In return, this silence continues her struggle with making human friends. Since she won’t socialize with people, then she will never be able to easily make friends.

Emotion's Value in Humanity and Beyond

As I continue reading We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, I keep thinking about Fowler's remarks concerning humans' self-perceived supremacy. When talking about the close relationship between humans and chimpanzees, she said something along the lines of, "Our brains are made up of essentially the same parts, the difference is how they're used." At this point in the story, I'm beginning to wonder if one of Fowler's main claims in this work is that the experience of emotion is the common thread between humans and their animal counterparts, chimpanzees in particular. Though this claim is still in it's infancy, I've definitely noticed that emotion has been a common thread throughout the novel. This seems ridiculously obvious, as emotion drives every story, but its presence seems to have special significance in this work. First of all, the title of the piece is We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, an expression which implies that everyone in the book is overcome with emotion.

Rosemary grew up in the midst of a psychological experiment, and her narration of her life almost reads like a case study of her family and the effect that the experiment they were involved in has had on their individual emotions and on their dynamic as a family. Rosemary chronicles the behavior of her family members in sections such as this one where she says, "Our mother was vaporous," (Fowler 60) and then goes on to detail her mother's complete withdrawal from her former life. The story of We Are Completely Beside Ourselves is centered around a study in which a chimpanzee was raised alongside a human child as if it were human, too. It's easy to think that the results of this study concluded when Fern, the chimpanzee, was removed from the home and the graduate students stopped collecting data. However, this is not the case. Rosemary is essentially continuing to record the results of the experiment by telling her story. The only difference is Rosemary is documenting the emotional effects of the experiment on all of the people involved, rather than the effects on the chimp; she's telling the side of the story which is so easily and so often neglected when research first begins. As Rosemary noted, "There's science and there's science, is all I'm saying. Where humans are the subjects, it's mostly not science" (Goodreads).

There's a noteworthy emotional dichotomy present within the novel represented by the relationship between Rosemary's brother and her father. Her brother, Lowell, is an advocate of Fern's ability to communicate; his character is often the one to humanize Fern. This was especially evident in his telling of his reunion with Fern. He describes her fervent signing that she would be good and wanted to go home, and he then described as she sacrificed her self-defense against the alpha male in order to cling to his arms (207-209). His telling showcased Fern's abilities to remember those she cared forc and to communicate her feelings in an animated fashion. Both of these reactions served to humanize her in the eyes of readers. Rosemary's father, however, often does the exact opposite. He speaks of Fern and the human members of his family in terms of science and psychological experimentation. At one point, Rosemary begins to recount a memory and she says, "My father would surely want me to point out that, at five, I was still in Jean Piaget's preoperational phaseout regard to cognitive thinking and emotional development. He would want you to understand that I'm am undoubtably...imposing a logical framework on my understanding of events that didn't exist at the time. Emotions in the preoperational stage are dichotomous and extreme" (52). This sort of talk led to conflict between Lowell and his father. The rift in their relationship serves to represent the rift between science and emotion. We discussed in class what Fowler's work could suggest about science as a field. From what I've gathered, it seems that Fowler suggests that the science of psychology is cold and fails to provide accurate answers to questions regarding humanity and beyond because it cannot take into account and measure the experience of emotion, a stronge force in shaping the human experience and, arguably, a uniting force across the animal kingdom.

Fowler, Karen J. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. New York: Plume, 2013. Print.

Fowler, Karen J. "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves Quotes." Goodreads. N. P. 2013. Web. 7 Sept. 2014.

Understanding Learning and Modeling Behavior as a Two-Way Street

In Karen Fowler’s lecture, she delves into the relationship between the human child and the chimpanzee, and how each exerts an equally powerful influence on the other. Most notably, Fowler notes in past studies that have attempted to raise a chimpanzee in a human environment, the main focus of the project is how the chimpanzee responds to, interprets, and learns human behavior. Responding to this approach, Fowler notes though the research was successful in obtaining data on how the chimpanzee responded to a human environment, most projects completely overlooked the effect of the chimpanzee on the human child’s behavior. Fowler’s text addresses this shortcoming through the delayed reveal of Fern’s identity.

Prior to Rosemary’s revelation on page 77, Fowler allows the characters of Rosemary and Fern to develop in the reader’s mind through description alone. By not explicitly revealing Fern as a chimpanzee, the reader is ignorant of the social stigmas and associations attached to this label. This approach not only highlights the similarities of Fern’s behavior to humans, but further reveals how Fern’s presence impacted Rosemary’s upbringing. 

In the diner scene, Rosemary’s decision to throw the glass down resembles the immaturity and impulsiveness of a chimpanzee. Amidst the chaos of the diner scene, Rosemary cannot control her instinct to join in. Rosemary notes, “I didn’t just let [the glass of milk] go. I threw that glass down as hard as I could” (10). This instinctive impulsiveness is mirrored in her rationalization of why she dropped the plate. Though she does admit to dropping the plate, she attempts to explain her behavior by saying, “I honestly didn’t mean to. The fingers of my left hand just unclenched all of the sudden.” (10). Rosemary’s behavior in the diner scene vaguely mirrors the hasty, uncalculated decisions of a chimp. Rather than acting through reason and self-control, a more animalistic version of Rosemary surfaces that reveals the impact of Fern’s presence on Rosemary’s upbringing.

Likewise, Rosemary is similarly drawn to animals and is able to connect in a way she is unable to for humans. After moving back to Bloomington, Rosemary recalls troubles getting along with the local neighborhood kids. She notes, “There was no one I could reasonably be expected to play with. Instead I got acquainted with the neighborhood animals.” (61). Rosemary’s natural connection with the neighborhood dogs contrasts with her unrefined and unorthodox behavior in kindergarten. Fern’s presence in Rosemary’s upbringing again reveals its influence, as Rosemary is scolded for such behaviors as “putting [her] fingers into anyone else’s mouth or hair” and “biting” (102). Indeed, Rosemary even notes in kindergarten she learned that “different is different … None of that changed who I fundamentally was, my not-quite-human, my tabloid monkey-girl self.” (103). Through the delayed reveal of Fern’s identity, Fowler is able to investigate the flipside of the human child-chimpanzee situation. Rather than solely focusing on how a human upbringing shaped the behavior of a chimpanzee, Fowler sheds light on the overlooked, and slightly disturbing, effect of the chimpanzee on human behavior.

Courtney Christensen, The Concept of Normalcy.

‘“You know how everything seems so normal when you’re growing up,” she asked plaintively, ”and then comes this moment when you realize your whole family is nuts?”’ asks Scully, Rosemary’s first college roommate on page 130. This comment really plays on Rosemary’s biggest insecurities, her family life and her childhood, and makes her think about them, something she always tries to avoid doing by sleeping, as she mentions on page 135. Because Rosemary never really fit in with other human beings, especially children her age, she always viewed her situation as incredibly “abnormal,” while she perceived all of the other children as “normal.” However, she never really defined “normal” and neither do we. Normalcy is a concept that all people seem to idolize, especially as they are growing up, but it seems that there is not one universal definition. “Normal,” therefore, seems to be an impossible state to achieve. Since other children were not very accepting of Rosemary as she mentions on page 111 when she describes how children used to tease her so badly that she had to switch schools, she never interacted with them or got a sense of perspective of the lives of other children. She assumed that her life was the only weird one. When Rosemary goes away to college, she desperately tries to push away the “abnormal” in her life and find the “normal” again. She explains on page 128 that, “I came to UC Davis both to find my past (my brother) and to leave it (the monkey girl) behind.” In doing this, she refused to tell anyone about her family life. However, she is surprised to find that other people have issues in their lives too. On pages 130 through 132, her classmates start sharing their own stories. One girl was grounded for a B+, another said her father sang in the grocery, and another had a sister who was supposedly abused by their father. Suddenly, it became apparent that Rosemary was not quite as out of place as she had thought. Everyone thought that their weird was the weirdest, was ashamed by that, and tried to brush it off as no big deal. One girl was quoted on page 134 saying “whatev” to imply that her situation was not really as big of a deal as it sounded, even though to her, it really was a large issue. In light of Rosemary’s college experience, if she had had this perspective on which to base her idea of “normal” all along, would she have realized that she was not the only one suffering and more easily brushed off her own problems? Although most people may have been helped by this realization because they could discuss, connect, and bond with other people, I do not think that Rosemary would have been changed. Since Rosemary always struggled with connection and rarely thought of others, this probably would not have helped her very much. She is stuck in her own “abnormal” world.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

One of the things which struck me most about this book is how Fowler writes the character of Fern. She writes Fern as being almost human, occasionally to the point that if you hadn't been told that Fern was a chimpanzee, you might not always be able to tell.

Rosemary perfectly sums up her and Fern's relationship on page 108. "Sometimes it was encumbering, a monkey on my back, but mostly I felt enlarged, as if what mattered in the end was not what Fern could do or what I could do, but the sum of it - Fern and me together.” Later on that page, Rosemary describes Fern’s loss as being like the loss of a twin, leaving a permanent gap in her life. Fern here is not a chimp, not a research subject, but another human being who draws the same level of affection, compassion, and love from Rosemary that a human twin might have.

Much of the point of the book, it seems to me, is to say how similar humans and chimpanzees really are. Fern and Rosemary have an almost human-like level of communication - a level of communication no one else can establish with the ape. Rosemary describes on page 98, in one of my favorite passages in the entire book. “No matter how bizarre her behavior…I could be counted on to render it into plain English. Fern wants to go outside. Fern wants to watch Sesame Street. Fern thinks you are a doodoo-head. Some of this was convenient projection, but you'll never convince me of the rest.”

Fern and Rosemary’s relationship strengthens with time. They grow to be more and more alike: Fern begins to act more and more human, and Rosemary begins to act more and more like a chimpanzee. This is very true to the real-life experiments that this book was based on. The first of these involved a chimp named Gua, who was raised alongside an infant boy. Her development proved to be very similar to his, and she was actually better than him at certain tasks, such as drinking from a cup, but the experiment was cut short after the boy began to respond to his mother’s actions with chimpanzee noises.

Sadly, the book is also very accurate about humans’ treatment of experimental chimpanzees. Once the experiment is done, Fern is forcibly removed from her family and given to a research facility which puts her in a cage with a number of violent male chimpanzees, presided over by a research staff armed with electric cattle prods, just as many of the chimpanzees used in real-life experiments have been sent to cruel testing facilities. What an ignoble fate for such intelligent creatures.