FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION DAWN MORIARTY-ODOM

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
DAWN MORIARTY-ODOM

Battle field wars, neighborhood gangs, family cruelty, no matter how the seeds get planted, violence is a fast growing weed with physical, spiritual and emotional consequences. Often individuals or groups reacting with unnecessary force, violence and other inappropriate displays of emotions have never resolved the underlying pain, resentment, grief, or other negative feelings that triggered their intense behavior. Unresolved shame and the fear of embarrassment continue to embed the roots of dysfunction in victims blurring their ability to make healthy independent decisions. The fear of expressing feelings as displaying weakness can become a heavy burden. Márquez used the characters in, “A Very Old,” to express the consequences of violence and war which he could not have otherwise freely expressed without serious consequences in his culture. In comparison, Tim O’Brien exposes the injuries, harm and ongoing affects of war, violence and drugs in his story, “The Things That They Carried,” by drawing readers into the reality of the daily life and death events of the individual soldiers fighting in Vietnam. Author Gabriel Garcia Marquez exposes the injuries, harm and ongoing affects caused by war, violence, drugs, poverty, etc. through symbolism. John Goodwin surmises that: Published in 1955, “Enormous” appeared in the midst of La Violencia, a particularly intense period of Colombian history. Daniel H. Levine, in his book Religion and Politics in Latin America: The Catholic Church in Venezuela and Colombia, describes the time: “The Violence (La Violencia) [was] a massive and savage explosion of killing and civil warfare which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the decade after 1948. …If the reader substitutes “Colombians” for “the villagers” and “religion” for “the angel,” a picture of a global, theocratic government emerges (Goodwin, 128). Porter Abbot reports that Garcia Márquez has said that “[t]here’s not a single line in my novels which is not based on reality” (Porter, 135). Márquez used the characters in his short story, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, to express the consequences of violence and war which he could not have otherwise freely expressed without serious consequences in his culture. The spider, a young victim of violence, grows up burdened with guilt caused by carrying the baggage of unresolved emotional anguish. Marquez symbolically describing missiles, gunfire and explosions through the eyes of a child as claps of thunder and lightning that appeared to crack open the sky. What was most heartrending, however, was not her outlandish shape but the sincere affliction with which she recounted the details of her misfortune. While still practically a child she had sneaked out of her parents' house to go to a dance, and while she was coming back through the woods after having danced all night without permission, a fearful thunderclap rent the sky in two and through the crack came the lightning bolt of brimstone that changed her into a spider (Marquez, 423). The spider’s recollection of the details of the events, her continued reliance on charitable sources for support and nourishment are a literary neutral means that Marquez could use to expose the destruction and destitution left behind by the violence of war and drugs without making overtly political statements. In comparison, Tim O’Brien exposes the injuries, harm and ongoing affects of war, violence and drugs in his story, “The Things That They Carried,” by drawing readers into the reality of the daily life and death events of the individual soldiers fighting in Vietnam. Boston University’s Dean of General Studies, Linda Wells, concludes: What O'Brien suggests is that each soldier carried into this landscape of fear, danger, boredom, horror, and beauty a self already to some extent fashioned by eighteen years of acculturation in America—preconceived notions about the role of the warrior, about glory, and honor, and courage, narratives that spoke to him in the form of family stories, movie scripts, television commentators, politicians (Wells, 46). Wells goes on to describe characteristic similarities and parallels the younger generation: The lives we have come to associate with young people in other extreme situations such as youth gang members: their attraction to rap music, to talismanic objects, to weaponry as protection, to narratives of the warrior, to codes of conduct, to language that distances them from the reality of the violence they see and often perpetrate (Wells, 47). By using descriptions of the inner turmoil now carried as emotional baggage trapped within the soldiers, author Tim O’Brien also gives readers a glimpse of the younger generation; the non-soldier boy. They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing -these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment (O’Brien, 20). Carl Horner finds that in challenging the law of courage and heroic identification “when the heart is squeezed,” the intellect cannot always make decisions according to what O'Brien idealizes as “an act of pure reason.” He further shares that “rather than make decisions inwardly—that is, trusting an internal barometer and therefore being true to ourselves—O'Brien learned that fear of public condemnation might determine what we finally do (Horner, 264). Trapped in a realm of dysfunctional emotion, many individuals are unable to make rational decisions. War may be a necessity of society to ensure our democracy but ignoring the personal consequences of such action is not. No matter how the seeds of violence are planted or by what means their skills are acquired and embedded; once they are learned, it is only through mindful and purposeful initiative that one can begin to learn to subdue aggressive behavior. Learning from another of Marquez’s hidden truths depicted in the old man’s steadfast character which persevered through provocation, violence, and even imprisonment; “…because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue...” (The Message, Romans 5.3b-4a). while enduring hardship, he continued to exhibit forbearance and self-control when faced with those long-term difficulties. Opportunities for family reunification, rehabilitation and healing within safely established environments encourages individuals to step out of their fear, find freedom from their guilt, shame and emotional baggage beginning the journey toward permanent healing.
Links:
“AVery Old Man With Enormous Wings”
“The Things they Carried” Works Cited Abbott, H. Porter. Immersions in the Cognitive Sublime: The Textual Experience of the Extratextual Unknown in García Márquez and Beckett. Narrative 17.2 (2009): 131-142. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings. Leaf Storm and Other Stories. Trans. Gregory Rabassa. New York: Harper, 1972. Goodwin, John. Márquez's A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings and Bambara's The Lesson. Explicator 64.2 (2006): 128-130. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 7 Oct. 2010. O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Mariner Books, 2009. Print. Horner, Carl S. Challenging The Law Of Courage And Heroic Identification In Tim O'Brien's 'If I Die In A Combat Zone' And 'The Things They Carried’. War, Literature & The Arts: An International Journal Of The Humanities 11.1 (1999): 256. Military & Government Collection. Ebsco. Web. 7 Oct. 2010. Romans 5.3a-4b. The Message. BibleGateway.com. Zondervan Corporation L.L.C., n.d. Web. 2 Sept. 2010. Wells, Linda. The Things They Carried: Character, Narrative, and the Liberal Arts. Journal of Education 182.2 (2000): 45. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 7 Oct. 2010. Wesley, Marilyn. Truth and Fiction in Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone and The Things They Carried. College Literature 29.2 (2002): 1. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 7 Oct. 2010.

Dawn Moriarty-Odom wrote this essay while participating in Ms. D’s English 102 composition and literature course. Dawn’s father served in the US Military. Dawn and her father will always be welcome members of the MilSpeak Foundation military family. Welcome home.