America is this huge, vast, enormous place where everyone you know lives so astronomically far away from each other. There’s a deep, sad estrangement in Americans.We’re all so spread apart and isolated, living these remote, far-flung lives but we’ve chosen this. Maybe we could’ve chosen differently. I don’t know. But this is what we wanted.
Locust House was a very interesting novella to read. Each character was completely different, personality-wise and situational as well, and everyone had a comment on America in some way. For all the characters, Agnes, Frances, James, and Tyler, the house down the street had been a staple of freedom for them. "Locust House" they called it, after a band that played there. one character says, “[I was] proud of my city and the people in it and of this small moment in time. People were excited -- excited and together about this thing. It was easy to get caught up in,” (28). Most of the characters are flawed or broken in some way, they have maybe lost where they were going or are reflecting back on this one life changing night. “They believed in finding community and in people joining together in the name of something bigger than them,” (35).
There are a few key points where the tragedy of 9/11 is brought up. “It’s an awful thing when you grow up thinking that you and your country are the good guys and then you find out it’s all bullshit,” (30) someone says. “From a very young age I’ve been looking for community. Most of the time you were let down but sometimes...it felt like we were all in it together … It seemed firm and substantial; it felt like something that couldn’t be taken away from us,” (30-31). After 9/11, people felt like they were connected but after a big event like that, eventually, people have to go about their day normally. “ … I felt a kind of togetherness that was like what we experienced in the weeks following 9/11. People were suddenly good to each other and it seemed like we were all closer than we were before. Of course that was over fast … People stopped watching the news after the attacks because they couldn’t take the footage. (Or because they had to live their lives, to get by, to keep moving)…” (31).
Gnade says that, “You experience closeness but then it’s a temporary closeness and once you realize that it’s over then things start feeling pretty lonely...Americans are bad at togetherness. We’re afraid of it or we label it as this dangerous, subversive thing, this toxic kind of discord in the face of “rugged American individualism,” which is nothing but bullshit and self-sabotage,” (32). There's this feeling inside of every American that's like "No! I can do it myself!" when community is what's really needed. Holden reaches out for help in the wrong places, McMurphy realizes that he needs the men of the combine next to him, and Willy Loman needs his family.
Reflecting back, one of the characters in the group of friends thinks, “Some fantasy part of me would love it if we all lived in the same house one day. We could grow old together, keep each other company. But I know it’s just that, a fantasy. We’re far too different … now, just as it was back then,” (35). He's able to see that that the togetherness they all felt is something of the past, and that he cannot hold on to unrealistic fantasies, this is unlike many characters found in American literature today, many are unrealistic.
As the eviction party is taking place, Frances stops to think a moment, "As I walked through the house alone I looked at everyone and I loved them all. Who were they? All those kids -- drunk, sober, laughing, bickering, smoking, hooking up, arguing. I wanted to be everyone's friend all at once, to take each one aside and say, 'Look, here we are; we're together for this one great thing. Why don't we all know each other? Who are we in this place and most of us strangers? I'm a nice person. Life is lonely. Let's be friends,'" (39). Even though Americans strive for this individualism, they all want a connection, even for a brief moment. “The hardest thing for me was watching everyone leave. For a few hours it felt like we were all in this thing together, that there was some kind of greater commonality between us, but we left. We left in pairs or alone. We left drunk, high, sober, happy, sad, afraid, laughing, but we left… It was an army retreating, leaving the front and going back to the world; already concerned with the next thing,” (43-44). Just like 9/11, the party is but a memory now, everyone left and got out of it what they did. These fleeting moments of movement and staying put and togetherness and estrangement are what make the American Experience what it is.
People like Holden from The Catcher In The Rye are the ones who could get left behind. “Where are they now?... A lot of them...were sucked into the great pneumatic tube that takes you from your hopeful, idealistic youth into the dull drags of adulthood. They go mainstream, they have mainstream jobs, mainstream sex, mainstream relationships, mainstream families, mainstream tastes… So they disappear. They drop out into a bland, safe, lifeless normalcy. Or they don’t make it. Kids die. Or they burn out. They stay in the scene but they stagnate and age badly and never make good on the promises of their youth. They waste the wonderful things inside them…” (44). The one's who don't move on, who don't forgive (because you should never forget) are the ones who disappear.
To be American, “I work. I fight. I believe,” (45).
In the end of Locust House, Agnes is amidst the crowd, and like America itself in the form of Agnes, the last lines of the novella are, “The crowd pushed. Agnes pushed back,” (50).
There are a few key points where the tragedy of 9/11 is brought up. “It’s an awful thing when you grow up thinking that you and your country are the good guys and then you find out it’s all bullshit,” (30) someone says. “From a very young age I’ve been looking for community. Most of the time you were let down but sometimes...it felt like we were all in it together … It seemed firm and substantial; it felt like something that couldn’t be taken away from us,” (30-31). After 9/11, people felt like they were connected but after a big event like that, eventually, people have to go about their day normally. “ … I felt a kind of togetherness that was like what we experienced in the weeks following 9/11. People were suddenly good to each other and it seemed like we were all closer than we were before. Of course that was over fast … People stopped watching the news after the attacks because they couldn’t take the footage. (Or because they had to live their lives, to get by, to keep moving)…” (31).
Gnade says that, “You experience closeness but then it’s a temporary closeness and once you realize that it’s over then things start feeling pretty lonely...Americans are bad at togetherness. We’re afraid of it or we label it as this dangerous, subversive thing, this toxic kind of discord in the face of “rugged American individualism,” which is nothing but bullshit and self-sabotage,” (32). There's this feeling inside of every American that's like "No! I can do it myself!" when community is what's really needed. Holden reaches out for help in the wrong places, McMurphy realizes that he needs the men of the combine next to him, and Willy Loman needs his family.
Reflecting back, one of the characters in the group of friends thinks, “Some fantasy part of me would love it if we all lived in the same house one day. We could grow old together, keep each other company. But I know it’s just that, a fantasy. We’re far too different … now, just as it was back then,” (35). He's able to see that that the togetherness they all felt is something of the past, and that he cannot hold on to unrealistic fantasies, this is unlike many characters found in American literature today, many are unrealistic.
As the eviction party is taking place, Frances stops to think a moment, "As I walked through the house alone I looked at everyone and I loved them all. Who were they? All those kids -- drunk, sober, laughing, bickering, smoking, hooking up, arguing. I wanted to be everyone's friend all at once, to take each one aside and say, 'Look, here we are; we're together for this one great thing. Why don't we all know each other? Who are we in this place and most of us strangers? I'm a nice person. Life is lonely. Let's be friends,'" (39). Even though Americans strive for this individualism, they all want a connection, even for a brief moment. “The hardest thing for me was watching everyone leave. For a few hours it felt like we were all in this thing together, that there was some kind of greater commonality between us, but we left. We left in pairs or alone. We left drunk, high, sober, happy, sad, afraid, laughing, but we left… It was an army retreating, leaving the front and going back to the world; already concerned with the next thing,” (43-44). Just like 9/11, the party is but a memory now, everyone left and got out of it what they did. These fleeting moments of movement and staying put and togetherness and estrangement are what make the American Experience what it is.
People like Holden from The Catcher In The Rye are the ones who could get left behind. “Where are they now?... A lot of them...were sucked into the great pneumatic tube that takes you from your hopeful, idealistic youth into the dull drags of adulthood. They go mainstream, they have mainstream jobs, mainstream sex, mainstream relationships, mainstream families, mainstream tastes… So they disappear. They drop out into a bland, safe, lifeless normalcy. Or they don’t make it. Kids die. Or they burn out. They stay in the scene but they stagnate and age badly and never make good on the promises of their youth. They waste the wonderful things inside them…” (44). The one's who don't move on, who don't forgive (because you should never forget) are the ones who disappear.
To be American, “I work. I fight. I believe,” (45).
In the end of Locust House, Agnes is amidst the crowd, and like America itself in the form of Agnes, the last lines of the novella are, “The crowd pushed. Agnes pushed back,” (50).