Kate's Writing Portfolio

Through the course of the semester, there have been three works that have encapsulated an idea of epiphany in a very different fashion from the other works that were read. These three works are Margaret directed by Kenneth Lonergan, “Break it Down” written by Lydia Davis, and Satin Island written by Tom McCarthy. Each of these works contains a main character that, in some way, tries to insert meaning, and therefore, try to force and cultivate an epiphany from their said insertion of meaning onto, in all of their cases, another person. And in doing so, try to insert some means of epiphany into their life. However, when inserting meaning into these situations or obstacles that each character faces, there is an imperative ethical, moral, and inter-subjective experience, that seems to be lacking from each of these characters; they all insert meaning with only their identity and thoughts at stake; not taking anyone else’s into account. All of these characters see themselves as the main characters in each of their respective stories; which they are, but each character seems to see themselves as the main character in everyone’s stories. So, if each of these characters is actively searching for epiphany via insertion of meaning, there is the question of do they reach epiphany, do they reach the pinnacle that their inserted meaning should have brought to them? Does it not bring epiphany, and instead the sacrifices and meanings amount to nothing? Does the savage search for epiphany bring a sense of bliss or dread? If epiphanies, for so long, were supposed to come to characters, without the character enacting any want of epiphany; what happens to those characters who push the boundaries for searching for that epiphany or want of meaning in their own respective worlds?

            Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret, really explores this idea of Lisa, the main character, thinking that she is the main character in everyone’s stories, and thus inserting meaning into everyone’s lives. Specifically we see this in how Lisa reacts to the bus crash that she causes which results in the loss of Monica, a pedestrian’s, life. As Monica is bleeding out on the street, Lisa goes to comfort her, Monica reaches out for her daughter saying, “’Could somebody call my daughter?’ ‘Sure, we can call her. What’s her name? Just tell me her name and give me her number.’ ‘It’s Lisa.’ ‘No, no, no, that’s my name, is that your daughter’s name?’ ‘What? What, are you talking about?’” (Margaret 15:33-15:45). At the time, Lisa is confused by Monica’s use of the word Lisa. Though Monica was reaching out for her own daughter, in her time of need, that doesn’t stop Lisa from altering Monica’s words to fit her own narrative.

            Lisa absolves herself criminally from Monica’s case. When asked by the police, she claims the stoplight was green, and Monica was at fault. And though she absolves herself criminally, that is replaced with a feeling of guilt and angst.  These feelings of guilt, angst, and this idea that she is the main character drives her throughout the movie. Because she believes that she is the main character is everyone’s stories, Lisa assumes that every choice and decision she makes are vital and that her life should be meaningful and have meaning. And not only should her choices be vital in her life, but her choices are imperative to shaping other’s lives.

            So, when Monica asked for her daughter, Lisa thought it was meant to be. That there was a reason she was the last person Monica spoke to and of, thereby inserting her own meaning into her life. Lisa goes on to track down Monica’s friends and family and eventually meets Emily. Emily and Lisa have a conversation in which Lisa reveals her feelings and emotions about the moment before Monica’s death. She shows the insertion of meaning she has placed in this moment, and it is very eerie and quite inappropriate after learning that Monica’s daughter Lisa had died, “I’ve had this really strange feelings that in some way for those last five minutes, I kind of was her daughter, you know, in some weird way, this obviously amazing woman got to be with her daughter a few minutes before she died” (Margaret 02:15:30). To Emily, and most likely Monica, it was obvious in Monica’s time of need that she would reach out for her daughter, Lisa. But the main character Lisa essentially disregards that notion in order to force her own meaning into the moment, and further, into Monica’s life. And along with inserting or imbuing this sense of meaning into Monica’s life, she inserts this meaning after Lisa is the one who caused the bus crash. If she did not have this blatant disregard for the world around her, because she sees herself as the main character, maybe she wouldn’t have caused the bus to crash, or need to feel this reason to imbue meaning onto a dying woman.

            In the same scene referenced above, when Emily and Lisa are speaking, Emily finally pulls Lisa out of this meaning she has imbued that is not hers to put meaning into and we come to a climax of both Emily and Lisa’s feelings on the situation, “’And is she still inhabiting your body or did she go back to the spirit world right after? I don’t give a fuck what you believe in. This is not an opera, I said this is not an opera! I think you are very young.’” To which a bewildered Lisa responds, “‘What does that have to do with anything? If anything, it means I care more than someone older because this kind of thing has never happened to me before.’” And Emily sneers back at her,  “‘No, it means you care more easily. There’s a big different, only it’s not you it’s happening to.’” Lisa even continues by retorting, “Yes it is,” (Margaret 02:16:08-02:16:43). Emily essentially pops the bubble of thinking that Lisa has been so prone to.

            Lisa feels so much guilt for the death of Monica that rather than take any natural meaning that could’ve come from her death, any  personal growth or mental growth, is stunted throughout the movie when she savagely searches for and inserts meaning into Monica’s life. And this is shown in the way she treats her friends and family. She seems to ignore the world after she causes Monica’s death and then becomes so infatuated, that she doesn’t realize that it’s not her thing to be infatuated with. And it is not until the scene at the opera in which it seems that Lisa actually finds any sort of meaning or epiphany. And it comes in a moment when she is not actively searching for it.

            She hears the music at the opera and is suddenly overcome with emotion and beings to cry. She tries so hard to find meaning, but it’s when she waits in solace that any meaning ever comes to her. The entire movie, after she absolves herself of criminality, she seems to be searching for meaning in a punishment. Finding a punishment that is ample for the reason that she could live and Monica could not. She was so tied up in finding and inserting meaning into the death of Monica, that she did not realize that by searching so savagely and ruthlessly, she had already done so much of the punishment to herself. She became incredibly self-destructive in ruining relationships in her life, and doing unimaginable things, in order to make sense or a pattern or a meaning of things, when all she was doing was bringing punishment. And in searching so hard for meaning, it’s not until she is not actively searching for it that it comes to her that her inexplicable guilt towards her involvement was enough of a punishment or ultimately, meaning.

            So as a culmination throughout the movie, not only does Lisa insert meaning into many various arrays of her life in order to garner some sense of meaning out of it. However, when she imbues meaning into the life of a woman who is dying and continues to insert and investigative that meaning, there becomes a real ethical issue. How can one person place meaning into something that is not theirs to place meaning into.          

            This brings to mind “Break it Down” written by Lydia Davis. In this short story, the main character is a jilted-lover who spends the entirety of the story trying to quantify his former relationship in order to justify if it is worth it. It begins on the first page with:

            I’m breaking it all down. The ticket was $600 and then

            after that there was more for the hotel and food and so on,

            for just ten days. Say $80 a day, no, more like $100 a day.

            And we made love, say, once a day on the average. That’s

            $100 a shot. And each time it lasted maybe two or three

            hours so that would be anywhere from $33 to $50 an

            hour, which is expensive. (Davis 17)

The jilted-lover’s quantification of the relationship he had begins with the basics of food and total money spent in the relationship. However, he starts trying to quantify parts of the relationship which to many, would seem impossible to even begin to try and quantify, “She would keep looking at me and every time she looked at me it was worth something” (Davis 17). Like Lisa, the jilted-lover is looking for what seems to be a pattern in their former relationship in order to insert some meaning into it, and therefore see if there is meaning they can take out of it, to justify whether the relationship was worth it to them or not. But in doing so, brings up again, this ethical element.

            How can one person insert or take meaning from something that is not wholly theirs. One cannot justify a relationship or piece of meaning if there is another person to consult in the grand scheme of things. This relationship could mean nothing to the jilted-lover, but everything to the ex-girlfriend, so really, is it fair to only take one side of the meaning brought to the relationship, and dismiss the other half? In this story, I believe that this idea is paramount to the point Lydia Davis is trying to make. That the insertion of wanted meaning, searched meaning, in an array that cannot only be placed by one, cannot bring epiphany. That savage search is what stops epiphany from approaching.

            This jilted-lover is also like Lisa in the sense that both characters, seeing themselves as the main character in both of their stories, and everyone’s stories, hold these narcissistic worldviews in which the thing they are trying to put meaning into becomes the only thing they care about. They both have these obsessive tendencies to keep trying to insert meaning over and over, to see if they can grasp something new from it. And this obsession in wanting to insert meaning, can just turn into an obsession about the person they are trying to insert meaning into. Specifically in the jilted-lover’s case, he is quantifying this relationship in order to justify whether it was worth it or not, but halfway through, he almost becomes obsessive in remembering her, “everything about her has bled into you, her smell her voice, the way her body moves, it’s all inside you, at least for a while after” (Davis 20). In trying so hard to insert meaning, he is obsessed with the want of pulling meaning, just like he was obsessed with her at the time. In this line, it is not necessarily that she consumes him, but that his want for meaning from the relationship is so desperate, that it is all consuming to his thoughts at all times.

            His want to insert meaning into justifying his relationship through quantification brings the jilted-lover to this final conclusion about this justification he has so promptly been dissecting:

            You know the pain is part of the whole thing. And it isn’t

            that you can say afterwards the pleasure was greater than

            the pain and that’s why you would do it again. That has

            nothing to do with it. You can’t measure it, because the

            pain comes after and it lasts longer. So the question really

            is, Why doesn’t that pain make you say, I won’t do it again?

            When the pain is so bad that you have to say that, but you

            don’t. (Davis 24)

And it’s in this moment, and this paragraph, that brings back to Davis’ point for this piece. That though this main character wants desperately to quantify and justify this past relationship, that it is not possible.  And it is not possible because reality does not work in quantifiable terms. The human experience and connectedness cannot be placed on a scale to be ranked in order from best to worst. The human experience is ever-changing and evolving, and to pride one’s self on trying to insert a justification into it will bring no epiphany, and maybe even an anti- or useless epiphany.

            In trying to quantify someone’s presence and absence, the jilted-lover inserts meaning separate from the meaning that might already be held in that notion by his ex-lover. There is a role to play here in the perspectives of the main characters, and this narcissistic worldview they work with. Both Lisa and the lover are in situations that have overtaken their conscious and have become obsessed in inserting meaning in order to make sense or justify the situation that happened to them. However, both of these characters push that meaning into two separate entities that have no say or jurisdiction in how the events are remembered, or if there is any meaning that has already been inserted, that now the main character is just overriding in search of their own meaning. So if both of these characters are were able to insert meaning but with respect for an experience that is shared with another, given the autonomy of the give and take of meaning from both parties, what does that look like? How can these characters, who have savagely inserted meaning, understand that within these shared experiences there may be a meaning outside of the pattern or system that they have been actively searching within.

            This idea of meaning placed on an object outside the system that it was created and functioned within brings thoughts to Satin Island written by Tom McCarthy. In which the main character, U. is an anthropologist who works in the corporate world and is given instruction by his boss to write an ethnography on the company. U., being an anthropologist, is incline to insert meaning into every facet of his life, “I sometimes allow myself to think that, in fact, things were precisely the other way round: that my job was to put meaning in the world, not take from it” (McCarthy 34), which he does in order to avoid writing his ethnography, that of which he is struggling with the form.

            U. is a lot like Lisa and the jilted-lover because though he is an anthropologist and it is his profession to insert meaning, U. tries to find some form outside of the system he has come to realize he plays in to in order to write his ethnography. However, because he is constantly inserting meaning into things around him, U., much like Lisa and the lover, becomes infatuated with a situation that has little to do with him besides the want to understand the pattern and insert and pull some meaning from someone else’s death. U.’s specific infatuation is with a parachutist that has died, and supposedly was murder by one of his friends, or so U. thinks. Because of his profession, he thinks that the world need to be in the specific pattern, that is within the system in which the world  works, a system by which everything whether living dead, animate, inanimate, abides by. These patterns are what help predict and shape the meaning that anthropologists place upon things:

            To the anthropologist, as I explained before,

            it’s generic episodes and phenomena that stand out as signif-

            cant, not singular ones. To the anthropologist, there’s no such

            thing as a singular episode, a singular phenomenon – only a

            set of variations on generic ones; the more generic, therefore,

            the more pure, the closer to an unvariegated or unscrambled

            archetype. The parachutist story, in the stark, predictable sim-

            plicity of the circumstance that it presented, in the boldness of

            its second-handness, was refreshing: in its unashamed lack of

            originality, it was original. (McCarthy 64-65)

The parachutist and by extension the parachute because important to U. because he has been taught  to believe that there must be a pattern even in the in the most original of cases because by the systems standards, there is no originality.

            So this un-original, but uniquely original story of the parachutist falling to his death encapsulates U.’s full attention. He creates theory after theory, imbuing newer and stranger meanings to the death of the parachutist, until there are so many inconsistencies that lie within each theory that his own patterned thinking determined by the system begins to change, “The sense of calm, of languidness, grows all the more pronounced when set against the panic of the man hurdling away from it below,” (McCarthy 83), he begins to separate the parachute from the man, instead of seeing the parachutist, he sees the parachute and the man. The system that overarches all has made him a pawn in the system, forcing meaning to look at the whole picture, rather than the pieces that make up the picture and further, the system. He continues, “My point of identification within it and my attendant sympathy, shifting form the diminutive man to his expanded, if detached, paraphernalia. I felt quite happy for the latter, for its liberation to carelessness” (McCarthy 83), and in these few sentences U. has a realization that there is not a pattern for everything, or a pattern that exists in the system for everything. He realizes that the parachute itself is its own being apart from being a landing tool, or a broken thing that plummeted a man to his death, but rather its own being. And with it being its own entity, there is no system, or pattern, or meaning to be placed on the parachute. It is as it will be, simply itself, existing outside of any meaning given or taken meaning.

            This idea of entities existing outside of the system of patterned thinking, that have no need of insertion of meaning, as they have meaning on their own, brings to U.’s slightly, almost, epiphanic moment that occurs while on the way to board the ferry to Staten Island. He almost gets on the ferry, but in the end, chooses not to, “To go to Staten Island – actually go there – would have been profoundly meaningless. What would it, in reality, have solved or resolved” (McCarthy 185-186). In this moment, U. realizes all the systems and patterns in place within the system and chooses to removed himself from inserting his meaning into any of their preconceived ideas of what meaning is and should be. Rather, instead of being a bystander, he actively takes himself out of the system, much like the parachute did when the man and it separated. As civilians continue to feed into the system, to follow the pattern of getting on the ferry to go to the island, U. can’t continue to place meaning into patterns in the system that are only meaningful when meaning is placed on them. Whereas the parachute was able to exist outside any meaning, pattern, or system. Because his idea of meaning and systems has evolved in to so much more, he no longer is yearning to find or place meaning, so in going to the trash island that is Staten Island, there would be no point because he cannot categorize the mess, thus there is no meaning to the mess, and furthermore, there is no point. The true meaning of things and the island are outside the system, but outside the system you cannot place meaning on to them, because they are just being.

            All three characters dealt with have a narcissistic worldview in which their insertion of meaning into things in the world is the meaning that is valid, belongs and, counts. However, each of these characters savagely and ruthlessly search for that when any epiphany does arrive, it seems to be beyond them, or in their search for meaning they had already found epiphany or it never came for them at all. With Lisa, the epiphany at the opera enlightens her to be aware that the search for meaning and absolving herself of guilt and punishment, was meaningful. Meaningful in the sense that she realizes that what she was searching for and inserting into everyone around her was a sense of punishment, and the meaning she tried so hard to insert and instill was never a tangible meaning because she was actively searching so hard for it. Similarly with the jilted-lover from Davis’ story, his desperation to insert alternate meaning than there already was and quantify his former relationship in order to justify it, his vapid want for some type of meaning to emerge, brings the jilted-lover to almost an anti-epiphany. He realizes in the last lines, “You can’t measure it, because the pain comes after and it lasts longer” (Davis 24), that it is impossible to garner an inserted meaning or a quantifiable, tangible amount or exchange for human experience and inter-connectedness. You cannot put a price, number, or sole-meaning into an experience that exists with another person. The jilted-lover’s search for a pattern in money spent as a correlative tie to an inter-related experience between two, brings back to U. and his epiphany. U., like the others, has searched so hard for meaning that is has brought him to a point in which by the time epiphany dawns on him, he has already figured out the meaning long before. Being at Staten Island was not the entire epiphany, the other half was in the resolving of the parachute and the parachutist. U. tries to place meaning into every facet of life, and it is not until he is forced to think about what that meaning is, and if there is still meaning to belong without him implicitly stating so, that he comes to realize the meaning of the parachute on a grand scale. Which is that there is a system that we all exist in. And within that system there are patterns that which a person is then conditioned to place implicit meanings into objects and situations based on their function in the pattern, and by extension, in the system.

            In totality, both Lisa and the jilted-lover struggle in reaching epiphany because of their avid need or want to insert meaning, not just into a specific situation, but into events or experiences that are not entirely theirs. Both characters come to realize that their search for meaning in the way in which they would like to receive it, is impossible. You cannot insert meaning into someone’s else’s life without their jurisdiction or judgment at play in order to create a full formed meaning of the experience with everyone who was involved.

            Both Lisa and the jilted-lover are unable to find meaning or a fully formed epiphany because of their want to insert meaning into people’s lives, without any jurisdiction from the other person. And both characters, when reaching that form of epiphany, realize that in actively searching epiphany can’t come to you, or won’t come to you in the fashion that you’d like. However, if Lisa and the jilted-lover were able to insert meaning in a way that wasn’t wholly selfish and instead paid homage to the experience felt by both people in a situation, that would maybe manifest itself in the same way U.’s epiphany with the parachute did. Both of these characters run into ethical issues when trying to place value on someone else’s life. They’re not necessarily wrong for this, but they are placing meaning based on the system that they live in. So, in order to have real meaning instilled from these situations, they may have to look at their situations and lives like U. does with the parachute.

            Maybe human experiences and the inter-subjective experiences the characters face would be more meaningful if seen like U. sees the parachute. The parachute exists outside any pattern or system and simply just is; it exists as itself, without needing any meaning to be taken or given to it. He realizes that the parachute exists outside any form of meaning-generated pattern. And maybe for Lisa, that is what her epiphany at the opera led her to realize. That she was there for this horrible accident, she caused and witnessed a death, but it really has had nothing to do with her and never will. She selfishly intrudes herself into Monica’s life and further inserts herself into a meaning that is not hers to grasp. So for Lisa, at the opera, she realizes that maybe Monica, like the parachute, exists outside a meaning-generating pattern. It is not only unethical, but impossible to garner or insert meaning from a human being’s life without making that meaning a shared experience between the two parties. Monica, like the parachute, exists outside of the system, and Lisa’s search for meaning only ever brought her further from that meaning; because she was following the system. And the same goes for the jilted-lover: he can’t place meaning on a human being who exists outside of any meaning-generating pattern. Humans are not capable of placing this idea of meaning into others, when they already have meaning themselves just by being.

            All of these characters make their decisions in meaning making almost exclusively via internal thought. All of their thoughts for epiphany are strictly their thoughts and wants only, which is one of the reasons that of these characters, none really reach a true epiphany. Therefore, the epiphanies they do reach are wholly inside their own heads, and their heads do exist within the meaning-generating pattern of the world. However, there is the potential argument that if these characters had stopped searching so savagely and actively for meaning in every facet of their lives, they could have experienced an epiphany like Joyce’s; one wholly external, outside the head. Joyce’s original ideas about epiphany were rooted in the idea of recognizing an object’s whatness. In Joyce’s terms an epiphany comes when a person recognizes that an object is an integral thing, then that that thing is actually a thing by recognizing it is an organized structure, and then the person can recognize the object for what it truly is (Joyce 213). This epiphany happens wholly outside one’s head, as the objects whatness is what drives the meaning of epiphany and gives meaning to the observer. Also in Joyce’s epiphany, one does not actively search for epiphany or meaning but rather the object bestows its whatness upon the beholder, bringing epiphany and meaning to them. All of these characters are so determined to discover meaning, rather than wait for it, that it brings the opposite of what they intended in every story. However, if those ideas were made external and the search for meaning wasn’t so savage, and rather a patient wait for some meaning, Lisa would never have punished herself, the jilted-lover would not spend time calculating his relationship, and U. wouldn’t have either discovered a meaning outside of the system. Epiphanies are meant to be an external, spiritual experience according to Joyce. And throughout time, the characters search for meaning has inhibited them from being able to reach that peak of euphoria or ruination that they all seem to crave. As the idea and fruition of epiphanies has changed over the years, so has how characters experience and reach them — if they do reach them.

            Our three characters reach some form of epiphanic thought that brings their thoughts of meanings and epiphanies to a close, whether it was the answer they wanted or not. But in this active search for meaning, none of these characters really reach that true epiphany in which they were searching for. By inserting meaning, they hinder any true organic meaning that can grow from the shared experiences people have in life. There is the argument that neither Lisa nor the jilted-lover realize that their insertions of meaning do not amount to much; the time spent grueling over these other people bring no real meaning or experience to their lives beyond their active search. Lisa’s sacrifices in finding meaning result in loss of friends, fights with her mom, and becoming unlike herself. The jilted-lover, instead of pulling the already assumed meaning from the relationship, instead starts inserting meanings from the post-break up point of view, so his insertions of meaning will have been jaded. And finally, U.’s sacrifices made in search for meaning really do not amount to much; rather than finding a meaning applicable to the parachutist and the world, he rips himself from his profession and determined way of thinking in order to create a new perspective, free of the system. Each of their wants for meaning do not go as planned and thus, no character who actively searched for meaning will receive their moment of epiphany in return. The search for meaning constantly brings dread, each character unhappier with the state of the world, themselves, and human experience, than they were before. The world is meant for people to search for meaning in human experiences and objects, like each of our characters do, but when that search for meaning crosses the line into a meaning that cannot wholly be placed by one person, it is not possible to reach the peak of euphoria that everyone wishes for from epiphany. All of these characters reach some sort of epiphanic moment in their own time, but the savage search for meaning in order to garner an epiphany rather than let meaning and epiphany fall upon one’s conscious, hinders those from reaching a true epiphanic moment.