Paul Engles, editor
of the O'Henry Award Anthology when this story was selected for inclusion in
1942, said he considered "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud" "the most
perfect short story in American Literature." Although this may sound somewhat extreme for
such a seemingly slight little narrative, there is something classic about the
basic character configuration and theme of the story.
The enclosed
situation of the cafe in the early morning, the confrontation between the young
initiate and the experienced one; the cynical and ironic observer, the silent
chorus of men in the background--all this suggest a paradigmatic short story
situation. Moreover, the story's focus
on loneliness and the difficulty of loving fits with Frank O'Connor's famous
definition of the short story in The Lonely Voice.
The narrative
situation of the story is simple; what needs to be understood is the notion of
love that it presents. Some readers may
be as cynical as the cafe owner Leo in their reactions to the notion of loving
a tree, a rock, a cloud. McCullers
provides a suggestion about what she means by love in her essay, "The
Flowering Dream: Notes on Writing' in The
Mortgaged Heart. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941: "How, without love and the intuition
that comes from love, can a human being place himself in the situation of
another human being? He must imagine,
and imagination takes humility, love, and great courage."
If we ask why it is
easier to love a tree, a rock, a cloud than it is to love a person, the answer
must be that love is indeed synonymous with identification with the other. The aim of love is to dissolve that which
separates us and to swallow up the other.
This is difficult with a person because the other is a subjective
consciousness who wishes to maintain self identity.
However, as the transient tells the puzzled
boy, one can gradually learn to identify with the other if one begins simply
with the less threatening. This story is
about that primitive sense of the sacred that constitutes true reality, the
basic religious yearning of human consciousness to lose the self in the
other. Leo knows the transient is right,
but he also knows that such a demand is impossible for the ordinary human; the
boy, of course, has yet to learn this hard fact of human reality.
Tomorrow:
David Leavit's "Gravity"
2 comments:
Like Steinbeck's The Red Pony, this is a short statement about love, a statement made all the more powerful because it is framed in a humble setting, with humble characters.
An old man in a bar explains, through the trials and tribulations of his life story, that the discipline of love should be nurtured gently and systematically, selecting as its object the most simple of the world's offerings and gradually shifting to the more complex before moving on to romance between a man and a woman.
This short story can be easily located in the collection of short stories that were included with a novella, "The Ballad Of The Sad Cafe". Carson McCullers is one of my very favorite authors. There is something about her writing that enchants me.
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