Willy Loman is not Lazy!

Tragic, yes. Despicable, yes. Pathetic, yes (just clarify connotation, please!).

But not lazy!!!

William Loman wants nothing more than to be all the things he seemingly cannot be. A good father. A good husband. To be well liked. And he pursues these things -- deliberately and with energy -- like a hamster on a wheel with a cute little fedora and matching briefcase full of merchandise. Only the hamster is able to stop whenever he wants. Willy cannot. Therein lies the rub.

Because Willy is doomed to forward motion, he is incapable of true reflection. Because he is never, ever truly alone with his thoughts. To be clear, he has full access to his memories and a host of questions, mostly self-depracatory, but he has no such access to introspective thought. He cannot slow down his self-doubt; he refuses to release himself from his own guilt. In short, he cannot actually move forward.

Revision: Willy is doomed to perpetual motion, limited to circular angles, prohibitive of forward progress. Willy is stuck. But not by laziness. Not even by a lack of morals. He cannot overcome himself. He cannot face up to the sum of all his parts. Certainly, some of these parts are rotted wood: the affair, his parenting skills, his backward sense of reputation in the business world. But taken together, Willy Loman is not a bad man.

Low, maybe. Which is what makes him tragic. Which is why we murder to dissect him and stash him away nice and neatly into a mislabeled corner. We don't like to look overlong at such a man. We may start to see a bit of ourselves tucked inside a dimple or stuck to an eyelash. So we must kick him lower than he really is, to distance ourselves.

Do not, gentle reader, seek this distance. A little grit is not a bad thing.

Cash Bundren's Great Secret

Once again I find myself leading my intrepid literary troops through William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and once again I am struck by a singular character:

Cash Bundren.

Eldest child, focused carpenter, absolute truth-teller. His first narration in AILD is nothing more than  a list, a quick how-to on coffin-making. He even fails to mention that it is for his mother that he toils. Emotion-dodging? Deflection-by-insulation? Or space case? We quickly jump to the latter, feeling (fearing?) something is a little off with the oldest Bundren offspring.

Cash, however, strikes me as having access to some secret that I am not privy to, or if I am, then it is a secret I care not to look at for longer than a moment or two. Like staring at the sun overlong. Or a car crash before the ambulance.

He knows what it means to stay on task. Whether the task is concrete like constructing a coffin or abstract like demonstrating kindness, Cash knows how to see it through, regardless of time frames.

Like Dick in Waterland or Lenny in Of Mice and Men or Forrest Gump himself, it is their vacuous nature which allows them to outstrip, in this one small arena at least, the other great men which surround them.

I must confess, I don't like the hollowness of Cash's devotion. And not because he is "slow" or a "dullard," and not because he is "simple" and "rural;" it is entirely because it is something I cannot do. It is a skill-set which I do not possess. And I am not dull or slow; I am witty and sophisticated. I read and discuss and posit great ideas and challenge the great ideas of others.

In fact, it would seem as if I am so over-burdened by my wit and sophistication that I cannot clutch a single devotion to my chest for longer than a few moments.

Was it Thoreau who claimed "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!"? I feel, gentle reader, that Cash is nodding a slow nod right about now. And he will probably continue to nod until I get it, not a moment before. Not even long after his head hurts.