Vol. 6 / Fall 2015

In his short story, “Charlotte,” Tony Earley shapes an image of a town that is built on illusions, a place that cannot live up to its residents’ expectations. The nameless narrator of this story is disillusioned by the city of Charlotte’s loss of its professional wrestling scene and a subsequent loss of the illusion of attaining hope and love. The narrator previously adopts as his own the voice of Lord Poetry, a wrestler who turns to the writing of Yeats and Shakespeare in his own speech. In the wake of the failure of Lord Poetry’s romanticism in the Final Battle for Love, though, the narrator still maintains a hopeful belief in love even with the knowledge of its futility. This irony in his voice serves to lament Charlotte’s lost grandeur and still carry the illusion of the possibility of love in his relationship with his girlfriend, Starla, that Earley’s story suggests is a dream easier to support by vain faith than to relinquish.

Even in Earley’s descriptions of Charlotte’s prime, an air of superficiality hangs over the town and clouds residents’ views of the town’s reality. The narrator begins his lament with images of the wrestlers themselves: men cloaked in masks and given absurd stage names. He sees in Charlotte a similar illusory image, which he articulates when he says, “In the old days our heroes were as superficial as we were–but we knew that–and their struggles were exaggerated versions of our own.” ((Tony Earley, “Charlotte,” in Here We Are in Paradise, (New York: Little, Brown, 1994): 35.)) The narrator goes on to note the tendency of everyone in Charlotte to “[try] to be something they were not,” and in this sense, the residents wear costumes and masks just as the wrestlers do. ((Ibid.)) The city’s external magnificence is no longer capable of providing Charlotte with hope.

Earley’s Charlotte is a somewhat artificial place, its true identity hiding behind appearances; similarly, Earley’s use of professional wrestling to mirror the narrator’s wrestling with his relationship uncovers the fact that his own voice hides behind Lord Poetry’s. The narrator turns to Lord Poetry for advice in his fight to coerce Starla to admit that she loves him, and in response, Lord Poetry recites a verse from Yeats. Yeats’ lines detail the “weary-hearted[ness]” of one couple fighting to attain “the old high way of love,” and the narrator eventually concludes that these words “are just too true to ever say out loud.” ((Ibid., 38.)) Lord Poetry’s voice, which hinges on the voices of great writers of the past, uncovers for the narrator a truth in his own relationship with Starla.  In this sense, the narrator is relying on another voice (one that, in turn, is formed by voices from the past) to discover his own.

Lord Poetry’s performance in the Final Battle for Love further reflects the narrator’s parallel battle with Starla. The tension between Lord Poetry and his wrestling rival, Bob Noxious, in the fight to win the grand prize, the love of Darling Donnis, stands as a metaphor for the clash of love and lust in his relationship with Starla. Darling Donnis’ love is for Lord Poetry, but she is “mesmerized by Bob Noxious’ animal power,” so this staged battle between love and lust metaphorically indicates who will win between Starla and the narrator. ((Ibid., 47.)) During the Final Battle, Lord Poetry’s last desperate effort to win Darling Donnis’ affection is to read Shakespeare’s “Sonnet Number Eighteen,” but even his urgency-laced reading of this romantic verse cannot stop Darling Donnis from giving into her lust for Bob Noxious. The narrator and Starla are mere spectators to this disappointing battle, but he watches quietly as she cries out for Darling Donnis to resist Lord Poetry’s attempts, claiming that “he’s after [her] soul.” ((Ibid., 54.)) Starla, then, views this battle as a symbol for her victory in the relationship, which she finds to be loveless.

Lord Poetry’s failure and the narrator’s subsequent personal loss disillusion him, but not to such an extent that he gives up all hope. He takes on the duty to speak for Charlotte’s lost era of glory, when not everyone had “given up on love” like Starla has. ((Ibid., 36.)) Even once the professional wrestlers leave Charlotte, the narrator feels compelled to adopt Lord Poetry’s voice as his own. He articulates his remaining (albeit somewhat futile) hope when he writes that “in the old days Lord Poetry said to never give up, to always fight for love, but now he is gone to Atlanta with a big contract and a broken heart, and I have to do the best that I can.” ((Ibid.)) Even though Starla denies him the loving relationship he craves, he “hold[s] on” to the idea of attainable love. ((Ibid.))

The structure of “Charlotte” also highlights the strength of the narrator’s vain hope against the disappointing aftermath of the Final Battle for Love. From the beginning of the story, the narrator lets readers know that Lord Poetry’s cause is lost. He creates a current of loss by repeating the word “gone” in the opening paragraphs, signaling his own battle for love will result in a heavy loss. The narrator describes the bar he works in as a place in which “people look vainly. . .for love,” indicating that a part of him even sees the futility in this pursuit.” ((Ibid., 39.)) He also questions how to “tell somebody how to find what they’re looking for when ten years ago you came from the same place, and have yet to find yourself” ((Ibid., 41.)) These sentiments express a shattered illusion of Charlotte in the narrator’s eyes, and yet he “holds on” to his and Lord Poetry’s romantic vision.

Lord Poetry’s failure and the narrator’s subsequent personal loss disillusion him, but not to such an extent that he gives up all hope. He takes on the duty to speak for Charlotte’s lost era of glory, when not everyone had “given up on love” like Starla has.

The narrator’s voice carries in it what has vanished from Charlotte. Even in his seemingly futile telling of Lord Poetry’s fated loss, he makes concrete the facts of Charlotte’s old grandeur that have disappeared. In taking on this responsibility in his voice, he is speaking for everyman, every resident of Charlotte who felt this loss. Ironically, though, his voice is the last vehicle standing that is willing to preserve the town he once knew. For the narrator, it seems his old image of Charlotte is much easier to cling to than let fade. His inclination to hide behind Charlotte’s now broken illusions is exemplified in the fact that although she “breaks [his] heart,” he fights the endless fight to force Starla to love him. ((Ibid., 36.)) Although he sees that newcomers to Charlotte “must settle for much smaller hopes” than those with which they arrived, he refuses to see a similar fruitlessness in his pursuit of love. ((Ibid., 41.))

In the same way that Yeats’ verse is “just too true to ever say out loud,” the narrator finds the notion of letting go of the hope of finally drawing true love out of his relationship with Starla too heartbreaking. ((Ibid., 39.) An impossible balance of disenchantment and faith exists in his voice. With these seemingly incompatible qualities, the narrator weaves a story of a loss so great it is joined by a degree of disbelief. In “Charlotte,” Earley ultimately reminds his readers that some dreams–no matter how improbable–aren’t easily abandoned. The narrator and Charlotte’s parallel losses expose a degree of masquerading both he and the city previously performed. A shattered illusion, though sometimes a thing too difficult to see.

Bibliography

Earley, Tony. “Charlotte.” In Here We Are in Paradise. New York: Little, Brown, 1994.

 

 

Women continue to struggle against their diminished social roles in the United States, a condition inherited from the nineteenth century,when women were confined to the household, expected to keep order in the home and care for children. ((I would like to acknowledge and thank my peer review group for helping me explore the dimensions of female beauty and empowerment related to the legacy of slavery.)) The so-called “woman’s sphere” included the set of actions and relationships that would nourish the family, the social unit that would most benefit from sustained maternal care. The man in the home had access to the world of education, politics, and the workforce, while women were removed from public communities of discourse, delimiting their participation in intellectual discussions. The sexist-sponsored woman’s sphere constrained the female voice. Narratives of women’s lives went unpublished and authentic experiential accounts went largely unheard. Written accounts of slaves’ experiences were similarly constrained. Few testimonies were made public due to racist prohibitions and widespread misconceptions about African Americans’ rhetorical powers. When they were published in the North, narratives such as those composed by Frederick Douglass empowered abolitionists, who used his discourses to exemplify the co-equal status of white and black men. As a man, Douglass was expected to speak strongly and loudly. His entrance into the public sphere was welcomed by abolitionists as the free speech of a U.S. citizen.

However, the narratives of female slaves were not met with the same praise, even among abolitionist-minded white northern readers. Add to this the fact that her experience, like most other female slaves, involved navigating the advances of slaveholders, and one can appreciate the hazards of her role as a public writer. The history of slavery reveals that both men and women were subject to verbal, physical, and emotional abuse, however, female experiences of abuse were largely motivated by the sexual impulses of white slaveholders who desired them in a capacity very different from the way they desired their own wives. Seen as exotic or as pliant sexual prey, female slaves were vulnerable to various forms of sexual abuse that could not be uttered in public–at least not without spoiling the identity of the revealer. To keep gendered values of chastity and propriety in tact, female slaves were restricted to a world of silence.

Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl highlight despicable conditions and mistreatment under the system of slavery, but their production and reception differ. Douglass praises his new-found literacy, which bolsters his self-conception as a rights-bearing citizen. His strong voice and intellectual text go far in making him “a man.” His public self is ennobled by discourse. His effective persuasion gains him standing and status. Jacobs, for whom access to the public sphere is delimited both by her race and her gender, must tread softly into public view. Her work is punctuated by apologies for being forthright, for truth-telling, for speaking itself. It is her keen ability to negotiate her publicity, to locate a voice that will allow her to be heard, that deserves close attention. Her experience as a public writer is complex and entangled in both courage and hesitancy, but deserves full attention as a robust rhetorical act nonetheless.

American Studies scholar Winifred Morgan differentiates male from female slave narratives, focusing on what she believes are key distinctions between Douglass’ and Jacobs’ use of literacy (and writing) as modes of resistance. She finds that male slaves like Douglass highlight reading and writing as formative skills necessary to putting them on the path to freedom, but that female slaves depend not upon discourse but rather on their social and emotional relationships with others to give them a sense of personhood. As Morgan puts this:

The drive to become literate appears to be gender-based; unlike the narratives written by men, women’s narratives do not emphasize this factor. While male narrators accentuate the role of literacy, females stress the importance of relationships. Given the importance of relationships in the lives of most women, this is hardly surprising. ((Winifred Morgan, “Gender-Related Differences in the Slave Narratives of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass,” American Studies, 35, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 76.))

Morgan emphasizes the reliance of female slave narratives on the development of networks to contend with the struggles of slavery, while male narrators demonstrated their right to autonomy through their use of literacy. But, does such an approach do justice to her uses of writing to thwart attacks, to shelter her children from harm, and to establish her own rights?

Harriet Jacobs’ work, for example, was met with suspicion and hostility. Her public voice, rather than welcomed as civic free speech, was heard as inappropriate or even transgressive.

By simplifying Jacobs’ drive for freedom, autonomy, and resistance to oppression as facilitated by relationships, Morgan ignores her complex strategy of using communication as a means of resistance. Rightly so, Jacobs finds that her relationships with family and other slaves are important to her social development, but they are not necessary to determine her escape for slavery. I am interested in Jacobs’ ability to reclaim her voice in the midst of a silencing environment. A close examination of the narrative allows us to appreciate a vital dimension of the female slave experience in the omnipresence of the slaveholder: the use of voice and speech to hinder the slaveholder’s ability to use his authority to its fullest extent.

In her adolescence, Jacobs finds herself entangled and constrained by the sexual desires of her owner, Dr. Flint. She describes being placed in an impossible bind because she is a woman under the control of a forceful man. Either way, Jacobs found the courage to use her voice against Dr. Flint’s sexist voice. Risking her very life to challenge Dr. Flint’s authority, Jacobs “talks back” with wit and irony:

There was silence for some minutes. Perhaps he was deciding what should be my punishment; or, perhaps, he wanted to give me time to reflect on what I had said, and to whom I had said it. Finally, he asked, “Do you know what you have said?” “Yes sir; but your treatment drove me to it.” “Do you know that I have a right to do as I like with you, –that I can kill you, if I please?” “You have tried to kill me, and I wish you had; but you have no right to do as you like with me.” “I know I have been disrespectful sir,” I replied; “but you drove me to it; I couldn’t help it. As for jail, there would be more peace there for me than there is here.” ((Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of  a Slave Girl, ed. Nellie Y McKay and Frances Smith Foster,  (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000): 35.))

Despite the operations of racism and sexism, Jacobs manages to voice her honest opinion to Dr. Flint, knowing that he would expect her to be silent. It is important that Jacobs knows when to use her voice and when to remain silent, strategically silent, even when ordered to respond. We should remember, however, that Jacobs’ exercises her voice with sharp critique, knowing that she will likely not be harmed by Flint because he is interested in keeping her desirable body in tact. Quite problematically, sexism “protects” her. Her voice can be used only because of the slaveholders’ abusive attraction and sexual interest. Slaves were expected to remain silent in the presence of whites unless directed to respond.  If slaves chose to remain silent when questioned, they were abused or murdered for their disobedience.

Jacobs’ use of silence is strategic. Given Flint’s obsession with her, withholding key information throws his singular desire into chaos so that silence in this context operates as a kind of speech.  To say nothing is to say something very powerful.

He ordered me to stand before him. I obeyed. “I command you,” said he, “to tell me whether the father of your child is white or black.” I hesitated. “Answer me this instant!” he exclaimed. I did answer. He sprang upon me like a wolf, and grabbed my arm as if he would have broken it. “Do you love him?” said he, in a hissing tone. “I am thankful that I do not despise him,” I replied. ((Ibid., 40.))

Not only does Jacobs choose not explicitly to answer Dr. Flint, she also forces the reader to fathom her choice not to speak, whether it is to keep the identity of the father discrete for a time in fear for his safety, or to sustain her personal integrity in the face of violation. When she does reveal her lover’s name, she retains discursive power by turning Flint’s desperation (“Do you love him?”) on its ear by redefining love as “not despising” someone. Troublingly, Morgan downplays Jacobs’ use of language, implicitly defining slave literacy as “the use of reading and writing to distract her enemy.” ((Morgan, 85.)) But certainly literacy in Jacobs’ case should be extended to speech, especially given Jacobs’ keen skills at parody, irony, and other forms of stylistic savvy, including the figure of the litotes in the passage quoted above.  Here, Jacobs deploys a sophisticated rhetorical repertoire, as effective (if not more savvy) than Douglass’ persuasive style. To contend that Jacobs is disinterested in literacy as a method for resistance is to dismiss her bravery, fearlessness, and genuine daring, both in her disabling responses to Dr. Flint and in the presentation of her experience to audiences who doubted women’s capacities to exercise public voice.

To contend that Jacobs is disinterested in literacy as a method for resistance is to dismiss her bravery, fearlessness, and genuine daring, both in her disabling responses to Dr. Flint and in the presentation of her experience to audiences who doubted women’s capacities to exercise public voice.

Television, music videos, and commercials represent the masculine objectification of women, often displaying the black female body as highly sexual. The same black female body was objectified in slavery: women with light skin, like Harriet Jacobs, were considered more desirable than those with darker skin tones. Partly because of this curious distinction, Jacobs could speak her mind, depending on her body to keep her safe from physical harm. But to be black, beautiful, and to have a strong voice confounds both racist and sexist ideas–even now.

 Bibliography

Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Ed. Nellie Y. McKay and Frances Smith Foster. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.

Morgan, Winifred. “Gender-Related Differences in the Slave Narratives of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass.” American Studies. 35, no. 2 (Fall 1992): 73-94.

Children’s birthday parties have a tendency to erupt into complete and utter chaos. Twenty unruly children are hard enough to control without the addition of piñatas, pony rides, and Pixy Stix. In hindsight, this aspect of chaos is not what people tend to recollect about such parties. Rather, they remember the dissipation of this pandemonium in exchange for the calm brought by the customary singing of “Happy Birthday.” Such a song carries with it the connotation of unity and camaraderie due to its seemingly unfailing ability to coalesce a group of party-goers into harmony. Usually, it is more difficult to discern the effect of music on a group than it’s effect on an individual. Each person may have a unique reaction to the same song, which is partially responsible for the difficulty in identifying its generalized effects on a group. It is generally accepted that direct effects of listening to music can change one’s mood or provoke new thoughts. However, over extended exposure, music can have more intricate and lasting effects on people and relationships. Additionally, the particular music that groups listen to can reflect their current social conditions. Therefore, music inspires and reflects harmony and unity within groups that interact with it, as what we might call its Apollonian abilities maintain intergroup relationships over prolonged periods of time.

As each successive summer begins, “Sweet Caroline” evokes shared memories as it reunites family and friends. Whether listening to the song while floating on the lake, or lounging by the campfire in Adirondack chairs, it always welcomes us back to summer and to a state of harmony in our relationships.

Throughout childhood, my summers were marked by an exodus from Pittsburgh’s suburbs to our cottage on a small lake about an hour north of the city. Each year, friends and family gathered there for boating, skiing, cookouts, and campfires. Around my tenth birthday, these summer memories became punctuated by music, specifically Neil Diamond’s song, “Sweet Caroline.” During that particular summer, my parents succumbed to a lack of judgment and purchased a karaoke machine for the family. It was not long before summer nights comprised performances of Billy Joel, Elton John, and Duran Duran. But our hallmark performance was “Sweet Caroline,” to which elaborate dances were choreographed and lyrics belted off-key.  This particular encounter with one of Diamond’s most successful song has continued for almost a decade, and has come to represent substantially more than a worthwhile karaoke machine purchase. As I navigated my way through middle school, I looked forward to each summer’s Saturday nights. The unchanging schedule included grilling hamburgers and hot dogs, building a campfire for the parents, and then retreating inside for some “Sweet Caroline.” It seemed that each time we performed the song, our embarrassing dance routines and crazy Neil Diamond impressions only strengthened our relationship with the song and each other. Our experiences with the song have built upon one another, and it has since become our uniting anthem. Now, when the clock strikes twelve on New Year’s Eve, we blast “Sweet Caroline” over the stereo. When we moved into our new house last year, we christened it with a “Sweet Caroline” serenade. Our annual Fourth of July fireworks are now punctuated by Neil Diamond’s crooning of his hit song through the speakers on our back deck.

As each successive summer begins, “Sweet Caroline” evokes shared memories as it reunites friends and family. Whether listening to the song while floating on the lake or lounging by the campfire in Adirondack chairs, it always welcomes us back to summer and to a state of harmony in our relationships. Over the course of a decade, our schools and jobs have changed, but the people and the music have remained constant. The memories we made while singing, dancing, shouting, laughing, and crying to this song are strengthened and preserved by “Caroline” herself, who has evolved into a keeper of friendships and memories. These experiences help us to convey an instance of music affecting a group collectively. Much like singing “Happy Birthday,” listening to this song coalesces the group every time we reunite.  Each time I hear Neil Diamond launch into the first verse, I am transported back to simpler times  so that collective memories and relationships are reinforced. In this way, the song also serves to reflect the tranquil amity of our summer atmosphere.

The unity that “Sweet Caroline” evokes can be explained by it adherence to the Apollonian music theory.  According to R. Murray Schafer, Canadian composer and author of “The Soundscape,” there are two primary views regarding the purpose of music: Dionysian and Appolonian. Derived from Greek myth, the Dionyscian theory holds that music is best understood as a chaotic, emotion-laden whirlwind, while the Apollonian theory proposes that music embraces the more formal purpose of inspiring harmony and unity within social groups. ((R. Murray Schafer. “The Soundscape,” in The Sound Stories Reader, ed. Jonathan Sterne. (New York: Routledge, 2012): 97.)) The Apollonian theory bolsters my own experiences with music. Specifically, Schafer reminds us that the Apollonian view “seeks to harmonize the world through acoustic design.” ((Ibid., 98.)) My own experience with songs of summer attest to this power of harmonizing, as “Sweet Caroline” was able to elicit feelings of community and unity among family and friends over a substantial period of time. Even more provocative, Schafer goes so far as to say that “For some time I have also believed that the general acoustic environment of a society can be read as an indicator of social conditions which produce it and may tell us much about the trending and evolution of that society.” ((Ibid.)) Using my life as a microcosm of this idea, various music accurately mirrors situations and feelings I have experienced. Rather than “harmonizing the world” with music, “Sweet Caroline” harmonizes and strengthens unity in a much smaller cross-section, my group of friends and family. Each summer, the song’s complement to my experience reflects an unchanging, relaxing summer environment. This carefree mood, characterized by a current of group harmony, is directly represented by the music we choose to listen to.  Listening to Billy Joel, Elton John, and Neil Diamond reflects camaraderie, familiarity, and requiescence.

Music wields a power of unity and reflects our social conditions. Not only does it have profound individual effects, but it is also capable of strengthening group dynamics over long periods of time, whether a birthday party or friends around a campfire. This capability also speaks to music’s universality. Ineffective by themselves, but strong together, music’s combination of acoustics and lyrics elicits congruence and inspires collective witnessing of events. The Apollonian approach rings true to personal experience as it accounts for a vital social force.

Bibliography

Schafer, R. Murray. “The Soundscape” In The Sound Studies Reader. Ed. Jonathan Sterne. New York: Routledge, 2012: 95-103.

From the end of World War I to the middle of the 1930s, the United States witnessed a rebirth of black culture in what has come to be known as the Harlem Renaissance. Jazz was the musical herald of this new cultural identity: unbound, vibrant, fragmented, and provocative. Jazz was a hybrid, born from ragtime, blues, and spiritual traditions. Jean Toomer emerged at the height of this cultural and musical revolution and in his novel, Cane, we see the considerable influence of jazz on the new era in black literature of the United States. Cane is at once an embodiment of the American literary modernist and New Negro movements, influenced on the one hand by white modernist thinkers such as Sherwood Anderson and Waldo Frank, and on the other hand by the trailblazers of the New Negro movement: Claude McKay, W.E.B. DuBois, and Zora Neale Hurston. Thus, both in its characters and its narrative, Cane is an amalgam of racial and sexual configurations, painting images of queerness and quareness in enigmatic colors. Just as jazz is a mosaic of rhythms and preexisting musical traditions, Cane is not bound to one song as the black writers before it tended to be; it sings the harmonies of numerous shifting sexual and racial identities, pulsing together to reveal the quareness of the New Negro. This ployphonic quality, rooted in jazz, is most evident in Toomer’s rendering of black motherhood. In her essay, “Cane and the Erotics of Mourning,” Jennifer Williams analyzes the use of song as Toomer’s way of connecting his racial past to his present, and loss to sexuality. Through assessing her analysis and examining the narrative, structure, music, and characters in “Kabnis,” a section of the novel, I will elucidate how the quare spirit of jazz flows in Cane through the voice of the black mother, and will demonstrate how its male characters (like Toomer himself) are driven by the quest to find this voice.

“Kabnis” begins by setting us behind the eyes and ears of a male voice in Ralph Kabnis, and then with the song of the night winds, which functions as a refrain throughout the section: “White-man’s land./Niggers, sing./Burn, bear black children/till poor rivers bring/Rest, and sweet glory/In Camp Ground” ((Jean Toomer, Cane, Eds. Rudolph P. Byrd and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011, 81.)) This initial placement of perspective in Ralph Kabnis is significant, as he serves as the filter through which the events of the narrative unfold and the songs are heard; because of this, the music of “Kabnis” as well as the beginning song, is at once the backdrop against which the narrative unfolds and the form that dominates Kabnis’s senses, driving him to hysterics. Originally, “the lips of the night winds use for whispering” ((Ibid.)). that disturb Kabnis carry no gender, and Toomer describes “the winds, like soft-voiced vagrant poets sing”. ((Ibid., 85.)) However, in the third and final iteration, Toomer attributes the song to “Night, soft belly of a pregnant Negress. . .Cane and cott0n-fields, pine forests, cypress swamps, sawmills, and factories are fecund to her touch”. ((Ibid., 103.)) In this context, the female voice is the source of Kabnis’s discomfort and disconnection with reality. Specifically, it is the voice of the black mother, as indiated by the phrase “the soft belly of a pregnant Negress” ((Ibid.))

Furthermore, the musical elements of the refrain play a critical role in understanding Kabnis’s feverishness and the nature of queerness and quareness in Cane. The refrain is structured as a call-and-response, like many jazz songs and spirituals. The second, fourth, and sixth lines serve as responses for the congregation or accompanying musician. Here, Kabnis is a solitary figure being called to his black, Southern roots. The phrase “Camp Ground” is a reference to a black spiritual made famous by Paul Robeson, calling slaves to run away into “Camp Ground.” The harmony of the black mother is wrenching to Kabnis, a “queer bird” ((Ibid., 108)) of the North who proudly declares that his “ancestors were Southern blue-bloods” ((Ibid., 106.)) Just as the jazz in the refrain reflects Cane‘s circular design (in the circular journey “from the South up into the North, and back into the South,” so too is Kabnis a traveler on a circular path: his roots are in the slave-holding South, and although the North has complicated his racial identity, he is inevitably bound to return “home.” ((Ibid., 285.)) Additionally, just as jazz evokes a sensual, physical response in its audience, the call of the black mother drives Kabnis into a frenzy because it evokes what Williams describes as “the violence of racial history.” ((Jennifer D. Williams, “Cane and the Erotics of Mourning,” in Cane, 2nd Ed., Eds. Rudolph P. Byrd and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011: 416.)) She finds that the song serves as a “repository of cultural memory” of a traumatic past that Kabnis and Toomer have both repressed as motherless children. ((Ibid.))

Kabnis’s fervent response to the black mother’s call is not only rooted in its beckoning to his inextricable Southern queerness, but also in the absence of a mother in his life. It is his absence that leads Kabnis to hear the singing voice of a woman when others hear instead a man’s voice: “Thats a man. Hear me Kabnis? A man–“. ((Toomer, 96.)) The black mother’s voice is a harmony of queerness, summoning Kabnis to black selfhood. The break at the end, after Halsey says “A man–” represents Kabnis’s

Furthermore, the musical elements of the refrain play a critical role in understanding Kabnis’s feverishness and the nature of queerness and quareness in Cane.

dissociation with the present and his obsession to search for his mother. The  association of blackness with woman, mother, and song is ever-present in Kabnis’s psyche. Toomer deliberately weaves this union at critical moments in the narrative, such as the moment “the sister cries frantically: ‘Jesus, Jesus, I’ve found Jesus. O Lord, glory t God, one mo sinner is acomin home.'” ((Toomer, 90.)) At this moment, “a stone, wrapped round with paper, crashed through the window. . .reads ‘You northern nigger, its time fer y t leave”. ((Ibid.)) Here, the anaphora of the song in the repeated words “Jesus,” “Lord,” and “God” serves as the jazz, which utilizes repeated cadences of the mother’s call for the sinner to return home. However, at the climax of the woman’s song, Kabnis receives a violent reminder from someone who presumably is also black, of both is blackness and queerness. Although harmony is “perfectly attunede to the nervous key of Kabnis,” the black mother of the South is not his mother. ((Ibid.))

Thus, “Kabnis” is ultimately about Kabnis’s search for the black mother in the jazz and spiritual harmonies of her song. Furthermore, it is the absence of the black mother that queers the men in “Kabnis.” However, just as the queerness drives the men in “Kabnis” towards the black mother, it also pushes them away from her: “Th nigger hates th sight of a black woman worse than death” ((Ibid., 106.)) Nonetheless, as is seen with Kabnis, the compulsion to search for the black mother is undeniable. Halsey relates this compulsion when he says of Stella, “I used t love that girl. Yassur. An sometimes when th moon is thick an I hear dogs up th valley barkin an some old woman fetches out her song, an th winds seems like th Lord make them fer t fetch an carry th smell o pine an cane. . .I sometimes get t thinkin that I still do” (Ibid., 108.)) Here, we see that Halsey is most able to connect with Stella as black mother when memories of the slave-holding South arise: a blood-burning moon, an old woman crooning a spiritual, and “th winds” that “fetch and carry th smell” of the old South. This compulsion is only further demonstrated when Halsey attempts to find the black mother in Stella’s sexuality: “Halsey pins her arms and kisses her. She settles, spurting like a pine-knot afire” ((Ibid., 110.)) As Williams points out, “women’s bodies function metaphorically as a song as well, establishing a female-gendered connection with the past, with the site of origin.” ((Williams, 409.)) Thus, the sexuality of both Stella and Cora is simultaneously and embodiment of spirit of the “sorrow songs” that DuBois describes through the musical expression of “wounded kinship,” and also the spirit of jazz by virtue of their unbridled sexual nonchalance and their representation of the site of migration for Kabnis’s northern body. They are the only connection to his slave past just as jazz is the musical remnant of slave spirituals.

Even Lewis, who, judging from other characters’ descriptions, is white, is searching for the black mother. Lewis constantly attempts to associate himself with the black characters in “Kabnis,” which effectively makes him “queer as hell.” ((Toomer, 107.)) Various moments reveal this. In the previous quote, where Halsey describes the repulsion of the black man at his own quest, he follows by saying, “Sorry t mix y up this way, Lewis. But y see how tis.” ((Ibid., 106.)) Additionally, like Halsey, Lewis turns to Stella: “His gaze shifts to Stella. Stella’s face draws back, her breasts come towards him.” ((Ibid., 107.)) Here, Stella’s breasts represent her maternal qualities; Lewis seeks blackness and quareness in her breast milk.

Nonetheless, all three men are unsuccessful in their quest that night in the basement. Lewis fails because of the unique nature of his white quareness. He is spurned by both Stella and Cora, and “finds himself completely cut out. The glowing within him subsides. It is followed by a dead chill. . . he bolts from the table. Leaps up the stairs.” ((Ibid., 110.)) Halsey and Kabnis fail because of the nature of Stella and Cora. Although Stella’s and Cora’s sexualities are imbued with the spirit of jazzz in their easy, unbound agency, and they exhibit maternal instincts in various moments, they are ultimately incapable of fulfilling the roles of mother. Their nature as failed mothers manifests  itself throughout the basement scene. For instance, when Lewis looks to Stella, she replies “I aint got nothin f y, mister. Taint no use t look at me.” ((Ibid., 107.)) Stella herself suffers from the absence of the black mother: “A white man took m mother. . .an there I didnt care what become of me, an I dont now. I dont care now. Dont get it in y head I’m some sentimental Susie akin for you sop.” ((Ibid.))

Cora follows Stella’s example. When she engages Kabnis, “she meets his weak approaches after the manner she thinks Stella would use.” ((Ibid., 105)). Like Stella, she is a tragic figure because of her failure to fulfill the role of black mother and her past, revealed by “the twisted line of her moth when she smiles or laughs. . .[is a] suggestion of the life she’s been through.” ((Ibid.)) The line not only describes Cora’s personal history of trauma, but more generally, the traumatic sexual, racial history that Williams describes as “the unspeakable” in Cane. ((Williams, 414.)) Because of her black womanhood, Cora carries the sexual trauma of the slave-holding South, and because she is a childless mother as much as Kabnis and Toomer are motherless children, she is an extension of Mame Lamkins: morbid proof that “the violence of racial history cannot be contained by words unless those words can materialize into flesh, becoming ‘misshapen, split-gut, tortured, twisted words’.” ((Ibid., 416.)) Like Mame Lamkins, Cora’s and Stella’s bodies are deformed and, by extension, corrupted, unable to express itself and the history of women’s sexual and racial trauma.

Hence, although the jazz of Stella’s and Cora’s sexualities makes them unequivocally woman, their traumatic sexual history and separation from song and spirit queers them as black women; without quareness, they cannot assume the role of black mother. This separation from song and spirit is implied by the conspicuous absence of song from the moment that the characters enter the basement. Additionally, because of their queerness, they have actively attempted to suppress their blackness, albeit not successfully: “The girls, before the mirror, are doing up their hair. It is bushy hair that has gone through some straightening process. Character, however, has not all been ironed out. . .they are two princesses in Africa” ((Ibid., 111)). Thus, like Lewis and Halsey, Stella and Cora are tragic figures in “Kabnis” because of their failure to fulfill their role in the quest for quareness and their separation from song and spirit.

Until the final scene, it appears that Kabnis, too, will be a tragic, queer character because of his inability to find the black mother. However, the object of his quest emerges in the form of Carrie K. Toomer points to Carrie’s K’s quareness when he describes her “coming down the stairs. . .she is lovely in her fresh energy of morning, in the calm untested confidence and nascent maternity which rise from the purpose of her present mission” ((Ibid., 113.)). In the context of Stella’s and Cora’s failures, this mission is all too obvious. Toomer introduces Carrie as a maternal figure; thus, it is Carrie K. who is able to redeem Kabnis. Carrie’s arrival reads as the response to the call of Kabnis’s monologue; in the absence of the refrain, he bears it upon himself to sing a lament in order to satisfy his quest, which he describes as “hell. . .it’s a feelin an its ragin in my soul in a way that’ll pop out of me an run you through, an scorch y, an burn an rip your soul” ((Ibid., 112.)). When she touches him, “Kabnis is violently shocked. . .He springs back. . . ‘Carrie! What. . .how. . .Baby, you shouldnt be down here. Ralph says things. Doesnt mean to. But Carrie, he doesnt know what he’s talkin about. Couldnt know. . .I’m th victim of their sin. I’m what sin is” (Ibid., 114.)). When Kabnis says this, he finally acknowledges the burning desire within him to find the black mother and the tragedy of himself. Here, he is finally vulnerable in his queerness and his search for quareness. Additionally, his reference to himself in the third person is significant because the last time Kabnis refers to himself as “Ralph” is at the beginning, when he says “Ralph Kabnis is a dream.” ((Ibid., 81.)). Thus, in his admission of vulnerability and the emergence of the black mother, we finally see the”real” Kabnis.

However, Carrie K. does not fulfill Kabnis’s quest just through her emergence; instead, she works through Father John to bring Kabnis’s southern quareness face to face with him. Until this moment, Father John represents muted queerness; he is queer blackness embodied, a physical artifact of the spirituals, and as such, is unable to communicate with Halsey, Lewis, or Kabnis because of their failure to find blackness through the song of the mother. However, in the presence of the fulfilled black

Toomer’s weaving of jazz into the search for black motherhood in “Kabnis” is fundamentally about beginning the cultural process of mourning and celebration, as well as declaring the song of the New Negro henceforth.

mother, he is able to speak to Kabnis. Father John is also quarred through call-and-response: Carrie K. is the call and his response represents the emergent quareness that concludes “Kabnis”: “O th sin white folks ‘mitted when they made th Bible lie” ((Ibid., 114.)). This is a condemnation of whiteness and consequently, a celebration of blackness; it is a call to turn away from blackness. Kabnis responds sarcastically, but Carrie K.’s subsequent reply and embrace drives home Father John’s message of quareness: “‘Bother Ralph, is that your best Amen?’ She turns to him and takes his hot cheeks in her firm cool hands. Her palms draw the fever out. With its passing, Kabnis crumples.” ((Ibid., 114.)). Kabnis’s’ redemption in this scene is particularly apparent when placed in the context of Stella’s earlier description of the fever that Carrie K. here extracts from Kabnis: “Boars when their fever’s up. When their fever’s up they come t me.” ((Ibid., 107.)). However, whereas Stella and Cora cannot exorcize this fever, Carrie K.–as quare mother–does so, and Kabnis’s physical response resembles that of someone successfully exorcized. Carrie K.’s success most clearly manifests at two points in the closing moment: First, as “her lips murmur, ‘Jesus, com,’ and second, in the final line, as song is returned to the world when “the sun arises. Gold-glowing child, it steps into the sky and sends a birth-song slanting down gray dust streets and sleepy windows of the southern town.” ((Ibid., 115.)).

Thus, when we view “Kabnis” as the search for black motherhood and song, we see it in what Jennifer Williams describes as “black musical traditions as sites of memory where collective traumas can be addressed and possible repaired” ((Williams, 408.)). Through Williams’ analysis for “‘working through’ profound losses” Toomer utilizes the black musical traditions of jazz and folk to resolve the trauma of losing his mother at a young age, and hence his own blackness.” ((Ibid.)). In “Kabnis,” Toomer attempts to craft an “everlasting song” in which he can link the trauma of the slave South to his identity as a New Negro, so as to begin the process of grieveing and mourning. In his attempt to heal the cultural trauma of blackness through song, Toomer expresses the fundamental idea of quareness: the New Negro should not hide from his or her violent past, but should recover and repair its trauma through song. Here, understanding jazz is key to understanding the quest of the New Negro; jazz both invokes DuBois’s “sorrow songs” in its incorporation of slave spirituals with a celebration of new-found blackness in its entrancing rhythms. In doing as jazz does, the New Negro, like Kabnis, can unearth the black mother in the pain of his or her racist-sponsored trauma. Thus, Toomer’s weaving of jazz into the search for black motherhood in “Kabnis” is fundamentally about beginning the cultural process of mourning and celebration, as well as declaring the song of the New Negro henceforth.

Bibliography

Toomer, Jean. Cane. Eds. Rudolph P. Byrd and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011.

Williams, Jennifer D. “Cane and the Erotics of Mourning.” in Cane: Norton Critical Edition. Eds. Rudolph P. Byrd and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011.

Images of human suffering occupy a difficult space in journalism and documentary. They often add a level of depth and accuracy to a portrayal of tragedy that cannot be reached by words alone, but they are also liable to violate the privacy and agency of those they represent. ((I would like to thank my classmates in Writing 101: Representing the Other and our professor, Dr. Hillard, for providing thought-provoking discussion of the ideas in this paper and for helping me through the revision process.)) Their prevalence in today’s media amplifies these problems, suggesting a need to examine the ethics of their use. In their article “The Appeal of Experience; The Dismay of Images: Cultural Appropriations of Suffering in Our Times,” Arthur and Joan Kleinman outline multiple ways in which depictions of human suffering can abuse their subjects. In their estimation, images of human suffering can only be publicized in a morally acceptable manner if they avoid “essentializing, naturalizing, or sentimentalizing” suffering. ((Arthur Kleinman and Joan Kleinman, “The Appeal of Experience; the Dismay of Images: Cultural Appropriations of Suffering in Our Times,” Daedalus 125, no. 1 (Winteer 2009): 2.)) In other words, depictions must not reduce their subject’s life to one element, make normal an occurrence that is exceptional, or draw excessively on the emotions of the viewer. The Kleinmans also discuss the possibility that representations of suffering do not adequately convey the social aspect of human misery; rarely does an individual’s pain effect only himself. ((Ibid.)) A third set of concerns deals with the elevation of either the photographer or the audience at the expense of those depicted, as the Kleinmans fear that representations of suffering remove the power of their subjects by making each one “an image of innocence and passivity.” ((Ibid., 10.)) This elimination of the subject’s agency transfers all the power in the photographer-subject relationship to the photographer.

While not directly addressed in the Kleinman’s essay, Philippe Bourgois and Jeffrey Schonberg’s photo-ethnography, Righetous Dopefiend, falls under the genre of work that is susceptible to the problems the Kleinmans identify. The Kleinmans base their examination of images of suffering primarily on two photographs: Kevin Carter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a starving Sudanese girl being stalked by a vulture, and a highly sexualized New York Times photograph of a child prostitute in Bangladesh. ((Ibid., 3.)) While the Kleinman’s exact concerns differ between the two photographs, the images share two important characteristics: both depict people in precarious situations, and both were created with the intent to publicize their subjects’ suffering. Righteous Dopefiend, an anthropological study of San Francisco’s homeless heroin addicts, contains many images that share these traits. The addicts live precarious lives; while arguably not in the same immediate danger as the girl in Carter’s photograph, they exist in a state of perpetual flight from both law enforcement and torturous withdrawal symptoms. The moments Bourgois and Schonberg capture in photographs reflect this danger, making their subject matter similar to that of the photographs the Kleinmans discuss.

The images in Righetous Dopefiend are also similar to those in the Kleinman’s essay in that they were created with the intent to publicize the suffering of their subjects. The authors hope to make known “the relationships between large-scale power forces and intimate ways of being” so that policy changes can be made to ameliorate the addicts’ situation. ((Philippe Borgois and Jeffrey Schonberg, Righteous Dopefiend (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 5.)) Though Righetous Dopefiend does not have as wide an audience as a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, or an image in a popular newspaper, the photography it contains is nonetheless meant to make public suffering that, before being photographed, was very private. This combination of suffering as subject matter and publicity makes the photographs in Righteous Dopefiend analogous to those in the Kleinman’s essay, meaning that the Kleinmans’ argument can be used to evaluate Bourgois’ and Schonberg’s work. While the authors are fairly successful in avoiding essentializing, naturalizing, or sentimentalizing pain as they portray the social aspects of suffering, the book does occasionally increase the representational power of the photographer and ethnographer at the expense of the subjects in ways that the Kleinmans’ fear.

Bourgois and Schonberg take great care to avoid essentializing their subjects, mostly by using accompanying prose to provide ethical context. For example, one photograph shows Carter, one of the addicts depicted, injecting heroine into Tina, his companion’s, arm. ((Ibid., 243.)) Without any accompanying text, this image would certainly risk essentializing Tina , since its distinguishing feature is the needle being inserted into her vein, thereby identifying Tina merely as an another addicted body attending fully to the moment of her “fix.” This effect is increased by the fact that Carter’s face is not shown, reducing him to the role of supplier, a pair of hands used to inject the drug. The background is indecipherable, keeping the image from being grounded in time or space, robbing it of narrative context. There is little to give Tina or Carter a more fully human dimension aside from their existence as users, as vehicles for heroin consumption. The discourse associated with the image, however, reveals the complicated social context surrounding Carter’s injecting Tina. Bourgois and Schonberg explain that Carter’s injecting Tina “was a way of expressing their romantic intimacy and further reinforced Carter’s assumed responsibility to generate enough income for her new heroin habit.”((Ibid.)) This explanation allows both subjects to appear as multifaceted individuals with fuller identities beyond that of mere addicts; it illustrates the complexity of their relationship to each other and to the drug. Without the text, the viewer would have no way of knowing that Carter figures injecting Tina as an act of “love,” or that Tina is new to the use of heroin. Because of the accompanying text, the image avoids the essentializing effects the Kleinmans identify in Carter’s photograph of the Sudanese infant.

Bourgois and Schonberg take great care to avoid essentializing their subjects, mostly by using accompanying prose to provide ethical context.

The naturalization of suffering–the misrepresentation of suffering as an inevitable part of a certain culture–is also not especially problematic in Righteous Dopefiend.  Referencing the example of the photograph of the starving Sudanese girl and the resulting generalizations made by Americans about the Sudanese, the Kleinmans warn that images representing suffering in one culture are likely to reinforce stereotypes when distributed widely in another. Though we glimpse addicts managing their dependency (injecting heroin, preparing the drug, storing needles), the bulk of the images depict the residents of the homeless encampments in normative activities: conversing with friends, contemplating their lives, sleeping, or eating. In this way, the addicts are known to us as whole persons whose lives are not completely defined by their struggle, their pain, or their precarity. Bourgois and Schonberg urge us to understand them as persons within their communities.

A casual viewer of some of the photographs in “Chapter 3: A Community of Addicted Bodies” could accuse the authors of sentimentalizing the suffering of the addicts. Photographs depicting abcesses or amputees, at first glance and without reading the surrounding text, are undeniably shocking. For example one photograph shows Hogan with one arm severely scarred, and one arm amputated. ((Ibid., 105)). With no explanation, the photograph provides a sentimentalized representation of Hogan’s suffering; it induces intense pity, with no layers of response beyond pure emotion. However, the authors include an extensive background of the photograph in which they detail Hogan’s trip to the hospital and his neglectfully early release, describing Hogan “hobbling down Edgewater Boulevard leaning on Felix’s shoulder immediately following his release from the hospital.” ((Ibid.)) Though the inclusion of this account does not make the emotional response to the photograph any less intense, it does provide a layer of meaning beyond Hogan’s pain. This extra dimension eases the sentimentalizing effect because it directs the audience’s emotion. The specification of the inattentive and unsympathetic hospital system as the clear cause for Hogan’s pain identifies a specific problem to be dealt with. The text provides a rational outlet for the emotion catalyzed by the image; it helps stir an audience to action rather than inducing aimless depression.

Bourgois and Schonberg are conscious of the social aspects of suffering, one of the Kleinmans’ central concerns. A series of three photographs showing Tina and Carter in various stages during and after injection very clearly convey the social nature of their suffering. The three images depict Tina injecting herself as Carter looks on; Tina laughing in the foreground as Carter, holding a needle, laughs in the background; and finally, the two in a loving embrace. ((Ibid., 245.)) The two most prominent concepts in the photo are Tina’s and Carter’s love for one another and (slightly less emphatically) their heroin use. This characterization of the two as lovers first and addicts second reveals how their relationship links their suffering to each other. This idea is especially clear in the first photograph, where Carter watches closely as Tina injects herself. The text surrounding the images reveals that the photograph depicts Tina learning how to inject herself, shedding light on the fact that Carter is taking care to make sure that she does so properly. ((Ibid., 246.)) The images and text illustrate how their heroin habits are linked and, likewise, how their suffering is mutualistic.  They suffer not only simultaneously but also reciprocally, both with and for each other. By conveying this dynamic, the authors represent the full spectrum of each person’s pain, confining neither Tina nor Carter to singular spheres. They avoid the Kleinmans’ fear that images of suffering tend to isolate the subject outside of his or her social context.

Despite Bourgois’ and Schonberg’s careful efforts to represent their subjects ethically, their work occasionally participates in the victimization of the homeless addicts. The Kleinmans identify this potential problem in their essay; they assert that in some depictions of suffering, the sufferer “becomes a victim, an image of innocence and passivity, someone who cannot represent himself, who must be represented.” ((Kleinman and Kleinman, 10.)) It is possible that in facilitating the public representation of addicts’ lives, Bourgois and Schonberg may symbolically rob them of their powers of self-representation. This is not to say that the structural changes that the authors identify in their conclusions could not benefit the addicts, but rather that by assuming responsibility for the portrayal and intended eventual uplift of the homeless, the authors negate the possibility that their subjects could do anything to help themselves. The photograph of Hogan’s mangled body and its accompanying text exemplifies this victimization. Hogan is presented as helpless, lost in a hostile system from which he has no hope of escape. While the image and text are effective in inspiring the audience to action, they have the detrimental effect of indicating the authors and the audience as the source of any real change, removing any power Hogan himself may exercise. It is also significant that the authors themselves are never depicted in the images in Righteous Dopefiend; this effectively separates them from the suffering in their photographs, delineating victims with little power from observers with much more.

Before condemning Bourgois and Schonberg for victimizing their subjects, however, it is important to recognize that the issue of power differentials is inherent to the very genre of documentary.

Before condemning Bourgois and Schonberg for victimizing their subjects, however, it is important to recognize that the issue of power differentials is inherent to the very genre of documentary itself. The language of power differentials is inherent to the very genre of documentary itself. It may be impossible to document human suffering without creating a power imbalance, as the relationship between the audience and the subject is narrow and one-sided. The audience can never perfectly understand a subject’s life, nor can a subject actively participate in how that audience interprets the information presented by the documentarian. In this sense, it is the documentarian and the audience who hold most power in the rhetorical relationship. The agency of the subject is entirely absent from the process of production, distribution, and reception. If a documentary cannot be produced without limiting the power of its subjects, then representing suffering becomes a question of balancing the project’s benefits and liabilities. Is it possible to represent the suffering other without more or less victimizing the subject? If so, what makes such a representation acceptable?

Through images and texts, Bourgois and Schonberg carefully adjust their representation of San Francisco’s homeless heroin addicts to avoid many of the sticking points the Kleinmans identify, but they cannot fully escape the power imbalance inherent in the documentary genre. It is left to their audience to evaluate whether the good that can come from these representations–for example, the potential solutions the authors offer in their conclusion–is worth the victimization of the subjects. These same considerations much be taken in account in every case of the visual or linguistic representations of those who suffer. We must judge whether the propagation of such images causes significant good to outweigh the harm in this imbalanced relationship between the viewer and the subject.

 

Bibliography

Bourgois, Philippe and Jeffrey Schonberg. Righteous Dopefiend. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.

Kleinman, Arthur and Joan Kleinman. “The Appeal of Experience; The Dismay of Images: Cultural Appropriations of Suffering in Our Times.” Daedalus 125, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 1-23.

 

 

In 1905, Albert Einstein postulated the theory of special relativity, which expands on Newtonian mechanics to explain the motion of objects at velocities approaching the speed of light. The theory of special relativity was required to reconcile Maxwell’s Equations describing electromagnetism with Galilean Transformations describing relativistic motion according to Newtonian mechanics. Special relatively depends on two postulates: the laws of physics are the same in reference frames, and the speed of light is the same for all observers. Chief among the consequences of special relativity are the phenomena of time dilation and length contraction according to Lorentz Transforamtions. These aspects of special relativity explain the speed of light as the universal speed limit, the relativity of simultaneity, and mass-energy equivalence. Special relativity explains certain physical phenomena such as the difference in lifespan of radioactive particles traveling at high speeds compared to stationary particles, nuclear fission and fusion, and has made the Global Positioning System possible. In 1915, Einstein expanded the theory of special relativity into the theory of general relativity, which applies relativistic principles to non-inertial frames of reference not included in special relativity.

Introduction

In 1905, while working as a clerk in a Swiss patent office, Albert Einstein published his paper On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, in which he postulated his theory of special relativity. ((Wikipedia, “Special Relativity,” last modified April 24, 2015, acessed May 5, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity.)) Before Einstein’s paper, scientists had struggled to explain why the theory of electromagnetism was incompatible with changing inertial reference frames. They theory of special relativity reconciled electromagnetism with Newtonian mechanics, but introduced the possibility of even more confusing phenomena.

 Galilean Relativity

Contrary to popular belief, Albert Einstein was not the first physicist to propose a theory of relativity. In the seventeenth century, Galileo Galilei outlined the principles of what is known today as Galilean Relativity. ((Wikipedia, “Galilean Invariance,” last modified April 12, 2015, accessed May 3, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_invariance.)) Galileo began by describing what Isaac Newton later named inertial frames of reference. An inertial frame of reference is a system of coordinates that is stationary or moving at a constant speed relative to another frame of reference. Galileo proposed that the laws of motion are the same in all inertial reference frames. ((“Galilean Relativity and Newtonian Mechanics.” Einstein Light (University of New South Wales website), n.d., accessed May 5, 2015. http://newt.phys.unsw.edu/au/einsteinlight/jw/module1_Galileo_and Newton. htm.)) For example, Galilean Relativity states that a ball dropped by a person sitting in a car moving at constant speed behaves according to the same laws of motion whether the motion of the ball is observed in the frame of reference of the car or the frame of reference of the Earth. However, the trajectory of the ball in each reference frame will appear differently according to each observer (Figure 1). Galileo outlined a series of transformations, known as the Galilean Transformations, which describe how the position and velocity of an object changes between different inertial reference frames based on the assumption that the time elapsed between two given events is the same in both reference frames. Just as Newtonian mechanics describes the motion of objects moving well below the speed of light with great accuracy, Galilean Transformations are very accurate at transforming object positions and velocities between inertial reference frames moving at low speed.

 Problems Arise

However, in the early twentieth century, physicists began noticing discrepancies between Newtonian mechanics and Galilean Transformations, and the theory of electromagnetism proposed by James Clerk Maxwell in his 1873 paper, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. Galilean Transformations and the theory of electromagnetism were found incompatible for two reasons. First, when Maxwell’s Equations, which describe electromagnetism, were subjected to Galilean Transformations, the equations yielded nonsensical results. ((Professor Mario Belloni, personal interview.)) For example, Maxwell’s Equations changed form and failed to continue to accurately describe electromagnetic behavior. The disagreements seemed to indicate that either the theory of electromagnetic behavior was wrong, or that Galilean Transformations were inadequate for electromagnetic waves. Second, Maxwell’s Equations mathematically produce a value for the speed of electromagnetic waves, more commonly referred to as the speed of light: 186,000 miles per second. At the time, it was thought that electromagnetic waves, like all other waves, require a medium through which to propagate. According to this assumptions, the movement of this peculiar medium (called the ether) through which electromagnetic waves propagate ought to affect the speed of the electromagnetic waves. However, Maxwell’s Equations gave no indication that the speed of light should change due to a change in reference frame or the motion of a medium. ((Professor John Yukich, personal interview.))

In 1887, in order to investigate whether or not the speed of light changes with the motion of the ether, physicists Albert Michaelson and Edward Morley performed an experiment at Case Western Reserve University designed to detect the motion of the ether. ((Wikipedia, “Michelson-Morley Experiment,” last modified March 8, 2015, accessed May 5, 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment.)) The experiment involved firing pulses of light perpendicular to each other over the same distance and measuring whether one pulse of light covered the distance in less time than the other (Figure 2). A discrepancy in time elapsed would indicate that the motion of the ether had affected the speed of light that passed through it. However, in repeated trials, Michelson and Morley detected no difference in the time required for both pulses of light to cover the same distance. ((“Time Dilation and Length Contraction in Special Relativity.” Einstein Light (University of New South Wales website), n.d., accessed May 5, 2015. http://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/jw/module4_time_dilation.htm.)) The results of the Michelson-Morley experiment indicate that there is no ether, and the speed of light is invariant. Clearly, another explanation was required.

Einstein’s Solution

Einstein’s theory of special relativity is based on two postulates: 1) all the laws of physics, and not just the laws of motion, are the same in all inertial reference frames, and 2) the speed of light is the same for all observers in all reference frames. Thus, Einstein includes electromagnetism in special relativity. In order to account for light having the same speed in different reference frames, special relativity has two radical consequences: time dilation and length contraction.

The change of the amount of time elapsed between events as observed in different reference frames is called time dilation. Redefining time as a relative property of the universe rather than as an absolute property was a radical departure from Galilean relativity, and, indeed, all other previous physics. Describing the difference of position, speed, and time in different reference frames at relativistic speeds requires a different set of transformations, called the Lorentz Transformations. Recall that the assumption in the Galilean Transformations that the time elapsed between events is constant in different reference frames requires changes in position and velocity of objects between inertial reference frames. By the same principle, keeping the velocity of light constant between inertial reference frames for the Lorentz transformations requires a change in position and time.

To understand how time dilation works, imagine a spaceship flying at a constant speed and equipped with a light generator, light detector, and a mirror (Figure 3). An astronaut inside the spaceship measures that the light takes a certain amount of time to propagate out from the emitter, reflect from the mirror, and return to the detector. However, to an observer outside the spaceship on Earth, the light appears to follow a longer, diagonal path to reflect from the mirror and return to the detector. Since the light must move at the same speed, the amount of time required for the light to cover that distance must be longer. Thus, the observer on Earth experiences more time than the astronaut inside the spaceship. The shortest time elapsed, called proper time, will always be measure in the frame of reference of the observer who measures both events (the light propagating out and returning) in the same location. In the example of the spaceship, the astronaut in the spaceship measures the proper time, and the observer on Earth experiences dilated time.

Length contraction is another consequence of special relativity. It is the shortening of the length of high-speed objects in the direction those objects are traveling as observed from a stationary frame of reference. If observers in different reference frames agree on velocity but disagree on time elapsed, by necessity they must disagree on length as well in order to agree on the same law of physics. The disagreement about time causes observers in any frame of reference to measure lengths moving in other frames of reference as shorter than they really are. However, lengths are only contracted in the direction of the motion of the object. The longest length (the proper length) is measured in a frame of reference in which the object is stationary. In the example of the spaceship, the astronaut observes the proper length of the spaceship. The observer on Earth measure the length of the spaceship contracted. However, the observer on Earth measures the proper length of the distance the spaceship travels, and the astronaut measures a contracted distance traveled.

It is important to note that time dilation and length contraction are only significant effects for objects and frames of reference moving at velocities nearing the speed of light. For example, an object traveling at 10% the speed of light only has its length contracted by 0.5%. ((“Length Contraction,” The Physics Classroom, n.d., accessed May 5, 2015, http://www.physicsclassroom/com/nmedia/specrel/lc.cfm.)) A velocity of 10% of the speed of light is typically considered the threshold at which relativistic effects must be considered. However, 10% the speed of light is 18,600 miles per second. Thus, while time dilation and length contraction are experimentally verified effects and do occur for all motion, those effects can be ignored in ordinary circumstances.

Implied Phenomena

Special relativity implies the possibility of a series of baffling phenomena concerning the behavior of objects moving at velocities nearing the speed of light. Chief among these phenomena are the relativity of simultaneity, mass-energy equivalency, and the universal speed limit.

Events are simultaneous if they occur at the same time. However, time dilation between reference frames leads to the conclusion that events that are simultaneous in one frame of reference may not be simultaneous in another frame of reference. Thus, the theory of special relativity casts simultaneity as a relative phenomenon rather than an absolute one, as the theory does with all time-dependent phenomena. The relativity of simultaneity can lead to some puzzling apparent paradoxes, the most famous being the barn-pole paradox (Figure 4).

Imagine a barn with doors at both ends which rapidly open and close at the same time. Now, consider a pole that is about twice the length of the barn. The pole is traveling near the speed of light through the barn such that due to length contraction, there is an instant in which both barn doors can close and the pole is enclosed in the barn. From the frame of reference of the barn, the pole will fit perfectly in the barn before the doors reopen and the pole flies off. However, in the frame of reference of the pole, the barn appears to approach the pole at the speed of light. Thus the barn will contract in length so that the pole is longer than the barn and both barn doors can’t close around the pole at the same time. ((Robert Firth, Philip Gibbs, and Scott Chase, “A Special Relativity Paradox: The Barn and the Pole,” The Physics and Relativity FAQ (University of California-Riverside Department of Mathematics website), 1997, accessed May 5, 2015, http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/barn_pole.html.)) According to special relativity, both of these outcomes should occur at the same time!

The resolution of this apparent paradox lies in the relativity of simultaneity. While both doors close simultaneously in the barn’s frame of reference, they close at different times in the pole’s frame of reference. First, the far door will close as the pole flies into the barn. Then, the far door will reopen and the pole will begin to pass out of the barn. As the back edge of the pole enters the barn, the near door will close and reopen behind the pole, and the pole will fly out of the barn unhindered.

Another phenomena implied by special relativity is mass-energy equivalence.