Quest of the Spirit: From Suffering to Acceptance

93. Faith in an Unfaithful World! Rawlings' The Sojourner!

                                                        Rawlings'  The Sojourner: A Spiritual Victory

         "For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away." This passage from James 4:14 reflects the transitory nature of human life, much like the theme of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's The Sojourner. As Rawlings suggests in the novel's opening, "We are all strangers and sojourners . . . as were our fathers" and our days on earth are but "a shadow" (First Corinthians 29:15). In The Sojourner, protagonist Ase Linden spends his days wrestling a living from the soil, struggling and suffering, awaiting the close of his earthly journey and the inception of a newer, higher spiritual quest. In essence, Ase serves as a metaphysical hero, an archetypal Adam, in a post-Civil War farm in the South, much like the dark characters in a Faulkner novel. Ase serves as a moral hero in an immoral society, lost and betrayed by family and modern values. Like the Prodigal Son, Ase's brother Benjamin demands his birthright to seek his fortune in the goldfields of Alaska, only to lose everything through a life of profligacy. His absence, however, causes unceasing sorrow and loneliness for the remainder of Ase's, his mother's and Benjamin's lives. The anguish of their separation forms the basis for Ase's physical and emotional despair throughout his life. Rawlings uses irony and the coming-of-age theme to express the hero's tragic quest.

            Tragically, Ase's intellectual curiosity and desire to understand the psychological motivation of his children leave him at a continual loss. His standards of "truthfulness, integrity, and purity" clearly conflict with those of his offspring who seek the wealth and success of the world, instead. As his children reject his ideas and religious principles, Ase nevertheless remains true to his beliefs. Here, Rawlings creates a hero longing to find his place in the eternal scheme of creation, if not in this life, certainly in the next. Rawlings uses Icarus, the mythical symbol of tragedy, to emphasize Ase's confusion and despair. Like Icarus, Ase's inability to transcend human ideals and understanding forms the basis for his spiritual loneliness and isolation. Ase wants "to ride the eagle" because it is "man's desire for wings, no longer to be earthbound." The main character recalls "the story of Icarus" which "had stirred him deeply" because he "felt himself with this man's cravings" (281). This, Rawlings suggests, forms the embodiment of Ase's tragic nature, to transcend human mortality and knowledge, to be one with the cosmos (72). Ase's friend Mink Fisher had often told him of man's "mythical trek across the Milky Way" (276). This again, Rawlings suggests, constitutes the protagonist's dream. Ase believes that "if a man could once break through it, soar high like a bird, he would be free, would meet, would join, something greater than he, and be complete at last" (94). Here, the aged hero could reach "into the outer space for a comfort the earth did not provide" (72). Rawlings enhances the tragic aspect of her character's existence by comparing modern man's earthly plight to a form of metaphysical tension. Ase remarks at the train station that the bustling activity made "a sort of Purgatory"; the hero comments that "All here were caught if not quite between Heaven and Hell, at least between going and coming, in the eternal lost sojourn on the earth" (300). He regrets that the struggle for power and monetary success overshadows the spiritual purpose in modern man's life. Ase maintains his moral conviction, however, as he reflects in a conversation with Jan Rebaski: "Whatever he became, a scientist, or poet, physician, or professor, he would bring to his life work an integrity , a purity, a dedication" which were to him "the marks" of "great souls" (291-292).

             For Rawlings, Ase also serves as a prophet, as well a tragic hero, who believes that a "physicist" could also function as a "poet" (291). Like Orpheus' lyre, Ase's flute calms all of Nature around him, as it "imitate[s] the mourning of the turtle dove" who "seemed to answer" (208). Ase's music speaks to the soul of Nature and inspires the imagination of those like himself, the gypsies and Tim McCarthy, his mentors. Ironically, his fate separates him from the consummation of his ideals, his "need to learn all possible that may be taught, of the values of life . . . of a greater nobility of labor with the soil, of the dreams of men, to add to the force and beauty of all human living" (194). Like Orpheus, Nature serves as Ase's home and source of peace. Rawlings illustrates his symbiotic relationship with phrases as such Ase "loved the land," the changing of seasons," the "March wind," and the soft gray of April" (162).

            Rawlings also discusses the idea of fate when Ashahel, his brother Benjamin, and mother Amelia face barren hopes following the death of Ase's father. The tragic tale opens in a somber tone, as the closing of father Hiram's funeral service, with "three unmourning mourners" whose "bereavement of life rather than guilt for death" literally "chills" Ase's bones (3). Benjamin "requests" money for his share of the farm (6), and like "three cold stones, pendulous in space" (2), the three are left dangling in as existential limbo, much like the victims in a Dostoyevsky novel. Just as fate condemns the brothers Karamazov to lives of vice and violence, so are Ase's children condemned to experience the torment of daily life. As father Ase comments, "Children came into the world with characters infinitely more unpredictable than those of the creatures from whose breeding and blood lines much could be prophesied" (156). Rawlings here expresses how the inscrutable hand of fate predetermines the events in their lives, even to their own destruction. Rawlings continues in this vein when Ase asks the question: 'Was each individual character implicit, fixed even before birth, so that every man went his tormented way and could never be guided by another equally tormented toward the Truth?'" (186). Rawlings, in this case, suggests the futile consequences of man's impotence against the overwhelming force of fate. Just as heredity condemns the characters in Dostoyevsky's Possessed to generations of madness and insanity, so does human nature condemn Ase and Benjamin to years of hopeless spiritual emptiness. Rawlings also employs the theme of loss and betrayal which parallels the accounts of Cain and Abel, Jacob and Essau, and the Fall of Man. Whether Benjamin wanders across the state of Nevada and the Northwest in search of his destiny, or Ase remains on the family farm to support his wife, mother, and children, the same loneliness and isolation prevails. In Rawlings' eyes, the fortunes of each of the major characters, whether it be Ase at home, Benjamin far away, son Nat in corrupt politics, Amelia the abandoned mother, Nellie the isolated socialite, or even Hiram, Ase's father, suffer the betrayal of father and brother, which suggests a timeless theme, like the luckless fate of the two brothers in Steinbeck's East of Eden.

             Despite Ase's suffering, Rawlings suggests that man's fate still constitutes insufficient cause for remorse. Throughout his life, Ase desires to become one with "the life pulse" of the cosmos which to him exists "somewhere on or in or among other suns and earths and stars." He desires to be one with this pulse which would "continue indestructible, eternal, the Life to which men gave the name of God" (137). His cosmic view also describes the opposing force to man's achieving this goal: "a force of gravity . . . heavy weight . . . [or] . . . unendurable pressure from the outer land" (94). Thus, Ase's scientific application to the forces of good and evil reflects Rawlings' plea for a synthesis of science and morals, much in the manner that Einstein describes as man's only hope for survival. Like Balzac's aged hero in Pere Goriot, who after sacrificing his lifesavings for his daughters, sadly is scorned and abandoned, so Ase sacrifices his emotional and psychological contentment as he longs for the reappearance of his brother, and his children's love and understanding. Ase, disappointed, like King Lear, longs for a respite from the cruelty of his children. Even as a victim, the protagonist, nevertheless, perseveres. Rawlings suggests that Ase, a modern hero, remains true to himself and his faith, unlike the modern existential hero, unlike the existential heroes of the post-war generation who lost faith in God, values and often themselves. Ironically, the price he pays demands his moral and spiritual isolation from the material perspectives of those he loves. This again reflects Rawlings' message for modern man. In his last hours, Ase prepares for his "ultimate home, aeons and aeons hence" (312). Ase knows that "the earth was a pain to leave," but "to know it was to love it" (313). Ase ultimately finds peace. Although his earthly "sojourn had been brief," the protagonist now makes preparations "to gather up the shabby impediments of his mind and body and to be on his way again" (315). This truly becomes the "home he yearned for, the true and final home" (254). To Rawlings, facing eternity in this manner constitutes the highest form of courage. Thus, death merely opens the portal to a new and grander sojourn; such becomes Ase's tragic victory, and hopefully a victory for all of us.

                                    Works Cited for Rawlings'  The Sojourner: A Spiritual Victory

Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan. The Sojourner. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953.