The Parts of the Self_________________________________________

The last page suggested that the manifest characters of Oklahoma!
don't have a one-to-one correspondence
with the characters they represent in the underlying fantasy.
One character can play a number of roles in the underlying fantasy
and a number of characters can play one role.

When we take this insight as far as it will go
we discover that we don't have to think of the characters
as persons at all, although we experience them
this way when we watch the movie.
Instead, we can think of them as representing
different ways of dealing with life
and different parts of the self
since we all contain inside ourselves
all the possible solutions to life.
The creators poured these characters out
from inside themselves
and we, in turn, are able to take them in
and live vicariously through them
because they are the faces we show and hide
from ourselves and the world.

The interactions between them can also be viewed
as unfolding  inside a single person, who is
the creator of the story and each of us and generic humanity.

As a representation of parts of ourselves,
Aunt Eller embodies the wisdom that comes with age;
she is the wisdom of being open to the good of life
and accepting the bad.
Her single status and the fact that she is
a surrogate mother to her niece, Laurey,
who has no parents in sight, suggests
that Aunt Eller knows something about the bad.

Jud and Laurey are her opposites, each in a different direction.
Laurey, who is alone except for Aunt Eller,
wants to know only the good in life
and wants the good to always remain the same.
She is sunshine and delight,
but is unable to face ugliness or accept uncertainty.
She is a child in fear of growing
into a world that includes sex and death.

Jud knows only the bad.
He has filtered out the good and,
living in a place that is a paradise,
has dug a hole for himself and shut himself inside.
He too represents the act of getting stuck in development.
Afraid to be potent and alive,
he has sunk into anality, jealousy, and fantasies of revenge.

Laurey must come face-to-face with the bad he represents,
before she can grow up and fall into the tender arms of love.
Her encounter with him is a confrontation
with the dark side she has activated in man and in herself.
When she sees that the alternative to
embracing love and life
is Jud's lascivious and impotent lifelessness,
she finally accepts what love brings -- the act
of becoming part of a world of change and death.

Annie represents the fear of growing up in another way
because she yearns for a life of adolescent irresponsibility
in which she can give in to sexual temptation.

Just as Laurey's "suitors", Curly and Jud,
are potent goodness and impotent malevolence,
so Annie's suitors -- Will and the Peddler -- are polar opposites:
childlike naiveté versus con artistry.

The Peddler is worldly wise, like Aunt Eller,
but he uses his wisdom to manipulate people
for his own benefit, rather than acting benevolently.

Aunt Eller is also the opposite of the foolish father of Annie,
as he appears in the second love triangle.
The father wants to control his daughter's life
and pick her husband
whereas Aunt Eller wants to bring out in her niece, Laurey,
the ability to make a choice
based on what her own heart tells her.

Laurey and Annie are different aspects of womanhood and humanity --
frigidity (however well disguised) and sexual abandon, or fear and desire.
Aunt Eller is what they can become --
a person at peace with herself who is no longer driven
by fear or desire
and can devote herself to helping the next generation
find its place in the world.

The potent and phallic Curly
and Annie's domineering father
are aspects of traditional masculinity.
Both are brave men who know how to use phallic guns
to threaten weaker men.
But Annie's father is foolish and controlling
when it comes to his daughter.

Curly and Jud, Will and the Peddler, and Annie's father,
are different aspects of man and humanity --
potent assertiveness and impotent fearful resentment;
childlikeness; shrewdness; and domination.

Ultimately, this society of characters is the society
of characters inside us.
You are Jud and Curly, Annie and Aunt Eller,
Laurey and the Peddler
and so am I.

The insight the movie offers at the end
can be related to this idea.
As Aunt Eller expresses it to Laurey:
"You got to get used to all kinds of things happenin to ya.
You got to look at all the good on one side
and all the bad on the other and say
'Well, alright then to both of them.' "

If you modify that statement so it refers to people as well as situations,
it represents a central insight we achieve
in the act of growing up, namely, that we can accept
all the aspects of people and ourselves.
We can accept the fact that someone is good but has a dark side,
or that someone is strong who also has weaknesses.

In the movie, these aspects are divided up
as they often are in the primitive ideas we have about people
in the unconscious.
What fiction and criticism can teach us
is that in accepting, loving, and identifying with the characters
who are aspects of ourselves,
we can accept the fact that we have many aspects,
good and bad, wise and foolish, and strong and weak.
Similarly, in identifying with Aunt Eller and with Laurey,
who finally accepts the good and bad of life,
we can get a sense of what it is like to do the same.

As Aunt Eller would put it,
we have to look at at all the good on one side --
of ourselves and other people and life --
and all the bad on the other, and say
"Well, alright then to both of them."

The number inside us isn't legion, but we have many facets,
and, as this jewel of a movie keeps spinning its plot around,
it shows us first one face of our selves and life, and then another,
all of which are part of our own quest
to grow into a true adulthood and become whole.

______________________________
Oklahoma Home Page | Transparency