Religion and faith is a recurrent theme in book. What do you think the message is? What do you think Miss Lonelyhearts really believes about religious faith? How does his "Christ complex" affect the story?
I found the religion/faith theme fascinating - that Miss Lonelyhearts wants to believe in Christ but has also consciously rejected the orthodox Christian faith. Yet he can't completely pull himself away. I found this passage interesting, at the climactic scene with the Doyles:
"With the first few words Miss Lonelyhearts had known that he would be ridiculous. By avoiding God, he had failed to tap the force in his heart and had merely written a column for his paper."
Yet at the beginning we learn that "With him, even the word Christ was a vanity." (In the chapter "Miss Lonelyhearts Returns.")
I thought that West cut across more usual discussions of Christianity and faith at an odd, but very interesting, angle. It didn’t seem that Lonelyhearts was really beset by doubts as is so often the case in a struggle of faith. Instead, for him Christ seemed to be a fever and very immediate, and the issue was fear of engaging something so hot and consuming. Indeed, Lonelyhearts has a string of fevered hallucinations; the last of which is in a chapter called “Miss Lonelyhearts has a Religious Experience”.
What do you make of “the stone” he seems to have achieved and tested near the end of the story? And what of the religious imagery of the attempt to sacrifice the lamb? Violence seems to be very much at the core of his religious fever.
Shanxi, that paragraph about "avoiding God" stood out to me, too.
I felt like Lonelyhearts was struggling against an overwhelming sense of futility and helplessness, like he knew the true answer to everyone's problems: Love one another (as Jesus said). Comfort one another, as he wanted to advise the Doyles. Try, for once, to create happiness through making someone else happy instead of constantly contemplating your own misery. But it wasn't an answer that people were prepared to embrace because it demanded a great deal of them, too, and even if they embraced the idea, what good did it do them if the people around them didn't embrace it, too? It was a very lonely path. I sometimes thought of Holden Caulfield from "Catcher in the Rye" while reading this — the idea of one guy who sees, or thinks he sees, to the heart of why human beings are such miserable creatures and who feels the need — along with the terrible futility — to do something about it, to "catch" all the little kids before they fall.
Good point about the fever imagery, DW. I thought the whole rock thing was just a matter of steeling his resolve, his moral core, so as to make it impenetrable from the likes of Shrike.
That’s a good point. “Love” is an excellent solution, but it does have the very difficult problem of being a social solution and not an individual solution. West doesn’t frame his story in political terms, but he was writing in politically turbulent times. You can certainly give a political read to this story or use it as a political criticism of religions that advocate a social approach like love but avoid attempting social—political—transformation.
Maybe Lonelyhearts “stone” can be seen in this light too. I wasn’t sure if it was part of his preparation for his final—and rather Christian—vision, or if it was an alternative that he discards in the end. I was wondering if it was perhaps a religious alternative in being a more Buddhistic approach to suffering.
The rock thing is interesting. He describes it as though he's had some kind of religious enlightenment, but to me it seemed more like he was simply squelching all emotion.
I found the lamb episode pretty hard to read.
Shrike repeatedly refers to Miss Lonelyhearts as a Christ figure. Do you think he thought of himself that way?
I found the religion/faith theme fascinating - that Miss Lonelyhearts wants to believe in Christ but has also consciously rejected the orthodox Christian faith. Yet he can't completely pull himself away. I found this passage interesting, at the climactic scene with the Doyles:
ReplyDelete"With the first few words Miss Lonelyhearts had known that he would be ridiculous. By avoiding God, he had failed to tap the force in his heart and had merely written a column for his paper."
Yet at the beginning we learn that "With him, even the word Christ was a vanity." (In the chapter "Miss Lonelyhearts Returns.")
I thought that West cut across more usual discussions of Christianity and faith at an odd, but very interesting, angle. It didn’t seem that Lonelyhearts was really beset by doubts as is so often the case in a struggle of faith. Instead, for him Christ seemed to be a fever and very immediate, and the issue was fear of engaging something so hot and consuming. Indeed, Lonelyhearts has a string of fevered hallucinations; the last of which is in a chapter called “Miss Lonelyhearts has a Religious Experience”.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you make of “the stone” he seems to have achieved and tested near the end of the story? And what of the religious imagery of the attempt to sacrifice the lamb? Violence seems to be very much at the core of his religious fever.
Shanxi, that paragraph about "avoiding God" stood out to me, too.
ReplyDeleteI felt like Lonelyhearts was struggling against an overwhelming sense of futility and helplessness, like he knew the true answer to everyone's problems: Love one another (as Jesus said). Comfort one another, as he wanted to advise the Doyles. Try, for once, to create happiness through making someone else happy instead of constantly contemplating your own misery. But it wasn't an answer that people were prepared to embrace because it demanded a great deal of them, too, and even if they embraced the idea, what good did it do them if the people around them didn't embrace it, too? It was a very lonely path. I sometimes thought of Holden Caulfield from "Catcher in the Rye" while reading this — the idea of one guy who sees, or thinks he sees, to the heart of why human beings are such miserable creatures and who feels the need — along with the terrible futility — to do something about it, to "catch" all the little kids before they fall.
Good point about the fever imagery, DW. I thought the whole rock thing was just a matter of steeling his resolve, his moral core, so as to make it impenetrable from the likes of Shrike.
That’s a good point. “Love” is an excellent solution, but it does have the very difficult problem of being a social solution and not an individual solution. West doesn’t frame his story in political terms, but he was writing in politically turbulent times. You can certainly give a political read to this story or use it as a political criticism of religions that advocate a social approach like love but avoid attempting social—political—transformation.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Lonelyhearts “stone” can be seen in this light too. I wasn’t sure if it was part of his preparation for his final—and rather Christian—vision, or if it was an alternative that he discards in the end. I was wondering if it was perhaps a religious alternative in being a more Buddhistic approach to suffering.
The rock thing is interesting. He describes it as though he's had some kind of religious enlightenment, but to me it seemed more like he was simply squelching all emotion.
ReplyDeleteI found the lamb episode pretty hard to read.
Shrike repeatedly refers to Miss Lonelyhearts as a Christ figure. Do you think he thought of himself that way?