Themes (spoilers to end of book)

irishrosem · Doctorate Joined: 19 Oct 2006 Posts: 536 Gender:

[This isn't about any one specific part of the book so I figured I should start a new thread. I hope that's o.k. It's hard for me to write about individual parts of a book, I tend to always relate it backwards and forwards.]

I’m not sure if anyone else, besides Mad, is reading this story but it’s been a week since I finished it and if I don’t get some thoughts down then I’ll forget them.

Thankfully, the “sands of time” theme was not overused. In fact, as I recall, it was only once explicitly evoked, and this within a context that made sense. After the protagonist’s watch stops working, his last vestige of the outside world, he ruminates, “As long as this vicious circle was not broken somewhere, not only his watch but time itself would be immobilized, he feared, by the grains of sand” (93). It’s almost as if Abe didn’t need to invoke the “grains of sand” image because he wrote a story that essentially narrates the meaning behind it.

First, what really struck me as significant to this story is Abe’s ability to commingle extraordinarily developed themes within a simple context. The story is exceedingly straightforward: a man is trapped in a hole. And yet the resulting themes that unfold, each affecting the other, was almost magical to participate in. Abe touches on the constructs of society comparing the outside world with the world in the sand. Within these comparisons, he discusses the themes of stagnancy (or being stuck in a rut) and movement and how this plays into violence and passivity. Isolation and the significance of human relationships is a major theme that plays into almost every idea in the novel, most specifically the sexuality addressed in the book. There are also themes of work, perspective, and obviously nature and sand. One of my practices is to note passages in a book that highlight specific themes; I can then align each noted passage with its theme on paper and really see their individual development. This was more difficult to do with Abe, because each theme was dependent on pieces of other themes. I have a feeling that these notes will, as a result, turn out to be muddled. Therefore, I’m only going to address the theme of debt below and see where the discussion, if others get involved, develops.

The idea of debt and payment, specifically with regard to the protagonist’s perspective of “what is owed,” was interesting to see develop. This quasi economy system the protagonist adopts based on what is earned or deserving in contrast with what is undeserving. It begins with a normal assurance that he will show his “appreciation” monetarily to the person who provides him with a place to sleep (20). He does not want to feel indebted to or take advantage of someone. This idea of paying for his expenses runs throughout his discussions with, and pleas to, the woman. Upon accepting food from the woman, after realizing he was the town’s captor, he justifies it by assuring himself it would be repaid. That he was allowed to accept the food in order to keep his strength, as long as it wasn’t taken freely. “It was not a question of her doing something for nothing. He would certainly pay for his food. If he paid his money there would be no reason to feel indebted to her—not a bit” (61). After bounding the woman in an attempt to lure the villagers down to rescue her, he again reiterates that he will “pay honest board,” even though his “stay here should be free” he “can’t stand not canceling such a debt” (103).

This idea of payment for services then filters into the theme of sexuality that pervades the second half of the book. Throughout, he sees his lust for the woman as a temptation to succumb to his imprisonment, as if the woman in the dunes were a siren to lure and hold him. “He couldn’t relax his guard. Her charms were like some meat-eating plant, purposely equipped with the smell of sweet honey” (91). If he accepts the “sweet honey” then he will be indebted to her, granting the woman justified power over the protagonist. “First she would sow the seeds of scandal by bringing him to an act of passion and then the chains of blackmail would bind him hand and foot” (91). This then creates an association with prostitution within their relationship. The protagonist would have to pay for sex with his freedom; if he accepts what he perceives as her advances, he then accepts the implicit imprisonment.

But the debt theme takes an even more intricate turn almost from the outset. Immediately after trying to climb out of the sand hole and returning to the hut to see the woman crouched naked in a corner he thinks “it would not be long before he would see himself as an executioner, torturing the woman…And in that movement he would lose his right to speak” (53). The protagonist feels he has the higher ground here, he is a victim of the woman and the town’s imprisonment. He could easily overpower the woman with violence “torturing the woman” but then he would “lose his right to speak.” In other words he will lose his righteousness. This aligns with the conversation on the Religion board that Dissident Heart and I are having regarding Martin Luther King, Jr. King argued for peace, despite violence being justified, because that was the only way to truly attain the higher ground for both the victim and the oppressor. If the protagonist takes retribution on the woman, she is no longer indebted to the protagonist for the wrongs she has inflicted. Of course, in the end, the protagonist collects on his debt, tying the woman up and at times enjoys her suffering, “Let her suffer. It was fitting retribution for her to suffer like this” (123).

And yet, just after collecting his fee, the protagonist questions the justification of the villagers to imprison him, “‘Where do those fellows get the right to strike such an absurd bargain?” (127). After participating in a less than respectable way in the economy of human relations, the protagonist then tries to use reason to question his imprisonment. Yet, as the reader has already accepted, reason cannot be used to explain the protagonist’s situation. He has no role in the “bargain” he questions, nor is he any longer owed the right to participate in the bargain.

In the end, the protagonist finally understands the debt issue from the villagers’ perspective. The old man has already explained to the protagonist that they cannot rely on government to help them with the sand. “‘If we let the government office have their way we’d be lost in the sand while they’re fiddling with their abacuses’” (152). If the villagers feel abandoned by the outside world, then “naturally there was no reason why they should be under obligation to the outside world. So if it were he who caused injury, their fangs should accordingly be bared to him” (223). The villagers see the protagonist as a participant in the abandonment they feel from the outside world. As an outsider then, he is deserving of imprisonment in their effort to save the woman’s house and therefore their village, because he is implicated in the overall negligence of the outside world.

I think this idea of debt as not justifying punishment or retribution can relate back to the earlier discussion of “fixed positions” and Abe’s claim that “a stationary condition” leads to “unpleasant competition” (15). In order to truly make social changes we must reevaluate these “stationary conditions” and the entire concept of the economy (debt/payment or justification and retribution) of society and human relations, much the same way the protagonist is able to at the end of the story. Everyone is owing and owed. How do we move beyond this?

MadArchitect

Okay, Rose, I've finished the book, so I'm ready to reply to your earlier comments. I hope you haven't had to wait too long.

First off, I'll say that I was actually really impressed with the way Abe handled the last two or three chapters. I didn't think I was going to like them, but I ended up feeling that they were very apt without being too somber.

irishrosem: Isolation and the significance of human relationships is a major theme that plays into almost every idea in the novel, most specifically the sexuality addressed in the book.

Sexuality seemed to have been, more than anything else, a way of cementing relationships. That all comes to a head in the next to last chapter, when the villagers grant Jumpei's request for limited freedom on the condition that he and the woman publically demonstrate their conjugal relationship. In an oblique way, it reminds me of the conclusion to Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut".

This quasi economy system the protagonist adopts based on what is earned or deserving in contrast with what is undeserving.

There seems to be a commonality between money and sand -- you could almost say that money was modelled on sand. It's fungible and reducible. I don't know where that analogy leads; it's something I hadn't thought about until you brought up the economics of the novel.

What strikes me as most pertinent is the way in which money absolves the character from any sort of permanent relationship to others -- similar to the way he cognizes sand as a kind of itinerant element, repelling any attempt to put down roots. If I recall correctly (I don't have my copy with me), he even tries to rationalize his sexual relationships as a kind of monetary exchange.


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