One of the niftiest things about George Saunders' writing is the way he can seamlessly challenge one of society's most valued beliefs in an incredibly convincing way. In this case, I'm referring to the way he presents love in his charming story "Escape from Spiderhead".
In said story, we encounter a fellow named Jeff, who is a convict that opted to be used for scientific experimentation in leu of prison time in a distant and frightening future. One of the things our buddy Jeff tests is a serum that creates the feeling of love for another person, and goodness does it work. With the help of this serum, Jeff is able to fall madly and passionately in love with two separate ladies in the span of only a few hours. And I would like to emphasize the passion of this love, because for each woman, he says that he was overcome with the feeling that they were perfect in every way. Not that they were just hot or nice, but literally the epitome of what Jeff had desired for his entire life. For each woman.
But hold up, how can he love two different women in such a way? That means it's not true love, right? Or maybe what Saunders is trying to say is that there really isn't such a thing as "true love". Or that romantic love isn't quite as special as we as a society like to think it is. Now, obviously we don't have any of Jeff's serum, but Saunders' point still stands.
And, like any good author/philosopher, he provides a counter-point: that there exists a more important love that is accessible to all of us no matter who we're dealing with. And that love, as cheesy as it sounds, is the love of fellow humans. Perhaps love is not the best word for it, but I feel like it's a fitting term given the context of the story. When the scientist, Abnesti, kills someone during his experiments, Jeff is upset, due to "basic human feeling". However, the more powerful stuff comes after the first death at the beginning of another. Abnesti is about to (potentially) kill another person that Jeff currently has no feelings for and Jeff won't stand for that. He ends up sacrificing his own life in the place of the other person's, and feels liberated in his last moments for doing so. It is from this freedom that he experiences at the end that we see the true power of being a good person. It is through the sacrifice that Jeff is able to find long term happiness in a sense, and not through the artificial feelings of romantic love.
So love isn't necessarily all that it's cracked up to be, according to Saunders. Instead of trying so hard to find that special someone, instead focus on trying to be a good person, and think of others before yourself. Something like that.
I like/agree with everything you said, but i think another possibility is that Saunders is only pointing out that love is just a chemical reaction in the brain and that Jeff could go through that and stop multiple times.
ReplyDeleteI agree with all that you say about the "greater human feeling" and how that is more important than love, but I don't think that Saunders leaves the reader with the conclusion that love is controllable. There are many different kinds of love in the story, one sexual and passionate, which could be controlled, but there are others such as the one between Jeff and his mother. Abnesti cannot control Jeff's adoration for his mom, and even in his final act, Jeff hopes to make her proud. As he jumped, he had little regard for his own life, but only regret for leaving his Mom. Even though this is not the typical form of love Abnesti sought to control, I think Saunder's believes that it is just as important.
ReplyDeleteErin has a good point in that Jeff's adoration for his mother is not quantified by Abnesti or by the same standard that his love for Heather and Rachel could be in the story. However, he never chooses to pursue controlling it. In "Escape from Spiderhead", I think Saunders is acknowledging that the quantification of romantic love for it has been morphed by the media and societal standards to no longer be a personal unique interaction, but rather various duplications of the ideal relationship. I believe he is criticizing that fact that society even has an ideal romantic relationship.
ReplyDeletePerhaps I should have clarified more, but when I referred to "love" in this post, I was referring to romantic love, like the kind Jeff felt for Heather and Rachel. I wasn't trying to say that there is no such thing as love, but rather that, as you three said, this romantic love is disproportionately valued by society. That's all. Also, good catch with the mother love, that's also a somewhat subtle but also important aspect to Saunders' depiction of love that I failed to you touch upon in my post.
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