Captured... Her Heart?

The family dynamic in The Man Child confuses me a little bit. 

When I first started reading it, I got really concerned that I was about to read a short story about an abusive father who did not care about his children or wife at all. I thought the family dynamic would be a lot worse than it ended up actually being.

In the very first paragraph in the book, Baldwin is setting up the scene. They’re describing the main character (Eric) and his family. In the second line, Baldwin writes, 

“Eric lived with his father, who was a farmer and the son of a farmer, and his mother, who had been captured by his father on some far-off, unblessed, unbelievable night, who had never since burst her chains. She did not know that she was chained anymore than she knew that she lived in the terror of the night.”

When I first read this, I had to reread it, making sure that I wasn’t mistaken. His mother was captured by his father? What does that mean? These questions are never really answered in the novel, so those lines still confuse me. But not only that, they leave me with a sense of worry. It makes me feel like the father is not a good guy. It makes me believe that the father will turn out to be a bad man in this story and that scares me a little. 

Later in the same paragraph, still setting up the story, Baldwin writes,

“Then, not long ago, there had begun to be a pounding in his mother’s belly, Eric has sometimes been able to hear it when he lay against her breast. His father had been pleased. I did that, said his father, big, laughing, dreadful, and red, and Eric knew how it was done, he had seen the horses and the blind and dreadful bulls.”

This again, puts my mind in a weird place. It is obvious that Baldwin is maybe trying to set us up to be wary of the father figure in this story, but I’m not so sure. 

The story goes on, nothing really stands out about the father that is “bad”. He seems pretty caring towards his family, which it doesn’t seem like would be the case based on the first paragraph. So maybe, the word “captured” was in reference to a phrase like “captured her heart”? Who knows.  The only thing that I noticed that the father did that was bad was poking fun at Jamie at the dinner table and arguing with him. This also kind of contradicts the beginning, because in the third paragraph it said they were good friends, they were practically brothers. So I was surprised by that as well.

Overall, I liked this story a lot. I liked the twist at the end, although it was horrible and awful and terrifying. I guess I just like morbid short stories. But, I am still confused by the beginning. I still don’t know what Baldwin meant by all of it. I don’t know if he wanted us to believe that the father would be bad, if he was just setting us up to be surprised. Whatever his actual intention was, I was definitely surprised by the story as a whole. 

What color were her eyes?

Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes stood out to me as a story. It was the first one that really confused me, which isn't really normal when I read a Salinger story. I really didn't know what to make of the story so I shamefully looked at a summary to try to get more info that I might have been missing. I guess the thing that confused me the most was the relationship of the woman in the story to the two men. Was she just some random woman? Or was she Arthur's wife? *dun dun dun*

I think it's interesting that we can read the story in two completely different ways depending on how we see the female character. So I guess that's what I'm trying to compare right now.

If we view the female character as just some random lady:
I think that in this situation, Arthur looks a little (or a lot) less sympathetic. He calls up Lee in the wee hours of the morning after a party, freaking out about his wife. She isn't home, which I guess is definitely a little worrying, and he keeps accusing her of hooking up with any guy she talks to and going crazy at parties. Someone in class mentioned that it made Arthur look a little possessive in a way, and I kind of agree with that. It does make him look a little possessive. Plus he keeps saying all these bad things about his wife (granted I think he feels a little bad for saying them...). But overall, Arthur definitely looks a lot less sympathetic.

If we view the female character as Arthur's wife, Joanie:
This changes things a lot. At first, it's a little hard to pick up on the idea that the lady might be Joanie. Some people in class didn't pick up on it, I didn't even pick up on it until I read online that it could be Joanie. We'll never really know, but I think that it makes it a more interesting story if Joanie is the one with Lee that night. If we assume that it is in fact Joanie in the room, Lee looks like (to put it bluntly) an asshole. He's hooking up with his coworker's wife! I just feel really bad for Arthur here too because it's obvious that he's worried. He might even have his suspicions about Lee and Joanie, and maybe that's why he's calling. I have a lot of theories that I could talk about but really I'd end up writing an entire essay. But if this really is true, it also makes Lee look pretty impressive by walking this tight rope of trying to give Arthur advice but also trying not to give him any hints that he's with Joanie.

There are a lot of things that might point to the second theory (as Joanie being the woman in the story). First of all the title could give it away. "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" could suggest eyes, green with envy, and a pretty mouth having to talk their way out of a sticky situation (Lee talking to Arthur on the phone). Another small thing that could allude to the second theory is in the beginning, when the phone was ringing, Lee asked if he should answer it or if he should just let it ring. Why would he not answer it? Was he worried that it actually was Arthur? We may never know.

Really, I don't know anything as to whether or not it is in fact Joanie, but I definitely have my suspicions and theories.