This was an essay for American Lit, I was going to base it on the use of weaving faith and superstition throughout the plotline of several novels, but realized at the last minute that there was no way I could do that effectively. So at the last minute I changed the topic to the use of
food and mealtimes throughout novels, which Dr. Mackie said was a really good topic, but the essay needed a lot of work. I knew that, but a poorly-written essay is better than one turned in past deadline. It got a 79, which is higher than I would have given it, but that just barely kept me from getting an A in that class(I had an average of 88.9). Oh, well.
In literature, often overlooked are minor details of daily
living, if they are not relevant to the plot in some way. One of these aspects
is mealtime; though the presence of food in general often serves as the setting
for an important scene and/or emotional turnaround, or where important
background exposition is revealed. I will try to showcase how food and
mealtimes are important in novels.
Through her novels, mostly situated within the small
Appalachian village of Mitford, North Carolina, Jan Karon writes in a very
down-to-earth, everyday manner. Characters do laundry and go grocery shopping
and work through chores on Saturday; they work crossword puzzles and pray and
read the local newspaper. Most of all, they eat. And many cook. In her
anthology collection/scrapbook The
Mitford Bedside Companion, Karon responds to numerous reader fan mail
commenting on all the food in the books(which includes everything from apples,
buttermilk biscuits, and Sara Lee pies to bouillabaisse, gizzards and lethal
orange marmalade cake). She says on page 49,
“Why is there so much food in the
Mitford books? First, food is a great way of communicating. When I write about
Dooley loving fried baloney sandwiches, you can connect with that. When I write
about Puny baking cornbread and Louella frying chicken, most of you can relate
to that. Food is something we can all understand; it’s a common language.”
A little farther down the same page Karon explains that
besides that, she had left a successful advertising job to launch her writing
career, and the reason the first book was filled with food references was
“largely because my cupboards were bare, and I was writing hungry.”
When hungry, it can
be difficult to think properly, which can lead to poor decision making. The
most obvious example of this is the biblical story where Esau traded his
birthright to his younger brother Jacob as payment for a bowl of lentil stew
(Genesis 25:29-34). Drinking alcoholic beverages throughout history has been
seen as a social pastime, depicted in many literature and films. The impending
decision about Jig getting an abortion in Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills
Like White Elephants” is discussed over beers, while she proclaims that
everything in life tastes like licorice. “Especially all the things you’ve
waited so long for, like absinthe.” Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises is filled with characters who exist in an
alcohol-induced fog of addiction, living out Jig’s thought that “That’s all we
do, isn’t it – look at things and try new drinks?” The characters of Eugene
O’Neill’s play Long Day’s Journey Into
Night would probably agree; as Mary says of addictions in Act Three, “It
kills the pain. You go back until at last you’re beyond its reach.”
Though not using drink as a means of escape, Nick Carroway
of The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott
Fitzgerald, is perhaps running away from the memories of that New York summer
by locking the experience into printed form. Jay Gatsby built up his ridiculous
façade to disguise his anguish over Daisy’s marriage to Tom, but the hullabaloo
camouflaged well the fact that “he was just the proprietor of an elaborate
road-house next door” (64). Gatsby uses
mealtime and alcohol memorably; most of the first chapter introduces us to the
main characters through an extremely uncomfortable dinner party (6-17). The
second chapter is primarily concerned with the bizarre evening at Tom and
Myrtle’s trysting place, which Nick cannot remember too well due to being drunk
most of the night (24-37). It is over a meal at a fancy New York restaurant
where the shadowy side of Gatsby’s business dealings is briefly revealed to the
reader (69-73). Everyone is partially drunk that day in August when Myrtle
Wilson is run over (114-141), and then in the aftermath that night Tom and
Daisy “conspire together”, in Nick’s words, over cold fried chicken and ale
(145).
But more often the sensory experience of consuming certain
foods lends itself well to forming associations with experiences involving that
food; which is what John Tobias’ poem with the extremely long title
“Reflections on the Gift of a Watermelon Pickle Received From a Friend Called
Felicity” is about. As Tobias says:
“…The summer which
maybe never was
Has been captured and
preserved.
And when we unscrew
the lid
And slice off a piece
And let it linger on
our tongue
Unicorns become
possible again.”
Watermelons ruled that summer when “the purpose of knees was
to be skinned”; according to the poem, and E.B. White picks up on this theme
quite a bit in Charlotte’s Web, from
the opening chapter describing the momentous breakfast one spring morning in
the Arable kitchen (7-13) to the listing of all the edible things summer brings
(50-51) to the old sheep’s recitation of the paradise of food Templeton will
find at the county fair (130-131). Listing all the places food drives the story
forward would be citing almost the entire book.
In another novel written for juvenile readers, S.E. Hinton’s
The Outsiders, it’s while Ponyboy and
Cherry are getting popcorn and Cokes at the movie theater where they discuss
the differences and similarities between the Greasers and the Socs, exposing
each to the view that those “on the wrong side of the tracks” might not be so
terrible after all (38-43). Coca-Cola realized that trendy music could help marketers
target the young demographic which Ponyboy, Cherry and Hinton all fell into,
using widespread TV and radio advertisements starring the likes of Ray Charles,
Libby H. O’Connell writes in her history of The
American Plate (238). And while popcorn had a long tradition of being an
American snack food, O’Connell states that its’ big break came from the
invention of the electric corn popper in 1925, which was soon picked up widely
by movie theaters, providing an affordable draw during the Great Depression and
then providing servicemen a taste of home on military bases during World War II
(261).
Besides providing sustaining energy, meals can also be, in
the formal definition of UCLA scholars Elinor Ochs and Merov Shohet in their
journal article “The Cultural Structuring of Mealtime Socialization”, “cultural
sites where members of different generations and genders come to learn,
reinforce, undermine, or transform each other’s ways of acting, thinking and
feeling in the world.”
That transformation of acting and thinking which can occur
over shared meals is part of what makes Celie’s and Squeak’s revolt during a
family meal even more shocking in Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple (198-204). Harmony is just somewhat expected during
mealtimes, and so it’s doubly astonishing when that social civility is snapped.
At the book’s close, a barbecue is one of the staples of the family reunion,
thus reestablishing the sometime-frayed communication channels between former
partners, extended family and parents and children (287-288).
In Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie, the girls’ Christmas is made
immeasurably brighter by Mr. Edwards’ visit bearing gifts from Santa Claus for
Mary and Laura. These presents include a tin cup, a peppermint stick, a cake
made of white sugar and a penny for each of them. And for the whole family, there
are sweet potatoes to go with the Christmas turkey (248-252). Moving ahead
about six years and changing the scenery from the Kansas prairie to the South
Dakota prairie, the Ingalls’ Christmas with their friends the Boasts is
brightened by the meal of roasted rabbit, dried apple pie and popcorn
(198-200).
And sometimes the conversation over meals can reveal
insights or revelations which would have no other outlet. In a place as
ultra-conservative as Philip Gulley’s Harmony, Indiana – which is anything but harmonious – the conversation in the
Coffee Cup restaurant during a slow winter month revolves around the first
bikini ever sold at the Five and Dime (Life
Goes On 193-194). The townspeople can be unlovable curmudgeons who hate
everything to the point where the best thing anyone can say at the funeral is
“He did like Cheetos” (Signs and Wonders 146).
But it in this town, over a piece of terrible-tasting leftover pot roast, that
a father accepts that his son is gay (Signs
185-186).
Going back to Karon’s North Carolina in her first book, At Home in Mitford, the town’s favorite
clergymember Father Tim Kavanagh meets his pretty next-door neighbor Cynthia
Coppersmith the children’s book author/illustrator when she knocks on his door
in a rainstorm to borrow a cup of sugar for a cake; they end up devouring a
rack of barbecued ribs he had just made (At
Home 142-144). From that first interaction, a friendship blossoms which
eventually leads to their marriage. There are times when the strain of
preaching gets to be too much, so those are where Father Tim can take a break
and go visit the cabin of his friend Homeless Hobbes for encouragement and a
bowl of stew in equal measure (At Home 236-240).
Edgar Guest begins his poem “The Perfect Dinner Table” by
pointing out that the tablecloth is slightly dirty from little hands, the food
is not fancy, and it is only him, his wife and their children at the table (Book of Virtues 241-242). The next two
stanzas describe the excited chattering of the kids describing their day and
the minor impolitenesses of putting elbows on the table or talking with one’s
mouth full. It is a perfect example of the domestic focus and warm tone which
so often comes through in Guest’s poetry. But the final stanza closes it out
thusly:
“At many a table I
have been
Where wealth and
luxury were seen,
And I have dined in
halls of pride
Where all the guests
were dignified;
But when it comes to
pleasure rare
The perfect dinner
table’s where
No stranger’s face is
ever known;
The dinner hour we
spend alone,
When little girl and
little lad
Run riot telling
things to Dad.”
That is idealistic, but if your dreams are not slightly out
of reach, what would be the point of aiming at them? Most dinnertimes do not
follow such a placid, well-trodden path – there will of course be battles over
finishing the peas or corn - but that makes the times when it does happen shine
brighter. Throughout this essay I tried to showcase instances of the ordinary
routine affecting the extraordinary events of plotting; this does not the
quality of a Red Lobster meal, instead seeming more of a Hamburger Helper type
of paper.
Works
Cited
Fitzgerald, F.
Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925. New
York: Scribner, 2004. Print.
Guest, Edgar.
“The Perfect Dinner Table”. 1916. The
Book of Virtues. Ed. William J. Bennett. New York: Touchstone, 1993. Print.
Gulley, Philip. Life Goes On. San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 2004. Print.
-----------------.
Signs and Wonders. San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 2003. Print.
Hemingway,
Ernest. “Hills Like White Elephants”. 1927. PDF file, Massey University. Web.
11 November 2015.
Hinton, S.E. The Outsiders. 1967. New York: Viking,
2007. Print.
Karon, Jan. At Home in Mitford. New York: Penguin,
1994. Print.
---------------. The Mitford Bedside Companion. Ed.
Brenda Furman. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.
Ochs, Elinor and
Merov Shohet. “The Cultural Structuring of Mealtime Socialization”. New Directions for Child and Adolescent
Development. Wiley Periodicals. Spring 2006. Web. 11 November 2015.
O’Connell, Libby
H. The American Plate: A Culinary History
in 100 Bites. Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, Inc., 2014. Print.
O’Neill, Eugene. Long Day’s Journey Into Night. 1956. The Norton Anthology of American Literature.
Vol. D. Ed. Nina Bayim and Robert S. Levine. 402-480. New York: W.W. Norton
and Company, 2012. Print.
Tobias, John. “Reflections
on the Gift of a Watermelon Pickle Received From a Friend Called Felicity”.
1963. PDF file, University of Florida. Web. 11 November 2015.
White, E.B. Charlotte’s Web. 1952. New York: Dell
Publishing, 1972. Print.
Wilder, Laura
Ingalls. By the Shores of Silver Lake. 1939.
New York: Scholastic, 1953. Print.
-------------------------.
Little House on the Prairie.1935. New
York: Scholastic, 1953. Print.
