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"READY TO CATCH HIM SHOULD HE FALL" (NEIL BARTLETT) & "A BOY'S OWN STORY" (EDMUND WHITE).   Term Paper ID:20670 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Compares novels' young gay protagonists, their growth, the realism of their experiences & the roles their lovers play.... More...

8 Pages / 1800 Words 5 sources, 18 Citations, MLA Format $32.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: Compares novels' young gay protagonists, their growth, the realism of their experiences & the roles their lovers play. Paper Introduction: This study will compare and contrast the young protagonists in Neil Bartlett's Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall and Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story. The study will consider the growth of the two characters, the realism of their experiences, and the roles their lovers play in their growth. The process of growth portrayed in White's book is far more sophisticated, profound and realistic than that portrayed in Bartlett's book. This is due to the greater sophistication of the writing in White, to the fact that the protagonist in White is himself a more profound thinker and observer of psychological and emotional states and details, and because in White we are allowed to see more of the internal workings of the protagonist through the first-person perspective. Bartlett's story is by far the more romantic of the two stories. To fairly assess the two Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. . He is not a free individual, and individuals who arenot free are not capable of true growth. I wiped my mouth with the back of an adult hand, smiled and walked up to the dining hall humming a little tune (White 218). The boy in White is notonly eager for growth and self-discovery, he is capable, unlike the boy inBartlett, of clearly articulating his discoveries about himself as well ashis lovers: "As I went in him, he said straight out, as clear as a bell,'That feels really great.' It had never occurred to me before that sexbetween two men can please both of them at the same time" (White 29). We are witness in White to the mind of a young poet whose mastery ofthe language allows us to experience every shading of his emotional,psychological and sexual growth. He is shown by the narrator tobe the sexual, romantic object which his lovers, for the most part, see himas being. Despite all his nights staring out of the window,he was still in some ways very ignorant of life in the city" (Bartlett148). . . The universe, signaled by its master, groaned, revolved, released a flash of lightning. We are meant to see Boy as a romantic,idealized, not at all realistic individual. At last the imagination, like a mold on an orange, was covering the globe of my mind (White 81). . Outside, a film of oil opalesced on the water under a great axle of red light rolling across the sky from azimuth to zenith. At every stage of White's protagonist's growth --- even in theearlier stages when he feels most strongly a sense of rebellion from hishomosexuality --- the reader is intimately included, as opposed to theoutsider role to which Bartlett relegates his reader. Certainly it would not be fair to say that Boy does not grow atall through his positive and negative experiences, but there is littleevidence that he has matured, or come to any profound psychological,emotional, spiritual, or even sexual awakenings. What is the sense of those two things happening at the same time I thought, those two ceremonies, just what is the sense in that, just when . With such self-conscious, self-protective statements, theauthor/narrator simply emphasizes the absence of realism in his study ofBoy. Boy's lovers, despite their ages, seem to be as stuntedemotionally, psychologically, spiritually and sexually as Boy himself. Withoutsuch knowledge of a character, it is difficult to perceive or assess thechanges and growth that that character experiences. Thereader is told much of the Boy's external life and his relationships, buthe is never allowed to truly and fully enter into the internal reality ofthe Boy. Weare made privy to the life and sexuality of gay men, but we do not come toknow these men or boys as individual characters with unique traits andminds. Kevin had made me very happy-a gleeful, spiteful happiness. It is as if the boy in Bartlettwere a puppet obeying some abstract set of rules which control the world ofgay romance and sex. Both books end with reference tosong. Moving directly from Bartlett to White, this reader feels as ifhe had moved from a dark, murky pond into clear daylight. He spends the evening or night with a younger man sometimes now, a man younger than himself, a boy really; and these boys he chooses are always very excited to be chosen by such a beauty, and of course are even more flattered when someone like me tells them that they have been with half of such a famous couple, almost a legend or institution in our circle (Bartlett 3 9). White, Edmund. It can even be argued that the boy does not trulygrow at all, but merely accumulates experiences of romance and sex andtragedy. Boy in Bartlett displays little self-knowledge, but White'sprotagonist is rich with insight into the discoveries he has made abouthimself, his life, and his lovers: Sometimes I think I seduced and betrayed Mr. Beattie because neither one action nor the other alone but the complete cycle allowed me to have sex with a man and then to disown him and it; this sequence was the ideal formulation of my impossible desire to love a man but not to be a homosexual. The reader comes to know this boy, to share his emotions, toexperience his growth as it comes step by step. For example, inWhite we read: Kevin took my hand. Insuch passages, we discover something of the imagination of the narrator,but we come to know little or nothing of the boy himself or the process ofgrowth he may be undergoing. Without such knowledge, it is difficult to see or appreciate thegrowth that Boy or any of his lovers and friends experience. . . The backdrop of the face-cutting attacks provides the readerwith a context of tragedy in which to view the Boy and his life. The narrator and/or the author are simply not capable ofarticulating the kind of powerful romanticism they seek, and in fact thestriving of the narrator to do so constantly frustrates the reader whowants to know more clearly the boy and his lovers and their experiences.White, on the other hand, is a much more accomplished and sophisticatedwriter, and he has created a similarly intelligent protagonist who is ableto articulate not only his awakening in realistic terms, but also hisromantic and imaginative side: My calm was restored --- but the calm was sepulchral. Again, his "growth" seemsto consist of an accumulation of experiences, sometimes incredibly intenseexperiences, to be sure, which wear his character down rather than add toit or refine it in any healthy sense of the concept of growth. The problem, of course, is that the tragedies and suffering whichtake place in the life of Boy are just as romanticized and unrealistic asthe love which he seeks. Works Cited Bartlett, Neil. The reader is warned: if he does not want aromantic and tragic portrayal of gay love, then he should look elsewhere.This portrait of the growth of Boy remains romantic from beginning to end,and the narrator in the final pages highlights the romantic nature of thestory even as he writes that he wishes he could provide a more romanticfinal look at Boy and his primary lover O. Nowhere in Bartlett do we read anything which even hints at suchinsight on the part of the narrator or Boy himself, but in White we findsuch examples of growth on every page. . Here we were, right under the noses of these boring old grown-ups, and we were two guys holding hands (White 28). Edmund White, on the other hand, offers the reader a far morefulfilling experience, both in terms of the quality of his writing and therealistic nature of the portrayal of the protagonist and his growthprocess. . He was sitting next to me in the dark. In Bartlett, on the other hand, the narrator again and againemphasizes not the growth or self-discovery of Boy, but rather hiscontinuing ignorance: "I don't think that Boy knew any of this washappening, not really. I thought I was Jupiter or his disguised and only seemingly powerless incarnation. Before wesee this as a major flaw of the book, however, it is important to rememberthat the author/narrator from the beginning of the book declared it to be adeliberately romantic portrayal. The explicit and direct nature of White's protagonist's expression ofhis own growth process does not mean that White's book is withoutimaginative power. Boy will always be beautiful I think. Butin White's final first-person look at the protagonist, we feel as if we aresharing with the young man his own growth and self-knowledge fully and step-by-step. Perhaps you think that Boy does not sound too beautiful to you . He declares openly and repeatedly that he has idealized andromanticized his protagonist. For example, we readthe final pages of Bartlett and are left in a muddle as to what actuallyhappened to Boy, what changes he has gone through, how he has grown. Butwhile Boy was sitting in the dark, waiting, he must have been thinking, andthis may have been what he was thinking or imagining" (Bartlett 179). The final effect of thisportrayal is that Boy remains a sexual/romantic object: . New York: Plume,1992. Almost anysentence from White tells us more about his protagonist's mind and emotionsand character than the entire book by Bartlett tells us about Boy. He pulled it off without a trace of guilt . . Sometimes I think I liked bringing pleasure to a heterosexual man (for after all I'd dreamed of being my father's lover) at the same time I was able to punish him for not loving me (White 218). Bartlett's story is byfar the more romantic of the two stories. A Boy's Own Story. wanted to be sincere but I didn't know how. In Bartlett the song is inserted by the narrator in such a way thatthe reader is not helped to see anything new or profound about Boy. He may be growing in ways that the author or narrator is notcapable of portraying, but we must take the narrator at his word and acceptthat we are getting all there is. The boy in Bartlett does nottruly experience his lovers except in contrived and almost exclusivelysexual terms, whereas the boy in White is continuously relating with hislovers verbally, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, and sexually,so that he is able to see them as human beings and not mere symbols of aromantic ideal. . I could find no method for it except when alone. . Theromantic, codependent "All of me, why not take all of me" (Bartlett 312)tells us about the longing of the narrator to sum up the story of Boy, butit tells us little about Boy, except that he remains an idealized symbol ofunfulfilled, unhealthy sexual obsession. . . In that case, the growth process of Boyis limited. At exactly the same time. Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall. In White, on the other hand, thefinal reference to song ("a little tune") tells the reader directly andsuccinctly of the growth in selfawareness won by the protagonist as hematures into a unique individual capable of healthy, independent thoughtand action: I who had so little power --- whose triumphs had all been the minor victories of irony and attitude --- I had at last drunk deep from the adult fountain of sex. . . The onlychange --- which may be a kind of growth --- is that Boy and his lovers areworn down by the violence, disappointment and tragedies in and around theirlives. We lived one year in a suburb so new it was still being built in fields of red clay: a neat grid of streets named after songbirds was being dropped like a lattice of dough over a pie. . then you would admit to the accuracy of what I've said (Bartlett 13-15). On the other hand, the boy in Bartlett is never permitted by theauthor or the narrator to come to his own discoveries about himself, or hislovers, or the world in which he lives. When a psychologist gave me the ink-blot test, I saw no people in the abstract shapes, only cemeteries, diamonds and ballrooms. The study will consider the growth of the two characters, therealism of their experiences, and the roles their lovers play in theirgrowth. The growth of the boy in White is a process which leads him to feelthe right and the power to be himself in the world and in relationship withothers --- lovers and friends. . . He describes sex-related events in sucha way that the his sexuality is seen as only a part --- though a powerfulpart --- of his entire experience and growth. . To fairly assess the two books,however, we should keep in mind that the authors have quite different goalsin mind: White is trying to show the reader the subtleties of theprotagonist's growth process, while Bartlett is trying to paint a broader,more romanticized, and more tragic version of homosexual love. As a result, White's boy grows in all these areas and doesso in fully realistic ways. The narrator describes "Boy" at great length,but he recognizes at the same time that he is idealizing him. The narrator writes: And if you still can't quite see him, and this is not your ideal Boy at all, then I'm sorry. New York: Plume, 1983.----------------------- 1 This study will compare and contrast the young protagonists in NeilBartlett's Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall and Edmund White's A Boy's OwnStory. Bartlett and/or his narrator strives for a romantic,imaginative quality of expression, but the result is unsatisfying andineffective. From beginning to end of White's story, the young protagonistdisplays a fine mind for the kind of details which allow the reader to feelas if he knows the character well. Boy iscompared, for example, to a young Paul Newman in a Tennessee Williams play-made-into-a-movie. For example, the boy and hiseven younger lover Kevin go into a store to purchase a jar of vaseline: I was blushing and couldn't raise my eyes. . That little round jar of grease would be a clue for my father or his to find. . Outside, the half-moon sped through the tall pines, spilled out across a glimpse of water, hid behind a billboard, twinkled faintly in the windows of a train . This is due to the greater sophistication of the writing in White,to the fact that the protagonist in White is himself a more profoundthinker and observer of psychological and emotional states and details, andbecause in White we are allowed to see more of the internal workings of theprotagonist through the first-person perspective. . . We arewith him as he moves through the stages of this growth, as in this passagein which he recognizes that he is not yet ready or able to be himself: As a result, in every encounter, even the most glancing, I had to be a performer, for at all times I was aware I was impersonating a human being . There is a theatrical, speculative, posed quality to the descriptionsof the boy by Bartlett which continually prevents the reader from knowingthe protagonist or perceiving any growth he might be experiencing in hisrelationships: "Let us imagine the scene; we'll have to, since Boy shut thedoor behind him, and left us to speculate as to what happened . To the contrary, romantic literature is based ontragedy as much as on love, and in Bartlett we find Boy experiencing hisshare of such tragedy, including the death of the "Father": On the afternoon of the funeral, a teacher who was going out on his own to celebrate his forty-second birthday had his face cut open. In Bartlett, on the other hand, we findthe portrayal of a romanticized protagonist who always remains somewhatvague, or simplified, in part because the author/narrator deliberatelyportrays him in that way. Boy is seen as an archetype of a young gay man in a world inwhich satisfying and healthy love is a difficult if not impossible goal toseek. This is not to say that the portrayal of Boy and of his growth is anentirely lovely one. He is enveloped in a fog of sensuality and sexuality from themoment we see him, and he remains so enveloped until the end. The protagonist seems to be most alive when he and his lover areengaged in sex, sometimes violent sex, but the reader even then feels as ifthe characters and relationships and sexuality are generic rather thanspecific. I could feel the calloused pads on his palm where he'd gripped the bat. (sic) (Bartlett 291). I apologize if this description of Boy sounds to you like some fantasy and not a real person . But the truth is, if you had ever seen this young man . By the end of the book we are convincedthat it is a real and profound growth which he has experienced. Worse, it was the application of method to sex, the outward betrayal of what I wanted to consider love, the inward state (White 25). . Sophistication suspended this anxiety, since to be sophisticated is to adorn oneself rather than to strip oneself bare (White 188-189). Well I have to say that much of the impact of this story depends upon your being able to see and think of Boy as beautiful, admirable and even adorable . The process of growth portrayed in White's book is far moresophisticated, profound and realistic than that portrayed in Bartlett'sbook. . If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.