Daniel. Shittiest big brother since Cain, you'd better believe it.
Did Daniel love Dahlia?
The book seemed to suggest that there was something different/wrong about him from birth. Was that what led to his abuse of his sister or was she simply the scapegoat for his own torment about his parents failed relationship?
Do you think he will be haunted by Dahlia's death as she hoped?
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No, I don't think he loved anyone.
Yes, the book did seem to make him out as rotten from birth. Then he had that interlude where he was decent and loving to Dahlia. It would almost have been better if that had never happened, because it was a moment of perfect happiness that she spent the rest of her life trying — with depressing futility — to recover.
I know this doesn't sound very charitable, but at some point in the book I just decided that we were supposed to think of him as simply a born asshole. I think that's what Dahlia concluded — that some people are just assholes and you're not doing yourself any favor by imagining that there's a really great person hiding behind the asshole facade. It was just an exercise in masochism for her to keep having faith in some inner goodness of his that just didn't exist.
I don't think he'll be haunted by her death. I didn't think his coming to her at the end was out of genuine love or respect for her, did you?
You asked in your first question if Dahlia ever repulsed us, though, and I have to say I was repulsed when she attacked Dan's wife with references to her physical attributes. I thought that was beneath Dahlia.
Danny was an asshole and as Dahlia described him age 10 to 25 I hated him with a white-hot hatred. He was incredibly cruel and irreparably damaging to his sister.
But, does that mean he was incapable of love? I don't know. I wonder at the end if Dahlia is a trustworthy source. I think it is possible that he is in love with his wife, decent to his parents and kind to his congregants.
She suggests as much, that he was a decent Rabbi, "Rabbi Douchebag could be counted on by all and sundry in need...If Dahlia had been a lucky member of the all-and-sundry, Rabbi Douchebag would have brought cookies, played cards, told jokes, offered theological perspective, planted himself alongside the sick and held her hand, prayed."
But I don't believe anyone is purely "rotten from birth" So perhaps I was looking too hard for some small glint of human compassion in him. We won't ever know what he wanted to say, how/if he wanted to make amends with Dahlia since she was resolute about punishing him for the sins of his childhood.
I did consider that his motivation at the end was all about martial pressure.
How deliciously ironic that the most tortured soul in the book ended up marrying a psychologist. Perhaps she worked him over constantly--diagnosing and fixing him. Why didn't Dahlia realize how self-abusing that choice was? She could have reveled in it.
Danny was unbelievable to me. He never softened. And I just didn't understand that. If he had truly loved Dahlia as a child, if he had really been nurturing and sweet to her, why did he never draw from that? Had he forgotten it?
And then, when Dahlia got sick and Danny reached out to her, he made no attempt to apologize, to acknowledge the vile way he had treated her. He simply wanted to pretend it never happened. He expected Dahlia to still be patiently waiting for the day he decided to be her friend again. And I also suspected that it was pressure from his wife that drove him to call and visit. Although we only get Dahlia's side of the conversation, I saw no real evidence that he'd had a change of heart or felt any remorse or grief over Dahlia.
AEL, I don't think anyone is really an asshole from birth either. I think Dan probably had some good points, but why should people have to dig through tons and tons of garbage to find someone's good points? And what does it mean to say there is good in everyone if you have to conduct a painful, agonizing search to find it? If you are 90 percent asshole, do you really deserve the effort by others to find and appreciate that 10 percent of not-an-asshole? (I know from the point of a view of a minister or a psychologist that such an effort is always worthwhile, but from the point of view of ordinary people who just want to their lives?)
Maybe Dan loved his wife and his congregants. But I think it's just as likely, based on the evidence we have, that he really didn't. He was a supreme egoist. Being a rabbi could have been just a power trip for him. I mean, there was certainly no evidence that he felt especially holy or was devoted to God. So why did he become a religious leader? Because it gave him power over other people? Because it's a profession with built-in respect and an automatic aura of goodness that would appeal to his ego? And there was no evidence that he was nuts about his wife. I had the sense that getting married was just an accomplishment for him, as in, well, successful people get married (like successful people own their own homes and have retirement plans), so find someone you can more or less live with, who will complement your own feelings about yourself, and settle down. As you said, it's delicious in one sense that he married a psychologist, but then again, is she really forcing him to take an honest look at himself and change anything? It seemed just as likely to me that their too-late "concern" for Dahlia at the end was just a show to avoid the final accusation by possibly other family members and friends that they were total assholes. It's easy to imagine Dan feeding off sympathy from others, like his congregants, that he just lost a sister (poor rabbi!), even though in reality he didn't give a shit about her.
Another thought I had about Dan is that maybe Dahlia's relentless pursuit of affection from him was akin to her teenage cutting — where she would mutilate herself just to feel something. Maybe all those painful attempts to interact with Dan were just metaphorical razor slices across her heart. She must have known that he was not going to respond — ever — in a loving way. But somehow the pain of interacting with him was better than the pain of not interacting with him. Something was better than nothing.
And I don't think Dahlia was resolute about punishing Dan for the sins of his childhood. I think if he had come to her, as Erin suggested, and acknowledged the depth of the pain he had caused her and expressed truly meaningful awareness and apology, she would have embraced him. But he should have come to her on his knees and in sorrow — not upright and aloof, like OK I'm ready to be "friends" again now that I've ruined evrything for you and you're about to die, but it's still about me and my needs, not you and yours.
I think forgiveness is a lovely, transcendent thing. But doesn't it derive most of its beauty from the act of contrition that should precede it? Does forgiving someone who is not truly repentant have any real meaning or value?
I think Dahlia's refusal to indulge Dan's tepid advances at the end were remarkably heroic. She didn't feel good about him and she didn't feel forgiving, so why should she confer some dying (and lying) absolution on him? To make HIM feel that everything was OK in the end? To make it possible for HIM to one day meet his maker with a clear conscience?
kc,
I guess we are all only required to look past other people's shit and find the percentage of good in them to the same degree that we want other people to do the same for us. But I also believe pretty strongly in redemption (its that Easter story again) I realize not everyone does to the same degree.
As to forgiveness, I don't think it has much to do with the contrition that preceds it. Forgiveness is powerful for the one who offers it whether or not the forgiven even sits up and takes notice. It's about releasing our own hearts from the anger and hatred that withholding forgiveness brings. Grudges are toxic, and Dahlia is, to me, a good example of that. She had every right to be so angry at her brother but the self-protective wall that anger created in her was only a recycling of the family pain.
I've been thinking hard about your comment. I think we basically agree, with some nuanced differences.
I believe in redemption, too. I don't think people make fundamental changes of heart very often, but I wouldn't discount the possibility. Life would be too dreary without that possibility, wouldn't it? But I just don't believe that Dan was trying to redeem himself. I don't think his motives for visiting Dahlia in the end were entirely honorable and in good faith. I don't think redemption was on the table because I don't believe he truly understood that he had done anything to be redeemed. His visiting her at the end was a formality for the dying, so HE wouldn't look bad. It was not for her. As I said earlier, the only way he could have approached her with ANY meaning was on his knees and in sorrow.
As to forgiveness, I'm all for that, too, and I believe it can be a great healer for the person giving it as well as the one receiving it.
I don't think Dahlia was nursing a grudge per se. It wasn't like a one-time snub that she was stubbornly clinging to; it was a lifetime of pain cruelly inflicted by someone who should have offered her unconditional love and protection. For most of her life she was reaching out to him, and she displayed great faith that he would one day miraculously come around. He never did.
A large and crucial part of forgiving is forgetting. Not that you don't remember the offending item, but that it occupies a smaller place in your heart — because of time and distance and intervening experiences, or perhaps from sheer exhaustion of being consumed by it. I don't believe that anyone still in deep pain about something can meaningfully forgive the offender. Forgiveness is not entirely an intellectual act of will; it's a mysterious function of the heart. And if the heart is not ready, then the forgiveness is really nothing more than a verbal exercise.
I don't think Dahlia had reached a place of forgiveness. She reached a point of resignation, a realization of futility — maybe a belief that any interaction with him was so fraught with the potential for pain and disappointment that she just couldn't emotionally risk it at that juncture. And forgiveness may have come later, but there was no later.
And don't you think the brilliant epigraphs that introduce Dahlia's story are a key to how we should see the story and that they bear most significantly on her relationship with Dan?
The first is a poem by Emily Dickinson:
'Tis easier to pity those when dead
That which pity previous
Would have saved —
A Tragedy enacted
Secures Applause
That Tragedy enacting
Too seldom does.
The second from "Terminator 3":
Anger is more useful than despair.
I loved that Emily Dickinson poem.
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