Sunday, January 09, 2011

John Ashley

My favorite John Ashley moment was when George was having nightmares before his tonsil surgery and John came in to calm him.

"Does the sun go round the earth, George, or does the earth go round the sun?"
"The earth goes round the sun, Mr. Ashley."
"And anything else?"
"The moon, and ... the planets, I think."
"And what's the sun doing all that time?"
"It's going very fast."
"And carrying us with it?"
"Yes."
"It's as though we were on a great ship moving through the skies." Pause. "I often have that feeling just before I fall off to sleep. We're going at that great speed and yet you saw how quiet it is down there in the square. It's a wonderful fact, isn't it?"

I love the gentleness with which he approaches George and the way he talks about life. It was especially touching to me after seeing the cruelty of George's own father.

What did you think of our generous workaholic, simple family man, genius inventor, fugitive murder suspect John Ashley?
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5 comments:

kc said...

I really liked that scene, too!

And I loved John. I loved his simplicity and brightness and innate intelligence. Sometimes he seemed too good to be true, in a kind of otherworldly way.

The younger John I didn't really understand, the one who rejected potential mates because they wanted to be a bit more than a housewife! But he matured nicely. I love how he sought the advice of women and listened to and respected them — and children too. He didn't have any prejudices that kept him from appreciating varieties of experiences and he wasn't judgmental.

Why do you think he had to die so casually? I understand why Wilder neatly killed off Eustacia's husband, but Ashley's death was strange and haunting.

2:25 PM, January 10, 2011
cl said...

He was a complicated character. Brilliant, detached, not all good or bad. Or no bad, just the detachment. Like his lack of egoism was supposed to be Christlike (improving conditions for the workers, letting Lansing take credit for so many things), but he rarely put a hand in things that weren't as they should be. (How Lansing treated workers, his wife, his children.) He called himself an "unnatural son" when he reflected how he inexplicably cut himself off from his parents after his marriage, like they had raised him and were in no further need of contact. And of course he had to witness a number of travesties, like spousal abuse, once he was in Chile, but he couldn't intercede as a fugitive.

The genius inventor aspect made him sound like one of those people perpetually in their own head, doling out kindness and love when prompted but maybe slow to see it at times.

Yes, how he treats George is one of his finest moments in the story. I also enjoyed his interactions with the Mexican fortune teller and Mrs. Wickersham. And I liked how when he was feverish that his genuine feelings for Eustacia came to light but beyond that it seemed something too deep in him to acknowledge or dwell upon.

Was there a part that he had not especially sought out Beata other than she was an attractive girl in his town? That like Eustacia he'd made a somewhat hasty marriage because it seemed like the right time and place? I need to go back over that. That would be another tragic aspect of his detachment that he perhaps loved his wife but not so much as she did in return.

Hard question, Erin, because he was a deep character.

4:28 PM, January 11, 2011
Erin said...

Good call, cl, about his selective detachment. He loved his wife and children fiercely but thought very little about cutting off all communication with his own parents. Strange.

The courtship section was odd, yes. He seemed to reject potential mates pretty hastily. I didn't know if he truly loved Beata or if she was just the most convenient because she had no career aspirations and didn't mind leaving her parents behind.

Ashley's death was a weakness of the book, I thought. Here we'd been following him carefully along his journey, his thoughts and actions, and then Boom! He gets on a ship and is lost at sea. The End. We don't even get to know what happened on the ship or what his last thoughts were or anything.

2:20 PM, January 12, 2011
kc said...

Yes, good call, cl, on his estrangement from his parents. I also found his relationship with Beata odd, Erin. We're told that he loved her and that he remained faithful to her, but I didn't really have the sense that he desperately longed for her. It's almost like he was largely satisfied with love as an abstraction, like it was enough to KNOW that they were devoted to each other and didn't spend a lot of time actually pining for her. He was "detached," as you say. This book was written in the 1960s, so more forthright scenes of passion were doable, and maybe if Wilder had shown us some physical passion between John and Beata it would have been easier to believe both of them as ardent lovers.

2:57 PM, January 12, 2011
Erin said...

Agreed. Even with Beata, we didn't see much evidence of her love for John, just a third-party account from her children and the narrator.

When John said he loved his wife and children, it felt to me more like he loved the idea of having a family. He loved his contented home life in general more than the individual family members.

5:06 PM, January 12, 2011

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