By Jay Fox
Brooklyn, NY, USA
One of my high school teachers told our class a
story that has always stuck with me. I don't remember it's context in the
greater lesson of the day, and perhaps I may have
perverted a few of the details because memory isn't perfect or, to be a bit
more
accurate, memory tends to manipulate certain elements of most stories to
get them to comport with one's worldview. Regardless, this teacher, Mr. Craig,
had gone to Europe. I believe he was in a nation that had previously been part
of the Soviet Union, and that it was at a time when such nations were still
getting used to the idea of independence. I don't recall why he was there—he
may have been part of a tour group or he may have been one of several chaperons
overseeing a multinational field trip.
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| Jay Fox |
However, a situation arose wherein the entire
group was locked out of their hotel rooms because there was a problem with the
locks or the keys. They informed the front desk. The people from the Soviet
countries understood that this was a problem that would eventually get fixed,
and so they sat in the hallway to await either the locksmith or the clerk who
would arrive with the correct keys. My teacher, however, thought that this was
a waste of time, so he went out in search of someone to help him. Within just a
few minutes, he came back with the keys to allow everyone into their rooms.
Those who had been sitting in the hallway thought this odd. They were not
offended by the American man's temerity or impressed by his ability to wheel
and deal or his willingness to proactively fix a problem. They just never would
have done what he did.
I don't wish to give the impression that I
believe this to be a uniquely American characteristic. Far from it. However, in
certain largely defunct and certainly dated spheres of American literature,
this kind of assertiveness is the precondition for achieving one version of the
American Dream. Call it the honest American Dream. It's the belief that one has
enough agency to use their intelligence and natural gifts to make their own
life, and that if they are pure of heart and diligent, they will achieve
success.
In its most radical iteration, you end up with
Objectivism—a philosophy that gives each individual total freedom to fashion
and define the world in which they live, and grants this same freedom to all
others, thereby eliminating any ethical imperatives beyond those of
self-interest. Equally radical is the Existentialist worldview, which also
claims that individuals have the freedom to define what is good and what is
bad, but maintains, contrary to Objectivism, that there is burden of
responsibility, and that to choose for oneself is to choose for all people.
Jean-Paul Sartre, probably the most famous of the Existentialists, was perhaps
the most vocal proponent of this type of universal ethics. He also felt that
this combination of responsibility and autonomy leads people to feel anxiety,
despair, anguish and, because there's no God to tell us what to do, forlorn.
In its less radical form, this honest American
Dream recognizes that there are social conditions that can have substantial
effects on individuals' freedoms. Some have the privilege of not having to
overcome numerous obstacles; some are not so lucky. The typical American Dream
narrative focuses on the latter—the person who goes from rags to riches because
of their tenacity and incorrigibility in the face obstacles. The underlying
logic behind the American Dream is that anyone who is willing to put in the hours
and maybe get a few lucky breaks here and there can be successful.
Institutional racism, sexism, xenophobia, poverty and a wealth of other social
conditions that can prove debilitating to all but the most intelligent and
talented are usually not under consideration in such narratives, though they
are inalienable from American society.
However naive this worldview is, it has been at
the center of some of the greatest works of fiction and drama that our nation
has produced. One of the playwrights best known for using the American Dream as
a plot device is Arthur Miller. This particularly true of his seminal work, Death
of a Salesman. However, there was another work that he wrote a few years
beforehand which deals with similar themes, and that play is The Man Who Had
All the Luck. It debuted in November 1944, and ostensibly takes place
during the mid-1930s.
The play's protagonist is David Beeves, a man in
his early-twenties who lives in a Midwestern town. David has always gotten what
he wants, though he's never had to work very hard to achieve success. Things
just seem to work out in his favor and obstacles seem to disappear. When he
starts a business running a garage without really knowing how to fix cars,
somehow he manages to get by without any problems. This is true even when he
makes a bad decision when he gets talked into buying a massive barrel of
anti-freeze in the spring. Luckily, a sudden cold streak hits the town, and he
ends up being the only shop that can provide it to motorists. Other examples
abound. After opening a gas station on the outskirts of town, he soon learns
that a new state highway is going to be built that goes right past it. When he
is asked to fix the car of a rich farmer who owns several tractors (which
require frequent maintenance and can earn a mechanic a good living), he finds
that he is out of his league. He stays up all night without figuring out what
the problem with the car is, but in the early morning hours Gus, an Austrian
who is new to town, shows up to give him a helping hand. He, not Gus, ends up
becoming the most celebrated mechanic in town. Hester, his fiancée, has a
father who objects to their marriage, but he is killed, thereby leaving David
and Hester free to wed. You get the idea. He is extremely lucky.
When David looks to the other characters,
however, he finds himself almost entirely surrounded by men who have ostensibly
been destroyed by luck. (Unfortunately, the women do not seem to have lives
that are independent of the men, so the idea of them being personally deprived
of something isn't an issue.) One man, J.B., can't have the children he
desperately wants. Another, Shory, lost the use of his legs in the Great War.
Amos, David's brother, can't seem to land a break with a team in the majors,
despite being a phenomenal pitcher who has been coached by their father since
he was nine.
As the play progresses, David becomes
increasingly aware of his luck, and begins to acknowledge that everything does
seem to always work out in his favor. He grows increasingly perplexed by the
logic behind it. Why does he have all the luck?
At the beginning of the play, David sides with
Gus, who believes that people are responsible for their own lots in life, and
laments that many of those in his native Austria do not share this belief.
“What a man must have, what a man must believe. That on this earth he is the
boss of his life. Not the leafs in the teacups, not the stars. In Europe I seen
already millions...walking around, millions. They gave up already to know that
they are the boss.” For David, it's foolish to just sit around and wait for
something to happen—nothing ventured, nothing gained.
As David comes to see these misfortunes around
him, however, this worldview changes. He begins to believe that people are the
objects of Fate. He begins to side with Shory, who tells David early on in the
first act, “A man is a jellyfish. The tide goes in and the tide goes out. About
what happens to him, a man has very little to say.” Everything goes well until
it doesn't, and, eventually, people have to accept that the other shoe is going
to drop.
This type of thinking eats at David, and he
begins to obsess over it, to act as though it is an inevitability. As he tells
his wife, Hester, “A man is born with one curse at least to be cracked over his
head.” I won't ruin the drama by describing how this paranoia affects the plot
of the play, but I will note that we eventually learn that luck alone did not
cause other characters’ misfortunes. Each one of them is suffering because of
personal flaws.
J.B. is denied children because he has a
drinking problem, and his wife refuses to bring a child into a world with a
father who is an alcoholic. Shory was denied the use of his legs not because of
heroics on the battlefield, but because he was having sex with a prostitute
inside a building that collapsed. Amos was denied a contract with the majors
because his father taught him the basic mechanics of the game, but never gave
him enough experience on the field. Despite his good arm, he was incapable of
concentrating when there were runners on the bases. Furthermore, his father
failed Amos thrice because, on top of his faulty training, he never went out of
his way to call a scout to see his son pitch. Had it not been for David, who
called the Detroit Tigers several times and asked them to send someone to see
his brother pitch, Amos would have probably spent another decade waiting for
someone to come appreciate him only to learn that he wasn't majors’ material.
Finally, Amos' fixation on baseball precluded the cultivation of any other
talents. At the end of the play, he's pumping gas at his brother's station.
However, this still doesn't resolve the issue of
luck and fate, and this is the lasting question that one is left with at the
end of the play. Is there a design that preordains winners and losers in this
world, either due to their vices and virtues or simply by caprice, or are the
events that befall us ultimately due to a morally arbitrary series of causes
and effects? It's a question that has been asked for millennia, one that Miller
sees as more worthwhile to ponder over than to answer.
