Author: wippmanc

Both Luna by Julie Anne Peters and Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan are young adult novels that distinguish themselves by their language and structure.  Young adult novels are typically driven by plot lines and messages, not by linguistics.  Each novel follows this young adult theme entirely, by having characters whose main point is to find their identity while facing challenges and obstacles.

Another genre that follows these ideals is the coming out story, which both of these novels are as well.  Coming out stories have paralleling concepts, however, typically these struggles involve sexuality or gender identity and the coping mechanisms that characters use. Luna by Julie Anne Peters follows these ideals with a main character, Reagan, who is an adolescent trying to understand her own identity, while at the same time struggling to understand her transgender brother.  The main character is facing challenges that many people face, attempting to define herself through high school, however she also endeavors to protect and comprehend what her sibling is going through. While Luna captures the coming out narrative structure, Boy Meets Boy strays from the ‘common’ construction of these stories.  The main character, Paul, has already uncovered his identity, and he lives in a community that is overwhelmingly accepting and understanding.  While some of Paul’s peers are still attempting to understand their identity, we do not see these challenges as in depth because they are not happening with the main character.  This creates a utopian experience within the book, which is not relatable.

It is interesting to talk about how Boy Meets Boy is different than typical coming out stories because it does not fit common themes we see throughout the genre; however, the entire genre is about people breaking societal norms to find their own identities. There is a lot of irony in this analysis because if each story is valid in its own truth, then why do we think some coming out stories are ‘abnormal’ because they don’t fit a certain structure?

Both Oranges are not the only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson and Angels in America by Tony Kushner symbolize the internal and external struggles of coming out.  Each piece of literature attempts to define the exterior barriers of their societies.  While both fall under the same category of coming out stories, the novel and play take different approaches to exemplify the struggles in their society with the LGBTQ community.  Each story highlights characters who embody the attitude that their societies had with people who identified with queer.

In Oranges are not the only Fruit, Winterson personifies these values within the character of Jeanette’s mother.  Her mother is a queer-fearing Christian who believes that with the help of God, her daughter can be saved. In the book, Jeanette’s mother attempts to save her by aiding the church in attempting to get Jeanette to repent from her sins.  Jeanette’s mother, along with members of the church and the pastor, pray for Jeanette while locking her in the parlor for thirty-six hours.  Jeanette then falsely accepts that her sexuality is a sin, only to get out of the confined space.  However, the elders, the pastor and specifically Jeanette’s mother are ecstatic believing that God has saved Jeanette from this horrid sin.  This was a common assumption at the time, that a person could be saved from their “queerness” by God or a religion and Jeanette’s mother is an outward example of this.

While Jeanette’s mother shames her for who she is and attempts to destroy Jeanette’s “gayness”, in Angels in America the character Ethel has the same purpose, but attempts to punish Roy for his identity rather than save him.  Ethel visits Roy as a ghost to haunt him about decisions he’s made in his lifetime. She terrorizes him on his sexuality and attempts to shame and reprimand him.  Ethel characterizes the aggression that people of her time had towards the LGTBQ community.  During the time of the AIDS crisis, the common belief was that queer people were dirty and misfits, therefore not worth trying to save.  The hostility and disgust that Roy receives from Ethel was a general way the culture dealt with the LGBTQ community during their time.

Ultimately, Oranges are not the only Fruit and Angels in America help their audiences understand how the main characters coped with the mechanics of their societies and cultures.  Through both authors work, they portray their struggles, and how each of them took different approaches to get through it. The differences in the way the authors coped with their own hardships can teach others in how to deal with their versions of the same base story.

“I did remember, but what my mother didn’t know was that I now knew she had rewritten the ending… I have never since played cards, and I have never since read Jane Eyre.” (Winterson 74)

When reading this paragraph, there are a lot of different interpretations that one can have regarding Jeanette’s life.  This moment, where she discovers her mother has manipulated the end of Jane Eyre and she finds her adoption papers, are both defining moments in her life and within her search for an identity.  These two pillars are essential to the identity that Jeanette has established with herself.  To then find out later in life that not only did her mother rewrite the ending of a book they had read throughout her childhood and that she was not actually her mother’s birth daughter, were devastating losses that made Jeanette question who she was if she did not have both of those elements to define her.  This destruction of ideals for Jeanette makes her questions everything she was brought up to believe. She says in the passage after this quote that she no longer knows where to look for the information that she craves (Winterson 75).  This is essential to her discovery of who she will become, because Jeanette now realizes that not only is it possible for her to find answers outside of her mother’s word, it is imperative that she looks elsewhere to find her truth.

An important factor that is revealing here is what the real narrative of Jane Eyre teaches Jeanette when she discovers the real ending.  This allegory is extremely critical to Jeanette’s mindset changing because when she discovers that Jane does not marry St. John, which her mother had written, Jeanette realizes that all stories do not always in the way that other people deem is right, which is a turning moment in the question of Jeanette’s identity.

“Every peak is a crater. This is the law of volcanoes, making them eternally and visibly female. No height without depth, without a burning core” (Rich, 148).

When reading this particular excerpt of section XI of Twenty-One Love Poems I immediately notice the gender attachment that Adrienne Rich gives to the volcano.  The law of volcanoes is when power is forcefully held in, and then bursts. A volcano is extremely powerful and by identifying the “law of volcanoes” as a woman, it creates the parallelism of the harnessing and withholding of power, and the eruption of power as similar to the power of woman.  It also relates to the suffering of woman, which is a common theme throughout Twenty-One Love Poems. Rich commonly discusses woman finding their power through many different aspects, such as love or language, and that woman are forced by society to withhold their power.  However, once one is able to harness the power which they hold in their “burning core”, they allow it to erupt and therefore become more powerful.  Another place we see this idea is in Audre Lorde’s piece, The Uses of the Erotic. In Lorde’s writing she discusses the idea of redefining the word erotic to mean power or using erotic as a resource for power.  Once one is able to understand where that comes from, they can use it to their ability and become more powerful and self aware.   For Rich it is the comparison between the volcano and a woman that exemplifies this, and for Lorde it is when she writes “the erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling,” (Lorde 87).  In both pieces, the usage of power is thought of as an entirely female force which is kept inside, until it is recognized, and once one can fully understand it, then it is an extremely powerful force.