That Tree Post

In this post, my intention is to analyze why the marriage between the Journalist and Miriam failed. The marriage, in my opinion, collapsed for the following reason. Miriam did not need the Journalist as a husband. She took on financial obligations and saved up her money from her first job for three years, and they ended up living off those savings, her birthday checks, and Christmas money which eventually “melted away and they got nothing for it.” Miriam was forced to occupy the role of the husband, the usual breadwinner of the family, and her doing so emasculated the Journalist, causing him to rely on defense mechanisms— denial, projection—to defend his position of the starving artist. He denied that his poverty of artistry was laziness, and he projected his own opinions onto those Mexican artists surrounding them, saying “these men went ragged and hungry because they had chosen once and for all between the seriousness of their souls and this world.” Miriam pointed out that all of his Mexican artist friends ended up finding careers and making money. Because Journalist remained steadfastly tied to his poetic licenses, he chose to relieve all the responsibility for making money to Miriam, who could not do it alone. By the end of her marriage, she had become “shabby and thin and wild-looking.” Miriam additionally did not need Journalist to challenge her intellectually. Her education threatened Journalist, and he believed her job as a teacher “was the most deadly occupation there was.” It stripped her of her “prettiness” and sparked the understanding that working and learning produced a certain happiness and a content lifestyle. She, however, could find no mental challenge in the housework “she despised and resented.” Miriam must have felt constrained to a submissive lifestyle where she should feel satisfaction from cooking and cleaning for a man who works just as hard as her to bring home food to his family. Except, he felt no family duty calling his name. So, Miriam was left academically static and unneeded as the role of the wife as challenged a challenged equal partner. Because he never gave her one, Miriam had no opportunity to need the Journalist to stimulate her intellectually or challenge her role as a wife. Furthermore, Miriam did not need her husband sexually. She did not challenge his virginity—most likely, because she suspected the truth and never wanted to breach the topic—but she also had “no curiosity” about sex, nor was she “palpitating to learn about life” in the way that her husband believed she would. He thought his job as a husband was to “play the role of a man of the world educating an innocent but interestingly teachable bride.” Her lack of interest in learning about sex hints at the idea that Miriam was not a virgin herself, but remained sexually unsatisfied by her husband. He believed she was merely uninterested, but perhaps she had just known what it was like to really have intimate moments with men and could not feel the chemistry with her husband. In their marriage’s intimate moments, “her mind seemed elsewhere, into some darkness of its own, as if a prior and greater shock of knowledge had forestalled her attention.” To restate: her mind wandered because her mind was preoccupied with a greater knowledge. She knew what she was missing. She did not need Journalist to satisfy her sexually. He could not satisfy her sexually. Finally, Miriam did not need the Journalist to be her savior. At the dance when the generals pulled out their guns, all the Mexican women pulled their husbands to their bodies as shields to save their lives. Miriam, however, saved her own life by running under a table. The Journalist, again, was unneeded. She expected them to be equals when he believed he should be the protector and provider. Only when the Journalist realizes that Miriam left because she did not need him in his life, does he seek revenge in the form of a career. She usurps his idea of utopia, refuses to fit the mold of a subservient Indian woman and blatantly disagrees with his ideology of poverty. But only when the Journalist realizes that Miriam really doesn’t NEED him, as society really doesn’t NEED him—he has no purpose, no existence—does he use her exit as an excuse to make something of himself. Miriam, then, could be the metaphor for “the chalk line” in life. She draws it down as a reminder that the life led right now is one that could totter into purposeful poverty or purposeful success. Living on the chalk line is like living under “that tree.” It’s a life that isn’t real and can easily be erased.