Sameness

Madeleine L'Engle is wonderful, and not just because she received an honorary doctorate from BYU in 1999 and gave a great commencement address there (see http://www.byub.org/findatalk/search.asp?all=true"). She is also a solid writer for children (intertext with Shakespeare, Goethe, the Bible!) in a time when the stultifying and the vapid have cornered too much of the children's literature market. As President Monson said recently, "In our age of mass culture, when so much that we encounter is abridged, adapted, adulterated, shredded, and boiled down, it is mind-easing and mind-inspiring to sit down privately with a congenial book." I consider Madeleine L'Engle's A WRINKLE IN TIME to be just such a "congenial" book.

There is a wonderful scene in A WRINKLE IN TIME where, on the planet Camazotz, the characters encounter an unusual town:

"Below them the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns. The houses in the outskirts were all exactly alike, small square boxes painted gray. Each had a small, rectangular plot of lawn in front, with a straight line of dull-looking flowers edging the path to the door. Meg had a feeling that if she could count the flowers there would be exactly the same number for each house. In front of all the houses children were playing. Some were skipping rope, some were bouncing balls. Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play... 'Look!' Charles Wallace said suddenly. 'They're skipping and bouncing in rhythm. Everyone's doing it at exactly the same moment...'
Then the doors of all the houses opened simultaneously, and out came women like a row of paper dolls. The print of their dresses was different, but they all gave the appearance of being the same. Each woman stood on the steps of her house. Each clapped. Each child with the ball caught the ball. Each child with the skipping rope folded the rope. Each child turned and walked into the house. The doors clicked shut behind them" (pp. 103-04).

When one of the children breaks rhythm by dropping his ball, the visitors to Camazotz try to return it to him. They knock on his door, but his mother protests:

"The woman pushed the ball away. 'Oh, no! The children in our section
never drop balls! They're all perfectly trained. We haven't had an Aberration for three years'" (p. 106).

There is a wonderful criticism of sameness in this scene, one with which Brother Brigham might perhaps have agreed: "There is too much sameness in this community. . . I am not a stereotyped Latter-day-saint and do not believe in the doctrine. . . away with stereotyped Mormons!" (http://www.dialoguejournal.com/excerpts/36-2a.asp)

It is this form of sameness that often finds itself under fire in much of the criticism of suburbia that has long seemed fashionable, particularly of late. From recent New York Times articles and editorials extolling the "authenticity" of city or even rural life, to architectural history books decrying the "artificial" nature of suburban sprawl and its accompanying cookie-cutter lifestyles, to contemporary films like "Revolutionary Road" that emphasize the supposedly vacuous and unfulfilling lifestyle to which suburbia condemns its prisoners, it is clear that the 'burbs have gotten their share of negative publicity. The perceived lack of architectural variety among the monolithic rows of "bedroom communities" becomes, for some, symbolic of the homogeneity of the inhabitants, whose lives thus reflect the monotony and lack of individualism faced and even sought out by these native suburbanites, these worshippers of the temples of kitsch and conformity.

While I find some of these evaluations of suburbia somewhat unfair and even occasionally elitist and self-congratulatory, I do find something intriguing about this criticism of sameness that finds its way into such anti-suburban discourse. Sameness can stifle creativity and individuality, force individuals into roles which they neither wish for nor even are capable of filling. It can create suspicion and xenophobia towards all but the most limited of homogeneous circles. I have met people who were suspicious about folks in the next county over. Is this not xenophobia in the extreme?

I believe that our personal righteousness will lead us to greater individuality; as Elder Neal A. Maxwell (I miss him!) once said, "Of course, our individuality is actually enhanced by submissiveness and by righteousness. It is sin that grinds us down to sameness-- to a monotonous, single plane" (see Educating Zion, p. 202).

I am also reminded of a key opening passage in one of my favorite novels, Hermann Hesse's UNTERM RAD. Describing Joseph Giebenrath, Hesse writes:

"Er haette mit jedem beliebigen Nachbarn Namen und Wohnung vertauschen koennen, ohne dass irgend etwas anders geworden waere. Auch das Tiefste seiner Seele, das schlummerlose Misstrauen gegen jede ueberlegene Kraft und Persoenlichkeit und die instinktive aus Neid erwachsene Feindseligkeit gegen alles Unalltaegliche, Freiere, Feinere, Geistige teilte er mit saemtlichen uebrigen Hausvaetern der Stadt" (pp. 1-2)

(I apologize for the lack of umlauts- an ugly sight indeed. I'm still new and in the process of learning the ropes around here).

I am also reminded of those all-too-often repeated American evaluative phrases: "That was... different" or "She's definitely... different"-- as though variation from the norm were somehow unnecessarily transgressive and therefore undesirable. It is usually to avoid using other negative words that "different" is thus employed- after all, isn't it nicer to say "different" than incompetent, boring, stupid, annoying, etc? Yet by using "different," we thus inevitably inscribe the word's negative meaning, situating it firmly on the derogatory end of the lexical spectrum. Variation becomes transgression and invites ostracism and rejection. Those who seek individuality quickly find themselves despised and rejected of men.

It is often jealousy that seeks to impose rigid conformity. W.E.B. Dubois perceptively described this phenomenon when he stated, citing Booker T. Washington, that "we are like crabs in a barrel, that none would allow the other to climb over, but on any such attempt all would combine to pull back into the barrel the one crab who would make the effort to climb out" (see http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:i86bVA89DCkJ:xroads.virginia.edu/~MA03/faturoti2/Ambrose/relg280-washington%2520dubois%2520garvey.doc+%22w.e.b.+dubois%22+and+%22crabs%22&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us).

I began this (lenghty) post with a children's book, and now I end with one, J.K. Rowling's HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE. While Yale critic Harold Bloom excoriated the book in his (in)famous Wall Street Journal op-ed (see http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/courses/205.03/bloom.html) and claimed that reading Harry Potter was in fact not reading at all but "eyes simply scan[ning] the page," there is at least one aspect of Rowling's description of the Dursleys that I find appealing, particularly in this context of writers questioning sameness and conformity. The very opening lines of the book set the tone for what will become a subtle critique of the stifling, British "middle class morality" that English writers like George Bernard Shaw and others have long derided in their works:

"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense" (p. 1).

Now, I'm all for morality, middle class or otherwise, but the term "middle class morality" carries with it sometimes connotations of contented, suburban conformity, an "All is well" mentality that is dangerous not only for its immediate and long-term spiritual ramifications (see 2 Nephi on that), but also for the rigid regimentation of behavioral codes it often imposes on others. There is no room for difference with such codes in place. Thus, the Dursleys' harsh treatment of Harry is not contempt for the boy himself per se; it is, rather, contempt for the very idea of difference, contempt for individuality, for non-conformism. The Dursleys are not so much of afraid of Harry's mysterious powers as they are of what their friends and neighbors, many of whom live in neatly-arrayed rows of nearly identical houses very similar to their own(the film makes this even clearer, depicting, as it does, the almost stereotypically middle-class, non-descript English suburban neighborhood), will think of them if they ever find out about their "freak" (a word that signifies the ultimate otherization) of a nephew. Petunia Dursley gives voice to some of this conformist anxiety in her speech before Hagrid when she reveals that she knew all along that Harry has magic powers:

"Knew! Of course we knew! How could you not be [a wizard], my dratted sister being what she was... I was the only one who saw her for what she was-- a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family...
Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you'd be just the same, just as strange, just as-- as--abnormal-- and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!"

As Elder Eric B. Shumway (a personal hero) has pointed out, "We [can] become victims of a self-satisfied, narrow provincialism that can snuff out curiosity and harden our opinions into prejudices. There is a provocative Tongan saying that warns against the dangers of a "small fish" perspective. 'The lokua [a tiny reef fish] thinks his tidal pool is the vast ocean'" (http://home.byu.net/few2/pdf/BYUHawaii.pdf)

Like the lokua fish, the Dursleys have a hard time seeing beyond their own immediate, limited circle, and they guard fiercely the parameters and contours of the narrow sphere they have drawn up for themselves and those around them. Yet there is a whole world out there, with many different kinds of people doing many different kinds of things.

There is no need for us to impose sameness on one another.