Lem’s Solaris: Critique of Human Progress

According to Muntius, Solaristics is the space era’s equivalent of religion: faith disguised as science. . . . Solaristics is a revival of long-vanished myths, the expression of mythical nostalgias which men are unwilling to confess openly. The cornerstone is deeply entrenched in the foundations of the edifice: it is the hope of Redemption. (Lem Solaris 173).

Unlike either Tarkovsky‘s or Soderbergh‘s film versions, both of whom seem to have taken Muntius’ interpretation of Solaris to heart, Lem’s 1961 novel suggests that Solaris remains alien, something that humanity’s cataloging and ordering cannot explain. The great ocean, despite humanity’s greatest minds, remains essentially mute and inexplicable, unable to be coded by scientific reason, explained through empiricism, or contacted through poetry. Lem seems to suggest, in the aftermath of science fiction’s Golden Age, that science is not the panacea or pinnacle of evolution and striving: it, like religion, is a faith-based language unique to the creatures that invented it. Lem’s vision seems introspective — it turns a mirror on a species that used science to create the possibility of annihilation by splitting the atom and mocks our pretenses to transcend our own human follies. While contact with the other may not be possible in Lem’s vision, perhaps the universe does contain wonders if we can just see past our own desires.

Lem’s novel is about Kris Kelvin’s exploration of his own psyche. A trained Solarist and psychologist, Kelvin is sent to Solaris to see what has become of the crew, but unknown to Kelvin, he is traveling light years to encounter not the strangeness of the alien sea, but his own troubled existence. He travels alone, strapped inside a ship he cannot control and is hurdled toward the Solaris station. Chapter one, “Arrival,” illustrates his own sense of alienation: his surroundings are familiar, but hostile to human life. He understands the academic history of the ocean planet — what he calls a useless jumble of words, a sludge of statements and suppositions . . . [that] has not progressed an inch in 78 years since researchers had begun” — but he has never experienced it himself (23). However, his mission is not to study Solaris, but to try to gain some understanding of what happened to the crew.

When Kelvin encounters first Snow, then the dead Gibarian, then Sartorius he begins to see what is going on, but his scientifically trained mind cannot accept whet his eyes tell him. Each of the crew has a “visitor,” ostensibly produced by Solaris for an unknown purpose. Snow speculates that they are meant to show “our own monstrous ugliness, our folly, our shame!” (73). He speculates that the ocean probed their brains and penetrated their deepest fears and regrets: the visitors are “a genetic substance . . . a plasma which ‘remembers.’ The ocean has ‘read’ us by this means, registering the minutest details, with the result that . . . well, you know the result” (74). Snow believes that he understands the how, but he does not know the why. The scientists cannot rid themselves of the visitors; they appear when the scientists have slept; they regenerate when hurt; they seem immortal, and, as Sartorius opines, “They are not autonomous individuals, nor copies of actual persons. They are merely projections materializing from our brains, based on a given individual” (102). Kelvin elaborates further:

The origin of the materialization lies in the most durable imprints of memory, those which are especially well-defined, but no single imprint can be completely isolated, and in the course of the reproduction, fragments of related imprints are absorbed. (102-103)

As scientists, they arrive at the conclusion that they themselves are the subject of an experiment (103).

Experiment or not, the visitors begin to learn after they arrive. Snow later speculates that: “When it arrives, the visitor is almost blank — only a ghost made up of some memories and vague images dredged out of its . . . source. The longer it stays with you, the more human it becomes. It also becomes more independent, up to a certain point. And the longer that goes on, the more difficult it gets. . .” (150-151). After that time of adjustment, Snow suggests, they become human, now a part of the life on the station. They learn from their surroundings, and begin to question; Snow states: “In a certain subjective sense, they are human. They know nothing whatsoever about their origins. You must have noticed that?” (74). While in one sense the visitors mirror the scientist’s memories, in another they are also as questioning, answer-less, and alone as humans.

Science begins to falter, offering no answers, but only guesses as to what might be happening. Kelvin begins to accept his visitor, his dead wife Rheya. Early on, Kelvin confesses that her suicide is his fault: he left her in a psychological fragile state with enough drugs to do away with herself. He left her, and she killed herself, and he carried the blame with him for a decade. Yet, when Rheya appears to him on Solaris, the scientist in him dismisses her as ersatz, a simulacrum undeserving of the status of human. He launches her into orbit, but she is soon replaced by another, one that he begins to grow attached to, despite the fact that she is not Rheya and was born out of an alien ocean. Yet, he longs to have another chance to redeem his mistake with Rheya and begins to think of this Rheya as human, someone to be cared for and loved: “It was Rheya, the real Rheya, the one and only Rheya” (93). However, as much as wishes to believe that, this Rheya learns that she is a product of Solaris and cannot accept that fact herself.

At one point, Snow offers his view of humanity’s travels into the cosmos:

We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. . . . We don’t want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. . . . We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don’t want to enslave other races, we simply want the bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. . . . We are only seeking Man. We have no need for other worlds. We need mirrors. . . . We are searching for an ideal image of our own world. (72)

Yet Solaris presents them with the opposite: their own fears and shortcomings, and they have difficulty accepting that. They consider that they are mad, but when madness cannot be justified, they ask why Solaris is doing what it’s doing. Science cannot answer why, it can only answer how. The Rheya simulacrum falls into this trap as well: a reflection of Kelvin’s mind, she cannot accept her own alienness, and like the real Rheya, finds a way to kill herself. Perhaps this is what humanity is, then: an exclusive club that seeks to conquer and not understand.

Lem’s novel seems to call into question the very notion of human science. Like a religious faith, science was upheld in science fiction as an endeavor that could save us from ourselves. It is a rational discipline that stands upon human reason and knowledge, not fear and superstition. However, science itself is only a human belief system, something that may hold true in our remote corner of the universe, but it cannot allow us to make contact or examine the complexities of the universe or our own minds. While science might tell us how our minds operate, it cannot disclose the implications of its operation. Perhaps Solaris suggests that having too much faith in science can destroy our own humanity, making us more like machines than beings who are capable of looking beyond our own beliefs and prejudices. Perhaps the word “human” is in need of re-articulation if it cannot encompass difference.

At the end of the novel, Kelvin decides to visit the ocean on Solaris. He lands his craft on a “mimoid,” a seemingly random structure spawned by the sea. As he considers his experiences on Solaris, he ponders his existence and that of the planet. Despite the trouble and pain of this trip, he thinks “We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them” (204). He seems to shrug his shoulders at the ocean, at the defeat of humanity to make contact, to break out of its own arrogant little shell. Yet, his final thoughts might be the beginning of a new life: “I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past” (204). However cruel his experience, at least Solaris represented something outside the sphere of humanity. Perhaps this thought is comfort enough when our experiments fail us.

Lem’s Solaris

A Critique of Human Progress

According to Muntius, Solaristics is the space era’s equivalent of religion: faith disguised as science. . . . Solaristics is a revival of long-vanished myths, the expression of mythical nostalgias which men are unwilling to confess openly. The cornerstone is deeply entrenched in the foundations of the edifice: it is the hope of Redemption. (Lem Solaris 173).

Unlike either Tarkovsky‘s or Soderbergh‘s film versions, both of whom seem to have taken Muntius’ interpretation of Solaris to heart, Lem’s 1961 novel suggests that Solaris remains alien, something that humanity’s cataloging and ordering cannot explain. The great ocean, despite humanity’s greatest minds, remains essentially mute and inexplicable, unable to be coded by scientific reason, explained through empiricism, or contacted through poetry. Lem seems to suggest, in the aftermath of science fiction’s Golden Age, that science is not the panacea or pinnacle of evolution and striving: it, like religion, is a faith-based language unique to the creatures that invented it. Lem’s vision seems introspective — it turns a mirror on a species that used science to create the possibility of annihilation by splitting the atom and mocks our pretenses to transcend our own human follies. While contact with the other may not be possible in Lem’s vision, perhaps the universe does contain wonders if we can just see past our own desires.

Lem’s novel is about Kris Kelvin’s exploration of his own psyche. A trained Solarist and psychologist, Kelvin is sent to Solaris to see what has become of the crew, but unknown to Kelvin, he is traveling light years to encounter not the strangeness of the alien sea, but his own troubled existence. He travels alone, strapped inside a ship he cannot control and is hurdled toward the Solaris station. Chapter one, “Arrival,” illustrates his own sense of alienation: his surroundings are familiar, but hostile to human life. He understands the academic history of the ocean planet — what he calls a useless jumble of words, a sludge of statements and suppositions . . . [that] has not progressed an inch in 78 years since researchers had begun” — but he has never experienced it himself (23). However, his mission is not to study Solaris, but to try to gain some understanding of what happened to the crew.

When Kelvin encounters first Snow, then the dead Gibarian, then Sartorius he begins to see what is going on, but his scientifically trained mind cannot accept whet his eyes tell him. Each of the crew has a “visitor,” ostensibly produced by Solaris for an unknown purpose. Snow speculates that they are meant to show “our own monstrous ugliness, our folly, our shame!” (73). He speculates that the ocean probed their brains and penetrated their deepest fears and regrets: the visitors are “a genetic substance . . . a plasma which ‘remembers.’ The ocean has ‘read’ us by this means, registering the minutest details, with the result that . . . well, you know the result” (74). Snow believes that he understands the how, but he does not know the why. The scientists cannot rid themselves of the visitors; they appear when the scientists have slept; they regenerate when hurt; they seem immortal, and, as Sartorius opines, “They are not autonomous individuals, nor copies of actual persons. They are merely projections materializing from our brains, based on a given individual” (102). Kelvin elaborates further:

The origin of the materialization lies in the most durable imprints of memory, those which are especially well-defined, but no single imprint can be completely isolated, and in the course of the reproduction, fragments of related imprints are absorbed. (102-103)

As scientists, they arrive at the conclusion that they themselves are the subject of an experiment (103).

Experiment or not, the visitors begin to learn after they arrive. Snow later speculates that: “When it arrives, the visitor is almost blank — only a ghost made up of some memories and vague images dredged out of its . . . source. The longer it stays with you, the more human it becomes. It also becomes more independent, up to a certain point. And the longer that goes on, the more difficult it gets. . .” (150-151). After that time of adjustment, Snow suggests, they become human, now a part of the life on the station. They learn from their surroundings, and begin to question; Snow states: “In a certain subjective sense, they are human. They know nothing whatsoever about their origins. You must have noticed that?” (74). While in one sense the visitors mirror the scientist’s memories, in another they are also as questioning, answer-less, and alone as humans.

Science begins to falter, offering no answers, but only guesses as to what might be happening. Kelvin begins to accept his visitor, his dead wife Rheya. Early on, Kelvin confesses that her suicide is his fault: he left her in a psychological fragile state with enough drugs to do away with herself. He left her, and she killed herself, and he carried the blame with him for a decade. Yet, when Rheya appears to him on Solaris, the scientist in him dismisses her as ersatz, a simulacrum undeserving of the status of human. He launches her into orbit, but she is soon replaced by another, one that he begins to grow attached to, despite the fact that she is not Rheya and was born out of an alien ocean. Yet, he longs to have another chance to redeem his mistake with Rheya and begins to think of this Rheya as human, someone to be cared for and loved: “It was Rheya, the real Rheya, the one and only Rheya” (93). However, as much as wishes to believe that, this Rheya learns that she is a product of Solaris and cannot accept that fact herself.

At one point, Snow offers his view of humanity’s travels into the cosmos:

We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. . . . We don’t want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. . . . We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don’t want to enslave other races, we simply want the bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. . . . We are only seeking Man. We have no need for other worlds. We need mirrors. . . . We are searching for an ideal image of our own world. (72)

Yet Solaris presents them with the opposite: their own fears and shortcomings, and they have difficulty accepting that. They consider that they are mad, but when madness cannot be justified, they ask why Solaris is doing what it’s doing. Science cannot answer why, it can only answer how. The Rheya simulacrum falls into this trap as well: a reflection of Kelvin’s mind, she cannot accept her own alienness, and like the real Rheya, finds a way to kill herself. Perhaps this is what humanity is, then: an exclusive club that seeks to conquer and not understand.

Lem’s novel seems to call into question the very notion of human science. Like a religious faith, science was upheld in science fiction as an endeavor that could save us from ourselves. It is a rational discipline that stands upon human reason and knowledge, not fear and superstition. However, science itself is only a human belief system, something that may hold true in our remote corner of the universe, but it cannot allow us to make contact or examine the complexities of the universe or our own minds. While science might tell us how our minds operate, it cannot disclose the implications of its operation. Perhaps Solaris suggests that having too much faith in science can destroy our own humanity, making us more like machines than beings who are capable of looking beyond our own beliefs and prejudices. Perhaps the word “human” is in need of re-articulation if it cannot encompass difference.

At the end of the novel, Kelvin decides to visit the ocean on Solaris. He lands his craft on a “mimoid,” a seemingly random structure spawned by the sea. As he considers his experiences on Solaris, he ponders his existence and that of the planet. Despite the trouble and pain of this trip, he thinks “We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them” (204). He seems to shrug his shoulders at the ocean, at the defeat of humanity to make contact, to break out of its own arrogant little shell. Yet, his final thoughts might be the beginning of a new life: “I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past” (204). However cruel his experience, at least Solaris represented something outside the sphere of humanity. Perhaps this thought is comfort enough when our experiments fail us.

We Want Mirrors

I watched Soderbergh’s Solaris again last night to try and get this paper going. I was again captivated by the visuals that seemed to pay homage to Tarkovsky’s love of flow. If Tarkovsky had had access to the latest in CG technology, would he have used it? I also noticed other parallels to the Tarkovsky, like the large video monitors on which the dead seemed to communicate with the living, the dreary cityscape on earth, and several key pieces of dialogue. Yet, this time I was most struck by the the notion of mirrors that ran throughout the film, both thematically and visually.

When Kelvin first arrives on the station, he quickly learns of Gibarian’s death, meets with the remaining crew members – the jittery Snow and the measured and paranoid Gordon (Sartorius in the novel and Tarkovsky film) – and begins his investigation into just what is happening.

In an early scene (chapter 8 on the DVD), Kelvin watches a video journal of the dead Gibarian that echoes Tarkovsky’s: “we don’t want other worlds, we want mirrors.” Gordon echoes this sentiment later when she and Kelvin discuss the reality of the “visitors,” particularly the Rheya simulacrum:

GORDON: It is a mistake to become emotionally engaged with one of them. You’re being manipulated. If she were ugly, you would not want her around. That’s why she’s not ugly. She’s a mirror that reflects part of your mind. You provide the formula.

KELVIN: She’s alive.

GORDON: She is not human! Try to understand that if you can understand anything.

KELVIN: What about your visitor, the one you’re so ready to destroy without hesitation. Who is it? What is it? Can it feel? Can it touch? Does it speak?

GORDON: We are in a situation that is beyond morality. Your wife is dead.

KELVIN: How do you know that? How can you be so definitive about a construct that you do not understand?

GORDON: She’s a copy. A facsilime. And she’s seducing you all over again. You’re sick!

The distinction here is meant to be ambiguous, calling into question what is human. Both react according to how they interpret human and their own desires. Also, human seems to be a product, not only of culture, but of environment. How could something that appears to come from an alien ocean planet, constructed from a particular person’s memories, and manifested physically by an alien thing be “human”? Gordon, as an empirical scientist cannot buy it; Kelvin, a psychologist remains dubious. Yet, we cannot so easily discount his desires and the morality – a human invention – of calling the obviously alien construct “human.” The visitors are a fact; there’s no doubting that physically. However, since science cannot explain their appearance, the question enters the realm of metaphysics.

It always seemed to me the height of human metaphysical arrogance to create God in our own image, specifically a white man – I guess the “white” part is the product of later Western artists, as Kelvin suggests during a flashback of a dinner party: “The whole idea of God was dreamed up by man. The limits that we put on it are human limits. It designs. It creates–” Rheya interjects, “No, I’m talking about a higher form of intelligence.” Gibarian is there, too, and adds: “No, you’re talking about something else. You’re talking about a man in a white beard, again. You are ascribing human characteristics to something that isn’t human.” While Rheya listens, she becomes uneasy. Kelvin continues, somewhat condescendingly, “Given all the elements of the known universe and enough time, our existence is inevitable. It’s no more mysterious than trees, or sharks, or your mathematical probability and that’s all.” Yes, you can’t explain everything, but that, according to Kelvin and his friends, does not prove the existence of a higher form of intelligence. As Solaris shows them, how we measure intelligence becomes mute in the presence of something that it cannot explain, so we attempt to make it fit into the parameters that we invented to define ourselves. The truly alien becomes a reflection of ourselves, a mirror. In a true postmodern moment, Kelvin speculates that even if there is a God, we cannot possibly hope to understand it. Yet, faced with God, Kelvin and the rest of the scientists seek to do just that.

The pivotal scene comes when Gibarian visits Kelvin in a dream – again the “dream” part is ambiguous. The latter accuses him of not being human, a mere puppet, but Gibarian returns: “Maybe you’re my puppet, but like all puppets, you think you’re actually human. Hence the puppet’s dream: being human.” Kelvin questions him about his son, but Gibarian answers that his son is back on earth. He continues: “And that’s not your wife. They are part of Solaris. Remember that.” Kelvin continues to probe, asking what Solaris wants. Gibarian answers: “Why do you think it has to want something? This is why you have to leave. If you keep thinking there’s a solution, you’ll die here.” Yet, Kelvin cannot leave her, remembering the guilt of leaving her the first time on earth, an action that precipitated her suicide. Kelvin must find the answers; he must understand Solaris so that he can cleanse his guilt and remorse. Gibarian says finally: “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you: there are no answers, only choices.” Yet Kelvin, like the western conception of the rational human, believes that he can find the answers to the puzzles that Solaris presents.

Soderbergh’s Solaris reflects humanity’s quest for place where we can be most ourselves. This seems a vain and solipsistic longing to make the world a reflection of our inner perceptions that gives meaning and order to the universe, but simultaneously objectifies external realities and recreates them in our own image. We want to be like gods, whose creating words become manifest in the physical world. This brings security and comfort, like we might find at home, or that a filmmaker might find in his vision of a novel.

Indeed, the final scene vindicates this quest: Kelvin is again at home; he again is slicing vegetables for dinner and again cuts his finger as before, but this time he is able to wash away the cut, to erase it with water as easily one might erase a mistake on a computer screen. The scene cuts back to Kelvin deciding to remain on the station as Solaris expands to encompass it: he will not return to earth, a place now that is alien to him, where he would have to relearn to be human. Cutting back to the apartment, Rheya appears calling his name, and he asks if he is alive or dead. She, with an expression that is mirrored through the film, replies that “We don’t have to think like that anymore. We’re together now. Everything we’ve done is forgiven. Everything.” Their final embrace suggests his acceptance of this reality that seems to be the reflection of Kelvin’s greatest desire made manifest by Solaris. Kelvin has ostensibly found his place. He is now trapped in a reality of his own making.

Like Tarkovsky’s ending, Soderbergh’s seeks to find a repentance, an idea of heaven born from our greatest desires – a reflection of forgiveness and solace, a chance to right our greatest mistakes. Yet, again like Tarkovsky’s, this ending is also a trap, one from which Kelvin will not escape. He, like his patients at the beginning of the film, is now trapped in his own mind, having succeeded in making it his reality. His forgiveness is not external, but internal: he has forgiven himself his trespasses and now feels he deserves peace in the familiar. What is love other than a reflection of ourselves, a place to feel the most comfortable and secure? While we can live in this place, it also traps us, making the real world of human interaction less bearable and ultimately impossible.

While Tarkovsky’s answer seems to be a return to nature, away form the alienating concrete and steel of the city, Soderbergh’s seem to suggest technology might provide these moments of connection, but at a price. Like our family and friends, the technology that we surround ourselves with reflects our desires and provides us with spaces where we can be most ourselves, where transgressions are quickly erased and leave no scars. The digital world mirrors how we perceive ourselves, how we wish to be perceived, and how we perceive others. It’s a haven of security on one hand, and a place to interact on the other. Yet, even though we might chat, browse, or email, we are still physically sitting alone in our own rooms looking at a monitor that, if we look closely, reflects our hopeful faces in its glass. Solaris seems to be an effort to come to terms with our anxieties about what it means to be human in an increasing age of digital technology. What will happen when the digital becomes manifest in the products of nanotechnology, genetics, and robotics. What then?

We Want Mirrors

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] watched Soderbergh’s Solaris again last night to try and get this paper going. I was again captivated by the visuals that seemed to pay homage to Tarkovsky’s love of flow. If Tarkovsky had had access to the latest in CG technology, would he have used it? I also noticed other parallels to the Tarkovsky, like the large video monitors on which the dead seemed to communicate with the living, the dreary cityscape on earth, and several key pieces of dialogue. Yet, this time I was most struck by the the notion of mirrors that ran throughout the film, both thematically and visually.

When Kelvin first arrives on the station, he quickly learns of Gibarian’s death, meets with the remaining crew members — the jittery Snow and the measured and paranoid Gordon (Sartorius in the novel and Tarkovsky film) — and begins his investigation into just what is happening. In an early scene (chapter 8 on the DVD), Kelvin watches a video journal of the dead Gibarian that echoes Tarkovsky’s: “we don’t want other worlds, we want mirrors.” Gordon echoes this sentiment later when she and Kelvin discuss the reality of the “visitors,” particularly the Rheya simulacrum:

GORDON: It is a mistake to become emotionally engaged with one of them. You’re being manipulated. If she were ugly, you would not want her around. That’s why she’s not ugly. She’s a mirror that reflects part of your mind. You provide the formula.

KELVIN: She’s alive.

GORDON: She is not human! Try to understand that if you can understand anything.

KELVIN: What about your visitor, the one you’re so ready to destroy without hesitation. Who is it? What is it? Can it feel? Can it touch? Does it speak?

GORDON: We are in a situation that is beyond morality. Your wife is dead.

KELVIN: How do you know that? How can you be so definitive about a construct that you do not understand?

GORDON: She’s a copy. A facsilime. And she’s seducing you all over again. You’re sick!

The distinction here is meant to be ambiguous, calling into question what is human. Both react according to how they interpret human and their own desires. Also, human seems to be a product, not only of culture, but of environment. How could something that appears to come from an alien ocean planet, constructed from a particular person’s memories, and manifested physically by an alien thing be “human”? Gordon, as an empirical scientist cannot buy it; Kelvin, a psychologist remains dubious. Yet, we cannot so easily discount his desires and the morality — a human invention — of calling the obviously alien construct “human.” The visitors are a fact; there’s no doubting that physically. However, since science cannot explain their appearance, the question enters the realm of metaphysics.

It always seemed to me the height of human metaphysical arrogance to create God in our own image, specifically a white man — I guess the “white” part is the product of later Western artists, as Kelvin suggests during a flashback of a dinner party: “The whole idea of God was dreamed up by man. The limits that we put on it are human limits. It designs. It creates–” Rheya interjects, “No, I’m talking about a higher form of intelligence.” Gibarian is there, too, and adds: “No, you’re talking about something else. You’re talking about a man in a white beard, again. You are ascribing human characteristics to something that isn’t human.” While Rheya listens, she becomes uneasy. Kelvin continues, somewhat condescendingly, “Given all the elements of the known universe and enough time, our existence is inevitable. It’s no more mysterious than trees, or sharks, or your mathematical probability and that’s all.” Yes, you can’t explain everything, but that, according to Kelvin and his friends, does not prove the existence of a higher form of intelligence. As Solaris shows them, how we measure intelligence becomes mute in the presence of something that it cannot explain, so we attempt to make it fit into the parameters that we invented to define ourselves. The truly alien becomes a reflection of ourselves, a mirror. In a true postmodern moment, Kelvin speculates that even if there is a God, we cannot possibly hope to understand it. Yet, faced with God, Kelvin and the rest of the scientists seek to do just that.

The pivotal scene comes when Gibarian visits Kelvin in a dream — again the “dream” part is ambiguous. The latter accuses him of not being human, a mere puppet, but Gibarian returns: “Maybe you’re my puppet, but like all puppets, you think you’re actually human. Hence the puppet’s dream: being human.” Kelvin questions him about his son, but Gibarian answers that his son is back on earth. He continues: “And that’s not your wife. They are part of Solaris. Remember that.” Kelvin continues to probe, asking what Solaris wants. Gibarian answers: “Why do you think it has to want something? This is why you have to leave. If you keep thinking there’s a solution, you’ll die here.” Yet, Kelvin cannot leave her, remembering the guilt of leaving her the first time on earth, an action that precipitated her suicide. Kelvin must find the answers; he must understand Solaris so that he can cleanse his guilt and remorse. Gibarian says finally: “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you: there are no answers, only choices.” Yet Kelvin, like the western conception of the rational human, believes that he can find the answers to the puzzles that Solaris presents.

Soderbergh’s Solaris reflects humanity’s quest for place where we can be most ourselves. This seems a vain and solipsistic longing to make the world a reflection of our inner perceptions that gives meaning and order to the universe, but simultaneously objectifies external realities and recreates them in our own image. We want to be like gods, whose creating words become manifest in the physical world. This brings security and comfort, like we might find at home, or that a filmmaker might find in his vision of a novel.

Indeed, the final scene vindicates this quest: Kelvin is again at home; he again is slicing vegetables for dinner and again cuts his finger as before, but this time he is able to wash away the cut, to erase it with water as easily one might erase a mistake on a computer screen. The scene cuts back to Kelvin deciding to remain on the station as Solaris expands to encompass it: he will not return to earth, a place now that is alien to him, where he would have to relearn to be human. Cutting back to the apartment, Rheya appears calling his name, and he asks if he is alive or dead. She, with an expression that is mirrored through the film, replies that “We don’t have to think like that anymore. We’re together now. Everything we’ve done is forgiven. Everything.” Their final embrace suggests his acceptance of this reality that seems to be the reflection of Kelvin’s greatest desire made manifest by Solaris. Kelvin has ostensibly found his place. He is now trapped in a reality of his own making.

Like Tarkovsky’s ending, Soderbergh’s seeks to find a repentance, an idea of heaven born from our greatest desires — a reflection of forgiveness and solace, a chance to right our greatest mistakes. Yet, again like Tarkovsky’s, this ending is also a trap, one from which Kelvin will not escape. He, like his patients at the beginning of the film, is now trapped in his own mind, having succeeded in making it his reality. His forgiveness is not external, but internal: he has forgiven himself his trespasses and now feels he deserves peace in the familiar. What is love other than a reflection of ourselves, a place to feel the most comfortable and secure? While we can live in this place, it also traps us, making the real world of human interaction less bearable and ultimately impossible.

While Tarkovsky’s answer seems to be a return to nature, away form the alienating concrete and steel of the city, Soderbergh’s seem to suggest technology might provide these moments of connection, but at a price. Like our family and friends, the technology that we surround ourselves with reflects our desires and provides us with spaces where we can be most ourselves, where transgressions are quickly erased and leave no scars. The digital world mirrors how we perceive ourselves, how we wish to be perceived, and how we perceive others. It’s a haven of security on one hand, and a place to interact on the other. Yet, even though we might chat, browse, or email, we are still physically sitting alone in our own rooms looking at a monitor that, if we look closely, reflects our hopeful faces in its glass. Solaris seems to be an effort to come to terms with our anxieties about what it means to be human in an increasing age of digital technology. What will happen when the digital becomes manifest in the products of nanotechnology, genetics, and robotics. What then?

Gwen Sell

I only knew Gwen for a short time, but the experience I had with her was positive. I know that Gwen was well-liked by her colleagues and students: she was awarded Outstanding Teacher Award at Macon State College last year. She always had a smile for me and always encouraged me as a new faculty member. Her office was right across the hall from mine my first year at MSC, and she would occasionally stop by to say hello and see how I was adjusting. Gwen was an important member of our faculty and a wonderful person. She will be missed. My heartfelt condolences to Larry Mobley and all of Gwen’s family.

I only knew Gwen for a short time, but the experience I had with her was positive. I know that Gwen was well-liked by her colleagues and students: she was awarded Outstanding Teacher Award at Macon State College last year. She always had a smile for me and always encouraged me as a new faculty member. Her office was right across the hall from mine my first year at MSC, and she would occasionally stop by to say hello and see how I was adjusting. Gwen was an important member of our faculty and a wonderful person. She will be missed. My heartfelt condolences to Larry Mobley and all of Gwen’s family.

The Taming of Nature in Gilgamesh

[quote]Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” . . . “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.” (Genesis 1:26 and 1:28)[/quote]

Well, since the beginning, humans (why do I want to write “man” here?) have had divine sanction to do whatever it is they desire to the flora and fauna (“creeping things”) of the earth. Many have taken this to heart and continue to use the word of the God of Genesis as authority to rape, pillage, and squander all that the natural world has to offer. Indeed, much of what humanity has taken from the earth has directly led to our continued evolution through superior technological developments, but what is lost by a careless and prodigal waste of these god-given resources? The Judeo-Christian Old Testament is not the only work of literature that addresses the ecology; the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh also looks at humanity’s progress, but perhaps not so wantonly.

Humanity’s progress seems very much linked with the character of Enkidu. Created as a wild man, Enkidu had “long hair like a woman’s,” and he “was innocent of mankind; he knew nothing of the cultivated land.” While the comment on having hair like a woman’s deserves some treatment, that will have to wait for another entry; however, there does seem to be a link between woman a nature the pervades the epic, as if women supply a link somehow between men and nature, a sort of gateway between the innocence of animals and the experience of civilization. Enkidu is animal-like at the beginning of the epic, and it takes the ministrations of the harlot to make him a man. While the latter has ideological and social ramifications as well, what’s important to the present topic is that Enkidu, once he has slept with the harlot — “For six days and seven nights they lay together, for Enkidu had forgotten his home in the hills” — he is no longer accepted by his former animal brethren, as if the harlot had contaminated him with the stench of humanity: “Enkidu was grown weak, for wisdom was with him, and the thoughts of a man were in his heart.”

Here is where the dichotomy between nature and civilization begins to be made clear: nature is frightening and in need of control and domination — it must be civilized so that humanity can live and function within it. Nature must be tamed and ordered so that civilization can continue to grow. They somehow seem mutually exclusive, as if the natural world reminds the civilized world somehow of a bestial past that it’s trying to overcome and repudiate. Enkidu is created for this very reason: to tame the wild heart of Gilgamesh, so that he can become a good king for his people. In order to live together, humanity must have common goals and laws; both Gilgamesh’s and Enkidu’s wild natures must be assuaged and controlled for them to become human.

Once Enkidu has tried unsuccessfully to return to his wild life, he comes back to the harlot who “divided her clothing in two and with one half she clothed him and with the other herself; and holding his hand she led him like a child to the sheepfolds, into the shepherds’ tents.” Clothing represents humanity; like Adam and Eve after they ate from the tree of knowledge “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves” (Genesis 3:7). Clothing comes from the cultivated land, not from slain beasts, for the latter suggests an incivility while the former expresses humanity. For instance, when Gilgamesh and Enkidu slay Humbaba, the first thing that Gilgamesh does is wash himself and change his clothes: “he threw off his stained clothes and changed them for new. He put on his royal robes and made them fast.” And when Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh repudiates the civilization that led to his death, and he “dragged off his splendid robes and flung them down as though they were abominations” and trades them for the “skin of a lion.”

Similarly, what one does with his or her hair also symbolizes civilization. Once Enkidu has joined the shepherds, he “rubbed down the matted hair of his body and anointed himself with oil.” Combed and cared-for hair marks one as civilized, just as disheveled and dirty hair suggests a beast. This motif runs concomitantly with clothes throughout the epic, for Gilgamesh also “washed out his long locks” and “flung back his hair from his shoulders” after his battle with Humbaba. And, again, after the death of Enkidu, he vows to “let my hair grow long for your sake.” The change in Gilgamesh’s appearance has the desired effect, for when Siduri sees him “coming towards her, wearing skins” she thinks he is a criminal or a beast come to do her harm. Hair and clothing make the human, just like they do today.

Along with clothes and hair, what one eats also speaks of one’s culture. As part of Enkidu’s education, he is presented with bread and wine, but “Enkidu could only suck the milk of wild animals.” Both bread and wine take knowledge and skill to make, not feats that can be accomplished by animals. He quickly learns to eat like a civilized person and he “became merry, his heart exulted and his face shown.’ Only after Enkidu had followed the instructions of the harlot — “Enkidu, eat bread, it is the staff of life; drink the wine, it is the custom of the land” — is it finally evident that “Enkidu had become a man; but when he had put on man’s clothing he appeared like a bridegroom.” Indeed, Enkidu is now married, or about to be, to the customs of humanity, never able to return to the state of innocence that he has now, perhaps unwittingly, repudiated.

The epic makes other comparisons between eating the flesh of animals and that of taming the resources of the natural world in order to make civilized food, like wine and bread. When Gilgamesh wanders the land after Enkidu’s death, the god Shamash sees Gilgamesh “dressed in the skins of animals” and eating “their flesh,” activities that distress the god. This implied criticism favors the more civilized customs of eating what human knowledge cultivates, not what aggression and violence procures. Perhaps this is an implicit suggestion that vegetarianism is more civilized than eating meat? This notion, as we who have tried being vegetarians know only too well, does not sit well with the current customs of our land.

Yet, in order to grown grapes and grain, land needs to be cultivated; therefore forests need to be cleared. Forests are also used for the literal building of cities, used to protect humans from the unknown dangers of the wilderness and the known dangers of the elements. In order to impose a human order on a hostile nature, one of the first steps will be the killing of Humbaba, Lord of the Cedars. Using what currently seems a very viable reason for killing, Gilgamesh reasons “Because of the evil that is in the land, we will go to the forest and destroy the evil; for in the forest lives Humbaba whose name is ‘Hugeness,’ a ferocious giant.” Precipitated out of sheer boredom — Enkidu complains that he is “oppressed by idleness”) — Gilgamesh decides that Humbaba is part of an axis of evil and must be destroyed, even though the ferocious giant is no immediate threat to the people of Uruk. In order to even get to Humbaba’s they have to travel half-way around the world, at least the world as they knew it. What better way to justify heroic deeds than to call it evil, a menace to society?

Yet, figuratively, Humbaba stands as a symbol for a nature that must be tamed if humanity’s civilization is to grow and prosper. While Humbaba does not offer an immediate threat to Uruk, the idea of Humbaba represents a holdfast to the continued growth of a civilization that places such importance on land that must be cultivated and cities that must be built and reinforced. In order to destroy the holdfast, Gilgamesh and Enkidu must first be armed for battle, weapons must be cast. This arming, while an aspect of the epic, also represents another aspect of human civilization and knowledge: skill and intelligence are necessary to the blacksmiths; a knowledge of ore and and how to order it to work for humans is something provided by nature and tamed by humanity.

As far as epic battles go, the fight with Humbaba is not very spectacular. It seems that most of the danger was just a product of the heroes’ minds, for Humbaba the ferocious giant fell as easily as one might cut down a tree. In fact, much of the battle with Humbaba includes the cutting down of trees: Gilgamesh “felled the first cedar and they cut the branches and laid them at the foot of the mountain.” When Humbaba is felled “for as far as two leagues the cedars shivered . . . for this was the guardian of the forest whom they had felled to the ground.” After the guardian of the forest is dispatched, the heroes attack the forest itself: “They attacked the cedars, the seven splendors of Humbaba were extinguished”; “While Gilgamesh felled the first of the trees of the forest Enkidu cleared their roots to the banks of the Euphrates.” These actions sound like the present-day clearing of old-growth forests in the name of progress. In order to make the land usable by humans for agriculture, the roots, too, must be cleared so that crops may be planted. Humanity is able to spread its influence, but no regard is given for the forest, the creatures that lived in the forest, nor any consideration for the future implications of this clearing.

An ethical critique is offered by the god Enlil: “Why did you do this thing? From henceforth may the fire be on your faces, may it eat the bread that you eat, may it drink where you drink.” As if Nature herself cries out and curses the very aspects of civilization that Gilgamesh’s people hold dear, Enlil knows why Gilgamesh and Enkidu have slain Humbaba, but he cannot reconcile the waste and disregard for nature that seems to accompany human progress.

However, with this progress also comes pain. As punishment, the gods send the Bull of Heaven as punishment for their trespass, and Enkidu bears the brunt of this assault and is mortally wounded. The Bull of Heaven might symbolize the unpredictability of nature, like the consequences of expansion on nature (El Niño) or even strains of disease that might be direct results of human expansion. Through the death of Enkidu, we are made aware of civilization’s double-edged sword: not only does it help humanity to grow, survive, and evolve, but it also destroys an innocence that might have made death less painful. Enkidu curses what represents for him civilization: women, Uruk, and the trapper. These took from him his happiness in naïveté, his innocent existence with the animals and replaced it with death. With civilization comes the knowledge of one’s own mortality, as if all human endeavor only leads to this certainty: “It was I who cut down the cedar, I who leveled the forest, I who slew Humbaba and now see what has become of me.”

Perhaps part of how we deal with death is how we live as humans. It seems that while we pay lip service to civilization and knowledge, we also give little thought to that which sustains us. We are part animal, and therefore still need that which nature provides. Even to grow grain for bread and grapes for wine requires a symbiotic relationship with nature, not a destructive one. What are the consequences of our continued waste of the land? Can we learn nothing from a 4500-year-old epic?

Tarkovsky’s Solaris

To science? It’s a fraud! No one will ever resolve this problem, neither genius, nor idiot! We have no ambition to conquer any cosmos. We just want to extend earth up to the cosmos’ borders. We don’t want anymore worlds. Only a mirror to see our own in. We try so hard to make contact, but we’re doomed to failure. We look ridiculous pursuing a goal we fear and that we really don’t need. Man needs man!
–Dr. Snauth

Tarkovsky’s Solaris portrays humanity’s attempt to understand that which is beyond the scope of our creation. The characters make contact with the truly alien and try to conceive of this presence in terms dictated by their science and ration understand, but fail miserably. Solaris addresses the futility of our technology in the face of something that cannot be translated or incorporated into the body of our knowledge, but humanity’s arrogance and faith in its own paucity of knowledge and understanding drives the characters to code and codify a being that is truly alien. Solaris asks if “reality” can be measured scientifically through the subjective perceptions of humanity. It seems to suggest that it cannot, and bids us be happy with the small comfort that we can give each other.

Tarkovsky’s poetically shot Solaris begins with his trademark views of nature on the land of Chris Kelvin’s father. Kelvin, whom we are told is “working too much,” walks among the pastoral serenity of this place that eschews the new, but seems to be troubled by the world that is slowly encroaching upon it. Kelvin is about to leave for Solaris as the final decision maker about what is to become of the station studying the ocean world; he leaves behind his own troubles, instead concentrating on his job in determining the future of Solarist studies. He will break the impasse that surrounds the controversial discipline; he will measure the “facts” against the passions of the “hearts” of those that have been there.

The mood of the entire film is one of foreboding and uncertainty. Human understanding and technology seem at best conditional above the swirling mass of cerebral consciousness that is the Solaris ocean. Images of flowing and swirling water emphasize the uncertainty as Kelvin seems to be slowly traveling deeper into his own subconscious full of pain and repressed grief for the loss of the innocence he once possessed, his unclear relationship with his “mama,” his current professional responsibilities, and the suicide of his wife ten years previously.

His encounters with the living and the dead precipitate Kelvin’s own journey inward: the dead Dr. Gibarian on a video tape, Dr. Snauth who warns him not to trust anything he sees that contradicts the facts, Dr. Sartorius who has a hardline scientific approach to problems, and finally his dead wife Khari brought back to life inexplicably. A scientist himself, Kelvin soon looses confidence in science’s ability to explain what his senses tell him is real, but his mind tells him cannot be. Reality, Dr. Snauth tries to warn him, does not work here the same way it does on earth; it’s something like “insanity” that prods and pokes at conscience, much like science does to its subjects. Indeed, they only began having trouble when Gibarian began bombarding the ocean with x-rays. Perhaps in retaliation, the alien sea/entity seems to be able to plumb the depths of the scientist’s minds and manifest physically what it finds there for the scientists to deal with, in an irony straight of of Lem’s novel.

Tarkovsky’s film attacks notions of scientific difference and our certainty in them, like sleep and consciousness, simulation and reality, and even our ability to perceive color. The film will suddenly switch from brilliant and sharp color to an almost murky black and white without any obvious reason. It also conflates video with reality, so sounds, dialogue, and time become uncertain, ostensibly interacting so that both the audience and even the characters themselves become confused: was that sound on the video or coming from outside the room. None of us are certain. Many scenes of sleep and delirium are juxtaposed with those of philosophical discourse; images of idyllic landscapes with those of bristling cityscapes; and sounds from childhood with unearthly scrapings and crashes. The flow of the images in the film come like those of a lucid dream, seemingly connected in our dreamscape, but utter nonsense against morning coffee and newspaper.

Science, at least how we understand it in our human isolation, cannot encompass the cosmos. Indeed, as Snauth says above, we are not really interested in discovering that which is beyond us, but only endeavor to change the other to fit our definitions of it. Science itself changes that which is studied: if it does not do what we want it to do, then science can change it to make it fit a mold, a meaning, and a classification. The Solarists are at an impasse about just what the Solaris ocean is, but that does not stop them from imposing their desires on that which is utterly alien. Science does not accept that there might be things which are beyond science — more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.

What is reality if it is not of our own making? The “visitors,” as the scientists call Solaris’ manifestations of their minds, are part of the scientists’ own perceptions of reality. Khari is not “real” in the sense that she has had her own life experiences as an autonomous human being, but is a physical representation or simulacrum of how Kelvin perceived her — his flawed and subjective memories of his dead wife. This determines the pseudo-Khari’s actions: since Khari killed herself in Kelvin’s past, that’s how he determines the simulacrum Khari’s future. She must kill herself over and over again. However, the more time she spends with Kelvin, the more human she becomes. That is, the more of her own experiences she is able to have and the more she begins to understand Kelvin’s own troubled reality. At one point she even says “I am becoming a human being,” suggesting her own free will even though her inexplicable creation comes from the mind of another. Here is true objectification.

Man needs man seems to be what the film is finally saying, even though it gives no clear suggestion as to what that ultimately means. Indeed, if we don’t understand ourselves, what hope can we have of knowing the cosmos? The why of things ultimately gives way to the now of things. We cannot know the why, the film suggests, but we can know the now, the here, the immediate. Here is where love exists; here is where happiness resides:

When man is happy, the meaning of life and other themes of eternity rarely interest him. These questions should be asked at the end of one’s life. . . . The happiest people are those who never bother asking those cursed questions. . . . To think about it is to know the day of one’s death. Not knowing that date makes us practically immortal.

Snauth becomes anti-science, a humanist foil to that of Sartorius. The latter seems inhuman as he refers to Khari as a thing, something to be experimented upon, to be dissected, to be studied. Kelvin remains in the middle: “We don’t know when our life will end, that’s why we’re in a hurry. . . . We question life to seek out meaning. Yet to preserve all the simple human truths we need mysteries. The mystery of happiness, death, love.”

By the end of the film, Kelvin has ceased his questioning, desiring instead to return to a state of naive innocence, like a child at his mother’s breast. He only wants to love Khari, even though he knows that love means the death of all that has given his life meaning and drive up until that point. He wants to cleanse his memory of these questions, and retreats home. Yet his home, too, becomes a literal island of memory on the surface of Solaris. The final scene has him kneeling before his father as if begging the latter for forgiveness, guidance, acceptance. As the camera pulls up and away, we see his father’s home has been recreated on Solaris, and the soundtrack suggests a defeat, rather than solace we might have expected. Has Solaris won, or has Kelvin finally returned home? Perhaps the two are not so far removed.

Tarkovsky will not supply any answers, as if there could be any. This ending seems like a Luddite retreat away from science and technology to a simpler life in nature. We seem to be part of both our own technology and that from which we evolved; could we repudiate one for the other and still remain human? The cosmos is perhaps unknowable in our current state of evolution, but does that mean we should slink back to our mamas, never to venture into that which might make us question who we are and why we’re here? Kelvin has been defeated, losing his sense of the cosmos by isolating himself in a reality of his own construction, materialized of course by Solaris. Perhaps his solution is a caution to us: continue to move forward with the tools we’ve developed, but never get complacent or arrogant so as to forget to notice our brothers.

Three Visions of Science

Lem’s, Tarkovsky’s, and Soderbergh’s Solaris

Read: Essay

You Can’t Go Home Again

Notes on “Babylon Revisited”

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] have finished re-reading, again, what is arguably F. Scott Fitzgerald’s best short story, “Babylon Revisited.” It merges the past with the present as Charlie Wales returns to Paris to try and recapture his life literally by taking custody of his daughter Honoria, and figuratively by exploring the Paris of his prodigal past that still lives in his memory if not in reality. As Charlie looks back, he is concomitantly forced to look inward at his character and come to terms with bitter experiences that continue to haunt his life. Charlie has returned to Babylon to inquire and probe: is he a bad father and husband, or just the victim of bad luck?

The story begins like an epic: in medias res. We are thrown into the Ritz bar and into the middle of a conversation. Uncertainty and confusion mark the beginning; the first word is a coordinating conjunction, but we are missing he first part of the sentence: “‘And where’s Mr. Campbell?’ Charlie asked” (6). Also, we hear about Mr. Campbell, but he is never to appear in the story. This beginning is no beginning at all, but an episode in the life of Charlie Wales. As readers, it takes a bit more effort to get our bearing, as if we are attempting to glean meaning from a conversation overheard in a bar, which we very much are.

Why is Charlie at the Ritz bar — a place that we soon learn symbolizes Charlie’s dubious past of excessiveness and extravagance? Yet, Charlie finds that the Ritz is not how he remembers it: “He was not really disappointed to find Paris so empty. But the stillness of the Ritz bar was so strange and portentous” (6). The “really” suggests that he indeed is disappointed, just as “But” at the beginning of the next sentence calls into question the sentence that preceded it. Charlie is disappointed that the current reality of Paris does not match the reality of his memory. Charlie’s time away has changed his perspective, but has it changed his character?

Charlie’s present downfall occurs at the outset of “Babylon Revisited.” Ostensibly as an offhanded inquiry — something that we all might do while visiting a place where we grew up — Charlie writes down his brother-in-law’s address for Duncan Schaeffer, a figure from his past that he probably doesn’t have much of a desire to see, but habit seems to guide his actions devoid of any forethought about possible consequences. Indeed, we see that much of Charlie’s actions in this story are habitual, perhaps containing a desire to relive a past that is as irretrievably last as his dead wife Helen. He knows the Ritz bar as if he grew up there: “When he turned into the bar he travelled the twenty feet of green carpet with his eyes fixed straight ahead by old habit” (6). He continues to run on old habit throughout the course of chapter one as he tours his old haunts and even picks up a prostitute at the close of the chapter. He seems to have no conscious intentions, but seems to be working on a sort of autopilot.

He even errs at one point by calling attention to his visit to the Ritz bar in the company of Lincoln and Marion, his daughter’s current guardians and former in-laws, the latter the sister of his dead wife. He realizes his mistake and repeats what seems to be his mantra: “I only take one drink every afternoon, and I’ve had that” (8). Again, almost a product of habit or wishful thinking, his seemingly rational decision to have a daily drink so that the notion of abstinence does not overwhelm him appears to be a sound idea, but it’s also a further indication of his thoughtless living by rote, or perhaps chance.

Chance seems to play a role in this story as well, again emphasized by the story’s opening: at one point Charlie rolls the dice with Alix for his drink. The dice symbolize the element of chance that seems to be out of Charlie’s control. Is Charlie ultimately the victim of chance and bad luck, or does his character again lead to his downfall, the prolonged limbo of the story’s end?

The story ends much as it begins, in a conditional state, one of uncertainty and tentativeness. And, true to Charlie’s character, it ends literally where it began, in the Ritz bar. Perhaps the bar also symbolizes that desire in Charlie’s life that he keeps coming back to, but that keeps him repeating the same errors? Can home be looked at this way? Home is a place of comfort, but it also keeps us stupid. Growth seems unlikely under shelter and comfort, especially in a place where mistakes don’t seem that egregious. Coming home, in this case Charlie’s coming back to Paris, represents his effort to reclaim part of his past, but he gets more than he expected. His habits led to, if not caused, the death of his first wife — again something that can be interpreted as bad luck — and could do so again to his daughter. Are we, like Charlie, doomed to repeat that which experience has made us, or can we escape the persistence of home?

Fitzgerald never answers this question, and we will always have a figurative home: “He would come back some day; they couldn’t make him pay forever” (19). Yet, we must ask ourselves: when Charlie does come back, is he also coming back to his true self. Can he ever reconcile the present with the past? Can any of us?