An Instance of Verisimilitude: Cat On a Hot Tin Roof

"When something is festering in your memory or your imagination, laws of silence don't work, it's just like shutting a door and locking it in a house on fire in hope of forgetting that the house is burning. But not facing a fire doesn't put it out. Silence about a thing just magnifies it. It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant . . . (Williams 32)"

     Cat On a Hot Tin Roof contains one of Tennessee Williams' most famous motifs, present throughout most of his popular works. Williams is well-known for taking a tender subject and working it out into the open. For this, many consider him the most controversial and boundary-breaking playwright of the 20th century. Evidence of his technique is probably more ever-present in this work than any of his others, as this one deals a lot with more tense and taboo subjects. Williams just wants to bring man's true nature to light via the stage.
     Prior to the key quote cited above, romantically frustrated, Margaret, had been fighting with her husband, Brick, about past affairs and why he doesn't show her affection anymore. Throughout the play, scandalous and often important secrets are kept from various members of the family, from Big Daddy's fatal illness to the real reason Brick became an alcoholic and lost all affection for Margaret. Williams, being a controversial writer, slowly starts to later bring these issues to light, just as his intentions are in getting the theme across. The whole play is spent establishing secrets with the reader that are driving the characters to be so distressed, but none of the characters know truly, which is what the quote suggests in relation to the text. The secrets are ruining relationships and "festering" inside each character, eating them alive with guilt. Just like the universal metaphor of the "cat on a hot tin roof", this quote compares one of the text's central ideas to being burned. Keeping the truth secret is only torment to a smart soul.
     The work's true essential reality is the presence of the all-natural truth. If one chooses to hide the truth, the one and all parties involved will end up burned, no matter the controversy.

Word Count: 300

An Instance of Verisimilitude: The House of the Seven Gables

"But, besides these cold, formal, and empty words of the chisel that inscribes, the voice that speaks, and the pen that writes, for the public eye and for distant time, - and which inevitably lose much of their truth and freedom by the fatal consciousness of so doing, - there were traditions about the ancestor, and private diurnal gossip about the Judge, remarkably accordant in their testimony" (Hawthorne 123).

     In analyzing this novel, I have noticed many passages hinting at an inner reality extending beyond just what can be read in the text. However, up until now, I had not found a true instance of verisimilitude that I could tie in to the work's inner theme. This passage, however, connects right to a certain suspected theme. There is a common thematic idea throughout this novel of letting one's superstition and ancestry reflect the lives of a family's descendants. A lot of this novel's inner passages hint at past history, family traditions, and fear of superstition. The previous passage cited takes these ideas and connects them to reality, going almost unnoticed as Hawthorne slips it in with Judge Pyncheon's character description. 

     The passage occurs in a chapter almost wholly comparing Judge Pyncheon to the accursed ancestor, Colonel Pyncheon, who was just as greedy and corrupt. As the narrator begins to discuss the Judge's past, this passage occurs, as if transitioning from an overall successful outlook into the bitter reality of his stature. In modern English, the passage says no matter what people say about someone, how many achievements that someone earned, or even what's engraved on that someone's tombstone, it's what people gossip about and establish as true that really matters. In reality, if someone has a great number of achievements but have bad stories spread about them, people will listen to the stories first. For example, Michael Jackson was one of the world's greatest entertainers, but people now pay more attention to his acquitted court charges than his success. 

     One of the biggest possible themes for this novel is the fact that superstition supersedes reality always, as revealed by this verisimilitude. People can achieve great success destined to sink by rumors, as the Judge's superstitious stories suggest about himself. 

Word Count: 300

A Second Instance of Verisimilitude: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

"He'd shown us what a little bravado and courage could accomplish, and we thought he'd taught us how to use it. All the way to the coast we had fun pretending to be brave. When people at a stop light would stare at us and our green uniforms we'd do just like he did, sit up straight and strong and tough-looking and put a big grin on our face and star straight back at them till their motors died and their windows sunstreaked and they were left sitting when the light changed, upset bad by what a tough bunch of monkeys was just now not three feet from them, and help nowhere in sight (Kesey 227)."

     This is another instance of verisimilitude I found in the novel that relates to the presence of a hidden reality. In the events leading up to this passage, Randall McMurphy and the patients had been on their way to board the boat for their planned fishing trip. They stopped at a gas station and McMurphy led the rest to look tough and threatening, as to keep everyone else of their case. If you find yourself questioning how this passage reveals even a hint of verisimilitude, ask yourself this question: Have you or you and your friends ever acted tough and brave just for the fun of it, or to keep someone off your case? That is exactly what is going on in this passage. McMurphy has taught the patients to be brave, and the patients are having an exuberant time in exercising this new skill. Just like people do in real life, the patients are putting up a front to keep people away from them and treating it all as a joke. If one would disagree with this being a common instance of verisimilitude in life and literature, then one should look at some certain extraneous works, such as S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders. This freedom or skill is also exercised as Ponyboy and his gang put up a fearless front and have great fun with it. Sound familiar? The instance in One Flew is not much different than this example. Kesey reveals this verisimilitude also through his diction, as he refers to the bunch as " a tough bunch of monkeys". One could argue that, in life, all a tough group of people are is a bunch of monkeys; they put up a front and joke about it. 

Journal Entry 10/22/15: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

 ". . . it still made me smile a little to think about it. I had to keep on acting deaf if I wanted to hear at all" (Kesey 197).

     In Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the narrator pretends to be deaf and dumb and uses it to his advantage to listen in on the novel's antagonist. This passage is an ironic come-to-realization that if he wanted to know or understand anything further, he would have to keep on pretending not to hear it. 

     There is a small hint of verisimilitude in this passage as well. In life, one sometimes has to stay quiet and oblivious to listen to and comprehend what the general public has to say. If someone puts his or her opinion out in the open, someone else may disagree with it and shoot it down. So, instead of putting out an opinion in lieu of it getting shot down, one may want to listen and learn from what the other opinion conveys. One can judge and learn better based on that. 

     Irony function broadly in other ways throughout the text. A few more ironic aspects of the novel would be the fact that the most sane man in the institution ends up being the biggest problem and the fact that this same man chose to go to the institution for an escape but still ended up being trapped. He wanted to escape from his prison sentence so he switches it to a commitment to the mental institution to find out all of the other patients like him can leave when they want to but he can't. 

     Irony isn't heavily present throughout the novel, but when it does show up, it leaves a lasting effect. There is a purpose behind it; it helps drive the novel. 

An Instance of Verisimilitude: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

 "While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top, spreading his laugh out across the water—laughing at the girl, the guys, at George, at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier and the bicycle rider and the service-station guys and the five thousand houses and the Big Nurse and all of it. Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy" (Kesey 237). 

     This passage from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest reveals a type of verisimilitude that gives off a glint of reality. For those who are unsure, verisimilitude is a kind of hidden truth that one can link back to real life. One can relate to a statement with this type of verisimilitude in real life. The verisimilitude occurs within this passage within the last lines mostly. To summarize briefly, this takes place in the novel after McMurphy starts fighting back again against the Head Nurse and convinces her to let him take the other Acutes on a fishing trip. They're out fishing and start to catch a sort of huge fish, adding on to everything going on already. Within that, Kesey drops a bomb of wisdom on the reader in the last line, saying: "Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy." Readers can relate to this if they had once been at a point in life where they get hurt or things just go wrong, and they laugh at it just to keep from getting angry or negative. In a way, it's very true. Even musician Maynard James Keenan says (to tie back to this kind of verisimilitude): "Once you take yourself too seriously, your art will suffer."