Throughout All the Living, Aloma proves herself completely incapable of understanding Orren and his grief, and it comes out as unadulterated selfishness.
All the Living is written from a third-person limited perspective, focusing only on Aloma's thoughts and feelings. Aloma's thoughts and feelings are rarely about Orren, the man she supposedly loves who has just experienced unimaginable trauma. From the beginning of the novel, Aloma's thoughts revolve around herself, her desires, her needs, and her lacks. Morgan begins All the Living: "She had never lived in a house before and now, upon seeing the thing, she was no longer sure she wanted to" (3). Morgan does not begin the book by revealing Aloma's first thought to be something even as casually un-selfish as "so this is where he lives" or "so this is where they last lived." Instead, it is about what Aloma has had and has not had, what she wants and does not want.
As the novel progresses, this behavior only intensifies. Aloma may occasionally believe she is thinking about Orren, but she only does so just enough so as to let herself believe she is not entirely self absorbed. For example, when she begins playing piano, she is offered "fifteen dollars a week" and alleges that she does not care much about the money by thinking "Orren will be happy, and she liked that" (Morgan 73). Aloma likes that it is convenient for her, in this instance, to make Orren happy. It allows her to consider something she is doing simply for her own pleasure a selfless act. Doing something one enjoys is no great sin, no matter how much grief his or her loved one is feeling. It's pretending that that personal pleasure is helping the one grieving that is sinful.
Aloma continues this behavioral trend later on. On harvest day, she ventures into the new house because she cannot stand to be anywhere else (Morgan 155). She excuses herself from the self-centeredness of her listlessness partially because she believes she would have helped with the harvest if she had only been asked (Morgan 151). She does not see that that in itself in selfish - not to swallow her pride and her emotions and even her sense of self and offer to help a man she supposedly loves on his first harvest day feeling alone in the world. Beyond that, she first thinks of extra income, which she somehow still believes matters more to Orren than it does to her, so she excuses herself from disrupting what Orren sees as some sort of shrine to his mother and brother (Morgan 155).
I don't know which is harder - to grieve or to watch someone who has become your whole world grieve and stand powerless to ease his pain. That's not the point. The point isn't that Aloma has it so easy, and she's just a terrible person for being so self-centered. I don't think she's a terrible person - at least I hope not, because that would definitely make me one too. The point, instead, is that Aloma is not the victim here, no matter how often she focuses on herself to try to make it seem like she is. Orren is the victim. He's the one grieving. She just can't face it.
All throughout Aloma’s childhood, she has been deprived of her deepest desires, always wanting “more than she was given” (14) and is constantly dreaming up a better life for herself. She has never experienced true pleasure, only “small lusterless things” (15) and cannot imagine what a fulfilling life would feel like. In contrast to Aloma, Orren has already lived a life full of love and gratification. On top of that, he has once had a family who cared about him. Given that Aloma is devoid of this familial love that Orren’s whole life was centered around, it is understandable why she isn’t able to fully comprehend the trauma that comes with having that love taken away. I personally don’t believe Aloma is being selfish, rather she is completely oblivious to Orren’s thoughts and feelings, but nonetheless wants the best for him. Even though Aloma so badly wants to leave the farm, she tries to “line up her wanting with the same want that sent Orren out of the house each morning” (37). This line at least proves that Aloma is making an attempt to identify with Orren’s own desires, which is an act of selflessness, no matter how small. Nearing the end of the novel, it is not until Aloma’s dispute with Bell that she begins to see “now with a clarity brought on by defeat, she had fought not to love even as she had asked him for love” (174)—him, in this case, meaning Orren. In Aloma’s defense, she has had no family to “teach her otherwise” and has “never known the burden or the joy of contouring herself to another” (174), for which this reason, I respectably deem she cannot be considered a selfish character.
ReplyDeleteAloma does act as a selfish character because she is not given what she initially expects. She is trapped in a life that she does not want because both she and Orren are stricken by poverty. Orren seems to be more grounded and realistic, while Aloma is much more of a dreamer. As a result, there is a large disconnect between them. Aloma could never understand why Orren would so tirelessly work the fields and not pay any mind to her, except once when "She found that if she fastened her eyes to the ground at her feet where she could not see the wave of earth beyond the fields, she could hold onto the feeling. So long a she did not look up" (83). Orren never "looked up" from the fields because it was his livelihood and what he was born to do. Aloma did look up because she wanted something more, and this want made her act selfishly and is what caused most of the fights between her and Orren. She dreamed of becoming a pianist, of attending school, and of living elsewhere, but poverty and disparity ruled both her and Orren's life. It may be selfish that she expected Orren to give her more, but only given the circumstances. Wanting more is something that is accomplishable for those with money, but because Aloma and Orren are poor it is selfish to focus on anything other than putting food on the table. Aloma does not tend the farm and so she does not understand how badly the both of them need it; instead she feeds into her wishful desires by playing the piano at the church. Bell states, while disappointed with her deceit, "You are foolish, he said. You are pretty, you play pretty music, but you are foolish" (172). Aloma is not necessarily any more selfish than the rest of us, but because she is selfish and poor, she is labeled as a fool. She feels extreme guilt, "Her empty hands had stolen something. The knowledge cut her with a guilt so clear and so sudden, she didn't know how she'd not felt its sharp edge before, her own feeling numbed by some dulling desire" (173). While Orren was worrying about both of their needs, she was worrying about her own wants. She inflicted frustration and anger onto Orren that he did not deserve, and at the end of the book she felt a great deal of shame because of it. I think she realizes that dreams are not for the extremely poor, and to dream is to distance herself from the life she currently lives. She was unable to "look down" with him at the fields and was unwilling to succumb to poverty, and she was also unable to understand the grief he felt over losing his family. Once she lost the ability to play at the church and she had only home to go back to, she gave up on her dreams and focused on her and Orren's life together. I agree in that she was selfish and that it was unfair for her to take out her grief on Orren, but I also don't think it is fair to diminish her to a purely selfish character when she had dreams just like everyone else. When people are sad, they act out in ways that are cruel, and she lived nearly every moment in despair because her dreams were unachievable.
ReplyDeleteI found your assessment of Aloma’s character quite interesting and I agree with a lot of what you have said. She does act and think quite selfishly throughout the novel but I believe that this is the product of her upbringing. Aloma never had anyone growing up that truly cared for her. Even though she lived with her aunt and uncle for a while, they still couldn’t provide her with the affection she needed because “they’d cared in a middling, impersonal way that instinctively reserved their best for their own,” (12). And because she never had anyone care for her in a deeply personal way, she never learned how to care for someone else in that same manner. She was forced to become self-sufficient and put herself and her desires above everyone/everything else if she wanted even the smallest chance of getting out and escaping the life she was living. It is evident that she tries to move past this train of thought at times but in the end, it’s difficult because she’s never been forced to do it before. At the end of the novel though, I found C.E. Morgan implying that Aloma is willing to do everything she can to act less selfish, especially when it comes to Orren because deep down she loves him.
ReplyDeleteYour post brought me a new perspective of Aloma that I had not seen before. I agree that she is unwaveringly selfish throughout the novel, but I don’t agree that Orren is entirely a victim. Regarding your example of Aloma’s first thoughts of Orren’s house, I completely agree that Aloma is only thinking of herself. My disagreement begins when the house is described. The curtains are “bleached to gray,” the rugs are “tattered” and “scattered across the floor,” (4). Orren’s house is depressing. Would you want to live there? Some of Aloma’s bitterness towards Orren’s childhood house also stems from the fact that there is a newer house that they could live in together. Aloma definitely prefers the other house. I understand that Orren is mourning his family, but Aloma is his family now. He shouldn’t mind living in a different house in order to comfort her. His family is gone, and nothing will change that, but Aloma is living. Additionally, Orren is emotionally abusive at some points. While admiring the tobacco fields, Aloma compares the beauty of the white tobacco to a white Christmas. She then adds, admiringly, that she has never had anyone to share Christmas with. Orren responds by saying “well, I don’t got nobody [but] my own self,” (85). Would it kill Orren to share in the once beautiful moment they had together? I don’t think so.
ReplyDeleteThis blog post is truly one of the most interesting analysis of Aloma that I have seen. I, as a reader, sympathized with Aloma and her losses and discontent of life. However, stepping away from the perspective set by the narration, I do see other “victims” of life that seem to have found coping mechanisms to divert themselves from their tragedies. Orren, for instance, has recently lost all his remaining family. Because of this, he spends most of his time laboriously obsessing over his family farm. This may not be the healthiest outlet for a recent grief, but as the hired farm hand told Aloma, “Got to be done, I reckon,” (154). The other man in Aloma’s life during this story, Bell Johnson, portrays another coping mechanism that most suffering people tend to turn to: religion. When describing how he came to the preacher position, Bell revealed to Aloma, “… my daddy preached this church and that’s how I came to be here,” (102). Through embracing religion, Bell has coped with the death of his father. Both men have actively tried to absolve their unhappiness through acknowledgement and through coping with external outlets. Aloma, on the other hand, has refused to outwardly admit her unhappiness. While Aloma is quite selfish in her thoughts and actions throughout the novel, I believe that it is because she refuses to express outwardly her unhappiness. By conditioning herself to remain unhappy, Aloma has lost her sense of empathy; if she does not grieve, why should anyone? In a way she is the victim- to herself.
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