This last concept makes me think that, early on, F. Scott Fitzgerald may have considered entering the priesthood. I know for a fact that sometimes, to a young Catholic man, the thought of jumping into the priesthood can be quite strong. But there is the fact that "not going out and seeing the world" can hold a prospective seminarian back from making the decision early on. There is truth to both approaches. The struggle with indecision seems to be at least implicitly expressed in this story. At the end of the story, Lois decides to send the telegram to Howard, but, in the end, she doesn't. To me, this expresses some deep interior perturbation. The same type of unsettling feeling that is present when one feels that he may have a vocation to the priesthood. This was the main takeaway that I got from this story and I can relate to both Lois and Keith. To me, Lois represents indecision, Keith represents comfort in decision. This theme of indecision is important to recognize in the characters because it can manifest itself in life in many circumstances.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
F. Scott Fitzgerald "Benediction" II
F. Scott Fitzgerald's Benediction tells the story of a young woman whose lover seems to be considering a break up. As this woman, Lois, sets out to meet her long-unknown brother, she hopes to also meet up with her lover. Her brother, Keith, is a seminarian who left for his priestly studies when Lois was still young. She was young enough that she didn't really know him. She goes to meet him at the seminary where she seems to express apathy toward Catholicism. She seems to question whether or not it is a good idea that some of the seminarians entered their studies so early. Lois expresses to her brother that she thinks the young seminarians should have gone out and seen the world before committing to celibacy.
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It's always comforting when one is able to relate to the work, and I think that you found that "discernment" as a theme for Lois and Keith as a particularly relevant connection. They discuss how and when the young men discern. What is not said out loud is Lois's discernment. Instead, that is left for the reader to discern.
ReplyDeleteGoing off the ideas previously mentioned, the end of the story does leave readers with many loose ends. Lois is indecisive in whether or not to send the telegram and ultimately end her relationship with this Harold, but this surface conflict runs much deeper. Her relationship with Harold is comparable with that of the Catholic faith. Lois mentions early on that her mother wished her to enter a convent, but she (Lois) did not wish to. It is possible that in her exclamations regarding the ages and lack of life experience of the young men entering the monastery (is this right?) she is verbalizing some of the fears she experienced herself.
ReplyDeleteI was also pretty confused by the Benediction scene. She first experienced revulsion to the point of having to leave (or fainted?), but afterwards describes "a warm peace [that] was filling her mind and heart she felt oddly broken and chastened". Whatever happened in that scene had a profound effect on Lois apparently to the point where she wishes to move on. Is this last telegraph relatable in any way to Lois' experience with the Catholic faith? How are her relationships with Kieth and Harold involved in this?
Alex brings up some great questions - on Lois's relationship with Howard, it's important to note his telegram to Lois at the beginning of the story. He explicitly says that he wants to be with her, but *not* to be married. So he's asking her to enter into what would be (especially at that time) an irregular relationship and against the teachings of her Catholic upbringing.
ReplyDeleteBut it's not just that living with him without being married would be "against the rules" -- it does seem to bother Lois somehow deep inside. Her decision to visit Keith, a seminarian at a monastery, is interesting - it suggests that she isn't quite sure about going to Howard and all the modern ideas he represents. She's still partially drawn to the older, religious way of life that Keith has chosen (even though most of her modern friends have pretty much rejected religion, as she tells Keith).
You might say that the story shows Lois being torn between two worlds, and she's not sure which way to go - so it's a story about discernment, as Renee rightly points out here.
So, what happens to her in the Benediction scene? She does feel both revulsion and peace when she confronts the ritual, in which the seminarians are praying before the Eucharist. (As we'll see later when we read Flannery O'Connor, when God enters a story, it can often be quite uncomfortable!) Fitzgerald's writing in this scene builds to a climactic and almost hallucinatory moment for Lois. Is she changed? Does she decide? It's hard to tell. Notice that in the last part we don't see her, but hear two telegram operators talking about her.
One interpretation of this story that I found interesting is at a blog run by a Jesuit (sorry, I don't know how to embed links in the comments, but here is the URL address):
http://whosoeverdesires.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/f-scott-fitzgerald’s-jesuit-story/
There, he takes a positive view of what happens to Lois - that she has begun to change, and that she has begun to examine her life. Here's what he has to say --
"The story ends ambiguously...we’re led to believe she has returned to Howard, after writing and then discarding a telegram to him breaking it all off. Such second thoughts, however, are a significant change for Lois. At the end of the story’s first section, after she has arranged her rendezvous with Howard and just before she goes to meet Keith, she thinks to herself 'never be sorry…never be sorry.'
"By the story’s end she realizes that life is far more complex, far deeper than this carefree and superficial sentiment conveys. Lois’ encounter with God, with Catholicism deeply lived by Keith and his companions, has changed her. It may not, Fitzgerald leads us to believe, have resulted in a conversion...an about-face from a life of sin to a life of grace. But it has resulted in a life that is deeper, that contains previously ignored levels of meaning and profundity, a life perhaps more difficult, but also more real."
I read this story ages ago. There seemed to be some tendency of Keith to wonder about Lois, to border on infatuation with her. If I remember correctly one or both of them thought about going to Europe. So, if this is a story about discernment, which I think is reasonable, the commentators here are overlooking the intensity of Keith's feelings for Lois as a woman. He's sheltered and has to come to term with that. To be honest, I thought that he was a bit flakey and not terribly sure of his vocation. I wondered if Fitzgerald was writing about a socially inexperienced youth who had stopped himself from thinking about the opposite sex until this one, Lois, came into his life. He put her on pedestal. So in a way he was sending mixed messages to Lois -- if I remember correctly I think Keith was praying before a grotto lost in wonderment about Lois. Did Fitzgerald know young idealistic men who maybe rushed into a seminary at a young age and then didn't know what to make of the "feminine." I think Keith's wonderment about Lois is really confusion about his life choice. I apologize if I don't remember the story accurately, I read it several years ago but it stuck in my mind. As far as Lois and Howard, and the telegraph operators, I couldn't tell where that storyline was going.
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