Final Response

The ending of this book was pretty much tragic. Alma finally begins to like Joshua, and then she finds out he isn't even technically Jewish. She then can't figure out why on earth she ever hated the man, and begins to really appreciate how well he treats her. Unfortunately, this happens days before his death. Seigl asked Alma to go for a walk in the cemetery, and despite Alma's worry he wanted to ascend a long, steep staircase. When they were about thirty stairs up, he clutched at his chest and seemed to be having trouble, so Alma rushed to him from her place lower on the staircase, where she was struggling. She tried to hold him, but he pushed her off and ended up falling down all the stairs. He ended up dying of the heart attack, and Alma was distraught. She went to the funeral, even though everyone there hated her, and then had to leave early because she was sobbing.

It turned out that Seigl left his estate and a large some of money to Alma, and he wanted her to continue living there and sorting his stuff, and also to go to college and pursue her education. Alma was touched, and she was so happy to know that he had loved her. Dmitri came by to reclaim Alma and get money, but she turned him down. The ending seemed to be really touching and satisfying so far... but it went all downhill from that point.

Alma felt a great loss over Seigl's death, and spent her time thinking about him and loving his memory. Then the police came to the house and questioned her, because there was suspicion that she had assisted Seigl's death, due to the odd situation in which he died. Alma wasn't guilty, but the cops made her uncomfortable because of her past. When they left her, she was pleasantly surprised that they didn't arrest her. She ended up deciding to go to nursing school, and she was really excited and knew Seigl would have been so proud. She was very happy, but then she walked into Seigl's study and was attacked by Jet.

Jet was waiting there with a big German knife, and she stabbed Alma 32 times. This really kind of ruined the ending for me, because as soon as there was a wholesome and somewhat pleasant part of the book, it was gone soon after. Alma was finally having hope for her future, just for it to be ripped away by a psycho character who was barely even in the book. Once again, Jet Seigl went against Joshua's wishes and abrupty tampered with his life, resulting in a negative impact, as usual. Jet said that justice had been done when she killed Alma, but really she ruined Alma's life, who was innocent, and went against her dead brother's wish. The ending was definitely a disappointment to me, because after such a dismal, crude story full of hatred, I was beginning to enjoy the new found optimism and moral justice.

Themes From American Literature

The first common theme from American Literature that I noticed in the book is prejudice against religion or faith, more specifically anti-semitism. Both Alma Busch and Dmitri hate Jewish people, and therefore hate Joshua Seigl because he is Jewish. Even though they both can see that he is a generous and kind person, they always reveal their disgust about how he's Jewish and classify him with all of the Jewish stereotypes. Seigl lives in a big house and has a lot of money, and Alma classifies all rich people as selfish, lazy, and ungrateful. Seigl also spends his money in ways that are very frivolous to her, and that disgusts her even more. These are characteristics that she classifies all Jewish people by: rich and ungrateful and selfish. Throughout the story, every time she thinks or talks to Dmitri about Seigl, she refers to him in a negative and harsh connotation. At one point, she thought to herself, "I hate him. Hate his whiskers, his fat Jew lips." She hates Josh Seigl to an extent that later on in the book she wants to kill him, literally, and often plots ways she could try to without getting caught.

The other theme that appeared alot throughout the book is love, and also the need to be loved by others. Alma has always felt the desperate need to be loved by men and to feel wanted by them, even if it means being terribly abused. Dmitri, her most recent "lover," abuses Alma sexually and emotionally, yet she still says she loves him and would do anything for his love. In the story, Alma shows that she is willing to change her opinions and actions to prove herself worthy of Dmitri. An example of this is when she slept in his car when he kicked her out of his apartment.
She'd slept in his car in the backseat wrapped in a filthy blanket crying herself to sleep not minding the cold. Proving to him her devotion. Her brain jangled from the crystal meth. Might've been roach poison he gave her. I love you Dmitri don't send me away, see?-I trust you."
She acts differently than her normal self to try to be funny for Dmitri and his friends, even though they only laugh at her because they think she is pathetic. She steals things from Seigl's house to try and please Dmitri, but he usually just was disappointed in them. Because Alma is very self-consious, she needs Dmitri to love her, and she is willing to change herself to be appreciated by him.
I also saw some of this same characteristic in Joshua Seigl. Seigl definitely cares about what people think about him, and usually he doesn't like them to know anything at all. He doesn't talk to anyone about his illness, and even gets uncomfortable talking to his doctor. When he had to tell Alma a vague explanation of his illness, he begged her not to share that information with anybody. Seigl doesn't want people to see weakness in him, because he's afraid it will alter their perceptions of him.

Diction & Syntax

The novel is written in third person, but it switches off between looking into the thoughts of two different characters: Joshua Seigl and Alma Busch. This changes every few chapters, to allow the reader to hear the thoughts and learn more about the personalities of each character. Throughout these changes in perspective, I have noticed something Oates' has done stylistically to the sentence structures of the different viewpoints.
Alma's sections were definitely the most noticeable to me. Because she is uneducated, young, and simple-minded, her thoughts and conversations are much different than Seigl's. Those characteristics, combined with her strong emotions and opinions, cause Oates' to write Alma's thoughts as extremely long, run on sentences with simple grammar, a lot of profanity, and other harsh words. I'd like to share a couple example passages that particularly grabbed my attention.

"And Alma made sure he wasn't creeping up on her like he did sometimes (without him knowing she saw him in the corner of her eye) and she was prowling restless and hot Hate hate hate both of you Jew kike bastards and her heart pounding like she'd sniffed the purest coke straight up into her brain and she watched seeing her hand open a glass-front bookcase in Seigl's study and from a shelf she pulled a book that made her smile almost, small as a children's book, which was what she thought it might be, the title sounded like a children's fairy tale, Anna Livia Plurablelle, but when she opened it and tried to read the tiny print swam in her eyes, fucking words made no sense like they were not English or any kind of English she'd been taught and her heart kicked in resentment and fury and her hands yanked the covers of the little book back until she heard the fragile spine crack and she smiled with childish satisfaction like a boy yanking a frog's legs apart tearing the frog into two pieces. There! Fucker."
This passage is one big run on sentence with a few commas thrown in. There is a lot of bitterness and hatred, shown in her vile description of the frog, her evil satisfaction at destroying the book, and also all the profanity that is found in this passage of her thoughts.

"Seigl was moody a lot. Rude! On his good days he was respectful to her as he'd been in the beginning and often he gave her extra money and spoke of sending her to the local college but on the other days when his legs gave out or he couldn't concentrate on his work he sulked and hid away like a sick dog then called for her and expressed impatience she didn't get to him in ten seconds and he bossed her around as bad as her daddy ever bossed her mother and she heard that edge of exasperation in his Jew-voice familiar to the Tattooed Girl from other sons of bitches and the essential message was Look, he doesn't love you. Doesn't care a fuck about you."
That passage, again, contains a very long run on sentence with obvious lack of punctuation, which makes it more personal for Alma's character. Reading it allowed me to sense the bitter hatred she was feeling towards Seigl. These long, simple sentences with their profane language are prevalent throughout all of Alma's sections of the book, while Seigl's sections are more grammatically and politically correct, along with more intelligent. These distinct differences in the syntax and diction of the two characters allows me to better understand the characters, and also to have a clearer vision of which character is being observed and when.

Character Study

Joshua Seigl
Joshua Seigl is the first character Oates introduces in the novel. As I wrote in my first post, Josh was initially described as a lonely, quiet author who had recently developed an illness, which I later discovered was a dibilitating neurological disorder that caused him great pain and weakness. I originally didn't understand why Seigl chose such a mysterious girl as Alma to depend on and spend so much time with, but now that Oates has developed his character and I am almost finished with the book, I feel I can better understand his character and decisions. Oates' characterization of Seigl is often very direct, because she oftentimes will flat out say what he is like or something about his personality. An example of this is,
"Seigl hated it that people talked of him behind his bac, and dealt with the predicament as he dealt with most predicaments: by banishing the thought from his mind."
This straight-forward information about Seigl explained a weakness in Seigl, and helped me better understand his personality. Seigl avoids confrontation, and seems to fear them. For example, when Jet wanted to visit him but he really didn't want her to, he thought,
"God damn if he'd allow her to interfere with his life when his life, at last, was going so well."
But then, Oates wrote,
"The next day, there was Seigl driving to the airport to meet his sister's flight. Had she said 1:08 P.M.?"
Seigl definitely is seen as always wanting to please others. When he interacts with Alma, he always worries about if he's making her feel uncomfortable or if he said something that upset her. I also think that the way Seigl is compensating with his illness and needyness is by trying to help Alma. It seems to me that Seigl hired Alma to help her help him, and he always offers her to pay for her college education or surgery to remove her tattooes. Also, one of his favorite hobbies is chess, a game he is very good at and even was in the newspaper for his skills as a child. He offered to play with his friend's son, and taught him and really encouraged him that he was doing well and to keep at it. His reclusive personality and fame may make him seem a bit proud, but Siegl is the opposite, and has a very kind heart.

Alma Busch
Alma Busch is the tattooed girl. She came from out of town, mysteriously, and was picked up by a bad guy. Dmitri Meatte is a crude, selfish man who takes Alma home and bathes her and feeds her so that he can get her to have sex with him and be like an item to him. Because of her needy personality, his plan works. Alma falls in love with this horrible, disgusting man who often beats her, rejects her, and sells her body for money. But still, she always runs back to him, offering sex and money for his attention. This has been a theme in Alma's life. As a young girl, she always went really far with older guys so that she could get their attention and feel wanted, even if they didn't care about her at all. Alma is used to taking abuse, and even blames herself for it sometimes. When recalling her experiences with those high school boys she was with, she remembered,
"There was a time in high school when sometimes they left her at the side of the access road by the river three miles from home and she felt the hurt as a child might feel desperate to be forgiven for whatever she must have done, to provoke such hurt."
Probably the most important characteristic about Alma is that she hates, absolutely despises, Joshua Seigl. He doesn't know this, but she always thinks about how she hates everything about him and decides later on in the book that she intends to kill him. Alma is an anti-semite, and so she hates Seigl because he is Jewish. She tries to deny that fact by saying many other things she hates about him, but they are all little, immature reasons that aren't valid reasons for how much she hates him. But the thing about Alma's personality, is that she so easily loves and hates people. When thinking about Dmitri, who she supposedly loved, she thought,
"If he ceased utterly to want her, she would wish him dead."
That doesn't seem to legitimize her feelings, and it really says something about her. She has flighty emotions that change so easily, and her simple mind makes either extremely harsh or extremely flattering judgements about people, no matter their validity. She also has a very shallow opinion on love and relationships, she thought once,
"Why did people care for one another, where there was no sex connection?"

Jet Seigl
Jet is Joshua's sister, and only living relative. Her real name is Mary Beth, but she legally changed it to "Jetimah Steadman-Seigl" at age 18. She is a very strong-willed and opinionated person, who is described as strikingly beautiful for being in her thirties. Compared to her prodigious brother, who was an excellent student and incredibly talented chess player, Jet was the troubled child growing up. Jet has been medicated many times in her life, for disorders such as Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia, due to her emotional issues and temper tantrums. She cares about her brother and wants to help him, but she is too pushy and rude for him and he tries to avoid her because they always end up fighting. She is perceived as very odd, and at one point in the book Oates' said,
"She enunciated the word rationalism as if it were a comical obscenity."
Jet is what some would call "different," and she is very outgoing and will let people know exactly what she thinks. When she visited Seigl and met Alma, she didn't like her and even showed her violence, slapping and fighting her.

Trend of Similes

Throughout the book, Oates has used similes and metaphors very frequently to explain what she is trying to say, or sometimes to provide a better understanding of the characters. Personally I really like her technique of these reoccuring comparisons, because they really help me understand what she's trying to say very clearly, because she gives me something to associate her point with. During my reading, I underlined some of these similes and metaphors and I'd like to share a few of them and discuss why they were helpful or what they helped me realize about the characters or plot.

It's too much trouble to take the sheeting down in the spring so the windows are permanently covered. Like glaucoma-clouded eyes.
I'm familiar with the eye disease glaucoma, so using that comparison of the foggy windows let me picture in my head what Oates was intending the fog to look like.

Like vomit rising in the back of her mouth, her hatred tasted.
Alma has a hatred for Joshua Seigl that is unlike any common hatred. She initially doesn't know why she hates him, it is explained later on. But at this point before her complicated character is really explained, this was one of the first descriptions I had gotten of Alma's feelings toward Josh Seigl. It is very harsh, and very vivid.

...since the sister's departure there was beginning to be a weakness in the man like cracks so fine you can't see them yet but can sense they are there.
Joshua Seigl is a man who does not like to talk about his feelings to others, he prefers to keep his private life to himself. This description of the weakness Alma saw in Seigl tells me that Seigl was not obvious in his weakness, but in fact tried to hide it. Alma could sense the weakness in Seigl, because he doesn't like to show his outer emotions to people.

Slow dull lonely winter days and she was stone cold sober. And the deliruim of the weekend was eclipsed behind her like the soiled clothes she'd stumbled out of, kicked off her feet.
This simile compared Alma's hazy memory of the past weekend like subconsiously kicking off clothes, something you don't remember every detail of but you know it happened.

Yet Seigl seemed to know, his recovery had little to do with medication: no more than the sun easing out of a solar eclipse has anything to do with mere optics.
This passage is when Seigl thought he was cured of his illness, but really he was just in remission. But his explanation of his disease being cured was that he didn't need an explanation- because like the solar eclipse, it was something of a miracle.

Like a shy suitor he approached his bathroom mirror to examine his face for the first time in months without flinching.
When Seigl began having health problems, he stopped paying attention to his appearence. Disheartened from his sickly and aging look, he stopped looking in the mirror and shaving his face. But the day he woke up feeling better, he shaved and smiled at finding himself attractive. This simile describes his attitude when he first went to the mirror to see his reflection for the first time in awhile.