Out In The Cold

There are many videos on the internet about cats and kittens that were abandoned or badly treated and found by a good soul who helps them overcome their difficulties and find happily ever after. Most people love those warm-hearted stories that make you believe that there is good in this world. There is a belief in our society than anyone can rise above their initial situation, that nothing condition you to living a certain way of life.

The public has a natural empathy towards stories with hardships and a happy ending. It is the typical narrative scheme followed in stories. The protagonist is living their lives, they encounter difficulties that are developed along the story-line until they are resolved and the character knows a well-deserved happy ending. This idea is present in popular culture and within every product coming from the United States that we consume like cinema, shows and literature.

It has its basis in the myth of the self-made man, the idea that the key for an individual’s success lays within the individual itself and is not influenced by outside conditions like education or social status and rise above it, against all odds, climbing the social ladder. This term coined by Henry Clay in 1832 to talk about Benjamin Franklin’s upbringing from a son of a candle maker to being one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Then, developed by Frederick Douglass, a social reformer, abolitionist, orator and writer who escaped slavery, the term “self-made man” became an archetype and cultural ideal in the United States. This is when being the outcast, the outsider has been romanticized. Being disowned by society is represented as an initial situation that is irrevocably going to evolve and change into something better that is the character’s goal, inspiration.

Terry Eagleton, in The Guardian, talks about the outsider literature as a phenomenon appearing in the English literature during the 19th century. There is an apparent taste for marginality with writers from the lower-middle class like George Eliot, Dickens, and the Bronte sisters and, from the poorer side of the gentry, Jane Austen. They are considered as marginalised but Terry Eagleton argues that they are more “betweeners”, they live in between worlds: upper class and underdog, urban and rural, province and metropolis, so that they can reach a wider range of experiences that will be brought together in a single plot. Terry Eagleton states that “modernists were nomadic, in-between, adrift between cultures” and that “they handled English with the exquisite, innovative self-consciousness of the outsider”. He gives an interpretation about the importance of the outsider: “Literary theory was soon to catch up with literary practice. Literature isn't usually written by vagrants, but there is something vagrant about the very idea of it. It is language which is not quite at home, out on a spree, portable from place to place, open to a clash of interpretations. Ambiguity, the very stuff of literary language, is meaning which is wandering, transitional, in-between.”

The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald (1925) would be the perfect example. Gatsby is originally a poor man that keeps evolving to have the status permitting him to be with Daisy, the woman he loves. By wining money through some illegal business, Gatsby grows economically permitting him to climb the social ladder, this makes it possible for him to be with Daisy, although it is not enough for her, she prefers kipping with the appearances of a perfect marriage instead of being with the man she loves. Even if Gatsby grew by himself despite the circumstances to attain his goal, it is too late for him to have his fairy tale happy ending. This love for the outcast is also highlighted through the character of Nick Carraway who does not belong in Gatsby’s world but gets a glimpse into it through a peculiar friendship. He is the outsider who gets an Intel and his an objective observer of what happens.

This type of character is visible in a lot of different genres. In shows like Gossip Girl (2007), Dan Humphrey keeps being referred to as the ultimate outsider but is one of the main characters of the show. He is again the character that observes everything that happens. Along the way, as a writer, like Nick Carraway, he uses what he sees to nourish his stories about the Upper East Side, a world he doesn’t belong in but wants to. At the end of the show, the viewer learns that Dan Humphrey was Gossip Girl all along and that in a way despite degrading him and refusing to consider him a part of their world, he had a central role.

We could argue that Dan Humphrey and Nick Carraway, following the idea of Terry Eagleton, are actually “betweeners", more than actually marginalised. Dan Humphrey is still a New-Yorker living in Brooklyn in a huge loft which is still an expensive lifestyle to live in the Big Apple, he is in a private school and his the son of an ex-rock star who owns an art gallery. He might not be up to the standards of Serena Van Der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf but he cannot be fully considered as marginalised. It is a similar thing with Nick Carraway: his family owns a hardware business. He is Daisy’s cousin who is originally from a wealthy family, which could make us think that Nick Carraway is not economically challenged. The reader also knows that he went to Yale University which underlines the fact that he is not fully an outsider. The myth of the self-made man is recurring, people like it so much because it is a message of hope, that anything is possible if you put your mind to it. Disney is a fervent advocate of this. In cartoons like Rapunzel, Mulan and the Princess and the Frog, the story starts with three female characters who do not have good life conditions whether it is being locked in a tower, being a shame to their families or being poor and victim of racism. In the end, the characters rose from their circumstances and become princesses.

To some extent, this myth is also present in Harry Potter, even if he had a certain reputation in the world of wizards, he came from an abusive background to being a saviour and a hero.

The role of the outcast, that still is in a way an outcast but becomes the main character is more and more used as a slight modification of the myth, you do not have to change inherently who you are to be successful. This is visible with the Outsiders' comics which are about a team of superheroes that do not fit the norms of mainstream superheroes but still save the world.

Stories of rags to riches are highly popular but has been criticized by the intellectual and cultural history of the United States as something that was never accurate, just a myth, developed by the government as a sort of propaganda to idealize the United States as a better land, the land of the free where everything is possible for anyone. This criticism is visible in the Great Gatsby that serves as a cautionary tale regarding the myth of the self-made man and the American Dream. Fitzgerald highlights, in rather a pessimistic way that poor people will always live at the mercy of those who were luckier than them, the riches: “an unhappy fate is inevitable for the poor and striving individual, and the rich are allowed to continue without penalty their careless treatment of others’ lives”. Never the less, the American Dream, true or not, being able to be self-made, rise from poverty has been nourishing cinema and literature and influencing writers to describe people from all walks of lives, showing them in different conditions and experiences, making them evolve or not.

This idea of self-made man, the American Dream and the Pursuit of Happiness is problematic in America. With the industrial boom experienced in the 19th century, a higher social class and status was established in society. With the Beautiful and Damned, Fitzgerald exposes the society of his time as a hedonistic and materialistic society. With the character of Anthony, the reader can see that the outcast overcoming adversities is just an ideal established but that in everyday life it is the powerfully established that rule. Anthony is expecting greatness for his life and thinks it is his right, but he is unwilling to work for it. The character uses his lineage and inheritance for his quest of pleasure without pursuing his literary goals.

Moreover, this ideal is so deep rooted in American society that it is a part of the Declaration of Independence: “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creators with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. America is based on myths that fuels the idea that it is a welcoming land for all people, where they have equal opportunities to achieve greatness. This is highly problematic because these idealistic ideas based on a sort of abstract philosophy does not translate into people’s lives. When put into context, this ideals are excluding a big part of American society such as Native Americans, African American and women. This forgetting of such a big part of the American population is visible in the literature of the time. There is a real effort of cultural erasure and denial of African and Native American. This proves that not everyone can “make it” in America, you can go from rags to riches as long as you are a white male with a good head start.

Composed by,

Cécile Fardoux, Undergraduate of English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Aberdeen