Early Impressions and Superstitions Dictate Our Lives
The impressions and superstitions that we receive when we are young
dictate the course that our lives will follow. According to John Locke, a philosopher from
the 1600s, the mind at birth is a “tabula rasa” or blank piece of paper (Soccio
300). Given this information it follows logic that we are what we learn from our
environment or culture. But it also is a given that we are the same biologically,
therefore our subconscious’ work in the same manner. Janie, in Their Eyes Were
Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Grace, Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, and
Kills-Close-To-The-Lake, Fools Crow by James Welch, are prime examples how
impressions and superstitions can rule our lives. The choices we make are swayed by what
we are taught, whether we recognize that consciously or subconsciously.
In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Hurston, Janie
leads her life based on a vision of love that she gets from a pear tree. Hurston says, in
an article by Biman Basu, “the Negro thinks in hieroglyphics” (161). With this
in mind let’s read what Janie sees when looking at this pear tree,
She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the
visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible
voice to it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom;
the thousand sisters-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the
tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So
this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt
remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid. (11)
From Webster's definition of hieroglyphic, “a picture or symbol
representing a Janie uses the picture of the bees and the pear tree to represent
marriage.As girls in this time and age (as well as Janie’s time) there is great
importance placed on marriage. My Great Aunt Bea use to tell me, as a little girl that
basically the goal for girls is to marry and have someone to take care of you.
Janie’s grandmother also had placed great importance on this subject and instilled
this in Janie (13). All the fairytales that we are told end with Prince Charming marrying
the poor maiden and living happily ever after, and with this stimulation how can we not
have an extravagant ideas and impressions of marriage.
The images Janie sees in this pear tree and the idea of how marriage
is suppose to be is something Janie strives to achieve subconsciously and consciously for
the rest of her life. Superstitions and impressions dictate Grace’s, the main
character in Alias Grace, life as well. Grace was a young Irish girl and being
Irish means that you have many superstitions and set impressions placed on you from an
early age. I can testify to this, being Irish myself. Arthur L. Stinchcombe and Carol A.
Heimer, sociologists who are studying the subconscious, state that the subconscious is
real, “but socially learned” (309). Grace believed in many superstitions
that dictated the outcome of her life. One such superstition was if you peel an apple in
one long piece and throw it over your shoulder, “It will spell out the initial of the
man you will marry” (166). But the superstition that put Grace into her spiral
downward, was the impression that when people die, a window needs to be open to let their
spirit escape.
When Grace’s friend Mary Whitney died Grace forgot to do this
and she believed, at least subconsciously, that Mary’s spirit entered her. She
believe in this so much that she actually heard Mary’s spirit whisper, “Let me
in” (178). This is followed by, Grace thinking she is Mary Whitney for a day and then
losing memory of that and becoming herself again (180).This belief of Mary’s spirit
not escaping the room follows her for most of her life.
At the time of Mary’s death Grace was young and impressionable.
Mary was the only friend that Grace ever had. With all the tragedy in Grace’s life it
is no wonder that she subconsciously took Mary with her and her superstitious nature
helped her accomplish this.This is really evident at the time of the murders. The night
that James McDermott told Grace that he was going to kill Nancy, Grace started to wonder
what Mary would have done (311). When Grace fell asleep that night she dreamt of Mary. In
the dream the following took place:
She [Mary] was holding a glass tumbler in her hand, and inside it was a firefly,
trapped and glowing with a cold greenish fire.Her face was very pale, but she looked at me
and smiled; and she took her hand from the top of the glass, and the firefly came out and
darted about the room; and I knew that this was her soul, and it was trying to find its
way out, but the window was shut; and then I could not see where it was gone. (313)
Subconsciously Grace was hoping for Mary to take over and because
Grace believed in this superstition so much, Mary was able to. Sigmund Freud, a physician
who developed psychoanalysis, suggest, “dreams are fulfillments of wishes” (World
Book 279). Grace’s wish came true even if it was subconsciously. In this time
and age possession was a popular belief and if Grace even subconsciously believed this as
a possibility she could have pulled the murders off without even remembering them. Ray
Rivera, a writer for the Seattle Times, did an article that suggest this very
thing and the possibility of “false memory syndrome” (A3). As Dr. Jordon puts
it, “What is perceived as being known is only a small part of what may be stored in
this dark repository” (141).
With this being the case Grace was in prison and ultimately released
because she let her superstitions run her life. In Fools Crow,
Kills-Close-To-The-Lake lets her impression of being an unworthy wife rule her choices and
the outcome of her life. Jerold Ramsey notes,
prophecy is something that many Native tribes have traditionally set great store by. To
be able to account for and predict the future, whether it be through a story, a vision, or
a dream, is to possess power, for it suggest that the future falls under the jurisdiction
of one’s own worldview. (Burlingame 18)
Basically, what we see our selves as is what the world will be to the world.
Kills-close-to-the-lake felt like a slave to the other wives in her lodge and felt like
she was unwanted by her husband (222). These feelings and the impression of being treat
like a daughter by her husband lead her to fantasize about her near-son White-mans-dog
(Fools Crow). She would flirt and stare at him when he was in the lodge. Striped Face, the
second wife in the lodge, had even noticed (225). It got to the point where
Kills-close-to-the-lake choice to cut off her finger because she had dreamt about Fools
Crow and in this dream she had convinced him to sleep with her (119).
Since Native Americans put so much meaning into their dreams, it is
no wonder that Kills-close-to-the-lake felt shame after this incident. But that did not
stop her. She knew that it was useless to go after Fools Crow any longer, so she moved on
to his little brother, Running Fisher because she felt “he was everything she
possessed in the world” (224). Her impression of being worthless led her to do things
that would give others the same impression. Kills-close-to-the-lake’s resignation, to
a life without love and a proper husband determined her final banishment from the tribe.
According to Rides-at-the-door, Kills-close-to-the-lake’s husband, she felt resigned
from the moment that she left her father's lodge. “She was sure that she would never
be happy again” (340).
From the beginning she had the vision that she would never love and
she believed it so whole heatedly that it came true. She came to this realization when
Fools Crow married Red Paint. When she tells how she use to dream of Fools Crow and how
she felt when he got married, she proclaims, “[W]hen he married Red Paint, she felt a
pure and true emptiness and in a strange was welcomed it as though it completed her
destiny” (340). The resignation and the unworthy impression of herself proved to be
true throughout her life.
Impressions and superstitions that we get when we are young follow
us throughout our lives and dictate the outcome. We continuously do silly things that we
have done for years. My grandmother still lifts her feet off the ground when going under
train treacles, for good luck. My mother still believes that some day she will live
happily ever after even after three failed marriages, and my sister still feels that
I will always be better than her at sports. These things may or may not be true, but we
still run our lives like they are.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Alias Grace. New York: Double Day, 1996.
Burlingame, Lori. “Empowerment through “Retroactive Prophecy” in
D’Arcy McNickle’s Runner in the Sun: A Story of Indian Maize, James
Welch’s Fools Crow, and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony.” American
Indian Quarterly; Berkeley; Winter. 24.1 (2000): 1-18.
“Dreams.” The World Book Encyclopedia. 1985 ed.
“Hieroglyphic.” Webster’s New World Dictionary and Thesaurus.
1996 ed.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: HarperPerennial,
1998.
Rivera, Ray. “Demons Usually in the Mind not Body of Victim, Experts Say.” Seattle
Times 28 Oct 2000: A3.
Soccio, Douglas. Archetypes of Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy. United
States: Wadsworth, 2001.
Stinchcombe, Arthur l. & Heimer, Carol A. “Retooling for the Next Century:
Sober Methods for Studying the Subconscious.” Contemporary Sociology; Washington; March.
29.2 (2000): 309-319.
Welch, James. Fools Crow. New York: Penguin Group, 1986.
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