A McBook Full of Despicable Characters. But...

After our discussion of naturalism on Tuesday and its continuation on Thursday, I am reaching a better understanding of the context from which McTeague arose. Looking at his character, he starts out as a bit of a simpleton, but someone who appeared more or less harmless but for his brute strength, not unlike Lennie from Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. I would go so far as to say that the McTeague we saw early in the novel was more like a Forrest Gump on steroids. We se a simple man who didn’t need much but “to eat, to smoke, to sleep, and to play upon his concertina” (5). As the story progresses, we see a shift in this character, as he descends to having more animalistic characteristics, eventually becoming utterly wretched and despicable.

The first step that McTeague takes along this decline is in Trina’s series of dental appointments. His lust-driven, animalistic urges give way to the little bit of sense that he may have floating around in his thick skull. As he finally gets his girl, the story takes more of the form of a conquest than of anything resembling “love.” Perhaps more disturbing than the fact that McTeague’s brute strength won over is the fact that Trina not only gives in, but actually somehow almost likes it. She describes this as “that strange desire of being conquered and subdued (103). The problematic thing about Trina is that her submissiveness is frustrating. Furthermore, both characters simultaneously become more and more corrupt. While McTeague becomes more of a massive, brutish animal, Trina becomes ever more like Zerkow, finally rolling in her bed of gold coins in the ultimate gratuitous display of greed and miserly materialism.

It is definitely discouraging to see so many character either start out bad (Zerkow with his over-the-top stereotypes as the greedy Jew, Maria as the kleptomaniac, etc), but the small bit of redemption is in the beautiful little courtship scene that plays out between Ms. Baker and Old Grannis. This courtship drastically contrasts with the direction that the other characters are going in their downward spiral to baseness (or deadness, which seems to be the trend of late in the middle 2/3rds of the novel). I am cautiously optimistic about one thing in this book, and that is the wishful thinking that nothing happens to tarnish the side-story of these two old people who have found each other. Sentimental? Yes!