See the Moon? by Donald Barthelme
"See the Moon?" by Donald Barthelme is a monologue that explores complex themes of identity, mental health, and familial relationships through the voice of an eccentric narrator. The story is characterized by disjointed thoughts and a unique narrative style, as the speaker reveals his inner struggles and life experiences, including his time as a promising university student, his military service in Korea, and the challenges of raising a son named Gregory. The narrator's peculiar obsession with the moon and his self-declared "lunar hostility studies" serve as metaphors for deeper fears and existential inquiries.
Throughout the narrative, he grapples with his past disillusionment, the complexities of his relationships—including a divorce and a new marriage with a pregnant wife—and his aspirations as a father. The narrative culminates in an address to his unborn child, named Gog, where he expresses a desire to protect his offspring from the harsh realities of life. The moon symbolizes both danger and fascination, reflecting the narrator's belief that there are elements of existence that remain beyond human comprehension. Overall, Barthelme's work invites readers to ponder the interplay between madness and brilliance, and the elusive nature of truth in the human experience.
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See the Moon? by Donald Barthelme
First published: 1966
Type of plot: Antistory
Time of work: About 1965
Locale: The narrator's house
Principal Characters:
The unnamed narrator , an eccentric intellectualSylvia , his first wifeAnn , his current wifeGregory , his seventeen-year-old son
The Story
The form of this story is that of a monologue in which the speaker's perceptions and revelations are the primary content. The speaker, or narrator, would seem to be confiding his deepest apprehensions and ambitions, along with much of his life history to an interlocutor of some sort, a visitor or friend, or perhaps even a psychiatrist, because the narrator's personality is, to say the least, odd. He claims to be conducting "very important lunar hostility studies," although his methods "may seem a touch light-minded. Have to do chiefly with folded paper airplanes." Indeed, he confesses to "a frightful illness of the mind, light-mindedness" while at another point he asserts that he is nevertheless "riotous with mental health."
To a literal-minded reader, the narrator may seem simply to be insane. In the world of this story, however, conventional standards of neither sanity nor fictional form have much relevance. The narrator's obsession with the moon and its possible negative influence implies inevitably the origins of the word "lunatic." The implication is more than likely ironic and intentional on the author's part, for if the narrator is a "lunatic," he is certainly a brilliant one whose provocative observations cannot be dismissed merely as the product of a deranged mind.
During the course of the disjointed, meandering narration, a coherent autobiography emerges, fragment by fragment. The narrator was, in the late 1940's, a very promising student at an unnamed university on the Gulf Coast. He was drafted into the United States Army on graduation, however, and sent to Korea. On his return to civilian life, he was hired by his alma mater as an assistant to its president with the primary responsibility of writing "poppycock, sometimes cockypap" for the president's speeches. He married Sylvia, and they had a son, Gregory. Within a few years he became disillusioned with his work at the university; rearing a child proved to be a further stress; he resigned from his job, and his marriage ended in divorce.
At the time of the story, Gregory is a freshman at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Obsessed by his own quest for selfhood, Gregory makes frequent, unexpected telephone calls to his father with questions out of the blue such as "Why did I have to take those little pills?" or "What did my great-grandfather do?" The narrator has meanwhile remarried in middle age, and his current wife, Ann, is pregnant with a child whom they call Gog—a name whose apocalyptic associations seem, in this instance, bizarrely incongruous.
Although it is hard to say what the narrator at this point actually does for a living, a bohemian lifestyle is rather obviously implied. An eccentric freelancer, he devotes his "moonstruck" brilliance to various "little projects" such as the aforementioned lunar hostility studies and the equally eccentric pursuit of "cardinalogy"—a taxonomical study of cardinals of the Catholic Church, "about whom science knows nothing."
In the concluding section of the story, the narrator addresses his monologue to his unborn child. It appears now that the story also represents the father's concern for (and need to justify himself to) his offspring—as he says, "You see, Gog of mine, Gog o' my heart, I'm just trying to give you a little briefing here. I don't want you unpleasantly surprised." Thus, to help forestall "unpleasant surprises" in life for his new child, he has presented the truth (whatever that is) of the world as he knows it: the report of a traveler to someone beginning the journey. Beyond human understanding, though, there are realms of terror and fascination that no "reports of travelers" can describe. In the narrator's mind, the bright, austere face of the moon is equated with the threat and the allure of the unknown mysteries of life; in the climactic next-to-last line of the story, he voices the resolve to protect his child by making "sure no harsh moonlight falls on his new soft head."
Bibliography
Barthelme, Helen Moore. Donald Barthelme: The Genesis of a Cool Sound. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001.
Gordon, Lois. Donald Barthelme. Boston: Twayne, 1981.
Hudgens, Michael Thomas. Donald Barthelme: Postmodernist American Writer. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001.
Klinkowitz, Jerome. Donald Barthelme: An Exhibition. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991.
McCaffery, Larry. The Metafictional Muse: The Works of Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, and William H. Gass. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982.
Molesworth, Charles. Donald Barthelme's Fiction: The Ironist Saved from Drowning. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1982.
Olsen, Lance, ed. Review of Contemporary Fiction 11 (Summer, 1991).
Patteson, Richard F., ed. Critical Essays on Donald Barthelme. New York: G. K. Hall, 1992.
Roe, Barbara L. Donald Barthelme: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1992.
Stengel, Wayne B. The Shape of Art in the Short Stories of Donald Barthelme. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.
Trachtenberg, Stanley. Understanding Donald Barthelme. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990.
Waxman, Robert. "Apollo and Dionysus: Donald Barthelme's Dance of Life." Studies in Short Fiction 33 (Spring, 1996): 229-243.