Racial Asymmetries. Stephen Hong Sohn
a group you can’t really tell what the hell we are, though more and more these days the very question is apparently dubious, if not downright crass, at least to folks like Theresa and Paul, whose race-consciousness is clearly quite different from mine” (69). Jerry is aware enough to realize that his position as an “an average white guy” (69) makes any question directed toward a racial minority concerning descent and origin potentially fraught. At the same time, he seems far more dubious about Theresa and Paul’s racial politics, which apparently are too intellectualized for his tastes: “They inordinately fear and respect the power of the word, having steadily drawn down the distinctions between Life and Text. Let me say that when I was growing up the issues could be a lot heavier than that, a switchblade or Louisville Slugger being the text of choice, and one not so easily parsed or critiqued” (69–70). Again, Jerry demonstrates a shortsighted view of the damage wrought by prejudicial language. He attempts to minimize the complications that can result from ethnoracial tension by comparing it directly to the threat of bodily violence. He asserts that it is a much “heavier issue” to deal with someone attempting to stab or beat you up rather than being called, for instance, a racist epithet. Yet predicating the terrain of violence in this manner ahistorically represents race and does little to acknowledge how ethnoracial difference has incited centuries’ worth of exclusion, much of which dovetailed specifically with physical brutality. In these various examples, two returning motifs appear: the family and the home. Jerry places value on these two elements in the understanding of his place and his inclusion within Long Island suburbia, but his individualistic thinking neglects to point out the long history of American white supremacy.
Madness and Suburban Civilization
For Jerry, American-ness seems based on something as simple as the change of a name. As he tells it, “the family name was originally Battaglia, but my father and uncles decided early on to change their name to Battle for the usual reasons immigrants and others like them will do, for the sake of familiarity and ease of use and to herald a new and optimistic beginning, which is anyone’s God-given right, whether warranted or not” (23). The phrase “anyone’s God-given right” suggests an egalitarian view of an individual’s right to self-determination, but this statement, in actuality, reveals Jerry’s belief in the importance of an Anglicized genealogy and immigrant transformation. As Jerry notes, the name change reinvents the family not simply as Americans but as a specific kind of American. That is, their family name is altered to mimic that of someone of English or Anglo-Saxon heritage. The ease with which this change occurs contrasts with the other character who has an “English” name but whose transformation remains incomplete: Jerry’s wife, Daisy Han. It is important to note that Daisy’s name would not be an exact Korean-to-English transliteration because its phonetics, broken into “day” and “zee,” would be difficult for a Korean to enunciate. There is no “zee”-sounding equivalent in the Korean alphabet, so Daisy’s name would at best be a rough approximation. This attempt to reinvent through a change in the first name rather than the family name, as in the case of the Battaglias, features Daisy’s more tenuous American acculturation. Even as Daisy maintains her family name in contrast to the Battles, her Korean past is routinely erased in Jerry’s understanding of her life.
This oversight demonstrates that white liberal individualism’s subtle appearance within the novel bears more scrutiny, especially in relation to the chapter that relates Daisy’s rise from department-store perfume-counter employee to upwardly mobile suburban housewife and then to her fall as a manic-depressive suicide. The chapter, of course, is narrated from Jerry’s point of view and reveals how he figures Daisy as an irrational subject based on a diagnosis of what is likely to be bipolar disorder. I say “likely” because the chapter never directly refers to this condition, and my earlier mention of it as manic depression is based preliminarily on Jerry’s description of Daisy as experiencing “manic heights” (124). Although Jerry admits he “didn’t know what it was to be DSM-certified, described in the literature, perhaps totally nuts” (103), he does provide enough details to suggest that Daisy is suffering from bipolar disorder. Jerry does not go on to explain the acronym DSM, which stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, a reference manual for American psychiatry. It is difficult to know when Daisy might have gotten a firm diagnosis for bipolar disorder, as the doctor who tended to her before her death did not have a psychiatric background. Instead, Jerry comes to know this diagnosis at a later point, perhaps while reflecting on what he had observed in the instances prior to the drowning.
It is worth noting that the description of bipolar disorder has changed over the course of the five different editions of the DSM.21 According to the medical professionals Benjamin J. Sadock, Harold I. Kaplan, and Virginia A. Sadock, “patients with both manic and depressive episodes or patients with manic episodes alone are said to have bipolar disorder” (527, emphasis mine). “A manic episode,” they explain, “is a distinct period of an abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood lasting for at least one week, or less if a patient must be hospitalized. . . . Both mania and hypomania are associated with inflated self-esteem, decreased need for sleep, distractibility, great physical and mental activity, and overinvolvement in pleasurable behavior” (528).22 The psychologist Sheri L. Johnson further clarifies that “there are two major subtypes of disorder in DSM-IV-TR: bipolar I and bipolar II. Bipolar I disorder is diagnosed on the basis of a single lifetime manic or mixed episode. Despite the name ‘bipolar disorder,’ depression is not a diagnostic criterion” (4). In Aloft, Daisy’s mania first appears in ways that are too subtle for Jerry to notice, except in retrospect. Notable events include the following instances described by Jerry: “she bought herself and the kids several new outfits and served us filet mignon and lobsters and repainted our bedroom a deep Persian crimson trimmed in gold leaf” (103); “she worried me a little with her insomnia and solo drinking and 2 a.m. neighborhood walks in her nightgown” (104); and, most disturbingly, she “went off to Bloomingdale’s and charged $7000 for a leather living room set and a full-length chinchilla coat” (103). Jerry notes that given the depressed economy at that time (the year is 1975), the spending spree creates a definite strain in their marriage. A final mishap serves as the proverbial last straw when he arrives home to find Daisy “going through a couple hundred fabric swatches piled on the kitchen table, she had four or five different room chairs, some Persian rugs, several china and silver patterns, she had odd squares of linoleum and porcelain floor tile; she had even begun painting the dining and living room with sample swaths of paint, quart cans of which lay out still opened, used brushes left on the rims dripping” (106). After this scene of domestic chaos, Daisy strangely joins Jerry in the shower, but they are interrupted in the middle of sexual intercourse when food left on the stove catches fire. Although Jerry finally gets the fire under control, the potential danger to the children caused by Daisy’s inattention, coupled with her earlier spending spree, leads him to take drastic measures. Heeding his father’s counsel, Jerry severely restricts Daisy’s access to money, effectively cutting off her purchasing power. She therefore cannot continue decorating the house (instead of watching the kids) or go on extravagant shopping trips.
Daisy manifests the strain of the fire and her restricted monetary conditions in a variety of ways. Her diet changes markedly: “Daisy set down my dinner and she sat, too, but wasn’t eating. After serving all of us seconds she took our plates and began cleaning up. The kids chattered back and forth but Daisy and I didn’t say a word to each other” (113). Her insomnia worsens: “We usually went to bed at 11 or so, after the news for me and maybe a bath for her, but she started getting up at 5 in the morning, and then 4 and 3 and 2, until it got to the point when she didn’t even get ready for bed, not bothering to change into a nightgown or brush her teeth or even take a soak” (118). The climax of Daisy’s manic episode begins with a nude nighttime walk she takes to the local school. When she is brought back home by a police officer, her nonchalant attitude infuriates Jerry and provokes a shouting match. Jerry demands that Daisy see the family’s general practitioner, but Daisy refuses; she further incenses Jerry when she does not seem concerned about waking up the children (122). But when Daisy lunges at Jerry with a knife, missing his “throat . . . by a mere thumb’s width” (123), this act finally pushes her to agree to see Dr. Derricone, who prescribes her a course of Valium. After taking a dose, Daisy drowns. Later, when Jerry recounts this event, he comes close to