Recent Biblical Reinterpretation Reveals Roots of Harvard Malaise

"How about some Harvard flavors?" Radcliffe friends have gaily teased us.

"Harvard Men don't come in flavors," is our moribund reply.

But finally the time has arrived for our little brother school to attempt some generic master-synthesis, some Hegelian superstructure.

Harvard men are even more dogged than their Radcliffe counterparts in insisting that awesome individualism and, consequently, unfathomable multiplicity, are their only measure. To snip ungainly squares out of the brilliant patchwork that is Harvard would be the most impudent and absurd of tasks. Harvard men will not suffer themselves to be set in little boxes. Nor should they.

Then by what standards, with what vocabulary, may we begin to classify this unclassifiable body of scholars? We must look, clearly, for what is designated in lower level English courses as the Unifying Theme. With some exuberant exceptions, the Unifying Theme for Harvard undergraduates is malaise. It is a vague malaise to be sure. Most often only a brooding ostenato to gayer melodies, but there nonetheless. No simple response to those thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, the Harvard Malaise is a nagging self-dissatisfaction, a dearth of inner order, despite any personal triumph. The fact that the undergraduate rarely enjoys unqualified happiness registers not so much a nebulous mal du siecle as a fairly specific mal de Universite, a heavy burden of melancholy, a perrenial discontent of spirit. He doesn't know why. He just feels "sort of lousy."

Are there, indeed, characteristic, discomfiting Cantabridgean frames of mind?

* * *

The Expulsion From Eden Complex

The neurasthenic symptoms of the Expulsion Complex are at once disquieting and difficult to pin down. Longfellow (as a member of the Harvard faculty) unwittingly described its primary orientation:

A feeling of sadness and longing

Not akin to pain,

Resembling sorrow only

As the mist resembles rain.

The freshman, so highly motivated, so industrious in his pre-college years, assumes listless habits of dress, spends an inordinate amount of time in activities best described as "frittering," and suffers from mild abulia (a psychological disorder characterized by loss of will power).

By any rational measure Harvard, stacked up against high or prep school, is a paradise. But psychologically, to the freshman, it is post-Adamic. To the question "What is Harvard like?" a freshman most frequently mumbles about how intelligent and talented all his classmates are (roommatees will use each other as examples), indicates that he was an idolized Mr. Everything back at So-and-So High, and then hastitly and sheepishly assures you that of course he realizes at Harvard he will be merely a face in the crowd.

Like Adam, the Freshman was king of the beasts back in Eden. Or, at any rate, all came easy. But then, to eat of the fruit of knowledge--recent Biblical study indicates--he entered a new realm. No longer the chosen son, he was forced, as undergraduates say, "to sweat it." As a consequence, the real ethos of the Expulsion Complex is nostalgia; embellished reminiscences in which one's pre-Harvard splendor may become, in retrospect near dazzling.

As a rule, boys from large, traditional preparatory schools, of the Exeter-Andover variety are rarely subject to this malaise. (Nor often, for that matter, to other unsettling yearning of the heart.) The complex finds its most severe expression in what may be termed The Putney Syndrome. The P.S. occurs in boys from relatively progressive, coeducational boarding schools with pastoral settings. These settings are rapidly fancified into veritable idylls.

The Putney-type graduate may often surround himself with high school friends (ideally, with a high school girl-friend), go back frequently, and with the slighest excuse, to his old school, and return to Harvard despondent, recalling his pleasant visit, the warmth of his welcome (he forgets the role his present Harvard status plays here) and looking forward to his next trip. He dresses quite as he did for the hayride back then.

One reason the Expulsion Complex functions so strongly in this sort of student is the easy going relationships the enjoyed with girls in high school. He misses the informal babbling of voices in the Union dining hall. Most important, he is frightened of mixers, tea-dances, Radcliffe jolly-ups. He hesitates to inject himself into the structured and fiercely competitive world of Harvard heterosex. In addition, he yearns for the hard-core communitas of his old school chums. Most often, his longing for pre-college status and situations skulks underground. When his friends tease about how much he talks of "the old days" he is genuinely suprised, or denies the preoccupation altogether.

A variant on the Expulsion theme is seen in the fellow who, in his first two years at Harvard severs the umbilical ties wiwth his teenage civilization with ostensible success. But sometime in his junior or senior year he develops an insatiable craving for high school culture. Oddly, he is most often one who despised that way of life as a high school senior. But suddenly, having always hated rock 'n' roll, he finds himself singing surf songs in the shower, going to drive-in movies, to Saturday night "Y" dances, bowling, and travelling out with the boys for a big hairy pizza afterwards. Graduation almost upon him, he undergoes a painful nostalgia for the days he racked up A's with short essays on "My Dog," "What I did last summer," and rewrites of 3 or 4 pages from the World Book Encyclopedia.

* * *

The Jacob, Joseph and More Severe Birthright Complexes

The Hands of Esau: Entering freshmen share an agreed conception of Harvard life. They see themselves as beings with the possibilities of success or failure. The essence of this principle is that one must emerge from the crowd or else one is nothing. On this basis the necessity of action is established, but it is a rare freshman who possesses the inner confidence that he has, at the start, all the stuff needed to make it.

His entrance into Harvard (in the eyes of his hometown admirers an increase in stature) is to him a diminishment, in the most immediate sense. He is anonymous, low man on the totem pole. Like Jacob, he must win the birthright through ploys. As Jacob tricked Isaac into bestowing his blessing by putting on the godly rainments of his brother, and the skins of the kids of goats upon his hands, so does many a freshman, with the voice of Jacob, display to the world the hands of Esau.

Selecting an image or posture for himself, sometimes radically different from his high school "personality," he tries to gain Harvard status by imitating the mannerisms of those he feels already possess it. So one middle-class boy, who learned of "good society" at Exeter affects an exaggerated prep school accent and dress, and cultivates an effete sneer and slightly effeminate mannerisms. By his senior year he has risen as high in the clubbie world as one may without actually coming from a "good family."

Another, a suave type, feeling grossly outclassed by Harvard sophistication, adopts an alien mid-western twang and cultivates a homespun humor and the slightly hayseed appearance of an endearing country lad. A third arrives sporting a youthful social idealism. Finding this stance unfashionable, he soon outdoes his classmates in pretending to the cynicism of a world-wise septagenarian. Sometimes one's entire undergraduate career may become an act. "The Snow-Man," of one sort or another, is a traditional Harvard phenomenon The ethos of this complex is ambition; its characteristic emotion is frustration.

The Dream of Joseph: When tricks or ploys fail to win recognition, the Jacob complex goes underground. Another breed of undergraduate learns to content himself with imagined glories. The young Joseph, twelfth man in a line of brothers, dreams that the bound sheaves of his brothers stood round and made obeisance to his sheaf in the field.

In effect, these students participate in the same sort of adolescent fantasy-power life. They are Harvard's Walter Mittys; many are also wonks of varying descriptions. Meek Milquetoasts in reality, they attend Albert Finney or Belmondo or James Bond movies on nights off from Lamont. Identifying powerfully with their heroes, they sneer at themselves in the men's room mirror of the Harvard Square Theatre during intermission.

Another variation on the status-through-fantasy theme surrounds himself with the earmarks of quiet fine taste without becoming a playboy. 3 piece suits, excellent cigars, brandy, expensive furniture, well-bound books, and perhaps an original painting or two, allow him to feel he is leading "the Good Life" without ever actually leaving his room.

Other Joseph-types fantasize that the essentially impotent positions they hold are repositories of actual power (sometimes called the HCUA Delusion), or fool themselves into thinking that making a great deal of term-time money--and cultivating a middle-aged brusqueness towards less affluent classmates--is an equivalent substitute for influence in the community, or for real-life tycoonery.

Whale-Fodder: When the will to prominence is traumatically frustrated, or when pleasing fantasies of rank are shaken by unwitting confrontations with reality, the Jacob-Joseph complexes may become aggravated, most typically in the freshmen or senior year, into the more severe Jonah complex. Here the undergraduate feels himself engulfed in helplessness. He sleeps through breakfast, but goes to dinner early so he may watch T.V. afterwards in his house common room. Directionless, he rarely studies, but thinks about studying perpetually. If he is a senior, he lacks a thesis topic. Jonah arrived in his predicament through running away. So does his namesake. The whale of Harvard swallows him. (In its most critical form, the Jonah complex is transmuted into the Amos complex. In the Bible, Amos was the Herdsman of Tekoa crying in the wilderness.)

* * *

The Cain Complex

The keynote of Harvard is competition. From the first days of comparing college board scores in the Freshman Union, the undergraduate is placed in opposition to his symbolic siblings. These rivalries are compounded by honest feelings of brotherhood that grow between classmates. One envies, like Cain. One must win the approval, over others, of House Masters, professors, and activity leaders. To win out, it pecomes perpetually necessary to do in one's brothers. Thus, while the primary emotion of the Cain complex is envy, its secondary emotion is guilt.

The A student commiserates with his friend's academic misfortune yet feels a secret glee. Then he is ashamed and guilty at his selfishness. The Fellowship Orientation Meeting recently, where each senior stole glances of stealthy ambivalence at his beloved rivals, was a transparent orgy of the Cain complex in action.

For the student who craves prominence in any of the major organizations, the experience of Cain becomes a pivotal, diurnal reality. All of these societies--the CRIMSON, WHRB, the Lampoon, the political clubs--have full-scale executive competitions, in which longtime friends must strive against one another, all seeking coveted offices. The same is true of varsity athletics, or of the struggles for Radcliffe girls at a one-to-five premium. Some students suggest that they take their cue in the Cain complex from observation of the Harvard Junior Faculty.

* * *

These burdens of vague nostalgia, frustration, envy, and guilt merely represent preliminary speculations into the roots of Harvard's mal de universite. Further research is surely in order, and other, more simplistic responses to malaise will bear investigation. There is always the undergraduate with the Noah Complex, for example. He drifts through his four years here. Or the one with the Goliath complex. When he feels uneasy, he simply gets stoned.