Old Rabbits Die Hard

Since the dawn of civilization, aspiring minds have been writing papers that read more or less like the following:

The book Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, is full of themes—as many themes as there are rabbits in a thriving den, and as many sub-themes and tunnels between themes as in the den itself. Undergirding this abundance is the book’s central Theme, that of (the) rabbit(s). It can fairly be said, with remarkable brashness and deceptively little initial qualification, that John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is all about rabbits. Rabbits are more than just characters in the novel: they in some sense are the novel, and yet they exceed (run outside) it and are possessed by it all at once. To Steinbeck himself, in both life and literature, they were—and continue to be—more than just rodents, adorable yet problematic: they were tufted meta-metaphors of the act of writing itself. To understand more precisely the way(s) in which Steinbeck’s use of the rabbit-as-metaphor eclipses the rabbit qua rabbit, or even as reified rodent—furry symbol of proliferation—let us consider more closely Lennie’s appeal to George: “Tell me ’bout the rabbits.…” This single poignant remark is nothing less than Steinbeck giving voice to the tacit cry of the reader, who in the process of reading this novel implicitly implores the author to “tell [him/her] ’bout the rabbits….” (emphasis added).

Now that’s a paper. If you think it sounds fluffy, you’re missing the point. Admit it: when you start to really think, your brain does begin to feel like a warren, full of related pockets of thought which form a structure so beautiful and complete, it’s indescribable. John Steinbeck, speaking as himself, said, “Ideas are like rabbits,” and no one can deny it.

American writers are chock-full of homespun originality and pith. How to account for the dreck produced by American students? I don’t think it’s our fault; it’s what they do to us. Faulkner said that writing is about killing your darlings. When we write papers, we slaughter our ancestors and submit ourselves to sterilization. I wish someone had taken me aside during Freshman Week and told me then what I have since learned the hard way: that the fundamental principle of paper-writing consists in saying things that sound vaguely familiar, so that the person grading it can know it is right. The ideas in my papers are petrified, stillborn; they’re a string of academic commonplaces soaked in lye. I find my creative outlet in the titles, specifically in whatever alliterative pun comes before the colon.

After having drained my lifeblood into a series of final papers which did their job but brought little joy into the world, I am left with only bile. I hate having to smash my big Idea to pieces and then classify and reassemble the parts, to turn each thought into a topic sentence or its subsidiary, and to organize them in an arbitrary linear structure which undercuts the extent of their coherence. What perverse monsters we are to do this for a grade. It’s bad enough that we distort the world with notions of cause and effect, presence and absence, positive and negative, either and or—conventions of thought which become fetters when naturalized as logic. After the organic joy of thought has been exterminated, we drive the mental engine onward through the formal ruse of argument. Our very ideas are bellicose, formed to know their enemies and seek to destroy them. Our delight is in the death-march of the argument over the novel notion, the heady idea: the sound of data crunching and uncertainty crushed beneath jackbooted convention. We drown the daisies in concrete and leave ourselves a toilsome ascent strewn with the rubble of our finest thoughts. And for what? At least Sisyphus realized when he was back at the bottom. We labor under the illusion that the ascent is never-ending.

But the truth is out there. Some nights when I am up late working on a paper, by page 12 I can hear the truth breathing shallowly beneath the surface before I bury it in the conclusion. Every undergraduate longs in his heart of hearts to write something as nuanced, verbose, unreadable and inconclusive as his very soul; and some day, every undergraduate will. At the end of an education, are we not entitled to at least one manifesto? After all our tiresome discursiveness, do we even dare?

But for those of us who must ploddingly finish the race as tortoises smiting our hares, the summer is a temporary antidote. It will be nice to spend the summer in Widener, learning how to read. No more feverish scanning of indices, looking for the point of a book. When ideas are treated as ends, they can be deep, dignified and enormous; when they are forced to compete with one another in a crass market-place of ideas, they become scrappy, instrumental and unpalatable. My first aim this summer is to quiet their squabbling and nourish each runt with my mental largesse (owing in no small part to the largesse of the Harvard College Research Program). When the fall comes, the weak and infirm shall have to be weeded out; but in the meantime, I’ll luxuriate in the abundance and allow my wascally thoughts to combine and proliferate at will. Indeed, Widener is the perfect place for rabbit-hunting. How do you start? Be very, very quiet….

Madeleine S. Elfenbein ’04 is a social studies concentrator in Kirkland House. Her column appears regularly.