NAYLOR, GLORIA. "LINDEN HILLS".   Term Paper ID:24981 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Critical review of novel on blacks' pursuit of success at the cost of their own culture.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Critical review of novel on blacks' pursuit of success at the cost of their own culture. Paper Introduction: Gloria Naylor's Linden Hills is a novel that tells the story of a black neighborhood built and supported by the manipulative and mysterious Nedeed family. The first Luther Nedeed to arrive from the South bought the apparently worthless land and established his undertaker's business there. Each succeeding generation of Nedeeds consisted of one son who was the exact image of his father and bore the same first name. The first Nedeeds had hoped to defy the white world and the white God by establishing the worth of the black people who lived in Linden Hills. They devoted all their efforts to building up the neighborhood and ensuring that as it improved, and the land became extremely valuable, it remained in the hands of African Americans. But the current Luther Nedeed had become convinced that there was nothing that black people could do to truly change Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Here, in the place of Paolo and Francescain the second circle Naylor has substituted Winston Alcott whose betrayalof his lover David, by marrying a woman, has been manipulated by Nedeed.As Nedeed points out while driving the groom's party to the wedding, "noone's been able to make it down to Tupelo Drive without a stable life and afamily" (75). Helocks the pair in the basement, intending to starve the child and reducehis wife to a state of mechanical dependency that will assure that theirnext child will be his. But Xavier adheres to a similar model for his own life and he looksto Smyth for guidance. Lester is a poet of sorts but he has resisted highereducation, the 'baptism' that ensures progress down the slope. Nedeed supplies thisreassurance and absolves them of any worry over anyone else or over theirown souls by allowing them to feel "they had saved themselves" and thattheir lives in Linden Hills were evidence of this (184).Section 5, December 23: The fourth day is spent near the bottom of LindenHills where Willie and Lester work for Laurel Dumont and meet DanielBraithwaite. Lester's description of how his motherdrove his father to his early death is a chilling portrait of a woman whocould never be satisfied--no matter how many material goods she piled up.This is the kind of drive that the current Luther Nedeed relies on. Her life was planned around her goal ofmarrying such a man. Gloria Naylor's Linden Hills is a novel that tells the story of ablack neighborhood built and supported by the manipulative and mysteriousNedeed family. The chapterdetails his story and his sound devotion to serious religion and thewelfare of the poor. His nightmares on the subject often begin thechapters. The Nedeeds built their home in the exact center of Tupelo Drive, thelowest level of the neighborhood, and surrounded it with a moat. She is a liar whohas deceived herself. They devoted alltheir efforts to building up the neighborhood and ensuring that as itimproved, and the land became extremely valuable, it remained in the handsof African Americans. Ciacco was thefirst to tell Dante what would happen in Florentine politics and Roxanne isconstantly driven by her ideas about what her future should be and what shehas to do to achieve it. As he saw it, "Linden Hills wasn't black; it wassuccessful" (17). He is cutting himself off from himself and believes that "therewasn't a moment of his life that [he] could afford to forget his duties ashigh priest because if the image ever crumbled, his own fate wasn't too farbehind" (99). Here the most obvious parallel isthe story of Count Ugolino who was imprisoned with his children and forcedto watch them starve to death. In the novelLester "Shit" Tilson, whose family was never fully assimilated into LindenHills, is the Virgil figure who guides his friend "White" Willie Masonthrough Linden Hills. Laurel's suicide leads Willie and Lester to the home of Dr.Braithwaite, a historian whose pride in his accomplishments in recordingthe history of Linden Hills is equivalent to the pride of Bertran de Born,whose punishment was "the perfect contrapasso," that is, the perfect formof divine retribution (Alighieri 329). On the fourth day Willie and Lester work for the ReverendMichael Hollis who fits the category of heretics and skeptics that Danteplaced in the sixth circle of hell. She destroys her husband and herself and thepeople of Linden Hills merely watch the house burn. Inferno. It issimilar, of course, to the desire to better themselves that drove many ofthe early residents of Linden Hills. The people in Linden Hills were, in his estimation, merely whitepeople disguised. The first Nedeedshad hoped to defy the white world and the white God by establishing theworth of the black people who lived in Linden Hills. As Nedeed bitterlyreflected, "all of those sacrifices to build them houses and they refusedto build a history" (286). By cutting themselves off from their past, Naylor argues, they aremaking the present and future empty. Whathe does not realize is that Nedeed actively cultivates the feeling amongthe Linden Hills residents who are "so concerned with making a heaven onearth, it never dawns on them it won't be forever in spite of thosedeceptive mortgages" (171). They go to clean out the garageat the Donnells house. The evil and the guilt of sinners increased inDante's hell as one went lower, culminating in the center of evil, Satan,who, like the Nedeeds, was located at the exact center of a frozen lake inthe lowest pit of hell. The first Luther Nedeed to arrive from the South bought theapparently worthless land and established his undertaker's business there.Each succeeding generation of Nedeeds consisted of one son who was theexact image of his father and bore the same first name. Her whole life had come to seem to contain "onlytotally circular, totally evasive wrongs" (228). This abandonment of self, whether it is distance from one's past ordenial of one's sexuality is precisely the sort of action that deprives theindividual of his or her soul. Naylor shows the cutting off from the past andthe new assumptions that guide Roxanne in a concentrated passage detailingRoxanne's life plan. As Willieobserves them, they drink from the same cup and "it soon appearedunthinkable that there should be more than one cup between them since theynever reached for it at the same time" (34). It is at thismeeting that Luther Nedeed makes an appearance to announce a coalition witha racist citizens' organization to defeat a plan to build low-cost housingnear Linden Hills. When Smyth smugly asserts that a nude layout featuring a black womanin Penthouse is a sign of progress he willfully ignores the signs that, asLester points out, "they're trying to tell you that black people stillbelong in the jungle" (115). The sins that Naylor catalogues are those of African Americans whohold that in order to achieve success in white America they must rejecteverything they have known. He believes that "when theexecutive chair became vacant, the board of trustees wouldn't think twiceabout giving the best man the job. Also like Dante,who is honored by the attention of the ancient poets, Willie has memorizedhundreds of poems and is, therefore, accompanied by "Baraka, Soyinka,Hughes, and most of Coleridge [and] Whitman" (45). Luther Nedeed had feltexhausted prior to his end and speculated on the impossibility of the taskhis ancestors had left him. Chester Parker is so eager to trade in his late wife for a new modelthat he hires Willie and Lester to steam the old wallpaper off his bedroomwalls while the wake for his wife is going on downstairs. If Roxanne is a modified version of Dante's gluttons, her mother isas furiously concerned with material things as any of the money-grubbers inDante's fourth circle of hell. She wrapped her arms around his neck and "Luther tried towrench free, but they breathed as one, moved as one, and one body lurchedagainst the fireplace" (3 ). Trans. The two young men doodd jobs over the course of several days, making their way down the hilltoward the final catastrophe at the Nedeed house. Willie watches as Nedeed imposes his will on the crowdand wonders what the source of his power is and what his secrets are--forWillie notices that the cake Nedeed claims was made by his wife had, infact, been purchased in a store.Section 4, December 22: Willie is increasingly disturbed by Nedeed andwonders about his wife. Naylor relates so much of Laurel's story becauseit demonstrates how difficult it is to pinpoint the moment when anindividual has abandoned her true self for the illusion that is fit to livein Linden Hills. They would never have succeeded in fulfillingthe original dream of Linden Hills because they were incapable of bothachieving success and remaining true to themselves. Willa Nedeed has this same experience andthen, when she escapes, she clings to Nedeed as Ugolino was frozen togetherwith Ruggieri. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1985. Willie looks out the window toward theNedeed's house, the view Braithwaite always ignored, and wonders if thehistorian "would have gotten a much different picture all these years bykeeping his desk up against this window" instead of looking up toward theresidents of Linden Hills (266). The fear of marrying a black woman, especially onewho is the wrong kind, plagues Xavier. The self-hatred of this Nedeed motivated his desire to create aneighborhood which would continue to look like a black success story butwould actually ensure, through the careful selection of tenants for thethousand-year leases, the ruin of those who lived there. David eventually repudiates Alcott byreciting a Whitman poem that Willie recognizes, but not before Alcott'streachery has been confirmed. Ruth Anderson is a woman who has escapedfrom a 'good' marriage in Linden Hills and turned to Norman Anderson, amentally ill man whose periodic fits of insanity make their livesmiserable. Throughout the novel the current Mrs. Nedeeddiscovers traces of her predecessors in the cellar where she is imprisonedand the horrors of their existence are slowly revealed in the course of thebook.Section 1, December 19: The parallels between Dante's Inferno and LindenHills are not exact and if a reader sometimes gets the impression in theInferno that it is Dante rather than God who is handing out punishments,this is certainly true of Naylor. This is the kind of family that Nedeed needs to further hisplans; one that has been forced and stands no chance of success. Norman too has asecond function when he reappears as Naylor's version of the HeavenlyMessenger who helps the poets get past the angry demons (police officers)who block the way to the lower hell of the eighth crescent. Her grandmother provides a clue when she talksabout the difference between black music, a part of Laurel's heritage, andthe classical music that is part of the life Laurel has taken on. As Nedeed saw it,"let them think that they were proving something to the world, tothemselves, or to him about their worth" (17) He would select those whobelieved themselves to be connected to their history and would enjoy"watching their bewilderment as it all melted away the farther they camedown" (17). Abovethem there were eight crescent shaped drives and a rise in social statuswas signified by moving down to the better houses closer to the Nedeeds atthe bottom of Linden Hills. But the current Luther Nedeed had become convincedthat there was nothing that black people could do to truly change theirlot. The best example is her elevation ofPaolo and Francesca from hell. He is not only heretical with regard to his own religion, however, heis also a skeptic regarding the Linden Hills variety and mistrusts LutherNedeed who, Hollis believes, "sets a bad example for the rest" (171). Naylor also paralleled Dante's story of hisjourney through hell in which he was accompanied by the poet Virgil who wasa resident of Limbo--a resting place for those who were not actually sinfulbut had never been baptized and could not enter Paradise. Naylor patterned the story after Dante'sInferno and the eight crescents, along with Tupelo Drive, constitute thenine circles of hell. As Willie notes,"that guy looks like someone just punched him in the stomach and his lipssorta froze up that way" (84). ButLaurel's depression cannot be so simply summed up because, as she comes tosee it, her illusions about her life were self-willed. His sin in failing to openly acknowledgeDavid earned him a place on Second Crescent Drive. She had "paid her dues to the Civil Rights movementby wearing an Afro for six months and enrolling in black history courses atcollege," but all Roxanne had gotten from these classes was "statisticalproof" that there were only a very few black men who could give her thekind of life she wanted (53). This section also features sinners. Smyth, "having conquered the lastfrontier," (his excrement does not smell) believes that nothing standsbetween him and his ultimate goal (1 6). In this she is like Dante's Ciacco. But he understands fully when, havingattempted to give a rousing, old-fashioned service at Lycentia Parker'sfuneral--one in which he raised the question of accounting for one's sinsin the afterlife--he is followed by Luther Nedeed who gives thecongregation what they want. The child must be as black as Luther Nedeeds havealways been--otherwise the self-hating, based on race, that motivatesNedeed will be pointless. Bertran carried his clever head inhis hand but Braithwaite is condemned to a blindness that will eventuallyrender all of his work worthless. Smyth is a comic inventionwho is less a character than a summing up of all the soul-destroyingefforts of African Americans to replace their true selves with an imitationof white people. Despite all his absurdities, however, it isSmyth who offers one of the best examples of the kind of bewilderedcollapse that Nedeed enjoys so much. His "entire life became a race against thenatural--and he was winning" (1 4). Roxanne Tilson is gluttonous andbinges on food when she is upset. Once Smyth discovers what Nedeed and the readers know--that he willnever get the job because he is black--there will, quite simply, be nothingleft of him. Even when the story comes up to the present and Laurel'sdepression and breakdown are related it is difficult to locate a specificcause for her problem. Butshe is also like him in being associated with the future. Above all, they reject those of their people who have not madeit and they find themselves condemned to chilling isolation in a place likeLinden Hills. Linden Hills. What they want is reassurance that theirlives are as perfect as they want them to be. Throughhis blackmail Nedeed has succeeded in forcing Winston Alcott to marry andby doing so Alcott has abandoned his real self. Inside Xavier has asked Maxwell Smyth to drop bybecause he wants to know what to do about the serious problem of findinghimself falling in love with Roxanne Tilson. But Ruth persists with Norman and they function as a unit--muchthe way Paolo and Francesca are eternally bonded in the Inferno. But his separation from his own beliefsalienated him and he became a womanizer and an alcoholic. His rise to head of a department atGeneral Motors has been accomplished only at the expense of all otherinterests. And that's the only kind of man he was"(1 6). By accepting what seemed like an excellent position,with a home in Linden Hills, Hollis believed he was continuing the workthat was important to him. Willie,like Dante, is an outsider to Linden Hills and a poet. Hollis is a peculiar type of hereticsince what he denies the faith in which he actually believes and submits toproviding the form of worship the people of Linden Hills want. Willie andLester have been asked to help transport food and gifts for Hollis' annualChristmas party for the poor and when Willie tells Hollis how importantthese Christmas parties had been to him when he was a boy, Hollis has acrisis of conscience. But when wealth becomes a goal inpursued for its own sake this dehumanizes the individual and forces otherconsiderations aside.Section 2, December 2 : Lester and Willie take on the job of working at thewedding of a man who lived on Second Crescent Drive, but whom Lester hadalways suspected of being gay. Mark Musa. They reject the old music, the old religion,the old refusal to countenance racists, and even the old custom of marryingfor love. Everything about her life had come to seem wrong.Her career, for example, "that she clung to with a desperation mistaken forpride, ambition, or contentment" was wrong "but if she let go of it, whatelse was left?" (228). It is the denial of blackness in pursuit of whitenessthat is the illusion that the people in Linden Hills are encouraged topursue. Laurel Dumont's story is told at great length--from herchildhood visits to her grandmother in the South to her college career andpresent-day misery being a highly successful executive at IBM and living insplendor in Linden Hills. But now Luther Nedeedpromotes Alcott to Tupelo Drive, for his "dedication to Linden Hills"--histreachery has earned him a spot in the lowest reaches of hell (87).Section 3, December 21: On the third day the two poets encounter threeindividuals: Maxwell Smyth, Xavier Donnell, and Chester Parker and onceagain get to see Luther Nedeed in action. At the beginning of the book the current Luther Nedeed has decidedthat the whiteness of his son, who is otherwise a duplicate of himself,means that his wife has betrayed him and given him another man's child. Braithwaite is the dupe of Luther Nedeedand, like Bertran who gave false counsel, the proud historian lies to thepeople who read his work.Section 6, December 24: In the last section of the book the poets reachthe frozen lake around Nedeed's house. His exalted position next to thechairman of General Motors is the highest a black man had ever risen andXavier is flattered that Smyth had taken an interest in him. Smyth is convinced that he has succeeded since he has,thus far, managed to exert his will over every circumstance in his life--shaping it as he wished. Ruth also functions as the lovely woman (Blessed Virgin-Lucia-Beatrice) to whom Willie/Dante is devoted and who suggests their workingjourney and arranges for Lester to accompany Willie. Works CitedAlighieri, Dante. Like Virgil, Lester lives in the Inferno but is nottruly a part of it. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1984.Naylor, Gloria. Like Satan, a former angel who defied God, the current LutherNedeed took great pleasure in tempting the people and helping them along totheir gradual downfall. Once Alcott has gone through with hiswedding he knows that David will no longer have anything to do with him.At the wedding, when Willie begins to observe him, Alcott has theappearance of one of the lost souls in Dante's hell. 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