Their relationship never really seemed completely healthy to me. From The Chief (do we know his real name?) insisting that Mary Hudson not play in the baseball game, despite her instance that she wanted to, to the whole "dentist" thing, it seemed a bit odd. This book is older, published in 1948, and back then the notion of a woman's happiness tended to rely more on her spouses than her own. So shouldn't Mary just be happy to be with The Chief? Especially if it's only a few times a month? Maybe that's saying more about Mary than The Chief.
This has been a lot of rambling, basically my thoughts going straight into this blog post. Still though, we have the unanswered question of, what happened to their relationship? Was it just destined to end? Well, I've come up with a possible list of reasons Mary and The Chief broke things off. Read my ramblings ahead:
- Mary was cheating on The Chief (hence the "dentist" thing)
- The Chief was cheating on Mary (hence the "dentist" thing)
- Mary was pregnant with The Chief's child, but he didn't believe it was his.
- Mary was pregnant with another man's child, but fooled The Chief into believing it was his.
- Mary was pregnant with The Chief's child, and he just didn't want to have kids with her.
- Mary was pregnant, but had an abortion without telling The Chief (hence why The Chief killed off The Laughing Man maybe)
- Their relationship wasn't working, due to The Chief's busy schedule with the Comanche Club.
- Mary was jealous of how much time The Chief spent with the Comanche boys versus with her.
- The Chief didn't trust Mary when she went back to the city.
- Mary didn't like The Chief controlling her.
- The Chief didn't like Mary not listening to her.
- They didn't see each other enough (Comanche Club and "dentist")
Those are just some I've been thinking about. I'd love to hear more ideas, though. Stories with questions left unanswered always leave my brain spinning for days after. It's an interesting tactic of Salinger's to make the story from a young boy's perspective, instead of Mary or The Chief, and leaves the reader with a lot of questions. What happened? Why did The Chief kill The Laughing Man? And many more.
I also was quite fascinated by Mary Hudson and the Chief's relationship. I'm not quite sure of the exact reason they broke up, either, but my best guess is that it has something to do with the Chief not trusting or being very controlling of Mary. We know that the Chief was very nervous around Mary, and they don't see each other that much, as Mary only comes from the city every few days or so. This leads me to think that the Chief was very worried about Mary cheating on him and was being very controlling. There was one part where the Chief and Mary are fighting, and it says that he was holding onto her coat, but Mary "got away from him," which to me sounds like he was trying to control her somehow. It's also possible that this had something to do with Mary being pregnant, and he was trying to get the truth out of her or something.
ReplyDeleteWhen Elissa and I were trying to come up with discussion questions we debated the best way to bring up this topic as a discussion setting. The story is quite detailed, but there is a serious lack of details surrounding the relationship between Mary Hudson and the Chief. I actually really liked your list of possible reasons why Mary Hudson and the Chief broke things off. You came up with some possibilities that I had never even considered. When we were talking about it primarily, Elissa and I thought that the "dentist" was actually a gynecologist. We believed that she was pregnant and for some reason that damaged the relationship between Mary Hudson and the Chief. The chief killed off The Laughing Man because he was upset with whatever happened between himself and Mary Hudson.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Annemarie, that the chief probably broke up with Mary Hudson because of the lack of trust the Chief had for Mary, but it is because they didn't get to see each other that often that created this mistrust. I feel that the chief's nervousness when Mary came along with the other Comanche members shows that his relationship (with Mary) was a rather new one; if it was a longer one, then I think that the Chief would be more comfortable around Mary. One could also speculate that with more comfort comes more trust, so I think that the root of the problem to their relationship is the distance they have, and of course the Chief's insecurity to some point.
ReplyDeleteOn a strictly rational, realistic level, of course, the fact that Mary happens to sit next to a pair of baby carriages, and later the narrator literally walks into one while backing away from her, doesn't offer any actual information as to what's going on in this story. But it does seem like Salinger perhaps dropping hints, or even the later/older narrator framing the story in a way that offers these clues that the young kid is simply overlooking.
ReplyDeleteIt has always seemed to me that some kind of pregnancy issue is at stake, but it's hard to speculate about the details beyond that. In a sense, though, it doesn't matter, as the Chief (O'Brien-style) seems to transform his actual life into the Laughing Man myth, with a tale of betrayal and noble death. Here we see again the theme of innocence threatened by the encroachment of the adult world and grown-up problems--quite literally, the fictional "dream" of the seemingly never-ending daily installments of "The Laughing Man" is brought to an abrupt halt, as the real-world intrudes: a potent metaphor for a loss of innocence, even if the one who has lost the innocence doesn't really grasp what's happening. He knows he can't go back, as the tissue-paper on the lamppost reminds him. And the experience is traumatic.