Set This House on Fire

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Set This House on Fire is a novel first published in 1960 by the American writer William Styron . The German first edition was published in 1961 under the title And put fire to this house in the translation by Günther Danehl.

This novel by Styron is about the confrontation of the protagonist and narrator Peter Leverett with an apocalyptic situation of life in the modern world. The title, which is taken from a letter by John Donne , the formulation of which itself goes back to the Bible , suggests that the violent events depicted in the novel are put into a religious perspective from the outset. God tries, as the title suggests, to reveal himself to the main characters of the novel by exposing them to the horrors and atrocities of life without the protective experience of his divine closeness.

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The story begins with a visit by the narrator Peter Leverett to his former school friend Mason Flagg, who moved to Sambuco, a small town near Salerno , shortly after the end of the Second World War, to finish a play here started a long time ago. On the way to Sambuco, Peter has a collision with an Italian motorcyclist who is hospitalized unconscious. When Peter finally reaches Mason's residence in Sambuco with his badly damaged car, Sambuco and Mason's property are besieged by an American film company that is finishing the final shooting there.

In Mason's house, the narrator observed strange events that evening. His friend Mason pursues the fleeing maid Francesca in a dressing gown and tries to capture her. Peter also witnesses how the drunken Cass Kinsolving, an American painter who is totally dependent on Mason, has to entertain society in a way that is extremely humiliating for him. Peter tries to help Cass and accompanies him to a poor hut. Temporarily sober, Cass brings Francesca's father's medicine, which he had previously stolen from Mason.

The next morning, the narrator learns that Francesca had been raped and Mason was found shattered at the foot of a steep rock. In the official version of the events, which remains unsatisfactory for the narrator, it is said that Mason raped the woman and then killed her; then he threw himself off the rock. Peter Leverett then returns to America, shaken and confused.

In a later conversation with Cass after returning to the United States, Peter admits that he killed Mason and threw him off the rock to avenge Francesca and himself. After this act, however, he learned that Mason raped Francesca, but did not kill her. Francesca met the village idiot Saverio on her escape from Mason. He killed her when she reacted hysterically to a harmless touch on his part.

Interpretative approach

The extremely melodramatic events in Italy only acquired their real meaning when Peter Leverett and Cass tried to look back after a long period of time to shed light on what happened in the past. The narrator's endeavor to reveal the matter forms the external framework for the subsequent investigation of the incidents in Sambuco. Up to that point, Peter saw himself as an average citizen with no particular ambition; However, the events at that time left him deeply depressed and uneasy, as he felt responsible for Mason's death, even without having caused it directly: “ I still felt low over what had happened in that Italian town… though I was in no way the cause of Mason's death, I might have been in a position to prevent it. "(P. 6).

However, it later emerges that he would not have been able to prevent Mason's death; without seeing through what was happening before his eyes, he could not have acted otherwise than he did at the time. In retrospect, the events take on a certain meaning for him when, years after the events in Italy and his return to the USA, he sees the name Kinsolvings under a caricature and decides to visit the painter in order to clarify the events and backgrounds with his help .

On the way to the painter, the narrator first visits his father, for whom life is " a search for justice " (p. 13). The narrator describes his path to Kinsolving as "lonely seeking" (Eng. "Einsames sucht", p. 13). Similar to the father of Robert Penn Warren in Brother to Dragons (1953), Peter's father also regards the dream embodied in the American Declaration of Independence , with which the United States entered its history, as originally justified: " Except maybe for the nigro [ sic ], the common man found freedom in a way he never knew or dreamed of - freedom, and a full belly, and the right to pursue his own way of happiness, I guess it was the largest and noblest dream ever dreamed by man " (P. 15). But because of the overexploitation of the land and the keeping of slavery , this dream has lost its justification. The people in the United States were not up to the fulfillment of their dreams and did not become more mature, but remained a nation of children ( "a nation of children", p. 14), since they did not see that the "black" was his must receive fair wages (" his just payment ", p. 14).

While the narrator and his father drive together, Peter's father regrets the state of the American nation; the gradual collapse of the vehicle on this same ride is here, as it symbolically to the pictorial expression of the failure of the entire nation.

During their journey, the two reach a coastal town where Peter almost drowned as a child; because of his rescue, Peter had learned to appreciate life anew. The memory of these early childhood experiences gives the narrator, who now feels deprived of all illusory, innocent security of his childhood ( “shorn of all illusions and innocence”, p. 19), a new sense of identity; like his father, he sees himself in a certain way also in search of justice.

In the conversation with Cass Kinsolving, Peter is finally able to free himself from the shadow that has weighed on him since the incident in Sambuco. He becomes aware of the role Mason played in his life. Since their first encounter at a pre-school (comparable to a German kindergarten), Mason had impressed him with his wealth and self-assured behavior. This fascination, which the narrator emanated from Mason, remained even when he was expelled from school for a sexual offense against a minor. Despite realizing his friend's perversion , Peter was always ready to forgive him.

Mason, like many of the characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels , is one of the "rich boys" who, in their wealth, believe that they can simply buy the fulfillment in life, and are in no way prepared to accept any adult responsibilities to take over. The narrator is, however, also aware of the emotional distress in which Mason finds himself: You meet him in a friendly manner because he is rich; however, he has no real friends and is lonely. His behavior is characterized by “recompense and hire, laden with the anguish of friendliness” (p. 173).

Despite his good looks, he fails to develop a normal relationship with the opposite sex; his increasing perversion finds its expression primarily in his obsessive passion for group sex and pornography , which at the same time reflects the attempt to compensate for his immaturity and loneliness. In Peter, who relieves him of his lies, he finds someone in whom he can see himself confirmed; He also needs Cass in order to be able to gain self-affirmation in his role as a patron and at the same time in his power over Cass.

In the conversation with Peter, Cass denies his question whether Mason was "bad". Before Casson killed Mason, he had looked into his “tortured, pale, soft and boyish face”, which was by no means “the face of a murderer” (“ the pale face, which was so soft and boyish, and in death and in life so tormented, ... not the face of a killer ”, p. 465). He could well imagine the agony and hardship of Masons in his isolation, which finally found its outlet in violence ( “a starvation with no chance of fulfillment, which must fever and shake and torment a man until he can only find release in violence ". P. 442). Accordingly, Cass understands Mason's rape of Francesca as a rape of himself (p. 443); At the same time, the figure of Mason Flagg becomes a symbol for American society as a whole, which believes that “it can buy friendship in its prosperity” but “cannot build a bridge to the other” in this way. The attempt to escape social isolation then ends in an act of violence.

Speaking to Cass Kinsolving, the narrator also realizes the danger into which his immature relationship with Mason had put himself. After the clarification in the conversation with Kinsolving, which is almost symbolically indicated in his name ( "solving" ), Peter is able to free himself from this danger. He "attains his maturity by learning to assess Mason's behavior not exclusively as evil", but as "immaturity who is not ready to accept suffering and believes that they can buy themselves out of it."

With this insight the narrator regains his psychological balance, which he had lost through the experiences in Sambuco. Unlike Peter, however, Cass cannot easily shake off the shadows of the past. In his youth he had helped a salesman get money for an unpaid radio from a black farm worker. When the debtor could not be found and the radio turned out to be damaged, the seller began senselessly destroying the entire inventory of the poor hut. Since then, Cass, who was infected by this destructive fever, has been depressed by the injustice in which he was involved towards the colored man. He knows that he cannot redress his wrongdoing and he suffers from his memory, which for him means constant penance .

This guilt towards the colored person is only paradigmatic for his guilt in general; he does not see himself alone, but the world as a whole, succumbing to evil. The question that asks him is whether the evil is a real threat or just a mere “ghost” ( “a figment of the mind”, p. 128) and where the guilt lies. In southern Italy he sees the injustice that the impoverished rural population is suffering there; he also sees the injustice that Mason does. In addition, he recognizes the entanglements from which the individual cannot break free and in which evil manifests itself. In this way, existence has become a suffering for him and the world from which even God can no longer redeem people (" even He [God] in His mighty belated compassion could not deliver His creatures from their living pain ", p . 358).

Reinforced by an experience of war that caused Cass to seek psychotherapeutic treatment, but which he can no longer remember exactly, he has lived his life ever since trying to escape this suffering. Only in a state of drunkenness does he believe he will find redemption, only to find himself deceived again in a sober state. This effort to escape suffering also paralyzes his strength as a painter. As Cass must recognize, his ego stands in the way of his soul to find God (cf. p. 254) by blocking himself from accepting guilt and suffering (cf. p. 271 f.). He longs to go back to the innocence of his childhood or thinks about killing himself and his family. Paradoxically , he can only be freed from his dependence on Mason through self-surrender and extreme self-humiliation; Only through selfless help to his neighbor can he free himself from Mason and beyond the material goods of this world. Only at this point can he break out of his illusion that he can escape the suffering in this world by drinking alcohol.

When Cass murders Mason, he still believes that his self-confidence has been hurt to the utmost by Mason; after the fact he wants to put an end to his life and, after he is prevented from doing so, to face the police. This plan is also thwarted; after that Cass spends his life lonely in a kind of inner prison ( "We are serving our sentences in solitary confinement". p. 497) until he is shown a way of justice by Luigi, an Italian philosopher in the form of a policeman : In his suffering, Cass would only continue to please himself; but he has the possibility not to turn to his guilt, but instead to the good in himself (see p. 499).

He cannot justify or undo the murder of Mason, in which, according to his own words, he played the role of God's judge and Mason took the opportunity to possibly become a better person after all (cf. p. 446); so at the end of his report he denied that his path could be viewed as a suffering that finally grace makes possible; nevertheless he decides in the choice between “being and nothingness” ( Eng . “to be and the nothing”, p. 500 f.) for the return to his family and a new beginning in America. Such a new beginning exists with Cass, as with Peter, rather "than an acceptance of the apocalyptic situation of life in the modern world."

Impact history

Cass Kinsolving's wish for a new beginning in America is metaphorically drawn with the image of the sun rising over America ( "I kept thinking of the new sun coming up over the coast of Virginia and the Carolinas, and how it must have looked from those galleons, Centuries ago, when after black night, dawn broke like a trumpet blast, and there ist was, immense and green and glistening against the crashing seas. And suddenly I wanted more than anything in my life to go back there. ". p. 500 ).

This is in American literature since Hawthorne's The Marble Faun (1860, dt. The Marble Faun ) repeatedly used as an expression of hope, for example, in Stephen Crane The Red Badge of Courage (1895), or F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby ( 1925).

expenditure

  • Set This House on Fire. Random House , New York 1960.
    • New edition: Vintage, London 2001.
  • And put a fire on this house . From the American by Günther Danehl. S. Fischer Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 1961.

Secondary literature

  • Jeffrey Berman: Surviving Literary Suicide. University of Massachusetts Press 1999, ISBN 1-55849-211-9 , pp. 230-233.
  • Franz Link: Set This House on Fire, 1960. In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , pp. 47-51.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Franz Link: Set This House on Fire, 1960. In: Franz Link: American narrators since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 47.
  2. ↑ See Franz Link: Set This House on Fire, 1960. In: Franz Link: American narrators since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 48.
  3. ↑ See Franz Link: Set This House on Fire, 1960. In: Franz Link: American narrators since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 48.
  4. ↑ See Franz Link: Set This House on Fire, 1960. In: Franz Link: American narrators since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 48 f.
  5. ↑ See Franz Link: Set This House on Fire, 1960. In: Franz Link: American narrators since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 49.
  6. ^ Franz Link: Set This House on Fire, 1960. In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 49.
  7. ^ Franz Link: Set This House on Fire, 1960. In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 49.
  8. ↑ See also Franz Link: Set This House on Fire, 1960. In: Franz Link: American narrators since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 50.
  9. ↑ See Franz Link: Set This House on Fire, 1960. In: Franz Link: American narrators since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 50.
  10. ^ Franz Link: Set This House on Fire, 1960. In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 51.
  11. ↑ See also Franz Link: Set This House on Fire, 1960. In: Franz Link: American narrators since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 51.