Symbols are abstractions. Intellectualizations. Same thing with applying "American Gothic": that's just a category. It's not some kind of answer guide. This is cart leading horse. Approaching the story from the outside-in. I've seen the same thing done when it comes to genre: people ticking off boxes to fit the story to the category.
For example, Daniel is not "adrift" in Nashville. We have watched him increasingly integrate into the New Canaan community, establish an employment history, baby-steps day by day to rebuild his life.
What does it even mean to say one's "future isn't started yet?" The future starts every moment. How can it not start?
Daniel could go to Ohio, but his way forward is to stay in Nashville for the time being. It's where he's got a foothold, where the resources are that can help him progress.
You proclaim that "Children are the future," but this is a generic meaning and it's perfectly arbitrary. The boy has a specific, concrete effect in that few moments. That effect is evidently positive; how can you deny that Daniel and the boy share this connection? They smile at each other. The boy turns away because he's not very well going to continue looking at this man. Why would he? If you want the boy to represent the future, fine; the future has just smiled upon Daniel.
his facial expression could have just as meaningfully expressed resignation.
I said that the moment gives him quiet joy, and it does. You're talking about when the moment ends, when of course it's back to reality after that connection, and he feels the resignation that we all feel after being visited by a moment of grace, when we know we must return to the daily grind. And Daniel's grind happens to be listening to his own narration of traumatic events in his past. Things like that. Ho hum!
But it's not an either/or situation where we either get to feel connected to others, to innocence, grace, etc., on an ongoing basis or we never do. Nobody lives 100% connected or disconnected; some, like Daniel, perhaps experience that feeling more sporadically than others. But I'm not sure about that; he seems to attract moments of grace and connection. Not everyone has access to quiet joy like that.
The story ends with Daniel lying in bed, and we look down on him from the same overhead camera position as the episode prior. Context is everything: last time he was enduring the pain of listening to himself narrate being raped in prison; this time he's creating a vision of hope - you can't miss the rebirth symbol. Yet more context: we heard all about what a giant step hope was for ex-convicts, as spoken by Mr. Pickles.
You're misapplying that southern gothic book, distancing from the experience and meaning of the story at hand. The ending of Rectify is blatantly positive for its protagonist. Context is far more reliable than intellectualizing abstract symbols. That way lyeth the wabbit hole.
"You must not judge what I know by what I find words for." - Marilynne Robinson
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8 years ago
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Whatlarks
8 years ago
Without friends? The finale shows him enjoying his friends. He even chooses to postpone answering Janet's call because it would disturb the moment. The writers developed that context over the whole season.
Family can visit. He's not a child anymore; that's the point.
The place he's in is also where he's learning new skills and healing the trauma of the past. That's not being trapped, it's the process of moving out of the trap. As I say, baby steps. A person can be in an imposed situation and still derive significant benefits from it. Happens to all of us.
his future is a continuation of his past.
What the hay are you talking about? S4 was all about breaking the hold of the past on the present so he can have a future. The past of course still has a grip, but S4 shows that grip gradually loosening, and in the finale we see several examples of major progression for the character.
I've said how I know this about quiet joy. If that phrase bugs you, just call it a pleasing connection.
It is much more positive for those he left behind in Paulie.
Comparison is irrelevant; all that matters is the relative change for the character himself. The state of change for other characters is not the benchmark for Daniel.
What do you mean the door that leads to a positive outcome is locked? The character's vision of hope for his future substitutes for the vision of trauma that held him in the past. McKinnon was pretty exact in contrasting the final images of his last two episodes. That contrast underscores a most positive shift for the character. It would be unnatural to depict his situation as more advanced than that. That little is enough, and more: it's promising.
"You must not judge what I know by what I find words for." - Marilynne Robinson
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8 years ago
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Whatlarks
8 years ago
Sure, no problem. Going forward, it's only fair that if you drag out the dead horse again, I get to flog it again. Otherwise you'll go riding off in all directions.
That was a reference to another author. An antidote for when the Southern Gothic gets too heavy. Twain would work too.
"You must not judge what I know by what I find words for." - Marilynne Robinson
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