The Poet

As I was reading Asch, I noticed that the characters seemed to be in constant movement.  They drove from one scenario to the next:  "along the street in Texarkana, Texas"; "a house that was whole"; "the shack" where the man from Minnesota lived.  All of these constructs generate a poor image of America--and the main character seems to lack agency as he moves from scenario to scenario.  I often view him as an audience member observing the living conditions in which the poor Americans inhabit (clearly of the Dust-bowl).  This reminded me of Ong a little in his explanation of the audience member as fictive.  "The writer must consctruct in his imagination...an audience cast in some sort of role," he says.  While reading In Search of America, I often equated the main character with the audience--which begs the question of the audience member as actually real?  Which is a bit of a stretch considering the main character is fake, but considering he functions as a catalyst for the reader with his constant "walking," "driving" to different cities across America.

If no one has ever read Sherlock Holmes, the character of Watson works the same way.  His character serves as a bit of a narrator from which the audience can view the text in words they understand.  Asch's narrator describes America as he wanders about the land.  But his character lacks agency because he doesn't arguably 'do' anything.  He asks questions that create the characterizations of the people in the story.  As he interacts with the farmer with the poor tenants he asks "How did they live on through winter"  He asks the woman with the bad back why "she didn't go to the doctor that owned the land they lived on."  And he asks the poet at the end if he could read his writing.

Of all the characters in the story I feel the poet relates to us and the author the most.  He works as an odd parallel between audience, agency and the question of authorship. 

I'm silly and I forgot to bring my binder containing all of our reading materials to BH before class.  I'm going to just sum up my points now then elaborate later. 

As I was saying...I definitely think there's a parallel between the narrator and the poet in terms of agency.  As in, the poet has agency because he writes everything down.  The narrator lacks agency because he observes as an audience member (although he definitely facillitates thought by asking questions).  This suggests that the writer, the author if you will, possesses the power in America.  TBC