This student reflects on her reading of Elena Ferrante’s ‘The Story of a New Name’ and discusses the meaning of the novel as well as musing about creativity, imagination and role of writing in the story.
The Story of a New Name, the second novel in the renowned Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante, is connected to but otherwise different from its prequel, My Brilliant Friend. While the former is a beautiful yet tangled mix of events, symbolism and the ever-present idea of dissolving margins, The Story of a New Name offers a much more linear narrative, but provides surprising insights on human nature, on the 20th century world and on life itself, suggesting ‘new names’ to things we have previously taken for granted.
For sake of clarity, I will separate this article into three parts, each one corresponding to one angle of the insights I have listed above. 1. On Human Nature (and characters) 1. 1 Writing & the Bright Side of Humanity The book starts by this sentence: ‘In the spring of 1966, Lila, in a state of great agitation, entrusted to me a metal box that contained eight notebooks,’ (Ferrante 15). The notebooks were part diary and part personal reflection, containing detailed accounts of the events in Lila's life, thoughtful illustrations of the neighborhood, translation exercises, outbursts of intense emotion and sudden intuition, flurried sketches of Naples's ‘twisted trees, humped, smoking mountains, grim faces.’ Apart from The Blue Fairy, a novel written when Lila was ten, which I will get to later, this box of notebooks is the only evidence of Lila's writing described to readers. Thus, they offer a new angle to analyze Lila's character which, though described through the eyes of Elena, are nonetheless revealed by Lila herself.
Lila's writing is an extremely detailed record of what she thinks, feels and observes. Unlike Elena's writing, Lila strives to record and explain everything she observes. ‘The branch of a tree,’ the author enumerates, ‘the ponds, a stone, a leaf with its white veinings, the pots in the kitchen, the various parts of a coffeemaker, the brazier, the coal and bits of coal [...] the broad avenue of the stradone, the rusting iron structure beyond the ponds, the garden, and the church, the cut of the vegetation alongside the railway, the new buildings [...] and above all colors, the colors of every object at different times of the day’ (Ferrante 15). There are descriptions, some in English, Latin or Greek, of her father and brother, their gestures as they worked, of Enzo Scanno and his cart, of discussions with Pasquale, of talks with Lenù herself. There are accounts of her joy when she wrote the Blue Fairy, pain at its rejection, jealousy that Lenù was allowed to go to school and she can't, excitement for the creation of the shoes, hatred of the Solaras, questions about the sudden dissolving of Stefano, his transformation into the form of his father, Achille.
The language is vivid, detailed, intense, full of life. It is almost as if she is trying to fit in the entirety of Naples. Her writing is open to everything that life offers and doesn’t try to shape it like Elena’s books. Life’s beauty, its suffering, its chaotic and twisted roots, the whole gigantic truth about the city reflected in the daily life of a young girl in a poor suburb neighborhood, into the miniscule space of words. When the truth is too heavy or complex, the words turn chaotic and rushed themselves, and transform into pictures, as demonstrated below: ‘Usually the sentences were extremely precise, the punctuation meticulous, the handwriting elegant, just as Maestra Oliviero had taught us. But at times, as if a drug had flooded her veins, Lila seemed unable to bear the order she had imposed on herself. Everything then became breathless, the sentences took on an overexcited rhythm, the punctuation disappeared [...] it might also happen that she broke off abruptly and filled the rest of the page with little drawings of twisted trees, humped, smoking mountains, grim faces’ (Ferrante 16). This implies that words, language, marks on paper, are sometimes not enough to convey life.
These notebooks shed light on a side of Lila hidden from the rest of the world: her creativity, her silent observation of every detail and every person around her, her passion for writing and her stubborn perseverance to write even in difficult situations, the millions of ideas her brain generates that are far, far from destructive, her ‘capacity to love’ and to experience emotions as intensely or perhaps even more intensely than Lenù. One person, capable of so many observations, sensitive to so many emotions. Warmer, more relaxed and more empathetic than the determined, intense, sometimes cruel ego that she directed as a child toward everyone else, as a sort of protection against chaos. More creative and tenacious than her seemingly submissive form first towards Fernando and then towards Stefano. As Carmen once jealously said, ‘Lina thinks, Lina does, Lina knows’ (Ferrante 346). Why has she hidden it? To avoid showing weakness, a habit that is enforced by living in a family of violence, a basic wariness required for survival in the midst of insults and blows. Even towards Lenù, Lila never has truly entirely exposed herself (at least, by the end of the second book). Knowledge of her more vulnerable side give others the power to hurt her, which is exactly what happened after Lila puts her full trust in Nino out of love.
Even more evidence of Lila's more compassionate side can be found in a description of the novel she had written when she was ten, The Blue Fairy, and Elena's very extreme reactions to this sudden discovery of a relic of their childhood. ‘I began to read The Blue Fairy from the beginning, racing over the pale ink, the handwriting so similar to mine of that time,’ Elena recounted, ‘But already at the first page I began to feel sick to my stomach and soon I was covered with sweat. Only at the end, however, did I admit what I had understood after a few lines. Lila's childish pages were the secret heart of my book. Anyone who wanted to know what gave it warmth and what the origin was of the strong but invisible thread that joined the sentences would have had to go back to that child's packet, ten notebook pages, the rusty pin, the brightly colored cover, the title, and not even a signature’ (Ferrante 455). The lack of a signature hints at the impossibility of a person, an author, being able to claim that he or she has successfully contained or represented life, which has a more complex and distinctive nature.
What was The Blue Fairy about? Who was the Blue Fairy? The author never gave us an answer. Perhaps it is linked to the ‘blue fairy’ in Pinocchio. It may also be an actual character in the book. It can even be a bridge between the known and the unknown, the agent that opens mortal eyes to the base reality of life through dissolving margins. Personally, I would imagine the character to be a symbol for human nature (or at least, its good sides), a personification of unconditional love, hope and conscience, which also align with the traits of the Pinocchio version of the blue fairy. It is a state of perfection that actual human beings strive to yet may never achieve. The same is true for Lila's writing, a level of writing that is perfection, the ‘true state’ of writing. This is the standard of writing that Elena tries to imitate and give form to all her life but could never do so, for it is forever changing, it has no form. 1.2 Responses to Adversity Lila's response to adversity is especially interesting. As a child, she has suffered prolonged brutality from her family, which are results of the strong social hierarchies, normalized aggression and the ‘culture of honor’ in Naples. As previously mentioned, she has responded by using emotional ‘coldness’ and an unpredictability in action as armor against the onslaught. However, the violence she experiences in The Story of a New Name is much more subtle, yet harder to escape.
The first type of violence she experienced was with her husband. In Neapolitan culture in the 20th century, it is completely normal for a husband to beat a wife, and thus the community remained passive and unsupportive. Bonded by marriage and the new identity (new name) Signora Caracci she has bound to herself, Lila found it increasingly hard to resist aggressively (physically fighting her husband back), especially since her new role made people from the neighborhood, including her family members, resentful towards her. She reacted first subtly herself, using her name as Signora Caracci instead of Lila Cerullo to openly act ‘the lady’, imprudently offend others, take control over important shops and have sex with Nino on the beach, creating humiliation for Stefano. Her love for Nino, however, reawakened the urge to rebel, no longer for the sake of hurting Stefano but for the sake of saving herself. Because of Nino, ‘The phenomenal child of elementary school, the girl who had charmed Maestra Oliviero, who had written The Blue Fairy, had reappeared and was stirring with new energy [...] to sweep away Signora Carracci. Which she gradually did.’ (Ferrante 341). The motive behind the change in response is likely due to a few reasons: 1. The audacious and ‘phenomenal’ part of Lila, the part who can ‘cry out the truth as if it were a lie’, is tired of this prolonged period of lies and deception. 2. Through Nino, Lila has recognized that a future with Stefano is neither inevitable nor desirable, so there is no gain in further fights. 3. Lila's desire for freedom, both physically and intellectually, have exceeded her need for revenge towards Stefano. Instead of prevailing over Stefano, Lila's primary goal now is to escape from him, end this war, erase him from her life and her memory. Her pregnancy and care for her future child also fueled this desire.
To achieve this escape, Lila left Stefano's house and settled in secret with Nino in an apartment in Campi Flegrei. They lived together for twenty-three days. During the time period, she felt ‘enormously cheerful’, and discovered that ‘She didn't feel in the least the loss of the new neighborhood's comforts, she didn't smell the odor of mold, didn’t see the stain of dampness in a corner of the bedroom [...] wasn't depressed by a place that immediately foretold a return to the poverty of her childhood’ (Ferrante 357). Her fascination with this place is partly explained by her fervent love and desire for Nino, partly because of the newfound freedom and happiness this place promises, and partly because of the intrigue of erasing herself, which she repeated later in her life. She wasn't depressed by a return to the poverty of her childhood because she never was afraid of poverty. Instead, she was frightened by violence, and equally by captivity (not by Naples, she has never left Naples, but the mental and spiritual captivity by the people around her). After returning to Stefano after Nino's betrayal, Lila escapes again with the help of Enzo. They lived together in San Giovanni under hard conditions. Lila worked in the Soccavo sausage factory, suffering undernourishment, cold, fatigue, and multiple injuries on the hands and arms to earn just ten lire more an hour for working in the icy storerooms. Enzo works by day and studies programming at night. Ironically, though Lila is not afraid of poverty and even returned poverty to escape from violence, it is only to escape the subtle domestic violence at home and face the more vulgar and more excessive oppression from the wider society. Poverty is forever linked to violence and imprisonment. Without the basic comforts that a human requires, any dreams are extinguished. In an attempt to bring herself back to ‘the old Lila’, Lila stepped into a marshland that is temporarily far greater than her own strength. The feeling of alienation increased, and she destroyed her childhood self, The Blue Fairy, if only for a small victory against Lenù. But is the struggle completely futile? Comparing the current Lila, in harsh working conditions and dilapidated health, and the former Lila, crushed by the domestic abuse and intellectual stagnation of her husband, the current Lila seems happier, freer, able to learn and discuss computational theory with Enzo, able to catch the start of the Digital Revolution. It is a consideration between physical wellbeing and mental freedom. Lila chose the latter, at a cost to the former.
Compared to Lenù's responses to adversity, Lila's are very different. Firstly, her rebellions, especially in the later stage, are more direct and more optimistic, even seems far -fetched, matching her wild personality. Lenù's responses to difficulties, for example the strain of studying at school, getting bad marks, catching the flu or being criticized for the first book she's written, are more avoidant and subtle, using hard work and outward meekness as a solution or just avoiding the situation entirely (as when she temporarily left school). When crossing over a challenge, Elena takes into consideration the picture (‘ego’) that she has to maintain towards other people and feigns personality traits (e.g., meekness) to lessen social pressures and help her cope with the situation. It should be noted though, that the difficulties that Lenù experienced were far less challenging than the scenarios Lila had had to face.
1.3 Desire to Learn Lila's desire to learn is extremely different from Elena's. While Elena learns out of competitiveness, to polish her ego, Lila learns for a need to explain the world and the things that are happening around her. This is perhaps because of a fundamental difference in Lila's and Elena's personalities, one being more explorative, the other more combative. While Lenù continually tries to copy Lila, for example in the interest to write a book, the passion for shoes, the style in writing, Lila never imitates Elena. Instead, every time Elena catches up with Lila's interests, Lila changes course, shifts her interest to a new area. From books to shoes, from shoes to playing the lady, from playing the lady to swimming, then to managing shops, to books and novels she read for Nino, and at last to computer science and programming languages with Enzo. The only passion that has endured, that she has preserved all through her life, is writing. For while the varying of the sources of input gives her new specimens to study, writing is the sole output where she can try and explain all the ideas inspired by these specimens in her head. Lila's desire to learn can also be viewed as a way to unravel the mystery of dissolving margins, which she experienced all through her life.
The difference in their desires to learn also causes differences in Lila's and Lenù's styles of writing. While Elena's essays are used to prove or disprove a claim, to display her literary knowledge, but most of all to please the professors and therefore earn high marks, the purpose for Lila's writing is simply to explain the world around her. Lila's desire to learn and write is motivated by the urge to explain, making her words carry strength and sincerity, whereas the urge to imitate and to please that drives Elena's makes her language seem polished yet superfluous. This desire to explain also prompts Lila to link seemingly different topics in often surprising ways. It can be noticed that many of Elena's responses that fascinated examinators and college professors alike come directly from Lila during their vacation at the beach, for example the link between the night sky and the claim ‘beauty is a sham’, and the opinion that ‘life’ is ‘still more life’ without ‘sight or hearing’, a statement that comes from Dan Rooney, a blind character in Beckett's play All That Fall.
1.4 Psychological Symbolism The psychological symbolism of Lila and Elena is very interesting. If viewed under a psychological lens, it is commonly accepted that Lila represents the ‘id’, while Elena represents the ‘ego’. However, the ‘id’ is constantly framed negatively as irrational and immoral, driven by an animal urge for immediate pleasure, while the ‘ego’ is often framed as completely rational and moral. Therefore, to describe Lila and Lenù in a more neutral light, I will redefine the ‘id’ and the ‘ego’ as the inner self and the outer self, the inner self being the authentic core of a person, comprising of subconscious thoughts, emotions and intuitions, the outer self being the persona that we display to the outer world, shaped by social values and norms. The ‘inner self’ and the ‘outer self’ has no inherent good or bad. In reality, both parts are needed for survival, and matter on both personal and societal levels. A good comparison may be the actor on a stage: the mask cannot exist without the actor, but the actor would not be part of the stage without the mask. At most times, the ‘outer self’ consciously or subconsciously subdues the ‘inner self’ to better fit society's expectations.
The basis for this analysis is supported both by the unique fitting characteristics of Lila and Elena, and the tangled relationship between them. Like the inner self, Lila has a free and wild soul, is not fearful of the unknown, has thoughts that are deep, creative, beautiful, contains an element of unpredictability in her actions. Like the inner self, she can be intensely loving yet fiery, determined, rebellious, but has always been true to herself. Like the inner self, she is something too beautiful to exist in the material world, and dissolves into the borders of life through the process ‘dissolving margins’ at the end of her life. All of this makes her a preferable symbol of the ‘inner self’. Elena, by comparison, has always cared deeply for outside validation, from the teachers, from the professors, from the publishers, even from her boyfriends (consider how she longed for Nino's agreement). Her essays and novels need Lila (the inner self)'s inspiration and are often too polished. Yet, just as Lila cuts open the world and reveals its entrails, Lenù dissects herself using the same knife. If she indeed represents the outer self, this will explain this phenomenon, for the outer self is aware of its own inadequacies because it has the inner self to compare it to. Step by step, Elena has carefully constructed a persona for herself out of all her experiences, a ‘safehouse’ to help her forget the dissolving margins, and yet she is still haunted by the image of Lila, peering at her scrutinizingly, perhaps even and judgementally, from the streets of their childhood. She is aware of and puts down all of her flaws and inner conflicts in writing. She reflects, as Lila never did, that she wasn't well enough, that there was always something missing, which Lila has and she didn't have. She can beat Lila, in all the conventional ways, but never could she catch her. The self -awareness, self-perceived inadequacy and conditional sense of worth unique to the ‘outer self’ is the reason for Elena's social behavior and her ability to make such judgements of herself so harshly yet accurately. 1. 5 Complexity of Human Nature The nature of humans that the book reflects does not confine itself to the protagonists, Lila and Lenù. Another interesting person to discuss is Maestra Oliviero, and why she never gave Lila any feedback on The Blue Fairy, causing Lila intense pain and disappointment. At the time, the teacher seemed to ignore the book, angry at Lila's parents and warned Elena against becoming a ‘plebeian’ like Lila. However, after receiving the novel from the teacher after her death, Lenù discovers that Maestra Oliviero had read the book, had in fact praised it. "I opened it to the center page [...]’ Elena writes, ‘I saw, with amazement, that the teacher had written beside a sentence: beautiful. So she had read it? So she had liked it? I turned the pages one after the other, they were full of her wonderfuls, goods, very goods. I got angry. Old witch, I thought, why didn't you tell us that you liked it, why did you deny Lila that satisfaction? What drove you to fight for my education and not for hers? Is the refusal of the shoemaker to let his daughter take the admission examination enough to justify you? What unhappiness did you have in your head that you unloaded onto her?’ (Ferrante, 455).
The question that Elena asked, that many readers may have asked as well, can be answered in multiple ways. There is a complexity to the teacher that may have been the result of her own life's experiences, a constant fight between her role as a teacher (someone to ‘shape’ a student), an intelligent student in her past, and a woman in the neighborhood. One possible explanation is that as a teacher, Maestra Oliviero sees the possibility of ‘shaping’ Elena, to gradually polish and mould her, raise her to a better future. However, there is no opportunity in helping Lila, for she is too brilliant to be taught, too rebellious to be given a form, too wild to recognize the value of what Elena adores: fame among peers, good marks, association with the upper class, money. Another explanation is that the teacher has formerly been a student much like Lila in her youth. As a teacher, she must have at least a middle or high school diploma. Yet, unlike Elena, she returned to the neighborhood to teach. If she has been to the city, to places outside the Naples, maybe, what is the reason for her return? The most logical explanation is that someone from her family, probably her father, would not support her further education. Seeing the same thing is happening to Lila, Maestra Oliviero may have felt the duty to spare Lila from her own fate, and considered that an early acceptance of Lila's father's decision and not attending middle or high school would dim Lila's passion for learning and spare her the pain of a forced return after she has seen the freedom outside Naples, just like the teacher herself. 2. On the World 2.1 Overview Late 20th century Naples was a place of dramatic economic and political transformation. The recovery from World War II impact was immense, especially considering that Nazi forces had destroyed Neapolitan infrastructure (water, electricity and the sewage system) during their retreat. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1944 destroyed nearby villages and impacted up to 12,000 people, adding to the strain. In the 1950s and 1960s, Naples experienced an enormous construction bloom, featuring the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno industrialization movement in 1950 and the Lauro Era in 1952-1957, a period of significant building bloom which included the creation of the famous Palazzo delle Poste. However, this fast urbanization is met with criticism of the corruption and inefficiency of the government and the disfigurement of Naples's historic sites, such as the Vomero. Many constructions, especially in the suburb, became unused due to structural failures and loss of connection with the main commercial center of the city.
Though post-war Naples seems to be taking leaps and bounds (at least on the surface) in terms of economy, nothing improved for the daily lives of normal citizens. Most lived in bassi, cramped one-story street-level rooms like the ones Elena and Lila lived in during their childhood. Daily life was porous. Chores and events that are private under the modern lens, such as washing, cooking and socializing, ‘spilled’ into the streets and alleys. Many lived in poverty, were unemployed or survived through informal jobs (like the Cerullo's shoe repair business, or Elena's summer jobs), with blurred boundaries between personal and social life. Moreover, the Camorra, a criminal organization similar to the Mafia but with independent clans that took the opportunity to expand under the social and political instability of that time, controlled the city through a mix of loan sharking, extortion, smuggling and direct violence. An example of how this may have affected citizens is the influence of the Solaras on the Cerullo and Caracci business. 2.2 Effect: The Neighborhood Though some would describe history as the overarching trend that is steered only by important figures, it is nevertheless bound tightly to the daily lives of ordinary citizens in an interdependent relationship. History affects the ideals, habits and living conditions of normal citizens, while the actions of the normal citizens change the course of history. The backdrop of My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name, the Neapolitan city and suburb, is an ever-changing social and cultural terrain heavily influenced by historical events from1944 to 1968 as Italy underwent its transformation from post-war disaster to a modern country.
The neighborhood into which Lila and Lenù are born (some speculate that to be the Rione Luzzatti) is an example for such a change. Starting from a depiction of the poverty and violence in the old neighborhood and other regions with even worse conditions (1940s post-war Naples) through the eyes of the two children, the author moves on to the flourishing of businesses and construction of the new buildings during Lenù's middle school days (the 1950s ‘construction boom’), then to a description of the run-down factories in the scene where Elena had sex with Antonio (suburban construction gone unused). In The Story of a New Name, the Cerullo business expanded but was used than marginalized by the Solaras (the Camorra group), and many families even in the old neighborhood started having telephones and cars, with richer people in the city obtaining elevators in their apartments (further industrialization and modernization in the late 1960s). At the end of t he story, Lila and Enzo start learning the basics of programming languages (probably BASIC), signaling the start of the Digital Revolution at the end of the 20th century.
The effects of history on the mundane Neapolitan neighborhood are not limited to physical and technological changes. It also revealed itself in the ideals and cultures of the neighborhood and the city. One example may be the fashion of the city which slowly infiltrates into the neighborhood, starting to appear in the constant comparisons of fashion between the girls and the scene of the ‘girl in green’ during Lila's visit to the city, and slowly strengthening itself through description of the fashionable clothes Lila wore during her romantic relationship with Stefano. Another example is the ongoing exchange of modern ideas, for example feminism, neo-colonialism and socialism, especially in more educated circles, in contrast to the Fascist regime that previously ruled Naples in the early 20th century. 2.3 Effect: People The effect of history on specific people, such as Lila and Lenù , is tied heavily to the environments of their childhood. For both, the normalization violence of the neighborhood in their early years, especially the violence of her family in Lila's case, are strongly imprinted upon them. Although none used violence as a weapon, both were fearful but accustomed to its existence. The domestic abuse against women they have witnessed in their parents' home also caused them to react violently when strangers try to hurt them, but view beatings from a male family member (father or husband) as something for the sake of their ‘education.’
For Elena, the cultural differences and higher education she experienced in the city changed some of her ideals, rooted in her childhood. She learned at the Normale to eat quietly, keep under control the Neapolitan accent in her voice, pretend to be surprised by her own results, behave in a meek, friendly yet tactful way to eliminate enemies and become well-liked. The journals and books lent to her by Professor Galiani introduced ideas of world peace, of socialism, of neo-colonialism and nationalism. Her interactions with Franco Mari introduced her to Communism and helped her develop an anti -Stalinist sensibility, a higher level of understanding of the society than the ones her discussions with Pasquale had caused. S he experienced a change of the status of men and women due to the spread of feminism in Italy. On returning to Naples, she found that everything about her outward complexion has changed, and her family appeared distant to her. She could also not tolerate the sexual abuse of males on the bus to the Soccavo factory, and shouted insults at her attackers instead of pretending not to notice like the neighborhood tradition.
Lila's world, unlike Elena's, is filled with poverty and violence from her childhood to middle age at the end of the second book. She is also acquainted with a more diverse group of people, mostly from the people at the bottom but also some from the middle-class or the upper-class, because of her work at the neighborhood grocery and the shop in Piazza dei Martiri. While political ideologies did not concern her directly, she is familiar with the unemployment and poverty that the people suffered from because of the consequences of the ‘building boom’ and the corruption of the government. She is also more aware of the horror of the Camorra and of the underlying violence of Naples.
Apart from Lila and Elena, other people in the neighborhood are affected by this grander course of history as well. Essentially, The Story of a New Name can be viewed as a collection of small tragedies under the greater pressures of society, to which they have no power against. While they observe the threats of the neighborhood from an external point of view during childhood, when they become adults, they become part of the pattern themselves. Take Antonio, who after he broke up with Lenù and was sent to military service, returned mentally ill, broken, and became the Solara's puppet, running errands for the people that he once despised and hated with all his heart. Another male example may be Stefano, whose gentlemanly traits were overridden by the voice of father, by his shape and his violence that leaped out of his meek features, or Rino, who stopped caring for her sister, and whose sensitive heart was overcome by the desire to win and the distress of it being impossible, becoming a copy of Fernando. Nino, who hated his father and tried to seem outwardly as far from him as possible, became in the end duplicate of Donato. Rinuccio, whose cultured Italian and intelligence his mother has developed during infantry are gradually replaced by the vulgar language and filthy habits of the poor environment he grew up in. They are beaten by their fathers, transformed by their environments, they compete for success, are trampled by society, and inevitably turns into their fathers themselves, continuing this never-ending loop.
For the females, pregnancy is the cage that traps them forever. As Lenù acutely observed, ‘I saw clearly the mothers of the old neighborhood. They were nervous, they were acquiescent. They were silent, with tight lips and stooping shoulders [...] Extremely thin, with hollow eyes and cheeks, or with broad behinds, swollen ankles, heavy chests [...] And good God, they were ten, at most twenty years older than me’ (Ferrante 102). Melina, who sat in the pond during an unusually silent madness attack, ‘dirty, smiling faintly, her light clothes soaked and muddy, the outline of her wasted body visible under the material’ (Ferrante 97). Pinuccia, who after her pregnancy became ‘slovenly, nervous, extremely thin, resigned to her fate, she bore the marks of the beatings that Rino continued to give her’ (Ferrant 439). Marisa, who in the last year before her marriage with Alfonso ‘lost her old liveliness, her effusiveness, and now seemed above all careful not to say anything that might annoy him’ (Ferrante 439). Ada, who had sex with Stefano and was pregnant with her son, and whose furious debate with Lila reminded Lila of ‘the cries of Melina, the abandoned lover [...] the long flame of suffering, which then had much impressed her, was flickering again in Ada; only now it wasn't the wife of Sarratore feeding it but her, Lila. A cruel game of mirrors that at the time escaped us all’ (Ferrante 422). The young girls, formerly fashionable and outside of the violence of the adult world, after marriage and pregnancy become overpowered by the shapes of their husbands, tied to the children who they could not leave, defeated both by the patr iarchal environment of the neighborhood and the domestic abuse by their husbands. Contrary to the boys, who turn into their fathers, the girls are forced back to the paths of their mothers. A cruel game of mirrors, indeed, is being played. 3. On Life 3.1 Why is Life Cruel At the end of the previous part, I likened life to a cruel game of mirrors. Children grow up, turn unavoidably into their parents, following the same path down poverty and violence. But why is life like that? What makes life cruel?
Presuming that we don't go into religious comprehensions, one explanation is that life itself is neutral, that it is the influence of people to a single individual, the pressures of the human society that makes life ‘cruel’. Despite the fact that every person may have acted on their own free will, following the discussion of the previous part, they are still heavily influenced by their culture and by the ‘grander trend’ of history. The ‘building boom’, the widespread violence, the control of the Camorra, the patriarchal society and the trap of poverty contribute to the tragedies of the lives of these Neapolitan children. ‘What is an individual?’ and ‘Can we ever be ‘individual’?’ are questions that the writing frequently asks.
Apart from this, another interpretation is that the misery in life is caused by human consciousness and self-awareness. Under the ‘illusion’ that we have superior intelligence, emotions and experiences, we separate ourselves from nature and are driven to ‘existential panic’, craving for a meaning that does not exist. A famous quote that expressed such a view, ‘human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution’, is spoken by Rust Cohle in the movie True Detective. However, the original idea comes from Peter Wessel Zapffe, a Norwegian philosopher inspired by the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer. This contrasts with Camus, who argues we should rebel against the universe's coldness and create meaning for our lives ourselves. Personally, I agree with Camus's view, and believe that the meaning of life is created through the struggle to find life's meaning itself.
Besides the two most interesting solutions, there are other explanations as well. We may have set the bar of our expectations too high for the neutral life to fulfill. Life may be inherently unjust and cruel. It may have been because of the human race's own evil, or its desires. Life may have had no ‘cruelty’ or meaning, and it is we who make a story out of a string of random events to create a pattern that doesn't actually exist. All these explanations are justifiable and explain the question ‘why is life cruel’ by its own logic.
3.2 Life's Chaos and Linearity After the description of her life at the Normale, Elena was surprised by ‘How easy it is to tell the story of myself without Lila: time quiets down and the important facts slide along the thread of the years like suitcases on a conveyor belt at an airport; you pick them up, put them on the page, and it's done’ (Ferrante 336). In comparison, recounting what happened to Lila was much more ‘complicated’. Her belt of events ‘slow down, accelerates, serves abruptly, goes off the tracks. The suitcases fall off, fly open, their contents scatter here and there. Her things end up among mine’(Ferrante 336).
The simile is an accurate picture of how the lives of Elena and Lila differ. Lenù's life follows a linear, well-trodden path: study hard, get good marks, go to middle school; study hard, get good marks, go to high school; study hard, get good marks, go to university; be engaged, publish a book, earn money. Lila's path, however, seems to swerve off the main road. She was Stefano's fiancé, the rich lady; she was Signora Caracci, beaten by her husband; she was mistress of the grocery and the shop; she was the loving mother of Rinuccio; she runs away with Nino and Enzo, was the friend Lenù; she was a poor and fatigued worker at the Soccavo factory. It is almost as if she is acting unpredictably intentionally. The question, then, is why is Elena's life linear, and why is Lila's life chaotic? What makes life, which is supposed to be a random string of events, differ so greatly between two who grew up together in the same Neapolitan neighborhood?
A possible explanation may be that life lies on the ‘edge of chaos’, between absolute order and complete randomness. This is supported by the existence of both quantum mechanics (which is probabilistic) and general relativity (which is deterministic) in our current perception of the universe. Whether an individual's life can be linear or chaotic, then, depends on the will of the individual themselves. By following a stable, direct path, Elena pushes the scale of life a little bit to the ‘order’ side, which is why her life is so linear. By refusing to follow that path, Lila pushes the scale a little bit to the ‘chaos’, making her life chaotic. But why?
It can be shown in the book that Lenù has a tendency to ‘build’, and Lila has a tendency to ‘destroy’. Over time, Elena adds, brick by brick, onto the persona she is building around herself: a good student. A wall to protect herself, but also unintentionally caging her, as she recognized more and more later in her life. She could no longer escape that persona, for the ‘ego’ is too strong to beat over the ‘id’, the ‘outer self’ over the ‘inner self’. Abandoning the path she has forged for half a lifetime would be denying her entire existence, denying all of her choices from childhood to adulthood. In a way, Elena's self is weaker than Lila's which is why she has to build an armor around herself to get a sense of who she really is.
Lila, however, has always been wary of any path that seems too certain. She has a greater sense of self and thus greater courage to face the unknown and the unpredictable. To her, anything around her that may cage her in has to be destroyed, and often she does so in a direct and violent way. By having sex with Nino, she escapes the form of Stefano that has been occupying her. By running away with Enzo, she breaks the entire identity of Signora Caracci. By throwing The Blue Fairy into the fire, she denies her childhood self, or at least one form of Lila that Lenù has attributed to her. By disappearing at the age of sixty -six into the margins of life, she successfully defies all of her former existence, a feat Lenù is unable to do. A greater, more intense desire for freedom and for rebellion, until she even defies the cage of existence itself. Destroying everything one builds is, perhaps, the only way to truly stay free in the world.
Is it worth it? Personally, I find it better to balance ‘building’ and ‘destroying’, for finding joy and meaning is as important as being free in life. One way is to unconsciously have many forms (or identities) available that one can take on and alternate between them as one wish or according to the social context. Rotating around hobbies of different types is also useful for remaining anchored (at least from the tip of the string) while also staying relatively free. For example, math is a very good tool for countering dissolving margins. Another method is minimizing superfluous social interactions and focus only on the deepest bonds apart from spending most of the time alone, which allows one to be free from outside influence. Ultimately, the question of whether freedom is worth the continued process of destruction is up to how much value one gives to freedom, and what the definition of freedom is for the person.
Emily, Grade 8
