A M(Other)’s Love: Lacan’s Desire in West’s The Day of the Locust
October 4th, 2006 at 08:05am rmartin
What struck me the most as I was reading this novel was desire. As stated earlier in this blog, everyone seems to be desire that which they cannot have. All the men in the text seem to be desiring Faye and Faye seems to be desiring that which does not exist in the context of the story - the rich and good looking man to make her wealthy and famous (wealth and fame don’t really seem to exist in the text either - at least not for the main characters). Lacan seemingly would have a great deal to say about this unfulfilled desire in West’s Hollywood of Day of the Locust. During the mirror stage we recognize that our mother desires something other than themselves and we, by attempting to become the Imago, try to position ourselves as the object of her desire, which is what the whole, completeness that the Imago promises us. Ultimately our desire stems from this - a desire to be the object of our Mother’s love. We experience ourselves as incomplete - unable to fulfill our own desire - therefore, seeking an Other, an object of our desire. West’s novel is ripe with objects of desire and each character seems glaringly incomplete as they endeavor to seek the love of their M(Other).
But much like Lacan’s subject’s desire, the desires of the Faye, Tod, Homer, Mr. Greene and the others are not and cannot be fulfilled, ultimately leaving them frustrated and alone. Lacan points out that desire cannot be fulfilled. We never had this “perfect” love of our M(Others), but we think we had it (we think we had it before the mirror stage, before we realized we were incomplete, before we experienced our body as fragmented). Each of the afore mentioned characters - Faye, Tod, Homer and the rest - want so desperately to be the desire of their Other’s love, because they cannot fulfill their desire on their own. Homer and Tod both desire Faye and believe their completeness will come by way of her. Faye desires Hollywood fame and the world’s approval and love, as well as an additional object of desire which doesn’t seem to even exist within the novel (the wealthy, good-looking man to help her reach her desire of fame). Like Lacan’s subject, desiring is all that these characters are: they experience themselves as incomplete - a desiring being, finite and incomplete on their own.
For Lacan, the M(other) represents the first figure of desire in position of all powerful, all truth. She is the one who can satisfy the desire of the Freudian Phallic Mother. And when we realize that we cannot have our M(other) (she is prohibited by the law of the father) we substitute anything else in to address this desire. The ultimate fantasy is that the Other appears to hold the “truth” and the power to make good our loss, as we assume our Mother did. Accordingly, this is fantasy because if our loss is met it would equal our death (because for Lacan all we are is desire and if that no longer exists, we no longer exist) and because there is no “truth” to be had. For Lacan, as well as West’s characters, there is no knowledge, no Other, and oddly enough no M(Other) that will every make us and them whole.
The “oddly enough” here leads me to notice the lack of mothers in this text so full of desire and longing. West shows a father/daughter relationship, but there is an apparent lack of mothers in text, creating within the text the illusion that each character can become the object of their other’s desire. If West were to include a mother in this novel, it would show his readers and his other characters that even the mother is a desiring object, unfulfilled and incomplete, ultimately revealing that ours and the characters’ desire can never be fulfilled. However, by leaving the void of mothers in the text, West leads the reader and his characters to believe that someone can find the “truth”, happiness and love they so desperately seek. But for West and Lacan, this desire can never be fulfilled. Never.
Entry Filed under: Week 6 - West
3 Comments
1. Jessica Montfort | October 4th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Although her role is small, there is the mother that Tod and Homer encounter looking for her little boy, whom she treats basically as a commodity to be proud of. Tod then has a little aside about parents who bring their children to Hollywood to initiate them into the star culture, implying that this seldom gives them the results they desire (since there are swarms of them all wanting to be the next Shirley Temple). Unfortunately, I don’t have the book with me, and can’t remember the page number. But this is really the only occurance of parenthood I can think of.
2. rmartin | October 4th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
Thanks for reminding me. I had forgotten about her in my wee-early morning ramblings. We could look at her as a the demonstration of the M(other) who cannot complete the desire and who is as unfulfilled as we all are. West definitely depicts her as a desiring being, incomplete, seemingly searching forever for her wandering son. I had forgotten about her, but I think she could be worked into the Lacanian analysis…
3. Professor Sample | October 4th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
With or without the Lacanian angle on things, we can definitely talk about desire, or rather frustrated desire in The Day of the Locust. I too thought of Adore’s mother, Mrs. Loomis, when I read Rachel’s post. And remember that the song Adore sings is “enormously suggestive” — “Mam doan wan’ no glass of gin / Because it boun’ to make her sin / An’ keep her hot and bothered all the day” (140). We not only have desire here, we have layers of it, desire within desire, and all of it, like Adore’s bump and grind dance, simulated, fake, a sham at one level or another.