Frankenstein: Who is the Monster and Who is the Man?

 

    How do you do, 

   To start the countdown to Allhallowtide (or, as the non-Catholic readers would know it as, Hallowe'en -- which precedes All Saints' and All Souls' Day) I will reveal that every year, between this season and the Autumn Equinox, I commence to a binge reading of dark and spooky works. I don't have a particular order in this, unlike in most reading binges, which means I could start with just about anything. I could begin with Washington Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hallow" and jump ahead to Poe's poems and stories, just as I would do with the American literature. Then it's fast fowarding to 1911 with Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera. I sometimes add in Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray in the mix and Nathan Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables as they contain dark themes. Some years even include Goethe's Faust, mostly with the grim scenes in the first part's climax, along with H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds, and Stephen King's Carrie was included when I was in high school and college. Recently, I even included H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthuhlu" and Dante's Inferno (since it takes place in Hell, it does count as a kind of Medieval haunted house feel). At some point, I eventually reach Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus, one of my favorite novels in English literature. 

    Technically speaking, almost anything written or published after Christ rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven has some degree of darkness, including the Revelations of St. John that provides one of the darkest chapters in the Bible (the days when Satan will be at his peak power and the evil in the world will be at the worst, while the faithful face their greatest challenge ever, and finally the End of the World). In Western Literatures, you can mark the trend from the Fall of Rome (as Petrarch named the period as the Dark Ages) with darkness as a sign of chaos and light of God brought forth in the heroes, such as in the epic of Beowulf and the Norse sagas. It later transfers down into the Medieval period, especially in wake of the Black Death, and the foreboding theme of death echoes through many works. Shakespeare wasn't immune to this as evidenced by his three darkest plays: MacBeth, Hamlet, and King Lear. Somewhere in this evolution of story telling, the core of the Christian doctrine (being resurrection of Christ who will bring a resurrection of the dead in the Second Coming) has become perverted with stories of the dead walking among us, and with the undead coming forth, all of which cause chills in our spines and goosebumps on our skins. In short, European literatures have some fascination with death and darkness, which is still present today (think of Harry Potter's chief antagonist, Lord Vordemort, who's name means "Fly from Death", and is also the embodiment of Death itself). So, when it comes to the clash of life and death in the realm of light and darkness, a discussion of Mary Shelley's novel comes into being as it deals with those themes, while also taking on other themes. 

    Imagine, female readers out there, you and your husband are newlyweds going on a vacation in the Alps. Once there, you meet up with the famous man of letters, George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, or Lord Byron as most call him. He and Mister Polidori are vacationing near lake Geneva and you and your husband meet up with him. You have plans of using this retreat for nature hikes, boat rides, and some sports you know of in the meadow. However, upon arrival, the weather goes from pleasant and sunny to rainy and wintry. What the heck? you wonder. It's June, the start of summer, and it's freezing outside. Who turned off the summer? Welcome to Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death, as we in America call it. So, instead of doing all those things mentioned, you are stuck inside, keeping warm by the fire with glasses of sherry, and reading a few ghost stories of German origin translated into French. Then, Lord Byron decides to host a constant where everyone will come up with a ghost story that is original. You hear the men tell all sorts while you busy yourself with one. Then, one night, you dream of seeing "the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together"[1] which is put into motion by incredible means, then seek out his creator who fled from the creation and try to reach out to him at the bed curtains. This is enough to wake you up and narrate the scene to the men. 

   If this story is about you, your name would be Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley, nee Godwin, named after the feminist writer of the late 18th Century, 19 years old and wife of the poet Percy Shelley (admit it, you saw the footnote and panned down to take a look). Mrs. Shelley dreamed up the scene that later became chapter five of the novel, Frankenstein. She evidently was encouraged by her husband to expand on the scene and it became a short, three part novel, finally published in 1818, which means it will turn two hundred years in 2018. Over the two centuries since it was first published, Shelley's break out book (or not since all of her later works didn't match the power of Frankenstein and were forgotten) has been translated into many languages, adapted to plays and movies. We all know of the 1931 movie starring Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's creation and the franchise that spawned forth of the robotic giant, with scars and bolts, walking toward you. There are also the lesser known Hammer films with Peter Cushing of Star Wars fame playing Doctor Frankenstein, and one had his fellow Star Wars costar, David Prowse, play his creation. 1994 saw Sir Kenneth Branagh team up with Robert De Niro in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Then there are the loose adaptations like Young Frankenstein (a spoof on the Karloff movies, mostly), Rocky Horror Show, and Frankenweenie (in which a kid resurrects his dog). More recently, American author, Dean Koontz, made a re-imagining of Frankenstein and even titled it that way. First time readers of Shelley's novel may or may not be familiar with all these, but they would be in for a few surprises upon opening it up. 

   For starters, contrary to the Universal films, the setting doesn't happen in Transylvania. In the book, Victor Frankenstein states he is Gevenese, though born in Naples[2]. He creates his "monster" not in Geneva, either, but in the University of Ingolstadt, in Bavaria (today part of Germany). The setting switches between Switzerland and Germany a couple of times, with one visit to the British Isles, before climaxing in the White Sea. Another thing to surprise the reader is in the name. Frankenstein is not the name of the Creature, despite the popular branding of him. Frankenstein is the name of his creator. The book offers no name to him, but he does say to Frankenstein "I ought to be thy Adam"[3], a reference to the first man, created in the image of God, yet is called "Devil" by his creator which made him reference his status as a fallen angel[4]. Third, Shelley offers no description of how the monster was brought to life. She doesn't even give us a clue to how he was fashioned together. It's basically we see the sausage but never see how its made, if we could use that phrase. And there is a fourth surprise: the hunchback assistant Igor who populates the image of a mad scientist who is compared to Frankenstein does not exist in the book. 

  In fact, Frankenstein hardly resembles the mad scientist sort. He is often called Doctor Frankenstein, yet he is still a student in Ingolstadt when he made his creation. That is basically like calling Howard in The Big Bang Theory as Doctor Wolowitz, despite the fact that he is an engineer with a masters. Frankenstein did go into the university to study chemistry (or alchemy, as it was called), but later switched to poetry. The thing of him creating his creation is more about wanting to make another break through in science: to conquer death. That basically leads us to the subtitle: "The Modern Prometheus." 

   First, get rid of the movie you saw back in 2012. Prometheus was a titan in Greek Mythology who created Man out of clay. He then stole fire from the gods as humans were less likely to survive than animals who had the best gifts around. For that, Zeus had him chained to a mountain in the Caucasians and his liver would be pecked by ravens. Prometheus had also taught humans to offer poor quality sacrifices to Zeus and keep the meats for themselves, which angered the god farther. Prometheus stayed there until Heracles, son of Zeus, came along and freed him. Since Antiquity, the legend of Prometheus is more than the Greek retelling of the Discovery of Fire. A being dares to take what belonged to heaven, even with the intention of aiding the lowly in the process, which is still an act of theft, and is thus cast down and given a harsh punishment. For most of the history of Europe, the thought stayed on as it seemed an example of "Thou shalt not steal", until the Romantic period (of which the Shelleys and Lord Byron are a part of) came along and re-translated the legend to be anti-authoritarian. The fire that the gods hold is suddenly the key to the lowly becoming equal to the high, yet the people above don't want it shared and thus the hero takes it away and upsets the delicate balance. Two generations later, German philosopher, Frederic Nietzsche, made Prometheus a tragic figure in rebellion against the universe, yet is defeated and brought down. Of course, the Romantics understood the danger to this deed and showed it. A generation prior, William Blake had Bromion take Oothoon from Theotorman in Visions of the Daughters of Albion and he winds up chained with her and suffer remorse for his actions[5]. In the same instance, Mary Shelley has Victor Frankenstein take the ability to create life from God through science and winds up doing that cliched phrase "created a monster". 

    One thing with Frankenstein is also seen in the name: Victor. It is an obvious parody of victor, as in winner, but it leans more toward the vicar, a clergyman. Take also the surname being of German origin, meaning "Stone of the Franks", than you basically get the name that means "Vicar, Stone of the Franks". Before he creates his creation, Frankenstein starts out as the doted child of a loving couple. He has two brothers named Ernest and William, a cousin named Elizabeth, to whom he falls in love with, plus his best friend, Henry Clerval. These are English names, as Shelley was writing to English readers, so we can't doubt Elizabeth actually was christened Isabella while Henry was Henri or Heinrich, and Ernest was Ernst. Frankenstein spends many days of his childhood reading, which leads to Shelley making discourses on philosophical works that happen in the narrative (if they don't interest you, you can skim them over, though I don't really recommend it). One can see why Stephen King compared it to "a college dormitory bull session"[6] when reading it over. After reading and studying, he goes to Ingolstadt for higher learning, which makes him run into two professors, Messers. Krempe and Waldman, who stand in for the faculty of the institution (my interpretation of it, as I don't think they ever existed). Waldman is the one who takes Frankenstein on to his path of infamy, especially with this speech: 

"The ancient teachers of this science," he said, "promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little;...But these philosophers...have indeed performed miracles."[7]

   The speech is very biased against Ancient sciences, especially against the Greeks who coined the word. We know now that the ancients were able to invent things to benefit man, charted the universe, constructed structures, and created ways of solving equations. What the modern scientist does is merely follow in their footsteps, sometimes standing on the shoulders of genius. What made the men Waldman spoke of fascinating was how they were able to demystify the world after centuries of seeing it one way. They did prove that the sun and the earth weren't supported by giants, but by gravity (as well as the earth going around the sun, instead of the other way around), that lightning is electricity and an atmospheric discharge, and so on. It would seem that science has taken the magic out of the world, becoming the light to replace darkness, and expose the ghosts as nothing but illusions. I shouldn't have to add that Ingolstadt is also the place where the Illuminati was formed, met for a while, and then was disbanded, roughly in the time frame of the book's story, and its name means "light." 

    This light now entices Frankenstein take the next step, going along with what Dr. Ian Malcolm is saying in Jurassic Park (which shares many themes with Frankenstein). Instead of making a quote and placing a footnote, why not just watch this clip and listen for yourself. But, after that and taking some knowledge of mixing chemicals to make the elixir of life, Frankenstein goes out finds pieces of a human corpse and makes something out of them while the year flies away. This is not coming up with getting a baby to live outside of its mother's womb or to keep the body of a person gone vegetable kicking; he is using parts and parcels of people who lived their lives and were selected to die. Yet, he uses those pieces to bring together a reanimated man. Then, he brings it to life and realizes too late he made a mistake. In this period where men were rationally explaining away the existence of demons, imps, witches, and ghouls, all of a sudden, we got a demon that lives and breathes like any mortal creature. 

    The Creature is a very interesting character to walk the pages of English literature. He is a stark contrast to Boris Karloff's interpretation. He is big, but he is not a robot or a zombie (if anything, he could be likened to the Revenent, an undead creature that dies but is brought back to life). He evokes the image of the Egyptian god Osiris, who was killed and mutilated, but put back together and resurrected. Yet, where Osiris remains the same when he comes back, the Creature here begins as a newborn lamb. 

    While we may call him Frankenstein, that is not really his name. In the book, he is constantly referred to as Demon, Wretch, and, one time, Devil. Monster is the common name used, though he hardly seems like it. Creature is the working name, though it does dehumanize him somewhat. Another is Creation, which is also dehumanizing. The only logic to naming him Frankenstein is largely to make a kind of paternity between him and his creator, though by that logic Adam would have been called Adam, Son of God, in scripture and we'd all be bearing the title "Son / Daughter of God" in our names. So, basically, the Creature has no name, mostly as Frankenstein never thought to give him one and just referred to him by degrading terms. 

    The Creature leaves Ingolstadt and resides in the country, allowing for the Pasterol setting so familiar in Romantic arts to appear in the novel. He sees nature at work and learns how to support himself as no one is around to help him. During his life, he figures out how to make fire and how to acquire food, becoming a strict vegetarian who lives on nuts and berries. One day, he comes upon a cottage and watches a family consisting of an old man and his children, named the De Laceys. One day, they are joined by an Arabian woman named Safie, who the youth, Felix, is attached to. Through this setting, the Creature learns how to talk and read, eventually reading great works of literature in the process. He also learns of Man and the good and the bad of the human race. Finally, he learns of his creation and how even his own creator hates him.
   If there is one thing modern readers may find not so PC in this section is the constant appearance of discrimination. The Creature comes off as an analog to the era being that Shelley wrote at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, which were preceded by the French Revolution, which was in turn foreshadowed by the Age of Enlightenment, as though the Revolution and its ideals were the monster made by the thinking of Voltaire and Franklin. As Shelley was writing, Britain was in the Industrial Revolution which was sweeping Europe also, radically changing life. Political movements to dominate the century had their beginnings at this time like feminism and liberalism, both of which have created their own monsters. Some things in the novel can seem dated, especially the knowledge the Creature obtains. The history he learns is slanted toward the Europeans and the subplot of Felix and Safie presents two types of Muslim characters: the exotic Arab and the treacherous Turk. These do have some purpose to 19th century readers as the Ottoman Empire was still a power at the start while Arabia had not had many visitors from Europe since the Crusades. The exotic Arab is in Safie whose beauty attracts a young Frenchman named Felix De Lacey. The treacherous Turk is her father who promises her to Felix, only to go back on it after being freed from justice at the ruining of his potential in law's family. The portrayal might seem slanderous to Muslim readers, but it serves a purpose to let the Creature see Man's dark side, which gives him one in turn. The Creature also learns of poverty and classism while near the cottage, which enables Shelley to make a commentary on society itself.
    So, the Creature holds up a mirror for the reader, regardless of his skin color or religious beliefs, his political stance or his orientation, and asks the reader look at oneself and examine those stances, as opposed to picking something for a stance. He could say how he is excluded because he is one of his kind and how the actions of people have made him this way, pointing it out in every form. Imagine how the Creature might react to our current society, especially having something to say about recent tragedies and our leaders.
   When the Creature tries to communicate with the cottagers, it starts out with some awkwardness as he never got a chance to socialize, and even the Blind Man's children scorn him. He seeks out Frankenstein and kills William during his tenure, thus making in a matter of chapters the corruption of a soul that happens without will. The Creature wasn't born to be wicked, but circumstances made him that way. He only wanted companionship, but because of his ugliness he gets turned away at all turns and even harmed when he does one good thing (can you imagine Superman getting shot at for rescuing Lois? by one of her friends?). But, worst of all, to the Creature's mind, is that his own creator has spurned him and now he can offer nothing but torment to Frankenstein. So, after reading the book, it's hard to not watch the speech in Young Frankenstein that the Creature gives to keep the mob from killing Frederick, or that Apple commercial where the Creature attempts to sing "Home For the Holidays" to a crowd of tree gawkers, without getting misty in the eye, for in both examples he gets that warm welcome he had long sought out. Even that Hugh Jackman movie, Van Helsing, has the Creature becoming heroic. 

     This is not what happens in the book, though. The Creature requests a companion of Frankenstein with the promise that he would leave Europe for South America and they would be content. However, Frankenstein goes back on his promise and destroys the work, just as Safie's father went back on his promise to Felix. The Creature then declares war by murdering Henry and later Elizabeth, in his promise "I shall be with you on your wedding day". You can just imagine that in this day and age, such a threat would be taken serious and you would think a restraining order or something would help. Of course, how would you explain to the judge that you want a restraining order to someone who was just a year ago a corpse that you brought back to life. You might get dismissed from the court room as a loon. This is also why Frankenstein held his silence when William was murdered and the nanny, Justine, was punished. An innocent woman is executed for the crimes by another, in a portrayal of the justice system (note the pun, Justine and justice) that comes across as Anti-Catholic at times -- she is threatened into confessing the murder by the confessor and the confession is a lie.

     Eventually, Frankenstein is left with only Ernest alive and he chases the Creature into Russia and then up north. Shelley opens and closes the book with Captain Robert Walton and his expedition in the North Pole, which follows closely the plot of The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner (even with the mention of the Albatross). Just like in the movie, Titanic (1997), the book ended scenes feature a man searching for something (Walton's case is adventure to the unknown as shown with the North Pole) while probing the Arctic with a ship manned by Russians. Then he meets a character who narrates the story, thus making it a story within a story, plus another through the Creature's narrative. Frankenstein dies of hypothermia and the Creature repents of his deeds. He waxes poetic of his deeds to Walton and vows to die up in the North Pole, thus ending the book as a downer. Both Frankenstein and his Creature die cut off from humanity, for the former matches to Prometheus. 

    Frankenstein; Or the Modern Prometheus is not a long book. It's 196 pages long (fifteen of which are devoted to the two introductions) split across three parts and twenty four chapters. That doesn't sound like much, you might think, but why did it take two years for Mary Shelley to publish all that? The publishing process was a little different then. It was published in a serial form, originally. As to the style, if you took out all of the philosophical digressions and angst passages, plus shrink the backstory of Frankenstein down some, the book would be vastly shorter, barely passing the 100 page marker. The dialogue is poetic sounding with the Creature's initial speech to Frankenstein sounding like that of a prayer (he uses Thee and Thy when addressing him the way a priest does to God). I will say Shelley is able to make a representation of men in the book better than she does with her fellow women, which seems surprising. Elizabeth and Justine, plus Caroline Frankenstein, are the main women in the book whose roles are fleeting and tragic as they die off one by one. Agatha and Safie are brought up in the Creature's narrative as either the dutiful daughter or the damsel. At the same time, the men are little more than symbols: the professors being the Pan like tempters, Henry is the boyhood friend, and so on. The only really fleshed out characters are Victor Frankenstein, his Creation, and Captain Walton, who each seek something. Walton and the Creature are seeking a companion and Walton shares Frankenstein's quest for glory. It should be pointed out the truly fleshed out characters are the ones narrating the book.
    Looking over the book, Mary Shelley is able to create scenes of desolation and horror, especially once the Creature has been created. The first four chapters are spent on setting up Frankenstein and his ambition to conquer death. Chapter four mentions him raiding charnel houses, slaughter houses, and dissecting rooms[8] just to get the pieces of the body, as opposed to simply unearthing a dead man and using the body for his experiment. Then comes chapter five, from which point things get dark, including the pivot-able scene of the Creature coming to life. The moment is a parody of the Creation of Adam, even making an inverse where the Creation holds out the hand to the Creator. When the Creature narrates his tale, we seen pastoral scenes of nature, that makes one thing of paintings. Even Frankenstein's ascent of Mont Blanc is like the painting of the man on the mountain. It gets dreary afterward, finally climaxing with Elizabeth's murder that is done to the style of the painting "Nightmare." Thus the light and dark of the Romantic period is exploited with artistic imagery in the text.

   When looking about the story, one common image pops up in the descriptions: ice. Remember, Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein in the summer of 1816, which was the Year Without a Summer. Through out the book, you see this image of snow and ice that often makes the book feel cold: the book opens and closes in the North Pole, with Walton's ship trapped by ice, the Creature spends his early days in the cold, Frankenstein climbs Mont Blanc and scales its glaciers, and the Creature dies alone in a frozen waste land. It also matches to Dante's Inferno where, instead of the usual fire and brimestone you get in a Sunday sermon, Hell is shown as a giant, dark, eternal freezer with a lake of ice holding the worst of sinners. Frost brought that up in his "Fire and Ice" by stating:

If it had to perish twice, I think I know enough hate, / to say for destruction ice is also great / and would suffice.[9]

    Light and darkness. Fire and ice. Contrasts of the matter are present in stories, with European literature consisting of darkness frequently. The darkness of death is present in Frankenstein where Victor Frankenstein sees it as the ultimate enemy to beat. The irony was his action of creating life to beat death resulted in more death as the Creature does murder, either deliberately or inadvertently. Of course, it is Frankenstein whose soul bleeds from this as it was him who set the events into motion. The Creature never sought to murder people, not at first. All he wanted was companionship. However, coming upon a dark world as this where people are repelled by ugliness (even today, where good looking guys could get away with certain actions and racial profiling is rampant in major cities) makes it harder and it breaks his heart. So, he becomes a monster. At the same time, could he really be a monster? Or as Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame had us decide: "who is the monster and who is the man?"[10]
     One thing to add is the book Frankenstein turns 200 years old next year. 


1: Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein. 1818 Author's Introduction (1831). pg. x-xi.
2: Shelley. pg. 33
3: Shelley. pg. 95.
4: Ibid.
5: Blake, William, Visions of the Daughters of Albion. 1793.
6: King, Stephen. Introduction to Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Signet Classic. 1978. pg. vii.
7: Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein. pg. 47.
8: Shelley. pg. 53.
9: Frost, Robert. "Fire and Ice."
10: "The Bells of Notre Dame", Alan Menkin. 1996.

Heaven and Hell: The "Last Full Measure".

    How do you do,

   As anyone who has taken US history knows the whole drama of the Civil War did not end at Appomattox. In fact, it wouldn't conclude with Lincoln's assassination either. Any discussion of the Civil War is going to lead to the Reconstruction where its a question of rather the wounds in our nation will heal, or will they form scars to last generations. It's a topic that still debated by Americans today. So, with Heaven and Hell, John Jakes concludes his Civil War trilogy in telling about the Reconstruction. Through out the trilogy, we have seen the titles be two polar opposites lending their names to the title. For with North and South, we see two differing societies. In Love and War, we have the two different emotions, if not for a better description. In the third book, we see different perpetual states of being: Heaven and Hell. Heaven is seen as the home of the gods in ancient religious, with Christianity transforming it into Paradise, where we can be with God and the Angels and all the toils of the world are gone. Hell, in contrast, was previous the land of the dead but is now seen as the dwelling place of the Devil and his demons, where the Damned are to be sent for all eternity. This makes the best amount of sense title wise out of all the editions to the trilogy. For the end of the Civil War it was Heaven for many. For the end of the Civil War it was also Hell, especially for the defeated South. For African Americans, it was Heaven in knowing slavery was gone, yet it was Hell when their freedom became a nightmare in form of the Black Laws. So, basically, with the title we see what the Reconstruction is, a mass bundle of contradictions all of which led to it being one of the biggest failures in American history. The whole trilogy has been a mass bundle of contradictions, yet many are willing to call Heaven and Hell the worst in the trilogy (I have read the reviews of costumers on Amazon enough to see it), though this one is less jaded than its two prequels. The characters are still godless, the men are violence and profaners of anything while the women are seductive and plotting, yet two become the real protagonist and sympathetic villain.

   Story wise, Heaven and Hell begins where Love and War left off with everyone coming out of the Civil War. We see a noticeable scattering of our heroes and villains to the far corners of the world: Orry is dead, James Huntoon is dead, Billy and Brett decide to head to California where they exit the stage entirely, Cooper survives but is a shell of himself, Charles leaves with his child for Kansas, Madeline is a widow operating what use to be thriving plantation, while Bent is walking about with a bad case of amnesia.
   I never brought this up in the first or second books, but I'll bring it here. The plot line of North and South appears similar to that of the film Birth of a Nation (1915) where it featured a Northern and Southern family having sons who befriend each other. The plot is also used in The Blue and the Gray. In Birth of a Nation, the Northern Stoneman family is headed by an Abolitionist patriarch who is suppose to be a fill in for Thaddeus Stevens. He has two sons and a daughter, the eldest of whom catches the eye of the Southern Cameron's daughter, who has three brothers. The Romeo and Juliet complex aside, the two families are also witnessing the Civil War and wind up on opposing sides. The film's hero, Ben Cameron, survives when his two brothers are killed, along with one of the Stonemans, and gets a pardon from President Lincoln himself, and it would seem that love with the girl Elsie would be a fitting conclusion to the healing process. Of course, the film doesn't go out that way. In the same formula, North and South had the Northern and Southern families meeting with a son of theirs becoming good friends (the Hazards and the Mains). Then Love and War had the Civil War with the two families on opposing sides, each losing someone close. Now, Heaven and Hell takes up the two families seeing the aftermath in a not so easy healing event (or as one song put it, "a hard road to travel"). But, where D.W. Griffith told the story in a two part three hour movie, John Jakes has told it all in three door stopping novels. Not only that, Birth of a Nation speaks to us from the beginning of the 20th Century and Heaven and Hell speaks toward its end, which gives you the sense of how they will differ in the storytelling.
   Yes, the Klan shows up in this book, because it happens in the Reconstruction. Of course, if you have the images from Birth of a Nation (1915) in your mind, get them out. If you think of the Klan as a Moose Club like in the 20th Century here, forget it. At this point, the Ku Klux Klan is a fraternity order turned resistance movement. The robes of the Hooded Order were nothing like the ones worn in the 20th Century. From the photos and archived materials, the original Klan did a few things differently: they didn't burn crosses in people's front yards, but they did lynch black people. Jakes makes a careful look at the Klan and avoids the portrayal that made the movie famous (or infamous) when it came out. The scenes of when the Klan first arrive with their robed and hooded forms and the torches is very Gothic, making one sense he was witnesses a Witch's Sabbath. When they show up, one will be wanting to know how long before Madeline's revelation of her one-eighth African heritage will lead her to a rope hanging from a tree. Especially since her brother in law is among them.

  In the matter of allegory, one place to find it is on the cover (It's late, but the photo shows it in my copy of all three books). Will say that in both Love and War and Heaven and Hell, the covers show the national colors: red, white, and blue. That shouldn't be surprising, especially as all of the Confederate flags (minus the Bonnie Blue Flag) have red, white, and blue (with the more iconic battle flag being more red for rebellion). In this instance, just as this copy of Shelby Foote's narrative I got, the national colors are show cased to solidify what was mentioned in the after word of North and South, that the Civil War was entirely "our war". It also shows the country that many Americans love, and some only appreciate for the sake of their own freedoms, is at stake in this point in time, something that the films Planet of the Apes and Jaws did to their advantage. The copy that was bought from a supermarket, was new edition and it shows the Old Glory with the Rebel flag, poles crossed with a third object against three different backdrops, which tells you that there is division in the story regardless of which book you pick up. More will come on the allegorical side of Heaven and Hell will come as we look at Madeline and her brother in law: Cooper Main.
   Cooper Main has come a long way from that man who rebelled against his father's wishes in this chapter. Once, he would have blasted the South for its unwillingness to give up its way of life. Now, all of a sudden, Cooper is a Dixiecrat. Early in the book, he threatens Madeline in an effort to take what is his. What he is after is Mont Royal, the plantation that he grew up in and was passed over to Orry upon death of their father. This allowed Cooper to take part in the Confederate Naval construction in Liverpool. Now, Orry is dead and Madeline is in the house that is rightfully Cooper's. The original agreement, at first, is Cooper would own the land and Madeline would keep it. Sounds fair. Yet, Cooper is seen returning from England and seeing the ruined landscape of South Carolina. In one occasion, he faces a few black people who offend him with their slothfulness. Jakes is commendable for keeping things from getting PC in his portrayal, such as the use of the N word in the dialogue and even the word "negro" in referencing black men. No doubt, some one in the freed African Americans may have thought freedom met they wouldn't have to carry out one simple request for a white person (one could cynically claim if they believe in that, they'd believe in anything). The encounter, and the death of his son, did some affects to Cooper who suddenly favors making rules to keep black people in line, as one would claim. He also encounters Des LaMotte, an unmentioned cousin of Francis and Justine, whose family he believes is ruined.
    By the time Cooper and Madeline meet, things go south. Madeline decides to start a school for the black children, as any progressive would, and Cooper declares she won't. Since he owns the plantation, he does have the say on the matter. However, Madeline still wants to go ahead with this and Cooper threatens retaliation.  Then, he aids the Ku Klux Klan. So, in three books, Cooper Main has gone from one of the good guys to antagonist and unlike Ashton or Bent, Cooper is actually a villain in the trilogy we can sympathize. He has lost his family: his brother was killed in some plot, his sister was ruined and lost in an aborted attempt to remove Jefferson Davis, his son was killed late in the War, his remaining sister is married to the enemy and now out in California; he has lost his country (people thought their home state was their country, not the US) to the War; he lost his fortunes from the Navy with the Southern defeat and there doesn't seem any attempt to fix it. Cooper Main somewhat embodies the Defeated South in the Lost Cause mythos. A shell of a figure that invokes sympathy to the modern viewer after being defeated by a superior foe and only now wants to get back to the top. The only thing standing in the way is Madeline, who is more realistic portrayal of the South: a product of generations of classism and racism, mixed raced, and stubborn in holding on to its traditions. I actually commend that Jakes finally crafted sympathetic characters into the trilogy, being two who were there from the start and now take up opposing sides as symbols of the Reconstruction Era South. 
    Madeline really does embody the South. She has a mixture of European and African ancestry (even if most like to see true Southerners as white) and she has a fire that is hard to quench. She marries Justin and it ends with her separating from him, just as the South separated from the Union. Then she goes with Orry who becomes the embodiment of the Confederacy and his death is its end. Now she is the New South, dealing with ruins from war and continues to be that defiant figure facing against men in her society even though that society is nothing but ashes. This basically makes a good enough metaphor though one wonders why it's not on the cover. In the key scene, Madeline confronts the Klan on the steps of the mansion of Mont Royal and calls their bluff, refusing to yield to their demands. The irony is Madeline is standing for the symbolism of a society that enslaved her some of her relatives, in opposition to a group of men who claim to speak for it much better than she. Another ironic thing was despite being former Confederate veterans, most of the members of the Klan at that time didn't own slaves prior to the War, but they saw themselves not as equals to black people anyway and were willing to follow the former slave owners into those night rides.
    To avoid surrendering Mont Royal, Madeline travels west and rounds up Charles, Virgilia, and Ashton. Virgilia also does an 180 degree turn, going from that amoral woman in Abolitionist clothes to supporting hero as she helps Madeline transfer the property to the Hazards. Ashton, meanwhile, has survived out west by becoming more and more of the Whore caricature in a literal sense. During her early scenes, having lost her fortune in widow's inheritance from James Huntoon (who got the last laugh from her cuckolding him by withholding it from her), Ashton supports herself as a fallen woman. She still collects fly buttons, however, which is something I have no word on what so ever. It just seems something she likes to collect. In the first time they meet since before the Civil War, she and Virgilia make jabs at each other over sleeping with men under the radar. The narration shows the two women willing to sleep with anyone with a penis, but where Virgilia goes with black men, Ashton stays to white costumers. I can't say anything else on that matter, since it's still whoring around no matter what color the costumer's skin color is. As to Madeline and Virgilia, they are able to secure the home and leave Ashton begging for crumbs (I don't know what could be worse than rock bottom, but normally one goes back up once she hits it, but not Ashton), after she buys the place from Madeline, to fulfill a promise that she would return after being banished by Orry.
    Where is Bent in all this? Did he "get bent?" No, he goes into amnesia for several chapters before remembering who he was and what his purpose was for. He wants revenge and Orry is already out of the picture. So, he can go to the rest of the picture, which includes Madeline. Bent had found out in the second book of Madeline's heritage and was willing to use it against her here. So, his revenge to Orry who is beyond him is to destroy his wife. As to George, he takes his vengeance out in the same manner, this time by murdering Constance. George is now a widower and working the steel mill, thus continuing his peace time iron trade that began from book one when he came upon a meteorite. Once that is taken care, Bent goes after Charles who is out west.
     Charles has gone from Confederate cavalryman to scout in the US cavalry. However, he has to deal with the taint upon his name for serving in the CSA, which leads to a bullying captain who pushes him hard. This doesn't result in one of those underdog stories where Charles would be bullied yet recovers, does something later, and gets the respect of everyone, including his superior officer. Nope, Charles is taken aside and beaten up, first by his officer seeking revenge for what General Morgan did to his family, then by the other Union veterans (thus another scene of men beating up another one in a brawl that involves kicks to the groin). He later is placed under the command of another veteran, General George Custer. The way General Custer is in this book, its enough to label him as the villain of the book without any of the fictional villains added. Some of it was something Jakes admitted to wanting to do after seeing of the way he handled things. The real deal breaker of Custer is how he handles the latest wars with the Plains Peoples, resulting with the tragedy at Washita. Jakes likened the set up to Vietnam in the way the US Army is frustrated at facing an enemy that fights in a conventional manner that it results in the soldiers seeing everyone as the enemy, thus ensuring a massacre (apparently, this seems an example of how Sherman's total war methods are not always the best approach). One would want to see Little Big Horn happen, but that won't come until 1876, and the book doesn't even show it. Well, since we know it's coming, we can settle for that. It does show an example of the tragedy that comes with the Old West, where Native Americans were displaced, imprisoned, and murdered from the Civil War's final stages to Wounded Knee. Not just with Custer. One of the Union commanders, Philip Sheridan, who destroyed the Shenendoah Valley and its army, also took part of the Western conflicts and said to coined the statement "The only good Indians I saw were dead", translated through memory as "The only good Indian is a dead one". He also applauded the land theft and got his promotion for the Washita Massacre.
     At the same time, Charles' exploits in Kansas allows the reader to see another world after spending it mostly seeing the contrasting regions. Allowing the West to enter the story takes it in good direction and allows, or rather makes the reader believe, a chance for a simple conflict of good and evil to enter the story. That shows with mostly the higher ups being wicked and the one good guy being the man who resigns from the Army where he sought redemption. Charles had also brought his son along and he meets a woman named Willa. Then, Bent appears and kidnaps Gus, leading to the epic chase and the final confrontation. There doesn't seem to be any point of discussing how Bent is finally punished, since he wasn't such a good character in the first place. He went through the whole trilogy with little development, other than being revealed a product of incest and out of wedlock birth, and being obsessed with revenge against the heroes. He could have been disposed of in book one, but Jakes kept him through all three and didn't make him reform as he did Virgilia.

   The climax of the book, and the whole saga, happens after Johnson's impeachment and Grant's election. Ashton is able to get money from gold in New Mexico and heads back to South Carolina to buy back Mont Royal, despite the work the Klan had done to it. Madeline goes to the Hazards and Charles and they get the place back from Ashton. George comes back after being away for certain periods and strikes a friendship with Madeline. Then, Jakes has a brief description of the early years of Grant's administration until 1876 when the United States turned one hundred years old. The Centennial is celebrated, but it doesn't mean everything is good. Despite the Klan now disbanded and the election of black officials, the South is entering a period of Redemption that reverses most of everything of the Reconstruction. The North is letting it happen (just as US stood by and permitted an era of Fascist and Communist dictators to happen after "making the world safe for democracy", just as it stood by and let Stalin transform Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain, just as it permitted the Domino Theory to be made real, just as it did nothing about extremism taking over Islamic countries after the Soviet Union broke up, just as we allowed ISIS and all to run wild after pulling out of Iraq). The Reconstruction is a controversial discussion that doesn't have many definitive answers. Should we permit a central government to make equality of races possible by having a military force encroach on everyone's constitutional rights, including those of the oppressed race? Or should we let the people decide, even if it means the racist elements will take over and lead all in the opposite direction of what the moralists want? Can we deal with the fact our system is flawed to the point that it can be influenced and thus we have to enlighten the population into voting the next election? Or should we abandon democracy and republican ideals and be run on the whelms of a dictator who may or may not give us the world we want? These are things that come up in discussing the Reconstruction and they do come up with our present political and social issues.
    Because the United States has a constitution, is a republic, with a democratic government, and a bill of rights for US citizens, the Reconstruction was doomed to fail from the start. Men of the time wanted to use it to exploit the South, something Lost Cause mythology hypes up, and punish it beyond all sense of humanity, such as with Thad Stevens. Others wanted to only focus on what to do with the freed African Americans. There were also those who while they believed slavery was bad they didn't see anything wrong with mistreating blacks. The book shows it where the new character, Scipio Brown, is denied a place in the restaurant by the maitre d'. As with today, people wanted quick results and the news of scandal from Grant's period showed that the operation was not working. So, they decide the whole thing is a gangrenous limb to be severed. Finally, in 1876, the election of Hayes comes with the promise of withdrawing Federal troops from the South and the Southern states begin passing laws that one day become the Jim Crow ones. When the last happened, not many in either location batted an eye. Now, one could use this as an example of believing people like those white supremacy groups should be stripped of their constitutional rights, which is a flawed logic that comes with a double edged sword. If you believe Fascists shouldn't be allowed to vote, you are no different than they are. Would you want someone to decide if you are unfit to have a say all because your opinions disagree with others? If you say no, you must also say that we should let everyone talk, which means giving a voice to the demons as well as the angels. If it turns out the wrong elements vote and causes things to not go your way, then it's tough luck. If this country was a democracy then you just see how dangerous democracy is: it's the tyranny of the majority. The sooner everyone in the US is aware of that, the sooner we can stop with all the complaining about who is in office: like with the Republicans during the Obama years, the Democrats back in the Bush years, and now in Trump's presidency.
    At least Jakes shows it not that new (even if our parents and grandparents might think otherwise). Through out the trilogy, we have seen people who blasted the people in charge. In this book, there is one scene where a group of men stir up freedmen against the Democrats. Heaven and Hell also deconstructs the Lost Cause telling of the Reconstruction where the people of the South are now fuming at the Republicans in charge (more than a century later, it's ironic to see which of the two is dominating the landscape) and Redemption is when they show signs of happiness. At the same time, the North is bogged down in intrigue. George's brother goes into politics, which ruins his own marriage in the process. The moment the nation turns 100 is something to lift spirits a bit. It's a shame, however, that some of the action is construed due to the subplots, one of which is in the West. If it would have been improved, the Western subplot could have been a separate novel.
    Then again, could the whole thing be executed better? If someone were following in the footsteps of John Jakes, he or she could do all sorts of things that Jakes didn't do. For one, create characters in a more relatable basis and try to not make them amoral as he does. Really focus on the tragedy of the Civil War as it tears people apart, not just come up with card villains who take everything like a scapegoat. One thing to avoid doing if you write a series of books on the Civil War is avoid having Elkanah Bent sort of character. He had his use in one area and not the whole trilogy. Take time also to show that the historic people your characters meet are only humans and not something else. That is something that is bothersome after ready Shelby Foote that Jakes didn't provide a scene where George or Virgilia walk into Fortress Monroe and see the former president of the Confederacy and find out something of the man.
    Even with those flaws, Jakes is able to have Heaven and Hell wrap things up like a bow on a present by connecting it to the first book. In the allegory of the aftermath of the period, George and Madeline court and eventually marry. With the marriage of George and Madeline, we see the final reconciliation of the North and the South and the consummation of the Union's reunity. The last chapter in the book, and the whole trilogy, is something like the Epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, where a new generation is seen off to the schooling of our heroes. Jakes does this with Gus, now a grown up, and G.W. Hazard, also grown, meeting up at West Point and becoming its newest members. The circle starts all over again as Billy and Charles sit near by and remember the old days. They reference George and Orry at one point, and talk of what had come between that moment and the present. The unlikely friendship of an iron master's son and a rice planter's son formed there is the crucial starting point of it all and it began the epic odyssey through their younger brothers, and now the son of each of those brothers is carrying on that torch first lit in 1842. Questions arise in this scene: is this moment of tranquility the end result of the drama? Have Americans truly gotten over their regional differences and showed a better sense of brotherhood, if not nationalism? Or is Jakes presenting us a fleeting dream that is impossible when one looks at American history, especially with the way this country currently is? I cannot say for sure what Jakes would answer those with and since no sequel series is coming of North and South, they may never be answered.
   North and South, Love and War, and Heaven and Hell, are the three in the trilogy of books by John Jakes in concerning the Civil War. They are enjoyable books to read for a high schooler or someone in college, though they are not the greatest works on the period made. They can't compete with classics like Absolem! Absolem! or Gone With the Wind, or even such books as The Color Purple or To Kill a Mockingbird, or even Jakes' own Kent Series. They exist largely for the sake of entertainment, as opposed to being an inviting history lesson. They were translated into made for television movies, but if they were to hit the big screen is something to see. Books as thick as they are have been made into one movie, so there is no saying they cannot. But, in the meantime, we can take the lessons of the past and learn from it now.

  

Love and War: The Civil War Epic

   How do you do, 

   North and South ended just as the Civil War was beginning and that is where Love and War takes up. North and South is basically the first of a three act drama, making Love and War the second act, which thus has the main conflict involved. The third act is where everything is resolved (remember what George Lucas said about that when discussing his Star Wars Trilogy? If not, click here). In someways, also, the first book is just prologue, meant to get everything and everyone into the proper location for the second book. The second book, meanwhile, is the main story, which is why I deem this the Civil War epic as opposed to its prequel and sequel. Jakes stretched the narrative to encompass the four years of war into a thousand page novel, as opposed to the eight hundred pages dealing with nineteen years of peace. Unlike the first book that has a used title (as from Gaskell) this one can easily be seen to come from the phrase "All's fair in love and war."

   The Mains are now in the Confederacy while the Hazards stayed in the Union, with only Billy and Brett as the binding tie. Given the size of the novel, it would be too much to go too deep, especially as the first book revealed that Jakes puts too many incidental events within the confines of 800 pages that summarizing it is a Herculean task. It would have worked if it was done as a chapter by chapter analysis, but the hand is on the plow now and I cannot look back. So, to get back to this, the basic way to summarize it is Orry and Madeline live together at Mont Royal, basically getting Madeline divorced from Justin so they could wed; Billy and Brett are married with the latter living among the Northerners, becoming the symbolic Pro-Union Southerner without the sentiment; Ashton and James Huntoon became part of a web of deceit with one taking on adulterous affairs with another man while James takes part in a secret, and treasonous, conspiracy to undermine President Davis; Charles rides in the Confederate cavalry, even taking part of Gettysburg under J.E.B. Stuart; Cooper becomes part of the operation involving the CSS Hunley, an experimental submarine; Billy also rides in the US cavalry and even winds up in Andersonville prison camp; Bent returns for development and even takes part in Sherman's March to the Sea; George becomes at odds with Stanley again over Washington politics. That's the gist of the story.
   During the course of Jakes' door stopping sequel, the characters witness it all: the opening maneuvers, First Manassas, Antietam, Fredericksburg, the Emancipation Proclamation, the first draft in American history, the blockade runners, the rise of Generals Lee and Grant, and the climatic surrender of the former at Appomattox. I do no believe the miniseries that was produced on both books has done any of the moments their proper justice.
    Things noteworthy are to be brought up. For one, James Huntoon goes from the bully lawyer that we love to see gotten rid of to a more sympathetic character, as Ashton cheats on him for the sake of power in Richmond society. The narration does it more in making her seemingly unsatisfied with his performance, which includes going to penis sizes. While obesity may be linked to shrinkage lately, it's a fact that size doesn't really matter. Anyone can tell you that. Of course, Jakes goes to where many popular writers, romance novelists, and erotica authors tend to do and make bigger penises the desired item for men. It's something that ads have plagued the internet on for a bunch drugs that are supposed to make one bigger down there and yet it's all a scam (and caused the plastic surgery industry to boom with that, also). So, this makes Ashton more sinister than in the previous book. All she cares about is having a place in Richmond society. Since women can't get that that place on their own, she needs a man to put her there. Since her husband is not the man for the job, she seeks out others and gives them sexual favors. In fact, the narration claims she gives these favors just to get what she wants. In short, to women like Ashton men are nothing but tools for personal gain. I know some women like her exist, and some existed in the 1860s, but that doesn't make them the rule.
   Bent returns to largely plague the heroes, even those who stayed in the Union. However, he becomes less of a cartoon villain than in the first book. He is not really a Bent, as it turns out, but the son of a Starkwether, who fathered him out of wed lock. John Jakes had started his Kent Series with The Bastard where the title character was spawned from the House of Kents, to which he took the name upon coming to America. Though just as black hearted as North and South's characters, Philip Kent is the relatable protagonist in the first two books, seeing the rebellion of the United States against Britain and proves a useful asset. Of course, Jakes later had him become Pro-British in the political field and unfeeling father who only shows up in the early chapters and dies off stage in the third book. Bent is different. He is not really someone to relate to and the "Luke, I am your father" moment doesn't happen here, not to the same degree. Besides, the man doesn't claim him as his son, which is the only thing to make Bent sympathetic as he is resentful. I was born in wedlock, which is why it is beyond me, and since I haven't fathered a child, yet, the whole business novel to me. Bent got the last name from the Bent family, which is said to be farming one from Ohio (and he took pride in the state in the first book) where the husband spent most of the time away from the house while the wife was said to be quite a family woman. She would visit her relatives and drag him along, or lecture him on the scripture reading each day. She even whipped him till he bled just for catching him in the act of masturbation (in this time, people still considered it a grave disorder and they told tales on how it can lead to blindness, baldness, and even effeminism in boys). Bent was also seduced by a homosexual (or bisexual, the text didn't say) man before going to the academy, to which his father secured his appointment, which was about the only good thing he ever did to Bent. And, of course, he overate and got fat in a time when most farmers were thin.
    Such is the history of Bent. During the course of this book, Bent does try to weasel out of the War, which is enough to keep one from sympathizing with him. I will add that not everyone in the US got to fight in Virginia or Tennessee, given how big the armies were. In fact, there were plenty of those boys in blue who got deployed in the West instead, some sent on guard duty at some supply post in the rear, and some put in the forts around Washington. The reason for that is things happened while the Civil War was on going: the Sioux made an uprising that was put down in 1862, another conflict with the Native Americans erupted in Colorado, which included the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864, California was still being settled and order was necessary, Confederate raiders were loose in Kentucky and Missouri, as well as Kansas, and there was a moment where the US almost went to war with Great Britain from the Trent Affair. The US didn't send everyone to fight the main armies of the Confederacy, just like it didn't send everyone to face the Nazis and the Japanese. Common sense is the key. So, Bent might try to apply to have a change in orders and not wind up in Kentucky. This doesn't work out and eventually takes on a moment in Shiloh. Still, even the War doesn't reform the man.
   Bent, Ashton, and Virgilia are three of the villains in Love and War. Virgilia comes in with her radical support of Abolitionism which gives her a black and white morality of her own. She sees all Southerners as evil and must be killed. To a point, she actually lets a wounded soldier die of his wounds in one scene as a nurse. This action is enough to make one want her removed as a nurse, who is expected to tend to any in need. Bent remains evil with his vendetta. Then there is Ashton who, with her husband and a group of lovers, is taking part in an operation to undermine the Confederacy. If there is one problem with such characters as villains in historical fiction it's that it often distracts from the tragedy in the historical sense. Logically, Jakes could have had his fictional villains retire or have both sides settle their differences to fight the War and then it resumes in the third book. Of course, this doesn't happen.
    The reason it would seem that they distract is many points in history brings its own heroes and villains, that often are more developed than anything character of fiction. The Civil War has a legion of such men and women, and it was something Shelby Foote used to his advantage in his narrative. In a way, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were the two protagonists of the drama, along with the generals, none of whom could be considered bad guys but simply men who were doing their jobs (though it is easy to see Sherman, Forrest, Sheridan, and Quantrill in a villainous light, they each were fighting a war and had their ideas on how to win it). Davis and Lincoln wouldn't be the ultimate villains either, being that they were committed men in their causes. They were simply men who were called to duty as president of their respected sides and they answered with reluctance, especially as fate dealt them a situation no one would ever want: a war that tears families and friends asunder. If there were any who could be considered the bad guys in the narrative, it would be the people who either took steps to prolong the War's conclusion or hampered with the war effort. Jakes even points this out in his afterward, Governor Brown and Vance of Georgia and North Carolina opposed President Davis the way the Copperheads did to Lincoln and withheld everything from the Confederate military in the name of States' Rights (ironic that Southerners will spout off States' Rights as the chief cause of the Civil War and yet a group of Southerners undermined the Southern effort in the name of it). The said Copperheads were Northern Democrats who were simply protesting for the sake of liberty even as the man best known to freeing the slaves was curtailing civil liberties in a time of war. In short, history provides a not so black and white issue with heroes and villains, because often the villains might be doing the morally right thing or the heroes are, and vice versa.
     Fiction does provide freedom to use that black and white morality, as long as its not abused. Jakes, sadly, abuses it. He does show the opposition to Davis, and then has his villains take part in a conspiracy to form another Confederacy. There is also a subplot added to attempt to have him assassinated, which is foiled by Orry. For any who feels the Confederacy has no moral ground to stand on, the villains in the book could easily be rooted for as opposed to being what they are: saboteurs. At the same time, if the villains prove to be more evil than the historic characters it kind of downgrades the evil of the latter. This is one of the things that wasn't brought up with Titanic, but having Tim Curry's character as a villain does what the villains of Cameron's blockbuster does and distracts from the tragedy by adding in a villain to it, especially one who doesn't even have a hand in it. The same if there was World War II being done to where you have someone more evil than Hitler in Germany, and suddenly the Holocaust seems tame. With this instance in the Civil War, having opposing sides voiced is okay, but not in the way that Jakes does.
     It's especially note worthy that he doesn't go into details on slavery other than to say it's wrong. I won't do what some liberal blogger would do and claim Jakes' whiteness has something to do with it. Slavery is basically the sun that many other causes orbit around in the solar system model that led to the outbreak of the Civil War, though it doesn't make it the one and only cause any more than a solar system is the sun alone. Either way, the moral debates on slavery, begun some in the first book, doesn't get into detail in book two. There doesn't seem to be a black character involved with relatives he would like to free. Jakes instead focuses on the tragedy with friends and relatives killing each other, which is the tragic event in this war, but it seems freedom and slavery must be side lined. Again, the use of the fictional villains has distracted the reader from this and we don't get to see much of slaves being eyed when the Emancipation Proclamation arrived, the debate of arming slaves being skirted and shot down with one or two words, or Forrest's supposed cold blooded massacre of black Union soldiers at Fort Pillow, any one of which he could have had his bad guys take on. Yet, he does not. Instead, the villains are men and women of selfish ends who seek to make the South actually lose, or make it hard for the Union to be restored while committing actions that any with a heart would consider a war crime if they are Northern. The villains Jakes had had their place in book one, but book two is where they should have retired in the wings and allow history to happen on its own, given the way it was planned.
   So, do they get their comeuppance? James Huntoon and his wife are led to Texas in the later stages of the War and basically get lost in the desert. They have basically become their own Lucifers who chose to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. Of course, Huntoon is killed during his time. Ashton, his widow, finds out that because she withheld sex from him he will withhold everything entitled to her after death. Basically, it's a battle of entitled sexes: the man doesn't get have sex with his wife went he wants it, than the woman doesn't get anything of his when he is gone. Now, I am sure she has a right withhold her body and access to it, just as he has the right to remove her from the will. So, it would be tedious to start a debate on sexism from this. Bent disappears after a few attempts to take his revenge on Orry. Virgilia does the surprising move and begins to reform, especially after hearing from Brett of Madeline being one eighth black. At the same time, there is a death among the good guys. Cooper doesn't go down with the submarine, Hunley, which saved his life as it sunk after striking her only victim. Yet, Orry is killed in a scuffle late in the book, leaving Mont Royal and Madeline for all to claim.
    What of Charles? Charles encounters a girl named Augusta and they get married and have a child named Charles Augusta. At the end of the book, Charles vows to raise the boy as an American. In the meantime, the War eventually ends with the events that are recited as legendary to all Americans: Robert E. Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox, President Lincoln is assassinated at Ford's Theater, and Jefferson Davis is captured. With the Civil War ending and the Confederacy falling, it would seem that there is nothing else to look forward to except the Reconstruction. A much better term would be Reconciliation, since now it is the time to reach across and attempt to restore what was lost while enjoying something that is won. That is basically what leads to the third installment in John Jakes' North and South Trilogy: Heaven and Hell.

  One thing that is brought to Jakes' attention in the Afterword for the next installment is the common appearances of horses in the trilogy. The horses stand for chivalry, which comes from the Latin word for horse. Of course, the gritty realism of the modern war in this story makes a remarkable contrast to the horse. Take the submarine Hunley. Submarines are machines and thus can be considered unfeeling, especially as it attacks from under the water where conventional ships are above the water (on equal terms). With the representation of a machine with the horses, you can see how anachronistic chivalry becomes in modern war. Might work better if we have more chivalrous characters, but I am willing to bet that George, Orry, Billy, and Charles are the knights in this retelling of the Medieval story, with the modern fair ladies in the picture, the politicians in place of a wicked aristocrat, and the black slaves being the modern serfs. Of course, many other stock characters in such a drama are missing.
   In fact, the clash between the unfeeling and inequality of the machine aged war with the chivalry of a pre-enlighted period as illustrated by the horse is prominent even in Love and War. I mentioned how the characters are hard to relate to and the scenes are soap opera styled, in the end it doesn't really matter when reading this book because we don't really get in to the characters or how accurate the picture is, something Jakes tries to strive for. It is the image of George recovering a meteorite and making plans on exploiting this rare phenomena for a person profit; it is the desperate horse ride of Charles and his squadron as they race against time to join up with Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, not knowing that the Confederates were actually winning at Gettysburg at this point; it is Cooper missing out the maiden attack of the Hunley and having a survivor's guilt; it is Billy's experience in the prison camp with the tortures of Corporal Vesey coming upon him like the Inquisition's torture on a heretic, and Charles willing to go to great lengths to rescue his old friend from that; all of these show this clash and I would expect the miniseries to at least try to give those scenes their proper justice.
   Another I will bring up is that masculinity is a theme recurrent in John Jakes, as evidenced of it in the North and South Trilogy and Kent Family Series. John Jakes has the motif of that manliness in having egotistical male characters dominate the landscape and are often sociapathic, if not psychotic. Almost every Jakes book to my knowledge has this exemplified with violence where in almost every couple of pages the men get into a brawl, which result with one character kneeing or kicking another in the groin and then beating the guy up, sometimes one gets kneed and the other gets beaten up. In short, one reading Jakes is reading constantly about a bunch of men kicking each other's asses, to put it vulgarly. In Jakes' world, there are two kinds of men; those who are ready to fight with a fist and those who are merely there to provoke. In North and South, the entire trilogy opens with a man and a boy poised for conflict and the man is just pushing the boy toward it. Orry and George's introduction is the same way with Orry facing off with the Stevedore and two men who turn out to be robbers. Forbes LaMotte is even shown beating up a tourist in Charleston who was just opinionated. The same in the sequel with some of it directed to the fighting in the War. Basically, John Jakes defines being a man as having the ability to switch punches at everyone, even women and children, smoke, cuss, and fornicate. It's an animalistic definition at best -- he also admits to not trying the kind of dialogue people would have spoken in 1860s. People might not speak it either, but it really is anachronistic to have people in the period talk like people from the 1970s. Also, it matches to the clash of chivalry with the inhuman modern war where we see men hitting women and children in his books.
   The Catch-22 with the equality of the sexes is it permits men to hit women in anyway they like, while making the kick to the groin less of dirty fighting, but making a rule for men and women to not fight each other means there is a superior and inferior sex. That seems to be what Jakes is saying in this kind of characteristic style, as North and South and Love and War have shown. The irony is chivalry does promote equality by making sure two men fighting each other don't get the upper hand over the other. As a result, never have the strong pitted against the weak; either strong against strong and weak against weak. However, to some, if we are to be really have true equality we have to get rid of the phrase that "real men don't beat women", as it falls under the definition of "No true Scotsman" fallacy and it ignores situations where self defense is necessary (there is such thing as a female mugger) while redefining the word "abuse". The problem with using Jakes as an example is he still relies on what is referred to as "gender stereotypes" where men are violent and animal like while women are seductive and mischievous, and Love and War does this on plenty of occasions. This is only for start, to get really deep would take too much in this entry. Best save it for another entry. I will add that John Jakes does fall under what feminists would call "poisonous masculinity".
    Back to the book, Love and War is a massive entry to the trilogy and covers the War in one volume, which is more than what Jeff Shaaras can say. It might seem to be easier if Jakes split the whole thing into two books, given the amount of incidents that happen, but that can't be changed. It's set in stone now. Sure, at over 1000 pages, it seems a hard stretch, but there are thicker novels. It does feel tedious that Jakes takes twenty of the 147 chapters before we are out of July 1861 and the discussions of the generals might only interest a Civil War bluff, but the scenes described are worth it and so do the morphing of the characters. Rather or not it can equal such classics like Absolem! Absolem!, Gone With the Wind, or Jubilee is highly debatable.

North and South: Not Elizabeth Gaskell's Book.

    How do you do, 

   Seeing after giving y'all six weeks of hearing about the eight novels I was willing to read in high school, Anne of Green Gables, over the past summer I decided to continue with other books I read in high school and late elementary in the remainder of the year. First up is North and South by John Jakes.

   North and South is the first of three in a trilogy of novels dealing with the events before, during, and after the Civil War (or, as some in my neighborhood would call it, War of Southern Independence, War Between States, War of Northern Aggression, etc.) The first book is about the Antebellum days with the plot of the novel having two families from different sides of the Mason Dixon witnesses the events, and participating in them. I had been reading this and its two sequels since high school, continuing on through college, and I have read the Kent Family series, the works Jakes is most famous for. From that, I am willing to make this entry be about each book of the trilogy, just as I had done with Anne of Green Gables.
    One thing anyone might notice is that John Jakes' book shares the same title as Elizabeth Gaskell's novel, published within the time frame of this one, but taking place in Great Britain. To the British, North and South referred to Southern England and the Midlands (with the remarkably similar industrial vs agrarian setting as with the US). Of course, Gaskell was writing about a country girl going up to Manchester and learning of city life not being what it's cracked up to be while going through a plot like that of Austen. Jakes has different plot line in mind, which deals with two families representing the two regions and how they witness the coming apart of the US. Now, this is why I recommend new authors out there to do some research so as to avoid having a used title. Jakes didn't have the internet when he wrote, and I doubt he had even heard of Elizabeth Gaskell, so he can be excused. This is something people today cannot. I mean, we can't have a book about a compass that leads one to the treasure and call it "The Golden Compass", or some kind of tournament themed story that acts like Pokemon and call it "Game of Thrones", and I don't think "Gone With the Wind" can be used as the title of a book about tornadoes or hurricanes, nor can you write about someone going to the University of Notre Dame and call the story "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". So, as I said do some research before settling on a title for your book. If it can help, do what some would do like use a line from a poem or song, like how William Faulkner got As I Lay Dying from The Odyssey and John Updike got In the Beauty of the Lilies from "Battle Hymn of the Republic." You can also use something that was said by a character in what TV Tropes calls "a title drop," like with Harper Lee using the famous quote from her novel as the title.

   Following a prologue that establishes the families in the story, the Hazards and the Mains, we are first introduced to our protagonists: George Hazard of Pennsylvania and Orry Main of South Carolina. You'd notice that John Jakes doesn't go the traditional route and have them be descendants of some ancestor who came ashore at either Jamestown or Plymouth (which gave rise to Virginia and Massachusetts, respectively) as most American narratives tend to do. Instead, he focuses on the lesser known Atlantic colonies. South Carolina, and its northern neighbor, is named after King Charles I, with the Latin name Carolus, and with the female naming (just as Georgia is named after King George). Though named for the English king, who was tragically beheaded at the end of the English Civil War, South Carolina was first explored by the Spanish who set up a settlement and then abandoned some slaves in the area. Later, it was founded as an English colony with Charles Town (later called Charleston) as the capital. Even then, many of its inhabitants did not speak English, but French. This is because South Carolina was at one time inhabited by the Huguenots, French protestants exiled from France after King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. So, it is an English colony with a lot of Latin influences (name, early settlers), and some of these men set up homes in the murky and humid lands near Charles Town and grew rich off of rice production (through the labor of slaves). Among these French speaking British subjects, the ancestor of Orry appears. Pennsylvania is also a state founded as an English colony with non-English influences. Its name is conglomeration of Penn, named for William Penn, an Englishman who used the royal charter to establish a home of religious freedom, and Sylvania, which comes from the Latin word Sylva, meaning "forest"; this means the Commonwealth's name means literally "Penn's Forest." As with South Carolina, a great many in Pennsylvania didn't speak English. The Quakers and Anabaptists groups that were brought to the land, also escaping religious persecution, were German born, thus they spoke German (leading to people being named the Pennsylvanian Dutch, a corruption of Deutsch). George's ancestor was by another family, where a boy is shown to have run away from an abusive miner of a stepfather and fell in with a man named Hazard, even taking his name.
   Orry and George are as different as apples and oranges. One is the son of a rice planter, the other the son of an iron smith. However, they become good friends in the course of the novel. One might say, they are BFFs. They meet in New York, become friends, and enter the West Point Academy. In the time when college education was a privilege to the few, these two take up to entering the US Army and train in the Academy. This seems more convenient than going through college which costs thousands in tuition. West Point charges no tuition; all one had to do was get appointed by his representative or senator, then devote years of service to the Army. Now, such an easy entry doesn't make it easier: it's boot camp and ivy league college at once. Infractions lead to demerits, which affect one's standing, as do grades in the courses. They also have terms for three of the classes (Plebe, Yearling, Cow...) as opposed to Freshmen, Sophomore, and Junior. West Point gives the highest standing cadets places in the engineering and artillery while the lower guys are simply horsemen or infantrymen.
    Orry and George encounter future Civil War generals as cadets. They see Ulysses Grant and Thomas Jackson among the upper class-men (history will call them "U.S. Grant" and "Stonewall Jackson", respectively). These are two of the real men, but Orry and George meet a fictional upper class-man named Elkanah Bent, basically a combination of Peter Griffin and Himmelstoss in West Point garb. Bent takes an instant disliking of Orry and George and does everything in his power to trip them up so that he can report them and they each earn a demerit. The actions he does are appalling and it's a miracle he doesn't get expelled. Of course, he has friends in Washington who can pull strings and keep him there (yeah, he seems to have a 19th Century Don Corleone somewhere who will give West Point an offer it can't refuse and then Bent is in). In the meantime, Orry and George live in the Academy in what can basically two best friends going to military school plot used in some soap opera and moved into the 19th Century America. Another way to describe it is basically Harry Potter without magic, in military uniform, and without Hermione or Ginny. George and Orry are equal in collecting a demerit and being bullied by Bent, yet George is shown to be an excellent student in the academic side. He scores big in his class work and appears to be able to do that in his sleep, but Orry is mediocre at best, becoming one of the "Immortals". Remarkably, no envy arises in Orry. Then there is the social life where George goes to the hop and has time with women, drinking beer, and smoking cigars (two of those were frowned upon at West Point) while Orry seems more willing to keep studying.
    As tradition shows, Orry and George get visited by the Hazards as they become Yearlings, with Cooper coming by at one point. Then they get furlough at the end where Orry takes George down to South Carolina. We took a picture of the South when Cooper visited and took us down to Royal Mount. There come the Mains: Tillet, Clarissa, Ashton, Brett, and Cousin Charles. There is also the stubborn Priam, one of the slaves on the Main lands (no pun intended) and the overseer who bullies him in sight of Charles. From this, the Mains are fleshed out: Cooper shows no love of the South, thinking the society with it is obsolete in the Industrial Revolution while Tillet argues for the paternalistic viewpoint of slave owners (made symbolic in the father and son relationship presented; Cooper is the older son in one of Jesus' parables who doesn't want to do his father's will, yet is present in the South for it while Orry, the younger and more willing, is up in West Point), Charles is the orphaned nephew living in the plantation with scorn coming from many, including his uncle (basically Jakes' answer to Luke Skywalker, with the touch of Harry Potter), Clarissa is the rational mother figure who could rival Ellen O'Hara, while Ashton and Brett are Southern belles with two different characteristics, which will develop more as they become women. We even see how Priam is a ticking time bomb, basically any rebellious black man you can think of placed in the role of his ancestors, and his overseer is willing to push him into that state as Bent does to Orry and George.
    The Hazards were already introduced in chapter one. George also has a father named William, his mother, his sister Virgilia, and his brothers Stanley and Billy. The Hazards become noticeable in their introductions: Stanley is hard working though entitled, Billy is adventurous, and Virgilia is rebellious. If there is a good reason behind this simplification of the characters its largely a way of showing that despite the two families being from different states and having different status, with different prospects, and the fact one family owns slaves while the other does not, they are not that too far different. They both breathe the same air, they both face the same family troubles, and they both have deal with troubles back home. In a sense, it makes one wonder why the book wasn't called A Tale of Two States or A Tale of Two Regions, as opposed to simply North and South. The thing is, it seems that John Jakes, a Northerner, is willing to put more on the Southern characters. On the same note, both Jakes and Charles Dickens also feature well off men named Charles in their historic epics.
    George and Orry graduate from West Point just in time for the Mexican War to break out. You might have noticed something before we get to this point. Instead of starting on the eve of war, Jakes pushes the beginning back to 1842, just nineteen years prior to Fort Sumter. Just why does he do that? Why not be like Herman Wouk who had The Winds of War begin in 1939 and have World War II break out within one hundred pages? Or why not be like Margaret Mitchell who actually started on the eve of the Civil War? Instead, he goes like Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace with the story beginning right as Napoleon has declared himself emperor, even if the Invasion of Russia in 1812 (a mere eight years later) is the centerpiece of the story. There four reasons involved.  First it basically allows for the build up and the suspense in the leading up process that precedes the War. Secondly, it allows one to explore the contrasting worlds of the Antebellum South and North. Third, it lets the readers have a chance to see the drama that leads up to the War's outbreak: the Mexican War, the opening of the West, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Bleeding Kansas Affair, the Dred Scott Decision, John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry, the 1860 election, and finally the Secession Winter. Fourth and finally, the book is meant to partly be an adventure story (if lack of a better word) with some soap opera involved, and it requires one to get to known the characters, especially as they are part of the West Point class that make up the leaders on both sides of the Civil War. The modern reader gets that adventure just as he would with Dumas, Stevenson, or Tolstoy where he is transported to a different time period and see far away places that the reader just might know as his backyard. For example, the second half of the novel has scenes that take place in West Texas, which was considered the edge of civilization at the time, now it's home to over a million people.
    During the Mexican War, Orry and George run into Bent again, who proves a coward in some instances and a snake in others. In fact, the man is angry with them for staining his record and holds that grudge to the next generation. Orry and George report him to a superior who expresses the shock at the disloyalty among West Pointers. So, they continue on. Orry loses a hand during the Battle of Churubusco, and is mustered out at the end of the Mexican War. George also has his six years as an officer cut short by an early retirement in peace time. This was, after all, a short war and it takes place in a time when the US military would downscale after a war and never re-mobilize until the next one. Of course, that would make George and Orry lucky because many servicemen in the time period of the book would have wound up in some outpost in the Old West or sent to some base in Florida where malaria ran rampant.
   Once they come home, we see other parts of the novel take shape. Prior to the war, Orry encountered a woman named Madeline Fabray from Louisiana. He rescues her from a snake in what looks like a scene of chivalry. Orry had claimed he was a one woman man and was searching for someone like her. To him, it was Madeline. Then life comes in to take her away because she was engaged to one of his neighbors, Justin LaMotte, and their wedding happened within a day of their meeting! I certainly feel sorry for Orry, especially in recent days. You meet the right person for you and she or he is already taken (Rotten luck). Justin, and his brother Francis, are shown to be bullies, and older than Orry and Madeline (in fact, it gets pointed out on how Justin worried on his age compared to her while Madeline is said to expect a man Justin's age to behave). They live a life of ease like the Mains, but their plantations, like Justin's Resolute, are run with inefficiency and brute force. They spend more focus on breaking horses and slaves than tending to their plantations, and Justin sees his wife as another challenge like that of horses. Justin tells Francis he won't tolerate her opinions in a matter of a man who feels his manhood threatened and is trying to convince his peers that he is not weak (and we never get any justification). Later, when the LaMottes consummate their marriage it's rape at best (but the joke's on Justin because Madeline wasn't a virgin on her wedding night, and something else is in her that will be mentioned shortly). Madeline eventually comes to not enjoy being married to Justin who threatens her for voicing her opinion at one point and often holds her hostage on others. Eventually, Madeline becomes like Madame Bovary and loses all beliefs in fidelity and sanctity of marriage, which drives her into seeking an affair.
    The marriage of Madeline to Justin sort of shows the values dissonance in marriage in the 1840s, where men viewed their wives as property and opinionated women were not tolerated. This also shatters the image of the Antebellum South as a civilized place presented by Gone With the Wind, though I will say even that book subverts it (that's for a different entry), by presenting not only racism in a society build on enforced labor but sexism as well. In one scene, everyone talks with John Calhoun on the matter of secession and Madeline voices her two cents on it (an act that defies convention in the period) and Justin yanks her aside and talks to her as though she were a misbehaving child. He mentions of the Grimke sisters who were just as opinionated as her and they were banished from the South for it. Eventually, it comes to a point that he carries out his threat and isolates Madeline from all contact and starves her into submission.
    But, of course, the joke is on Justin because Madeline not only gave away her precious flower before marriage but she is one eighth black, in a time when having African ancestry was scandalous. Of course, Madeline withholds this information with the intention of revealing it at the right time, though it never comes up. Besides, after seeing the movie Mandingo, I wouldn't be surprised if Justin murders her to avenge his honor and then covers the murder up with a disease death that people would have understood.
    During the period of the Compromise of 1850, the Mains and the Hazards flesh out as the nation titters on the brink of break up. Virgilia Hazard becomes an Abolitionist and attends a rally at one point. While Orry is unmarried, thanks to his pining for Madeline, George meets Constance Flynn, to whom he marries, in spite of her Irish Catholic background, which shows that discrimination was felt up North. This was a time when Catholics were viewed with disdain by their Protestant citizens, fueled through Irish immigration and almost brought up in the Mexican War. So, by marrying Constance, George is exposing himself to it. Even his family is slow to warm to her. At least Constance is mild compared to Virgilia, who takes every moment to talk about the South in a vengeful manner, especially with slavery involved. When George brings his family to meet Orry's, Virgilia takes the time to see a slave of James Huntoon, a young lawyer who pays a call to the Mains with a few others for the Nashville Convention, and gets him to freedom. The action is commendable, though two things stand in the way. If we recognize in slavery that a man is someone's property, then what she does to give him freedom is theft. At the same time, she seduces him, in what most would say get some of the Jungle Fever sampling. The latter seems like a confirmation of the pro-slavery men who saw mixing of races involved with abolition. On neither thing does Virgilia apologize.
    The debate of slavery provokes tension between Orry and George, to the point that George convinces Orry to let Priam run off unharmed and Orry reminds George that the South doesn't need advice from outsiders. This puts a dark cloud in their friendship.
     In contrast, Cooper, Orry's older brother, knows of the slavery curse and wants to modernize the South, yet his father is against it, leading to arguments between the two. In a sense, Cooper comes across an angry cynic who just likes to poison everyone's statements with his rhetoric (like when some Atheist comments to a statement about praying when a tragedy strikes) and while Tillet plays up the grouchy old man stereotype (I also caught that Cooper and Charles are also the names of two rivers in South Carolina). Eventually, they decide time apart would do and Cooper goes into the city living of Charleston while Tillet remains in the plantation where he soon dies. With Cooper away, Orry becomes the head of the house with a reputation as a recluse.

   While time is made to develop the characters, I am willing to say that John Jakes gives us some of the most ungodly characters out there. Both the good guys and the bad guys seem alike in the pages to the point that one has troubles routing for. Both groups cuss and profane, both get into violent situations and threaten to beat people up or murder, both cheat on their spouses, both steal things, and just about any other commandment breaking one can think. The only characters who seem to be relatable in matters of finding someone who is not like this are the African Americans, but that is problematic for three reasons: one, most of them are enslaved; two, because of that they are mostly just present as background objects without much personality and only exist to show the horrors of slavery; and three, they hardly contribute to the plot. I know the Magic Negro trope not being used is a good thing and all, but it would have helped make them as people if we had one black character tell the heroes something that was useful. One could have told Orry some pearls of wisdom, one talk to George, or anything. Of course, the only sort of thing like that ever happens is when Virgilia sleeps with one and gets him to run away. This action doesn't really do much except invoke the black lover and Jungle Fever crazed white woman trope, while basically making the whole Abolitionist platform being presented from the point of view of a pro-slavery individual.
    Case in point are Madeline and Justin LaMotte. Justin cares more about his fragile male ego and his standing among his peers than his own plantation and his wife's feelings. As a result, he abuses her. Madeline then goes around him to see Orry in what any Christian reader would recognize as borderline adultery. This seems to be something with fiction where the means justifies the ends while having the protagonist a carte blanche when it comes to sins. In the eyes of God, Orry and Madeline are doing wrong, but that seems okay to the reader when considering Justin. This falls under the Orwellian term of doublethink and that is what this is when the hero is permitted to do terrible things and not be called out on it.
     The same with Virgillia. In slave owner terms, she is not just sleeping with an inferior being but she is also stealing property by helping him run away. But, that's okay because slavery is wrong and James Huntoon is not a nice guy after all. Again, that's doublethink. Even earlier in the book, Orry and George are willing to be petty. George calls out Orry on his book reading during their time together and aims to wash him of it (their conflicting statements on women maybe something for a feminist to deal with, though the idea of them wanting to be used "like a glove" sounds distasteful). Yet, the noble Orry is willing to chase after a run away slave and bring him to his owners, and has to be told of the wrong through George and Madeline (even if the idea of him being an enlightened sort who was ahead of his time might seem farfetched).
    Other times, George seems a weak man for letting Virgillia come to the South even knowing how she would behave around Southerners and not even calling out his family for their hypocrisy their treatment of his wife. The list could go on, with the obvious villains in the book pitted against questionable heroes, which seems to be a common theme in John Jakes. No doubt, its his way of saying we are all sinners and we have flaws. The trouble is with North and South is it becomes hard to tell who is good and who is unjust when the characters' morals are blurred together. But, this is not the worst of it.

    While it seems that George and Orry are the protagonists in the book, we see them shifting into the background in the later chapters and it becomes more toward Billy Hazard and Charles Main, the brother of George and cousin of Orry. It also seems that as Ashton and Brett grow, they begin to be more active, mostly to get suitors. Ashton becomes a woman first and is paired with James Huntoon, a fat lawyer turned politician who frequently is likened to an old toad or slug because of his physique. Like with Bent, we are encouraged to dislike Huntoon, though he is more sympathetic, more developed. Bent is just a bully, but Huntoon is crafty and ambitious, though naive and easy to intimidate.
    Huntoon is introduced merely to give us a picture of Southern courtship. At first, it may seem a romantic picture until we see him among the fire eaters. Of course, he is also courting the last sort of woman you would ever court. In Ashton and Brett, Jakes brings up the Madonna / Whore complex, with the Whore like Ashton and Madonna like Brett. This is most obvious when Ashton lusts over Billy and later goes into a quickie with Forbes LaMotte, son of Francis. Forbes starts out as a background character but is brought in when it's time for Brett to be courted. He courts Brett, which seems like an insult to Orry's injury that a LaMotte has his sweetheart and now another will take his sister. Forbes feels scared of Ashton, yet he can silence her beau by simply walking up to him and then threatening him. Ashton basically becomes Virgilia's Southern counterpart and Madeline's foil; she sleeps with other men and craves control of her destiny. Where Madeline will suffer abuse and sneak to Orry over it, Ashton keeps one man teased while she goes easily to another. Huntoon is willing to comply to the demands of courtship and he is not getting anything for it, until she accepts his proposal. Forbes, of course, goes with Ashton in secret and she opens her legs for him right away. Brett, meanwhile, saves her virginity for marriage, even as womanhood slowly comes to her. Like Elsa and Anna from Frozen they go through a time of separation in the course of the story.
    Then there is Billy Hazard, younger brother of George. At first, Ashton sets her eyes on him and it seems he would have her. However, after she teases him one too many, and discovers Brett's kindness, he leaves her for Brett. You of course know the saying "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" and it is the best way to describe Ashton after Billy dumps her. Ashton responds by closing herself to her sister, and her family, in that order, she sleeps around with others, including Forbes, and then marries James Huntoon just to get back at Billy. As the Civil War comes, Ashton then burns up her love of Billy because he is a Northerner and would like nothing better than to have him killed.

   If there is something redundant with Jakes is that he sometimes seems to repeat himself in this book. Best case in point is with the two young men in each family. First, it's Orry and George meeting and attending at West Point. Then we have Billy and Charles. Both are trained in the Academy and come out as officers. Then we have the love triangles with a Main and LaMotte guy occupying an angle: first with Orry, Justin, and Madeline, and then it's Billy, Brett, and Forbes. In the case of the two, the first triangle has it happening with Madeline and Justin already married, while Billy and Brett have the nation coming apart around them, making them the modern day Romeo and Juliet.
    George and Constance had their brush, especially from Stanley and Isabel, Stanley's wife, who distrust Constance being Catholic, while Virgillia makes it hard for George to be friends with Orry for her abolitionist stance, and now there's Billy and Brett, who might not wind up together because Ashton saw him first and wants to sink her claws into him, while his status as a Northerner can put him into the sights of Forbes. This as Billy and Charles go to the Academy, graduate, and then get into the US Army. Charles gets the most developing, or rather travels the farthest from the wings, in this section. He grows into a young man, fights his duel, and becomes a respectable sort. He also tangles with Bant on a few occasions. As their careers go, Charles spends time in Texas in handling a Comanche raid while Billy eventually gets sent to Charleston. At this point, the book starts to bring history into the mix, such as Orry and Virgillia witnessing John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. For Orry, the event is a hostage situation, while Virgillia comes out embittered with the South even more. A year later comes the presidential election that changed history. Abraham Lincoln is elected and South Carolina secedes from the Union: the sun came up, the Old Glory came down, and the United States of America comes apart. Cooper witnesses the moment when the legislature in Columbia declares "The Union Is Dissolved" while Billy is stationed in Fort Sumter.
    James Huntoon marries Ashton and takes part in the formation of the Confederacy. Billy decides to marry Brett, yet the LaMottes and a few others intend to have him killed. Madeline is able to escape Justin's clutches and warns Orry. Charles also sees Texas depart from the Union, where General Twiggs surrendered his forts while Colonel Lee is made to flee to Virginia, as he and others are now in enemy territory. Forbes appears drunk in beating some visitor and attempts to rape Brett. Eventually, it comes to a point of a duel that Billy is made to fight Forbes with and we see the two men competing for Brett resorting to the blade. Orry finds out about Ashton abusing slaves and having a hand in going after Billy. He then disowns her, thus banning James Huntoon from the plantation as well. They leave, but not without Ashton stating the Mains will be watched in the new government. Up north, the Hazards see Lincoln come and not think much about him. Billy and Brett leave South Carolina as Fort Sumter is fired on. As to George and Orry, we are left with them looking over the world and seeing how things have changed. They are now part of two opposing nations in an upcoming war, one that will answer the question: can a nation long endure half free and half slave? That is where the book ends and the War will be taken up in book two, Love and War.

     In telling the events leading up to the Civil War, John Jakes does a good job, though he does twist a few facts along the way. From a storytelling perspective, I do think North and South does bog down in the description of society, some of it is meant for the reader who has no idea how things were in the 19th Century, though he has the characters speak in less than dignified sort. The positives is that the adventure side of the story is worth the read, especially when you go through an 800 paged journey to Fort Sumter. At times, it can be felt like Harry Potter for big boys, minus the magic, which is what the scenes in West Point feel. At the same time, it gets into a soap opera term with the family drama in South Carolina. Despite being called North and South, much of the action deals with the Southern characters. Charles, for example, does most of the developing in the course of the novel that it can be argued that he, not Orry, is the hero of the book. In a way, one would wonder why Jakes didn't simply split this into two novels, especially as Jakes repeats himself a few times.
     If there is one thing to add with any discussion of the Civil War literature, I should add that there are lessons in this time that must be heeded. Many similarities of the Civil War era and today are remarkable and amazing: we have a republican in office now whose victory is a source of controversy and one state announced it was going to leave the Union (but did not carry it out, for some reason), there is a souring of race relations in the country not seen in decades, we are also seeing such abominations as the event that happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, and so on. Just recently, I have seen pick up trucks with Confederate flags hoisted in the bed driving up an down roads. So many issues now exposed and are threatening to tear the country apart, even now with Islamic terrorists still at large (and the 9/11/01 attacks' anniversary is nigh), North Korea's leader testing nukes and making everyone nervous, and now the South is seeing two powerful hurricanes come in and give a picture of what Noah's flood would have looked. When South Carolina left the Union, the United States was on the path to destruction, believe it or not. People were debating on slavery's legality, the legality of secession, the humanity of blacks, what this country is about, and so on back then and the breaking away of the Southern states was the tipping point of it. Of course, Fort Sumter was fired on and it unified the North against the Confederacy at the sight of the US flag fired upon. Even then, the United States of America was that close to dying and it would take a large conflict across many states with a million American men killed or wounded before it could come out reunified and stronger than before. So far, we haven't seen a Fort Sumter of our own. Charlottesville has made more division than unity.
     The Civil War was an epic tragedy, one that could have been prevented at some point, and it is believed to have concluded through the murder of a US president, though the scars still linger on. I do hope and pray that we don't have to witness something like that in order to get this country reunified. George and Orry were good pals and the Civil War really challenged that. We do not need to become like them and have to face the fact that a BFF or bestie is now in enemy territory and aiding your country's enemies, especially since those enemies are also your countrymen.