Classic Pre-Teen

"Don't call me Frankie! she said. 'I don't wish to have to remind you any more." -p77

This comical and exasperated response from Frankie/F. Jasmine is a brief example of her struggle in adolescence. Everything around her is changing. She is no longer considered just a child and she cannot do the things a child does. She feels uncomfortable and outcasted in this period of change, so she takes refuge in adulthood. She musters up all the sophistication she can and tries to be mature, to be a part of this grown up group. But always, impulsively, her instincts as a child fight for a chance to be heard. She tries to act like an adult, a member, by discussing the wedding in response to Uncle Charles' death. Here her child-ness shows, she cannot get over the self-centered attitude of an angsty pre-teen. So here she responds with a quick outburst of hey! don't call me that! Immediately she recovers, masks herself in sophistication and uses her best adult language- "I don't wish to have to remind you."

Adolescence can be a terrible time for many people, is Frankie just skipping out on an awkward changing period by skipping straight to adulthood? Is she suppressing her true self as Frankie here, or is this sophistication a mature and wise improvement?

One Body

"She had been breathing very fast, but after a minute her breath slowed down so that she breathed in time with Berenice; the two of them were close together as one body, and Berenice's stiffened hands were clasped around F. Jasmine's chest" (109).

In a moment of tenderness and unity, F. Jasmine climbs into Berenice's lap feeling sick and overwhelmed. The two sit, almost in silence, and breathe in time together. The narrator describes the moments as if there were together "as one body". This moment could be suggestin that when allowed to calm down, and simply be with another person, it is possible to achieve a sense of togetherness and understanding that is other wise out of reach. Throughout the novel, Frankie struggles to find her place, and yet, she finds unity in a completely unexpected moment. Following this gentle moment, Berenice and Frankie discuss what it is to be on "caught" at a certain station in life: whether this be gender, race, or personality, most people feel caught in one moment or another.

What is the significance of this gentle moment between Frankie and Berenice? If Frankie stopped trying so desperately to find her place, do you believe she would find unity more often?

Angst and Anger

"Frances wanted the whole world to die. She sat on the back seat, between the window and Berendice, and, though she was no longer sobbing, the tears were like two little brooks, and also her nose ran water. Her shoulders were hunched over her swollen heart and she no longer wore the wedding dress." p. 172

In the start of Part 3, the protagonist has once again changed her name and essentially her identity. She was first named Frankie, then F. Jasmine, and now Frances. Each time Frances changes her name, she implies that she has become a new person with a new perspective to live. Throughout the novel, Frankie was childish, selfish, and violent, and this excerpt displays that she still has the same attitude as before. Frances states she has grown, but still acts childish by moping and wishing ill-will for the world. Not only does she display her violence, but she even sheds the wedding dress as a sign of her disappointment in the wedding. Her attitude in this excerpt embody the attitude that a child would have when they're displeased.

Every time Frankie/F. Jasmine/Frances changes her name, does her attitude and personality truly change or is she still the same person?

Adulthood

"Hush up!" F. Jasmine said. The jail did not frighten her this evening, for this time tomorrow she would be far away. She gave the jail a last glade then walked on. "How would you like for someone to holler something like that to you if you were in jail?"


This scene is the turning point for Frankie's coming of age story. In this moment, we can see F. Jasmine beginning to develop the ability to empathize with others, an emotion that she was previously unable to demonstrate. As children develop, their ability to feel empathy and compassion for others develops also, a sign of maturity. This scene foreshadows her budding adulthood through her emotional changes. The scene also goes on to show her understanding of childhood by choosing not to explain the scene with the crazy man to John Henry, which is a learned skill that requires retrospective after the phase. Her empathy befittingly is first shown with the people that she identifies with- those in jail, because she herself feels alone and caged in her lack of identity. She cannot see that through the development of her ability to identify and empathize with others she will eventually find her niche and become joined with others, and in doing so, become her own self. 

The Member of the Wedding (pg. 100)

“The old Frankie. She had been in her seat on the second row and she stamped and put two fingers in her mouth and began to whistle…The old Frankie had never admitted love. Yet here F. Jasmine was sitting at the table with her knees crossed, and now and then she patted her bare foot on the floor in an accustomed way, and nodded at what Berenice was saying. Furthermore, when she reached out quietly toward the Chesterfield package beside the saucer of melted butter, Berenice did not slap her hand away, and F. Jasmine took herself cigarette. She and Bernice were two grown people smoking at the dinner table.” (pg. 100)

This passage refers to the first time that F. Jasmine has ever engaged in a conversation about love. There is an interesting interplay between silence and noise that is apparent in this scene, not to mention in several other portions of part 2. The narrator states that the old Frankie instigated a lot of commotion during a show regarding love, but now F. Jasmine has matured and is participating in an adult conversation about a topic she was previously reluctant to consider. This passage is representative of her conflict between childhood and pettiness, and the inevitable transition she must make into late adolescence and maturity. McCullers uses silence and noise to emphasize the conflict Frankie is facing. Juvenile Frankie makes lots of noise when confronted with a matter that is beyond her maturity level, while sophisticated F. Jasmine sits quietly at the table with Berenice and takes a cigarette. There are several instances in which this contrast between silence and noise can be seen. For example a few pages before, F. Jasmine sees 4 girls from the club walk by. She says that the old Frankie would have waited expectantly to receive an invitation and then shouted at them upon not receiving it. But instead F. Jasmine watched them quietly and supposedly was no longer jealous. There are also times in which periods of silence are abruptly interrupted by noise, such as the sound of the piano, further signifying Frankie’s internal conflict to achieve some level of maturity that she does not necessarily comprehend.

What significance do you see in the interaction between noise and silence? Are there other moments in the novel that this interplay occurs?

Isolation and Confinement

“Often some criminals would be hanging to the bars; it seemed to her that their eyes... had called to her as though to say: We know you” (149).

McCullers is showing again how F. Jasmine is disconnected from other people, but trapped at the same time. She feels connected to the prisoners in the same way that she feels connected to the people in the circus. She most likely feels this relation to these groups because she identifies with their isolation as well as their captivity. She feels that she cannot escape her town, her gender, or her age, just as the prisoners cannot get past the bars that hold them. She also relates to them on the basis of isolation. The prisoners are clearly cut off from the rest of society, but in F. Jasmine's mind, she may as well be just as disconnected. She feels that she has no one to relate to, no one to identify with.

Do you think there is any other way that F. Jasmine would identify with the prisoners? Why is she so intrigued by them?

F. Jasmine's Biological Clock

“ The silence was over, and it was like those kitchen times when, after the first uncanny moments, she realized the reason for her uneasiness and knew the ticking of the clock had stopped- but now there was no clock to shake and hold for a minute to her ear before she wound it, feeling relieved.” pg. 165

This happens just after F. Jasmine hits her date, the drunk soldier, over the head with a glass bottle when he tries to kiss her. The silence ends just as the soldier ends and she realizes that the silence is just like the silence of the kitchen when the clock stopped ticking, but now she had no clock to try to fix. The images of past sexual events flash before her eyes and she thinks the world is crazy. By finally connecting her past encounters F. Jasmine seems to see the idea as reality instead of childish fantasies. She is unable to fully understand the maturity of the acts and seems to use the word “crazy” as a synonym for sexual. Therefore earlier in the novel when she says “ It happened that green and crazy summer when Frankie was twelve years old.” the phrase“crazy summer” can be replaced with “sexual summer” and the “it” she is referring to is not only the wedding, but her maturity.
The clock also represents F. Jasmine's sexual maturity over the passage of time. She, before, was unconscious of her biological clock but now that she is entering her more sexually mature years she is uneasy and the clock stopping shows that she is trying to ignore this change. It is strange that she jumps at the chance to be sexual and grow up quickly, but since she cannot comprehend her own sexuality she cannot use it. She should not be having sex at twelve, but she should be aware of her own biological changes that are changing her view of the world throughout the novel.

Will F. Jasmine realize her biological maturity? Will she have sexual relations before she even realizes this biological change? Why is she trying to block out her own maturity that she ironically runs towards at first?

The Member of the Wedding

"She was back to the fear of the summertime, the old feelings that the world was seperate from herself-and the failed wedding had quickened the fear to terror." 157

This passage comes from the very end of the book, after the wedding is over and Frankie is back home. At this point, she has just been caught after trying to run away because she was not allowed to go with her brother and Janice. It seems like Frankie is right back where she was at the beginning of this book and that nothing has changed. You would think that Frankie would have grown some from her experiences with the soldier and going to the wedding, but it seems like she is right back where she started. Is there some change in Frankie or are things the same?

Do you think that Frankie changed/grew throughout the novel? Why or why not?

The Member of the Wedding

Berenice: “What makes you think they want to take you along with them? Two is company and three is a crowd…Remember Noah and the ark?...He admitted them creatures two by two…”

F. Jasmine: “They will take me”

Berenice: “And if they don’t”

F. Jasmine: “If they don’t, I will kill myself, but they will”

Berenice: “Kill yourself how?”

F. Jasmine: “I will shoot myself in the side of the head with…the pistol that Papa keeps under his handkerchiefs along with Mother’s picture in the right-hand bureau drawer” (79-80)

Frankie has become Humbert-Humbert obsessed with the idea of leaving with her brother and his soon-to-be wife and not coming back. In this scene, Berenice tries very stubbornly to make her understand that it does not make sense for Frankie to go with them. However, Frankie, tired of not fitting in anywhere, dismisses Berenice’s advice and with much assurance tells her that if her plan fails, she will commit suicide. After Frankie describes how she would proceed to do such thing, McCullers describes a very vivid reaction coming from Berenice: “Berenice did not answer for a minute and her face was a puzzle. ‘You heard what Mr. Addams told you about playing with that pistol. Go on upstairs now. Dinner will be ready in a little while' (80).” She was simply speechless given that it is not common for a 12-year-old to talk so impulsively about suicide.

To the reader it seems very clear that Frankie is putting all her eggs on her brother and fiancé’s basket. However, it does not seem very feasible that the plan will succeed given that it is not the custom for a newlywed couple to begin marriage with a 12-year-old awkwardly violent girl by their side. How could the failure of the plan affect Frankie’s crazy temper?  Would she actually do something of that nature in order to show her dissatisfaction?

The Member of the Wedding- page 12

"There was in the neighborhood a clubhouse, and Frankie was not a member. The members of the club were girls who were thirteen and fourteen and even fifteen years old. They had parties with boys on Saturday night. Frankie knew all of the club members and until this summer she had been like a young member of their crowd, but now they had this club and she was not a member." (12)

Frankie in the novel seems to be alone. She is separated. McCullers says that she is not a "member," just as she is not a "member" of the wedding, her brother's wedding. Frankie appears completely isolated and alone.
McCullers seems to present Frankie's isolation in order to explain her obsession with her brother's wedding. I wondered if something in Frankie's past had been traumatic for her to react to her brother's wedding in this way. I understand that she is transitioning from childhood to adulthood. However, this doesn't seem like normal behavior. Also, Frankie really isn't alone. She isn't like Pecola where not even her mother pays attention to her. She at least has Berenice, John Henry, and possibly her father. Nevertheless, Frankie desires to connect with people.

Why isn't Frankie able to make any connections with other kids her age? Frankie had a connection with these "big" girls beforehand and was able to hang out with them. Why do you think the connection broke/ Why did these girls kick her out of her club?

Jazz Song Pg. 44

Page 44:

“The tune was low and dark and sad. Then all at once, as Frankie listened, the horn danced into a wild jazz spangle that zigzagged upward. At the end of the jazz spangle the music rattled thin and far away. Then the tune returned to the first blues song, and it was like the telling of that long season of trouble. She stood there on the dark sidewalk and the drawn tightness of her heart made her knees lock and her throat feel stiffened. Then, without warning, the thing happened that at first Frankie could not believe. Just at the time when the tune should be laid, the music finished, the horn broke off. All of a sudden the horn stopped playing. For a moment Frankie could not take it in, she felt so lost.”

The term consonance has two denotations. The first definition applies to music, meaning a harmonious sounding combination of notes. The second definition refers to an agreement between actions or opinions. In this passage, neither are achieved when the tune of the horn is suddenly cut off, leaving Frankie feeling incomplete--she waits for the ending of the song to come, but it is left unresolved. This passage demonstrates her dissatisfaction about being on the brink between childhood and adulthood, as well as her anticipation of moving on to the next segment of her life (hence the “drawn tightness”).

In reaction to this, Frankie begins to hit herself on the head and talk aloud, without paying attention to her own words. One gets the sense that not only is she incapable of communicating her feelings, but she is not always aware of what those feelings are herself. Discussion: do you agree or disagree with the notion that communication (which can be seen as an adulteration of thought and unconscious desire) is futile?

From Childhood to Adolescence

"This August she was twelve and five-sixths years old. She was five feet five and three quarter inches tall...In the past year she had grown four inches... If she reached her height on her eighteenth birthday, she had five and one-sixth growing years ahead of her. Therefore, according to mathematics and unless she could somehow stop herself, she would grow to be over nine feet tall. And what would be a lady who is over nine feet hight? She would be a Freak." 

This passage clearly illustrates Frankie's transition from a child to a pubescent adolescent. She is almost thirteen, yet she still believes it to be true that she can actually grow to be over nine feet tall. While this logic seems childish (very rarely do people grow to be over nine feet tall) the thoughts that drive such logic are those coming from a young girl. Frankie is delving into the world of low self-esteem and insecurity, very common among girls of 13 and 14. The passages prior to this also show the inner struggle of Frankie to be both a child and a young girl. Frankie is constantly in her own mind, thinking about the wedding, about her looks, about the world, things that she never gave much heed to before. She recognizes that these are new thought patterns, yet she doesn't have really have anyone to talk to about why she is having such thoughts. She looks for company from her 6 year old cousin (as a child would do) yet this doesn't satisfy her either. Frankie is in limbo between childhood and adolescence, a place that is never easy to be in. 

What events do you believe need to take place in Frankie's life in order to propel her from childhood to adolescence? As far as her low-self esteem, do you believe that the upcoming wedding will help her realize that she is not a Freak or merely make her more insecure? 

Childhood to Maturity

“…her world seemed layered in three different parts, all the twelve years of the old Frankie, the present day itself, and the future ahead…” pg. 61

At this moment, Frankie is just leaving the Blue Moon bar and realizes that this is not an activity that twelve-year-olds typically engage in. She is obviously not happy with her life thus far and She realizes that she is more or less alone within her family. She is caught between the childhood that John Henry is still exploring and the adulthood that Janice and Jarvis are entering. Frankie realizes that this day marks her exit from childhood and her arrival into maturity, at least in her own mind. She is beginning to think of all that she will do and the ways that she will act as an “adult.” For example, as uneducated as she is about anything regarding sex, she realizes that there is something of this nature that she will be involved with. It is hard to say, however, if she is trying to change the way that she feels about herself or change the way that everyone else views her.

Frankie is trying to leave behind her childhood, but also actually go into the “grown up world.” As they are two different things, which do you think is more important to her?

Maturation

“…her world seemed layered in three different parts, all the twelve years of the old Frankie, the present day itself, and the future ahead…” pg. 61

As Frankie transforms into F. Jasmine, she feels that there has been a shift in the direction her life is headed. This shift transcends her feeling of belonging but no one else takes notice. In part 1 she is far from adulthood, just entering her preteen years. She knows nothing of sex, as evidenced by her theory that Mrs. Marlowe was having a fit. McCullers skips over this defining day to refer back to it later. McCullers ignores the standard form of telling a story of depicting events in chronological order in order to allow the audience to see the difference and review her previous actions which lead to this immense change. While F. Jasmine feels that something in her world has been altered, it is really her. She would not have experienced such a strange change of events if this feeling had not prompted her to leave her home in search of something. Encountering the red headed soldier springboards her into many new experiences. He is the catalyst that sends her into the real world. We learn that red is her favorite color. McCuller’s purpose behind giving Frankie such a habit of describing the habit of things serves several purposes. Her favorite color is rarely mentioned. She thinks her red blood will be a cut above that of the other blood donors. Ironically she isn’t even allowed to donate. When she meets an older man who expresses sexual interest in her, she is attracted to him by his red hair. Red stands for an adult world of which she has only had a small taste and still has little hope of fully understanding despite the fact that she thinks she is very close to attaining all the life knowledge she needs.

Since red has come to represent sexual activity and other aspects of the adult world F. Jasmine doesn’t yet understand, why is the bar named the Blue Moon? The name could be a form of irony, or refer to a rare event with strange results.

Isolation

"This was the summer when Frankie was sick and tired of being Frankie. She hated herself, and had become a loafer and a big no-good who hung around the summer kitchen: dirty and greedy and mean and sad." (p. 26)

When Frankie is first introduced to readers, she seems to be a lost and sad child who can't seem to find herself. She feels like a "freak," because she is tall and is fed up with not having somewhere to belong. It's from this excerpt from the novel that Frankie's sense of depression and unhappiness with her life are portrayed. She focuses on how she doesn't have that sense of belonging in the world, and that the world has essentially excluded her. Instead; she resorts to staying at home and worries about being a "freak." Even when Frankie's friend John Henry comes over to play and eventually gets kicked out by her, she realizes that she is being overly harsh, and yet doesn't change her demeanor. Frankie tries to go around town to find a place to belong, but in the end, she is just unhappy again. It's as though Frankie makes attempts to find a group to identify with, but it seems as if she is just too picky to accept anything.

Is Frankie truly trying to find a place to belong or is she just allowing herself to wallow in her loneliness and isolation? If she does find a group to identify with, will she get the satisfaction that she seeks?

Member of the Wedding 23

"She decided to donate blood to the Red Cross; she wanted to donate a quart a week and her blood would be in the veins of Australians and Fighting French and Chinese, all over the whole world, and it would be as though she were close kin to all of those people. "(23).

From the first paragraph of the novel, it's clear that one of the conflicts the protagonist Frankie needs to deal with is trying to find a sense of belonging and self. Not only does Frankie say she belonged to no club, but she also had "become an unjoined person" (5) implying that she hadn't always been so alienated. However, this passage shows how deeply her need for inclusion runs. It isn't enough for her to say her blood saved lives; she wants to have a connection with those who has her blood, hoping they could become "close kin". Despite having Berenice and John Henry around, Frankie still feels alone. She seems to actually reject their presence at times, which makes me wonder if she is actually alone, or if she is neglecting the people who are there. Either way, Frankie isn't comfortable with herself and doesn't seem to have a means of identifying herself if she isn't associated with a group.

Is Frankie's alienation simple adolescent angst, or is there something more to it? Is she really as alone as she perceives herself to be, or has she merely overlooked the people who are there with her?