Throughout There There, Tommy Orange uses spiders and their webs to symbolize the idea that people and places can represent both home and a trap. He utilizes the spider to illustrate this idea, because a spider's web acts as its home but also helps to trap other insects. Similarly, the characters in the book find comfort in things and places that also ensnare them.
Jacquie Red Feather faces her own representation of the spider's web through her relationship with alcohol. She finds solace in drinking as it allows her to escape the traumatic events from her past, but drinking is an addiction that causes problems for her. For example, Jacquie abused alcohol throughout most of her life and never stood as a good parental figure for her daughter or grandsons. Jacquie finds herself wanting to drink at the conference and confesses, "Home was to drink. To drink was the trap" (Orange 148). Jacquie feels comfortable drinking and knows it will bring her happiness in the moment, but she also expresses how "the web stuck to you everywhere you reached once you were trapped" (Orange 171). She realizes how although drinking can bring her those feelings of safety for a moment, she will ultimately become trapped by her addiction if she continues to drink.
While Jacquie finds herself trapped by her own struggles, other characters in the novel, such as those who die at the powwow, are trapped by their circumstances and surroundings. The powwow exemplifies home for many Native Americans, and as Orange describes, "We made powwows because we needed a place to be together" (Orange 200). The Oakland powwow provides Native Americans with an opportunity to connect with each other and celebrate their heritage; however, tragic events unfold at the event which is meant to represent community and safety. The shooting at the powwow traps many people and takes their lives. The powwow was both a home and a trap for characters such as Orvil, Edwin, and Thomas who went to the coliseum seeking identity and purpose and encountered a horrible fate instead.
Orange utilizes the spider imagery throughout the novel to highlight how the characters find comfort in things, people, and places while also becoming trapped by those same entities. Whether due to their own habits like Jacquie's addiction or external circumstances like the shooting, the characters must be cautious of what they consider to be home, as this home can also be a trap.
The symbolism of the spider web is applicable to the Native American community as a whole, as well. At the beginning of the novel, Orange emphasizes the history of the indigenous community by detailing often overlooked events. For example, the prologue includes multiple examples of Native injustices such as the massacre of the Pequot tribe being the precursor for Thanksgiving. Orange’s prologue provides multiple accounts of violence that pushed Native Americans off their ancestral lands and into more ubiquitous locations across the United States. There There focuses specifically on the indigenous community in Oakland, California. However, in broader terms, this analogy could be used for the relationship between Native Americans and the United States as a whole. Based on the historical facts provided in the prologue, it can be said that the United States has been both a home and a trap for the Native population. According to Wikipedia, Native Americans have lived in the U.S. for over 15,000 years, yet they have been constantly undermined, assimilated, and forcibly removed throughout our country’s history.
ReplyDeleteSimilar to the themes addressed in Interior Chinatown, There There touches significantly on stereotypes that plague the Native community. On page 8, Orange says, “Getting us to cities was supposed to be the final step to our assimilation, absorption, and erasure, the completion of a five-hundred-year-old genocidal campaign. But the city made us new, and we made it ours.” Native Americans, as detailed by Orange, are everywhere and provide a distinct cultural purpose. Yet, the discrimination they face and the bloody horror of their history can not be escaped. Their oppressors will always have preconceived ideas about their culture, and stereotypes will continue to be projected. The trap colonizers imbued the indigenous into was that they can exist quietly anywhere but can never escape the limits set for them.