The Never-Ending Escape from Responsibility

[elange]

To move through life is to accept responsibility and find a place in the world where you are needed. However, there always exists people content with leisure, un-willing to take on any responsibilities, especially new ones. Writer Paul Auster displays many such characters in his movie, Smoke. Both unable to accept responsibilities, both past and present, characters Auggie Wren and Ruby McNutt will continue down a horrible path leading to their eventual lonely demise.
Being single and in middle age, Auggie Wren has little going for him other than owning a tobacco shop. However, Ruby McNutt, an old flame of his, appears and reveals that he is the father of an 18-year-old pregnant crack addict named Felicity. Instantly, Auggie denies it, unable to accept any responsibility for his supposed daughter and her baby. Although he does try to help by visiting Felicity with Ruby, Felicity greets them with malice, and they all decide to split ways. Auggie decides to then completely stay out of the situation and gives Ruby five thousand dollars to help out. This shows that Auggie does have some responsibility and feels that he should help, yet by giving Ruby money, he is excluding himself from helping Felicity in any other way. Had Auggie been more responsible, he would have tried many other times to reason with Felicity and stayed a part of her life. Instead he stays passive, not wanting to take on the responsibility and emotion baggage of having an addict as a daughter. Auggie denied his chance to become close to his supposed daughter, leaving him all alone in the world.
Ruby, though she decides to stay in Felicity’s life, is no better than Auggie at accepting responsibility. She first shows up at Auggie’s shop distraught and broke, not looking at all like the poster child of responsibility. However, she came because of her attachment to Felicity, which redeems her in a sense. Yet, towards the end of the movie, after her and Auggie visit Felicity and learn that Felicity received an abortion, Ruby decides to leave Felicity and not commit her to rehab. Ruby never cared for her addicted daughter, she only felt responsibility for her grandchild. She was the one who raised Felicity thus she should hold all the responsibility for how she turned out. Instead, she allows her daughter to continue to struggle with addiction alone.
Some people cannot handle the responsibility of children. Auggie Wren and Ruby McNutt, characters of the movie Smoke by writer Paul Auster, are some of these undesirable people that, through disregard of responsibility, end up all alone in life.

[Chris]

That’s quite an interesting take on how a person’s attitude towards responsibility ultimately shapes their fates. I found your points stressing the importance of connecting and taking responsibility for others very profound.

I often imagine what the world would look like if humans were like plants–unmoving and small. Each of us might be born and grow up in a single three by three feet plot of land, unable to see beyond our small little corners. However, I also imagine that by expanding our roots–by connecting with other “plants”–that we can expand our reach and learn more about the world about us. It takes courage to take responsibility for your own fate, and I think your analysis of Ruby and Auggie’s relationship with their daughter(?) implies a deeper lesson everyone could learn from.

This is where our opinions diverge, though. I don’t think Auggie and Ruby are stagnating in time and space. Both find alternative ways of moving forward that don’t necessarily rely on a major lifestyle change. I believe consistent small changes are better than individual large changes. When Auggie shows Paul his photo album collection, he explains that it’s the minute changes in each photo that teach him about the world around him. By observing smaller details like weather, the expressions of people, and the overall atmosphere of the photo, Auggie is able to develop an intimate understanding with the strangers in his photos, which I believe to be a non-physical version of “connection”. Over the course of the movie, Auggie is mostly situated in his cigar shop. In spite of this, though, he is present in every character’s story, minutely influencing their lives as they pass through his cigar shop (e.g. Money flows from Rashid/Thomas to him to Ruby to Felicity//His job offer to Thomas//His Christmas with the blind grandma).

Ruby is the foil to Auggie’s methods. Her connections with other characters are manifested in physical and tangible ways. She mentions how she consistently tried to connect with Felicity before reaching out to Auggie. Her own daughter ridicules her for having sex with Auggie, who she perceives as both old and unattractive. Ruby is unable to connect with her daughter because she lacks money, and her reason for connecting with Auggie was to ask for money. She is only able to find a reason to continue connecting with Ruby after receiving five thousand dollars from Auggie (for paying for Ruby’s rehab). Ruby’s connections are ultimately materialistic, and to say that neither Auggie nor Ruby try to connect with others (especially their daughter) is in my opinion, a bit of an overstatement.

I imagine Auggie and Ruby as smokers/liquor addicts. Smokers and drinkers know that their addictions are bad, but don’t stop. There is truth in your statement that a person’s denial of change and responsibility will lead them to stagnation in life. However, in an addict’s eyes, the journey to sobering up is daunting and seemingly endless. It may not be that they don’t want to change, but rather, that they cannot. Both Auggie and Ruby are old. In spite of the old adage, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”, both Auggie and Ruby find ways to continue to expand their worldviews. Each of them may not be making changes as significant as Paul or Rashid/Thomas, but they’re changing–and I think that deserves recognition.

-Chris

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