1.
“Miró, Miró, on the wall, who’s the deadest of them all” (McCann 112).
When I read this phrase, I could not help myself but to switch the word Miró with mirror. I do not believe that the author used the name of the surrealist sculptor, Joan Miró, just to make a bad pun. In effort to make some theory of my own, I did some research on Miró and found a connection between artist Miró and an object mirror other than those two words making a pun.
The website, The Art Story: Modern Art Insight, summarizes Miró’s works as following: “Miró’s art never became fully non-objective” This caught my attention because I thought Miró’s philosophy of not being fully unrealistic can be represented through a mirror. I believe that, we, as imperfect human beings, are very capable of deceiving ourselves. As we fall into our own deception, we need mirror to come into our lives and play its role: stop us from being fully non-objective about the reality and bring us back to our actual reality. When I am talking about a mirror, however, I am not talking about a simple reflecting surface set into a frame or a handle. I am talking about a mirror which is a tool that reflect, reveal, and even expose the reality whether we like it or not.
2.
I identified following 12 characters to be the primary characters of Let the Great World Spin:
- The Tightrope Walker
- Corrigan
- Ciaran
- Tillie
- Jazzlyn
- Adelita
- Claire
- Gloria
- Lara
- Blaine
- Solomon
- Fernando
On top of these 12 main characters there are more characters that play a minor role. I was not able to accurately count all the character intersections in LTGWS, but I estimate it to be around 50 intersections.
Out of these 50 or so intersections, one that stood out to me the most was Bereaved Mothers’ intersection with the Tightrope Walker. I was able to sense a lot of anxiousness from the mothers as they were talking about the Tightrope Walker. I suspect that, this uneasiness came from their bitterness towards Tightrope Walker’s recklessness. With all the news at the time questioning the purpose of Vietnam War, the mothers might have associated the Tightrope Walker’s possible meaningless death to their sons’ death in Vietnam.
I also saw the anxiousness from the mothers because they saw their sons when they looked at the tightrope and I think that was so intense for them to witness. They had related him to their sons because they think he should be appreciating life and not being so careless but I thought that he was living his life to the fullest and that the mothers should think about how fearless he is even though it may be considered reckless.
The anxiousness came from their yearning for their children. They see this man “throwing his life away” and putting himself in life threating situations for what they see to be as something silly and useless. The grieving mothers had their sons taken away from them, and I think they are almost insulted by the tightrope walker playing carelessly with his own mortality.
I enjoyed reading about how you researched further and found out that there was a connection between Joan Miro and the actual phrase. It actually makes sense that the mirror reveals the truth of your life.
I also agree with Hannah that we can look things from the tightrope walker’s perspective and we would notice that he is merely following his heart and living his life the way he wants to. Nothing should ever stop a human from living their life fully.
Wow, your last part was so interesting because you connected the tightrope walker with the bereaved mothers! The connection they have with death itself.