Category: Let the Great World Spin (Miró)

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: 

1. The Tightrope Walker
2. Corrigan
3. Ciaran
4. Tillie
5. Jazzlyn
6. Adelita
7. Claire
8. Gloria
9. Lara
10. Blaine
11. Solomon
12. 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)

Joan Miró is a surrealist and experimental artist from Barcelona, Spain. He derived his very unique style from other artist such as Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne. Miró not only does paintings but is also known for creating sculptures, murals, and even ceramics

When I first read the chapter’s title “Miró, Miró, on the Wall”, I immediately thought of the well known line from Snow White “mirror, mirror, on the wall”. Having that thought lingering in my mind, I noticed in the beginning of this chapter Claire has a lengthy interaction with a mirror in her bedroom. Claire is described as standing with “her body in the full length mirror” and has several moments where she is staring at her reflection. Translated from Spanish, “Miró” means I look or watch. Considering that Miró is of Spanish descent, I felt this was a clever play on words since Claire is watching her own reflection.  

I feel the purpose using the mirror is to symbolize an individual as being a work of at art. On page 78, Claire has a flashback where she is arguing with her father. It ended with him calling her “Modern. Like a fixture. A painting. A Miró”. Taking all information into consideration, I interpret this as meaning Claire is a work of art, but because you can not simply hang her up on a wall she is displayed through a mirror where she reflects and creates her own abstract piece through her own life experience, thoughts, and physical appearance.

II)

I estimate there are more than 60 human interactions or “collisions”. The one that intrigues me the most is Claire and Solomon finding out how their son, Joshua, passed away. It was heartbreaking to see at first Claire first thought of an exam when being told Joshua had ‘passed”, followed by the realization of what is actually going on. After the sergeant says Joshua had “died a hero” Solomon responds with a bit of hostility by saying “You don’t die a f[**]king hero”. Staring into some prints Claire even says “Miró, Miró, on the wall, who’s the deadest of them all”. Claire may be saying this as a way of receiving clarity/confirmation of her son’s death, or it could be possibly a way of seeing him for the last time through the “Miró” .

Primary Characters:

• Claire
• Solomon
• Joshua
• Ciaran
• Corrigan
• Lara
• Blaine
• Adelita
• Gloria
• Tillie
• Jazzlyn
• Fernando
• Sam

Upon hearing the title, “Miro, Miro, on the Wall” for the first time, it reminded me of the famous line from Disney’s movie, Snow White, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” However, the Miro reference is made from the famous Spanish sculptor, artist, painter and ceramicist Joan Miro. I feel like McCann, titled this chapter in this particular manner for a reason. When we look at the mirror, we see the truths about ourselves and become immersed in ourselves. Similarly, Claire and Marcia were lost in their own worlds, where they could think about their own personal stories only. Claire was nervous because she was worried all the time as to how the other women would respond upon seeing how wealthy Claire actually was, while Marcia was shocked by what she had seen earlier that day about the tightrope walker. It also, can be connected to Snow White, as in how the evil stepmother was obsessed with her own beauty, similarly, Claire was lost in her own problems.

List of some primary characters:

Corrigan (protagonist in my opinion, also could be called the giver), Ciaran (Corrigan’s elder brother), Tillie (elderly prostitute), Jazzlyn (Tillie’s daughter, also a prostitute), Claire Soderberg (Wealthy woman suffering from depression due to lose of her son), Tightrope walker, Gloria (part of the bereaved mother’s group), Marcia (part of bereaved mother’s group and the woman who first talked about the tightrope walker at Claire’s house), Blaine (Responsible for Corrigan and Jazzlyn’s death), Lara Liveman (Blaine’s wife).

As of the moment, I personally counted 54 intersections, but I am pretty sure, I might have missed a couple while reading.

I feel like for me the most touching moment was when Tillie was in the prison and her grandchildren came to visit her and before they left how Tillie was trying to get their scent and touch their fingers. This moment broke my heart as in her lifetime, Tillie tried her best to do whatever she could for the family, but in the end, she felt miserable because in her mind, she hadn’t done enough. She weeps about how she was a bad guardian to her own daughter, Jazzlyn. Also, this moment has a lot of emotions in it because Tillie tried her best to keep Jazzlyn away from the prostitute life, but in the end, Jazzlyn ended up being one. So now, when she sees her granddaughters in someone else’s care, it might make her feel even more miserable as in her thinking, neither was she a good mother nor a good grandmother. Just thinking about living through that pain is agonizing. There is a possibility, that maybe if I had been in such a situation, I would have done what Tillie did. At that moment, death would seem an easier option than living. It is sad, what she had to go through.

Joan Miró was a Spanish painter, sculptor, and ceramist from Catalan, Spain. He was influenced by Sigmund Freud, among others, during the Surrealism Movement, breaking out of an analytical mindset confined to Realism. I understood the title, “Miró, Miró, On The Wall” to describe the surreal reaching for something more yet unknown to most. The accumulation of memories on Claire’s refrigerator of her son Joshua, embarking on the surreal frontiers of computers, and leaving the material world to slide around through his programs lines up with this idea. However, when the sergeant comes to her apartment to give her the news of her son’s passing, she looks to a Miró print on the wall, asking who’s the deadest, alluding to her questioning of the dark possibilities the future holds, and if we should reach for the unknown, knowing how devastating it can be to those still living.

The bereaved mother’s group is more than a mere intersection; the women meet at each other’s homes, with the common trait of having lost a son in the Vietnam War. Our window into these meetings is Claire, and, through her narrative asides, reveals the true feelings she has during the meetings. Claire is constantly reminded of her deceased son Joshua, simply because of his absence, at various moments alone in her apartment, but leading up to, and during, meetings, she is more concerned with the opinions the others have regarding how she compares to them. When she lets on that she lives on Park Ave, she dreads that this will create a wedge between herself and the rest of the group, but at the eventual meeting she hosts, her thoughts are far removed from the gathering, entering a hopeful place reminiscent of her son Joshua. It becomes evident from another aside that, regarding the nonchalant activity of the other women which she describes as selfish, this group is not helping her. Claire doesn’t, at this moment, want to move on or heal, she wants to be reunited with her son. As the meeting progresses, she describes the visit from the sergeant, and has stirrings of a need to heal, finally realizing this is the perfect environment for it.

Primary Characters: Ciaran, Corrigan, Adelita, Tillie, Jazzlyn, Solomon, Claire, the bereaved mothers, Joshua, Lara, Tightrope Walker, Fernando, Dennis, Gareth, Jose, and Sable

Human Intersections/Collisions: approximately 46

 

Jolaynie Bonito

I) Before even looking it up I think of a mirror. It’s just too similar to “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” Searching “Miró” resulted in Joan Miró, a Spanish artist. I am disappointed to find out that it was a play on words with has last name and not in fact a mirror but a Miró painting hanging on the wall. I even tried to see if Joan Miró had done any artwork featuring a mirror but sadly no. The title is based on Claire’s Miró painting in her apartment.

II) Characters:

• Corrigan
• Ciaran
• Jazzlyn
• Tillie
• Adelita
• Claire
• Solomon
• Gloria
• Lara
• Blaine
• Fernando Marcano
• Sam
• Philippe Petit (tightrope walker)

There are too many “collisions” to count. It’s so easy to impact someone’s life, even the littlest things could have a big impact.

III) I’m not sure that Claire and Philippe can count as an intersection but to me it does. It was the first intersection that I had noticed. I would say that even though they never met he had impacted her in a huge way. First, he interrupted her morning to express her grief with the other mothers. It was unfair to her in that moment that everyone else in their group had a chance to talk about their sons but the day it was her turn they all had their interest fixated on a tightrope walker. Secondly, him walking between the Twin Towers had made her think about the importance of life and how her son Joshua’s life was so very important to her and she would trade her life for his and yet here is this man who could be throwing away his life so easily. I felt as if I were in her shoes and I myself felt anger.

I) Unlike most people who thought of the famous scene from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs when reading the title of the chapter, my mind went straight to the Shrek movies where Lord Farquaad says “Mirror mirror on the wall, is this not the most perfect kingdom of them all?” Funnily enough, in the Snow White movie the Queen says “magic mirror” instead of “mirror mirror” meaning that the McCann could have possibly been referencing the Shrek movies ;). Okay now onto the actual assignment.

When Claire mentions a Miró painting, she is referencing the Spanish surrealist painter Joan Miró. After revealing her wistful memories of her son, Joshua, she asks the painting “Miró, Miró, on the wall, who’s the deadest of them all? (112). In this quote, Claire is referring to both herself and her son since she suffers mass amounts of grief and depression since his passing.

II) There were many collisions throughout this section that included many minor characters; however, focusing on the main characters of the novel I counted about 15 interactions.

1. Corrigan
2. Ciaran
3. The Tightrope Walker
4. Tillie
5. Jazzlyn
6. Lara
7. Claire
8. Gloria
9. Bereaved Mothers
10. Adelita
11. Blaine
12. Fernando
13. Sam
14. Soloman

Although Corrigan is now dead, the interaction between him and Ciaran is what sparked my interest. Throughout a majority of Ciaran’s life, he could never obtain a true grasp on the meaning behind Corrigan’s work. Whether it was Corrigan giving his blankets away as a kid or joining the Order and moving to the Bronx to help prostitutes, Ciaran could not comprehend his brother’s motives. It was not until his interaction with Corrigan’s death where we see true development in his character based on his collisions with others. When Tillie slaps Ciaran for ever thinking of himself as better than her, instead showing anger he reveals that he is actually grateful for it. Humility. When Lara tells Ciaran that she was the one to kill Corrigan in the car crash, he only says one thing, “You should have stopped” (151). Forgiveness. One of the hardest things to do is to forgive—especially when it comes to someone killing your brother. As a result of his brother’s death, Ciaran was humbled and realized that he has to show the same compassion for others just as his brother did for all of the unfortunate people of society.

You ever have a perfect plan laid out? You ever think about it over and over again in your head, trying to find one flaw in it but never doing so? It’s so perfect that you start to wonder if you could have thought about it all on your own, but you look everywhere, and can’t find it. It’s, not to sound redundant, but…perfect. It’s so perfect you have Ed Sheeran’s new single “Perfect” playing in the background, adding to the ambiance of the events about to take place (of course, I am doing this to reference how music adds to the mood of a piece). Finally, your life can now be thought of as more than being alone in your room listening to pop ballads all day, eating potato chips, throwing your life away…uh, you get my point (I’m not speaking from personal experience, wink wink). You decide it’s time to execute it, and your heart sinks to the pit of your stomach.

This is exactly what happened to me over the course of the day. ready to type my perfect ideas on the screen, I looked below at previous posts to get an idea on the perspectives grasped by the book thus far, and saw Gee’s post. It was almost identical to what I was thinking. Almost every single world! My perfect plan…DESTROYED!!! I proceeded to drown my sorrows in Maroon 5’s “She Will Be Loved” for 12 hours, until I decided to begin to write again.

Anyways, in all seriousness, I was reading through the posts after reading the book, and realized that Gee had a very similar though process when it came to this book. Not trying to copy her or sound redundant, I dug deeper into this perspective a little and came up with the following. Gee talked about the allusion to fairy tales, yet with a little morbid twist. I 1000% percent agree with that, but I do want delve a little deeper in the fact that Claire was smiling uncontrollably despite the fact that the sergeant gave the news of a death. Throughout the course of the chapter, I couldn’t help but think to myself that there was something off about Claire. It didn’t hit me until this very seen that there is something wrong with her: she is normal.

Think about it: in the city full of art, crazy people on the train, and even a guy who walks across the World Trade Center, she is simply normal. She even said it herself that she has lived the same old routine for 31 years! Even when she looks at a picture of her and her son at the beach, she describes the scenery with just physical details, no emotion whatsoever. She even described Joshua as just a boy. Just a boy?! That’s your kid for crying out loud! Something that seals this argument is that she has to choose her words for conversations with her friends, as if she is a robot that converses with people. She doesn’t let the emotion of the world, as represented by its colors, penetrate her to give her body life. That is why her hair always has that gray strand, because it is impossible to cut that part of her, as it is now a part of her she can’t let go of.

As far as interactions go, I stopped counting after 50 (I wonder where I heard this before). However, one interaction that really interested me was Claire and Solomon (it was really Lara and Ciaran, but that was too unoriginal). It surprises me how little a couple can know about each other even after being together for decades. This is true of all couples as all human beings have multiple layers to them, each of them unique to specific situations, hence Solomon cursing so bluntly after the sergeant talked about dying a hero.

 

 

When I first saw the title of the chapter, the first thing I thought of the famous line from Snow White where the Evil Queen asks here mirror “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” However instead of “mirror”, McCann replaces it with Miró. Upon doing some research, I found that Miró refers to Spanish artist Joan Miró who was a part of the Surrealism and Cubism movements. The title is tied to Claire, a wealthy woman living in Manhattan with her husband Solomon, who is a part of a group of women that have lost sons in the Vietnam War. The line refers to her insecurities being the wealthiest woman in the group and thinking what the other women will think of her once they see how she lives and her socio-economic status. The way I interpreted the use of Miró in the title is that it reflects the almost surreal feel of the time that the women spent in Claire’s home. This is because she was constantly distracted by her own worries and the women were also distracted by the tightrope walker, so it all seemed like a blur, as if there were some aspects that were real but didn’t feel real, similar to the ideas of Surrealism, in which aspects of reality and aspects of the mind or imagination are merged into one.

Primary Characters:

• Ciaran and Corrigan (John A. Corrigan)
• Tillie, Jazzlyn, Angie
• Adelita
• Claire and Solomon Soderberg, and their son Joshua Soderberg
• Gloria and the women (Marcia, Janet, Jacqueline)
• Lara and Blaine
• Birdhouse the pimp
• Sam the hacker
• Fernando
• Phillipe Petit and his crew.

Overall there have been at least 50 interactions between the characters of the book. In doing this, McCann creates a very vivid and interconnected world, which is an aspect that New York City actually has; in including all these interactions, he manages to capture the lively spirit of the city, as well as making the world seem vast, yet so small at the same time.

A very interesting intersection of characters that I saw was the one between Lara and Corrigan and Jazzlyn on the FDR. When I first read Chapter 1, I was shocked by the ending and it left me with so many questions about how and why Corrigan and Jazzlyn met the tragic fate they did. In “A Fear of Love”, we got to see Blaine hit Corrigan and Jazzlyn’s car, sending them to their deaths. I was angered by their recklessness at first, but in a way I also felt relieved because I knew then that Corrigan and Jazzlyn’s story had not ended at that moment. Lara’s desperation and guilt about the death of Corrigan and Jazzlyn expanded upon the story laid out in the first chapter and created many more connections between the characters. McCann’s use of different perspectives makes each story much more intruiging and more captivating because each character draws you into their own world and we get to see how they each see the world they live in, despite the fact that they are all present in the same city.