Mailer gives us three “Time Machine” sections in these hundred pages. Let’s focus on them, keeping in mind Herakleitos’s axiom, “Character is destiny”:
Red Valsen’s life is one that probably seems alien to you. People no longer grow up in company towns, and we no longer have a significant hobo population. We have transient workers, mothers with children who have no official residence and statistically count as “homeless,” and a more hard-core homeless population plagued by substance abuse and mental illness, but not hobos. (For more information, Wikipedia has a useful explanation here. Disclaimer: Wikipedia, because it is open-source and community edited, cannot always be trusted and so should never be relied upon as a scholarly source, but I have checked this article and it provides a competent overview.) How does Red’s past shape his character, and how does his character shape his fate, both within the “Time Machine” section and the novel as a whole to this point?
Mary Gallagher says to Roy Gallagher, “you always seem so angry about something.” One can see her as perceptive, or simply as stating something so obvious that it would impossible to ignore. Gallagher, like Valsen, also represents a historical truth. The way Mailer describes the Boston neighborhoods — South Boston or “Southie,” as it is called, Dorchester, Roxbury, East Boston, Scollay Square (which no longer exists, and hasn’t since 1963), Memorial Drive on the way to Cambridge and Harvard — is familiar to me, since I grew up outside of Boston. Father Kilian is a thinly disguised reference to popular radio personality Father Coughlin, and Christians United is a reference to the Christian Front, an anti-government group that Coughlin supported. But which, if any, of the social and economic forces under which Gallagher suffers (and I do think he suffers), explain his anger? And to repeat the question I asked about Red: how does Gallagher’s past shape his character, and how does his character shape his fate, both within the “Time Machine” section and the novel as a whole to this point?
Robert Hearn’s personal history is about as far removed from Red’s and Gallagher’s as can be imagined. But he too is the product of forces beyond his control, and perhaps ultimately beyond his understanding as well — though he certainly has more education, more knowledge of the forces of history, and a wider range of experience than either of the other two men. Last week, we learned that he understands “‘Force, Space, and Time,’” the factors he tells General Cummings are those involved in chess. But while Cummings believes in chess as a metaphor, Hearn gravitates towards football, a game in which “‘You start off with a play and it never quite works out as you figured it would.’” Consider what we learn of his past in this context. Consider his arguments with the general in the light of what we have learned about him now. And let’s make it three for three: How does Hearn’s past shape his character, and how does his character shape his fate, both within the “Time Machine” section and the novel as a whole to this point?