The Amateur Marriage

Anne Tylers The Amateur conjugal union is a novel depicting two mismatched spouses that continu all(prenominal)y weight-lift for six decades. They separately fail to form their own individual guts impression of identify. They also do non form a neighborly sense of identity as a couple on within a larger community. They each fight for superlativeity in the trade union as their identity. This writing will examine this long-term conflict, related to each spouses quest for individual identity. Several elements form the identity of an individual. around are biological, stemming from inception in nationality, ethnic, and genetic backgrounds and, from basic human needs of food, shelter, love, and recognition (Richland College, 2007). new(prenominal) elements are social, including what groups a soul joins or tries to join, religious background and conversions to new(prenominal) religions, political leanings, and careers and occupations. i also retrieves oneself in one way, while differents see them in a nonher, making up two identities that usually do not fully match.Further, an individual is a son/daughter, spouse/partner, parent, or other relative or friend of someone else, and these are identities as tumefy. One interesting and very strong identity is the one arising from being in conflict with another person or group. Such a person may be, for example, anti child-abuse, anti war-with-Iraq or against all that his neighbor who has insulted him stands for. The mother of Psychiatry, Sigmund Freud, taught that all identity is biologically developed, completed by the end of adolescence (Richland College, 2007).His educatee Erik Erickson broke away from Freud, believing that identity forms via social interactions as well as biological maturity byout the lifespan, not ending in adolescence (ibid. ). Identity is an ongoing process. Erikson devised Eight Stages of Man. These include Trust (infant), Autonomy (toddler), hatchway (child), Identity (adol escent), Intimacy (young adult), Generativity (middle age), and Integrity ( experienceder age). Erickson believed that social environment combines with biology (aging) to translate people sets of crises to firmness at each stage.Resolving them creates maturity, because one must resolve the crises of one level before going on to the next, or blend stuck at the lower level, never to mature and always having the same guinea pig of problems, as the main couple in Tylers novel do. The couple Pauline and Michael Anton meets in pre-WWII Baltimore. Pauline jumps from a s manoeuvertcar to join a patriotic line of battle and suffers a head gash, so she flings herself into Michaels old family grocery store for help. A more reserved individual, Michael is taken aback by Paulines dramatic energy and falls instantly in love.Both in their early 20s, they marry, and they do not pass adolescence and never develop intimacy. mike goes to war, is shot in training, and comes heterosexual home. H e and Pauline have three children and move to the suburbs. They have numerous conflicts over the years and their matrimony stagnates, because they are both stuck in puerility and adolescence, fighting over everything to be known as the winner and the superior partner. Pauline always flies bump off the handle emotionally, while Michael silently stews over things as mundane as whether it will get polar seemly to snow.Nothing is ever solved over 60 years time, and the marriage and the individual Antons do not change or grow, either. They cut themselves off from the social interactions that would help them to grow. Their identity was formed by the time they get married and never had a chance to develop further, because they would not allow it. They fight, each trying to win in order to be identified as the winner and the leader of the marriage. Then either would feel important, worthy, and adult. Unfortunately, it never happens. mike is Polish Catholic, Pauline is WASP, and these disparate ethnic and religious identities are unmanageable to meld into a marriage.Pauline believes that two souls should combine as one. Michael feels that they should preserve distinct, but walk in the same direction. The marriage cannot work, because neither will translate additional new ways of thinking. Thus, for six decades, she is flighty, he is cold, and they remain constant quantity in this. While marriages of their friends grow and develop via individual maturity and interactions as a couple through the usual give and take with a larger community, the Antons marriage is stuck because of their feuding. Life passes them by, except for the problems.The Antons and their marriage cannot grow up. The precedent describes the friends growing marriages as fruit trees Marriages are like fruit trees afterward a time they meld, they grow together, and it doesnt matter how crazy the mix is, peaches on an apple tree or cherries on a plum tree still if you tried to separate them yo u would cause a fatal wound. Meanwhile, the Antons marriage is a gnarled, wizened, whiskery tree you see on windbeaten cliffs where theres not enough soil or water. The marriage is anorexic, starving to death.Pauline, who once loved Mikes reserved qualities chafed daily at . . . his rigidity, his caution, his literal-mindedness . . . his reluctance to elapse money, his suspicion of anything unfamiliar, his tendency to pass judgment . . . and his magical ability to hire her seem hysterical (p. 75). Michaels opinion of Pauline becomes a frantic, unsufferable woman, so unstable, even in good moods, with her exultant voice and scintillant eyes, her dangerous excitement (p. 167). Neither one is concerned with self-development, but exactly with criticizing the other.Over the decades, they become entrenched in these mindsets and unable to develop past their mid-twenties, psychologically. The get off all of the intimacy, generativity and integrity by holding onto adolescence. In ide ntity, they are just now the fighting spouses. When he does think about the marriage and where it is going, Mike sees that all those young marrieds of the war years have grown wise and veteran(a) and comfortable in their roles, until only he and Pauline remained, as inexperienced as ever the last couple left in the amateurs parade (p.168). He saw themselves as more like brother and sis than husband and wife. This constant elbowing and competing, jockeying for position, glorying in I-told-you-so (p. 168). Further, the Antons drug-abusing daughter lindy sees the family as a stagnated hell, a wretched, tangled knot, inward-turned, stunted, like a trap fox chewing its own leg off (p. 300). The marriage is stuck, as well as the family. In dysfunctional families, some members develop identities patronage the stagnation and toxicity.The development of such an identity, a hardy personality, is set forth by Professor Suzanne Kobasa Ouellette of City University of New York (Richland Col lege, 2007). Hardiness and its needed control, commitment, and challenge develop through attaining the following eight skills 1. Recognize and tolerate dread and act anyway. 2. Separate fantasy from reality and tackle reality. 3. Set goals and set in motion priorities. 4. Project into the future and understand how todays choices affect the future. 5. Discriminate and make choices concordant with goals and values.6. Set boundaries and limits. 7. Ask assertively for wants and desires. 8. Trust self and own perceptions. Some dysfunctional people achieve these skills through study and counseling, but the Antons do not. Even when they regulate to parent their small grandson Pagan, whom they rescue from the drug culture, they cannot lodge their entrenched differences. Pauline believes their fights can be patched up in a firefighting management technique. Michael sees these fights as hellfire itself. Mike and Pauline decide just to tolerate each other, until Michael leaves.Even thoug h it is possible to develop self-identities through conflict, Mike and Pauline are not able to do so, because they do not stop fighting in order to find social interactions as a couple (clubs, volunteer work, etc,), and counseling that would help them grow. They remain in the adolescent stage in their mid-60s. At this age and firmly entrenched in adolescence, it may or may not be too late for humans to grow further psychologically. REFERENCES Kriesberg, Lewis. , PhD. Us versus Them. 2003.From the website of beyond Intractability A Free Knowledge Base on more Constructive Approaches to Destructive Conflict http//www. beyondintractability. org/essay/identity_issues/ Retrieved Feb. 25 2007. Richland College. Dallas County Community College District. 12800 Abrams Road, Dallas, TX 75243-2199. The developmental Psychology of Erik Erikson. From the Richland College website http//www. rlc. dcccd. edu/MATHSCI/anth/P101/DVLMENTL/ERIKSON. HTM/ Retrieved Feb 25 2007. Tyler, Anne. The Amat eur Marriage. New York Alfred A. Knopf. 2004