Chapter 22: Callanwolde II

In Chapter 22, Tom, Savannah and Luke graduate from high school.  Throughout the summer, they think about and prepare for the future.  Near the end of the summer is the “day on the island” that has been foreshadowed throughout the novel.  Callanwolde and two of his friends from prison come to the Wingo’s house and finally succeed in raping not only Lila, but Savannah and Tom as well.  Luke brings Caesar into the house and lets him kill Callanwolde, and Tom and Savannah kill their rapists.  Three days later, Savannah cuts her wrists for the first time.

We have been expecting Savannah to get raped since Chapter 2.  However, we were shocked that Lila and Tom also got raped and that Callanwolde was behind it.  Now we are wondering why Savannah was the only one who went crazy; all of them went through the same ordeal.

The main event in this chapter was absolutely horrifying.  The content alone is shocking, and the mood is heightened by the powerful language Conroy uses.  He describes the graphic details explicitly, so that we can fully grasp the severity of the event.  We were perturbed by the scene Conroy created.

The fact that Callanwolde came back shows that the events from Chapter 5 were not finished.  The Wingos thought they were safe after leaving Atlanta, but in reality, Callanwolde waited for the next 10 years to come back for them.  Part of the terror of Callanwolde’s visits is that they are never expected and interrupt the Wingos having a good time.  This is a continuation of his visits from Chapter 5 and was completely unexpected just like before.  Callanwolde is a symbol for the terror, evil, and destruction that seem to define the Wingo family.  In fact, we don’t consider him to be a character.  He does not seem human; he does not evolve or interact with people the way other characters do.  The events for which Callanwolde is responsible are not as significant as the long-lasting sense of dread that he instills in the Wingo children.

Savannah’s reaction to the event is more obvious and public than Tom’s; however, we think that Tom was more deeply affected than Savannah.  Although rape is a terrible and damaging thing, it happens to women often and does not threaten their femininity.  When men are raped, on the other hand, it shames them and goes against their masculinity.  Throughout the novel, Tom has said that he is a feminist, and this event clarifies the reasons for that.  A lot of feminists consider themselves feminists because they think that men don’t understand what it’s like to be a woman, to be abused, to be raped, or to feel the pressures with which women have to cope.  However, Tom does understand these things.  He has been abused and raped, and the role he plays in his marriage—cooking, cleaning, and taking care of his children—is usually considered a female role.  Tom has many masculine qualities, but he experiences things that feminist women believe are reserved for them.  Conroy uses this characteristic to shoe that everyone can experience the same problems regardless of gender. 

Tom has made it clear throughout the novel that he hates his mother, and until reading this chapter, we didn’t realize why his feelings were so strong.  Lila’s reaction to the events in their chapter reveal her selfishness and insensitivity.  Now we share Tom’s contempt for his mother.  We were disgusted with the way Lila tried to Lila tried to cover up the incident and ignored the mental and physical pain that her children were experiencing because of it.  Tom was a significant injury from being raped, but when he tries to explain to Lila, “My a**hole is torn up,” she denies the gravity of his problem and only chides him for using profanity and gives him a pad. 

This chapter is important to the characterization of all the Wingos and explains a lot about why they have responded to their childhood in the ways that they did.

Tom and Lowenstein

Simply put, Herbert is a total jerk who doesn’t love Lowenstein at all.  They don’t get along well, and it is clear that they don’t love each other.  We think that Lowenstein never felt a strong connection with Herbert and has always wanted to be an individual; she demonstrated that by not changing her last name when she got married.  Herbert has an affair with Monique, who is a fellow musician and one of Lowenstein’s patients.  Herbert never explicitly tells Lowenstein about it, but she knows anyway because he is so obvious and doesn’t care what Lowenstein thinks.  

In Tom’s marriage with Sallie, the gender roles are reversed.  Sallie earns money for the family and acts as the head of the house, while Tom stays at home and takes care of the children and cooks.  It seems Tom and Sallie really loved each other at one point, and unlike Lowenstein, Sallie was willing to show a connection with her husband by taking his last name.  However, Tom has recently been too distracted by his own problems to have much regard for Sallie.  Sallie sympathizes with him but is still dissatisfied because Tom doesn’t pay attention to her.  She has an affair with one of the doctors with whom she works and confesses it to Tom in chapter 1.

When Tom and Lowenstein meet, there is a lot of tension between them.  Each has prejudices against the other—Tom doesn’t like therapists; Lowenstein doesn’t like Southerners.  Lowenstein is appalled at Tom’s behavior, including the language he uses, and Tom is displeased with Lowenstein’s views.  

As Tom tells more stories of his and Savannah’s childhood, Lowenstein opens up more about her marital problems.  Tom tells her she is beautiful, and she says her husband doesn’t think that.  They both get to know each other better than their spouses know them.  Their relationship grows from their trying to tolerate each other into romantic interest.  

However, even after they have grown closer, they don’t always get along.  They relate to each other better, but they still have some opposing views.  Lowenstein gets mad at Tom for making rude jokes and brushing off important topics.  In turn, Tom gets mad at Lowenstein for her anger as well as for her feminist views.  Their differences in opinion sometimes lead to bitter arguments and, at one point, physical violence when Lowenstein throws a dictionary at tom and causes him to bleed profusely.  However, they make up quickly after their fights and never hold grudges.  

In chapter 23, Tom sees for the first time what Lowenstein and Herbert’s relationship is really like.  Each of them, but especially Herbert, constantly tries to find ways to make the other mad.  Tom has dinner with Herbert and Lowenstein and some of their friends, including Monique, and he sees Herbert knowingly cause a lot of stress to Lowenstein and their guests.  Tom gets very angry and demands that Herbert apologize to everyone, threatening to destroy his Stradivarius if he doesn’t.  After Herbert apologizes, tom decides to leave.  That night (and the next morning), Tom and Lowenstein have sex.  

That night marks a turning point in Tom and Lowenstein’s relationship.  Romantic interest has been growing for a while, but now they have finally broken the ice and shown their commitment to each other.  

Chapters 26-27: Moving the Town & Luke's War

In chapter 26, Isabel Newbury dies and Lila marries Reese.  Lila now owns all of Melrose Island after her divorce with Henry, and her land ownership and Reese’s political power allow them to fuel a campaign that would relocate all of Colleton’s residents and turn the county into a nuclear research and bomb construction facility.  Luke protests this move more than anyone else and single-handedly tries to stop it.

The entire novel builds up to this event, and Tom tells Lowenstein that this is even worse that Callanwolde returning in chapter 22.  At first, we were surprised by this claim because, in terms of content, these chapters were boring compared to Callanwolde’s return.  However, when we considered their literary significance, we realized that the events of these chapters were the key to nearly all of the Wingo family’s problems.

Luke’s campaign to stop the moving of the town begins with his speech at the assembly.  In his speech, he compares Colleton to the Garden of Eden and says that the forbidden fruit that would destroy it is plutonium.  He encourages his fellow citizens to join him in a war against moving the town.  Even though no one in the town is brave enough to help him, Luke still carries out his war by himself and does everything he possibly can to achieve his goal.  He hides in the woods and blows up construction sites.  The workers are afraid of him and the FBI is after him.  He eventually plans to surrender, but before he gets the chance, one of the people who had been hired to hunt him down finds him and kills him.

Luke told Lila after his speech that while “most people are smart about a hundred things,” he is “just smart about four or five things (600).”  Luke had seemed unintelligent before this chapter, but this quote and his actions in these chapters show how passionate he is and how he just has different priorities than other people.  We had seen before with Caesar and the white porpoise that Luke is passionate about nature, but in these chapters, we see the extent of his love for his town and how far he is willing to go to save it.  Tom admires Luke for his passion and wishes that there was something he himself felt that strongly about.

Lila betrayed her family by marrying Reese Newbury and selling Melrose Island.  Ironically, Lila had always told her children that family loyalty was the most important thing, but her actions in these chapters are completely disloyal.  The Wingos hate the Newburys and everything they stand for, but Lila marries a Newbury because she wants money and high social standing.  More significantly, she sells Melrose Island, which has belonged to the Wingo family for generations and represents everything that is important to them and particularly to Luke.  Lila’s actions here completely tear the family apart and cause Tom to hate her.

Luke’s death is not tragic simply because he died.  It is tragic because of how it happened and how the whole town died with him.  The town and the island held everything that mattered to Luke, but Lila was selfish enough to destroy them for her own benefit.  Tom hates Lila because her selfishness took away his island, his town, his connection with his family, and his brother’s life.

Image Study

Caesar

In chapter 13, Henry buys a vicious tiger named Caesar and tries to use it to attract customers to his gas station.  Luke loves it and tries to train it.  It also serves as a school mascot at Tom and Luke’s football games.  Caesar ultimately saves the Wingos’ lives by killing two of the rapists that threaten to kill them and then dies tragically.

Caesar is characterized as scary and vicious.  When he eats one of the seals at the circus, everyone is terrified.  However, he is also described as beautiful, majestic, and powerful.

The tiger is an important element in Luke’s characterization.  When Luke tries to train him in the barn at night, it is the first time we see him display his true passion.  Caesar’s fierceness matches Luke’s passion for nature.

One of the most significant things about Caesar is that he does not belong where he is.  He clearly should be in the wild, and in the circus and in the town he is out of place and unhappy.  Luke is closely connected with the tiger because ultimately, people try to force both of them into places and situations that are unnatural for them.  Caesar becomes a symbol for people having to cope with being in a place they don’t fit in, like Luke, Benji Washington and Mr. Fruit.

Carolina Snow

While the tiger demonstrates ferocity and power, Carolina Snow, the white porpoise, represents another side of nature: its beauty and vulnerability.  Both the tiger and the porpoise are important to Luke’s characterization because Luke loves both sides of nature.

The porpoise is closely connected to the town.  Tom explains that she is a symbol of luck and that as long as she swims in the Colleton River, the residents of Colleton will have good luck.  Everyone in the town recognizes her and loves her, and they all work together to save her when she is threatened.  When the porpoise is finally captured, it means that the town’s luck has lapsed and foreshadows the moving of the town at the end of the novel.

Part of Henry’s characterization involves the porpoise.  When she is taken, we find out that Henry was helping the captors and that they paid him $1000 to betray the porpoise and the entire town, showing that he is selfish and does not have his priorities straight.  His betrayal of the porpoise parallels the way he raises his children: The porpoise is a symbol of luck, happiness, and purity, and just as he helps remove the porpoise from the town, he takes those things away from their childhood.  Henry’s actions in this chapter are also compared to Lila selling the town at the climax of the novel.  Both Henry and Lila are willing to betray the family and their town for selfish reasons.

Colleton

Colleton is a small, rural town that epitomizes the South.  The people all know each other, and most of them are friendly toward each other.  An important part of the characterization of the town is its response to Mr. Fruit, the presumably mentally disabled man who directs traffic where there is a correctly functioning traffic light.  Tom says that “any community can be judged in its humanity or corruption by how it manages to accommodate the Mr. Fruits of the world (208),” and Colleton proves itself to be a genial town by accepting and respecting Mr. Fruit when other towns wouldn’t.

The town is an important image because it is what Tom, Luke, and many others live.  Its destruction at the end of the novel in tragic because of the love so many people had for it.

Conroy also uses to Colleton to establish one of his claims about America: that its top priorities are increasing its size and wealth.  Colleton was destroyed because it didn’t want to change to match those ideals.

The Salt Marshes

“To describe our growing up in the lowcountry of South Carolina, I would have to take you the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron from its silent occupation, scatter marsh hens as we sink to our knees in mud, open you an oyster with a pocketknife and feed it to you from the shell and say, “There.  That taste.  That’s that taste of my childhood (6).”

The marshes are an important part of Tom, Luke, and Savannah’s childhood.  Since they lived on the marsh and their father was a shrimper, the children spent a lot of time outside, whether it was on the boat, swimming in the river, or sitting on the dock.  The came to appreciate a lot about the power of nature, that marshes, and the tides.

When Luke goes to Vietnam, he sees rice paddies that remind him of the salt marshes.  This makes beautiful parts of nature a motif in the novel and shows that they can be found all over the world.  The Wingo children, primarily Luke, love their island and their town not just for sentimental reasons but also for the beauty of nature that they see there.  Conroy shows us that nature connects everyone in the world because it exists everywhere and anyone can appreciate it.

Themes from American Literature

Gender, race, geography, and religion don’t define who you are and how things affect you.

The Prince of Tides is about people who go against stereotypes and respond to their experiences in ways that have no connection to the expectations of society.  Conroy explores the labels that society has put on different types of people and explains that those labels mean nothing and that experiences shape who we are.

One of the main categories Conroy addresses is gender.  Men and women are often seen as having separate roles, but we see in this novel that those roles can be mixed or reversed.  When Tom marries Sallie, he takes on what would often be considered the woman’s job—cooking and taking care of his home and his children—while Sallie becomes a doctor and earns most of the money for the family.  This lifestyle does not make Tom any less masculine or Sallie any less feminine; it is simply a different way to live.

           

Gender is also an important part of the sexual assaults on the Wingo family and their responses to them.  In chapter 5, when Callanwolde comes for the first time, Tom has the most emotional reaction.  He is horrified by the power of his own gender and cannot speak for days.  In chapter 22, Conroy addresses the vanity of stereotypical gender roles when Callanwolde and his cohorts rape Lila, Savannah, and Tom.  Before the incident, Tom didn’t even realize it was possible for a man to be raped.  Conroy uses this incident to prove that men and women can experience the same things.  Tom calls himself a feminist after being raped, but he disagrees with Savannah, Lowenstein, and other feminists because they believe that only women can be abused.

Conroy uses the story of Benji Washington, the first black student to graduate from Colleton High School, to make a statement about race.  Aside from being a different color from everyone else, Benji is a normal high school student.  He is also an excellent football player, and when he is on the football field, it doesn’t matter that he is black; it only matters that he plays well for his school.  The other students mistreat Benji and believe that he merits being treated differently because of his race, but really, his race doesn’t matter.  People group him into a different category, but he is really just like the rest of them.

Tom and Lowenstein are very different in many ways, but they are still able to have a relationship.  Conroy addresses both religion and geography through Tom and Lowenstein: Tom is from the South and was raised Catholic, while Lowenstein is from New York and is Jewish.  Each of them has stereotypes against the other when they first meet, but they soon realize that they share some of the same problems, and they are able to form a connection based on what they have in common.  They both have problems with their families, both of their spouses are cheating on them, and they are both generally unhappy with their lives.  Conroy shows that they bond because of their experiences and feelings and proves that their differences don’t mean anything.

The entire novel is about the Wingo children’s experiences and how they responded to them as adults.  Details like their gender and religion don’t have anything to do with their responses.  The emotion in the novel is much stronger because it is all based on experience, and any reader can empathize with the Wingo children because Conroy shows us that anyone can go through the same trauma and feel the same things.

America is extremely flawed because it feels the need to meddle in other countries’ affairs, is too emotionally detached, and is too industrial.

Although it takes a back seat to other themes, there is a somewhat anti-American feel to The Prince of Tides.  We mostly see this from Luke during his war for the town, but there are several hints throughout the novel from Tom also.  Most of them are merely subtle criticisms of America.

A lot of Luke’s criticisms originate during his time in Vietnam.  He sees the peasants in the rice paddies that remind him of the marshes.  Then he witnesses American soldiers killing those peasants and is forced to kill them himself.  He doesn’t understand why that was necessary or why America always feels the need to be involved in everything even when whatever it is doesn’t have to do with America. 

Luke also did not like that he could be part of the military and that the government could still take away his house.  Joining the military is usually something honorable and something that you are rewarded for, but instead of being rewarded for his service, Luke has his house taken away by the government.  This makes him very angry and distrustful of the government.  Luke begins to think that the only place he can really count on is the South, particularly the marshes of Colleton.  

A criticism that primarily Tom makes is that Americans, including himself, are too emotionally detached.  For instance, when he leaves Tolitha in a nursing home, he says, “Because I’m an American, I let her die by degrees, isolated and abandoned by her family” (146).  He knows that he should care enough about her to take care of her in her old age, but instead, he leaves her in a nursing home away from her family.  The government is also too detached.  It expects everyone in Colleton to not be too upset about moving as long as they would be compensated.  This reflects Tom’s desire to be like Luke, who was very emotional and intensely passionate about the town and nature that he loved.  In the idea that America is too emotionally detached, Tom seems to separate the South from the rest of the country.  The South is emotional and sentimental which is part of what Tom loves about it so much.  

Another criticism about American that is made in this novel is that America tries to expand and industrialize too much.  The destruction of the town of Colleton is significant beyond the fact that it made everyone relocate their homes and families.  The town had been a charming home because of the connections that all of its citizens had with each other because of the nature, the white porpoise, and the history they had together.  The destruction of the town was also the destruction of their memories and their lives and their friendships.  Tom acknowledges this flaw in America when he says, “As a town, we had made the error of staying small—and there is no more unforgivable crime in America” (607).  Conroy makes the argument that small town life in which people have connections and a relationship with lots of the other residents is the right way to live.