WHO AM I ?

The Star Splitter is perhaps my favorite of Robert Frost’s blank verse poems. In this narrative poem the protagonist, Brad McLaughlin, loses his interest in farming and in stead falls in love with the night sky.

He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And spent the proceeds on a telescope
To satisfy a lifelong curiosity
About our place among the infinities.


I think it is interesting that the protagonist in this story bares the last name of McLaughlin. The name contains the word Laugh. It is as if the writer wants us to see this character as laughable, or, perhaps Mr. McLaughlin’s obsession is ludicrous, ridiculous, and, yes, laughable. Any man who would burn his own house down so he can by a really good telescope, is a man deeply obsessed with something.

He had been heard to say by several:
`The best thing that we're put here for's to see;
The strongest thing that's given us to see with's
A telescope. Someone in every town
Seems to me owes it to the town to keep one.
In Littleton it might as well be me.'



As the story progressed Mr. McLaughlin and the speaker in the poem went on to spend many nights together studying the stars and talking.

Bradford and I had out the telescope.
We spread our two legs as we spread its three,
Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it,
And standing at our leisure till the day broke,
Said some of the best things we ever said.


The poem ends with some philosophical reflection.

We've looked and looked, but after all where are we?
Do we know any better where we are. . .?


As I take on, what well could be my final quest, I want to do what Brad McLaughlin and the speaker in this poem do, I want to pause and give my life, and life in general a little pensive consideration. After Mr McLaughlin’s extreme choices, after spending night after night looking into the soul of the universe he asks, “. . . where are we?” After giving up his farm, and burning his house down, and after spending hours, nights and years looking at burning orbs suspended in the vastness of space, he wonders if it was worth it. “Do we know any better where we are. . . ?”
If you want to feel free and be free you have to cast of the chains of outer assessments. We must demythologize and demystify ourselves. Eric Hoffer once said that we know ourselves “by hear-say.” That is the problem. We know who we are “by hear-say.”

When I think about it, I realize that most of the literature I like is connected some way with the question, WHO AM I?

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan deals with an Asian American with a strained relationship with her mother, and by hearing the mother’s story she understands both her mother, and gains insight into herself.

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton a first novel by a Tulsa high school student . The writing is a little rough, and the plot a little thin, but this is a great novel for teens, it is a great book to get reluctant readers to read, and it speaks to the adolescent need to define and establish their adult identity.

The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank This young lady found herself living in a world gone crazy, existing under a constant threat of arrest, deportment, and death, and nothing focuses your mind on what is important in life like the possibility of dying in a concentration camp.

Breaking Away (movie) One of my favorite movies. The past industry had been cutting stone for construction, but most of the cutter jobs were gone. You may think it is about a budding bicyclist, but it is really about a group of guys, and one guy in particular trying to carve out

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie (also movie version, Smoke Signals) This guy is one of the finest writers in American, and, as a native American he is truly an American writer. Like The Odyssey and Huckleberry Finn this is a road trip by two frienemies to pick up Victor’s father’s pickup truck and his cremation. Along the way, experience after experience both boys discover who they are and how they relate to one another, their fathers, the REZ, and the world.


If you are so inclined add your own books, movies, and poems that revolve around self discovery and the quest to answer the question: WHO AM I?