Stratton-Porter, Gene. Keeper of the Bees. 1st ed. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1925. Print.
Keeper of the Bees is a traditional narrative about a 25-year-old war veteran. In the story, we follow Jamie MacFarlane, who has fled a shelter to embark on a new life free from man's walls. Within the story, it is revealed that Jamie, as a soldier, was in due to his country. Jamie felt betrayed by his country when he overheard them say they'd send him to a TB house when he was not infected. He was living a hum-drum life, wasting away at the shelter and not getting any better. He had no enjoyment and no adventure in life. His need for adventure and freedom is revealed when we see Jamie leave the facility and embark on his epic quest to find what is truly valuable in life.
Networking Controlling Values |
Since I did not do any blogs for this book, I am going to go through each of the values on the value graph and throughout, share with you my experiences with the text.
Freedom. Freedom is a thing that we all want to grasp. For Jamie, this is ironic. He is fighting in a war for his freedom and his country, but they don't give him the freedom to go where he chooses. They decide without him in the room, that his fate lies in a TB house, where he is fertile ground for the virus and could potentially die. We see the change in Jamie when he rises and hobbles away from the shelter, even though the shrapnel wound in his chest and his bodily aches want to keep him imprisoned. The irony is that his fight for freedom is not his own, and he can't freely exercise his own freedom. Here is few a quotes from the book that gives the reader some insight on Jamie's past, and how he came to be at the shelter.
"The lad whose mother had always referred to him as 'my Jamie', forgot her teachings and her God, and went out to see how much personal vengeance he could wreak upon all the men who had wounded his heart.......
"He revenged himself thoroughly on many an enemy; then the hour had come when a ragged sliver of filth-encrusted iron had entered his breast and poisoned his blood...
"When it was definitely settled that he could not go back to the service, he was sent home. There another wound was added to the already deep ones that were torturing him. During the three years of his absence, the frail little mother, eaten with fear and anxiety for her only son, made her crossing, and his father, always dependent on her, had not long survived. The small property had been sold to pay for their resting places, and nothing remained in all this world that belonged to him--neither relative nor fireside. Even his friends had scattered and there was nothing for him but to remain a ward of the Government until such time as he was pronounced able to begin life again for himself."
Chapter 1, Page 3
This is extremely ironic the more I close-read. Jamie was selfish and proud. But the way the story was written, the reader is supposed to feel bad for him, and I'm not going to lie, I did feel bad for him the first time I read it. But the first sentence clearly implies that something bad is going to happen! The author makes the mental picture of his loving mother, then quickly reverts to how Jamie forgot her, and her teachings, and her God, and went off to go wreak vengeance. In reading it like that, it feels as though we all have had a similar experience (at least I have). You are raised under a peachy roof with a loving family, and it gets dashed all to hell when you decide to break away from that comfort and security. Then in doing that, you feel alone and deserted. Your comfort is gone, your happiness is gone, and for what? What did you gain? Look at Jamie.
Jamie's Character |
Jamie left his mother and his father to go 'be a man' and fight for his country and his pride. But he left the love and security of his family and people that cared for him, and ultimately went to fulfill his own selfish desires. Which brings us back to the controlling value: Caring for others. What will you gain from caring for others? Love and acceptance. What will you gain from being selfish? Rejection and death.
Since Jamie went on alone, without caring for his family when they needed him, he lost everything he was really fighting for. So now what does he do? Jamie has this wound in his chest and it's not healing, and his only family members are dead. Most people would turn their face to the wall and die, but Jamie is going through the networking values again. He once again wants to attain freedom from all the bad choices he has made, and ultimately get a new life out of the deal.
He's creating his own path.. He's going back to his mother's teachings, and his mother's God, and he's trusting in God to supply all his needs. By leaving the ward, he's creating a new life and he's becoming a new person.
Registers |
Mimetic
At first, when reading Keeper of the Bees, I was reading mimetically. The aesthetic emotion weaved throughout the story made me become a submissive reader and read the text the way the author wanted me to. Feeling bad for Jamie, and wanting to see his life turn around for good was the ultimate goal of the author, and it was easily attained by a first-time reader of the text and anyone with a soul. I say that because once I reread the text and looked at it closer, I began thinking Jamie was a jerk.
I'll use this example. It's almost like being a girl. A girl likes a guy, he seems nice, she falls for him, he breaks her heart. She likes another guy, he seems nice, he breaks her heart too. By the time the third guy comes around, the girl is questioning herself and wondering if this one is going to do the same thing. She's skeptical, and aware, and anticipating the same outcome.
It's just like us as readers. We read a stories all the time, and we draw our own conclusions about the text, and anticipate them, because we've seen them before, like in Seitz's A Rhetoric of Reading, when he writes, "(capable readers) not only have the ability to follow the text, but also the capability to jump ahead of it." Then there comes a point when you've heard it so much, you being to expect the character to realize it too. That's what I was doing while reading this text. I would often say to Jamie, "Don't you see that if you leave everything you love for your own selfishness, you'll end up alone and your selfishness will bring you nowhere?!"
This brings in the transition into the thematic reading.
This brings in the transition into the thematic reading.
Thematic
The whole theme of this story, in my opinion, has a lot to do with the controlling values. Aside from fighting for freedom and caring for others, there are other themes weaved throughout the text that portray a side of Jamie we haven't seen: A father or a caretaker of someone else's household or his own.
The theme that is right in front of your face as a reader is one that says, "Jamie's fighting for his own independence, he's being his own man, he's taking control of himself!"
The second theme that's a little more diluted is, "He wants to be cared for, and care for someone else, but he's also still really selfish."
Cutting even deeper, The third theme is one the reader doesn't have a clue about until Jamie meets the Storm girl, and even then it's in the background. "In his subconscious, Jamie always wanted a wife and someone to spend the rest of his life with." But we don't see that directly written down. It is implied, and as the reader, we are asked to fill in those empty spaces and give Jamie feelings that aren't portrayed on the paper. Which brings us to a synthetic look at the text.
The second theme that's a little more diluted is, "He wants to be cared for, and care for someone else, but he's also still really selfish."
Cutting even deeper, The third theme is one the reader doesn't have a clue about until Jamie meets the Storm girl, and even then it's in the background. "In his subconscious, Jamie always wanted a wife and someone to spend the rest of his life with." But we don't see that directly written down. It is implied, and as the reader, we are asked to fill in those empty spaces and give Jamie feelings that aren't portrayed on the paper. Which brings us to a synthetic look at the text.
Synthetic
Before we look at this quote from the book through the synthetic lens, I'm going to give you some back story. Jamie meets a girl during a storm by the sea one dark night. She confides in him, tells him she has a shame baby and needs a wedding certificate, a ring, and a name for the child. With all hope lost for his own life, Jamie tells her that he'd gladly help her out, since he's going to die anyway. This girl does not share her name with him, and Jamie promises not to seek her out after the ceremony. They agree to meet at a scheduled time the next day to be wed. Here is the quote.
"At heart, Jamie was a gentleman...."
"In taking this care, it occurred to him to wonder where the girl he was to marry was at that minute and what she was doing; whether she would be at the appointed place to meet him and what she would look like, and what she would say to him..."
Chapter 8, page 103
The text says he's a gentleman. It also says Jamie starts to care for the Storm Girl. But by his own doing, he's not allowed to follow her. He's not allowed to find her. He's married to a girl and he's not allowed to be with her. (That sucks!) His own honor comes in to play here, as he promised the girl and himself over his honor, that he would not try to find her. But obviously, from this text, we see that he does want to find her, and he wants to know what she looks like and what she'll say to him and how she'll act. He wants to find out about her. It's a battle within himself that only he can fight, and all we can do is read the text for ourselves and hope and pray that Jamie finds the Storm Girl and his needs are satisfied.
How this text helped me read... |
This text is one of my favorites, and I've read it numerous times. I've seen the text through many different lenses,, giving me a 3D view of the whole story, rather than just seeing the text for what it says and how it's supposed to make me feel. In reading it multiple times, and closely, I have picked up on a lot of things that I didn't the first time around. Some grammatical errors occurred to me as well as the flow of some sentences being longer than desirable.
Overall, I feel the network of controlling values in this story has helped me greatly in understanding the concepts of reading. Once I understood the network, I saw the story in a new light, that made room for new projections about the text, and also opened up spaces for my own feelings to contribute to the story.
In picking up the book, there was a guy and a girl on the front of the book, walking together. I knew there was love weaved in somehow and I just wanted to get to that part and be satisfied. The book was not what I expected the first time around, because I never expected Jamie to not be with the girl he married! I really thought it was going to have a happy ending. As I got farther in the book, I had no idea what was going to happen. I was constantly asking myself, 'Okay where's this girl he's destined to be with?!' 'When will she arrive?' Every time a female character was mentioned by another I felt really weird and suspicious, like 'hm, is this person going to show up later?'I
I was dazzled to see the whole story line come together into a beautiful ending. Looking back at my first projections of the story, I really was a submissive reader. The author wanted me to feel bad for Jamie, and then happy for him. She wanted me to be trapped in the story, unable to put it down. She wanted me to feel shocked, and upset, sometimes angry at the text. And in the end, she wanted me to be surprised, and in love with her book. And by golly, she did it.