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lated by the clamorous freeway that has obliterated its view, the
house symbolizes the modern as the discontinuity between past and
present.
The ironies of idealism pervade public and private life. The cor–
ruption of governments is matched by the bland ruthlessness of the
radicals who oppose them. Police knowingly detonate explosives in a
van containing prisoners and hostages . The prison-break planners
use Theo as a "front" without her knowledge . Intolerance and intimi–
dation fiourish in all classes and colors. A jingoistic black woman
refuses Ouida a driver's license because she pronounces the eye–
chart letters with an accent. Ouida's "benefit" a lovingly assembled
feijoada, is ruined by a multiracial group of rioters and petty
criminals .
Ouida's vision of cosmic interconnectedness provides the novel's
most dramatic irony.
"'If
spiritual harmony included everybody, it
could mean perfect peace in the universe,' Ouida said . 'Even the
arrival of eternal light. One disorder - say in the kidneys -leads to
another . . . and thus to all things, all things being connected .'"
Agrees Theo, "'That's in a way why I'm going to Fontana to help
those poor men.'" But control of one's own fate or the world's is an
illusion. Ouida, aspiring for all to universal goodness, finds instead
the "aspirador," the vacuum cleaner that becomes the symbol of her
defeat. With the failure of her feijoada, she gives up the attempt to
be free, exchanging for the servitude of Brazilian tradition the
domestic slavery of marriage to a black man who - Ouida's touch of
racism - is too dark to be her social equal. The inflexible logic of her
idealism drives Theo to her fate as one of the "poor creatures , poor
prisoners everywhere ." For Marybeth, the irony is gentler. Through
exile and daily terror, she has achieved expiation. Recognition
becomes deliverance, and the contending corruptions of authority
and rebellion suggest the morality of her retreat to private
happiness.
As in Johnson's other novels, women are the primary actors.
Marybeth's Chuck, in his moral and sexual perfection , is too good to
be true . Theo's eminent brother is passive and indifferent, jolted be–
latedly into awareness of the human condition. Ouida's suitor, Mr.
Griggs, has been cheated by the Bank of America of money painfully
earned for his crippled child. But the sins of corporate America do
not make Ouida's capitulation any less ironic.
Johnson's endings invite criticism: the finale of
Shadow
is reduc–
tive ; after repeated forebodings , the catastrophe of
Lying Low
may
