Because persons in all societies must transact much of their enterprise in social situations, we must expect that the capacity to maintain support of the social occasion under difficult circumstances will be universally approved. Similarly, since individuals in all societies and strata must perform tasks, the composure that this requires will everywhere be of concern.
I have discriminated several bases of strong character: courage, gameness, integrity, composure. It should be apparent that these may be combined, producing decorations for the moral life of the community. A wireless operator who politely declines to leave his sinking ship and goes down while coolly improvising repairs on the transmitter, gamely driving himself even though his hands are burned, combines in his deed almost all that society can ask of anyone. He transmits an important message even though his S.O.S. may not get through.
Now I want to return to the suggestion that although properties of character are typically found during fateful moments, they are also exhibited during times of mere subjective fatefulness, when a fate that is already determined is being disclosed and settled. The feelings generated during these moments may require powers of self-control if they are to be managed well. And, of course, this self-possession will be of special importance when others are immediately present, since the orderly interaction they sustain would be jeopardized by the discomposure of the fated one.
No better example can be found than the qualities exhibited by someone about to be hung, guillotined, shot, or gassed. Executions occur under conditions where the audience is quite labile, and where physical cooperation and psychic equanimity are required of the condemned man if things are to go smoothly. The lore of executions consequentially records persons who fought, twisted, spluttered, wailed, fainted, and were incontinent during the moments before their dispatch, proving thus to lack character:
The people of York witnessed another unpleasant hanging when Joseph Terry fought, screamed and bit as the hangman tried to place the noose round his neck. Six men came on to the scaffold to hold him and eventually the rope was forced over his head, but in another struggle the cap fell off. At this moment the platform fell. Terry leaped and managed to get a foot on the edge of the scaffold, clinging to one of the corner-posts of the gallows with his arm. Here he managed to fight off the united efforts of the hangman and his assistants for a minute before they dislodged him. He died with his face uncovered in frightful contortions.112
Conversely, the lore tells of other performers who exchanged pleasantries with the audience, maintained the social niceties, assisted the hangman in adjusting the noose, and generally made matters easier for everyone present. Gallows humor literally does occur, as when an aristocrat, about to be guillotined, declines the traditional glass of rum, saying, “I lose all sense of direction when I m drunk.”113
The procedural difficulties unwilling execution victims can cause, and their general tendency to go to their death cooperatively, demonstrate the desire persons have to exhibit strong character. The condemned man is usually cooperative; he is a good sport; he is not a child; he accepts his losing game without getting into a huff or bursting into tears,114 and can even show a fighter’s heart, disdaining with a sneer to hedge his final bet in the traditional way, that is, with piety, prayer, and a request that those who remain forgive him and be forgiven.115 This kind of grace is the final and awful socialized act, for the con-demned man smoothes out the social situation, supporting the most evanescent part of our social life—its social occasions—just at a time when he can very little longer share in what he is supporting. After all, others are present. Pass through the teeth of eternity if you must, but don’t pick at them while doing so.
Understandably, during the days of public executions, the doomsday conduct of the condemned was closely watched and contributed importantly to his posthumous reputation. Heroes could thus be born, confirmed, and killed while dying. In communities where the possibility of execution is lively, this interest is still to be found, as Claude Brown suggests in his Harlem memoirs:
It seemed like a whole lot of people in the neighbor-hood, cats that we’d come up with, gone to school with, were being cooked in Sing Sing. It had become a thing with people in the neighborhood to talk to these cats’ mothers and relatives, cats who went to the electric chair in Sing Sing. I remember when I was younger, when I was at Warwick [prison] and right after I came out, I had heard about people I knew who had gone to the chair. We all wanted to know what they said because we wanted to find out some-thing for ourselves. We wanted to find out if it was worth it at the last minute, if they felt it was worth it, now that they were going to die.
When I was younger, a few years after Warwick, I wanted to know just whether these cats were really hard. I think most of the guys my age looked upon them as heroes when they were getting cooked at Sing Sing. We wanted to know their last words. Somebody told me that when they cooked Lollipop-Lollipop was a cat who was kind of crazy, and we called him Lollipop because he liked candy—just before he left, he said, “Well, looks like Lolly’s had his last lick.” That was it. Everybody admired him for the way he went out. He didn’t scream or anything like that.116
In reviewing some of those personal qualities that in-fluence the way an individual will perform on desperate occasions, I have suggested a connection between action and character. The relationship should not be pressed too far. Those who support a morality are likely to feel that it can be carried too far, even though society may benefit from the example provided by extreme devotion. It must also be admitted that there are certain positively valued qualities of character earned by sticking to an undramatic task over a long period of time, and, consequently, conduct during any moment cannot contain a rounded expression of the trait. Moreover, during dutiful fatefulness, as when men do battle, the self-distinguishing kind of intrepidity and grace exhibited by gamblers and race-track drivers will not be enough. As William James remarked in his praise of the military virtues, there is a need to surrender private interests and show obedience to command.117 A crisis may call for not only those qualities of character that lead an individual to outdo others and set himself apart, but also for those that lead to his submerging himself into the immediate needs of the whole. Even self-interest may require the disciplined display of quite un-heroic qualities. The money pool player provides an example:
The hustler must restrain himself from making many of the extremely difficult shots. Such restraint is not easy, because the thrill of making a fancy shot that brings applause from the audience is hard to resist. But the hustler must resist, or else it would make less believable his misses on more ordinary shots.118
Here the deeper quality of character is to be able to appear under pressure to have less grace than one has. Finally, as already suggested, there are the qualities of character traditionally associated with womanhood. These oblige the female to withdraw from all frays in order to preserve her purity, ensuring that even her senses will be unsullied. Where action is required to ensure this virtue, presumably her male protector undertakes it.
I have been suggesting that while the individual is in a social situation he is exposed to judgment by the others present, and that this involves their assessing him in regard to primary capacities and to qualities of character. No picture of these reputational contingencies would be complete without considering the folk-beliefs prevalent in society regarding the nature of persons, for these beliefs provide the frame of reference for the trait-judgments made regarding the witnessed individual.
First, with properties of character, unlike primary prop-erties, a single expression tends to be taken as definitive. Since properties of character are called for only on those rare occasions when eventfulness has not been avoided, additional corroborative or corrective manifestations are not immediately likely. Reliance, perforce, will have to be put on a sample of one. More important, it is part of the imagery of these traits that no exceptions are allowed. It is just when he is most tempted to deviate, that the i
ndividual has the most telling opportunity to be constant and thereby demonstrate his character; this constancy-in-spite-of-everything is, in fact, what character is all about. To say that lay imputations are impulsive and unsound, and that over time and across various situations the individual might not, in fact, maintain the character he cur-rently manifests, is quite true but quite beside the point. I am here not concerned with whether a given individual does or does not possess a specified characteristic, but with how notions about character function in daily fife. In our dealings with another we assume that his currently expressed character is a full and lasting picture of him, and in his dealing with us he makes the same assumption as to how he will be viewed. Of course, excuses are offered, accountings given, and exceptions made; but this work is done in relation to the prior assumption that the current showing is crucial, and in any case is often incompletely effective.
Second, once evidence of strong character has been es-tablished, it need not be intentionally re-established, at least not right away; for the moment the actor can stand on his record. He can rely on others assuming that should the right occasion arise he would bear out the implications of his manner and act with character. But this, of course, adds its own danger to moral life, since we tend to operate in terms of optimistic views of ourselves, which would be discredited if ever put to the test.
Third, there is the belief that once an individual has failed in a particular way he becomes essentially different from that moment on and might just as well give up. A soldier indoctrinated with the idea that he has a will and that wills stand up entirely or are utterly broken, may tend, because of this, to divulge everything he knows during enemy interrogation, once he has divulged something.119 Similarly, a bullfighter may be described as having lost all his valor after his first goring.120 So, too, in horse racing circles there is discussion of jockeys “losing their nerve” and either riding poorly thereafter or refusing to ride at all. Exemplary stories tell of famous jockeys who, feeling they had lost their nerve, proclaimed this fact and retired for life from racing.121 Like tales are told of deep-sea divers. And detective fiction often describes tough cops and hoods who receive a severe beating and thereafter never quite have their old spunk. And, of course, there is the common belief that once a man’s price has been discovered and paid, he no longer has any reliability left and might just as well accept bribes that are small but frequent.
Coupled with the belief in the “losability” of nerve, the destructibility of moral fiber, and “never-the-sameness,” there is another: after long having no nerve or moral fiber, an individual can suddenly acquire ‘‘guts” or “heart,” and from that point on continue to have it.
Cayetano Ordonez, Nino de la Palama, could manage the muleta perfectly with either hand, was a beautiful performer with a great artistic and dramatic sense of a faena, but he was never the same after he found the bulls carried terms in the hospital, inevitable, and death, perhaps, in their horns as well as five thousand peseta notes between their withers. He wanted the notes, but he was unwilling to approach the horns to get them when he found the forfeit that was collectable from their points. Courage comes such a short distance; from the heart to the head; but when it goes no one knows how far away it goes; in a hemorrhage, perhaps, or into a woman and it is a bad thing to be in bullfighting business when it is gone, no matter where it went. Sometimes you get it back from another wound, the first may bring fear of death and the second may take it away, and sometimes one woman takes it away and another gives it back. Bullfighters stay in the business relying on their knowledge and their ability to limit the danger and hope the courage will come back and sometimes it does and most times it does not.122
In fiction and myth, redemption is often achieved only in the act that gives the individual strength enough to die for his principles, the decease of the redeemed one serving to maintain the contradictory assumptions that a fall from grace is permanent and that a broken person can mend himself.
Given the belief that character can be dramatically acquired and lost, the individual will plainly have reason for going through with a chancy situation no matter what the likely material or physical cost to himself, thereby manifesting what is sometimes called pride. Interestingly, our beliefs about nerve allow a little outside help in this matter: it is generally felt that a quick drink of straight liquor will allow a man to carry off a difficult action easier and better, and a surprising number of situations allow for such fortification.123
Given these arguments about the nature of character, it is possible to understand better why action seems to have a peculiar appeal. Plainly, it is during moments of action that the individual has the risk and opportunity of displaying to himself and sometimes to others his style of conduct when the chips are down. Character is gambled; a single good showing can be taken as representative, and a bad showing cannot be easily excused or re-attempted. To display or express character, weak or strong, is to generate character. The self, in brief, can be voluntarily subjected to re-creation. No doubt this license is practicable from society’s viewpoint because, as clearly illustrated in connection with gamblers’ “gamble,” the price of putting on these shows is likely to provide an automatic check against those who might be overinclined to stage them. In any case, here is the chance to show grace under pressure; here is the opportunity to be measured by Hemingway’s measure of men.
We can begin to see that action need not be perceived, in the first instance, as an expression of impulsiveness or irrationality, even where risk without apparent prize results. Loss, to be sure, is chanced through action; but a real gain of character can occur. It is in these terms that action can be seen as a calculated risk.124 Statements (including mine) that action is an end in itself must be understood as locutions. The voluntary taking of serious chances is a means for the maintenance and acquisition of character; it is an end in itself only in relation to other kinds of purpose. To consider action literally as an end in itself would be to trivialize and truncate social explanation.
And now we begin to see character for what it is. On the one hand, it refers to what is essential and unchanging about the individual—what is characteristic of him. On the other, it refers to attributes that can be generated and destroyed during fateful moments. In this latter view the individual can act so as to determine the traits that will thereafter be his; he can act so as to create and establish what is to be imputed to him. Every time a moment occurs, its participants will therefore find themselves with another little chance to make something of themselves.
Thus a paradox. Character is both unchanging and changeable. And yet that is how we conceive of it.
It should be no less clear that our illogic in this matter has its social value. Social organization everywhere has the problem of morale and continuity. Individuals must come to all their little situations with some enthusiasm and concern, for it is largely through such moments that social life occurs, and if a fresh effort were not put into each of them, society would surely suffer. The possibility of effecting reputation is the spur. And yet, if society is to persist, the same pattern must be sustained from one actual social occasion to the next. Here the need is for rules and conventionality. Individuals must define themselves in terms of properties already accepted as theirs, and act reliably in terms of them.
To satisfy the fundamental requirements of morale and continuity, we are encouraged in a fundamental illusion. It is our character. A something entirely our own that does not change, but is none the less precarious and mutable. Possibilities regarding character encourage us to renew our efforts at every moment of society’s activity we approach, especially its social ones; and it is precisely through these renewals that the old routines can be sustained. We are allowed to think there is something to be won in the moments that we face so that society can face moments and defeat them.
IX. Character Contests
Starting with the notion of fateful occupational duties, we can view action as a kind of self-ori
ented evocation in ritualized form of the moral scene arising when such duties are exercised. Action consists of chancy tasks undertaken for “their own sake.” Excitement and character display, the by-products of practical gambles, of serious fateful scenes, become in the case of action the tacit purpose of the whole show. However, neither fateful duties nor action tell us very much about the mutual implications that can occur when one person’s display of character directly-bears upon another’s, nor do we learn about the framework of understanding we possess for dealing with such occurrences. For this we must turn to interpersonal action.
Interaction Ritual Page 23