Rebel Without a Cause

by Robert M. Lindner

  When I get out maybe I’ll get married. Maybe and maybe not. I don’t think so. If I spend all my time with my work like I am doing now I don’t think I’ll get married …

  THE TWELFTH HOUR

  Well, I had another dream last night. I dreamed that I was on my bed half-asleep, and somebody was pulling the covers over me, shaking me I guess. That person was my mother. I got up and it was the same cell, the same cell I have now, everything was the same, only the blankets were different than we have here. So I got up in my cell and I got over to the wash-bowl and started washing myself, and I looked through the window in my door and right across the hall was Perry’s cell. His light was on and he was washing himself. That’s all I remember.

  L: ‘Can you associate to any of the objects or people in your dream?’

  I don’t know. Everything seemed the same in my cell as when I get up in the morning. The only thing is that Perry don’t live where I live and nobody wakes me up or shakes me like that. The only person that did that was my mother; many times my mother would wake me up like that in the morning at home. The blankets in the dream were like those at home, soft quilts. Everything was the same with the exception of the blankets and my mother shaking me. When I got up the cell was the same and through the window I saw the light in the cell right across from me and Perry was in that cell washing. I could see him combing his hair and wiping his face. I remember somebody waking me, nobody calling me but somebody shaking me. The person was my mother and then when I got up no one was there. There was nothing changed in the cell. I think I was sleeping in the same bed in my dream. The dream had only two persons. My mother and Perry.

  My mother was always kind to me. O, she gave me a beating every once in a while, but that was alright. Sometimes when I asked her for money and she wouldn’t give it to me I would try to get on her nerves by walking up and down. She was always kind to me and my sister, like any mother would be. She always held up for my side when my father said something to me or when he talked to her about me.

  Perry is a friend of mine, an acquaintance, that’s all. I probably will never see him again after I leave here. I know him for a long time but I never dreamed of him before. Our association has always been pleasant. O, he didn’t talk to me for a while because he doesn’t like some of the people I hang around with, but now I get along with him alright. I always used to get along with my mother too.

  L: ‘Can you think of any connection between Perry and your mother?’

  No, I can’t, but I don’t know. I like this fellow Dobriski very much. He reminds me of my mother, the wrinkles around his eyes are just like my mother’s. He’s short but well-built, with broad shoulders. His hair isn’t like my mother’s but his eyes, the wrinkles around his eyes, remind me of my mother.

  I don’t know the color of Perry’s eyes, but Perry’s hair is dark and the muscles on his arms are soft like my mothers’. Once in a while I have seen my mother look so downhearted and blue and sorrowful that I was sorry for her. When she looks at me that way it makes me want to cry. Perry is the same way; he looks so pitiful and helpless. My mother would tell me not to hang out with kids who got in trouble a lot. She wanted me to keep away from them. Perry is the same way; he always tells me to keep away from certain people, that I might get in trouble hanging around with them.

  Many times I put my arms around my mother, always when I wanted to get some money out of her. I used to tell her how beautiful and young she looked. Finally she got wise to me and right away when I started doing that she knew I wanted something from her. But I never put my arms around Perry, not that I know of. Perry wants me to study harder and so does my mother. My mother is very religious and Perry isn’t. I don’t know what they like that would be in common. Perry hates coffee and my mother drinks a lot of it. My mother is mostly quiet but when my father argues with her sometimes she answers back, but not often. Mostly she’s quiet, what you would call the timid type. Perry doesn’t speak to anyone; he holds his head down most of the time. My mother reads a lot of books, mostly love stories. Perry reads books too but no love stories.

  A lot of times I am half asleep when eating breakfast and Perry hits me in the ribs or punches me in the arm to wake me up. When he eats he holds his hands up by his face and mother does that occasionally too. She talked to me about biting my fingernails and Perry does the same thing.

  My sister Marie doesn’t look like mother at all. She has brown hair, is quick-tempered and ready to get in a fight or argue all the time. My other sister has blond hair. My father has black hair; but he’s bald mostly.

  Perry’s nose is almost the same as my mother’s, except my mother’s is broader I guess, and she is shorter and stouter. I used to see my mother look so pitiful and occasionally Perry looks the same way; he looks down to the ground, his face so long, looking so blue.

  I guess Dobriski reminds me more of my mother than Perry. He’s about the best friend I have in the world. We have been friends for three years now. He pulled me out of a lot of arguments. He’s never underhanded; never made any underhanded advances. The other day he motioned to me in the mess hall to come out and see him. He wanted to see me for something so I hurried up and went out. He told me he quit school because he had an argument with a teacher, and the only reason he wanted me to come out was that he wanted to look at me. We talked for about an hour.

  I used to call him Gooch. Once I saw that name in a funny sheet so I put the name to him and he calls me the same thing. That’s kind of childish.

  My mother used to like that Amy I went with in the country. She had black hair and eyes like Perry. They were very beautiful. My mother liked her very much, she wanted the affair to go further, I guess. This girl was religious and went to all the church activities. I guess that was one reason my mother liked her so much. I put my arm around her once but I never kissed or touched her …

  THE THIRTEENTH HOUR

  During the last few days I have been having some trouble. Some of the fellows are talking. For instance, yesterday we were in the mess hall eating and a baseball player, a fellow by the name of O’Grady, he tells me I am losing weight. He insinuates by that kind of talk that between me and Perry there is something up, and all the people like that seem to believe like he does. My friends won’t believe it. So I had some arguments and finally when I cursed them out a bit they came around and saw my point.

  Perry was in one of his moods today. When he is in one of those moods he doesn’t speak very much: when he is in those thoughts he is moody, downhearted, kind of pitiable. He don’t pay attention to anybody, like as if he was in a daze. Yesterday morning he didn’t seem very cheerful, in the evening he laughed and smiled a little, today he was very bad.

  Every time O’Grady sees me he makes some nasty remark, the kind of remark I don’t think he should make. My friend Dobriski gets in a lot of arguments like that too. When he did and I was around I’d talk to him and calm him down, kind of twist it around and get him out of it. He likes to talk about baseball. I keep quiet because I don’t like this talk about baseball all the time: it gets monotonous. They talk and they talk and every second word is some cuss word to describe themselves or some other fellow.…

  All of the flowers are now coming up into bloom. They look so nice and pretty, and all of the birds and pigeons are all around the lawns in the morning. I get up as early as five, it’s real nice and cool then, and I look out of the window. There’s a bunch of birds around all the time and with them something is always going on, they’re fighting or making a racket, especially the pigeons. Everything is so nice and fresh. I can hear the bugle blowing when they bring up the flag; it sounds nice and far away.

  The calendar tells me that this is the middle of August. The months go by fast and there are only twelve of them in a year so the years go by.

  Sometimes I look out of the windows at night and see the moon shining and the clouds around it. It’s pretty hard to believe that the moonlight is nothing but reflected sunlight. The univer
se must be so vast: man’s mind cannot penetrate it; millions and millions of miles. It shows that man is still very small. And the earth just keeps on turning; and the stars. It’s very hard for some people to understand that the earth and the apple that falls out of the tree have the same amount of gravity on each other. They just see the apple fall out of the tree and they argue with you and think you are crazy. I used to argue a lot with fellows about how the universe is and things like that. Now I just back out of such arguments.

  I like to read Boat Magazine. I just read it and look at the different boats. I like to go sailing. I’d hate to settle down in one place and just stay there all my life. I’d like to do this: buy a boat about sixty feet long, live on it somewhere along the water, somewhere in the north in the summer and the south in the winter, and have the work I want to do, all my books, my own library, and one other fellow on the boat with me to help take care of it. A boat doesn’t cost much. I’d like to have one when I wanted to go somewhere. If I wanted to go to New York I’d go to New York: if I wanted to go to Florida I’d go to Florida. I’m not interested in making money, big cars and all that. I guess what most of the time I’m doing is dreaming, that’s about all. I’d like to have a life of leisure. Of course I’d have to work, but I also want to do some of the things I like to do. I don’t want to tie myself down to one place and know that I have to stay there the rest of my life. That’s one thing I dislike about this place. You have to do certain things at certain times. If you have stockade you have to stay out there, and you have to stay there in spite of the hot sun. Still I’m glad I’m here or I wouldn’t be learning as I am. Of course, I haven’t got very far, haven’t even taken the first step on the ladder. But I’m going up. It looks so high up, so very far.

  Dobriski kids me a lot; calls me dumb and stupid, and I make believe I’m sore at him and he laughs. The other day he motioned me outside. “I don’t want to see you for nothing important,” he said. “I just want to look at you. I haven’t seen you for about a month.” Then he told me how thin I am. Everybody loses weight in the summer, I guess.

  Sometimes I get angry with him when he comes around with another fellow that lives in his cell-block. I chase them away. I want to have nothing to do with this fellow, I don’t like him; I don’t even want to talk to him. He irritates me. Yesterday Dobriski was playing ball and he came over to get a drink of water when I was going in. He said I was acting kind of funny. He said, “You don’t want to talk to anybody; you walk around with a long face; you don’t notice if anybody walks past you. I haven’t seen you smile or have a good laugh in a long time.” I think he just imagines it.

  One time we were sitting in the dugout, me and Perry and Dobriski, and another fellow came over. Dobriski sat down by me and put his arm around my neck. I was sore at this other fellow and I didn’t even want to see him, so I chased them away. Perry got sore because Dobriski put his arm around me or something. He said he didn’t like it.

  I always like to go out Sunday mornings, though, because they have the radio playing music. Perry likes music a lot too, but he can recognize any song that’s being played and I can’t. He says music is like a hot poker that singes your heart and soul.

  I hate a lot of the fellows in here. I like to be by myself. O, I know them. I’m getting so that I don’t want to speak to any of them and I don’t want them to speak to me. I’d rather be alone somewhere, all by myself for a few hours. Yesterday afternoon I was alone for about an hour. I started thinking about some philosopher who wrote that a lot of people have a liking or dislike for some other people because, well, they say, “We would go and pay them a visit if they didn’t have that vicious dog in their yard.” Most fellows I guess are like that in here. One fellow says he’s a friend of mine but he told a couple other fellows what a fool I was. I told him I knew what I was doing, so he started cursing me and called me all kinds of names; so I started wondering how true this philosopher’s idea really is; certain people are just like a little vicious dog in the yard that bites you.

  Yesterday Perry was telling me about genius. I don’t remember anything he tells me different times. Thoughts go through my head and I don’t pay any attention to what he says. When he got through I didn’t know what he said and I told him so. He said he knew it but kept on anyway.

  There are so many different people in here. You can almost tell the states they come from by the different customs and habits they have …

  THE FOURTEENTH HOUR

  Sometimes I talk and talk and talk and don’t realize what I am saying. It reminds me of the times when I am alone with somebody and I say something and they don’t know what I am talking about. I talk to myself a lot and I switch around to different subjects and think about them but when I try to remember the first subject I can’t.

  I talk about different things with people, mostly trying to repeat things I study. When I study and find something interesting and then go on studying, I can’t remember what I studied five or ten minutes before. I’m getting some information about Mexico now, something about their political and economic and social conditions before and after the revolution.

  I moved to another cell last night. There was an old fellow in there before me who had crabs and all of the other guys were kidding me about it today. I suppose it was just my imagination but last night I felt all the time something crawling over me. I didn’t sleep very much. All the fellows were kidding me and laughed: they saw that I hadn’t slept much and they said I’d been chasing crabs all night. I did sleep for a little while, though, and I woke at about four. I heard people talking outside my cell window.

  Thinking about a boat now reminds me of a submarine, how it goes down in the water and comes up. It is made for only one thing; to destroy. It produces nothing. These boats cost millions of dollars. War is bad. These sea battles, the boats run right through the water, through everything and over everything. They’re the things man made to destroy himself. It usually ends up not by the man being destroyed, the man who made and built these objects. They’re used to destroy other men, not himself. I can see the picture. A lot of these men swimming in the ocean, their heads bobbing up and down, and the boats going over them and past them. I don’t think there will ever be any stop to it. They’ll always keep on like that; but nature is a funny thing. When a pack of animals is together and one violates the code it is killed or ostracized, but man kills regardless. So does the rat. I always think that man and the rat are the two worst animals in the world. I think even a snake is better than either one. A snake goes on across the path and gets into the bushes and keeps going. One big country starts a war with another country, over a river or a mountain or a canal, and they fight over it, and they keep on fighting for thousands of years to come, over a piece of ground and some water. They shoot hell out of each other and the best one is the one who wins. All the way back in history there have always been wars over something, more territory, more land, markets, or something. These countries always are in trouble, always have something going on. The people of Mexico are always in the middle of a revolution, fighting, fighting, for nothing. A couple of men come into power; they take the money that they want; then they leave. It’ll be like that through the ages. There’s nothing new about it; it’ll never grow old. As long as people are like puppets it will be that way.

  I remember when I was in grammar school I had some puppets. I know how they work. You pull a string; they dance; they do anything. The only difference with people is that the strings are not visible; it’s hard to know where it comes from, what makes them act that way.

  I like to be alone, by myself. I find that although I don’t know anything, I’m my own best company. I’m happiest when I am alone. I talk to myself and discuss things and I always have the same idea, one opinion of everything, so I don’t do much arguing with myself. When I am alone I just close my eyes and let things go by.

  This fellow Gordon is a tough kid. He thinks he’s a big man because he gets in the boxing ring with so
meone. I think it’s alright; it’s a good sport; it develops their bodies; it makes them quick on their feet and teaches them how to use their hands.

  I don’t like to pick fights. I’m going to have one I’m afraid, and if I do I’m going to hurt the other fellow pretty bad. I don’t want to fight: I might hurt somebody and I don’t want to hurt anybody. As far as I’m concerned nothing is important enough to fight about, either here or anywhere, unless it’s for sport.

  I don’t know very much what I think about, but usually something I have read in the past will come to my mind and I think about it and turn it around and change it and twist it around to see if I can get something out of it. One time I was thinking about the iron ore that Germany is getting from Sweden, and I kept thinking how they can get the ore out if the railroad it is carried on is destroyed. I thought and thought and finally I decided that the only way they could get it out would be by airplane. I told another fellow about this and he said I was crazy, so now I don’t tell people what I am thinking about. I just think and let it go at that. Most people I know wouldn’t understand what thinking is anyway. I guess they haven’t done any of it. Most of them talk about baseball and then some more baseball.