Meaninglessness

Lauren Dodds
October 16, 2008

McKibben and Ware would be in agreement that over the years and across generations, significant social changes have occurred and with these changes, meaning has been lost. Ware depicts Jimmy Corrigan as a man that hasn’t found any purpose or meaning in his life. Without any delay, the book’s opening spread shows the reader how small and insignificant Jimmy feels. The earth is just a tiny dot in the universe, and Jimmy is just a tiny dot on the earth. When feeling small and insignificant, a connection with family and/or community can serve as a connection to the world, to provide meaning and purpose to an otherwise unimportant existence. Jimmy’s depressing life, devoid of meaning can be attributed to the lack of meaning that isn’t present in his family and community.

Ware uses Jimmy’s character to show the effects of a broken family. In the 1960’s, the idea of divorce became widely accepted, making “clear that family no longer carried the meaning we’d long assumed” (McKibben 45). Growing up, Jimmy never knew his father. Maybe his mother tried to do her best in raising him but it is obvious that Jimmy always desired paternal role-model in his life as he turned to superman to try to fill this void. The Corrigan family has been broken for generations with members who fail to see the importance of any family structure. Jimmy’s grandfather didn’t have a mother, but Jimmy’s father says he “turned out just fine . . . well sure, he was a little dumb, but for the most part he was an okay guy” (Ware 114). The man and wife who loved each other for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, ‘til death do them part was no longer required. In the Corrigan family this wasn’t even expected and the broken family left a broken individual.

Families are supposed to provide unconditional love and support, which can be shown by spending quality time with one another. Families are supposed to sit down and eat meals together, enjoying each other’s company. They are supposed to go on vacations and take pictures and celebrate the holidays together. To Jimmy’s father, “all that’s crap” (Ware 115). He chooses not only to take no part in family activities, but also to take no part in a majority of his son’s life. The disconnectedness of his family has left Jimmy feeling so alone. His isolation portrays the lack of meaning in his life. Close, stable relationships are supposed to be meaningful. However, this father-son relationship is not close, stable, or meaningful and because of Jimmy’s father’s beliefs on family, there is no potential for this type of relationship. Jimmy is merely one of his father’s mistakes; he has another one that calls every Sunday.

Disappointment is not limited to finding meaning through family, the community has let Jimmy down as well. Ware attacks the loss of community that has occurred over generations. My father and my grandfather would tell stories about how when they were young boys all the kids in the neighborhood would hang out with each other in the local parks and playgrounds all day long. This sense of community has dwindled over the generations as people became more independent of their neighbors and only interested in their own affairs. Ware attacks this lack of community. When superman jumps off a building, passer-bys more or less just step over him and go on with their daily lives without taking a second look. Jimmy’s father speaks about community as if it’s a burden. He complains about seeing people a few times a day. He feels he doesn’t have the time to talk to them and they only want to talk because they don’t have any friends (Ware 127). Jimmy’s father is trying to be an individual in every way. He has disconnected himself from the responsibilities of being a father and a husband and he distances himself from the community. McKibben says that we’ve been “elevated to the status of individuals, and reduced to the status of individuals” (McKibben 46), but Ware is focusing on the latter. This individuality that Jimmy’s father assumed has set Jimmy up for failure. Jimmy cannot connect with others, especially women, and his lack of meaningful relationships makes him disconnected and alone in a meaningless existence.

People often look for meaning by pursuing the wrong things. Jimmy and his father, lacking significant relationships, looked for meaning elsewhere. Jimmy’s father, for one, is very fixated on the television. When he is first introduced, he is engrossed in a televised boxing match at the bar (34-36). When he takes his son out to the Burger Kuntry, their conversation is pretty meaningless considering they should have several years to catch up on and towards the end of the meal, his father suggests watching a movie. Even when developing a meaningful relationship is potentially possible, the father does not want to take the risk. In “Enough,” Csikzentmihalyi would argue that that he has been “confuse[ed] [. . .] into thinking that technology is always the answer, that it enriches our lives in some deep way as easily as it makes them more comfortable and convenient” (McKibben 54). However comfortable it may be, possessions have stripped away real meaning from our lives and “reduced [us] to disengaged consumers of the commodities these devices provide” (McKibben 54). Some people, like Jimmy’s father, are so distracted by these devices that they fail to recognize the emptiness that has consumed their lives.