OTHER COMMENTS ON DOCTOROW’S WAKEFIELD (SPOILER ALERT).

OTHER COMMENTS ON DOCTOROW’S WAKEFIELD (SPOILER ALERT). Several commenters, including my wife Mary Jane, found that the key to Doctorow’s Wakefield was his competitiveness. A commenter here said that, “I think the bigger issue was that Wakefield didn’t know who he was outside of competition; he only valued what other men valued, and that pertained to his wife, but also to his job and his home.” The result is a Wakefield who steps out of the rat race of contemporary suburban life. and then, when his competitive instincts are reawakened, steps back in. In terms of reverting to nature, Clifford Garstang had the brilliant insight that Wakefield for a period becomes like the raccoon Wakefield sees at the beginning of the story (“…eating out of garbage cans, only emerging at night…”) Finally, B.A. Tsao was reminded of another early writer besides Hawthorne and Thoreau, likening Wakefield to Rip Van Winkle.