The Relationship Between Innocence, Experience, and Hope in Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain
How does Garth Stein employ motifs of hope to portray the oppositional relationship between innocence and experience in his novel The Art of Racing in the Rain?
I. F.
Hope can create a powerful sense of autonomy and purpose for oneself. While hope can be a strong motivational tool, past experience with real outcomes can damage one’s ability to convince themselves that their desired outcome is the most likely. Yet, according to professors at Pennsylvania University and San Diego University, while making predictions about the future, “[people] frequently believe that their preferred outcomes are more likely than is merited ” (“Hope over experience: desirability and the persistence of optimism”). This human tendency is illustrated in the 2008 fictional novel The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. Told from the narrative perspective of Enzo the dog, it follows as Enzo attempts to learn and understand his humanity as he prepares for his next life form: a human. As Enzo lacks the typical behavioural traits of a human, he is able to bluntly observe what is happening in a situation, and what needs to be done to make it right. As he witnesses the many obstacles his owner, Denny, faces, Enzo is the unobstructed witness of how Denny is forced to balance his experience and hope for the sake of his daughter, Zoë, in the wake of her mother’s death. This essay will examine motifs of hope to investigate the relationship between innocence and experience in the novel.
The Effects of Hope on the Psyche and its Presence in the Novel
“Unlike optimism, which is simply the expectation of a better future, hope is action-oriented and a skill that can be learned” (“Hope as the antidote”). Further, rather than passively wishing for an outcome to occur, hope is the active desire and pursuit of that outcome. Moreover, hope consists of being able to actively change one’s current state of mind to be more oriented towards the thinking of working towards a future that they wish to be a part of. Throughout this novel, the lines between optimism and hope are blurred, with some characters being completely rational and leaving little room for hypothetical ideas of the future, and others being delusional with their hope, doing irrational, meaningless things for the sake of the desired outcome. In this novel, we can tie this delusion to characters’ experiences throughout life; a child will unequivocally be more hopeful about an unrealistic outcome than an adult who has the experience to gauge how likely that outcome actually is and discern it from being something to hope for rather than something to be optimistic about.
Transformation of Hope
Throughout the novel, we see how hope has a direct relationship with one’s experience levels, although not always in the same way. Denny’s journey of becoming more and more jaded throughout the novel is paralleled by his prior experience with racing; something that he has so much experience with that there is no emotion tied to his decision making, he hopes solely based on facts. This ironic comparison highlights the author’s intention of illustrating how one’s experience with an issue can cause them to be less hopeful about their desired outcome; potentially unrealistically optimistic or pessimistic. These are juxtaposed alongside the innocence of Denny’s daughter, Zoë, who remains mostly hopeful throughout the tumultuous experiences of the adults around her due to her naïvety. Apart from having to cope with the death of her mother, Zoë is largely protected and shielded, maintaining her innocence and therefore her hope that things will work out in the end because she sees her father working for it. Her father consistently makes promises and fails to deliver, yet this does not impact Zoë’s trusting nature of the world due to her young age and the idea that someone she loves could never do something wrong.
Overall, through the exploration of the Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein, it has been discovered how the transformation of a hope motif occurs, and how it impacts the relationship between innocence and experience. The juxtaposition between characters’ naivety impacts how hopeful they are that their desired outcome will be reality. In addition, we see how some characters use obscure, often useless coping mechanisms to convince themselves they are being actively hopeful rather than just optimistic. This is explicitly shown through the characters Zoë and Denny, who have significantly different levels of experience in their lives, which impacts how hopeful they are about their futures. Denny nearly resorts to becoming an alcoholic when life is not going his way, losing almost all hope; whereas Zoë is able to trust in Denny’s word that everything is going to work out for them. This direct comparison between Zoë and Denny is intentional; the author has paired them together through familial ties to continuously remind the reader of this juxtaposition. By doing so, Stein is using characterization and these different perspectives seen through the unobstructed viewpoint of Enzo to highlight how innocence can allow one to have unrealistic expectations driven by blind optimism for miracles to occur. This message is vital to communicate, as the story ends with everything going as Denny and Zoë had hoped, with them moving to Italy and Denny getting his dream job as a professional race car driver. To conclude, the Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein uses the binary opposition of innocence and experience to comment on how one’s amount of practical knowledge can allow them to be hopeful, as in the case of Zoë, cynical, as in the case of Enzo, or hopeless, as in the case of Denny.
Characterisation
Characterization as a Means of Creating Juxtaposition
Hope is an important motif in literature because it is used as a powerful motivator for characters to seek change, and therefore it can drive the plot of a story. In literature, hope motifs are commonly used to explore characters’ perspectives on their relationships, hardships, and life as a whole. Literary hope is driven by the ideology “that positive change—either individual or societal change—can or will occur (“Literary Hope”)”. Without the motif of hope present in a protagonist, whether obvious or not, it creates a lack of direction in the plot. This common, sometimes hidden, motif appears throughout literature and is especially prevalent in Stein’s novel. In the quote, from the protagonist Enzo the dog’s point of view, “[suppressing] the symptom does nothing but force the true problem to express itself on a deeper level at some other time,” Stein is using the narrative perspective as a means of presenting an unobstructed judgement in a novel so rich with emotionally driven decision making (63). By presenting this mediator, Stein is encouraging readers to take some of the emotion out of their conclusions about situations in the book, seeing them discernibly.
We can see this prevalent in the instance of Eve, which the above quote is referencing. In this case, Eve is being blindly optimistic that by ignoring her illness it will go away, while Denny is not nearly as hopeful because he is seeing it from a somewhat removed perspective. Denny knows that optimism will not solve Eve’s illness, and rather knows that for him to hope he needs her to take action. Stein highlights how intense emotion is obstructing many of the characters’ rational thinking, with Eve simply saying to Denny after leaving Enzo home alone for days, “‘I was sick,” Eve said, stepping into the house with Zoë hiding behind her. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’” (55). In this novel, Eve’s characterization becomes symbolic for emotionally driven, irrational decisions. Denny responds to this situation by stating “‘I’ve never heard of anything so stupid. Careless. Totally unaware’” (55). At this point, Denny has been trying to convince Eve to go to the doctor to find out what is wrong with her, so he is frustrated with her irrational behaviour that continuously causes problems for him and the rest of their family. This tension between Denny and Eve is representative of the friction between one’s rationality and their emotional delusion; both vital aspects in how much one is able to hope for a desired outcome.
Juxtaposition of Rationality and Delusion
While Denny is clearly a more rational thinker than his sick wife, we once again see a juxtaposition through characterization with his daughter, Zoë. In the quote “Zoë stood in the door to the hallway, crying,” the author is using this instance of Zoë being upset over her toys being destroyed to convey the difference in innocence between her and her father (56). The innocence of getting intensely emotional over toys contradicts the heavy burdens many of the adult characters face in the novel. Moreover, Zoë’s innocence emphasizes the author’s goal of reminding the audience of how innocence and experience interplay and can determine one’s outlook on life. Zoë’s lack of rational thinking mirrors that of Eve; this explicit comparison between the two is showcasing how their lack of experience with their circumstances is driving them to see things for solely their value of how it makes them feel. For example, what felt like the biggest tragedy in Zoë’s life was the moment of her toys being chewed up by Enzo; depicting her innocence and lack of experience with life tragedies, meaning she is more easily upset by something someone with more experience would most likely see as a minor inconvenience. With Eve, her lack of experience with her illness drives her to think irrationally and make decisions that she would otherwise not make, as she is solely being driven by fear of what she is feeling. Denny is being juxtaposed by his two family members, who are, at the moment, only being driven by their emotions and not looking at things the same way he is. This causes him to become fed up, hitting Enzo for chewing up her toys and calling Eve stupid. Being surrounded by irrational thinkers is leeching onto Denny, making him do things he would not normally do as well.
Perspective
Unobstructed Perspective of Enzo the Dog
As previously stated, the novel is from the narrative perspective of Enzo the dog, who begins with a rather matter-of-fact outlook on life, initially lacking the practical knowledge to know what is good or bad. This blunt perspective is highlighted in the quote “[t]here was something inside Eve’s head that didn’t belong,” in reference to the character with a growing tumour (36). This constant reminder that the point of view is not human allows the reader to look at the unfolding plot in a way that is less pathos driven, and more cynical and discerning. Enzo’s lack of experience as a human allows him to separate truth from hope more successfully and see the evidence without hoping for certain outcomes. This untainted view of the world that Enzo has is strongly contradicted by all of the humans around him, which he observes the behaviour of to prepare himself for his supposed next life form as a human. The quote, in which Eve is speaking to Enzo, “‘[o]nly you can protect me. Please. Don’t let it happen tonight,’” highlights how Eve is using hope to manage her fears surrounding her worsening sickness (127). Although it is delusional to hope Enzo can protect her and could be perceived as optimism rather than hope, since Eve has reached the point of no return with her sickness and will die, she is using Enzo as a means of comfort in her final days. Furthermore, because she knows that she will die, she is willfully being delusional to convince herself that she is acting against her death; she is hoping for a miracle. While Enzo is able to clearly see her declining physical state, Eve is forcing herself to remain positive in order to cope with the unknown; as previously stated, it is human nature for us to think that our preferred outcomes are most likely. From our perspective, it is clear that Eve is merely optimistic and is not doing anything that will evoke real change against her fate; but in Eve’s mind, she is hopeful, because she is doing something that she thinks could change things, even if it will not end up helping her. The juxtaposition between Enzo’s and Eve’s attitudes highlights how a lack of experience can impact hope; for Enzo, he does not experience hope in the same way humans do, and rather sees things for what they are. For Eve, her lack of experience with how to manage this great unknown of if she is going to survive or not forces her to rely on a blind, potentially unrealistic, hope to handle it.
Binary Opposition of Innocence and Experience
The binary opposition presented in the Art of Racing in the Rain between innocence and experience emphasizes the stark juxtaposition between characters’ rapidly changing attitudes. This is highlighted through the quote “...I found Denny sitting on the porch steps with a drink of hard liquor, which I thought was strange because he hardly ever drank hard liquor” (58). Denny, typically depicting his hopefulness through the plethora of logical racing in the rain metaphors, in this quote has turned to alcohol to drown out his doubts. A witness, Enzo simply watches and is confused by his owner’s out of character behaviour. While the character Denny focuses on the positive throughout the entire novel, when he is on the brink of losing custody of his daughter to his late wife’s parents, he collapses and shifts to be more pessimistic about the situation given the power difference between himself and his late wife’s parents. This contrast illustrates how something Denny is initially unfamiliar with, a custody battle, appears hopefully attainable until the realities drown out his positivity. This is contradicted by something Denny has so much experience with, race car driving. In the quote “Denny, in his quick and muscular Porsche Cup Car, slicing through the rain,” it illustrates how Denny has so much experience with something that it enables him to remain perfectly calm while weathering a rainstorm while driving at high speeds (39). Denny’s experience with racing allows him to not have blind optimism, but understand what is going to happen based on the provided evidence and decide whether or not it is realistic to hope for a certain outcome. This is similar to what Enzo does; he absorbs the given information and does not have any bias when analyzing what it means. Rather than being focused on experience and innocence necessarily, racing for Denny is what Enzo does on a daily basis; it is simply having so much experience with an issue that they automatically separate emotion and bluntly accept what the fact of the matter is.
Citations provided upon request.
I. F. is a Mulgrave alumnum who specialises in ceramic and three-dimensional art. Though it is just a pastime, I. F. uses art to express the stress and social complexity that they face in everyday life.