Under Joshua’s
Shadow

Author’s Notes: “Literary Themes & Threads”
A fictional story with mature themes and intertextuality of nature, psychology, religion, myth, philosophy, and mysticism contribute to the novel’s linear yet rich plot that reaches for existential higher meaning — if higher meaning exists. Afterall, it is a dark romance novel. The dark themes in “Under Joshua’s Shadow” are essentially a nod to the 20th century authors such as John Steinbeck and George Orwelll, who wrote about bleak and harsh realities of the human condition Post-World War II. I aimed to explore characters who inherited a generational consciousness of doubt from the 20th century — a skepticism of faith in human goodness, morality, and the survival of the human species. That said, I am working on a sequel that attempts to reconsider that perspective. In this novel, there are variable levels of introspection among the two main characters, Tom and Joshua. In different quests for liberation, one character reclaims his spirituality, while the other discerns it. Characters dig deep or reach beyond themselves as they experience budding needs, grief, floundering sense of purpose, and fleeting transcendent experiences, only to be held back by laws of nature which remind them of their human tolerances as topics of doubt and faith intermingle among ambivalence and denial. There is a lot of language to consider in this novel as images, metaphors, subtext, symbolism, and repeated motifs reveal what the plot cannot explain alone. Although narrative builds up around clearer interactions, character development is not always central to the plot. It is essential to compare and contrast details in this novel to make your own inferences about character development. Also, the plot unfolds around allegorical references, biblical names, animal symbolism, and Jungian archetypes which possess heavy historical/cultural worldviews. I wanted to follow old worldviews to discover truth, so I mixed Plato’s strong narrative aesthetic for logic, and added Aristotle’s dramatic aesthetic with tons of visuals propped up for readers to discover meaning and inferences. I find it enjoyable when readers share with me their own web of meaning through motifs they personally identify with. For example, water is a classic motif throughout the novel. I thought about the traditional use of water from literary readings when water represented a metaphor for turning of tides or rising and falling. Slave narratives described how water could both contain and set one free crossing a river to escape slavery. In biblical terms, water was used to represent the source of life and spiritual cleansing. Whether character development exists within a traditional plot and dialogue, it is important to understand character development also unfolds around nontraditional explorations of archetypes, myth, and symbols. While writing this novel, I thought about literary theory from my literature courses at Chaffey College and the University of LaVerne. Classical concepts on how to organize and understand literature allowed me to better understand reality, but literary theory also made me aware that complete understanding is not possible because there is always more to learn. When I considered traditional concepts like logic/factual exposition, I also wanted to create a believable fictional story, yet I also wanted to produce a contemporary novel in which characters experience big feelings within a multicultural and multidimensional modern reality. For example, I intersected Plato’s ladder of love with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, as I explored the pyramid theories of higher purpose. Although linear versus multi-connected realities do compete for space in my story, I structured a story that certainly made sense to readers, with minimal use of foreshadowing, flashback, excessive narrator interference, or jarring surreal shifts in scenes. You will notice a narrator usually chimes in at the end of each chapter rather than throughout the story. But human fantasies and dreams are major themes in my novel, for they represent subjective moments of consciousness, so there is an intersection between a Platonian order within the landscape within a humanistic perspective in which lines between reality and imagination get blurred. Juxtapositions between characters and events represent competing interests, duality, or contrast between oppositions, and you will notice polarity reinforced in scenes about mountain altitude(ascent/descent), earth & sky, seasons, liquids, day & night, to more ephemeral images like light/shadow, color, temperature, such as when Tom wakes up in his bedroom on a chilly autumn morning. Such conditions are not necessarily binary, as there is no hierarchy in nature, rather spectrum and gradient is the rule. In other words, I was attempting to feel a blend over uniformity. In a world where religion says God is nature and scientific precepts say nature operates by laws, neither side explains the exceptions or the outliers, so while religion has angels to visit earth and nature has birds to flee it, characters are left feeling the gaps, as religion does not need the earth for ascension, and nature does not need theology to survive. Yet, it is at the center of these opposing views, gravity is always pulling or pushing on everything at once, and characters evolve within that singular gravitational vortex. Ironically structure or a built-up story environment, which is crucial to stability, ultimately serves memory, but my characters grapple with their memory or anxiety of budding new memories. The questions allude to my characters, do they burn down memory for change, or do they carry memory into the future? There’s a give-and-take in a relationship. When thoughts of ‘we grew apart’ feed the mind, then characters need to discern how love involves self-change and reciprocity. Does choosing love involve rejecting the memory of the old landscape, does it involve building upon it, or moving away? Do you reject your partner because of the past, or do you cling onto them while you fear the future? Space can be anchored apart between lovers who grow in the solidness of earth where deep rooted unspoken insecurities remain hidden in the darkness of soil. Perhaps the shoot grows upward toward the light, but what happens when anxiety turns to anger and thwarts required growth, or worse, uproots love? This is a metaphoric question of course and Plato believed a good story needed guidance according to logic to avoid emotional speculation and social disorder. I don’t think Plato would not have approved my poetic attempt to link emotions to the plot. Linking such emotions and unfounded concepts would destroy social order. But it’s important to note, the metaphor is a representation of two lovers who exist outside of that social order where wind literally blows them about. Weather plays a role in my novel as a way to show how it impacts characters. Hence, weather is a representation of systems like religion which can exert power over people. Plato believed in absolute truth and beauty, yet he could not consider, from a modern perspective, how truth and beauty can be depraved by states of anxiety, grief, poor esteem, or an overthinking sensitive bleeding-heart. Perhaps Plato was right to believe that a beautiful song should always end on a high note, but he could not foresee how modern lovers will continue to test each other’s worth all the way to the bitter end or worse question their own self-worth, as characters feel pressure to seek truth and beauty isolated and alone when love requires closer proximity and communication. In the pursuit of building closeness, in two different geographical settings, my main characters forgot earlier promises and fears. For Plato, the highest form of love did not grow from a beautiful yet false sentiment to one person for eternity; instead, true love grew when it is revealed in a universal sense – when one see’s beauty in all people and things. So, in spite of the dark romantic undertones, such as bloody scenes throughout the novel, I want the dark tones to make the reader consider universal connections between life and death, acceptance and judgment, trust and rejection, trauma and resilience which ultimately links my attempt to for the reader to see how attachment (salvation/judgment) and integration(liberation/self-wholeness) work against and for each other. Deviation from social judgment, allowed me to accommodate two male characters with their own unique partialities, to arrive to their own beauty for intimate healing, which was Plato’s highest goal for all people. Now, to influence character development, so despair would not anchor them down, evolving intuition pushed the plot forward. Sadly, religion looks down on intuition. So, each character poses variable degrees of agency on their own terms to learn how to love their inner landscape just as much as they admire their outer landscape. But when characters find love through a sense of home, it also rationalizes a past condition or a past transactional guarantee that contradicts to becoming fully who they are. Characters intuitively realize, perhaps too late, they only find the singular self at the end — only after the guarantee has expired. Thus, it was my attempt to write a story apart from the typical queer male genre often about coming out within a landscape of sex, drugs, and rock-n- roll, in replace of a story about queer spirituality. Therefore, sexual identity is not used as spectacle; it is used to enhance intimacy separated by walls of incarceration within the context of individual growth and partnership, and how the two interplay within that separateness outside of social constraints. Individuation or transformation can break but it does not necessarily mean love is broken. It simply means love can be broken and healing at the same time — a sort of restorative justice for love. The question is, in this novel, will justice prevail?