Anger, Rage, and Sam Crow

My copy of the Sons of Anarchy Season 1 DVD arrived a few weeks ago.  Suffice it to say I've spent a lot of time in front of the T.V. watching the bonus material and re-watching my favorite episodes.  The final episode, The Revelator, tied together a strange motif that's been swimming around in my brain for the last couple of weeks:  Understanding rage and violence.

I just finished reading Sherman Alexie's Flight.  If you've read any Alexie, you know that some common themes in his writing are absent fathers, Indian identity, and anger.  Flight is no different.  Alexie filters these themes in Flight through the eyes of Zits, a half-Indian teenage boy with a history in the foster care system, an absent dad, and a dead mom.  This formula works like as a crucible for his anger and frustration and culminates in an act of Columbine-like violence, egged on by a friend (known only as Justice).  At the moment of crisis, Zits is transported into the body and time of another man.  He spends the better portion of the book traveling through time, into the bodies of other men in unenviable positions, from a Civil War scout responsible for the death of an Indian village, to a flight instructor who not only betrays his wife, but gives flying lessons to a terrorist.  What Zits communicates, subtly, through his excessive profanity and dismissive language (lots of "whatevers") is frustration.  Lots of it.  He's frustrated that his mom is dead, that his dad is a drunk, that each person he inhabits hurts other people for reasons that don't seem to make much sense, and that those same people can be kind, compassionate, even heroic.  Zits returns to his body still angry (though not as much), still an orphan, still cursed with terrible acne, but aware of the pain of the world and aware that he has control over how much he causes.  Alexie asks us to try to understand where rage comes from, what its impacts are, and if understanding the rage could lead to the prevention of its consequences.

No, I'm not on Sherman Alexie's payroll, or the payroll of his publishing house.  And I’m getting to a connection with Sons of Anarchy.

We've been thrown into the tumultuous world of an outlaw motorcycle club without a lot of back-story.  So far, we know that the founding members of the MC were Vietnam War vets and that they returned to an ungrateful country.  With almost every episode, we're being fed slightly more of that back-story.  Most obviously, we know that John Teller became jaded with what the MC became - less about social anarchy and more about retributive violence - and that Piney sympathizes with his views and Clay Morrow (and Gemma) do not.  Gemma may be the reason why the MC is in charming at all (and I’m so excited to get that whole story, aren’t you?).

Rage and anger come from somewhere.  They are actually secondary emotions to frustration, and frustration comes from unmet expectations and disappointments.  Unfortunately, for the residents of Charming, the results of frustration are ever-present.  The town is protected by an MC full of members of a disenfranchised group of society:  war vets.  Most are vets from the Vietnam War, but Chibs and Half-Sack represent a new generation of Vets – those who were created because wars were fought over oil. 

But there are a number of other disenfranchised groups who we’ve encountered through the show, whose issues and frustrations are now becoming clear.  The One-Niners, Mayans, the True IRA, and even the League of American Nationalists represent populations who, in one way or another, have been denied resources, cast aside because of the color of their skin, or castigated because of their beliefs.  Because these resources have been denied, these groups have turned against and fought each other.  You could even say that Gemma represents the 50% of the population who has fought for equal rights to resources longer than any of the others:  women.  (For more on this, see Tim Wise’s video).

But there are also members of this cast of characters who aren’t really members of any disenfranchised groups.  Instead, they represent a generation who has had to fight for identity in a world defined by commercialism, the technological revolution, and wars fought not for ideals but for wealth:  the generation on the cusp between Generation X and the Millennials).  Jax, Opie, and Tara.  Neither are war veterans.  Jax, Opie, and Tara all grew up “in the club,” so for them the MC culture truly is their culture and provides them with an identity that people who enter the club from the outside don’t necessarily have. 

The transformation Jax has experienced after the birth of Abel is similar to the transformation experienced by Zits in Flight.  He sees the bigger picture now.  He understands the impacts his actions and the club’s actions have on other people.  He has the will to act in ways that preserve both the life of the Club and the lives of people connected to the Club.  Yet, as we’ve seen this season, Jax’s ability to stop a lot of violence has been curbed at nearly every turn by the Club itself.  Will he be able to turn the frustration of the Club members into something less than anger?  Will he be the salvation of the club?  Will he be the “balm of Gilead?”