God Go Begging by Alfredo Vea Analysis

 The Shed of Masculinity 

In 

“God Go Begging” by Alfredo Vea 

Someone once said,"Your body is not who you are. You shed it like a snake sheds its skin. We transfer the human consciousness between bodies to live an eternal life" (Altered Carbon 2018-2020). In other words, the author argues that the body and its skin becomes a social construction that traps and labels the individual to a form of prison or deadly war zone that the individual needs to outgrown or dispose of if they want to evolve, live or reproduce. Indirectly, the destruction of this label and damage shed is predicated on the transition from the external decay of the body as a shell that must be destroyed into the expansion of a consciousness that would provide an escape among individuals as a form of love and creativity where life is possible instead of violence. In the novel “God Go Begging,” the author Alfredo Vea uses the literary element of setting to imprison the protagonists Jesse and Calvin in a web of death, masculinity, and violence that does not allow them to escape from a deathly zone that targets them by age and gender. Despite the fact that trauma in the war and the ghetto might be perceived as different spaces, the Vietnam war in Jesse’s case and the ghetto for Calvin become a constructed spaces of violence and hyper masculinity that catatrest their own potentiality and creativity to become pawns that are easily disposable by their society. In order to accomplish this, three scenes for each of the protagonists would be analyzed and explained to illustrate how this space “Ghetto or War” becomes settings of oppression that enforced the limits of the individual’s time and space by killing their identity and dreams as a prey that can not elevate themselves from the ground. In order to support this argument, the secondary sources the “Disappeared Men: Chicana/o Authenticity and the American War in Viet Nam” by John Alba Cutler and the poet from Gerardo Mena’s “How to build a Sand Castle” would be used to support the theme that Jesse and Calvin become victim of a web of trauma that captured them from moving forward to love, the future and art itself rather than trauma and guilt. 

Since the beginning of this novel, the trauma of the Vietnam war is illustrated through the characterization of Jesse, the protagonist, who despite of his advance professionally to become a decent defense lawyer in California, he is still a torture soul who it is unable to liberate himself from the PTSD/trauma, anger, and guilt to the actrodicides of a senseless war that he committed as a soldier and law enforcement agent. An interesting scene that Vea illustrated is seen when he states “The one on the end, his name is Hong Trac!” he screamed at

them with his arm extended and his finger pointing.// There were bullet holes in his body but they were bloodless and had been put there long after death. They were meant to simulate the effects of a firefight somewhere out in the bush. In Hong’s left ear there was a narrow rectangular slot; an empty mineshaft that plunged downward through soft cartilage into the auditory canal… But he surely knew me” (Vea 85). Despite the fact that Jesse has been a member of the army and holds a position of power, he is unaware of what is happening in his army against the detainees that are being held in this detention place. This scene becomes like an epiphany moment where Jesse’s loss of innocence in the system of masculinity is charreted to the ground with the assasination of Hong as a cover up of the corruption and human violation of this individuals who should have be exposed to a trial and a series of legal processures to determine his innocence or guilt rather than to be torture and executed by Jesse’s government. Whether Jesse’s participation in this system of vigilante justice is blind, a war with radical beliefs or an overlook due to ignorance, he is not exonerated for his passive participation in it due to his ability to follow order and execute them rather than to think rationally. In a way, Jesse realized that he has continued with the genocide of minorities and marginated group in a legal system that used the law as an enforcement of blind faith rather than to follow a "specific rules and the individual can go free" (Vea 79) by providing his free will and mind to the mentality of a group. Through the use of the french language and his ability to go beyond this duty or role as a soldier, he has asked his superior if he could talk more with Hong. Rather than to perceive him as an enemy and even questioned his involvement and beliefs on this war, Jesse realized that he too is a minority that it is brainwashed to fight for some values that are not even guaranteed to him. 

As John Alba mentions “There is no distinction, here or anywhere else in the novel, no sense of the immense differences across the spectrum of national and racial identities marked together as oppressed” (Alba 589). Despite the fact that the author is not speaking about this novel, the idea that Hong and Jesse are the same implied with the “You same-same me” argument (Vea 79) is controversial because they supposedly represent opposite values of the same conflict. However, they realized that they owned more similarities than what they first thought. In a way, both men are in search of their own sense of “authenticity” away from the colonial violence that supports them financially (enforced by the military and its violence). Rather, they focus on a philosophical discussion about race, politic and even language itself that transformed them from “cockroaches”- which are animal resistance to any climate and

conditions into rebels who relies on the courage to resist the labels and the oppression to surrender to violence and extreme torture of others. The notion that Hong would place his memory of the war as the first thing to be extracted out of him is an indirect reference that he wants to be removed out of this memory first if he could have the chance. The french language, indirectly, became a metaphor of the liberation of the mind that allowed individuals to connect on a deeper level and even convert the existing knowledge into wonder and the acceptance of difference itself as the norm. An interesting notion that this scene reveals is the lack of interest that this society embraced on its minority citizens who have been left to die for a clause that they do not even know and it is like “building castles on the sand while the waves are destroying it and yet the individual still continues with the same repeat motion” even if it is illogical by nature and endless (Mena 10). Similarly, Jesse realized that he has been fighting for a system of oppression and death that it is illogical in nature and it is predicated on the death of its citizens to sustain itself. Because he realized his personal contribution as a young man who killed and remained silent, he has been placed in a complex situation where he can not relax and is silent by the media when he protests about the things that are happening such as torture etc. By not listening to his voice, the media reflects the notion that his voice was useless and muted. By leaving the army, Jesse was inspired that he would reclaim his voice and the sense of identity that has been extracted from him with this violence experience, however, the corpse that he saw reminds him of what could have happened with himself. Rather than to escape his poverty and the ghetto with travel and new experience, he joined the army and plead that he was he was going to be part of this subculture that relies on hypermasculinity and even loyalty, yet, he has realized that he has to left behind his free will, humanity and even identity in order to served in order to be incorporated and accepted. When Jesse decided to leave the army, however, he was left with the guilt of leaving his comrades beyind to be traumatized and to die on the field where there is nothing that he could do to console them and even provide physical support in time of need. 

Despite the fact that Jesse has been able to move on supposedly with his life, he has been left behind with the legacy of the inability to sleep, show emotions (rather than anger in a personal way) and even committed to something rather than himself. In a way, the inability to sleep and cry, he converted himself into nothing or a robot that is not capable of emotions that are normal and therefore he can not release the pain or sorrow that he is experiencing. As a

result, he has to wear a mask that prevents the people around him and himself to release his identity to the public on a deeper level. Because he is not able to be who he really is openly, he is consumed by the trauma and the silence of protecting the others from what he saw and from how the other is going to react if they know what he is capable of. In a way, Jesse became afraid of being dehumanized further and even considered an animal by his loved one. Because throwing his voice forward is the major form of releasing his emotions or confronting them rather than negating them and informing others of what he has experienced, Jesse is forced to muted himself into trauma and his own negative emotions further. When he decided to add alcohol into the mix too, he realizes that he was falling down in a sediment that was crashing with his reality and ability to move forward. 

An interesting scene that Vea illustrates the crashing of emotions that shag the lines between reality and his trauma can be seen when Jesse is driving in the street of California in his car where he is hungover from the alcohol and it is consumed by the memory of the war to the point where he does not know where he is at (Vea 216). Clearly, this is an episode of Post Traumatic Stress disorder where he is temporarily impairment but usually subsides over a short period of time where he is transported to the body of the enemy and his community in the river as a form of life itself that we have made of the world and have bitten his own tongue in sleep. The weird thing is that Jesse realized that alcohol is not the force that awakened him, but rather, made him feel worse and owned the same problem that he had before he drank with his friend. In a way, the thing that allowed him to move forward and be awake from his trauma and nightmare is the exclamation of poetry that allowed him to be aware before he self-destructed himself. In a way, poetry became an artistic force that awakened his spiritus that set a fire inside that made him realize that he is alive and present rather than consumed by the past. As a result, the exclamation of poetry became a prevention method that reanimated Jesse from his trauma and the deadness of his past into life before he accidently killed himself or due to negligence produced by his trauma to hit another vehicle. 

An interesting encounter that revealed the desire of Jesse to move away from his trauma and encouraged the present rather than to live in the past is seen when Vea illustrates “For the first time since infancy Jesse cried. He sat on the couch and sobbed endless, unstoppable tears; a long, belated deluge for the children on the hill, pour les enfants dans l'infanterie, for the infants who have always made up the infantry. At long last, after twenty-eight dry years, he shed his salt

tears for skinny cornelius, indian Jim Earl, the sergeant, and all those boys in uniforms that had littered that hill so long ago” (Vea 308). In other words, Jesse allowed himself to release his emotions and his regret in order to pardon himself, feel better by reconcile his actions with who he is now and allowed himself the chance to finally move on with his life despite what has been taken away from him in the past and present that he has loved or invested in such as Calvin itself. The fact that he has cried for the first time in years is a not a sign of weakness or a punch to his masculinity with the machista notion that man does not cried, but rather, the act of crying become a way to reduce all the stress and emotional repression that he has accumulated for years and the facade of toughness that did not allowed him to escape the tension that have been accumulated in his body. Despite the fact that Carolina has been trying to encourage Jesse to speak about his past and his emotions in order to release his trauma, his body language suggests that he is not ready to be forced to do something by nobody else and it is not a transformation that can be encouraged by anyone, but rather, it is a desire that must be felt by the individual alone even if the other person has the best intentions at heart. In a symbolic way, the act of nakedness that he embraced on is the desire to strip away from his own trauma by embracing the failure of mankind as Eva and Adan did after they have sinned. In a way, Jesse is not interested in the cover imposed by society or to provide some type of excuse for his actions, but rather, he is focused on embracing his sexuality, soul and identity in a transparent and intime way that it is honorable and unashamed even if it is a flaw in society. There is a sense of vulnerability that it is not experience despite of his nakedness, but rather, it is a scene of magic realism where he is at peace with his environment and have become part of it by building himself first and then it is implied that a revelation would follow where the individual would be truth, open and even revealed mask that he has not realized that he had in order to be pure and unrestrained. Ironically, it is the “death” of Calvin who is like a son figure to him that forced Jesse to break away from his clothes and its society in order to embrace a deeper search of himself. In a way, Calvin served to awaken him from his own victimization and anger to embrace the contribution of his persona to the community that he is not able to see. An interesting notion that Jesse seems to realize is that despite the occupation as a lawyer or as a soldier, Calvin would eventually become into another Hong that he could not save whether he plays or not by the laws and its brutality. Jesse realizes that the form to liberate Calvin from his social and physical death would be a deeper form of violence that is artistic and inspirational.

The trauma that Calvin embraced is illustrated in the court, yet, it is predicated on the ghetto as a form of origin. Since the beginning of the novel, Vea illustrated how Calvin has been racially profiled to be the defendant or suspect of this double homicide even if he does not have any criminal record that shows any violent inclination against anybody at such a young age. Rather, the fact that he is uneducated, poor in a marginated neighborhood and even black is used as a form of evidence to incriminate him through the use of words and his voice indirectly. Ironically, the thing that it is supposed to liberate him with is his voice that is used against him in court. An weird scene that Vea created is illustrated when Calvin and Jesse meet and there is a tense dynamic where Jesse is almost like a judge who is about to condemn Calvin rather than to be his defense lawyer. A notion that should be highlighted about the scene is when Jesse asked Calvin “ Did you bother to read it before you signed it? I did not think so. When is the last time you read a book? … Do you illiterate soul is worth saving, Calvin?” (Vea 69). In other words, the fact that he is uneducated and not a reader of his own words and other people’s words becomes the foil that sustent his detention and even further inflict more trauma on his persona at a young age rather than the fact that he was involved in the crime itself of Mai and Persephone. The notion that he is not interested in innocence is addressed, but there is an emphasis that Vea assigned that Calvin become a victim of the social construction of youth as criminals and the labeled and social roles that are attached to them further criminalize them from moving forward in life. Indirectly, the fact that he is uneducated becomes a weakness that society uses against him by adding a progression that does not reflect him, but predicated on him begins violence and clueless about his own words to imprisoned him in a place of violence and minimization before he even arrived in prison. The book, however, becomes a symbol of his own defense and ability to articulate himself in a court of law in order to defend his innocence which indirectly provided another form to live beyond violence and oppression. 

An interesting scene that this novel embraced is the notion of ghetto as a traumatic space where the individual is minimized to release his potentiality and even imprisoned them to before prisoners in their own house by their parents if they want to remain alive or have a chance to exist beyond the former life expectancy of their years based on social expectation for the men of his age. A hyperbole or an exaggeration of the trauma of violence can be seen in the chapter titled “On tourette’s hill” in which Vea mentions that “Every child born on this hill had entered this world without the slightest chance to succeed… Have the rights to an automatic weapon, a

pair of oversized shoes made by the indonesian slave labor, and a personal saint- a celebrity athlete who had “gotten out” (Vea 163). In other words, the legacy of violence and its tool has been passed on by a system of slavery that would captured them to die even before they have reached their destination and that would provided only the ilusion that there is hope outside of their world if they used the body or a talent that it is predicated on games and limits that would not allowed the individual to become successful. Clearly, success is subjective and it is a complicated notion that would vary by every individual, but rather, the notion that Vea intended to transmit is the sense of deadness and even imprisonment that this individual owned that would not allow them to move beyond the box in which they have been placed that it is killing them before they are borned or have life. By Calvin beginning to be part of this children, he too has been killed before he has even begun to live. The crazy thing,however, is that the mothers who are the figure of support and even hope that their children would be releasing their potentiality are the ones who trapped them in a mentality of despair and hopelessness. The mother become the figures who does not condemn their child’s choice to be on drugs, to end up in jail and even run away to experience a father figure through any organization, but rather, they too become objectified figures who were trapped by their own children and the worry of their existence in a system of single mothers that depend on absent figures. Rather than to be strong figures with dreams and ambition, these mothers transmitted the sense of lack of sexuality and identity that they child could see that did not make them happy either, but rather, resentful of being placed in this role. 

Just like the mothers were not happy, the children became resentful of the type of life that they were borned in. Similarly, Calvin who is raised by a mother who just remains watching tv and does not have any ambition, desire to live or explore, and even feel safe enough to reclaim his community is forced to tame down his desires and aspirations to the bare minimum just like his own mother. In a way, the sense of the castle system is embraced where the children would follow the same fate as their fate even before they are borned. The fact that Jesse provided new clothes, education and a sense of family or role model away from everything that Calvin knows in a hostile environment as a prison is interestly. On one hand, one could argue that he did this action of offering a book as a form of distraction so Calvin did not get involved in trouble. On the other hand, he knew what Jesse wanted to ask Calvin to do before he entered the meeting room. A chance that would not save Calvin from the brutality of his society, but also, a chance

for Jesse to save himself and the future children of the hill from the war, the ghetto itself and even their own death that it is predicated on this violence and this children to reproduced it without realizing its consequence on their space and time. 

Despite the fact that we do not know much about Calvin and Jesse’s childhood, it is interesting that they seem to be a reflection of the other by being recruited by a group whether organized or not that focus on hypermasculinity and violence (gangs and army). In a way, they are reflections of each other that seem to be connected by the same oppression of being taken as pawns that are easily disposed by their society without regard for their life or the notion that they served as the John waynes (Vea 164) that were heroic, ruled by their own principles and honorable despite of their status as outlaw rather than being the “John Waynes” who was so consumed by obsession that they end up killing the indian, queer (lesbian) or marginated figures. John Wayne is destined to be alone even after he has returned to save the day and the lady. In a way, Calvin and Jesse are designated to be searched too and would end up alone. 

The ending of Calvin in a shooting by his own gang members including his own brother, yet, his movement away from violence to books and education become a form of resurrection from death itself and violence that transformed them into Gods. God is not used in a religious sense, but rather, the term God is used as a being in charge of their own society to impose change positively and evolution rather than its destruction through violence. In a way, the fact that Calvin is not killed threw the shotgun wound that he received provided a chance to escape the ghetto with a clean or blank slate to start like a baby who can recreate his life without the past affecting him and his ability to move forward like he creates and wants rather than by being defined by the ghetto itself who would not allowed him to escape alive and being considered as a superior being due to his desire for a higher education and better opportunities away from the lack of possibility of the ghetto itself. 

Despite the fact that both men have escaped from the space that produced the trauma, they continued to be victims of it due to their memory of what they have experienced before. In a way, they can not escape their trauma especially because it is a reminder of who they are and how they have become who they are in any space or time, but rather, “ the line from a poem. Perhaps the sound of his own voice- his own mortal, living voice- could chase away the lingering veriges of the night before” (Vea 216). In a way, Vea alludes that the power from this God

comes out of what Alba calls the “disarticulation” of the physical body to obtain power and a sense of formulation that depends on his lack of assimilation and normalization of violence . The novel ends with the image of Calvin becoming alive on the pathologist’s bed while his autopsy was about to begin and Jesse moving to the river in darkness as a form of rebirth that transforms moments of deadness into life for both of them. The notion that Vea is seen to reveal, however, is that music, especially jazz and art becomes a form of healing (or a form of expression that would provide the opportunity to life almost like a bird to forget about limits) in order to turned hope, which are the protagonists itself, into the thing with feather as Emily Dickinson would have implied. Indirectly, the notion of Jazz become a form of “improvisation” (Alba 599) where the individual lives on the moment in an imaginary world where he can feel, add letters, numbers and even notes to feel his life and also innovative himself threw this elements in order to improved the quality of his life and the alteration that the individual adds on it as a form of music that they want creates movement and waves rather than tranquility. As you can see, both Calvin and Jesse become victims of their trauma and their society's imposition threw hypermasculinity institutions or objects to transmit it. However, they were able to move away from it through the use of self love, art such as poetry or music and even their decision to move again from the violence in order to implement a positive change on their society. Rather than to rely on the victimization of their situation, both Calvin and Jesse became searching for their own destiny or identity and form of life despite the labyrinth of violence in war and the ghetto in order to build castles in books rather than destructive platforms of water and sand that needs to be defended threw violence.