In the novel Moo, Jane Smiley uses Dean Nils Harstad, Marly Hellmich, Dr. Gift, and Chairman X to emphasize how, when there is a conflict between personal belief systems and workplace practices, individuals will sacrifice their morals to reduce the amount of time or effort required to achieve their professional or personal goals. The belief systems discussed can be either religiously, politically, or economically centered. Using religious symbolism, Smiley utilizes the sacrificed beliefs of the above characters to symbolize how when administrators and educators take shortcuts to line their pockets, the American education system suffers. Dean Nils Harstad is the prime example of a character who takes harmful shortcuts, as his interactions
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However, she does not have the power or influence to achieve her happy ending, which is the primary reason that she agrees to Harstad’s harebrained plan to marry even though neither of them truly love each other and there is an age difference of twenty years between them. The article “Serpents in the Garden,” mentions that, “passionate pedagogy in any context is likely to produce erotic feeling” (Carens 10). This is very much the case with Marly and Harstad as Marly is, in every sense, societally inferior to Harstad, with regards to monetary wealth, power, education, and even religion. Marly’s main goal is to make something of herself and she views her engagement to Harstad as a way to ‘marry up’ even though emotionally and ethically she is one of the most honest characters in Moo. Unlike Harstad, Marly will not do anything to move up in the world and, after realizing both her self-worth and Harstad’s almost crazed plan, moves on to San Francisco to start over. Marly moving to San Francisco and realizing that there is no shortcut to success can be interpreted as a symbol of rebirth, a common trend in religious symbolism. This symbol of rebirth supports Smiley’s claim as Marly represents how if the corrupted American education system was to realize the error in its ways and fix these mistakes, it would be possible for the American education system to be reinvented and become great once
However, she does not have the power or influence to achieve her happy ending, which is the primary reason that she agrees to Harstad’s harebrained plan to marry even though neither of them truly love each other and there is an age difference of twenty years between them. The article “Serpents in the Garden,” mentions that, “passionate pedagogy in any context is likely to produce erotic feeling” (Carens 10). This is very much the case with Marly and Harstad as Marly is, in every sense, societally inferior to Harstad, with regards to monetary wealth, power, education, and even religion. Marly’s main goal is to make something of herself and she views her engagement to Harstad as a way to ‘marry up’ even though emotionally and ethically she is one of the most honest characters in Moo. Unlike Harstad, Marly will not do anything to move up in the world and, after realizing both her self-worth and Harstad’s almost crazed plan, moves on to San Francisco to start over. Marly moving to San Francisco and realizing that there is no shortcut to success can be interpreted as a symbol of rebirth, a common trend in religious symbolism. This symbol of rebirth supports Smiley’s claim as Marly represents how if the corrupted American education system was to realize the error in its ways and fix these mistakes, it would be possible for the American education system to be reinvented and become great once