170 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel
(particularly literature) represents for Ringold an important front on
an ideological battlefield and, as such, needs to be expropriated for
political reasons. For Ringold, then, it is this over-determined view
of the world that underlies his own hamartia—his acute awareness
of history and materiality and his sustained ideological anger render
him blind to his coming tragic fall. Conversely, for Levov, it is his
ignorance of the importance of history and materiality and a sense
of apathy toward his privileged role in the production of history that
lead to his own downfall.
The emotional effects of Levov’s fall are portrayed with great
imagination and literary style by Zuckerman and begin to reveal
themselves during the tour he provides Rita before she reveals her
true identity. Given the timing of the tour, coming so closely after
the events surrounding Merry’s disappearance, the factory and its
herita ge subsequent ly begin to ta ke on more emotiona l signif ic a nce.
However, this regard for the factory then comes to be tainted with
the lingering knowledge that it stands for the things that led to
his daughter’s descent into political violence. This leads to a highly
conflicted state of mind that is captured with great literary effi-
cacy at the close of the factory tour scene. In this moment, Levov
tells Rita that glove tanning is “in my blood, and nothing gives me
greater pleasure,” but simultaneously “clutches his own effusiveness
the way a sick person clutches at any sign of health” (pp. 131–132).
This act of “clutching” on to Newark Maid is made all the more
tragic because the factory, with all the culture and heritage it rep-
resents for the character, is at the same time the symbolic source
of his daughter’s radicalization. His attitude toward the factory is
therefore bifurcated into two mutually exclusive emotional posi-
tions. The first is the one compatible with his long-cherished ideal
of an inclusive American paternalism in the manner of Johnny
Appleseed; the second is a guilt-ridden world of confusion and fear,
which perhaps doubts the virtuous image he has been erecting of
himself.
Such a paradoxical mindset is captured in the image of a tor-
mented, schizophrenic interplay between two voices that emanate
from the character. To represent this mindset, it is necessary to
quote at length: