The Pursuit of Happyness

“As long as I kept my mental focus on destinations that were ahead, destinations that I had the audacity to dream might hold a red Ferrari of my own, I protected myself from despair.”

Here, Gardner cites his life philosophy of focusing on the destination as a guard against present despair and hopelessness. He also voices the audacity to hold big dreams of not just making ends meet but being wealthy enough to thrive.

“Moms, standing at the ironing board just behind me in the next room, says very clearly, as though she has been sitting next me the whole time, ‘Son, if you want to, one day you could make a million dollars.’” 

Gardner cites this instance, where his mother believes him capable of making a million dollars, as one of the two pivotal events that gave him the confidence to dream boldly and to pursue his ambitions, regardless of the obstacles. Bettye Jean’s belief in her son is especially poignant because her own life has in many ways been one of heartbreak and missed opportunities. 

Over the years, I heard only parts of my mother’s saga, told to me by a variety of sources, so that the understanding that eventually emerged was a kind of Cinderella story—without the fairy godmother and the part at the end where she marries the prince and they all live happily ever after.” 

Although Gardner adores his mother, she is essentially a mystery to him and he cannot exactly be certain of the what happened to her in her youth. Gardner fills in the gaps with the notion of the archetypal fairytale of Cinderella, but without the happy ending. Throughout the book, the sadness surrounding Bettye Jean’s missed and stolen opportunities is set against her son’s triumphs.

“What she’d say to show me how powerful a building full of books could be was, ‘The most dangerous place in the world is a public library.’ That was, of course, only if you could read, because, Momma explained, if you could read, that meant you could go in there and figure anything out.” 

Bettye Jean’s statement about public libraries reinforces the notion that knowledge is free and open to anyone who can decipher the letters needed to access it. This statement goes far in providing motivation for Gardner’s belief in his own upward mobility. 

“My long-term plan had already been formulated, starting with the solemn promise I made to myself that when I grew up and had a son of my own, he would always know who I was and I would never disappear from his life.” 

Gardner’s recognition of the stigma surrounding his lack of a father figure and his vulnerable state in a patriarchal society makes him vow to spare his own child from the same indignities. There is also the suggestion that because Gardner does not know who his father is, he also does not fully know who he is, or what he stands for.

“Not only was I going to make sure my children had a daddy, I was never going to be Freddie Triplett. I was never going to terrorize, threaten, harm, or abuse a woman or child, and I was never going to drink so hard that I couldn’t account for my actions.” 

Gardner’s early decision to be the opposite of the dissolute, violent, abusive Freddie establishes his need for control over himself and his life. Already, he can see the kind of man he wants to be by modelling himself against the kind of man he does not want to be.

“The ability to become still was born in me that night from watching Moms. It exists in the realm of instinct, where the choice is fight or flight. Stillness was my mother’s only defense against a predator, the way prey can avoid the attack of a killer cobra or a shark by being so still as to be invisible.” 

Gardner watches his mother fend off a violent attack from Freddie by being still enough as to make him think that there is no battle to be fought. While Bettye Jean’s stillness was applied to the context of domestic violence, Gardner learns that it is a useful strategy for both enduring intense heat during his naval training and in navigating the stock market’s wilder oscillations.

“This period marked the dawning of my consciousness as a person of color, following on the heels of my discovery, lo and behold, that the world was not all black […] It was also feeling what it was to have my color as my identity, to be looked down on, to be regarded as less than, to feel shame, or to be invisible, a non-entity other than a dark-skinned black boy.”

Gardner’s teenage years in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement and when he leaves his mainly-black neighborhood to go to a white high school in East Milwaukee opens his eyes to a multi-ethnic world and the racial tensions that go alongside that. He also has his first experience with racism, in being regarded as a derogatory stereotype rather than as an individual.

“My self-esteem had suffered […] from the higher status my community seemed to give to lighter-skinned blacks. For years I had hated Smokey Robinson for being the epitome of the kind of guy that every girl I knew wanted. Slender, light-skinned, green-eyed, with his wavy ‘good’ hair and lilting voice, he had no idea how he ruined life for tall, muscular, dark-skinned, nappy-haired baritone guys like me.” 

The preference for lighter skin and Anglo features, even among the black community, at a time when Gardner is coming of age and considering how attractive he is to the opposite sex, is a strong impetus for him to become a Black Power activist. It also shows how Gardner is desperately seeking validation for his identity.

“The next slice of time, maybe ten, fifteen minutes, or shorter, do not take place in normal speed: parts of it stretch out in tortuously slow motion and other parts are heart-stoppingly fast. But even if I can’t track time, I remember every detail of what happens, from the second he pulls a knife to my throat, forces me on my back, pulls down my pants, puts his dick between my legs, to registering the confused horror of my dick getting hard from the stimulation, to the true horror of him hoisting me into position so he can fuck me in the ass, right on the living room floor.” 

Gardner’s rape, which he keeps from everyone in his family, is where he feels the full extent of his own powerlessness against someone who wants to use and harm him. The sense that time both speeds up and slows haphazardly is a true indication of the loss of the control that Gardner has come to value.

“Sometimes in years to come I’d realize that I must have been born at the perfect time—to be able to witness everything that happened in every decade from the fifties on […] It was amazing to be growing up right in the middle of a sexual revolution at a time when the stereotypes of color were changing and black was especially beautiful.” 

Gardner often cites his sense of luck that he was born at a time when he could witness monumental changes in social history. He thus situates his struggles and triumphs as a young black man coming of age within the context of a movement where many like him were rediscovering their identity and power. 

“For the first eighteen years of my life, I’d guided myself without a father, believing that my fundamental responsibility was to protect my mother. Having failed to guarantee her protection by getting rid of Freddie, it was now time to put her lovingly and safely in God’s hands and to go in pursuit of the happiness that was all my momma ever wanted for me.” 

This marks a turning point in Gardner’s life, where he shifts his loyalties away from his beloved mother and turns them towards himself. It is a bittersweet transition, as he prepares to live his own adventure while at the same time senses that he has failed to end her suffering by dispatching Freddie. 

“The powerful truth that emerged for me was something Moms had tried to tell me when I was younger—no one else can take away your legitimacy or give you legitimacy if you don’t claim it for yourself.” 

The paradox in Gardner’s success story is that while he searches for legitimacy from an authoritative father figure, his mother instills him with the belief that true worth can only be granted by oneself. Hence, when Ivy-League-trained students doubt Gardner’s legitimacy as a medic, he draws upon his self-belief. 

“Ironically, the safe, stable home that I’d wanted since childhood turned out to be too structured, too orderly, too rigid. Later I was able to take the long view and realize that I had gone from one institution, the Navy, to another, marriage, with barely a break in between.” 

The failure of Gardner’s marriage to the perfect-seeming Sherry Dyson, which he feels to be an authoritative institution similar to the Navy, shows him that he has set aside his appetite for exploration. It also indicates that the conventional notion of finding happiness through a stable home is perhaps not Gardner’s.

After spending twenty-six years fighting powerlessness with a need for control, a need for clarity of vision, I eagerly tossed whatever control of my senses remained and took a flying leap off the plank into whatever unexplored depths lay below.”  

Gardner’s relinquishment of the control he has craved all of his life as he embarks on an uninhibited affair with Jackie marks a diversion in his pursuit of the American Dream. For now, he will give up all crippling notions of future stability for the pleasure of the moment. 

“Chris Jr. stared right up at me, knowingly, as if to say, All right, Poppa, I’m counting on you. Then he studied me, in a way that I never knew babies could do, as though he was seeing me when I was a little boy not knowing who my father was or where my mother was.” 

Gardner’s much-anticipated entry into fatherhood is marked by an almost psychic bond with his son. He imagines that he has known his son from another lifetime and that they can protect each other.

“Six-six, 280 pounds. Black as night. A country man who has been in Louisiana forever, he towers in front of me—nothing like I imagined.” 

Gardner’s first view of his estranged father is imposing. The emphasis on Thomas Turner’s physicality conveys Gardner\s eagerness to see him and perhaps trace a resemblance. By the end of Gardner’s visit, this much-anticipated figure is still relatively unknown to him and seems more of an apparition than a fully-fleshed character in his life story.

“There was no denying that a circle had been closed. It was somewhat fractured, not a perfect circle, but gaps had been filled in my understanding of who I was and where I came from. Though many questions lingered about what might have been if things had happened differently in my upbringing, my preoccupation wasn’t with that part of my past anymore.” 

Gardner’s visit to Louisiana to meet his estranged father marks the closing of a circle and the answer to at least some questions about his identity. However, there is also the sense of underlying resentment that his father was absent from his life when Gardner was a vulnerable child and needed him. 

“Sitting there waiting for my interview, I could feel my adrenaline pumping, like a contact high, just from watching all the activity that was happening simultaneously: phones ringing, ticker tape running, stockbrokers hollering out orders and transactions and stamping time clocks. It was all at once like visiting a foreign country and like coming home.” 

Gardner’s reaction to the stockroom as one of homecoming is telling: he feels that this activity that he has no experience of is a perfect match for him in terms of atmosphere and attitude. It also shows that he thrives in places of high-intensity and excitement. 

“Time changes when you’re homeless […] During the daylight hours of the working week, time feels sped up, passing way too quickly. Nights and weekends are another story. Everything slows to an ominous crawl.”

Gardner’s experience of time during his stint of homelessness with his young son shows the sense of powerlessness belying his optimism and hard work. During the working week, Gardner’s time at work and his son’s time at daycare are accounted for; however, at night and on weekends, where Gardner has to think on his feet to find shelter and carry all of their things with them, time slows down.

“There was also a fight of a much bigger and different magnitude, a battle royal between me and the forces that would control my destiny. These were the same forces that robbed my mother of her dreams, everything from her father and stepmother not helping her go to college, to my own father for giving her a child to raise on her own, to Freddie for beating her physically and psychologically, to a justice system that locked her up when she tried to break out of her bondage.” 

While Gardner is struggling to make it as a stockbroker while being homeless and raising a small child, he often hears the voice of self-doubt, telling himself that he cannot achieve his dreams and break outside of the cycle of poverty. However, Gardner’s determination to do so is bolstered by a battle that is larger than him; it is part of the same battle his mother had to contend with throughout her life. 

“For the first time in a long time, maybe ever, I didn’t feel like it was all on me, slugging it, pushing against the odds. Still a dreamer, yet more of a realist than ever before, I knew this was my time to sail. On the horizon I saw the shining future, as before. The difference now was that I felt the wind at my back.” 

As Gardner’s salary at Dean Witter begins to rise and the prospect of him and his son moving back to San Francisco looms on the horizon, he feels he can breathe easier. The wind metaphor is potent: once he had to struggle against his destiny; now, it seems that his destiny has changed, and he can sail into it effortlessly.

“What is the American dream if it isn’t about the possibility that someone, anyone, can go from walking the streets of the Tenderloin and wondering how to take the next step to being able to help provide safe affordable housing in that same neighborhood for working folks?”

Gardner positions himself as the walking embodiment of the American Dream in being able to go from a homeless man in need of help to being able to provide assistance to others in the same predicament. He points out the crisis of a lack of affordable housing in San Francisco and other major cities, and how the struggle to make ends meet is detrimental to the dreams of so many.