Ham on Rye

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1982

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-11

Chapters 12-22

Chapters 23-33

Chapters 34-46

Chapters 47-58

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Alcohol

Alcohol is a dominating force in Ham on Rye, to the extent that the titular “rye” can be read as a reference to whiskey. Even though the novel depicts the formative years of Henry Chinaski, alcohol is everywhere in the young boy’s life. As such, the ever-present alcohol functions as a symbol of the rapid loss of innocence that Henry undergoes, and this loss of innocence also speaks to the loss of innocence in the novel it is most likely in reference to, The Catcher in the Rye. Henry grows up in a world where alcohol is everywhere, even though the United States was subject to prohibition laws from 1920 to 1933. The illegal yet available alcohol has a bewitching effect on the poor, alienated Henry. He grows up with very little, yet alcohol provides him with a form of escapism that is cheap and, by the time he is an adult, available. He begins by sneaking mouthfuls of wine in the basement of his friend’s parents’ house. Then, he steals beer from a refrigerator in the house of another friend. By the time he has run away from home, he has developed such a taste for alcohol that he can outdrink a gang of hardened criminals and win a small amount of money, which he then spends on more alcohol. This gradual but seemingly inevitable introduction to alcohol is a fated loss of innocence. Henry, feeling alone and poor in a world he does not understand, is bewitched by alcohol. As soon as alcohol takes hold of him, the innocent young man of the early chapters seems destined to vanish.

In this respect, alcohol becomes a symbol of Henry’s descent. By the time he has begun drinking heavily, he is aware that he should keep his addiction hidden. He often sneaks back into his parents’ house while they are asleep, quietly hiding his drunkenness from the people who will punish him. When he moves out, he fights often in his rented apartment. He is aware that his landlord will not tolerate his drunkenness and his violence, to the point where he actively flees his apartment once he recognizes the damage that he has done to the room. He vomits in random cars, destroys property, and then simply moves on to the next place. Henry never stops to reflect on the consequences of his addiction, and he is unable to stop drinking because stopping would leave him alone with himself. He develops an alcohol addiction as a means of navigating an alienating world. To Henry, alcohol represents an essential numbing of the world, and while he knows it to be wrong, he cannot live without it.

Given the nature of Henry’s childhood, alcohol represents the way in which violence and trauma are visited upon the current generation by the past. Among the few memories Henry shares of his youth, he recalls visiting his grandfather, his uncle, and his aunt. His grandfather and his two uncles have an alcohol addiction. They are violent, unlikable men who have been cut off from their families and who are suffering alone. Henry does not venerate these men, and he does not particularly like them. Growing up in a similarly poor family, however, during the Great Depression in the United States, he’s impacted by similar pressures and pains that caused the previous generations to turn to alcohol as a form of self-destructive self-medication. The three generations of the illness represent the way in which violence and trauma are passed down across time. Henry’s father was beaten by his father, so he beats Henry. As a way to cope with the pain and the suffering, Henry discovers alcohol, just as his uncles and grandfather had done before him. Alcohol becomes the outward symbol of a vestigial pain that echoes across the generations, a symptom of generational and class pain.

Fighting

Henry fights often and not always well. By his own admission, he is not a particularly big or strong person. He is malnourished and, quite often, drunk, meaning that he is immediately at a physical disadvantage compared to anyone bigger, more sober, or better trained than he is. Nevertheless, Henry never backs down from a fight. He also initiates many fights of his own accord, even when people remind him that he will lose. Henry feels a compulsion to fight, as fighting is an important demonstration of the toughness that he feels he possesses. Henry grows up poor. Even though he cannot afford nice clothes or a fancy car, he reassures himself by insisting that his experience of growing up poor has made him tougher than any rich person could ever be. Henry makes a virtue out of his poverty via his toughness, and his frequent fights symbolize his desire to test this virtue at any and every opportunity. By fighting, Henry can show the world that he has value. By showing the world that he has value, he can prove to everybody that growing up poor is nothing to be ashamed of. Henry needs to fight people because he needs to fight the world, which, he believes, has treated him so badly. Each fight symbolizes his alienation and his desire to show his toughness to others.

Henry turns to violence as the only way to assert himself as a consequence of his childhood. He grows up in a violent home where his father physically abuses him for the slightest infraction. Whether he has received bad grades at school, mown the lawn badly, or done something else to annoy his father, he receives a beating from his father’s razor strop. Eventually, Henry becomes numb to these beatings and his father realizes that the physical abuse that he has used to discipline his son no longer has any effect. Henry internalizes this violence and turns it back against the world. As his father would beat him for the most minor infraction, he is willing to fight anyone for the smallest slight against his character or reputation. Henry Senior turned to violence at a moment’s notice, so his son’s predilection for fighting symbolizes the way in which trauma can be passed across generations. The frequency of Henry Junior’s fights symbolizes the way in which a childhood of trauma can manifest in adult life.

By the time he leaves college, Henry has come to enjoy his reputation as a tough guy. After he clears out his gym locker, he is pointed toward a football player named King Kong who is taking pleasure in roughing up the other players. Kong is pointed out to Henry because Henry has a reputation for toughness. He enters the game, keen to maintain this reputation, and eventually sends Kong back to the locker room. Henry is pleased that he can leave college on a reputational high note. After, however, he runs unto Becker. By this time, Becker and Henry have fought a physical battle, but they go out drinking together. Their drinking session is interrupted by the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Becker, a Marine, is immediately summoned to the military base. Henry is left alone. He goes to play a fighting game in an arcade. This ending symbolizes the vapidity of Henry’s reliance on fighting as a way to establish a reputation for himself. When the real fight begins in the shape of World War II, other men are shipped off to war. Henry is left alone with a digital arcade fight. The arcade game reminds him that his lifetime of fighting has left him as alone and as stupefied as everything else in his life. His fights mean nothing compared to the larger fight that is happening in Europe and the Pacific. Becker departs with the praise of the barman; Henry is left alone to lose a fake fight, an arcade fight, to a child. Fighting, ultimately, symbolizes Henry’s struggle to find meaning in life and his inability to do so. He does not believe in the ideals that cause others to join the larger global fight against Japan. He thinks it is artificial and remains detached from it, rejecting the generational rallying call.

Literature

While alcohol and fighting symbolize the more negative aspects of Henry’s life, literature represents something positive during his formative years. Henry grows up poor. His family cannot afford much, especially when the reality of the Great Depression forces both his parents out of work. No matter how difficult the family’s financial situation may be, however, he discovers that literature provides a universal form of escapism. Public libraries provide him with access to the classics of world literature, in which he recognizes a form of alienation described by other authors in other countries at other times that rings true to him. Through literature, Henry discovers that he is not alone in his feelings. Importantly, he does not need to pay for this experience. The universality of the public library offers a form of escapism to everyone, regardless of their financial situation. Literature functions as a symbol of an innate humanity that transcends material conditions. Someone as poor and as alienated as Henry Chinaski can find people who think like him and who express similar thoughts. Literature symbolizes a universality that provides some relief to Henry. It is telling that he finds this balm at a public library, at an institution that allows him in and that does not charge. He has been barred from so many institutions previously, but here the public service helps him find some connection.

Henry consumes a vast quantity of literature. Not only does he read the classics, but he also begins to read short stories and pieces in literary outlets such as The New Yorker. Henry develops a disdain for these modern pieces, which he believes are overwritten and uninteresting. He has opinions on modern literature, which he uses to differentiate himself from the literary mainstream. He believes that the stories are written by and are for a social elite, which will never welcome him into its folds. In this way, Henry’s view of the contemporary literary world is an important symbol. Henry’s conception of this world represents his perpetual alienation; even something as unifying and as universal as literature can be alienating when Henry puts his mind to it. If literature and writing were all that gave him pleasure in his life, then he conjures up new ways in which to deny himself this small happiness. Henry’s understanding of the literary world is not necessarily wrong, but it does represent his continuing desire to remain isolated. He discovers new ways to distance himself from the rest of the world.

Robert Becker, like Henry, has an interest in writing. Henry reads several of Becker’s stories and praises their style. Whereas Becker harbors big dreams of seeing the world and writing about it, Henry’s pessimistic view limits the scope of his ambitions. Henry does not believe that he can ever succeed as a writer, even though he and Becker occupy similar material positions in society. Becker represents the life Henry might have led if he had had ambition, possessing a kind of literature-orientated optimism that Henry cannot imagine.

Nevertheless, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, and Becker is drafted into World War II. He is not in control of his own story, nor is he in the best position to realize his dream of being a writer. Henry wanders away from Becker, losing himself in the city and in himself. His literary pessimism becomes part of a broader, all-encompassing pessimism. Ironically, Henry is the alter-ego of Charles Bukowski, who turned these events and experiences into a literary career in later life. For all his pessimism about the literary world, Bukowski, and, by proxy, Chinaski, managed to find a way in which to express himself in an artistic manner. As such, literature represents the fundamental flaws in Chinaski’s pessimism, too.