The Blogger SAT Challenge

Dichotomies, almost by definition, reduce complex situations into manageable, reductive either-or binaries. Booker T. Washington's statement that he has 'learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed' is one such complex situation. Attempting to 'choose' which is, indeed, more important -- struggle or achievement -- misses the point that Washington is trying to make.

Rhetorical excess, even to the point of hyperbole, is often necessary when one is attempting to convince an audience of a seemingly impossible or counter-intuitive conclusion. In the achievement-obsessed milieu of the United States, success is everything. The 'underdog,' that sentimental favorite, is an example of the ways in which success is fetishized in American culture. Similarly, the current popularity of superhero movies shows evidence of the audiences' need for success. Superheroes, almost by definition, need supervillains. Without an opponent who is able to match the superhero's mighty abilities, the inevitable success would feel anticlimactic. Instead, the superhero is always written into a situation in which he or she faces odds that would seem impossible even for a superhero. This reversal of might recasts the superhero as an underdog, facing insurmountable challenges. Of course, the superhero *does* surmount those challenges, and ends the film as a victor.

It is this combined nature of success and challenge, though, that provides narrative satisfaction to audiences. One without the other becomes either masturbatory or tragic. Success without challenge is boring wish-fulfilment, absent any real sense of tension or conflict. Without success, challenge poses a very different sensation to American audiences. The first *Rocky* film shows the difficult and rare pleasures of challenge without success. Rocky's defeat at the end of the film is rare in American mainstream cinema, but by shifting the markers of success, we can see Rocky's fight with Apollo Creed as a victory in itself. Rocky cannot win the fight, but by making it to the fight, and by trying his best, Rocky wins, even in defeat.

Booker T. Washington is attempting to destabilize any facile adoration of success by pointing to the necessary condition of challenge. Besides the narrative imperative of having both, and the psychological needs expressed by it, Washington also attempts to inject an ethical mode into our culture of success. Success at any cost can too easily lead to tyranny and abuses of power. Instead, by reenergizing and valorizing the worthiness of attempting challenging feats, Washington reminds us that claiming the easy prize is less worthy of praise than attempting, and failing, to reach that which is always just beyond our grasp. And when we attempt the challenging, we succeed in ways that cannot be measured against simple win/lose dichotomies.

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