Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

STUDIES - László Dányi: Decoding Decoded Systems: An Interpretation of Steven Millhauser's "In the Penny Arcade"

"Suddenly someone began to speak; I looked quickly about, but the voice came from the cowboy's stomach" (137). Even machines can act and speak like human beings do, and the world of objects can easily be mistaken for the world of humans, if it is possible to differentiate the two at all. Anything and anybody can fit into the homogeneous mass of objects and humans by becoming "tough, dangerous, and inconspicuous" (136). The fortune teller, who is supposed to unravel the mysteries of the future and kill the uncertainty which lies in the future, looms against the eye like a fading object, or an obsolete piece of machinery, "A crack showed in the side of her nose. Her one good eye had a vague and vacant look, as if she had misplaced something and could no longer remember what it was" (137). The fortune teller's and later on the little men's unconvincingness is further emphasized by their physical isolation from the boy and their placement in glass cases. Blurring the boundaries between objects and people continues when the boy visits the old machines that have a "melancholy look" (140) and suddenly their weariness pushes life into them. However, this weariness is only a fake imitation of the alertness the boy has in his memory about the machines, 'The strange hush, the waking of the creatures from their wooden slumber, seemed dim and uncertain, as if it had taken place long ago" (144). After accusing the machines of losing their originality and of falling into blight and torpor, the boy reveals that he recognized that he had "become part of the conspiracy of dullness" and he had "betrayed" (145) the penny arcade, so the two short paragraphs at the end of the story introduce a shift in tone. The final implication of the boy's statement is that in order to appreciate the vividness and liveliness of these machines one needs to be vigilant. The pathetic fallacy in the arcade is that the boy thinks the figures there are rigid and hollow imitations of themselves sunk into hush because he himself is in that mood as well, so he projects his feelings onto them. 17