The Mayonnaise Essay

Richard Brautigan chooses in his penultimate chapter of Trout Fishing in America to wax eloquence on the word Mayonnaise. The chapter and its accompanying prelude do not really seem to fit with the rest of the text. Trout Fishing often finds itself paying homage to the natural world or telling selective excerpts from stories about self-discovery. The Mayonnaise Chapter (pages 111-112) sticks out, not only because of its seeming randomness, but also because it focuses on people who do not appear to share any direct relationship with the rest of the text. In many ways, the Mayonnaise Chapter stands alone. However, it does correlate with the text's funereal themes and ideas of isolation and separation.

Mayonnaise as a metaphor encompasses the themes of the rest of the text; in other words, the mayonnaise acts as the container to Trout Fishing. The word "mayonnaise" is written on the back cover of the book, and the cover of a book holds the inside together. "Mayonnaise," then, literally surrounds the text within the novel. The significance of the role of mayonnaise is thus clear before one even opens the novel.

The exact reason of its significance, though, is unclear, but perhaps its ambiguity is intentional. Brautigan opens the Prelude with a quote from anthropologist M.F. Ashley Montagu: "'The Eskimos live among the ice all their lives but have no single word for ice'" (Brautigan 111). This implies the ambiguity of language and supports the idea of the ability to stretch the definition of a word to better fit into the meaning a text. Brautigan further supports this notion by quoting Marston Bates: "'Language does not leave fossils, at least not until it has become written...'" (Brautigan 111). In this way, Brautigan's obsession with mayonnaise is him writing his own version of a language.

With this notion in mind, it becomes clear that mayonnaise does not just represent a sandwich condiment. In his final sentence of the Prelude, Brautigan says that his desire to write a book about mayonnaise "express[es] a human need" (Brautigan 111). Though he never specifies this need, in the final Mayonnaise Chapter, he writes a letter addressing the recent death of a man named Mr. Good. In some ways, this letter comes off as impersonal, especially because the readers do not know who the addresser, the addressee, or Mr. Good are. These details, however, are inconsequential; the importance of this letter lies within the broader context of death and remembrance. Mr. Good's passing is not what is truly important. Rather, it is the act of acknowledging this passing that holds real meaning. By ending the letter with the word "mayonnaise," the meanings of the letter and how it fits into the body of the text tie together.

On page 21, Brautigan touches on funereal themes as the narrator trout fishes at a graveyard. On one gravestone, the narrator reads, "This mayonnaise jar with wilted flowers in it was left six months ago by his sister who is in the crazy place now." Here, the mayonnaise jar acts as a literal container to hold flowers of dead remembrance. Mayonnaise seems to represent a way holding onto the past, or perhaps even containing the spirit. With a mayonnaise jar, death does not have to be an end-all. Contrastingly, however, the sister responsible for the mayonnaise jar does not seem to realize this hopeful interpretation. By saying that she is "in the crazy place," Brautigan isolates her and keeps her out of touch from the readers. In this way, the mayonnaise jar contains her entire being and keeps her removed from the rest of the world.

By redefining the word mayonnaise, Brautigan simultaneously creates a sense of unity and separation within the text. It is unclear whether mayonnaise is supposed to uplift or isolate the reader from the themes and characters within the text. Part of mayonnaise's purpose, perhaps, is to prove that language is malleable and often misunderstood. A writer does not give a word meaning. Rather, a reader inserts his or her own meaning into the text. Maybe the real question is whether giving words new implications makes them more true or only falsifies their meanings more.