Rebel Without a Cause

by Robert M. Lindner

  Me and this other fellow was also going to start in business. There was some money owing to me, about forty dollars from Toby’s father for some work I did for him and about forty-five from my aunt. We were going to rent a blacksmith’s shop and build platforms for truck bodies. They sell for about a hundred and a quarter. This fellow was very good at building them. We also had several ideas for making small plows and discs for cultivating. We thought we’d rent this shop and hire a blacksmith. Around this time my father wanted me to come back to the city. Later on I got into trouble time after time and so we never got around to it …

  THE SEVENTH HOUR

  There was an old brewery with a big chimney and we used to go inside this chimney and climb up the iron ladders way up to the top and look down. You could see the river from up there. From that height it looked like a creek, so small; and the railroad, right at the foot of the chimney; the tracks looked smaller than match sticks; and the train, the train looked like a toy train; and you could see the mountains far away, hazy and misty; and you could see all over our town and the town next to ours.

  We used to go to C—— on our bicycles. There’s a big park there with roads through it and bridges and a small pond for sailing with seaweed growing in it. The kids used to sail small boats. It wasn’t deep enough to go swimming. In the evening it looked all nice and soft.

  I get several thoughts in my head all at once.…

  I remember back to a place where the B—— Company now stands. There used to be a small farm there next to the railroad yards. One time we hid a whole carton of playing cards there. There was a tin roof on the barn and we would run up and down, up and down.

  When we still lived on B—— Street I once went with a fellow to take the lunch to his father where his father worked. We had to walk maybe a mile, and on the way we found some things, some metal things. I don’t know what they were. We hid them in a sandbank and came back about three or four times looking for them, and we’d dig and dig and dig for them but we couldn’t find them. They were long metal things with something like a pulley in the middle. They reminded me of a rounded sword. The other fellows used to have them and throw them. With practice it was easy to control them and you could make them stick in a tree.

  One of the fellows had a car that somehow was charged with electricity. We used to play around with it and try to shock each other. When it rained we would connect it with a wet fence and when someone came along and leaned on the fence they would jump.

  There was an Italian fellow who lived on this street too and one time I remember he had an argument with my friend. It wasn’t a fight, just an argument. I wanted to get even with him and so I stole a pair of dumbells and a small sailboat from that fellow and hid them behind a pile of wood.

  I used to play a lot with a gang that hung out around the Community House near the Catholic School I attended. There was a brewery across the street where we used to steal dry oats and put them down fellow’s necks when we were in school. The sisters would make us stay in and clean the floors because the oats got all over them.

  I used to hang around with a fellow by the name of Jimmy. He spent the summer at the shore with his grandmother. He was a blond-haired kid about my height and build, only he used to walk funny with his feet. One time I got sore at the girl I went with because she said something about his feet. He was in German class with me and we’d cut class lots. I didn’t like to go to school very much and neither did he. We only went because we had to.

  I’m hanging around with Perry occasionally here. The other guys kid me about him. I hate a lot of them. There’s a fellow named Billings. I hate him. We were walking in the line the other day and he gave us a dirty look. I hate the ground he walks on. About a year ago I almost got into a fight with him. I never did like this guy Billings. He has a dirty, filthy mind.

  I was sore at everybody today. I wouldn’t even speak to my best friend. They think that because you talk to someone there is something under-cover going on.

  Dobriski is the name of my friend. He plays ball with the institution. One time we were playing ball down at the other end of the yard when some fellow called Shanty said something about my eyes. I quit and walked away.

  Dobriski is a stupid sort of fellow but he is kind and considerate to people. He reminded me of an old fellow I used to like to talk to who worked on the same job with me. This old fellow made parole about a year ago, and when he got out he went to see my people and told them how I was getting along. He was just like a prince, always so cheerful. He loved flowers. He is the first one besides you who ever took any interest and tried to make me understand that there is something else in this world than prison and crime.

  The initial verbalization of positive transference. A triumphant moment!

  I worked with another fellow who took the Reader’s Digest. Once in a while he’d start an argument and after the argument had gone on for some time he’d bring out his book and prove his point. He would never start with the subject he was going to argue about; he’d start with something else, something entirely different; and then he would gradually bring it around to the point little by little. It would take him about an hour to reach his point.

  I also worked in here with another fellow, Johnson. This Johnson, he was funny alright. He didn’t like for anyone to criticize Sears-Roebuck where he once worked. He would get raving mad when anyone said Sears-Roebuck was a gyp-joint. He would work late at night and he used to come to my cell window when he was through with his work and look at my books. Every once in a while he would bring me flowers for my cell.

  I don’t read many newspapers, although some fellow sends me the New York Times every day. I just read its headlines.

  Sometimes there is too much noise in the cell-block to do anything so I just stand by the window and smoke and look outside. The trees and the lawns look nice. Over the wall I can see the mountains. They look rolling, misty: in the evening it looks like a painted picture. Upstairs, from the auditorium, you can look outside and you see the whole countryside. It looks so nice and green: in the wintertime it looks white and snowy.

  I remember when we were kids we used to have snowball fights and we’d snow-up the middle of the road to try and stop the cars from going through. And we’d build snow-forts. I recall we used to make big piles of snow and then dig little caves out of them and then we’d make a fire in them and they would melt down. One time we made a fire right in one of the caves: there was a lot of smoke in there. And sometimes the river would freeze and we would slide on our shoes right on the frozen river.

  Several times I went down to the Bay for swimming when I played hookey. At the Bay we would have to walk through big fields of mud and we’d get mud all over our shoes and clothes.

  Me and Jimmy used to go to baseball games at night. His uncle was a policeman and he used to talk to a fellow at the gate and he’d let us in and give us good seats, grandstand seats, right behind the batter. They would have all the lights on, just like daylight. And you could see the white ball and all the action, just where the ball is and how it goes. Sometimes when they would hit the ball it would go beyond the rays of light so you wouldn’t see it and you wouldn’t know where it was coming down. There was a score-board way out in the field, and above the score-board there was a clock. I couldn’t see the clock; it was too far away I guess, but it was real big. I went a lot of times to these night games. I never ordinarily went to see games in the daytime, only at night. I used to like to see the white ball. I could see it anywhere. There was a net before the grandstand to protect the people from the balls. Many times the ball would come over and hit the net and then roll down again.

  Dobriski pitches sometimes; he also plays at first base. He’s a pretty good ball player too. It is hard to play ball in a place like this because all they have to play for is an extra steak dinner once in a while and that’s all. In a place like this there is always a lack of cooperation. Some of the fellows don’t like this and some don’t like that. One
fellow is praying that the manager will make parole so he can get back on the team. He can’t play ball very well but he tells everybody it’s because he has bad eyes.

  I’ve got another good friend, Carlson. He marks the score behind the batter; last year he wanted me to take that job over. He asked me if I wanted it, so I didn’t tell him I couldn’t see, only that I didn’t want it. I didn’t tell him why. Once he said something to me about my eyes and I didn’t talk to him for about a month. Every time somebody says something about my eyes I always remember it later. I always remember. I use it as a basis for hating them.

  I don’t remember much about a dream I had the other night.

  This dream was unsolicited.

  All I remember is I was talking to some young fellow and he wanted to run away from the draft; so I told him it was better to go in the army for one year than in a place like this for five. I also remember that there was a war going on or something, and that there was also some fellow who wanted me to write a letter home to his mother. He was dying.

  The writer holds to the general thesis that the first few dreams brought by the patient should remain undiscussed. Too often the patient is alienated by early probing.

  This one that was dying was an older man: the other was a young fellow. I don’t think I looked very carefully at them. The younger fellow reminded me of Perry, except that he had hair like Dobriski, kind of a dirty blond. I don’t recall what the older fellow looked like at all. I was telling the younger one that it was better to be in the army for one year: that it was bad but not as bad as five years in here. The one that was dying was in one piece; I mean that he didn’t have his legs or his arms cut off or anything like that; but there was a hole in his side, a pretty big hole. He wanted me to write a letter to his mother. He wanted to let his mother know but he didn’t want anybody else to know. I can’t even place the fellow. He wore a tin hat like they have in the American Army. I don’t know how I was there or what place I was holding or what job I was doing. I don’t even know if a war was going on. Things changed from one moment to the next. He kept hollering to write somebody a letter: he was hurt or something. While I was talking to the young fellow there was a freight train going by and he was going to jump on that freight train to avoid the draft. The train was going and going and going, and it looked to me as if there was no end to it. I don’t remember seeing the engine passing, all I remember is that the freight cars were going.

  These first dreams will provide an index to performance and will enable the examiner to estimate the sufficiency of the patient’s grasp of the technique of reporting.

  Sometimes I lie in bed and I can’t fall asleep until about eleven. I get up several times to get a drink of water or to take a smoke and look outside. Sometimes I’m up till five-thirty in the morning. When I lie in bed like that and can’t sleep often I write poetry. The words just keep going through my mind like waves, fine and smoothly. I can’t remember a thing going through my head and so I write everything down in the night. In the morning I try to decipher what I wrote.

  I remember in the dream the freight cars were all going, moving, moving. They made a rattling noise. I could hear it plain as day as I was watching the cars.

  When I lived in T cell-block they had sliding doors made of bars. I was up on the third floor. Up there I would sleep until count-time: many times the officer would holler at me for sleeping late. I didn’t like the place, someone would walk by and your mind would lose interest in what you were doing and turn to the person going by. Somebody was always playing some music, the same song all the time. I didn’t like it so after about three weeks I moved out. I couldn’t get any of my work done.

  The only reason I moved up to that cell-block was that Dobriski was up there. We are always having a lot of arguments. He is a very fine fellow only he would burn me up a lot by talking to this fellow Billings or the one they call Shanty. If a person says anything or makes any remark about my eyes I always remember it. He purposely and deliberately agitated me by doing that. We had a lot of arguments about it …

  THE EIGHTH HOUR

  I had three dreams.

  In the first one I dreamed I was on the road above the greenhouse here. I dreamed that I and a girl were going in there. We went in on one side and at the other end I saw my sister, so we ran out of one door and my sister came out the other end. She started rushing toward the girl with a whip in her hand. The girl didn’t know what to do. My sister had a whip and I tried to stop her.

  In the other dream there were some men with big hats. I can’t place any other people or any of the characters. I don’t remember much about this dream. There was a room with a big bathtub in it and somebody turned on a tap and hot steaming water came down on all the people. I don’t remember getting any of the hot water on me.

  In the next dream I remember helping a fellow provision a boat with food. I was going to buy a boat for myself, a motor boat, and I was going to cruise to Atlantic City.

  I remember sitting in the show last night and it was real hard for me to see the picture. I was straining my eyes so much. The pictures were too bright, I guess.

  The reader will note the cautious but active introduction of the writer into his role in the entire procedure.

  L: ‘Harold, suppose you start with one dream and tell everything that occurs to you in relation to it.’

  Well, I don’t know who this other girl was. I think it was Lila. I remember my sister saw her one time with me and she didn’t like her.

  It was at the greenhouse in here. The greenhouse is about eighty feet long. We went in at one side and she was at the other, the other end. We came out on the road and my sister had a whip or something like a whip and she came running at the girl and it seemed she was going to hit her. I started holding my sister back. I wouldn’t let her whip her. I remember distinctly the girl with the whip was my sister Marie, the older one. They were the only two persons in this dream. I remember they were in the greenhouse inside the walls and I remember the greenhouse, the road, the buildings and everything. My sister had a dark dress on. I think we walked in one end and saw my sister come out the other with a whip in her hands. She was holding it in two hands, the thick end was in her left hand.

  L: ‘Why would your sister want to whip you?’

  She wouldn’t whip me, she was going after the other girl. She saw the girl with me one time and didn’t like her. She always used to kid me about what ugly girls I picked up. I held her back. The other girl didn’t know what to do, to stay or run away. My sister’s got a bad temper, a really bad temper but I always can cool her down. I just talk to her and just cool her down a little bit. But she had the thick end of the whip in her left hand and the thin end in her right hand. She was holding it with her two hands. The whip was about four feet long. I held her by the shoulders. I held her back but I didn’t take the whip from her.

  I remember that time my sister saw me with Lila. My sister had a red dress on and the girl was wearing a pink dress and I had a white shirt and blue trousers. I don’t know why my sister didn’t like her. I guess she was ugly in a fashion: she had straight hair and my sister has nice curly hair, shiny. I remember all the kids I hung around with would kid me about her. They used to say that she was taking good care of me.

  I think it was very funny. I remember very distinctly the greenhouse and the wall and everything about it; the greenhouse in this place and the wall in this place, everything in this place except the girl and my sister.

  Most of the other girls I ever went with my sister liked but she disliked this one. I didn’t go with this one very long, about two months or so. My sister really hated even her name.

  All I remember is that it was daylight and it was in the summer, and the grass was so green.

  They were the only two persons in my dream.

  My sister is right-handed so I don’t see why she would hold the whip in her left hand. I don’t remember whether the girl was running away from me or where she went. I was hold
ing my sister by the shoulders, holding her back. She was saying to me that I should get out of her way. After that I remember nothing about it. I think I woke up then.

  L: ‘Can you remember anything more about the second dream?’

  The second one I don’t remember much about. There were a lot of men, men with big hats, big hats like Stetson hats, and cowboy shoes. It was in a room or something. They had a lot of things like sprinklers near the ceiling set in different angles. It was a kind of bathroom with a sink and a wash basin and everybody was there. Somebody turned a knob and the hot steaming water came down on everybody. I don’t know who anyone of them were.

  In the last dream I had I can remember the place. It was at a dock where all the boats were tied up near C——. There is a bridge there over the river and before you cross that bridge you come to the place where all the boats are kept in storage. There were several people, a man and his wife and a small child, a girl. They owned the boat and were fixing it up to take a cruise. I was telling some girl in the party that I was going to buy a boat some day and I kept pointing out to her several different ones. I would like that one and that one and that one; and I would take a short cruise to Atlantic City for about two weeks or so.