Going into chapter 2, the chapter about communion, I was not so thrilled considering the only time hearing the word “communion” was in church. Although, this chapter was not only expressing the other ways it can be used, but that it’s actually rarely used as a holy act in literature. Communion can be seen as many things, such as people eating together, sharing something, or even sharing themselves with another person most commonly in order to establish a peace.
While reading this chapter, a few things triggered memories of movies and books that I have previously come across, like The Great Gatsby. In this book, Nick goes over to his cousin Daisy’s house where a dinner is taking place in order to make Nick feel welcome to his new home in Long Island. Along with Daisy, Tom, her husband, and Daisy’s friend, Jordan, are there. As this part of the book continues, personal information is shared along with gossip about other people. The dinner showed a growing comfortability with all of them together, therefore forming a sense of community. The dinner is interrupted by Tom’s mistress calling the house. Everyone falls silent due to the fact that everyone, including Daisy, knew who was calling. Tom rudely gets up to address the situation but there is no denying that an unwelcome guest has now attended this once pleasant dinner gathering. This dinner clearly had nothing to do with the food itself. It’s about the idea that food brings people together, but on the other hand can also ruin a communal gathering. Although food is seen as a symbol of peace, it can just as easily represent the dysfunction in a family or couple, such as Daisy and Tom. This moment in the book was always a moment I remembered but I couldn’t figure out why. Now I know it’s because it uses two of the types of communion in just one scene. The unwelcome guest was the thing I enjoyed more than the community the dinner brought because it displayed an immediate change in emotion.
Another example I recalled while reading was the major dinner scene in the movie Dinner for Schmucks. At the end of the movie, a huge dinner is held for co-workers and people of their choosing to make fun of throughout the dinner. The main character, Tim, only goes to the dinner to impress his boss in order to get the promotion that is promised to him if he attends. This element of trying to get on the good side of employers is really shown here because regardless of Tim being a non-hurtful man, he needed the approval of his co-workers. Also, this scene pulls at our heart strings a little bit extra because dinner commonly represents a safe place for people to come together, but this dinner is purely to make fun of all of the “schmucks” attending. This feels unnatural and uncomfortable to people due to what communion typically stands for.
This chapter truly taught me much more than I thought I would learn from just the use of the simple word “communion”. I know now that it doesn’t just have one meaning. It can mean and symbolize so many different things that I never even considered or thought my brain would be able to comprehend. I guess that’s all part of reading literature like a professor, though!
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