The Curious Alphabet of Our Lives

"In the curious alphabet of our lives I sat behind Herman Franks...The curious alphabet of our lives still placed Sylvia Carstairs, my best friend for life, beside me...In the curious alphabet of our lives, Regina Bristol was one seat down from the front of the class, still in one of the middle aisles." -pg.51, All Aunt Hagar's Children

Edward P. Jones got it right in the midst of the little girl narrator with far too much wisdom when he says that our lives are a "curious alphabet." We humans are all made up of the same stuff- the 46 chromosomes, the hair, the eyes, the smelly morning-breath. But we are constantly changing shapes and lives to fit the moment, much like the alphabet in which the world is made of. As the father of the girl in the story "Spanish in the Morning" believes, "The letter 'M', for example, had no life if it only existed between 'N' and 'L'" (43); and such is the life of all the characters in the eclectic-but-unified stories in Jones work. Jones comments on both the arbitrariness and importance of other humans in our lives of constant contact. When compared solely with the alphabet, one could look precisely to Ferdinand de Saussure and his structuralist method and draw some parallels.
While it is completely unfair to look at humans- a complex web of emotions, actions, and functions- in the same sphere as the signs in our language, we can put humans for a moment into Saussure's schema. Words are arbitrary by and large, and although much of structuralism has changed, this idea remains strong. Something is given a label, much like a name for a human, and all of a sudden value is prescribed to it- not by themselves, but by other signs. That something though, that human has no value innately though. The baby doesn't wake up and know: "I am going to be the type of person who does their laundry on a regimented schedule," or " I am going to be the type of person who wakes up with a different man in my bed almost every morning." Just like signs and words, "The value [of a human]...is determined by its environment."
We are all products of those around us- families, friends, cities; and the people in Jones' book are all connected or defined by the unsaid connections that create value. In linguistics, the value of a sign is made salient by its connections to other signs; "Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simputaneous presence of the others" (Saussure, Course in General Linguistics). We then are the same way; our value is made salient to ourselves by the presence of others in our lives. And it is a constantly shifting cast of characters, just as Jones' stories shift relatively quickly. This "curious alphabet" model of humanity is ideal because we live within the framework of our lives but at the same time are becoming something different to someone else at any given moment. It is exciting to see in a book like Jones' where the value of the characters are given by their connections with the things outside of their own consciousness, and sometimes out of their control. The soldier with breast cancer and his connection to the power of nature, the psychic connection between Arlene, Avis, and Eulogia, Caesar's connection to the coin tossed by the little girl on the D.C. street. All these connections create value for who these characters believe they are, or who the world believes they are. The alphabet isn't stagnant, and neither are the lives of the characters in Washington D.C. In fact, neither is my life.