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“If you wake up at a different place at a different time, could you
wake up as a different person?” (“Fight Club”) This is the question
that Tyler Durden or the Narrator/Protagonist/Antagonist of Chuck
Palahniuk’s ‘Fight Club’ asks himself as the plot gears into the
climax speed zone. In other words, assuming a specific definition
for identity, how does an individual manufacture it, cope with its
surroundings based on and according to it, and remanufacture it, if
necessary, under such influences? According to the Wikipedia
Encyclopedia, “identity is an umbrella term used to describe an
individual's comprehension of him or herself as a discrete, separate
entity” (“Identity”). However, this term, “though generic” can be
further specified in different fields. In philosophy, “identity
makes an entity definable and recognizable, in terms of possessing a
set of qualities or characteristics that distinguish it from
entities of a different type…This includes what distinguishes the
thing from its background, allowing one to determine what is and
what is not included in it” (“Identity”). In contrast,
“psychologists most commonly use the term to describe personal
identity, or the idiosyncratic things that make a person unique”,
while “sociologists often use the term to describe social identity,
or the collection of group memberships that define the individual”
(“Identity”). However, in this argument, Identity maybe identified
with a combinational definition rooted in all three contexts (as
things in real life, in fact, are not black and white), as a concept
that “relates to self-image or a person's mental model of him or
herself, self-esteem, and individuation” (“Identity”). To be more
precise, it is an individual’s ‘sense of self’ with respect to
him/herself, his/her surroundings and the society. Ernest
Hemingway’s ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ (SOK) and Charlotte P.
Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ (YW) have different takes on this
apparently simple but analytically complex notion, and view it form
different perspectives, and deal with, identify and reestablish it
differently. In addition, through reading SOK and comparing it with
Hemingway’s life, the reader finds Harry as “a self-portrait of
Hemingway [and] his struggles with himself: His insecurities, his
machismo, and his need and disdain for women” (“Snows of
Kilimanjaro”). Also, interestingly enough, “in 1887, Perkins
suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to
melancholia, [so] she sought out a specialist [who] urged her to
live as domestic a life as possible, [and] she was forbidden to
touch a pen, pencil or brush ever again” (“The Yellow Wallpaper”).
Therefore, with the aforementioned in mind, and at the risk of
sounding absurd, this essay will take upon the daunting task of
separate psychoanalysis of the main character in each story based on
the limited amount of information and resources available in the
texts. Then it will try to establish an argument in regard to the
author’s purpose and plan to create such a character (either
consciously or unconsciously), and how this creation relates to
his/her own perspective in regard to him/herself and his/her
immediate surroundings and society, and also how these perspectives
differ from one another. “Most of Hemingway’s stories feature
protagonists who speak little and reflect nothing at all about their
motivations and inner lives” (“Snows of Kilimanjaro”), but in SOK,
the male main character ‘Harry’ does otherwise. He identifies
himself with respect to his surroundings by contrasting himself with
it, which one could say – although fitting in all three contexts –
has a leniency towards the psychological and philosophical
definition of identity. In other words, he defines himself with
respect to what he thinks of the people around him and his
respective relationship with them and what he does to preserve or
prevent it: “In yourself you said that you would write about these
people; about the very rich; that you were not really one of them
but a spy in their country”. In addition, Harry is self-conscious in
all the ways that Perkins’ character is not; he despises his own
identity and blames himself for what he is. He even consciously
tries to reinvent or maybe recapture his lost identity. In contrast,
the YW’s female protagonist defines her identity through writing her
stream of consciousness, but with a more apparent sociological
pattern. She does not see herself as what she is, but as a function
of her society and how she is defined with respect to it. For
example, she calls herself and John “mere ordinary people”. Also,
she is a schizophrenic, and she gradually and unconsciously replaces
her identity with the identity of her dual personality. However she
does not do so because she resents who she is, but rather because
she looks down on her society with contempt and holds it responsible
for her misery when she remarks: “I didn't realize for a long time
what the thing was that showed behind that dim sub-pattern, but I
now I am quite sure it is a woman.” Therefore, one could say that
Hemingway portrays Harry as a masculine and self-centered but
conscious male who is free to explore, challenge and change, so he
does not have to resort to any method but the free expression of
himself. While in YW, Perkins portrays a suppressed, fed up woman
who has to revert to the unconscious reconstruction of her identity
through the written ‘wish-fulfillment’ of her desires, as if she
lives in a Freudian dream, because her society does not allow other
means of such expression and reinvention.
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “A man is but the product of his thoughts,
what he thinks, he becomes”. In SOK, Hemingway gradually develops
Harry’s character, but he founds it basis on Harry’s initial
perception of himself as a writer when he responds to the woman:
“That’s been my trade”. Step by step, he builds around this
foundation, introducing elements of self-doubt (“Maybe you could
never write them…he would never know”), rationality (“I suppose what
I did was to forget to put iodine…and started the gangrene”),
emotional depression (“Love is a dunghill…I am the cock that gets on
it to crow”), hypocrisy (“He slipped into the familiar lie he made
his bread and butter bye”), and sexism (“How little a woman knows”)
into Harry’s character, and thereby he gradually forms a
self-conscious yet doubtful and resentful image of Harry’s identity.
However the construction of identity does not end here and proceeds
further as Harry starts contrasting himself with the people around
him (people that the woman represents) on several occasions,
referring for example to where he refers to the woman as “you
goddamned Old Westbury”. This development reaches its peak when the
reader gets a good glimpse into Harry’s unconscious when he reveals
the nihilistic, self-centered dimension of his character, which is
in complete harmony with Hemmingway’s own sense of identity, as he
points out: “I do not like to leave things behind”. This remark
demonstrates his disbelief in the concept of afterlife and/or the
greater good of humanity and the people around him, and also his
lack of faith in himself that is indicative of his ignorance towards
any form of ideology. Centering this statement with the following
two quotations – “His lies were more successful with women than when
he had told them the truth” and “If he lived by a lie he should try
to die by it” – one could make the observation that he has no sense
of morality, or to be more precise, he has no super-ego. This
observation goes well, side by side, by the argument that he is not
religious, for a weak super-ego could only result from the lack of
any form of suppression of the ‘Oedipus Complex’ by the mediums of
ideology and authority (according to the Freudian psychology).
Hemingway also tries to associate Harry with the hyena (a predator
that lives off eating the leftover of carcasses of animals hunted by
other predators) through Harry’s observations and also through the
woman’s remarks such as: “They’re a filthy animal”. By doing so,
Hemingway points out an interesting resemblance between the hyena’s
method of survival and Harry’s way of earning his, and consequently
develops a negative image of his identity in the readers’
perspective. After formation of identity, Hemingway portrays Harry’s
resentment towards it and how he tries to escape and eventually
reinvent it: “I’m full of poetry. Rot and poetry. Rotten poetry”.
What stands out the most though is Hemingway’s use of two different
pronouns, ‘he’ and ‘you’, simultaneously in several paragraphs to
describe Harry’s feelings, which is the most important sign of the
existence of a dual personality. Harry switches back and forth
between ‘he’ and ‘you’ when he tries to describe who he is at the
present and who he was as ‘a writer’ in the past, respectively. He
uses ‘he’ as if he does not know or does not want to remember
himself as he is anymore (unconscious repression of identity), but
remembers his old self as ‘you’, as something he unconsciously would
want to be: “So this is how you died…he was not going to spoil now.
He probably would. You spoiled everything. But perhaps he would
not”. Harry also tries to reinvent who ‘he’ is by becoming ‘you’
again as he remarks: “So he had come out here to start again…to burn
it out of his body”. Freud’s ‘Theory of Dreams’ could also be used
to dissect his dream in his deathbed: “Ahead, all he could see…and
then he knew that there was where he was going”. Comparing this
dream with his conscious daydream at the beginning (“Close to the
summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard…No one has
explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude”), with his
point of view about rich people (“They were dull and they were
repetitious”), and his opinion about the interesting poor people in
Paris that he loved but left behind, one could obtain a general
perspective on Harry’s sense of self and identity: He wasted his
life high up the mountain of classes, somewhere he did not belong,
where the bare rocky ground is covered with nothing but snow and
food is scarce for a writer’s mind. Just like the dead leopard he
should have stayed in the beautiful plains amongst the poor
interesting people in his real habitat. Thus, considering what has
been said so far, one could conclude that Hemingway has expressed
his opinion freely without any form of censorship or any fear of
objection. He does not resort to symbolism as often, and he does not
hide anything, because he has no fear, no super-ego and no morale!
He portrays himself, and possibly the modern American man as a
selfish, sexist, opportunist, free and above all nihilistic entity
that by any means is responsible for what is about to happen to him;
a creeping, gradual death. He is too immoral to take responsibility
for his gifts and his actions, and above all, for the value of life.
Hemingway believes that individuals are rotten from the inside, and
it is their stench that is creeping all over society like gangrene.
As the Narrator in Fight Club famously puts it: “I flipped through
catalogs and wondered: What kind of dining set defines me as a
person?” (“Fight Club”)
On the contrary to Hemingway’s individualistic vision of the
identity, Perkins puts her finger on the society, and from a
sociological point of view holds it responsible for its entities’
failed identities. In YW, one of the few things that the woman ever
reveals about herself, as an individual, is that she is mentally
ill, and the rest comes from the insights into John’s character,
observations and oppressive behavior. Throughout the story, at least
at 50 different instances, she regards to John as “practical in the
extreme” or “never nervous in his life”. However, despite all of
these comments, she does not despise him; she simply believes he
does not understand him. But this does not help in identifying her
identity. Therefore, from a psychological point of view, Perkins
limits the development of identity to these numerous but relatively
hollow remarks. However, from the sociological point of view, each
of these remarks contains a massage in regard to the suppression of
identity regardless of what it is: “Personally, I disagree with
their ideas”. The adverb ‘personally’ is so often used throughout
the story that it could only imply that she has no independence of
character, that she is powerless, that John defines her state of
being, and that she has not control over it. Therefore unlike SOK,
her identity is not developed throughout the story, but rather it is
put under the microscope of oppression and dissected to reveal its
insides. This helps the reader to freely visualize her (even
substitute him/herself with her), and then feel the effects of such
oppression on her identity and how she, as an individual, copes with
its effects. She writes a journal and “[In the beginning] she
censor[s] her language and [has] an artificial feminine self who
reinforce[s] the terms her husband impose[s] on her” (“The Yellow
Wallpaper”), but she lets no one to see the journal, because for her
that ‘dead paper’ provides a sense of escape, a mean for ‘wish
fulfillment’. However, as the plot advances and she starts to see
her self as the new woman inside the wallpaper, her language becomes
less polite, her objections grow clearer and more audacious, and
above all, she starts to write less and less everyday for she can no
longer confide her secrets with the paper as a result of her
developing paranoia with the people around her. It is exactly at
this point that she starts to reveal her thoughts about the society,
though unconsciously, through portraying ‘the woman behind the bars’
and thereby exposing her own identity. She sees the wallpaper as her
society: Full of traditional notions, social norms and intolerable
expectations. She sees her self as the woman trapped behind this
prevailing order as she remarks: “I get positively angry with the
impertinence of it and the everlastingness”. She also refers to the
“unblinking eyes” at several points, as if they watch her every
move, and thus symbolizing the watchful, critical society, similar
to the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg in ‘The Great Gatsby’ but with a
“vicious” effect. Through her description of the pattern on paper,
one could understand her perspective on life: Dull (“It is dull
enough to confuse the eye”), repetitious (“for the thousandth time
that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a
conclusion”), entangling (“she is trying to climb through. But
nobody could climb through that pattern”), and cunning (“when you
follow uncertain curves they suddenly commit suicide”). She also
regards to the wallpaper’s color as yellow, with a permanent
yellowish stench. Considering that yellow is the color of
nervousness, the paper also symbolizes the misery and intolerability
of the life she is trapped in. Thus, through these numerous
comments, she develops a sense of identity for the women living in
her age, and consequently she defines her perspective on her society
as a female member of it. However, surprisingly, and despite the
oppressions, she sees herself as someone above the rest, and looks
down at the society. For example, she points out: “And we all know
how much expression they have”, or “She is a perfect and
enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession”. She
is also dealing with a rebellious and confident but suppressed sense
of self, and she believes there are other women like her who are
also trapped behind this pattern when she remarks: “Sometime I think
there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one”. It is
necessary to mention that she tries, although unconsciously, to
portray herself as an innocent person who is a slave to the
circumstances, and she does this through associating her feelings
with those of the children whom she believed have lived in that room
before her, and thereby freeing herself of any sense of doubt or
guilt. For example she says: “The wallpaper, as I said before, is
torn off in spots…they must have had perseverance as well as
hatred”. As the plot develops, she experiences an awakening, and she
knows that there have been other women, “the creeping figures”, who
went through the same identity crisis and have freed themselves.
However, she does not trust them, or to be more precise, she cannot
stand the way the society looks upon them, referring to her relevant
remark: “It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by
daylight!” Therefore, on one hand she is disillusioned and demands
more, and on the other she cannot escape the watchful, contemptuous
society. Consequently, she starts to develop a dual identity, and
she reveals that when she mentions that she is caught in a dilemma
between her old identity and that of the creeping woman’s, “by
daylight she is subdued, quite”, but at night “she just takes hold
of the bars and shakes them hard”. However, she has already reached
her breaking point; she cannot go back to her old self and at the
same time she cannot stand the society’s criticism. In other words,
she has broken free from the pattern (she tears the wallpaper apart)
but it will not set her free, because “it sticks horribly and the
pattern just enjoys it”. She is left in a limbo, and she even thinks
about suicide, but the fear of society will not let go of her,
because she “know[s] well enough that a step like this is improper
and might be misconstrued”. As a result, she finally decides to
suppress the reality, and thereby she falls into the insanity of
living a dual personality. The last comments that she makes are all
indicative of her mental breakdown: “I suppose I shall have to go
back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard!” In
short, one could conclude that unlike Hemingway’s macho, free and
roaring character, Perkins’s woman has to resort to symbolism,
politics and femininity to express herself. She does not believe she
is responsible for her fallen, shattered identity, but rather she
believes that it is the society that is trapping her inside its
“dizzying pattern”. By looking at the issue of identity crisis from
a feministic point of view, Perkins believes that it is the women’s
society (the paper) that stinks morally, and not the individual.
Tyler Durden says, “People do it every day, they talk to themselves.
They see themselves as they'd like to be, but they don't have the
courage you have to just run with it” (“Fight Club”). The woman in
YW desperately tries to run with her new self, but she unfortunately
cannot escape the society.
In conclusion, one could say that although both writers show extreme
resentment towards ther identities of their respective characters,
but their points of view in regard to the crisis of identity is
drastically different. This issue is partially due to what has been
explained so far, and also due to the difference in gender identity,
because “an important part of identity in psychology is gender
identity, as this dictates to a significant degree how an individual
views him or herself both as a person and in relation to other
people” (“Identity”). These differences have resulted in radically
different styles of writing, even though both writers elaborated on
the same issues. On one hand Hemingway, from his individualistic
point of view, blames the individual, and on the other Perkins puts
all the blame on the society’s shoulders from a feministic
perspective. However regardless of their points of view, at the end
of it all, it is the humanity that pays the price as a whole as
Shakespeare famously puts it:
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
…
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything...
Works Cited:
“Fight Club”,
Fight Club’s Memorable Quotes, IMDB, November 2007,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/quotes
“Identity”,
Wikipedia, November 2007,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_%28social_science%29
“Snows of
Kilimanjaro”, Enotes, November 2007,
http://www.enotes.com/snows-kilimanjaro
“The Yellow
Wallpaper”, Wikipedia, November 2007,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Wallpaper
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