Meeting, Barriers, and the Fundamental Narcissism in Human Interaction - Term Paper Example

Prof’s The Encounter: Meeting, Barriers, and the Fundamental Narcissism in Human Interaction More than perhaps any other creature humans have a desire to understand and to be understood by each other. It is for these reasons that humans developed language, that we write plays and novels, that we spend time conversing with our friends – there is a sensation that humans experience that is probably unique, of being trapped in one mind and one body but wanting to break out of this, to truly commune with others. Yet people also often suffer from a form of innate narcissism, interpreting those around them almost as characters of their own lives, without reference to other’s existence as being as whole, as complete and as universal as one’s own. It is in this light that a great deal of literature deals with “the encounter” as a feature of both literature and human life. The short stories “A Family Supper” and “Encounter” both deal with encounters between distant people: in “A Family Supper,” a man returns to his home in Japan from a foray into America, while “Encounter” details a strange interaction between a Norwegian fisherman and a traveling bookseller he meets along the way. Both of these stories express three inherent elements of an encounter: the desire amongst its participants to come to some kind of understanding or communion, that understanding coming only after overcoming real and intense barriers, and the encounter only being real when internalized by one of its participants, who then treats the other as a part of his or her life rather than a fully fledged individual. Both “A Family Supper” and “Encounter” show people that have some intense desire to understand each other more deeply. In “A Family Supper,” this desire arises out of familial bonds: it details the reuniting of a family that has not been together for some time, which has to deal with the absence of a dead mother (Ishiguro 338). The family’s desire to reconnect, though strained, is evident in several ways. Firstly, they show a desire for proximity: the father at several points says that he hopes his son will stay for “more than a short visit (339), and then later invites him to live at the house if he desires (342). The family also shows a desire to understand each other even when it means asking uncomfortable questions: the son, when hearing that a father’s friend committed suicide, taking his entire family with him, he fears that his father might see this as acceptable. To understand his father’s thinking, he asks him the uncomfortable question “you think what he did – it was a mistake?” to which the father replies “Why of Course. Do you see it otherwise?” (344). This is a surprisingly frank discourse, and one that must have taken a great deal of effort between two people who have a “strained” relationship (338), but both participants are willing to partake in it in order to understand each other. One of the encounter’s basic elements is a desire by two people, separated in some way to come to understand each other further, and put some effort into this understanding. In “Encounter,” it is less clear why the protagonist wants to understand the person he has an encounter with. It is strongly implied that it might be simple curiosity – that the man, Arvid, had a limited world view and the sight of a “black man” on his small back road, driving a moped, which, to Arvid’s knowledge there was only one of on the island, “his [Arvid’s]” might have inspired too much of a curious circumstance to pass up (Jacobsen 346). Whatever the reason for it, there Arvid still demonstrates an almost insatiable desire to understand the other person in this encounter. So much so that Arvid turns his truck around, wasting what would presumably be precious time, in order to run down the “black man” and have a conversation with him (347). Even as both stories agree that an essential element of the encounter is an almost urgent desire to reach out and commune with another person, they likewise agree that this understanding is marred by massive numbers of barriers which must be pushed through or destroyed for the communion to be reached, and that the path through these barriers universally requires vulnerability. “A Family Supper” details a vast number of these barriers. Communion between brother and daughter is marred by the presence of the father: in the presence of this paternal figure, the daughter finds herself unable to do anything but “giggle” (341). Likewise, communion between father and son is hampered by any number of issues. The two obviously share a strained history, with the father frequently commenting on his son’s “behavior” as being a reason that they might not have been able to make amends with each other (339). Likewise they are separated by vast swathes of time and culture: the father finds the idea of his friend committing suicide while murdering his family does not stop him from being “an honorable man” (339) while his son and daughter privately express shock and disgust at the idea (343). It is also implied that social niceties and taboos towards overtly expressive behavior plays a role in separating the understanding of characters in this work, with the father being consistently remote and unwilling to express his feelings. With all this, it is only the son’s discovery of “child” like plastic ships that his father has been constructing (343) – only after this sudden revelation of vulnerability are the father and son able to have their first real conversation, about the father’s friend who committed suicide. “A Family Supper” outlines the second element of the encounter – that an understanding can only be reached when significant barriers are pushed through, often with one party needing to be willing to make themselves vulnerable. In “Encounter” the barriers are not family history, as in “A Family Supper,” but language and culture. Arvid admits that he could not understand the black man’s speech very well, even mocking his language at one point, correcting the word “ship” to “ferry” (347). Despite the barriers to understanding being different, however, the solution is the same: one party needs to make themselves vulnerable in order for the pair to form communion and get a glint of understanding. When Arvid wants to buy a book, then finds himself without any cash on hand, the black man insists that he still “take it” – Arvid could “pay later (348). Here the black man, who is apparently not very well off, selling used books by road in order to support himself, puts himself in a vulnerable position of simply trusting this stranger to pay him back later, at the place the stranger says his house is (348). Only after this expression of trust, and of vulnerability, does the pair share a moment of understanding – Arvid “on the verge of exploding with laughter [… with] the black man laughing too” (348). Here, as in “A Family Supper,” communion in an encounter only occurs after hard-fought attempts to overcome barriers of understanding – and only with an expression of vulnerability. While both “A Family Supper” and “Encounter” describe an intense desire for their participants to understand each other, and a willingness to use vulnerability to overcome the barriers to understanding, they also both demonstrate a fundamental narcissism in world view. Once the other party is understood, and communed with, they are still treated as an object in the first party’s life – a character that intersects their story momentarily, has some impact on the other person, and then, for all intents and purposes, cases to exist. This process is only discussed tangentially in “A Family Supper” – the reader sees the beginning stages of an encounter, when the first understandings are born, but not the late stages, when both people move on and functionally cease to exist for each other. This process is thus displayed through the past history of the characters. The son and narrator apparently left Japan for California for a relationship has since soured – and now that that relationship is over, his former partner no longer seems to exist for him. He indicates that there is nothing left in California – displaying a startling narcissism, as his partner and former lover still exists, as, presumably, do many of his friends. But he has decided to move on, so, functionally, their role in his story is over, and they no longer exist to him. This process is even more explicit in “Encounter.” This story goes to great lengths to show the fundamental narcissism of members of an encounter, who only see the extant world as the bubble that happens to surround them at any particular point. When the encounter first begins, Arvid sees a black man down the street at some distance. But the man is not described in those terms – the narrator instead describes the man as “a small figure at the other end of the world” (346). This shows that Arvid conceives of the world only as what is in his immediate vicinity, and thus the people in it as only those that are actually standing in front of him at any particular moment. At the end of the encounter, Arvid shows somewhat less narcissism, but only a small amount. He describes the figure, as he moves away as “just a little figure on the other end of the swamp,” perhaps showing some greater consciousness to the fact that the other person will continue to exist, and the world is not in fact only what Arvid sees around him at any particular moment (348). This greater understanding, however, is then immediately qualified and limited, when the narrator indicates that the black man “disappears” and that “the only thing left of him was Moby Dick [the book he sold Arvid]” (348). So whatever understanding may be achieved in an encounter, it is in some ways fundamentally limited by the narcissism of those involves. Yes, the encounter does change the participants, but they do not actually form a connection to each other – they make their marks, then move on and out of each other’s existence. “A Family Supper” and “Encounter” are both fundamentally about encounters of distant peoples. They both also show a distinct and recognizable process to an encounter, whereby both participants show a desire to form an understanding of each other, face barriers, and then need to make themselves vulnerable in order to overcome them. Yet both stories also demonstrate that any understanding had by the encounter is limited: it exists only in so much as it marks each individual, but does not allow either side to truly conceive of the other person as a fully fledge, functioning entity with a universe of their own around them. Works Cited Jacobsen, Roy. “Encounter” in Daniel Halpern, ed., The Art of the Short Story: An International Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories. New York: Penguin Books: 346-8. Ishiguro, Kazuo. “A Family Supper” in Daniel Halpern, ed., The Art of the Short Story: An International Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories. New York: Penguin Books: 338-345. Read More