The Character of Michael in Impulse by Conrad Aiken - Book Report/Review Example

 The Character of Michael in ‘Impulse’ by Conrad Aiken Introduction This paper provides an in-depth exploration of the character of Michael in Conrad Aiken’s short story ‘Impulse’. It is good to remember as a background to what the literature describes as a psychological study on the character of Michael that the short story was written by a man who saw the dead bodies of his parents when he was 11, after Aiken’s father committed suicide, and after the father first shot Aiken’s mother dead. The incident is said to have seared itself into the memory and the later life of Aiken, who himself tried to commit suicide at some point in his life. This tragic event is also said to be the wellspring and inspiration for the overtly psychological themes of much of Aiken’s work, including his poetry and short stories, and this psychological perspective and treatment of his writings is said to be evident in the character portrait of Michael in ‘Impulse’. The psychoanalytic angle that was pursued by Aiken in most of his work shines a unique light on the character, motivations, and ultimate rationale for the actions of Michael in the short story (Poetry Foundation; Aiken; Academy of American Poets; Spivey; Wilbur). The short story is told basically from the perspective of a man who was sentenced to jail for three months for stealing a razor set in a store, at the end of a night of card games and drinking in an acquaintance’s house. Between that fateful day and the jail cell the reader understands the kind of unstable life that he lived with his wife Dora, the inner psychological turmoils that drove him to want to escape from the dreariness of his daily life and the obligations of family, his perception of being the victim of bad luck and the victim of life in general, and the way his theft and his subsequent reactions and thoughts reveal much about the character of the man and the ambivalent nature of his unconscious motivations, feelings, and actions. In the end we get an inside glimpse of the essence of the man, blurry to himself and full of self-contradictions, but essentially viewed by the outside world as a common criminal, a flake of a husband and a friend, a thief, someone not to be trusted and generally unlikable (Poetry Foundation; Aiken; Academy of American Poets; Spivey; Wilbur) Discussion It is interesting to note that though Michael was jailed, was abandoned by wife and friends, and basically marginalized by a society that saw him as a common thief and a flake of a human being, all that amounted to nothing more than three months of incarceration. What is telling in all this is that he saw himself as basically done, done in by that one act of thievery. There are many ways to interpret this self-conception. If this is the lowest that he imagined himself going, after which he saw himself as basically ruined, then in comparison to people who languish in jail for years, go in and out for more heinous crimes, Michael is basically decent. This claim is relative of course, to hardened criminals who remain upbeat in spite of life sentences for murders, rapes, and more heinous crimes involving the taking of lives and property. In other words, objectively speaking, Michael is not the worst human being on earth. In fact there are aspects of the perspective of Michael that show him to be extra sensitive to the everyday realities that confront him. His thoughts on his childhood, the stolen shell then, thoughts of his mother, and the detailed, intimate memories of his wife all indicate a kind of intense sensitivity that is not common to coarse criminals and petty thieves. Moreover, looking at the first part of the story, it is revealing that Michael found some relief in the knowledge, from his friends, that the impulse to do bad things is something that he shares with some people at least. In a way it can also be said that a part of him was sincere in wanting to find out what it would be like to steal something and act on his impulse in the way that he and his friends imagined, as a kind of intellectual exercise and a way to push the boundaries of his small and stifling life (Aiken). On the other hand, we get a glimpse too of the other objective facts of the life of Michael, and come to understand that from an outsider’s point of view, Michael had all the makings of a petty crook. He had a history of leaving places with unpaid rent, and of abandoning relatively large debts. His estrangement from his wife is partly due to his reneging on his financial responsibilities with his family. He had the inclination to slack off, to want to escape from responsibility, and to essentially try to go through life expecting that luck would turn, rather than blaming himself for his condition and trying to better that condition through his own effort. It was a loser mentality, in other words, that from the outside world’s perspective was something of a turn off. It is telling, from an outsider’s point of view, that the judge saw nothing in Michael that was redeeming, and that the police officers too, exposed to all kinds of men, saw in him nothing but a petty crook. His supposed friends abandoned him and portrayed him in terms that reveal them as not being true friends. They abandoned him. In this way the flaky character of his friends reflected his own flaky nature. Moreover, one can argue that when his voice faltered and he saw himself as being insincere in his explanations of his action to the police and to the judge, was it not an admission from a part of him that he wanted to steal because he was hard up indeed, and not because he saw it merely as an intellectual exercise? Was a part of him fooling his own self with regard to what his true motivation for stealing was? Knowing that Aiken had an intense interest in psychoanalysis, it is not hard to imagine that Michael’s was a portrait of a man who was after all, objectively, a convicted thief in the end. The external reality, the judgment of his wife, the judge, and the police, seem at odd with the self-image of Michael, and in this juxtaposition we are able to get a glimpse of a complex reality (Aiken). Going deep into an analysis of the character of Michael then, in the short story, brings the reader face to face with this enigma of the inner feelings and thoughts of a man resulting in a self-image that can be at odds with the external perception of that man. The reality is that from one perspective it is difficult to determine what part of Michael’s narrative is true and what part is delusion. We do not know in the end whether Michael acting on impulse was due to the intellectual exercise suggested by friends, or whether it was ultimately the result of some deeper motivations and neuroses. A person can argue one or the other and not get closure from the facts and circumstances of the short story. It must be the nature of the short story as presented by Aiken, and the nature of subjective perception, that one ultimately cannot judge one way or the other. If one is to believe the external judgment of the man, then one can say that the wife, the judge, and the police officers, even the friends, cannot all be wrong in their negative assessment of the character of the man. On the other hand, from the subjective perspective of Michael, things are not as easy to discern (Aiken). Works Cited Academy of American Poets. “Conrad Aiken”. Poets.org. 2013. Web. 30 October 2013. Aiken, Conrad. “Impulse”. Short Story Masterpieces, Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine (Eds). 1954. Laurel Book/ Dell Poetry Foundation. “Conrad Aiken”. PoetryFoundation.org. 2013. Web. 30 October 2013. < http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/conrad-aiken> Spivey, Ted. “Conrad Aiken (1889- 1973)”. New Georgia Encyclopedia. 2002. Web 30 October 2013. < http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/conrad-aiken-1889-1973> Wilbur, Robert Hunter. “Conrad Aiken, The Art of Poetry No. 9”. The Paris Review. Winter 1968. Web. 30 October 2013. Read More