Post by Beelzebibble on Jul 3, 2009 18:52:00 GMT -5
Here's a short essay I never thought to post last semester. It's a revised and expanded form of a free-write in which we were simply tasked to draft a concept for a magical realism story. Will I ever write the story? Maybe. But I think the essay stands well enough on its own, too.
All right. So let us posit, for a moment, the existence of a man. A young man, shall we say – why not? – tall and healthy, and decently good-looking. Really the point of the thing is to make him archetypal so we need not bother ourselves with giving him a limp or a skin condition. Occupation? Oh nothing special. Give him a mundane desk job, it doesn’t matter. Attitude polite, pleasant; make it easy for the reader to inhabit the role. Good? Good. Now, shall we say we put him somewhere – not at the office, sit him down someplace public, maybe put him in a diner across the street on his lunch hour – and let there enter another fellow who looks exactly like our protagonist.
An unusual happening! But social constraints serve to keep the two men from exclaiming at once their similarity. Don’t they? So, at this first meeting, the men share no more than a surprised look. Very well. Later in the week they see each other again. Yes, in a café or somewhere, standing next to each other in line, where it is harder to avoid making conversation. Our hero inquires about the second man’s past. Both born in Providence! But the second man attended a different college – Cornell rather than Dartmouth, or some other distinction without a difference.
We say the hero sees a third time this identical man. But when he greets him, the man doesn’t recognize him. Our hero asks about the man’s past, and learns that this man was not born in Providence, Rhode Island. He was born in Bangor, Maine. His father, our hero learns, has the same name as our hero’s. But instead of a lawyer, that man was a doctor…
Again and again this hero of ours meets men who look the same as him, again and again they make small talk. We allow, for the convenience of storytelling, that our hero becomes quite skilled at turning the conversation as he needs to, from the initial exclamation of resemblance to casual discussion of important life history. The men come from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York — occasionally, states farther south and west. Their fathers are managers, bankers, teachers, foremen, mechanics, dentists. And, one day, perhaps in the convenience store a block away from the office, the hero comes upon a man who is not quite identical to himself.
No, not quite: a little shorter, eyes a different color, hands even a bit smaller. Yet similar enough to take them both by surprise. Our hero wonders if perhaps this is merely coincidence. Ten minutes of conversation is sufficient to prove him wrong. This new variant has had a life nearly the same as his own… but his father married a different woman.
Altogether a new development! The next day another man appears to our hero. Hair, now, blonde rather than brown; shorter, too. Taller, stockier, more muscular. But so similar in facial structure as to merit notice. This man’s mother has the same name as the hero’s. It is the father who has changed.
So the game has become more difficult. Never again does our hero see men who look precisely like him. There is always some set of differences – different shoulders, neck and eyebrows – different nose, lips and skin tone. Always our hero determines the source: one parent or another has been substituted. And then the differences gradually overtake the similarities. The men he speaks to look more unlike him than like him. What has changed? Now he has only one grandparent in common with them. And beyond that it becomes very difficult to trace. In the weeks that follow, our hero falls into an obsession. He now looks for the scantest similarities – something shared in the shape of the forehead, or the structure of the cheekbones, or the carriage of the back. It becomes a critical point for the man, the matter of deciding when the similiarity is enough to warrant an approach. Sometimes, he knows, the doppelganger is so different that he cannot strike up a conversation without appearing crazy. And, indeed, he worries that he may truly be going out of his mind. But how can he hold his silence as he passes, on the street, one after another fragment of lives that could have been his…?
At this point, any number of things could occur to end the story. Does the hero indeed pass from sanity and end up in an asylum, challenging every man whom he sees for his personal history, trying desperately to find some common factor? Does his mania lead, in some twisted fashion which we need not yet specify, to his death? Or does he, after all, realize how futile his situation has become and let the peculiar incident pass completely through and out of his life? That would be an unusual thing: a story of fanatical obsession that ends happily and without long-term harm. On the whole, I’d say it’s unlikely. This may be magical realism, but you can only push the imagination so far.
All right. So let us posit, for a moment, the existence of a man. A young man, shall we say – why not? – tall and healthy, and decently good-looking. Really the point of the thing is to make him archetypal so we need not bother ourselves with giving him a limp or a skin condition. Occupation? Oh nothing special. Give him a mundane desk job, it doesn’t matter. Attitude polite, pleasant; make it easy for the reader to inhabit the role. Good? Good. Now, shall we say we put him somewhere – not at the office, sit him down someplace public, maybe put him in a diner across the street on his lunch hour – and let there enter another fellow who looks exactly like our protagonist.
An unusual happening! But social constraints serve to keep the two men from exclaiming at once their similarity. Don’t they? So, at this first meeting, the men share no more than a surprised look. Very well. Later in the week they see each other again. Yes, in a café or somewhere, standing next to each other in line, where it is harder to avoid making conversation. Our hero inquires about the second man’s past. Both born in Providence! But the second man attended a different college – Cornell rather than Dartmouth, or some other distinction without a difference.
We say the hero sees a third time this identical man. But when he greets him, the man doesn’t recognize him. Our hero asks about the man’s past, and learns that this man was not born in Providence, Rhode Island. He was born in Bangor, Maine. His father, our hero learns, has the same name as our hero’s. But instead of a lawyer, that man was a doctor…
Again and again this hero of ours meets men who look the same as him, again and again they make small talk. We allow, for the convenience of storytelling, that our hero becomes quite skilled at turning the conversation as he needs to, from the initial exclamation of resemblance to casual discussion of important life history. The men come from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York — occasionally, states farther south and west. Their fathers are managers, bankers, teachers, foremen, mechanics, dentists. And, one day, perhaps in the convenience store a block away from the office, the hero comes upon a man who is not quite identical to himself.
No, not quite: a little shorter, eyes a different color, hands even a bit smaller. Yet similar enough to take them both by surprise. Our hero wonders if perhaps this is merely coincidence. Ten minutes of conversation is sufficient to prove him wrong. This new variant has had a life nearly the same as his own… but his father married a different woman.
Altogether a new development! The next day another man appears to our hero. Hair, now, blonde rather than brown; shorter, too. Taller, stockier, more muscular. But so similar in facial structure as to merit notice. This man’s mother has the same name as the hero’s. It is the father who has changed.
So the game has become more difficult. Never again does our hero see men who look precisely like him. There is always some set of differences – different shoulders, neck and eyebrows – different nose, lips and skin tone. Always our hero determines the source: one parent or another has been substituted. And then the differences gradually overtake the similarities. The men he speaks to look more unlike him than like him. What has changed? Now he has only one grandparent in common with them. And beyond that it becomes very difficult to trace. In the weeks that follow, our hero falls into an obsession. He now looks for the scantest similarities – something shared in the shape of the forehead, or the structure of the cheekbones, or the carriage of the back. It becomes a critical point for the man, the matter of deciding when the similiarity is enough to warrant an approach. Sometimes, he knows, the doppelganger is so different that he cannot strike up a conversation without appearing crazy. And, indeed, he worries that he may truly be going out of his mind. But how can he hold his silence as he passes, on the street, one after another fragment of lives that could have been his…?
At this point, any number of things could occur to end the story. Does the hero indeed pass from sanity and end up in an asylum, challenging every man whom he sees for his personal history, trying desperately to find some common factor? Does his mania lead, in some twisted fashion which we need not yet specify, to his death? Or does he, after all, realize how futile his situation has become and let the peculiar incident pass completely through and out of his life? That would be an unusual thing: a story of fanatical obsession that ends happily and without long-term harm. On the whole, I’d say it’s unlikely. This may be magical realism, but you can only push the imagination so far.