Literary and Cinematic examples

Meursault

Mom died today. Or maybe yesterday. I do not know. I received a telegram from the nursing home: "Your mother passed away. Burial tomorrow. Heartfelt condolences." But it doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.

This is how The Foreigner begins, bringing with it the distance, loneliness, and desert aridity that run through each of the pages of the novel. It is the silent story of Meursault, a simple office worker who lives in Algiers, leads his life with total indifference towards himself and the world, observing the development of events from the window of his house, and that one day, for no apparent reason, kills an Arab. After his arrest, he only remains "faithful" to an almost exasperated realism; he accepts all the consequences of his gesture (trial and sentence to death) without any defense, in a disarming strangeness.

As soon as he receives the telegram of his mother's death, the dryness of the environment and of Meursault's life becomes evident. The slightest emotion seems to be remotely present as he arrives at the asylum where his mother lies. His emotional world is absent. After falling asleep on the bus, "when I woke up, I was leaning against a soldier who smiled at me and asked if I was coming from far away. I said 'yes' so I wouldn't have to talk anymore."

The director of the hospice shows him his understanding for having hospitalized the mother, given the economic impossibility of supporting her, while he remains distant and oblivious. There is continually an internal description of what is happening outside, in the world around him, as if Meursault were watching events unfold from a faraway place inside. "The director spoke to me yet. But I hardly listened to him."

They "invite" him to see his mother's body, but he replies, "No." "Why?" asks the doorman, without really asking. "I do not know." Thus ends the discussion, with a mysterious "I understand" from the concierge. The wake continues in tremendous desolation. When her mother's friends enter, the description is indicative of her way of seeing, being, and perceiving reality, which is never emotionally warm:

I saw them as I have never seen anyone before, and not a detail of their faces or costumes escaped me. However, I did not hear them, and it was hard for me to believe in their reality. [...] It struck me not to see the eyes in the faces, but only a dull glow in the middle of a nest of wrinkles.

In the funeral procession, the cypresses, the fields, or the hearse, glossy, oblong, and shiny, reminded him of a pencil, which gave rise to unexpected feelings.

Through the lines of cypresses that brought the hills closer to the sky, through that reddish and green land, through those houses, few and well-drawn, I understood my mother. The

afternoon, in this region, must have been like a melancholy truce. Today, the overflowing sun that made the landscape shake turned it inhuman and depressing.

From the beginning, there is constant reference to the elements of nature and the influence they have on his behavior.

I was a little lost between the blue and white sky and the monotony of those colors: viscous black from the open tar, opaque black from the clothes, shiny black from the car. All this, the sun, the smell of leather and manure from the car, the smell of paint and incense, and the fatigue of a sleepless night, disturbed my eyes and ideas.

To the point that, later on, he will make a "no decision" that will be fatal. It almost seems that nature is the only one that allows Meursault to approach something like a sense, a solitary man who tends to isolation, who half fears. It's about he doesn't have friends; maybe he does have co-workers, but they don't show up.

At the funeral, the detachment of a simple witness of his own life becomes evident. He is a detached observer, certainly very keen, who prefers to understand life rather than live it.

On Sunday, after returning home from his mother's funeral, he sits looking out his bedroom window: the cobblestones, the trams, the sky that incessantly changes color and density, the families... And he decides to go to the sea, where he meets Maria, with whom he spends the day and night. Everything happens as if you were standing, and the decisions rained down on you: you just stand in the middle of them and watch them.

Meursault will never mourn the death of his mother; only on a couple of occasions does he tell us: "At that moment I thought of my mother."

A bunch of characters revolve around Meursault, including an old man with a mangy dog for whom he only reserves blows and insults. The old man, who goes by the name of Salamano, will lose his animal, with whom, after the death of his wife, he had established a relationship of affection, albeit violent; he is sad, without hope of finding him. He lives across the street from Meursault who, when he hears him sob at night over the loss of his dog, thinks of his mother. "And I learned that because of the strange and slight noise that crossed the partition, I was crying. I don't know why I thought of mom. But I had to get up early the next day. I wasn't hungry and I went to bed without dinner."

A key character is Raimundo Sintes, who lives in the same building. He is known as a pimp, although he says he works as a warehouse keeper. The protagonist does not care about rumors. "In general, he is unloved. But he talks to me often and sometimes he comes into my room for a moment because I listen to him. I find what you say interesting. On the other hand, I have no reason not to talk to you."

This strange neighbor asks for a favor: writing a letter on his behalf to a woman. "He wanted to ask me about this matter [...] that I could help him and that he would be my comrade. I didn't say anything, and he asked me if I wanted to be his comrade. I said I was indifferent." Insensitivity becomes evident; her lover will ask her several times if she loves him:

Maria came looking for me in the afternoon and asked me if I wanted to marry her. I said that I was indifferent and that we could do it if I wanted to. Then she wanted to know if I loved her. I answered as I had done before: that it didn't mean anything, and I certainly didn't love her.

Meursault is totally unaware of his emotions, which seem to be isolated from his experience. We are not talking here about the suppression of a feeling, which can then erupt in an explosion or the like. In reality, it is about ignoring this emotional world, not having the tools that allow its recognition and expression. This trait is associated with the need to be autonomous.

Paradoxically, by saying yes to marriage to Maria, it might seem that he is putting himself in a situation that is anything but autonomous. Instead, he is even more independent because he can maintain an even greater emotional distance by making himself practically incomprehensible and, above all, elusive. There is also a good dose of sincerity in the face of the inability to set limits and say yes and no—something that could have responded to the wedding proposal, for example.

He doesn't lie; at most, he could be even more explicit when he says he doesn't love the girl. However, at the moment when he finds himself in front of the question, he cannot help but say how things really are for him. The question is already invasive in itself: he had already answered it once and he doesn't understand why he has to answer it again. So, he answers, and his sidereal distance is contained in the choice of words, tone, and laconism.

He will even prefer, at a key moment, to walk along a beach in the sun without feeling well, to return "with the women," who talk and ask questions. It is really too much for him, something unbearable, and the only limit he can set is to "back off": he leaves, silently. Paradoxically, if on the one hand he is insensitive, on the other he accuses a hypersensitivity to invasions, to intrusions, which is not only an expression of detachment but also of an excessive dedication that necessarily makes him withdrawn.

With his new friend, Raimundo, Meursault generally feels comfortable, even thinking, after testifying on his behalf in a complaint of assault on a woman: "I discovered that he loved me." This sentence makes explicit a kind of naivety that will lead him to not allow him, with so much isolation, to see how Raimundo is taking advantage of him, of his dedication. This good faith to put the murder for the one who will pay with his death.

In fact, Raimundo invites him and Maria to a house by the sea, warning Meursault that the brother of the woman he had assaulted is following him, along with other Arabs, to beat him up. During the day, the group hangs out on the beach, eating and chatting. The men go out for a walk on the beach right after lunch, with the sun overhead. Meursault suffers a lot with him and with the heat.

"I didn't think of anything because I was half drowsy with so much sun on my bare head." They meet the group of Arabs who, after a brief scuffle in which Raymond is slightly injured, flee. Raimundo carried a pistol with him, without his friend knowing it, and when they meet the two Arabs again, Raimundo asks if he should shoot the Moor or not. Meursault tells him not to use it, to confront him as a man, to put the weapon away and use it just in case the Arab looked at them without lowering his eyes.

Everything stopped here between the sea, the sand, and sun, the double silence of the flute and the water. I thought at that moment that you could shoot or not shoot and that it didn't matter.

It doesn't go any further. The two return to the house. Meursault stays outside. "The heat was such that it was painful for me even to stand motionless in the blinding rain that fell from the sky. Stay here or leave, it didn't matter. After a moment I went back to the beach and began to walk." He is overwhelmed by events, and the only thing he is looking for is a refuge—his refuge—which he does not have there, and then he must, necessarily, find another, perhaps the little fountain of water where there was silence, shade, and solitude.

There he could rest and regain his strength. Actually, he can't go into the house; it would be too tiring, and the thought of having to climb the steps tires him. He cannot enter the shadow of the house because there are the people who ask, who want; it is necessary to find an isolated place. It is for him, in a very obvious way, a matter of survival.

However, when he reaches the fountain, he finds the Arab, who freezes, literally motionless. The Moor puts his hand in his pocket where he has the knife and—suddenly—Meursault does the same, where he still has Raimundo's revolver. Would it be possible for you to go back? No, because behind there is the scorching beach. That excessive heat, to which he cannot react in any way, puts him in contact with his body, with a very strong bodily sensation, sometimes violent, in any case excessive for him.

A sensation that he cannot sustain, being habitually detached from his body, at such a delicate moment, in which he almost reached his refuge. The Arab's rage, when he takes out the knife, and the reflection of the sun on the blade, hitting him in the eyes, are experienced by the protagonist as the greatest invasion. There is a depersonalization of Arabic: it is the light reflected on the page that invades it, and this is the classic drop that fills the glass.

All you can do is shoot. Simply. "The burning of the sun reached my cheeks, and I felt the beads of sweat gather on my eyebrows. It was the same sun as the day I had buried my mother and, like then, my forehead hurt most of all and all the veins together under my skin."

The forehead can be seen symbolically as the mind; it is the network of thoughts, which is short-circuited the moment a feeling arises, so that it is no longer possible to analyze or consider... Something apparently greater than him surpasses him. "The fiery sword gnawed at my eyebrows and pierced my sore eyes. It was then that everything faltered." The 'sword pierces' in Meursault; a full-blown invasion.

Then comes an even more distant and cold description, if possible, of the Arab's murder. First, one shot and then four more. His words reveal the defense mechanism: it is as if it had happened to another, something of the least importance to him; it hermetically isolates the emotional content of the traumatic event from the intellectual, thereby losing its meaning, removing it from consciousness.

This automatic survival mechanism withdraws him into himself in order to "manage" what happened:

"It seemed to me that the sky was opening wide to let fire. My whole being relaxed and I clenched my hand on the revolver. The trigger gave way, I touched the polished belly of the stock and it was there, in that deafening, dry raining noise, that it all began. [...] I understood that I had destroyed the balance of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I had been happy. So I fired four more times at an inert body where the bullets sank unnoticed. And it was like four dry knocks that I gave on the door of misfortune."

Since it is a death by firearm, the blood is not spilled; this too is dry and barren, like the burning beach. Symbolically, he seems to want to highlight the interior desert of the character, the total absence of emotional humidity, the distance. The only color that is present, apart from the hot sun, so hot that it is not even identified as a color but is simply light, is the reflection on the leaf. Again, a cold, rigid, impassive element.

This mechanism is what will condemn him to death; at least, that's what it seems. The trial investigation begins. From the beginning, from the moment that Meursault speaks to the police commissioner, to his lawyer, and then to the judge, he shows himself as he is, totally removed from an emotional experience, and it is precisely this that the prosecution will use to give wings to a sentence to the guillotine.

All those who question him are perplexed by his surrendered admission of the facts. Meursault can't say that what happened didn't happen, and when asked why, he replies

that it was because of the sun, sparking laughter from the jurors and the audience. But for him, it is the truth. He doesn't know anything else. It was because of the sun.

His lawyer asks him about his mother's funeral, where, according to witnesses, "he had given evidence of insensitivity." Meursault does not understand that his mother's funeral has anything to do with the murder of the Arab; they are clearly two separate things, so why does your lawyer bring it up?

He asked me if I had felt sorry that day. This question surprised me very much, and it seemed to me that I would have been very upset if I had had to ask it... I must have loved my mother very much, but that did not mean anything. All normal people, I told him, have at some time wished the death of their loved ones. [...] The day of Mom's funeral, I was very tired and sleepy, so I didn't realize what was happening. [...]

He asked me if I could say that I had suppressed my natural feelings that day. I said, "No, because it wouldn't be true." [...] I realized above all that I was putting him in an awkward position. He didn't understand me and was a little irritated with me. I wanted to assure him that I was like everyone else, absolutely like everyone else. But, basically, all of this was not very useful, and I gave up out of laziness.

He refuses to ask or explain himself, even in this very serious case where, in fact, life is at stake. It's as if he "knew" a priori that it would be impossible for him to explain himself (because he is unknown even to himself...) and that, in any case, it wouldn't matter; so, having nothing meaningful to say, it's best to keep quiet.

The second part of the story delves into the world’s view of such a man: a misfit, obstinate in not adjusting to the norms and conventions required by society. This is his meeting with the investigating judge: "He told me, in the first place, that I was described as a taciturn and reserved character and he wanted to know what my opinion was. I replied, 'I never have much to say. That's why I keep quiet.'"

He then asks him "without transition" if he loved his mother. "Yes, like everyone else." Later, when he is accused of neglecting his mother by putting her in a hospice, Meursault, who still does not understand, will say that he could no longer take care of her financially and that, moreover, the two of them had nothing else to say, thus arousing general indignation. Thus begins the picture of a terrible and ruthless murderer who will also be accused of debauchery for having been with Maria the day after his mother’s funeral; in short, inhumanity. As if he were an alien.

Although he doesn't like the strident voices or the light in prison, he likes it and quickly gets used to the cell, "quieter and darker." His intolerance to "pain" manifests itself in intolerance

to noise. During Maria's first and only visit, in a large room where everyone yells, "I wasn't feeling well and I wanted to leave. All that noise hurt me."

Of his adaptation to prison life, he makes a description that is also distanced, although very accurate. You can sit still thinking, waiting, watching for a long time; considering separately the different aspects of his situation, which allows him to see, for example, the loss of certain freedoms as something that does not fall within the sphere of his needs. You can therefore minimize them, which is like reducing yourself: "I could spend hours just enumerating what I found in my room." Thus, the more he reflected, the more unknown or forgotten things he drew from memory. I understood then that a man who had not lived more than a single day could easily live a hundred years in prison. [...] In a certain sense, it was an advantage. Now, he is completely isolated in himself.

"I had read that in jail you end up losing track of time. But that didn't make much sense to me. Before, I didn't know how long and short the days can be at the same time. Long to live without a doubt, but so relaxed that they concluded above the others. They lost the name. The words 'yesterday' and 'overflowing some tomorrows' were the only ones that retained a meaning for me. When the guard told me one day that he had been there for five months, I believed him, but I did not understand him." It is a continuous soliloquy.

I went to the skylight and, with the last light, I contemplated my image. She was still serious, and there was nothing surprising about it because, at that moment, I wasn't too. But at the same time, and for the first time in months, I distinctly heard the sound of my voice. [...] I understood that during all that time, I had spoken to myself.

The trial begins with the usual and constant impression of strangeness; to the point that Meursault does not understand why there are so many people and so many journalists. Then he realizes it's about him and is shocked because "people don’t usually pay much attention to me." Everything comes out during the trial, and if the defense attorney can hardly object, the prosecution has a free path and uses each of the events-non-events of Meursault’s life to paint a ruthless and inhuman murderer. Meanwhile, our character remains motionless. An emotional color is painted when, after the testimony of his landlord that it was just an accident, the two look at each other and Meursault feels, for the first time in his life, the desire to hug a man.

There are questions that are obscure to him, such as when he wonders how they wield the intelligence they recognize in him as accusatory evidence. He realizes that the horror the crime inspires in the judge, and perhaps in everyone present, is less than that caused by his insensitivity.

The trial becomes very heavy for him, his head spins, and he continues to perceive the sounds that come from the street outside the court, bringing back memories of a life he no longer has. He realizes that this "circus" (the trial) is useless and he just would like to return to his cell.

The death sentence is not long in coming. From this moment on, Meursault loses sleep and enters into an eternal wait for dawn because he knows that at that time, the executions take place. He wants to be prepared; above all, he doesn’t want to be surprised, which he has never liked. He feels his heart beating and can't imagine that it will stop soon. He refuses the visit of the priest several times until the latter suddenly decides to enter the cell. Meursault does not believe in any God, in any redemption, he does not believe in sin, and he does not want to be asked once again what he has already been asked. Finally, it is explained to the priest in a catharsis.

"I tried to explain to him one last time that my time was short. I didn’t want to lose him to God. He tried to change the subject by asking me why I called him 'sir' and not 'father.' This got on my nerves and I replied that he wasn’t my father: he was just like the others. [...]"

"So, I don't know why, something broke inside of me. I screamed at the top of my lungs and insulted him and told him not to pray and that he had better burn himself and disappear. He had grabbed him by the collar of his cassock. I poured out the depths of my heart on him with mixed gasps of rage and joy."

"It seemed so safe, right? However, none of his certainties was worth a woman's hair. He wasn’t even sure he was alive, since he lived like a dead man. I seemed to have empty hands. But I was sure [...] of everything [...] of my life and of this death that was going to come. Yes, that’s all I had. But at least I had this truth in my hands, as much as it had me. [...] It was as if I had always waited for that moment and that dawn [...] Nothing mattered [...] What did the death of others matter to me, the love of a mother! What did I care about his God, the lives that one chooses, the destinies that one chooses, when a single destiny had to choose me and, with me, billions of privileged people who, like him, called themselves my brothers!"

"Everyone is privileged. There are no privileges. The rest will also be condemned one day. He too will be condemned. What does it matter if a man accused of murder is sentenced to death for not crying at his mother’s funeral? [...]"

"As soon as he left, I regained my composure. I felt exhausted and threw myself on the bunk. [...] The sounds of the countryside met me [...] The wonderful peace of this sleepy summer washed over me like a tide. [...] For the first time in a long time, I thought of Mom. I seemed to understand why, at the end of a life, she had taken a 'boyfriend,' why she had played at starting over. [...] So close to death, Mom must have felt liberated and ready to

relive everything. No one, no one had the right to cry for her. And I, too, felt ready to relive it all. As if that tremendous anger had purged me of evil, had freed me of hope, before this night full of omens and stars, I opened myself for the first time to the sweet indifference of the world. Finding him so similar to me, so fraternal, in short, I understood that he had been happy and that he continued to be. So that everything is consumed, so that I feel less alone, I can only hope that there will be many spectators on the day of my execution, and that they will receive me with shouts of hatred."

Underground Man From Memoirs from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

The anonymous narrator of Memoirs from the Underground is a bitter misanthropist who lives alone in Saint Petersburg in the 1860s. A veteran of the Russian Administration, he has retired with a small inheritance. The novel consists of "notes" that he writes, a confusing and contradictory set of confessions that describe his estrangement from modern society. The 'underground,' the 'dark cellar' from which he claims to be writing, is a symbol of his total isolation. He feels excluded from the society to which he is supposed to belong while stating that he prefers the underground world, which he hoards to exercise his individuality, as a good Self-Preservation 5.

The first thing he confesses to us is that he is a sick, evil, and unattractive man, mutilated and corrupted by hate. Read and intelligent, this very fact, in his opinion, motivates his misfortune, since modern society condemns all conscientious and educated men to be miserable. He denounces the romantic idea of "the beautiful and the sublime" as absurd in that context. His 'too-acute awareness' prevents him from acting, since 'too much awareness is a disease.'

There are times, he confesses, when he wants someone to slap him and anticipates that he will not be able to forgive or take revenge. For men of action, "two plus two equals four." If fools act impulsively to get revenge, someone with a "too sharp conscience" has too many doubts to act. And so, the underground man is seen as a mouse retreating 'ignominiously back into its hole.'

This loner constantly vacillates between seeking recognition from society and having nothing to do with anyone. In his low opinion of humanity, he denies that we are rational beings, stupid and cruel. Obsessed with literature, modeling, and actions with readings, he is not just separate from the city; also, in a certain sense, from reality. An example of a modern pessimist, he affirms that he simply carries to the end what the majority represses. We all have, Dostoevsky suggests, something of the spiteful pessimism of the underground man.

Human Nature

This antihero, who sees the worst in himself, generalizes about human nature, considering himself an example of a sick and spiteful humanity. He compares humans to animals: there are bulls and mice, and he is seen as an insignificant fly. We are just another animal species among many on this planet, with no special dignity. This degradation of humanity refers to Darwin's theory of evolution, which had just been translated into Russian when Dostoevsky wrote Memoirs from Underground. The protagonist does not hesitate to mention the scientific "discovery" that man is descended from apes. The underground man sees us humans as creatures as foolish, cruel, and despicable as himself. He claims that his pessimism is simply honesty about true human nature: malice and irrationality.

After having sex with Lisa, a prostitute, in the brothel, he wakes up at two in the morning next to her with nausea. The underground man encourages her to leave the brothel and get married. When Lisa comments that not all married women are happy, he tells her she is a slave and, at least, blurts out that she is not. Cruelty is seen here without meaning or limits in the underground man. For what reason does he torment the vulnerable Lisa? His cruel words, moreover, contradict him, for he had presented himself to the reader as "a coward and a slave." Of course, the underground man looks for others weaker than himself to experience a sense of superiority. He has spent days dreading Lisa coming to visit him and regrets giving her his address. Within a few days, however, he relaxes and begins to fantasize about being romantic with her. In dreams, his tone is different from the one he uses with the reader; he speaks to Lisa in a kind and magnanimous way. And it is then that the underground man convinces himself that Lisa will not go to her house, where it could be the real person who loses her delusion. He is obsessed with literature, which provides him with the material for his fantasies, which threaten to be destroyed by the irruption of real life. When the woman then actually comes to his home and he yells at Apolonio before bursting into tears in front of Lisa, he first feels ashamed and then feels sorry for her, but then turns cruel again, yelling at her to leave him alone. His wild mood swings and unpredictable treatment of other characters seem to stem from a strong angst beyond his control.

Isolation and Society

The narrator writes from a mysterious place underground, cut off from society. He always feels isolated in society, whether at school (where he had no friends) or at work (where he

hates all his colleagues). Does he reject society, or does society reject him? Does he crave recognition or not? Having been rejected by many, he despises us and withdraws, and this withdrawal makes others like him even less, leading him into almost complete isolation. It's a boring life, but isolation brings certain benefits, such as a critical distance from which to observe and time to read. So, the underground man goes back and forth between feeling unjustly excluded and voluntary exile. He can't even decide what he wants: friendship or loneliness.

Literature and Writing

The underground man differs from others in his obsession with literature. He grew up without many friends and spent (and spends, now underground) a lot of time reading. Not only is it a solitary activity, isolating him, but his overly literary sensibility prevents him from normal social functioning and makes him socially awkward. Lisa tells him that he talks like a book, and he's obsessed with dueling, for example, an antiquated practice in traditional literature. He imagines challenging someone to a duel at the bar, but then realizes that everyone will laugh at him, as indeed they will when he challenges Ferfichkin to a duel. However, literature offers him a chance to overcome his isolation: writing. Through writing, he can strike up a conversation with a community of readers. Although the novel is composed of interior monologues, it becomes a "dialogue" where he imagines his readers' reactions and responds to them. It can be seen as an attempt to break out of isolation. But he ends up rejecting even this community of readers: according to him, he should not have written these notes at all.

Thought and Action

Most of these notes are ramblings. There is little plot. And this is because, simply, there is little action in the life of the underground man. What he himself says is that he is a man of "too acute a conscience," which paralyzes him. He thinks too much, questions everything to the point that he can't decide what action to take. He often imagines action but never carries it out, such as when he heads to the brothel, where he is supposed to slap Zverkov... but he arrives too late. Paralyzed by his own thoughts, all he can do is go underground, talk to himself, and write down his thoughts. Through this pathetic character, Dostoevsky asks us: Isn't it better to be stupid and live like a normal person? Is it possible for a highly conscientious person to live a functional life in modern society?

The Toll Collector

From The Toll Collector by Rachel Johnson (2003).

The Toll Collector (in Spanish, El Recolector de Peaje), by Rachel Johnson, is a short film that portrays the isolation of the Five Self-Preservation in its strangeness before the world and itself. The Self-Preservation 5 is observed in taking isolation and renunciation to the extreme, where the individual is enough only with himself and his mind. The short portrays him in a poetic and subtle way, through stop motion, the technique of placing images or fixed objects one after another to achieve movement. The cold colors, the predominance of the moon, the spectral paleness of the character, and the dissonant music translate very well the distant and desolate sadness of this character.

A lonely woman lives in isolation and works at a toll booth. She feels strange and lives in her mind, fueled by the dream of being a prima ballerina. She is kind and has a different body. She feels different, like a monster; it seems that something is wrong with her; something inside her is insufficient, so it is better hidden. In that hiding, she is satisfied with little, and does not feel that she needs more. She is self-sufficient, but at the same time, she harbors a lot of sadness because that self-sufficiency and settling for little is the answer to a broken desire. It is the feeling that everything is already lost, love will never come, and only the rejection of destiny remains. It is the renunciation of life.

Loss and heartbreak can dry out the soul. Her life is boring, and in order not to see that desert, she fills herself with things: collections, knowledge, hobbies. She takes care with them, but they are locked up, without being shared. To fill her desolation, she practices and practices ballet, makes her own pointe shoes, and begins to weave until she is exhausted. From so much living in her mind of unattainable dreams, she begins to have hallucinations. The dry soul is disconnected from reality because it does not want to see its own emptiness; there is no longer a body, and the mind floods everything.

Until, one day, she hears a baby crying in the distance. Leaving her house, she sees a leafless tree from which some fetuses hang from the umbilical cord. Each baby falls from the tree like ripe fruit or as if they are launched into life. However, one does not fall; one remains in the tree, as if it does not wish to be born. As she gets closer, she realizes that this baby, seized by fear, has her own face. At that moment, she realizes that her sadness originates in fear, which keeps her paralyzed and hidden, without going out into the world to make her dreams come true, without living, after all.

She decides to change her life, go out into the world, stop being a spectator. She is going to fulfill her desires without knowing very well how, going through the fear that keeps her hidden. Well, as we hear in the short film, "a heart can bear loneliness, but it never gets used to it."

Paterson

From Paterson by Jim Jarmusch (2016).

The film Paterson, written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, one of the most important filmmakers in American independent cinema, chronicles a week in the life of a couple from Paterson, a small town in New Jersey.

The protagonist, played by Adam Driver, bears the same name as the town where the story takes place. Paterson almost never speaks unless asked, and answers almost always evasively, often in monosyllables. He does not let anyone into his emotional world. He protects himself in a kind and polite but implacable way.

Easy on the surface, absolutely nothing happens in the film. It is the chronicle of a banal, monotonous, and almost insignificant week, as much as the life of the protagonist seems to be. It is not that frenetic action cinema that mainstream Hollywood has accustomed us to, but a minimalist film that stages the day-to-day life of a Self-Preservation 5, the quintessential antihero.

Adam Driver himself expresses it as follows:

"I remember when I read the script, I couldn't help but think that something was going to happen in every scene, like, 'Now the dog gets hit,' or 'The bus driver runs off the road.'" It's very brave of Jim to think that a character whose main activity is listening is cinematic enough. He trusts that his audience can handle seeing someone who only thinks.

This look at the life of the protagonist and his partner Laura begins on a Monday morning and ends the following Monday, with the same overhead shot that opens every day: the two of them in bed, just as they wake up. The protagonist has an armored emotionality, a compulsive search for introspection, a polite retreat into his inner world, minimizing opportunities for contact and intrusion from the external world. His strategies are all unidirectional: a silent and discreet presence, practically never asking for anything, not creating opportunities for dialogue, exchange, or contact. He responds with monosyllables, saying nothing about himself, quickly returning the ball to the other person, and taking the least risk.

The character has a great capacity for concentration and abstraction. He spends almost the entire day immersed in his world, absorbed in his thoughts and poems. It's as if he detaches from reality, even though he's physically present. The "upper part" is always writing, ruminating, as he states in one of his poems: I'm in the house.

It's nice out: warm sun on cold snow. First day of spring or last of winter. My legs run up the stairs and out the door, my top half here writing.

In his notebook, there are no erasures or rewrites; the entire creative process is internal. When something emerges, it already comes out in its final version.

When spoken to, it takes him a few seconds to "come down to earth." In fact, it's as if a part of him never quite made it, as if his incarnation process had not been completed. When forced by circumstances, when an encounter is "inevitable," he faces it with the confidence of someone who knows what he can do, but will return to his world like flipping an on/off switch. This ability to compartmentalize and ensure that things, people, and environments do not mix—remaining pure and impervious, without communicating with each other—finds a specialist in E5.

There is no real interaction for this character, as he is always self-centered. He has great difficulty seeing the real other, to be in a relationship. He tries, but it's like he doesn't really have the skills to maintain a dialogue or bond. He just doesn't know what to say, what to do. He tries to be friendly, and he is very polite, formally available, but he is not truly engaged in the relationship. He cannot empathize or establish emotional contact with the interlocutor.

He feels much more comfortable observing than interacting. He looks at everything that surrounds him: the city he travels through every day on the number 23 bus, the matches, the glass of beer, the decorations that Laura hangs in the house, or the Paterson waterfall, his favorite and inspiring place.

From the safe vantage point of the driver's seat, he watches the life of the city. He stands still, life flows into him and passes. He listens to the stories of others: the dialogues of children, adolescents, men, and women. He pays attention to details, turning the rearview mirror to look at the passengers' shoes while listening to their conversations. He has fun, laughing to himself while listening to these stories. His thing is to live looking at the world from afar, through the window.

A Self-Preservation 5 is not lacking in interest in relationships. On the contrary, he is curious to know how they work, how they develop, what people say. As for getting involved... Well, that's another question.

The defensive need is greater the closer the link. On the other hand, with strangers—people you will probably never see again—it is less essential to protect yourself.

The film reveals, through the privileged channel of poetic creation, the unusual sensitivity and delicacy of a restrained and essential character with words. He is a phenomenological artist, who always starts from simple, everyday things, nothing extraordinary: he observes the matchbox, or the beer in the glass, he observes the emotions that they provoke, and transforms them into poetry....

We have plenty of matches in our house We keep them on hand always Currently our favourite brand is Ohio Blue Tip, Though we used to prefer Diamond brand That was before we discovered Ohio Blue Tip matches They are excellently packaged, sturdy Little boxes with dark and light blue and white labels With words lettered in the shape of a megaphone, as if To say even louder to the world. Here is the most beautiful match in the world, its one-and-a-half-inch soft Pine stem capped by a grainy dark purple bead, so sober and Furious and stubbornly ready to burst into flame, Lighting perhaps, the cigarette of the woman you love, for The first time, and it was never really the same after that. All this will give you. This is what you gave me, I Become the cigarette and you the match, or I the match And you the cigarette, blazing with kisses That smoulder toward heaven.

The seemingly irreconcilable dichotomy between an impenetrable, adamantine shell and a tender, hypersensitive core—"Incredible, a driver who likes Emily Dickinson!"—is clear from some narrative details. Like the contents of the breakfast box that accompanies him to work every day, in which, among the things that guarantee his survival, there is room, in addition to a tangerine and Laura's cupcake, for two obviously very significant photos for him. In a simple gesture, hidden but of great reverence, almost devotion, one is the portrait of Dante Alighieri, the supreme bard, with a small red rose attached, and the other is of his beloved Laura.

A common thread in the story is the cufflinks. In the opening scene, Laura, barely awake, recounts a dream:

Laura: I had a beautiful dream. We had two sons, twins... Paterson: If we had children, would you like them to be twins? Laura: Yes... Twins? Of course, why not?

There is the withdrawn, reserved, and anonymous Paterson, who walks on tiptoe so as not to make noise; and the timely and heroic Paterson, at the right time to disarm his friend Everett when he threatens to kill himself there, in the bar, in front of his ex-girlfriend. In this case, cold blood and the disconnection of emotions help him, and he is able to do everything at the right time.

A restricted and desolate environment and a claustrophobic climate envelop the plot. There is no sociability in the couple, who apparently have no relationship with the outside world. It is a life as circular as the Cheerios cereals that Paterson has for breakfast every morning, the obsessive black-and-white decorations that Laura paints all over the house, or the laps that the protagonist takes, day after day, at the wheel of her bus.

The protagonist's favorite poet is William Carlos Williams, also born and raised in Paterson. They are united by their roots in the place of birth and a very sober and traditional lifestyle. Nothing in their attitudes and behaviors reveals the internal volcano of feelings that beat in their words:

Old Glow

When I wake up earlier than you and you Are turned to face me, face On the pillow and hair spread around, I take a chance and stare at you, Amazed in love and afraid That you might open your eyes and have the daylight scared out of you. But maybe with the daylight gone, You'd see how much my chest and head Implode for you, their voices trapped Inside like unborn children fearing They will never see the light of day.

The opening in the wall now dimly glows. Flash When I wake up before you and you've Turned to face me, your face on the pillow, And your hair spread out, I take a

Chance and look at you, Stunned with love and afraid Daylight will scare you to death. But maybe, When the daylight is gone, you'll see my chest And head explode for you, with Their voices trapped inside, like children Born not who will never see the dread The light of day. The hole in The wall sends out faint gray and blue flashes Of rain. I tie them up and go downstairs To put the coffee on.

It sounds like a silent and desperate cry, with an abyss between what you feel, or think you feel, and idealize, and what you express towards your partner. That probably scares him, which is why he defends himself so much. This declaration of dependency, of the depth of the feelings that bind him to her, would expose him even more than he already is, making him even more vulnerable, because he gives the impression of being "at the mercy" of his wife.

Pumpkin

My little pumpkin, I like to think about other girls sometimes, But the truth is, If you ever left me, I'd tear my heart out And never put it back. There'll never be anyone like you. How embarrassing.

There is an absolute discrepancy between the intensity and passion of some of these verses and their inability to express their feelings out loud, as if they were walled off in the depths of their soul.

Despite repeated requests, Paterson never reads Laura his verses, even though the most moving poems are dedicated to her. He protects the depth of his feelings by sparing himself from a "real" person who may not correspond to that "ideal" person who is the muse of those lyrics.

His love is not expressed in outbursts or great effusions; nothing is wild or exaggerated. At times he addresses her almost like a stranger, with an unusual formality and distance for people who share the same bed. There are also no scenes of passion or unbridled sex. Everything is very measured, very smooth. She is always naked in bed while he never takes off his shirt: skin to skin without ever wanting to reveal too much, never completely, not even in private...

Laura: Look, honey, I think you should do something with those beautiful poems of yours... They belong to the world, you know? (scoffing): To the world? Now you are exaggerating!

At a given moment, although he does not put a remedy or limit, Paterson feels Laura's falsity. He feels that his interest is not real and deep, and he does not perceive the sufficient amount of admiration that a Self-Preservation 5 needs to decide to grant a few crumbs of his own wisdom.

Laura is a master in the art of manipulation. He uses it systematically, like when he decides to get a guitar as a gift. He bursts into Paterson's lair, the only real place of his in the house, with a precise plan in his head, a plan that apparently the protagonist will not understand.

The tendency to renounce, typical of the E5, is perceived in the spaces of the house. The only place that really speaks of him, with his objects, his energy, the only place that is really "his," is that garage, as we were saying, where he has carved out his own living space. Otherwise, obviously, the house "belongs" to Laura. Paterson moves and behaves in that house as if he were a guest. Each object, the furniture, the position of the paintings, their content, the presence of the dog, everything is and speaks of Laura, not of him. He even takes care not to "make too much noise" in his own home. He lives on tiptoe, occupying a minimum living space, without making a noise, not even when he wakes up. She collects her clothes neatly on the chair and takes them to get dressed in another room without disturbing Laura, who is still sleeping.

It is difficult to put limits on Laura's exuberance, and he gives up on it, as well as on proposing anything that concerns the house. She delegates, as if only she had aesthetic taste, so the possible movement is that of withdrawal: leave everything to her and make a space for himself in the basement or outside the house.

Returning home after finally having the luxury of going out for pizza and a movie (horror and black-and-white!), Paterson says, "We should do this every weekend." What is certain to celebrate the uncle is that the couple decides to give themselves that "luxury" thanks to Laura inviting them to a pizza and a movie (which they never do), a success of their cupcakes at the market. In this detail, the greed of the character and his narrow-mindedness emerge. Paterson guarantees with his work the survival of the couple,

the preservation, but nothing more. The glimpse of life comes with the money earned by Laura.

His small world, narrow but reassuring, begins to creak towards the weekend based on small events that take on the effect of a tsunami in the gray and dull routine that marks the days of Paterson.

Three-quarters of an hour into the tape, he's at the bar, as always, in front of his beer, looking at the Paterson celebrity wall, but he's alone, hopelessly alone, more than ever. The bartender is flirting with a female customer, two friends are playing chess, the pool table is empty, a girl is putting a record on the jukebox, and he is alone with his beer. The desolation is almost tangible, even more visible than the objects that appear in the shots. All this happiness that he had declaimed in the poem is not perceived at all:

When you're a child, You learn there are three dimensions: height, width, and depth. Like a shoebox. Then later you hear there's a fourth dimension: time. Hmm. Then some say there can be five, six, seven... I knock off work, Have a beer at the bar. I look down at the glass And feel glad.

Other:

When you're a child, You learn that there are three dimensions: Height, width, and depth. Then you hear that there is a fourth dimension: Hmm. Time. And then some say maybe there are five, six, seven... I get off work, have a beer at the bar. I look at the bottom of the glass And I feel good.

The greater concreteness of the countertype of the E5 is observed again in this poem. Unlike the social one, the Self-Preservation one is not attracted to abstractions, and when the concepts get complicated, it returns to the concrete: "Hmm. And then some say maybe there are five, six, seven...". Not in vain, although it is a very intellectual character (for

belonging to the mental trio, along with E6 and E7, and for being the most intellectual of them, like Five), this Self-Preservation subtype is the most specific, the most active of the three subtypes. The sexual being the most emotional, and the social being the most markedly intellectual.

Something happens then in the restricted and limited existence of Paterson—small things but with a very mobilizing effect—that force him to come out into the light, to get involved. The first trigger is a problem with the bus: a trivial failure in the electrical system that forces him to take action on the spot. Nothing transcendental, but he is forced to interact with those passengers who until now had been mere objects of observation. And also, to realize the anachronism of some of his attitudes, such as not having a cell phone—"it's a constraint," he says—so he is forced to ask a girl who was coming on the bus for hers to call garages. He is immediately ashamed of it; when the little girl asks him, "Don't you have a cell phone?", he replies, "No, I... I don't carry it with me."

That same night, at the bar, another even more unsettling "incident" occurs when Everett (still unable to get over the fact that his ex-girlfriend Marie can't be won back) pulls out a gun and threatens to kill himself in front of everyone. It's a toy, but Paterson unknowingly pounces on his friend and disarms him.

The bar is a substantial part of the Paterson routine, a privileged place where—even as a simple observer and not as an active subject—life enters the soul (or at least in the field of Paterson). Strong emotions flow and explode in the relationships between the patrons, not only between Everett and Marie, but also between Doc himself, the bartender, and his wife, who suddenly bursts into the bar for the savings, ordering her husband to return immediately, as he had booked with so much effort. She concludes with a threatening: "Doctor, you're going to need a transfusion if you don't return the money to its place!"

The protagonist's emotional shaker has not yet reached its peak, but it will the following night, with the real "tragedy." Paterson, already shaken by the events of the previous day, and surprised by Laura's proposal to leave after the success of his muffins (The Self-Preservation Prefers to Know Beforehand What He's Up Against), inadvertently leaves his poetry notebook on the sofa—instead of in the garage, as usual. When they come back from the movie, they find that Marvin, the dog, has ripped it to shreds.

A new warning for those who decided long ago to lock themselves in their castle and not expose themselves too much: living necessarily implies taking risks and suffering losses! Paterson can't express anger even when the dog destroys his most precious, intimate, and secret treasure. A world of feelings cries out within him, but it is frozen, repressed; he does not have access to the most direct, obvious, and common emotions. One wonders: But how does he keep such intense emotion at bay, when his secret notebook is destroyed?

At most, he says, "I don't like you, Marvin." And yet, something has finally moved. It begins to become an emotion, to have a name and an address: "I don't like you, Marvin" sounds like the beginning of a path of liberation.

Then comes a small big change: Paterson finally sets a limit for Laura when she wakes up on Sunday morning.

Laura: "Honey, it's still early. It's Sunday. Please go back to sleep. Please." Paterson: "Yeah, okay. Go back to sleep."

For the first time, he asserts himself. This is revolutionary for a conservative E5: put a limit on the act; not a preventive limit, an insurmountable barrier to his inner world (in this, he is a specialist), but a limit adjusted to the moment in which the need to do so arises.

He seems to be very agitated, almost on the verge of a collapse. And indeed, something changes. At the end of the story, Paterson seems to open up to a more subtle and mystical dimension of reality. Just when he seems about to relapse into a chronic depression, half-life lover, suffocating, he takes refuge in the contemplation of "his" waterfall, and suddenly a foreigner approaches him. He is a Japanese poet who has come to Paterson, New Jersey, to visit the birthplace of the poet William Carlos Williams.

A surprising detail of this salvific encounter is that Paterson expressly denies being a poet. Does he do it because his poems have been lost or because he has not made them public? Is it because of the same reluctance with which, throughout the film, he affectionately refuses to allow his companion to listen to a single verse of his, going so far as to claim some of the girl-poet's verses instead? Is it due to an excess of modesty, the result of his renunciation of life, of being part of it?

The Japanese poet—a saint? A bodhisattva? A message? Pure synchronicity?—gives him, as he leaves, a notebook with blank pages that are not padlocked or rubber-banded. It seems to give him a glimmer of hope. And the Japanese words sound like a blessing: "A blank page presents many possibilities..."

Change is possible, in fact it is already happening; the seed of transformation has been sown. Will it start to germinate? Or will resignation prevail?

Do I stay like this and resign myself, contenting myself with the least bad? Or do I prefer to "be a fish" and swallow a claustrophobic, limited, and insignificant existence?

The line:

There's an old song My grandfather used to sing That has the question, Or would you rather be a fish?

In the same song, Is the same question, But with a mule and a pig, But the one I hear sometimes In my head is the fish one. Just that one line. Would you rather be a fish? As if the rest of the song Didn't have to be there.