From: Rich Puchalsky Subject: Re: The Bridge: spoil-o-thon Date: Wednesday, May 02, 2001 11:24 PM Tenth post Metamorpheus: Two (part 2 of 2 posts) Orr returns to his apartment and "an ever greater disaster". Workmen are taking all of his clothes and belongings. One of them tells him he's being moved to level U7. Orr says it must be a mistake, that's where "workers, ordinary people live." The man tells Orr that all of his belongings were bought with his hospital allowance, and that therefore the hospital really owns them. Orrs asks to call Dr. Joyce, but the man shows him Dr. Joyce's signature -- the doctor was the one who authorized throwing him out. They even take his clothes and give him overalls. This is a wonderfully symbolic moment, with all sorts of interpretations that are mutually consistent. I'm going to number them. 1. Right off we know that this is about social class. When he enters the room, there is a "tall fellow" holding his shirts, so strong that he doesn't even get angry when Orr tries to grab him, Orr describes him as an "oaf". Orr has enjoyed his pseudo-Victorian-gentleman-hood, and even said " .. they accept their lot and their position in society with a meekness I find both surprising and disappointing" about the workers back on pg. 30. Of course, the narrator is the one who created the whole society; having his alter ego, Orr, muse piously about why the workers don't revolt is comedic. The narrator could have created a classless society if his fantasies had run in that direction, but they really don't. A lot of this has to do with the narrator's discomfort with his changing class position, of course. In any case, Orr will soon find out just how hard it is to refuse to be poor once you're poor. 2. In this interminable thread of high culture, I'm going to make a "Red Dwarf" reference (a British TV comedy) -- did anyone see the episode where the crew find a video game that puts you into a virtual reality that is exactly how you want it to be? It was called "Better Than Life", I think. Well, they all went in, at first things were fine, then one of the crew who had always rather despised himself and expected things to go wrong found things indeed going wrong. His subconscious was influencing the virtual reality to create the horrors that he expected. They end up getting out of the game just as he's buried up to his neck in sand and about to be eaten by rats or something. The point is that the same thing is happening here. This is a fantasy!, the narrator might well cry, how can this be happening? Because part of him wants it to. Just as the narrator can't control his sexual fantasies to make them palatable to his conscious mind, he can't really control everything that happens in The Bridge. He's fighting against himself. 3. But of course the part of him that wants this to happen is the part that wants him to wake up, as represented by Dr. Joyce. The fantasy of upper-class life on The Bridge is holding him back, obviously he's not going to want to leave if he is really enjoying being a Victorian gentleman. So the doctor is really continuing his therapy. He can send letters rejecting further progress -- hypnosis, within the context of The Bridge -- but he can't shut up that part of himself so easily. It's going to keep trying by one means or another. But this is getting long so I'll stop at 3., though I could write more about his loss of identity and so on. The workmen have a checklist of all his belongings, they let him keep his handkerchief because it's been monogrammed, but they're going to make him pay for it and the hat out of his new allowance. They also let him keep the other gift from Arrol, her painting, though they keep the frame. He's been stripped of everything without personal meaning to him. Of course Dr. Joyce's office refuses to let him see the doctor. He goes to his new room, it's small, with a communal toilet, etc. He is met by a guy named Lynch, a complete stereotype of the lower class as seen by people like the narrator. Lynch is grubby, his eyes don't meet you, he has awful table manners, he coughs, yet he's friendly, the salt of the earth, he helps Orr and buys him food when none of Orr's upper-class neighbors even wished him good day. Orr goes back to the bar, Dissy Pitton's, where he and Brooke the engineer would meet. The doorman doesn't recognize him and won't let him in. When he persists, the doorman waits till there's no one around, then beats him up. Now he knows why the lower class accept their lot and position in society. He somehow find his way home and lies on his bed. He is racked with pain, everything hurts. He has put his handkerchief over his cut eyebrow, a mirror of the time he gave it to Arrol for her bleeding nose. In all of this pain, the deep, circular chest pain that he's used to is drowned out. He is lying on his bed, being flooded by waves of pain. He passes from a stage of "waking agonies which the reasoning mind can at least attempt to place in context" to the "semi-conscious trance of torment" in which the deeper parts of the brain know only that "the body aches, and that there is no one to turn to for comfort." In other words, he has just recapitulated his real situation. He really is lying on a bed, in great pain, with no one to turn to, and he has escaped that by using the higher, reasoning parts of his mind to create a livable illusion. But he has to face it once more if he is ever to wake up. This experience, within the dream of The Bridge, may be a way of preparing himself for the trauma -- of saying, this is how it will feel, but I can get through it. Dr. Joyce is still on the case; his rejection of the narrator's easy fantasy has helped to prepare him for reality. On the other hand, this still is a fantasy, this pain drowns out the real pain. So he may be getting closer, but he's certainly not there. I should mention that with this post I reach the approximate midpoint of the book. I suppose I've got another ten or so to go.