{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6622", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 6622, "subject": "Short Story 92: Checking Out", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2014-08-14T14:33:54+00:00", "last": "2014-08-14T14:33:54+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-08-14T14:33:54+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 92: Checking Out", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Checking Out\n\n“Checking Out” first appeared in 1986 in *Afterlives* and is collected\nin *Storeys\nfrom the Old Hotel.*\n\nSUMMARY: A nameless protagonist is awoken by the slam of a door. He is\nlying on a blue satin coverlet fully dressed in his best suit but without\nshoes. He believes himself to be in a small, shiny, and cheap hotel room\nand sees his suitcase nearby. He opens his bag and realizes his blue-eyed\nwife Jane didn't pack it, thinking it must have been his cleaning woman,\nMartha, before he remembers “Martha was dead.” He sees a picture of Jane's\nclear blue eyes, and thinks that she would say that she would miss him,\n“Though he knew the only time she really relaxed was when he was gone —\nwhen he was gone, and she could pretend they were rich for life, and there\nwould never, never be a need to make anything more, no need for late nights\nat the office, for flights to New York with [his secretary] Jan.”\n\nHe remembers a flight and decides he is in the Algonquin in New York, and\nwants to go out and get a magazine but can't find his shoes: “Well, to hell\nwith them.” He finds Jan's picture while looking for his slippers, and\nthinks Martha must have put it there. He tosses it “toward the\nwastebasket.” He thinks she must love him “in a way Jane never had”, at\nleast since the birth of their child.\n\nHe finds a picture of his adolescent sweetheart Joan under Jan's picture,\nand hears the air conditioner like an “unending sigh”. He recalls a\nchildhood desk and is astonished to think that Joan was probably a virgin\nthen. He tries to throw “both” pictures at the wastebasket again, and steps\non the balcony to see a huge atrium, with flooding below and the sky above,\nbut no way to leave the room. “Tiny figures moved slowly across the lobby,\nwading in water nearly waist deep ?. The room was dark and gloomy behind\nhim, like a cave in which something slept.” He returns to the room to see\nJan's picture once again on his clean clothes, and reaches for the phone to\nconfess to Jane.\n\nThe story cuts to Jane and Mrs. Clem discussing how nice he looked in all\nthat pretty blue at his funeral — Jane bought an air tight dome to keep\nwater from getting to her dead husband. She answers the phone but hears\nnothing, not even breathing, as the main character, despite his resolve to\nreturn to his wife Jane, becomes confused again and calls out all three\nnames before the cleaning woman comes in to turn down the bed so that it is\nready for him to lie in once more.\n\nCOMMENTARY: The first thing that jumps out is the style of the story,\nrather unusual for Wolfe at this point in his career: simple declarative\nsentences that repeat the same pattern over and over. The simple repetition\nwill be the narrator's fate. He tosses Jan's picture toward the wastebasket\nthree times, and many thoughts recur incessantly. “No doubt” starts at\nleast seven sentences in a fairly short story — but our main character has\nbeen plagued by doubts and uncertainty all his life, especially when it\ncomes to women. The fragments that stick out are “Flights — Space. — an\natrium - ? a flood - ...” Even the names of the women involved (Jan, Jane,\nand Joan) have a sameness to them that makes them seem like a repetitive\npart of a cycle, and no doubt this symbolizes his difficulty in separating\nhis feelings for them while he was alive. He tries to get rid of unwanted\npictures now with little success. The picture of Jan keeps cropping up, in\nthe frame and on his clothes, whenever his attention waivers — no matter\nhow he resolves to throw it away, he fails.\n\nThe overwhelming blue of the sky and the water in the atrium and his own\ncoverlet of course reflect the blue of his coffin — but he is trapped in\nthat small room, sealed off from the blue water and infinite sky he can\nonly glimpse from the closed balcony. More than this, however, the blue\nalso represent Jane and her blue eyes. At the end of the story, she has\nerected an air tight barrier around him so that the water can't reach him,\nthe blue theme her choice, and he has been sealed off from her love. His\nending decision, to return to Jane, comes too late — unable to truly make\nup his mind in life, in death the decision has no power, and he is trapped\nin the limbo, with only the repetitive sameness of trying to throw away the\nthings he never could in life.\n\nThe sighing might seem like the slow exhalation of a final breath, but it\nprobably implies regret now that things can no longer be fixed and he has\nfinally made his choice. Even with his resolution, which seems firm, when\nJan does not hear him, he immediately begins to call out the wrong name\nonce more. This final scene is the hardest to pin down as “after-life” or\nnot. It is doubtful there is any intersection between his existence in the\nhotel limbo and Jan's continuing life without him, but whether or not his\nspirit can actually succeed in making the call, it is clear he can no\nlonger communicate with her. The only female presence he will have here is\nprobably “dead” Martha the cleaning woman, who refuses to do windows. His\nfailure to see clearly in life and appreciate the things he had has doomed\nhim to this.\n\nWith the meaning of the female names discussed below, Mrs. Clem's minor\nmercies involve saying how nice he looked in death and in suggesting to Jan\nthat she hang up the phone, but all that is left for the main character is\nthe bitterness of separation and the return of his dead cleaning woman.\n\nThere is some speculation as to whether this afterlife is more like a hell\nor a purgatory, but from the sighing and the main character's exclamation,\n“To hell with them”, it seems to be more like the first circle of Dante's\nHell, Limbo, the start of the huge vertical prison, rather than any\nCatholic idea of Purgatory, for even when he makes his decision to return\nto Jane or throw away Jan and Joan, immediately they are back to haunt him.\nThere is no indication that he can ever throw them away, failing to do so\nin life — when Jane does not hear his voice, the cycle of confusion starts\nover.\n\nLITERARY ALLUSIONS-\n\nBecause of the name, “Checking Out”, and the sighing that is heard\nthroughout the story, the thought that this was something like Wolfe’s\nversion of Bierce's “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” presented itself, but\nthe blue satin coverlet and the dead man's shoeless state matches a bit too\nmuch with the coffin (most are buried without shoes, after all) that his\nwife has spent so much money on to believe that he was actually still in\nthe process of “checking out”. It seems far more likely that the literary\nallusion at work is to Dante's *Inferno*, where the souls in Limbo\nconstantly sigh, lamenting their separation from God. Even though Dante's\nvision of purgatory is also vertical, like the huge atrium that our\nnarrator sees, the sighing found throughout Limbo and even the idea of\nVirgil in Limbo as a fountain and the “sea of all good sense” makes it seem\nas if our main character is more closely situated to the Inferno than\nPurgatory. Our nameless main character has no way to ascend or leave the\nhotel room, even though he insists on checking out of it.\n\nNAMES\n\nObviously, all three female names are so similar in their root that they\nmean the same thing.\n\nJan — God is gracious, it can also mean gift from God\n\nJane — God is gracious, gift from God\nJoan- God is gracious, gift from God\nOne gets the impression that part of the narrator's failing in life was in\nlacking appreciation for God's gifts until it was too late.\n\nBruce — implies thick brush (if there is a deliberate Dante reference at\nwork in this story, ironic that the start of his poem involves getting lost\nin the woods -\n\nIN the midway of this our mortal life,\n\nI found me in a gloomy wood, astray\n\nGone from the path direct: and e?en to tell,\n\nIt were no easy task, how savage wild\n\nThat forest, how robust and rough its growth,\n\nWhich to remember only, my dismay\n\nRenews, in bitterness not far from death.\n\n\n Martha — the sister of Lazarus and Mary, her name means bitter, (just as\nthe names of the wife of the narrator in “Redbeard” and the daughter in\n“The Adopted Father” do).\n\nMrs. Clem — the name Clem implies merciful. Her mercy extends to advising\nJane to hang up and in admitting that the dead man looked nice in all that\n“pretty blue”.\n\nTHE EFFECT OF THE NARRATIVE VOICE:\n\nThe immediacy of first person might create a more personal look at our\nnarrator’s dying or dead experiences, but the third person allows distance\nand a passive powerlessness that suits the isolated, trapped man — he is\nabout to lose the “I” of ego, isolated in the watery hotel room of his\nspirit. His attempt to assure his wife that he is returning and that he is\nmaking his choice comes far too late.\n\nUNANSWERED QUESTIONS:\nWhat is the significance of the flood, and why would Jane erect an air\ntight barrier around his coffin to avoid the entrance of water?\nSymbolically I think this represents the separation from her, but is the\nwater imagery truly as benign as Jane's blue eyes when there are figures in\nthe lobby wading in water up to their waists?\n\nCONNECTION WITH OTHER WORKS:\n\nI feel as if Wolfe has done several stories where the narrator is about to\ndie, namely “The Recording” and “Melting”, and several that involve\nconsciousness after death - “The Dead Man”, *Peace, *and some of the\nstories from *Strange Travelers*. However, even though there are some small\ngestures that this one is located on the cusp of dying, the overall effect\nis that of an after-life story where our narrator deals with the regrets\nand mistakes of his life, and in that regard it is closest to *Peace*. It\nis also like a more figurative “Packerhaus Method”, though this one is more\novertly dualist, with the intersection between the afterlife and the purely\nphysical world fleeting, ineffectual, and perhaps illusory." } ] } ] }