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Similes
Part 2: The Postman: Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Stranger to Himself:
Situational irony and portraiture arrive bundled together on Jude’s doorstep in Part 2, Chapter 3. By the time JB grudgingly returns his famed painting to Jude, his friend can barely recognize the subject of the work. His reaction to the portrait is an example of situational ironY:
He no longer felt anything for that person, but not feeling anything for that person had been a conscious act of will, like turning away from someone in the street even though you saw them constantly, and pretending you couldn’t see them day after day until one day, you actually couldn’t—or so you could make yourself believe.
This strangely dissociative moment spotlights a surprising result of Jude’s self-loathing. Staring at his own image, he “no longer felt anything for that person.” Ironically enough, though, this absence of self-recognition stems from Jude’s own hyperawareness.
Jude is so crippled by his own personal imperfections that he loses himself entirely. Self-loathing consumes his life: he tortures himself over his presentation to Harold, crafts bland alter egos, and loathes his own broken body. In an ironic way, then, Jude’s efforts at concealment require paying attention to himself. One can’t pretend to ignore someone without being able to “see them day after day” to begin with. One can’t train a “conscious act of will” without first identifying a target. Jude’s psychological experience shows the line that separates self-consciousness from self-denial, and how one becomes the other once taken to its extremes.
Related Themes:
Part 4: The Axiom of Equality: Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Powerful Powerlessness:
Harold arrives at Greene Street to a sight of vomit and blood in Part 4, Chapter 2. In a stretch of his first-person narration, he recalls this fateful night to Willem in its heartbreaking and violent aftermath. Even more, the law professor puzzles over his son’s complexities and the wildly different sides to his character, which are an example of situational irony:
That night, uptown, I had paced in circles, thinking about what I had learned about him, what I had seen, how hard I had fought to keep from howling when I heard him say the things he had—worse than Caleb, worse than what Caleb had said, was hearing that he believed it, that he was so wrong about himself.
In this moment of fretful perplexity, Harold reveals the irony of Jude’s abusive relationship with Caleb. Just pages earlier, he had celebrated his son for his aggressive litigation and mental agility. Harold recounts an episode in which Jude had grilled a whistleblower in court and lingers over his son’s “brutal” coldness. Here, though, he retraces the moment when he finds Jude crumpled at the bottom of the stairs and spattered in his own blood. The fierce, feared litigator—“so relentless, so dogged, so pointed”—is suddenly, ironically, so powerless and vulnerable.
Harold’s discovery comes as no surprise to the reader, who has witnessed Jude’s dualities throughout the novel. But he rightly observes that “I have never met anyone as neatly or severely bifurcated as he.” Jude is both the violated child and law firm partner. He is the sex worker and a movie star’s lover, a victim of unimaginable tragedy and a beneficiary of great luck, too. For the first time, Harold sees his son in his many contradictions.
Related Themes:
