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Chapter 9
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Talking to Strangers, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Default to Truth
Limitations of Transparency
Coupling Theory and Context
Self vs. Stranger
Summary
Analysis
1. In 1962, American poet Sylvia Plath moved to London for a fresh start after her husband, Ted Hughes, abandoned her and their two children to be with another woman. She found a rental in the Primrose Hill neighborhood. Plath was initially productive, and she completed a poetry collection that her publisher believed was worthy of a Pulitzer Prize. However, by December, her chronic clinical depression took hold of her life once more, and she died by suicide shortly after the new year.
In the months before she succumbed to chronic depression, Plath experienced a devastating separation, the promise of a new start, and a rewarding period of intense, productive creativity. Yet, many people remember Plath exclusively for her infamous suicide, reducing her to a romanticized figure whose life was consumed by despair. Gladwell begins Chapter Ten with a brief glimpse into the life Plath lived outside of the culture’s oversimplified memory of her to show how reducing our thoughts about a person to a single experience causes us to underestimate and misunderstand the meaningfulness of their life, the reasons for their actions, and the complexity of their character.
Themes
2. “Poets die young,” Gladwell claims, citing the statistically higher suicide rates of poets compared to other professions. Additionally, Plath’s circumstances put her at an increased risk of suicide: she had a prior suicide attempt, she had been hospitalized, and she was living abroad, cut off from friends and family. There is some ambiguity about whether Plath actually intended to die when she turned on the gas and placed her head in the oven on the night of her death. She had left a note to her doctor, which makes her best friend, Jillian Becker, wonder whether she had wanted to be rescued. On the other hand, the coroner’s report notes that Plath pushed herself as far inside the oven as possible, which implies her clear intention to die. Furthermore, she wrote morbid poetry in the days before her death.
The cliched phrase “poets die young” implies that suffering artists inevitability die tragic deaths. However, Gladwell challenges this notion by presenting conflicting details surrounding Plath’s suicide that, at the time, led some to question whether she was truly resigned to die. On the one hand, Plath wrote morbid poetry in the days before her suicide and had fixated on death for most of her life. On the other hand, the presence of a note to her doctor makes Plath’s friend wonder if she’d intended to be rescued before the poison carbon monoxide gas she inhaled from her oven killed her. The uncertainty surrounding Plath’s suicide suggests an impulsivity to her actions, as though she chose to die on a whim without fully thinking the decision through. Thus, Gladwell presents two opposing takes on Plath’s suicide: either Plath was a tortured soul who was destined to die, or Plath made a snap decision to die based on factors that presented themselves in the moment. Her suicide was not the consequence of fate, but of circumstance.
Themes
3. After World War I, many British homes used a manufactured fuel called “town gas” in their homes. The carbon monoxide used in this gas offered an easy means to commit suicide. In 1962, of the 5,588 people in England and Wales who committed suicide, approximately 44.2 percent died by carbon monoxide poisoning. When the discovery of natural gas deposits in the North Sea caused England to phase out the use of town gas in favor of natural gas, most English households had to replace their old appliances. Towns had to construct new gas mains. This process began in 1965 and was completed in 1977. During these years, as town gas was phased out of use, gas suicides became increasingly rare. For Gladwell, the question thus becomes: did the people who would have died by gas opt for another method, or did they choose not to die by suicide?
The positive correlation between access to town gas and high rates of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning suggests that the people who died by carbon monoxide poisoning in years when town gas was readily available opted to commit suicide only because a convenient means to do so became available to them. This theory also sheds light on the nature of Plath’s suicide. If we accept that the second option Gladwell presents us with is true (that people who died by carbon monoxide poisoning would not have died by suicide had gas not been available to them), we can speculate that Plath, as the statistics suggest, chose to die because a set of ideal circumstances presented themselves to her—not because she was fated to do so.
Themes
Gladwell calls the former option—that people could simply choose an alternate method of suicide—displacement. This theory suggests that when a person’s mind is set about doing something, they are likely to do it. For instance, Plath had a history of suicide attempts, so it’s logical to believe that she would have found an alternate method to take her life had town gas not been an option.
Displacement theory suggests that removing the opportunity for a behavior to occur doesn’t prevent the behavior occurring, it merely alters the circumstances in which it occurs. Applying displacement theory to Plath’s suicide seems to make sense, given Plath’s history of suicide attempts and chronic depression.
Themes
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The second possibility—“that suicide is a behavior coupled to a particular context”—suggests that the act of suicide is tied to circumstance. To illustrate the concept of “coupling,” Gladwell describes the set of circumstances his father, an emotionally repressed man, required to cry in public: a sentimental Dickens novel and the company of his children. Without these two factors, his father would not cry.
We can think of coupling theory as the inverse of displacement theory. Coupling theory argues that behaviors are tied to circumstances. If these circumstances are not met, the behavior will not occur.
Themes
If suicide is a coupled behavior, then it’s not merely something that depressed people do: it’s something depressed people do because of a particular moment or set of circumstances. If suicide is a coupled behavior, its rates would rise and fall according to the availability of means to commit suicide, such as town gas. On the other hand, if suicide is a displaced behavior, then one would expect suicide rates to remain constant over time. To determine if suicide is a coupled or displaced behavior, Gladwell references a graph that charts suicide rates in England, Wales, and the U.S. between 1900 and 1980. In Gladwell’s words, the graph resembles a “roller coaster,” with unpredictable, sharp rises and falls in suicide rates over the century.
If suicide is a displaced behavior, society has limited means to reduce suicide rates. For instance, enforcing stricter gun-control laws for patients with a history of mental illness in an effort to offset a rise in self-inflicted gunshot deaths might not have a significant effect on suicide rates overall, since the people who might have died by a self-inflicted gunshot will simply seek out another method to accomplish the behavior. If suicide is a coupled behavior, however, society can conceivably construct plans to reduce suicide rates by eliminating the particular circumstances with which suicide is coupled.
Themes
Criminologist Ronald Clarke argues in favor of suicide as a coupled behavior. In a 1988 essay, he describes how the painlessness and ease of access of town gas made it a preferable method of suicide compared to methods such as shooting, cutting, or hanging, which require additional planning. Gladwell observes the shockingly dry, detached way Clarke writes about suicide. Yet, Gladwell suggests, it’s illogical to pretend that method doesn’t matter. When gas began to be used in British households in the 1920s, no studies considered the possibility that the new technology could increase suicide rates. Furthermore, when the British government published a gas-modernization report in 1970, it, too, failed to mention natural gas’s influence on suicide rates.
Clarke argues that people who died by carbon monoxide poisoning in the decades after World War I died only because a convenient and painless method of suicide became available to them. Had town gas not been as readily available, these people might conceivably still be alive. One can’t help but consider Sandra Bland’s suicide a coupled behavior, as well. Like Plath, Sandra Bland had a history of hardship and mental illness. Yet had a very specific set of circumstances not presented themselves to Bland (i.e., the jarring experience of being in a new town, the excitement and trepidation of starting a new job, the trauma and humiliation of being threatened, belittled, and physically harmed by a police officer for failing to signal a lane change) one can speculate that Bland might still be alive.
Themes
Gladwell offers the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco as further evidence of suicide as a coupled behavior. Since its completion in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge has been the site of over 1,500 suicides. Statistics suggest that suicide is coupled to the Golden Gate Bridge. A survey conducted by psychologist Richard Seiden revealed that of the 515 subjects who tried to fall from the bridge but were restrained before they could go through with the act, only 25 went on to kill themselves in another manner. In conclusion, people who go to the Golden Gate Bridge to die want to die at that moment, on that bridge. They do not have a general desire to die.
Like Ronald Clarke’s research on the link between town gas availability and increased suicide rates, Seiden’s findings suggest that people who go to the Golden Gate Bridge to die by suicide would not die by suicide at all were the Golden Gate Bridge removed from the equation. This situation presents a very clear, achievable action society can take to reduce suicide rates: construct a barrier around the bridge to catch the people who jump from the bridge.
Themes
It wasn’t until 2018 that the city constructed a suicide barrier around the bridge. Gladwell attributes this delay to society’s unwillingness to see suicide as a coupled behavior. As evidence, Gladwell cites a national survey that found that 75 percent of Americans believed a suicide barrier would not dissuade suicidal people from taking their lives some other way. Gladwell uses these findings as a segue to a second set of mistakes humanity makes when talking to strangers: “we do not understand the context in which the stranger is operating.”
In 2018, the Golden Gate Bridge was 81 years old. Between its completion in 1937 and 2014, around 1,400 bodies of people who jumped from the bridge have been recovered. If the city had constructed a barrier sooner, they might reasonably have saved many lives. And yet, the delayed construction was met with no public outcry. The survey statistics Gladwell presents that a people resist the idea that suicide could be a coupled behavior. Gladwell uses this disbelief to connect Chapter Ten’s analysis of suicide to the book’s broader discussion about talking to strangers. For Gladwell, the notion that suicide is a coupled behavior—and the majority’s rejection of that notion—reflects another critical mistake we make when we talk to strangers: “we do not understand the context in which the stranger is operating.” In other words, we reduce the stranger to the person they are in our encounter with them. In so doing, we disregard the broader “context” of the stranger’s life that could explain and help us understand why they behave the way they do.
Themes
4. Today, Brooklyn’s 72nd Precinct is a gentrified neighborhood. Thirty years ago, it was a high-crime area. David Weisburd is a criminologist who researched the area. Though it’s a common theory that economically and socially disadvantaged areas generally see elevated crime rates, Weisburd’s findings showed that most crime was limited to one or two streets. This didn’t make sense to Weisburd, whose “Dracula model” of understanding criminals posits that criminals are driven by inner impulse and “have to commit a crime.” If this were the case, though, wouldn’t criminals’ drive to commit crimes compel them to extend beyond a couple streets? Weisburd realized it was time to rethink his assumptions about crime.
Gladwell shifts focus to analyze the notion of crime as a coupled behavior. The first example of this is Weisburd’s findings about crime in Brooklyn’s 72nd Precinct, which implied a connection—a coupling—between crime and place. These findings contradict Weisburd’s original “Dracula model” of crime, a model that draws from the theory of displacement to suggest that criminals’ inner impulse to commit crimes will drive them to act unlawfully, regardless of their shifting circumstances.
Themes
5. After leaving Brooklyn, Weisburd joined fellow criminologist Larry Sherman to continue studying the relationship between geography and crime. Weisburd and Sherman’s study focused on Minneapolis, and they collected data about crime as it corresponded to specific addresses. Their findings astonished them: just 3.3 percent of the city’s streets were responsible for half of all calls placed to the police. Studies in other cities, such as Boston, Seattle, and Kansas City, produced similar results. Gladwell believes that these findings suggest a “fundamental truth” about interactions with strangers: where and when we interact with strangers has a major influence on what kind of person we perceive that stranger to be.
The results of Weisburd and Sherman’s research in Minneapolis support Weisburd’s earlier findings in Brooklyn. Together, these findings make a compelling case for crime as a behavior that’s coupled, or linked, with place. For law enforcement, these results offer ideas about where to target efforts to reduce crime. For Gladwell, the coupling theory forms the basis of yet another “fundamental truth” about our struggle to talk to strangers: context has an enormous influence over how people behave. And, if we recall the national survey about people’s disapproval of the construction of a suicide barrier around the Golden Gate Bridge that Gladwell referenced earlier in this chapter, we can assume that context isn’t something we consider when we judge a stranger’s actions.
Themes
When Plath died by suicide in 1963, suicide rates among women in her age bracket in England were at a record high: ten deaths per 100,000 women. By the time England phased out town gas usage, that rate dropped by half. Looking at these statistics, Gladwell describes Plath as “really unlucky,” insinuating that she would not have died had she been a decade younger and missed the suicide peak of the early 1960s.
Having established suicide to be a coupled behavior, Gladwell surmises that Plath would not have died had she not met the “unlucky” circumstances of suffering a mental health crisis at the peak of town gas usage in the early 1960s.
Themes
7. In 1958, two years into her marriage to Ted Hughes, Plath and Hughes moved to Boston. She was not yet a famous writer and found work as a receptionist for Massachusetts General Hospital’s psychiatric ward. She enrolled in a Boston University writing center, where she befriended the poets Anne Sexton and George Starbuck. Like Plath, Sexton was obsessed with death. Sexton’s family had a history of mental illness, and Sexton suffered from depression, mood swings, and substance abuse. According to her biographer, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Sexton carried a bottle of barbiturates in her purse “to be prepared to kill herself anytime she was in the mood.” She died by suicide on October 4, 1974. Sexton’s death wasn’t a shock to anybody who knew her.
Sexton seems to have been well aware of the coupled nature of suicide. She carried a bottle of pills with her everywhere she went “to be prepared to kill herself anytime she was in the mood,” or anytime the perfect set of circumstances came her way. Sexton’s death didn’t surprise people who knew her because she, like Plath, was very interested in death. But what assumptions do we make when we pass judgments like this? Are we falling for the fallacy that suicide is a displaced behavior, and that suffering souls like Plath and Sexton ought to be defined by a singular, fateful moment in their lives?
Themes
Gladwell digs deeper into Sexton’s and Plath’s deaths, noting that their personalities and histories of mental illness are only partial explanations for why they chose to die on a particular day. Gladwell embraces the opinion of Plath’s close friend, the critic Alfred Alvarez, who thought the world had come to define Plath by her suffering, thus minimizing the complex, multifaceted person she really was.
Gladwell implicitly connects the way people reduce Plath to a tragedy to the way we tend to oversimplify the inner lives of the strangers we encounter, reducing them to one-dimensional characters who don’t exist beyond our interactions with them.
Themes
Gladwell shifts his focus to a map of Jersey City that Weisburd constructed. In the center of the map is a small, shaded area that represents a hot spot for sex work. After Weisburd assigned more police officers to the area a few years ago, sex work activity fell. Interestingly, however, sex work didn’t rise in the area outside the patrolled zone. This suggests that sex workers who could no longer work in the patrolled zone found different work or “change[d] their behavior.” Gladwell concludes that sex workers were “anchored to place.”
Weisburd’s map of Jersey City is further evidence of the link between crime and place. In this case, we see how sex workers in the patrolled area “change[d] their behavior” by finding new work instead of moving to continue sex work elsewhere. These findings can give us insight into the circumstances that went into sex workers’ decisions to begin working in the profession in the first place. This is why Gladwell believes coupling theory can help us approach strangers with a better attitude: it forces us to consider the myriad of ways that a person’s background and present circumstances impact their behavior. In so doing, we begin to see the stranger as a person whose life is as complex and layered as our own.
Themes
While people commonly regard sex workers as forced into sex work by extraordinary circumstances of economic and social disadvantage, Gladwell sees their unwillingness to move as surprisingly ordinary. Weisburd notes how sex workers affected by the increased police presence talked about the difficulty of establishing a client base in a new area and learning which strangers they can and can’t trust. A familiar locale offers predictability and assurance, while a new environment presents the threat of strangers and the unknown.
A lot of people attach certain stereotypes to sex workers. Some condemn their line of work; others overgeneralize them as all forced into sex work by poverty and disadvantage. Both attitudes reduce the sex worker to a one-dimensional character whose identity centers around sex work. But Weisburd’s findings normalize sex workers, revealing their normal reasons for not wanting to move, such as the unnecessary hassle of building a new client base.
Themes
Gladwell bounces back to the subject of Anne Sexton’s suicide. He argues that it’s no accident that she spoke about dying by overdose. Statistically, drug or poison ingestion as a suicide method results in death only 1.5 percent of the time. In contrast, use of a firearm has an 82.5 percent fatality rate. Gladwell suggests that Sexton’s preferred method reflects her ambivalence about dying. Eventually, taking inspiration from Plath’s death, Sexton died by carbon monoxide poisoning in her garage. Carbon monoxide poisoning has a much higher fatality rate than Sexton’s earlier preferred method.
Gladwell implies that Sexton’s initial preference for a suicide method with a low fatality rate reflects her initial ambivalence about dying. Eventually, as certain circumstances in her life changed to make Sexton feel more certain about her desire to die, she shifted her preferred suicide method to carbon monoxide poisoning, ensuring the success of her attempt. Earlier, Gladwell mentioned how Sexton’s friends expected her suicide. Yet, Sexton’s relationship to suicide wasn’t constant. It shifted in a number of subtle, logical ways to conform to whichever set of circumstances she was dealing with at different points in her life. Reducing Sexton to her single, fateful behavior oversimplifies her life and compromises our ability to understand her.
Themes
Gladwell proposes another similarity between Plath and Sexton. Sexton used fumes from her 1967 Mercury Cougar to poison herself. Emissions from the 1975 version of the same car contained roughly half as much carbon monoxide. Today’s cars emit hardly any carbon monoxide at all. Had Sexton been in crisis ten years later, she, like Plath, might have lived longer. Gladwell closes Chapter Eleven by describing a scene in which Plath and Sexton enthusiastically discussing death at a bar at the Ritz, a favorite past time of theirs. While a stranger who overhears the women’s discussion as they pass by might believe the women “do not have long to live,” the principles of coupling theory encourage us to take the opposite approach: States Gladwell, “Don’t look at the stranger and jump to conclusions. Look at the stranger's world.”
Gladwell suggests that Sexton might not have died had two particular conditions (Sexton having a mental health crisis and Sexton’s car being an older model) not coincided. Sexton’s friends and other outsiders felt, in retrospect, that her suicide was predictable. However, Gladwell suggests that the different conditions that had to be met during a period in Sexton’s life where she just so happened to be in the midst of a mental health crisis makes her suicide a singular event that can’t be so easily reduced to a tragic but inevitable incident. If we use the lessons that coupling theory teaches us to make an effort to understand the many independent variables that influence a stranger’s actions, we stand a better chance at being able to communicate with, understand, and help them. Gladwell’s closing remarks encapsulates the key lesson coupling theory teaches us: “Don’t look at the stranger and jump to conclusions. Look at the stranger’s world.” The key to getting better at talking to strangers is to consider the stranger’s life beyond the stranger encounter. When we consider the stranger from the broader context of their “world,” we can better understand and respond to their behavior.
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