11.3 Solitude, Loneliness, and Identity

Excerpt from “The Bet” (1889) by Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

In the second half of the sixth year, the prisoner began zealously to study languages, philosophy, and history. He fell on these subjects so hungrily that the banker hardly had time to get books enough for him. In the space of four years about six hundred volumes were bought at his request. It was while that passion lasted that the banker received the following letter from the prisoner: “My dear goaler, I am writing these lines in six languages. Show them to experts. Let them read them. If they do not find one single mistake, I beg you to give orders to have a gun fired off in the garden. By the noise I shall know that my efforts have not been in vain. The geniuses of all ages and countries speak in different languages; but in them all burns the same flame. Oh, if you knew my heavenly happiness now that I can understand them!” The prisoner’s desire was fulfilled. Two shots were fired in the garden by the banker’s order.

Later on, after the tenth year, the lawyer sat immovable before his table and read only the New Testament. The banker found it strange that a man who in four years had mastered six hundred erudite volumes, should have spent nearly a year in reading one book, easy to understand and by no means thick. The New Testament was then replaced by the history of religions and theology.

During the last two years of his confinement the prisoner read an extraordinary amount, quite haphazard. Now he would apply himself to the natural sciences, then would read Byron or Shakespeare. Notes used to come from him in which he asked to be sent at the same time a book on chemistry, a text-book of medicine, a novel, and some treatise on philosophy or theology. He read as though he were swimming in the sea among the broken pieces of wreckage, and in his desire to save his life was eagerly grasping one piece after another.

(Please open the link here to read the complete story of “The Bet” by Anton Chekhov).

Excerpt from “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” by Leo Tolstoy (1883):

“It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and the rest all false. And his professional duties, and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, ad all his social and official interests, might have all been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to defend.

‘But if that is so,’ he said to himself, ‘and I am leaving this life with the consciousness that I have lost all that was given me and it is impossible to rectify it —what then?’ He lay on his back and began to pass his life in review in quite a new way. In the morning when he saw first his footman, then his wife, then his daughter, and then the doctor, their every word and movement confirmed to him the awful truth that had been revealed to him during the night. In them he saw himself—all that for which he had lived—and saw clearly that it was not real at all, but a terrible and huge deception which had hidden both life and death. This consciousness intensified his physical suffering tenfold. He groaned and tossed about, and pulled at his clothing which choked an stifled him. And he hated them on that account.

He was given a large dose of opium and became unconscious, but at noon his sufferings began again […] (Tolstoy, 1883).

Loneliness, Connection, and Life Values

“A Clean Well-Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) written in 1933 is an existential commentary about life, loss, and the need for connection and communication. The two waiters, one young, and one older, have different attitudes toward an older man who frequents the café. His wife recently died, he suffers from melancholy depression, and he had attempted suicide. While the younger waiter is impatient and wishes to close the café and go home to his wife, the older waiter has compassion, empathy, and insight, insisting that the patron needs a place to go and that the “clean and well-lighted” café is a safe haven for the man. The café provides an atmosphere of solace and comfort. Hemingway’s characters represent different spectrums of human experience—one which is more self-centered and pragmatic while the other more compassionate and sensitive. The older waiter has lingering questions and thoughts about the meaning of life:

“We are of two different kinds,” the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. “It is not a question of youth and confidence although these things are very beautiful. Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be someone who needs a café.”

“Hombre, there are bodegas open all night long.”

“You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant café. It is well lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.”

“Good night,” said the younger waiter.

“Good night,” the other said. Turning off the electric light, he continued the conversation with himself.

It is the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanliness and order….” (p.1018).

From: “A Clean Well- Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway in Stott, J.C., Jones, R.E., & Bowers, R. (Eds.) (1998). The Harcourt anthology of literature (2nd edition). Harcourt Canada. (pp.1015-1018)

For the complete short story of “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” please open the link here.

An Excerpt from Solitude by Henry David Thoreau

“Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an early twilight ushered in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves. In those driving north-east rains which tried the village houses so, when the maids stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection. In one heavy thunder shower the lightning struck a large pitch pine across the pond, making a very conspicuous and perfectly regular spiral groove from top to bottom, an inch or more deep, and four or five inches wide, as you would groove a walking-stick. I passed it again the other day, and was struck with awe on looking up and beholding that mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrific and resistless bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight years ago. Men frequently say to me, “I should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially.” I am tempted to reply to such,—This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue; as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction.  (Walden  or A Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau).