For most of the beginning
of the book until somewhere in the middle of his journey, Smithy is a
frustratingly unemotional character. Sure, he feels embarrassed by his “huge
belly” and “fat ass,” and is always self-conscious around women, but he never really
feels any emotion when it comes to other people around him. At the very least, he
suppresses these emotions to the point where they are not important enough to
be included in his narrative, and this makes it almost impossible for him to make
friends or stand up for himself when people exploit him.
When he is run over by
Carl and taken to the hospital, for example, the amount of treatment and
attention he gets compared to the amount Carl gets is negligible, especially
given the state he is in when he wakes up in the hospital: “I had a headache,
and my balls hurt. I pulled my shirt over my head. The blood down my arm came
from a slice just below the back of my neck. I wet a paper towel, two towels, and
washed it down. I washed my arms. The caked blood ran blackish. My ass was
pretty cut, small cuts, but my underwear was soaked with blood.” Clearly, what
Smithy needs most at this point is rest. He needs someone to at least help him
take care of himself, if not clean the blood off for him. Certainly, he does
not need the stress of having to clean himself off in the bathroom and deal
with his clothes (or lack thereof) alone. Instead, he somehow ends up being twisted
into taking care of Carl instead of the other way around. “‘You’ve got your
hands full,’” the nurse tells him. “‘Seriously, though, if Carl didn’t assure
us you could take care good care of him, we wouldn’t release him. He speaks
very highly of you.’” Somehow, though, Smithy is more embarrassed than angry. He
has literally just been forced to take care of a random guy who ran him over,
and yet he is willing to stay with Carl and help him.
This sort of passive heroism,
where Smithy does not allow himself to get antagonized by others, is something
that I don’t think we give him enough credit for. He does it all the time –
recall the moment when he is shot by the policeman, for example, after he saves
Kenny’s life. Logically, what he does makes sense – why go to all the trouble
of holding a grudge against someone when neither you nor they can go back in
time and change what happened? For most of us, though, it would be extremely
difficult to keep our emotions in check in a situation like this, and although
the reason that Smithy is able to do it is probably not one of purely logical
reasoning, it is still something we should acknowledge and respect.
Okay... I mean I guess it's... nice... of Smithy to do things like process his injuries in a robotic way for the greater good. He doesn't seem to be consciously doing it but the effect is the same: he helps people and they're better off for it. I just think celebrating him for his emotionless behavior is beside the point; I'm way more concerned about his mental health. Like, emotional numbness is kind of a terrible thing to live with, honestly? He has PTSD?? His thing with thinking "other people need help more than he does ==> he doesn't need any help at all" strikes me less as heroic and more as something troubling he's going to have to deal with someday (but of course he puts it off, just like his emotions).
ReplyDeleteI agree with Sarah. The overall impression I get of Smithy's emotional state in the first half of the book isn't one of empathetically induced deference, its numbness. His inability to deal with his emotions is implied to be what lead to his alcoholism. When he's injured and helps Carl, I think its because he's highly concussed that he doesn't express himself, but one also gets the impression a severe concussion isnt that far off from how he's been living the past several years.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that Smithy is very numb in general, and that this does come off as being emotionless. But I also think that there are a lot of other things going on behind the scenes. Take for example the situation with Kenny that you mentioned. If the whole story is that Smithy saved a kid's life and he got shot for it, then that does normally elicit a emotional response such as anger. However, if you consider the fact that while Smithy was in Vietnam, he caused the death of an innocent boy named Orlando Cepeda, this lack of anger might be a little bit easier to accept. Maybe Smithy is remembering how Orlando died when he didn't deserve to, compared to Smithy "only" getting shot when he didn't deserve to get shot. Even in the case of Carl, maybe Smithy was thinking about how badly he treated everyone at the Tokyo hospital after Vietnam, and in a way he was redeeming his past by serving Carl and being selfless this time around. I think that we often fail to recognize and understand a lot of the other factors that may contribute to Smithy coming off as emotionless.
ReplyDeleteHey Anshul, I agree with the points you made. I kind of feel bad for him for being so passive all the time. He needs to put himself first sometimes in order to be able to help others. Like in the Carl scene like you mentioned, even though he was in so much pain, he went out of his way to stay with Carl and help him. Though Carl did need help, I feel like in the hospital they both could've gotten help as long as he spoke up. I don't really know how the nurses didn't notice his injuries, but that kind of just emphasizes more his lack of assertion. This makes me feel bad for him but also internally wanting him to push froward more.
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