critical commentary II Michael Godson
‘The Stare’ is an insight into the mind of a troubled teen, a pep talk a boy has with himself in a mirror to win the affections of a girl. It is primarily concerned with themes of illusion and commercialism - themes explored in James Joyce’s ‘Araby’ and Murakami’s ‘The Second Bakery Attack’. In ‘Araby’, the narrator fails to see Mangan’s sister for what she is: a naturally flawed human-being. The narrator in ‘The Stare’ also idealises the girl he lusts after, referring to her as a ‘damsel’. The boy also, like the man in ‘The Second Bakery Attack’, is totally dissatisfied by commercialism; in fact, he is only made hungrier by it as it promises him greater and greater rewards: ‘Adidas hadn’t lied. Use their shower gel and you get the girl’. The narrator in ‘The Second Bakery Attack’explains his insatiable lust for material consumption - ‘I began to think that this was a special hunger, not one that could be satisfied through the mere expedient of taking it to an all-night restaurant on the highway.’ This was the inspiration for the consumerist attitudes of the boy, describing himself as ‘hungry’. The empty cologne bottle was used to represent the empty consumerist ideals of the boy. This was an example of objective correlative used in my piece, inspired by John Cheever’s use of the technique in ‘The Enormous Radio’, describing the ‘empty’ street outside Irene’s apartment to highlight her isolation. The unreliable narrator is used throughout the piece to make us question the validity of what the boy is saying. This creates a sense of confusion and illusion in the reader. This sense of unreliability was created through the contradictory thoughts of the boy.The most obvious example of this contradiction is in the third paragraph when the boy states, ‘Well I was in love without
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