A Single Man: A Novel

“Staring and staring into the mirror, it sees many faces within its face—the face of the child, the boy, the young man, the not-so-young man—all present still, preserved like fossils on superimposed layers and, like fossils, dead. Their message to this live dying creature is: Look at us—we have died—what is there to be afraid of?” 

Within George are many different personas and perspectives which hurt each other more than help. At age 58, he is on the brink of old age and regularly contemplates his own death, especially since the death of Jim. At the same time, the boy within the man is still present; George wants to live, be lustful, and enjoy existing again. He carries the years of his life like wrinkles on his face. On the second page of the novel, George is already mentioning death. This foreshadows his death at the end of the day and novel itself.

“It is here that he stops short and knows, with a sick newness, almost as though it were for the first time: Jim is dead. Is dead.” 

George wakes up on the morning of this formative day the same way he does every other day. Memories of his life with Jim come flooding back, and he is forced to realize that his partner is dead again and again. He never seems to overcome this hurdle, being stuck in grief. This grief, this lack of acceptance, is the driving force of George’s life.

“They are afraid of what they know is somewhere in the darkness around them, of what may at any moment emerge into the undeniable light of their flashlamps, nevermore to be ignored, explained away. The fiend that won’t fit into their statistics […] the unspeakable that insists, despite all their shushing, on speaking its name.” 

George constantly faces gossip, social exclusion, and wrongful assumptions due to his orientation. During the 1960s, few people were accepting and, although it was relatively unacceptable to publicly insult gay people, it was still commonplace to talk about them behind their backs and refrain from including them in social affairs. Alternatively, some people avoid the subject altogether. George is an outcast in his own neighborhood and in his own life.

“But your book is wrong, Mrs. Strunk […] when it tells you that Jim is the substitute I found for a real son, a real kid brother, a real husband, a real wife. Jim wasn’t a substitute for anything. And there is no substitute for Jim, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, anywhere.”

Throughout the day, George speculates about what those around him are thinking. Much of these speculations center on their alleged opinions of him. Mrs. Strunk is a neighbor of George’s who invites him over but only when no other friends are around. George believes she read a pop psychology book about being gay and was given the idea that she needs to reach out. Her attempt is pathetic at best; it is painfully obvious that she misinterprets George and attributes reasons for his being gay that simply aren’t true.

“Oh dear, she has managed to get him irritated already! Yet how can he reasonably blame her for the discomfort of standing nastily unwiped, with his pants around his ankles?”

George addresses himself in a completely honest and open way. He doesn’t hold back from describing his day, including every detail. Despite the overall dark tone of the novel, it is occasionally broken by moments of humor such as this. George is made to feel like a real, living person because of these minute and relatable details.

“George loves the freeways because he can still cope with them; because the fact that he can cope proves his claim to be a functioning member of society. He can still get by.”

George takes the freeway in Los Angeles to get to his job at the community college. Most of the time, George feels a lack of control over his emotions and thoughts. However, when he drives on the freeway, he feels a sense of control and self-efficacy that he does not get elsewhere. Jim’s death took a massive toll on George and being able to drive with ease reminds him that he is still capable of functioning.

“The air has a tang of smog; called eye-irritation in blandese.”

George has a certain arrogance about him. He often views those around him as sexual objects, ordinary, or unintelligent. This attitude manifests via humorous or sarcastic remarks. Wherever George goes, he observes the details of the scenery around him and notes the way they change as days to years go by. He has a keen eye for people as well, regularly watching them and speculating on what they must be thinking.

“And now […] is the male and female raw material which is fed daily into this factory, along the conveyor-belts of the freeways, to be processed, packaged, and placed on the market.” 

George has a cynical side that particularly shines when he teaches. From the moment he arrives, he describes the way the college is changing from one with heart to a concrete jungle full of cars. The “raw material” George refers to are the students whom he believes are being churned out by the college to think and act exactly the same—the way society expects and wants them to.

“It is all, all symbolic.” 

George overthinks every interaction he has, often coming to dramatic and unrealistic conclusions about his place among others, their views of him, and their intentions. He refers to a metaphor about a peddler selling a diamond for a nickel, in which everyone passes by because they assume it is fake. Only a select few stop and take the time to fully examine the situation—and are thus rewarded for doing so. When George finishes teaching, three students stay behind to ask questions. George believes they understand his lesson and wish to discuss it; instead, each has a petty and unrelated reason for being there.

“A minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of a threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary.”

During class, George goes on a long rant about whether or not Aldous Huxley was anti-Semitic and the Nazis’ reasoning for persecuting Jewish people. He believes the Nazis had a reason—albeit not a good one. However, he goes a step too far when he says that the threat was not quite imaginary and shocks his class into silence. When he realizes his error, he dismisses them for the day. George is a minority himself, being gay, and may really be referring to himself here rather than the Nazis.

“Once again, the diamond has been offered publicly for a nickel, and they have turned from it with a shrug and a grin, thinking the old peddler crazy.” 

George explains a metaphor in which a homeless man attempts to sell a diamond on a street corner for a nickel (also mentioned in Important Quote #10). Due to cynicism and rationality, almost everyone dismisses it as fake aside from a select few. When George gives his speech about minorities and their hatred of the majority, and in turn the majority’s reasoning for persecuting them, his class is taken aback—and he feels he imparted great wisdom onto them which they completely fail to see.

“George feels flattered and excited. Kenny has never talked to him like this before. He can’t resist slipping into the role Kenny so temptingly offers him.” 

George is on his way out when Kenny catches up to him. The two chat and walk to the bookstore together, where Kenny buys George a pencil sharpener. This interaction foreshadows later events at the beach and at George’s house. George misreads the situation and believes Kenny wants to have sex with him or possibly even start a relationship, while Kenny really just wants to flirt and get to know an older man. George constantly flips between being a tired old man and a foolish young man; when he is around Kenny, he becomes foolish.

“In all those old crises of the twenties, the thirties, the war—each one of them has left its traces upon George, like an illness—what was terrible was the fear of annihilation. Now we have with us a far more terrible fear, the fear of survival.”

George speaks with his colleague, Grant, about the future of the country under the threat of war. They discuss the logistics behind building a bomb shelter, and George ponders the sad nature of Grant’s jokes. During past tragedies, people wanted to survive. Now, the thought of surviving post-nuclear war does not seem appealing; the thought of living through it terrifies George.

“Essentially, we’re creatures of spirit. Our life is all in the mind. That’s why we’re completely at home with symbols like the American Motel-Room.” 

George loves living in America. He misses aspects of his birthplace in England, but his heart is in the United States. George’s sister criticized him for moving, and George knows that her attitude is shared among many others. He refutes the belief that America is inferior for its apparent laziness and obsession with technology. Instead, George believes that these are the signs of an advanced civilization, one that has no need for hard labor and stress.

“This preoccupation is with death, and we can all share in that, at any time, at any age, well or ill.” 

George regularly thinks about death. Following the death of his partner Jim, he finds himself preoccupied with Jim and the prospect of his own end. When George visits a dying Doris, an old lover of Jim’s, he is once again reminded of his own obsession with death.

“How delightful it is, to be here! […] No one is perfect and no one pretends to be […] Nobody is too hideous or too handsome to be accepted as an equal. Surely everyone is nicer in this place than he is outside of it?”

One place in which George feels comfortable and safe is the gym. When he goes, everyone greets him and treats him as an equal. Regardless of peoples’ muscles or skill level, they are friendly and kind to each other. George feels like he can be himself at the gym, free from the masks of the outside world. He also enjoys the gym’s sense of healthy competition.

“But to say, I won’t eat alone tonight; isn’t that deadly dangerous? Isn’t it the start of a long landslide […] But who says I have to be brave? […] Who depends on me, now? Who cares?”

As George walks through a grocery store, he is reminded of the times he and Jim cooked meals together. He begins to spiral into worry, imagining himself desperate with loneliness. He fears that he will eventually fear being alone. George wonders why he has to keep up this level of courage when nobody is around to care.

“If I’d been the one the truck hit, he says to himself, as he enters the kitchen, Jim would be right here, this very evening, walking through this doorway, carrying these two glasses. Things are as simple as that.”

Rather than spend the evening alone, George decides to call Charlotte and take up on her earlier invitation. While there, he gets very drunk and begins having dark thoughts. He starts to see himself as obsolete and replaceable and understands the sheer luck of him being alive while Jim is dead. There is no rhyme or reason to who dies and who lives, and those who live have the privilege of existing and interacting—painful, but a privilege nonetheless.

“It’s kind of in two worlds. When you look out from the back—from the room I was born in, as a matter of fact—that view literally hasn’t changed since I was a boy.”

George and Charlotte reminisce about the past. George describes the current state of his childhood home back in England—something Charlotte requested several times before. Much like George himself, the house is caught between two worlds—that of bustling suburbia and that of the countryside, peaceful and spacious. George maintains much of the boyish glee and gullibility of his childhood, but he is constantly moored down by grief and the isolation he experiences due to being gay.

“And then the War’s end and the mad spree of driving up and down the highway on the instantly derationed gas, shedding great black chunks of our recaps all the way to Malibu.” 

George reminisces about the carefree and fun years following World War II. He met Jim during this time, and the two spent many years traveling and meeting new people together. George’s happiest memories took place during this period, and after a night of reminiscing with Charlotte, he is relieved to be thinking about joyful moments of the past.

“The Past—no help! The Present—no good! But there’s one thing you can’t deny: you’re stuck with the Future. You can’t just sneeze that off.” 

While sitting at The Starboard Side bar with Kenny, George experiences a strange mood due to the events of the day. Kenny remarks that he is not too keen on the present and the current state of things, and George explains that being stuck in the past does not help anyone, that fretting over the present seems equally useless, and that the future is the only thing which is certain and ever approaching. George reveals that the future he refers to is death. Since Jim died, he continues to obsess over his own death and when it will happen.

“Giving himself to it entirely, he washes away thought, speech, mood, desire, whole selves, entire lifetimes; again and again he returns, becoming always cleaner, freer, less.” 

Even more drunk than before, George and Kenny walk down to the ocean and dive into the waves. The waves are strong, and George can barely handle them, but he fully embraces the moment and goes under. He feels refreshed and renewed with each submersion, until he finally loses his footing and Kenny has to save him from drowning. George almost dies in this moment, lost in the waves. This scene foreshadows George’s death hours later, as he descends into sleep thinking about waves and the rock pools of human consciousness.

“Damn the Future. Let Kenny and the kids have it. Let Charley keep the Past. George clings only to Now. It is Now that he must find another Jim. Now that he must love. Now that he must live—” 

After years of being stuck in the past, dreading the future, and having no hope for the present, George finally decides that he will find love again and live the rest of his life to the fullest. In a sad twist of irony, George passes away in the very next moment. Earlier, George worried that it might be too late for him to start over again—as it turns out, he was right. His death is a strong lesson in living for the present and avoiding the fear of the future and longing for the past which can tie a person down.