Late Nights on Despair? by Lina ElShamy
Finding an identity is a process that should not be a process at all. Searching for an identity becomes part of one's identity. The wish to be desired and accepted becomes an intense desperation that causes the inner emptiness one seeks to fill to never be filled. Identity is revealed in discrete moments when one connects with their inner self; this connection can never be planned either. In Late Nights on Air, Elizabeth Hay explores the futility of searching for an identity by following the lives of two of her protagonists, Harry and Gwen, who are placed into two asymmetrical settings and left to see how each affects them. Contrasting different images from opposite settings in the novel creates a better perception of how the characters are influenced by their surroundings. The setting in a radio station demonstrates the intense competitive, passion-driven atmosphere of the radio station. To be juxtaposed with the radio station, Hay paints wonderful landscapes of the Arctic to indirectly express what the characters feel. In the same way, she describes the radio station as a tiny place that symbolizes the characters’ oppression. By using the simplest literary devices such as setting and imagery, Hay is able to better depict the characters’ pessimistic outlook on life and their struggle to find an identity.
To reflect Harry’s state of mind, Hay uses a claustrophobic radio station that shows how this setting affects him psychologically. As a result, setting becomes part of characterization. By placing Harry and all the other characters into a tiny radio station, Hay creates a claustrophobic atmosphere that facilitates the understanding of what he feels from his own point of view. The crowded setting forces the characters to start to get into each other’s ways – physically and psychologically – and thus any advances in what the characters are trying to achieve and the plot are diminished. The emphasis on the confined quality of the radio station reflects the tension and exasperation the characters feel toward themselves and their peers. “The radio station occupied a quiet corner […]. It had been an electrical supplies store once, […], and was that size. A one-storey shoebox…” (6) illustrates an atmosphere that is then transmitted to the characters to become part of the reason behind their disturbance. For Harry, working in a radio station is an escape from “the violent hours of drinking that followed on the heels of his television disgrace.” (24). He feels more at ease with the anonymity and disguise of being of radio than with the exposed and unsheltered performance of being on TV. The fact that he is comfortable with and is fond of the radio station’s confinement shows his shyness, insecurity and struggle to expose his introverted identity to the world. A poem by Alden Nowlen, whose verses Harry “admired and taped […] to the wall in the one and only announce booth.” (8), “described the foolish time in the poet’s life when he worked alone in a radio station and couldn’t believe anyone was listening for ‘it seemed I was talking / only to myself in a room no bigger / than an ordinary bathroom.” (8). Harry’s empathy towards the poet’s verses shows his loneliness when he sits in the announce booth, “feeling his own life collide with itself.” (9). The announce booth becomes the reason behind Harry’s loneliness; it makes him want to seek a different place in order to escape this loneliness, which he does. His decision to change his mental state by changing the setting is proven wrong when the effect of this new setting – the Arctic – does not change him.
The effect of setting is most evident in Gwen, who struggles to overcome her nervousness and live outside her embarrassment. Unlike Harry, who feels comfortable on air, Gwen wants to work in the background of radio. When Harry offers her a job as an announcer-operator, she questions herself, “Why would someone who wanted to be in the background agree to be in the foreground?” (25)This shows her fear from the loneliness of being put in the spotlight, something that is in the nature of working in a radio station. Her identity’s struggle to break free is shown when she agrees to do something she thinks she does not want. Her identity is something that is still distant to her as she continues to oppress that caged voice that wants to do the opposite of what she does. This part of her is something that she has yet to discover and reconcile with. The way she works in a “place so utterly contained, closed” (32) and is battling to break out of her shell and “jump” (34) symbolizes her oppression. The irony in the paradox that it is also a place where “voices are carried beyond the horizon” (32) and her being “the horizon to those listening” (32) not only shows how much pressure and responsibility is put on her, but also juxtaposes the futility of her overstated oppression even though her voice can reach across miles. “Alone, but heard for miles, she winced and stumbled.” (36). Because the identity she is searching for is going to be exposed to the world, her struggle to find one is increased. Gwen describes the loneliness of being on air as “feet dangling, heart pierced with doubt, head all tangled” (66) and “not allowed to say certain things” (76). The isolation this setting creates – as opposed to the isolation of the Arctic – does not give her the freedom of being not under control. Gwen feels she is at the bottom of the hierarchy and this puts her under an extreme burden that triggers self-loathing and self-pity. Gwen’s deep contemplation over “the visibility and invisibility of radio, the intimacy and isolation” (24) puts her into a more frustrating dilemma that makes her self-conscious and nervous on air because she is being heard and judged, while locked in a small room alone. The radio station is a place for “introverted extroverts” (114). This perplexing feature of the radio station is something that Gwen broods over. Her over-analysis and thinking too much about it reflects her nervousness and fear from being confronted with the world and its judgements. The fear she feels is a result of her detachment from her identity. Later on, Gwen shows signs of extroversion when she learns to embrace this “isolation” of the “little” (24) radio station and “grows more accustomed to the bracing experience of the microphone” (82) and like Harry, her shyness and introversion are shown through that very act. The introversion that is found in her attempted extroversion reflects her struggle to find that “miraculous release” (28). By learning to indulge in the loneliness of being on air in the announce booth, Gwen becomes that “introverted extrovert” (114). The radio station’s atmosphere forces her to transform her shyness and loneliness into suppressed loneliness; her identity remains locked inside her, just like how she is locked inside her announce booth. “For Gwen, [‘Shy’] was a tiny, precise, potent word like air, like loam, rock, sand, clay, marl, silt, mud, one of the basic building blocks of the world she lived in […]. [Being shy] meant shying away from oneself and from others, from life itself.” (112). The radio station’s confinement and Gwen’s shyness are constantly being emphasized throughout the novel: “A burka for the shy, the nighttime announce booth. A dark tent that covered [Gwen] up as she crossed the wide desert of late night radio.” (82). The size of the radio station is narrowed yet more when Hay describes it as a “burka” and a “dark tent” – with darkness describing both the secluded and eerie atmosphere of the radio station. The radio station is narrowed yet again when contrasted with the “wide desert” that symbolizes the miles Gwen’s voice travels. This, again, draws attention to the pressure Gwen feels when she if left alone to speak to an “imaginary listener” (40) in the confined walls of the announce booth.
When the setting changes to the Arctic, Harry becomes isolated and the pressure he feels at the radio station is taken away and replaced by breathtaking images of the North. The placid imagery found in the Arctic – the unconventional beauty of the “frozen lakes and flowing rivers” (282) – metaphorically incline a new pure life, a symbolism that draws attention to the differences in setting between the expansive Arctic and the tiny radio station. Placing Harry in a less claustrophobic environment isolates him and allows him more freedom, literally and psychologically. This isolation detaches him from society and gives him the right atmosphere to be him and experience a spiritual renewal that would help him find an identity. However, “[…] everyone thought the North would be the making of them. […]. That is exactly what lead to so many disasters.” (16). The failure of the transformation – one of the “disasters” – is reinforced when Harry returns to his former restlessness after leaving the Arctic. This juxtaposition, while it exposes him to the greatness of nature, does not change him permanently and is nothing but a distraction that leads him to overlook the significance behind this beauty, the way rhyme in a poem can distract from its meaning. His personality remains aloof and as cold as the temperature of the Arctic.
[long quotes] The canoe trip had been a medicine of a sort. Once the country opened up and they’d entered the flow of water and wildlife, [Harry’s] been taken past the Dido-wreck in his mind for continuous stretches of time. She receded for a while, several days, a week. But returned no less vividly and occupied his thoughts. [long quote] (327)
The return of Dido to Harry’s mind after the canoe trip shows how the Arctic has, at some point, mentally changed Harry for the better. The effect the Arctic has on Harry is a temporary inspiration that opens his eyes but never his heart to the magnificence of nature. The beautiful imagery found in nature, instead of inspiring him to look at his vulnerable essence, challenges him into conceiving an inane battle between humanity and nature; and in the end he is left beaten and unaffected and still oblivious to the true meaning behind the canoe trip. “Harry boiled over at the incessant headwind and slammed his paddle on the ice.” (259). His misconception about nature arouses a conflict between Harry and the Arctic that reveals his dependence and indifference. The effect of nature lies in the fact that it did not affect him at all. Harry still clings to the radio station as a symbol of the world he knows and his current state of mind. He does not accept the change nature would cause in him and still relies on this canoe trip to find an identity, without recognizing the key element in order to succeed. Harry responds to Gwen’s question of why ravens do not turn white in the winter like ptarmigans with: “’Ptarmigans are like us. They need all the help they can.’” His lack of certainty and confidence – which are harder to identify when he is in the radio station - starts to show when he is put under the test of the canoe trip. Harry believes he is “completely exposed, pathetically visible, but unseen, lost.” (267) “[He’d] give anything for a plane to come and get [him] right now.” (277). The experience of travelling the Arctic isolates Harry and drives him into insanity and savagery, but he realizes that early and wishes to go back to his beloved radio station. Gwen, however, does not realize that.
For Gwen, – who seems to need this spiritual release the most - the transition from the “little station” (24) to the Arctic does not change her. She still wishes she were a “different kind of person who truly loves life” (311) in the final days of the trip. When Gwen “’wonders if [the] trip has changed [her]’” (310), the first word that comes to her mind is “’wretch’”: a confession that shows her continuing misery, even after choosing to follow John Hornby as an inspiration to help her find an identity. Before she goes on the trip, Gwen “liked [John Hornby] enormously and fell under the spell of the desolate North” (43). When Harry asks her about the reason why she likes Hornby, Gwen tells him:
“[…] it was Hornby’s feeling for the Barrens. She understood the pull of that sort of desolate, rugged landscape; it’s what made her travel a year ago to Newfoundland. The Barrens were far more remote, she knew, and even more dangerously exposed in the treeless interior of the Arctic. She wanted to see them too.” (21) Because of her deep fascination with the Arctic, Gwen travels there expecting to experience a spiritual renewal that would change her into a happy confident person. She compares the identity she wishes to find with the “rugged landscape” and the “exposed” Barrens, hoping to be able to reveal herself like the “treeless interior of the Arctic”. However, when she is finally there, Gwen confides to Harry that “old worries had followed her into the Barrens, […]. Being all alone on the tundra – as exposed to the weather as she’d been exposed on the air – made her brood about certain things, like the flimsy shelter of personality.” (262). After being “exposed to the weather” in the frozen North, Gwen realizes how she does a poor job in encompassing her inner self – her identity – that never had the chance to come out. The “flimsy shelter of [her] personality” does not give her a sense of existence and individuality; it is but a frail layer that hides her real identity and feelings, feelings that never find “the moment of pure release, of the ice finally giving way.” (311). The self-image that Gwen conceives from the Arctic is one which makes her realize the similarities between her and the Arctic: the isolation, the loneliness, the fragility of the undisturbed wilderness, and the remoteness that is born of the vast spaces. This self-image becomes her only reality; she feels “Barren”.
Harry and Gwen’s desperate search for something so intangible is emphasized throughout the novel; it creates a frustrating intense plot that seems to be heading nowhere and thus generates a spiritual blockage that seems to intensify more as the story goes on. Their false belief that the Arctic is what is going to help them find their identity puts them into more depression, a calamity that makes their efforts to find an identity to no avail. Setting is not a simple backdrop to the story, but is the antagonistic character that deceives the protagonists into believing in its powers. No matter how much effort people put into trying to find an identity that appeals to their desired self-image, their unacknowledged identity remains. This identity is nourished by embracing all of the flaws, accepting the essential vulnerability and loving the self, not by deriving it from others.
“Human identity is the most fragile thing that we have, and it's often only found in moments of truth.”
Alan Rudolph
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