On "The Other Man"

Denis Johnson's "The Other Man" begins with the narrator's encounter with a Polish man on the ferryboat from Bremerton to Seattle. The man drinks with the narrator and tells him stories of his motorcycle and the midnight curfew in Warsaw's public parks. After engaging in a somewhat lengthy conversation, the man admits that he, in fact, is not Polish, but is really from Cleveland. He tells the narrator about a fire in the Cuyahoga River, and explains that it spread because the pollutants in the water were flammable. The narrator informs the reader that in previous times in which he told this story, the readers speculated that the "Polish" man was making a pass at him; but the narrator neglects the thought and moves on to speak about his arrival at Seattle and his clash with his friends' neighbor who thought he was a burglar and threatened to call the police. After noticing patients at the hospital across the street, the narrator enters a bar where he meets a women. They dance and kiss, and she says that she will take him home even though her husband is at their house, asleep- and their wedding took place two days earlier. At the end, the narrator alludes to him having sex with the stranger from the bar.

"The Other Man" follows the consistency of Johnson's short stories, that seemingly follow no plot, but rather the chronicled experiences of the narrator as he reveals his strange encounters and personal insecurities. The fact that the narrator couldn't pick up on the "Polish" man's flirtations suggest his inability to interpret situations. He has an easier time analyzing other people's situations, such as the hospital patients. He demonstrated his interest in their maladies and questions whether or not they will visit each other's graves after their deaths. The narrator's inability to enter his friends' apartment in Seattle suggests that he truly has nowhere to go, and that he feels alienated from the comfort of "home." His encounter with his friends' neighbor depicts people's misconceptions about him, and that those who surround him don't understand who he is- mirroring his lack of capability to understand himself. The narrator's intimacy with the stranger at the bar and their premature discussions of love is a reflection of the protagonist's lonesomeness; because he rarely experiences emotion, he grasps on to whatever love he could find, ultimately rendering him vulnerable.

An interesting aspect of Johnson's story is its constant changes in mood and tone. When he is on the ferryboat, the narrator tells the reader that "I'm sure we were all feeling blessed on this ferryboat among the humps of very green-in the sunlight almost cooly burning, like phosphorus-islands, and the water of inlets winking in the sincere light of day, under a sky as blue and brainless as the love of God..." In the presence of nature, the narrator feels cleansed and hopeful. In contrast, the description of the city elicits images of hell: "I imagined jamming her into a roaring fireplace. The screams... Her face caught fire and burned. The sky was bruised red shot with black, almost exactly the colors of a tattoo. Sunset had two minutes left to live." Like in James Fenimore Cooper's works, the concept of nature's goodness and the evil of the city is prevalent in this short story, that described the city as an unwelcoming, deadly place.