Lesson Plan: Narcissism in Brian Gold and Miller

 

Part One. Review the Narcissistic Traits of Brian Gold (from “The Chain” by Tobias Wolff)

 

1. Brian Gold is too focused on himself to the point that his intense self-focus results in isolating himself from others. He feels separate from others, which reinforces his self-focus, a vicious cycle.
2. Brian Gold chews on the gristle fat wad of self-pity, an indulgence that massages his narcissistic pleasure centers and elevates his status as an innocent victim, perhaps even a martyr. As a victim, he believes the world “owes him” to make-up for his unjust suffering.
3. As a cipher with no depth or core to his personality, he is like a reed in the wind, susceptible to the influences of outside forces and he compulsively conforms to whatever demands he believes will help bolster his image. For example, when Tom calls Brian’s masculinity into question, Brian is so insecure he will resort to a drastic measure to give credibility to his manliness.
4. Brian Gold is so narcissistic that he makes everything about himself. He can’t even look in his daughter’s eyes without being reminded of himself as a failure.
5. Brian Gold embodies self-pity, which we said in class is having the genius to always find a way to hate your life. There is a disparity between one's life circumstances, which could be very good, and one's bad attitude.
   

 

Part Two. Miller’s Narcissism Is Rooted in the Incorrigible Wish to Remain a Child Dependent on His Mother

 

1. When you’re a child, your mother loves you unconditionally and takes care of all your needs. However, there comes a time when you must grow up and break the tie from your mother. You must venture into a world that doesn’t love you unconditionally, a world that will not meet your needs. This is called adulthood. The narcissist refuses to grow up. He never achieves what Erich Fromm calls "individuation."
   
2. The narcissist, such as Miller, cannot have healthy relationships. He can only have sick symbiotic relationships, a diseased mutual interdependence that results in more and more dependence. The result is that both parties in this symbiotic relationship become emotionally crippled.
3. The narcissist is selfish and does not want his “host” or “hostess” to break free from the symbiotic relationship and achieve emotional health. For example, when Miller’s mother wants to start a life with a healthy distance between her and her son and remarry, Miller feels jealous and betrayed. He’d rather be his mother’s “little boy” forever and ever as the symbiotic relationship turns into emotional gangrene and eventually spiritual death.

 

Part Three. A Review of Your Essay Structure

 

In your first page, you will profile a narcissist you know, featuring this person with concrete details and a revealing anecdote that reveals the most malignant narcissistic impulses of your subject.

 

Then you will have a transition such as “Likewise” or “Similarly . . .”

 

Similarly, in Tobias Wolff’s The Night in Question, the characters are prisoners of their own narcissism, doomed to the private hell of their intractable self-centeredness. Wolff’s emotionally crippled characters show us the most salient elements of narcissism, which include ________________________, _________________________, ____________________________, ____________________________, and _____________________________________.

 

Sample A Introduction, Transition, and Thesis with Mapping Components

 

If I Have to Show Everyone How Good I Am, How Good Am I?

 

This morning I was jogging in ankle-high sand at Redondo Beach when I saw daggers and shards of broken glass, the remnants of a broken bottle of Jarritos pineapple soda, sticking out of the sand.

Part of me didn’t want to lose my momentum of my one-hour run while another part of me didn’t want anyone stepping on these glass daggers. In the distance I saw a lifeguard setting up his umbrella and I ran fifty yards and told him what I had seen. Then rather than let him clean the glass, I returned to broken bottle, gingerly picked up the daggers and shards, luckily stuck together by the sticky Jarritos label, and deposited them in a nearby trashcan.

The lifeguard followed me with a shovel and dustpan to finish the job while thanking me effusively. It was like I needed the lifeguard to know I was doing a good deed to be motivated to do it. After we exchanged niceties, I continued with my run.

Suddenly, I was Superman, running past people and feeling like I had saved them from grave havoc and destruction. About a mile away from the broken Jarritos bottle, I saw a father watching his two daughters playing by the shore and I had this impulse to stop, explain my good deed and warn him of more possible mayhem. He would be so impressed with my rare virtue and nobility that he would say, “You are my hero and you have saved me and my daughters from a trip to the emergency room. I need to make you my Best Friend Forever, and, if you would agree to it, to be my children’s godparent. Also, I'll need to photograph you so that I can erect a shrine in my livingroom in your honor.”

Before I opened my mouth and made an ass of myself, I had second thoughts, which made me skeptical of my grandiosity.

Jerry Seinfeld talks about this ability some of us have to detach ourselves from what we are doing and to analyze our actions impassively, as if from a great distance. Seinfeld calls this quality The Third Eye. Psychologists use a different term for The Third Eye. They call this same feature metacognition.

Whatever it’s called, The Third Eye or metacognition, I was fortunate that mine kicked in and rather than boast to the father about my heroic virtue, a voice in my head said, “That broken bottle was over a mile away, you moron. Shut your mouth and keep running. You’re no hero. You’re a self-righteous do-gooder needy for the approval of others.”

Thank you, Third Eye, for putting me in my place.

But what about those poor souls who lack the Third Eye? What becomes of them? Alas, it appears their fate is not a pretty one. It appears that such souls, as Tobias Wolff’s collection The Night in Question shows, are doomed to languish in the stagnation of a narcissistic existence. Narcissism, the inability to stand back and dispassionately judge oneself, results in several unresolved conflicts, which include __________________, ___________________, ___________________, _____________________, and _______________________________. 

 

Another Introduction Example in Which You Write About the Narcissistic Impulse to See the World As a Place That Conforms to Your Unrealistic Desires and Expectations

When I was seven living in San Jose, California, my father took me to the grand opening of a Taco Bell (fake Mexican food that I instantly loved) and I noticed the teenagers working behind the counter had unsightly spots on their faces. I asked my father what those ugly things on the teenagers’ faces were.

He answered, “Those are pimples, son.”

“Why do they have them?” I asked.

“According to Aristotle,” my father answered, “God gives teenagers pimples to teach them humility.”

It was apparent from my father’s answer that teenagers had a youthful arrogance about them that had to be kept in check by a God eager to afflict the arrogant with cosmetic imperfections.

I didn’t think about what my father said until seven years later. I was a high school freshman and I noticed that a lot of gangly, nerdy girls from junior high had blossomed over the summer and debuted high school looking like beauty queens. The summer had rendered them goddesses.

But sadly for me, over the summer I became ugly as I was cursed with acne. Not just ordinary acne either. Typically, pimples show up in random places all over the face. But not me. My pimples had a scary pattern that suggested the work of a vengeful God. My pimples created this perfect outline of a Fu Manchu mustache, which of course didn’t go unnoticed by my classmates. Many of them were fond of calling me Fu Manchu as my ugly face became a source of undying pleasure for them.

Pitying me, my grandfather paid me to go to a dermatologist. Antibiotics quickly cleared up my acne and the curse of the Fu Manchu had vanished.

It was then that I realized pimples are not a God issue. They are a medicine issue. Without science, we are too often inclined to use God to explain a world where petulant teenagers are put in their place by an admonishing deity. In other words, my father was projecting his own narcissistic desire to humble the arrogant by imagining a God who would do his bidding. 

This narcissistic impulse, to see the world as a place that conforms to our desires, wreaks havoc and self-destruction in the characters who inhabit Tobias Wolff's short story collection The Night in Question. In addition to their delusion that the world will conform to their narcissistic ways, these characters are saddled with the classic narcissistic qualities, which include _______________, _____________, ______________, _____________, and ________________. 

 

In-Class Activity

Write about a time your Third Eye saved you from behaving like a narcissist and transition your account to a thesis about the narcissists in Tobias Wolff's short story collection. 

Or if you don't have such a story to tell, write about someone who is deluded into thinking that the world conforms to his or her unrealistic desires and unrealistic expectations.