“Enemies” Is a Story about Anger That Never Dies
Introduction
Examples of Anger Responses:
1. Telemarketer calls you every night.
2. Your neighbor's dog barks whenever you're trying to sleep.
3. You lose your job and find out the boss replaced you with his wife's son, who happens to be a worthless jerk.
4. You spend a bunch a money on an online dating service and it sets you up with your ex.
5. Your husband cheats on you and then gives you herpes.
6. You bring your groceries home and you realize you bought moldy blueberries.
The problem with anger is that it's addictive. You can't shut it off. It becomes a way of being. We lose a sense of proportion. We only know anger for all situations so that anger makes us boring. "He's that guy who's angry all the time." We don't want to be that angry nutcase of a guy.
Always Know the Difference Between Healthy Anger and Self-Destructive Anger
Healthy anger is a normal reaction to something that is detrimental to your daily operation. You let off steam, you address the situation as best you can, and then you move on.
Healthy anger has these qualities:
It is motivational (mad at yourself for failing a test and using that anger as fuel to improve),
It is modulated (controlled)
It is temporary (you let go of it and move on).
However, self-destructive anger is a disease. Self-destructive anger has these qualities:
You don't or can't or are not willing to let go of it (you enjoy it in a perverse way and allow it to become your identity;
You love the drama of being angry because it fills the void in your life),
You let your anger control you (road rage, swearing in front of children, becoming a bitter person with the soul of an old man even though you may be in your early twenties)
You let your anger grow out of proportion to the original problem so that the anger is WORSE than the original source of your anger (TV commercials are bad but if you throw a brick through your TV because you're sick of the commercials, your rage just cost you a TV)
You misapply your anger to the wrong targets so that it is inappropriate (relationships and friendships, reciprocity; your talent level, resenting people who are more talented than you are)
You are blind to the manner in which the anger is destroying you (you become ugly and unpleasant around others and you don't even realize it).
All these self-destructive components of anger are evident in Kirilov.
Major Thematic Points
One.
A doctor has just lost his child. Before he can even go through the grieving process, the stricken man shows up to the grieving doctor because, he believes, his wife his ill. Is he acting out of self-interest or narcissism?
Explain. Self-interest is natural. We are all naturally selfish, especially if we’re talented because we believe the world is about us. The stricken man Abogin believes his wife is ill, but he has been a actor to a world in which most of the dramas are just that, dramas; therefore, much of the urgency is a reaction to a false situation. The man's life is false.
Abogin most likely had plenty of evidence that his wife was having an affair and that she made up her illness as a ruse to get away with her lover. Abogin is a deluded man and he approaches a doctor whose life is far more real and his grief is as real as life gets and the stricken man violates the doctor's private space, sucking him into his drama.
Two.
The doctor is right to be angry. The question isn't whether or not we should be angry. It's HOW angry given the circumstances because there's a point in which even justified anger, if out of control, becomes self-destructive.
The real theme of this story is NOT whether we should be angry when jerks suck us into their dramas. The theme is our overreacting to a situation and asserting how "right" we are to be angry.
Being right isn’t always right, especially when we overreact.
"You used my bathroom and clogged my toilet and I had to pay $500 for a plumber to fix it. I'll never be your friend again."
"You took the last slice of pie. Now you are my enemy."
"You dated my ex-girlfriend. You back-stabbed me. Now we are enemies."
"You stole my credit card and my identity and I had to spend almost $2,000 to regain my credit. I will hunt you down and kill you."
Three.
Abogin the odious narcissist who believes his dramas are of paramount importance even in the face of the doctor’s dead child. Dr. Kirilov, and we too, can be angry at Abogin and all the Abogins of the world. The question is HOW mad. Too often we obsess over our anger to distract ourselves from something about ourselves we don't like, something in ourselves that makes us unhappy.
Four.
Abogin needs to believe that his wife has fallen of ill health because this catastrophe is better than the real one: She does not love him. This is Abogin's ego talking: "It is inconceivable that my wife does not love me."
Five.
Abogin’s self-interest wills him to use tenacious persuasion to get the doctor to come with him even though the doctor’s son died just 5 minutes earlier.
Six.
Abogin is a liar. He says, “I am not asking for myself” but in fact he is, sucking the doctor into a psychological drama that has nothing to do with the urgency Abogin claims. Abogin is a hysterical narcissist who uses hysteria to make him the center of attention. Abogin follows the mourning doctor throughout the house like a demon and says “Let us go” as if the doctor were a servant.
Seven.
One of the story’s cruel ironies is that the doctor feels morally compelled, even in the agony of his loss, to help Abogin even though it turns out Abogin’s motives are a lie. This irony only feeds Kirilov's appetite to hate Abogin all the more.
Eight.
Adding to Abogin's descpicable ego is that once he realizes his wife betrayed him, he does not—as he should do—transition his attention to helping the doctor get back home. Rather, Abogin, being a narcissist, is still fixated on his pain, his victimization while paying no attention to his role in inflicting injustice against the doctor. Abogin continues his self-pitying adolescent monologue even as the doctor berates him.
Nine.
We can interpret the narrator’s account of the doctor’s failure to listen as a moral failure in which the doctor fails both Abogin and himself. What is the controversy of such an interpretation? See the bottom of page 47. “Who knows, if the doctor had listened to him and had sympathized with him like a friend, he might perhaps, as often happens, have reconciled himself to his trouble without protest, without doing anything needless and absurd . . . .” But the doctor becomes grotesque with bitterness and consumed by rage.
Sympathy for the fool was the window of opportunity Kirilov needed to heal his pain, from the loss of his child and for his propensity to rage against his perceive injustices.
Ten.
The doctor hates Abogin, not just for dragging him into his drama, but for being of a higher class, of enjoying middle-class comforts, of representing a particular type of evil: the pretentious wealthy narcissist who makes everyone else clean up his mess. The narrator seems to criticize the doctor for reducing Abogin to a stereotype rather than showing empathy for him as a human being.
On page 49, the narrator admonishes both Abogin and the doctor as being unhappy and cruel, failing to seize the moment of shared pain for shared understanding. At heart, they are both misanthropes. Their failure to understand others, and themselves, makes them their own worst enemy. They are both slaves to their ego or “egoism,” as we read in the story.
Eleven.
Mental health isn’t how we act in life; it’s how we react. Both Abogin and the doctor overreact in part because of their egotism and misanthropy and unhappiness. Think of how people over-grieve after a divorce or romantic betrayal. You must grieve, for that is natural, but you can over-grieve.
We are often addicted to self-righteous indignation ("self-centered anger") rather than coming to an understanding.
The Irrational Mind Is Built on Self-Centered Anger
One. We learn that the scary thing about the ego is that often the ego asserts itself without our knowing it. Kirilov thinks his anger for Abogin is justified, but Kirilov's anger is an overreaction poisoned with class envy and self-centered egotism.
Two.
One way the ego asserts itself is by adding up grievances. "I've been wronged many times and I need to get even. I need to find justice. I need to find vindication. I need to find vengeance."
Three.
We learn that the ego says, "I'm right" and "My suffering is of greater depth than yours" and the implicit "therefore I'm a superior person."
Four.
We also learn that the ego says, "My pain is so important no circumstance should impede me from finding relief even if the person in question is suffering the loss of a child."
Five.
We also learn that the ego says, "Screw forgiveness of Abogin and his pathetic ways. Anger defines who I am."
Six.
We also learn that ego (from Abogin's point of views) says, "Screw the doctor's pain from the death of his child. I need his help. Now."
Seven.
Anger is often born of the ego, especially when the anger is relentless and self-centered, and lacks proportion. Both Kirilov and Abogin lose proportion of their grievances and as such they become eternal enemies to each other.
Eight.
Not all anger is bad, but the kind that impedes your growth, makes you lose proportion, renders you self-centered, and gnaws at you resulting in a slow self-destruction is a poison directed toward yourself.
Nine.
But even if you understand this, your ego will not allow you to let go. Your ego doesn't care if you are destroyed. Your ego only lives to perpetuate itself.
Conclusion
So far we've learned that the Irrational Mind is comprised of self-deceit, addictive rage, and the self-destructive ego.
Example of Self-Centered Anger Making Us Lose Proportion Used as an Introduction and Followed by a Thesis
So your ego’s been damaged. Your girlfriend told you that you both “need to take a breather” and get some “quality alone time” so you can get back together and both be the better for it. But that time never comes. When you start calling her again, she’s more determined about breaking up than before. She starts giving you clues, like “I think we need to start seeing other people.” And “Since getting away from you, I feel like I’ve been given my life back.” And worse, “I think being your girlfriend was like dying a slow painful death.” And then the final nail in the coffin: “I’m seeing someone. It’s serious, so you’ll need to stop calling me—indefinitely.”
At this point, any man with half a brain realizes the relationship is officially over. If you’re a healthy-minded dude, you wish her well and hope she finds the happiness and romantic bliss she couldn’t find with you. But needless to say, you’re not that dude. You’re a spiteful SOB whose ego needs to see her life miserable in your absence. To see her squirm and fail as she tries to make it in the world without you gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. Her lowly existence “proves” that indeed you were the best thing that ever happened to her. Needing to believe this about yourself, you long to see her languish through a life of unending agony. You need to hear through the grapevine that she’s unhappy with her “dating life” and that she has a dead-end job with an obnoxious, penny-pinching boss who micromanages her every move. You need to know that her credit card bills and other expenses were just too great and she had to move back with her parents.
And then you get what you’ve been craving more than anything—the Surprise Meeting. These Surprise Meetings usually happen at a party. You see her standing all alone by a bowl of potato chips and onion dip. She’s overweight, needy, makeup running down her face. At which time you walk a circle around her, shake your head in disdain, puff on your Cuban cigar, and say, “Look at you now, sweetheart. Look at you now.” And then with a sneer you walk away from her as you make your grand exit from the party. Of course, you’re flanked by your eye-catching entourage—two slender scandalously dressed super models who accompany you as you get inside your silver Ferrari Barchetta Pininfarina you bought with the riches afforded by your new Fortune 500 company. As you sit in your three-hundred-thousand-dollar Italian sports car and your “girls” run their sensuous fingers through your thick head of hair, you see your ex-girlfriend, still alone at the party, now looking at you through the parted curtains and she’s shaking her head, her eyes full of sadness and regret. You can read her mind. She’s saying to herself, “Now that is one studly dude I should have stayed with. Just look how incredible his life is, and look how crappy mine turned out to be. If only I had listened to him I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life wondering how amazing it would have been to spend my life with a man of such incomprehensible greatness.”
This gratifying scenario would have lasted longer, only your three-hundred-pound mother in a muumuu wakes you from your dream and tells you to get off your fat ass. You promised her you’d find a job by now and you’ve got less than an hour before your interview at Toys R Us. As you lay on your filthy bare mattress and look at your mother shaking her finger at you while spitting a venomous lecture about what a lazy thirty-seven-year-old loser you turned out to be, you wonder what your ex-girlfriend is up to these days and you feel the urge to call her, but you know that’s impossible. Your pathetic existence would only vindicate her decision to have left you many years before.
You are like the characters from Chekhov's short story "Enemies" and you've allowed your life to be ruined by the Irrational Mind evidenced by __________, __________, _____________, and _______________.
"Enemies" Links
Comments