The Daemon Lover - Essay Example

James Harris can be repeatedly seen in the different writings of Shirley Jackson. Whenever he appears in the story, he seems to signify instability. This can also be seen in The Daemon Lover. James Harris is the Daemon Lover. He appears in the different stories as himself, as a figment of another character’s imagination or fantasy, or just someone who is mentioned as one of the characters. But what is consistent whenever he appears is the impression of a rather unstable mind by the narrator, one of the significant characters, or protagonist in the story. But even if James Harris seems to represent mental instability or mental illness, he still becomes a real character for the one with the illness. He is a real person, a real character, with a physical appearance and an attachment to the protagonists in the story. His moniker as the Daemon Lover is somewhat sinister and foreboding. His nickname emphasizes his character as ominous and disturbing, characteristics of the thoughts of someone with mental illness.

We create our own realities and fantasies. There are some things that we believe in that other people don’t. But there is a significant difference between the one who accepts fantasies as fantasies and the one who accepts fantasies as their realities. At the start of the story, the narrator, who was a woman in her 30s, was excitedly preparing for her wedding. Being wed to someone we love is a usual fantasy for a lot of women. The question is if it is real or not. In the case of the narrator, it was too real for her. She was fitting her clothes and thinking about getting breakfast. It was real for her and it was real for the reader. In the beginning, there was no questioning that the narrator was sane and quite capable of defining what was real and what was not. She did not look insane. There was nothing insane about her actions. But towards the middle and the end of the story, it was slowly revealed how the woman might have been insane from the beginning. Searching throughout the town for her fiancé, James Harris, she encountered different people who had different responses whenever she asked them if they had seen her fiancé.

There were three kinds of responses that were presented in the story. These responses were significant in understanding whether James Harris was real or not and if the narrator was in fact crazy or not. The first response was stating bluntly that James Harris was not real. This was not accepted by the narrator, of course, because James Harris was her reality. The superintendent of the apartment and his wife, and the Roysters (a couple living in the apartment) frankly declared that she “got the wrong house” since there was no James Harris living in that building. The second response was a mockery of the narrator’s situation. The newsstand man and the man behind the narrator conspired and dropped hints that they saw someone who looked like James Harris going uptown. The last response was a complete verification of James Harris’ whereabouts but the characters speaking of his existence were both unreliable. One was an old senile man and the other was a very young kid. Both had trouble with memory and the delineation between fantasy and reality because of their age. These three responses gave emphasis on the delusions that the narrator was experiencing. The responses clearly indicated that James Harris was not real.

The very first evidence that helps us realize that James Harris is not real comes in the first part of the story. While the narrator was waiting for her fiancé, she “tried to think of James and could not see his face clearly, or hear his voice” (Jackson, 2009). This was justified when she said that “it’s always that way with someone you love” (Jackson, 2009). But we know that it’s not possible to forget the face or voice of someone we love. The responses of the different people that she met while looking for James Harris emphasized once again that he was not real. There was no label for James Harris’ name on his apartment door. The superintendent and his wife, as well as other tenants, the Roysters, denied his existence. The only people who confirmed that he was a part of reality were two characters who were both unreliable when it came to setting reality apart from fantasy. As we know children play fantasy games, wherein they role-play or pretend that something is real when it isn’t. The whole atmosphere of this story was filled with feeling as if all around played this kind of game with the protagonist.

More evidence that James Harris was not real could be found when the narrator, directed by the old man and the young boy, went to some house. She heard voices but there was no one inside. The only thing she saw was a sinister-looking rat. The rat symbolizes the dark side of her mind. There was no one in the house, and it accentuated even more the instability of her mind. Her reality was actually her fantasy. She brought her fantasy to life when she made herself believe that James Harris was real when in fact he wasn’t. He was only a character in her mind. Like James Harris, who was a fantasy for the narrator, her sense of reality was swept away and was lost hopelessly even if she was looking hard for it.