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Character in Veneer
What a pity (yet a sad truth) that we never get to know the inner essence of most people but only their exterior. Is it possible, though, that personality (the outside appearance, action, and words of someone) constitutes a manifestation of character? I have heard professors remark that the great Charles Dickens never truly penetrated into the truth of many characters and merely presents characterization. But such superficiality is the reality of life, for we live the existence of a Dickens novel, coming in contact, either fleetingly or on a regular basis, with people we know based only on how they appear and what they say. Thomas Hardy perceptively notes that character is fate, and indeed, each one of us lives, externally to a great extent, the person (from within) he or she truly is.
I remember, for instance, a man named Sloan, who lived near my family’s house when I was about twelve years old in 1969. Sloan shared the first floor apartment, in a two family house, with his elderly aunt and uncle, and even at the age of twelve, I thought it odd that a fifty-year-old man lived with relatives. While I was slowly gaining a sense of the other, another person who lived outside of the realm of my world, beyond my own limited existence, I had not quite begun to comprehend that the living situations of people (while appearing to happen by accident) are frequently circumstances created by individuals not to satisfy convenience but to fulfill a desire, need, or motivation (unconscious or perhaps not).
Sloan’s somberness was in excess of his years. He rarely spoke, and he walked down the block in a slow, ponderous gait. His ruddy complexion was pierced by intense, blue eyes. All I ever knew of this man were the facts that he lived near us and that he was tacit and grave. Such, it seems, is how we come to know all of our neighbors. I consider, for a moment, what others know of me: they see me come and go at odd times (unaware of my teaching schedule), and by my slender appearance in long wool coat and beret-those physical features with which I was born and the clothes I chose-they make (inevitably) evaluations about me. Indeed, it is almost impossible for me not to be tempted to make personality or character assessments of my neighbors based on little more than a few words in passing, a repeated movement in walking, a peculiar gesture.
I recall that when I was about twenty years old, one evening on a cold, Fall night after having spent some hours in the library at Brooklyn College, I came home late and, because of how our house was angled, I had a clear view of the entrance to Sloan’s front door. There he was. I noticed that he stood in a slumped posture, his barrel-like body slowly rocking slightly, as if ready to topple, crash, and spill. He held something in his weak grip, a large white box, his precarious wobble on the stoop stirring in me a mixture of repulsion and compassion, and in my fascination I could plainly see that it was a pizza box; but he held it like a briefcase, the pizza grease dripping and cheese oozing out.
While witnessing Sloan’s raging inebriation, I instantaneously recalled that, about a year earlier, after having spent an evening with some friends and walking home very late, I spotted him comfortably seated near the window of a corner bar, half his face illuminated by a street light, the other half submerged in the dark and dreary place, desolate but for himself, the bartender, and one other lonely, thirsty soul. So is this how the man lived his life? Was there nothing else? Was there no inner, mental, or spiritual arena of his mind that kept him happily active? If there were, would I see it? There it is, a bleak, stark separation, two halves of the same outward whole, his life represented in that plain duality of his face.
I was twenty years old, and yet the image of this man, stooped in his entryway, clinging to the doorknob, as if his world had suddenly tilted backward, persists in my memory. I have no other concrete recollection of him, and I ponder if this veneer is or is not the essence of the man. My neighbors cannot-ought not to-make evaluations of me based on my appearance and movements and casual conversation, so why should I of another human being? But in fact, this broad tableau of humanity as it passes before us is all we see and know. Although we must not evaluate someone’s character based on characterization, Dickens was perceptive enough to realize that, but for a select few, all we ever know of most people comes from a facial expression, a repeated gesture, or verbal tone.
I consider, regarding myself, how my appearance, my movements, my choice of apparel, and my few uttered words do often reflect not a fleeting mood but my underlying temperament, an aspect of my character. When Hardy said, character is fate, he was following a philosophical tradition from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche which suggests that we reveal ourselves-we set our destiny-by something within us that governs, ultimately, how we act and who we will socially and spiritually become. Sloan, one must believe, had inner thoughts, but perhaps he merely saw the superficial, mirror-image of these internal workings. There was, in the figurative sense, no visionary aspect for Sloan of himself in the world. Instead he simply reflected of himself the representation of what he thought others saw. Rather than being the principal actor in his own drama, he acted someone else’s part for someone else. Did he not know his own essential character? Could he have shaped or refined himself otherwise?
However, it is only now, as I approach Sloan’s age, and because I have failed in so many things, that I understand the darkened veneer of Sloan’s character and forgive him for never mining and polishing the hidden amber of his being.
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