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| The Meanings of Intertextuality in Hanif Kureishi’s Short Story “The Penis” By Diane Sabatier |
“The Penis” concludes Hanif Kureishi’s collection of short stories, Midnight All
Day (1999), by narrating twenty-four hours in the life of a forty-year-old actor
(Doug) who suddenly loses his penis. The latter detaches off and goes on a
rampage on its own with Doug trying to catch up with it. The narrator makes
uses of Nikolai Gogol’s short story entitled “The Nose” – which ranks among
the great works of nineteenth-century Russian literature – to depict the
disquieting experience of estrangement from oneself. We will point out how H.
Kureishi’s subversive writing parodies “The Nose” and other hypotexts in an
intertextuality full of meaning. Our paper will underline the postmodernist take
on contemporary young men in the “The Penis” insofar as it stresses the
complex male protagonists’ anxiety. To do so, we will chiefly dedicate our
study to the stylistic means employed by the heterodiegetic narrator.
Day (1999), by narrating twenty-four hours in the life of a forty-year-old actor
(Doug) who suddenly loses his penis. The latter detaches off and goes on a
rampage on its own with Doug trying to catch up with it. The narrator makes
uses of Nikolai Gogol’s short story entitled “The Nose” – which ranks among
the great works of nineteenth-century Russian literature – to depict the
disquieting experience of estrangement from oneself. We will point out how H.
Kureishi’s subversive writing parodies “The Nose” and other hypotexts in an
intertextuality full of meaning. Our paper will underline the postmodernist take
on contemporary young men in the “The Penis” insofar as it stresses the
complex male protagonists’ anxiety. To do so, we will chiefly dedicate our
study to the stylistic means employed by the heterodiegetic narrator.
Under Gogol’s overcoat: An intertextual synecdoche
The parodic use of N. Gogol’s short story inscribes “The Penis” in a postmodern perspective of
literature. The last story of H. Kureishi’s collection highlights a sense of failure by having recourse to
the hypotext of “The Nose.” “The Penis” becomes the playground for a satirical portrayal of a
generation of frustrated men. The idea of psychic dissociation acquires a prolific dimension with Alfie
(the character who first finds the detached penis) recalling N. Gogol’s protagonist named Ivan, Doug
embodying Kovaliov and the penis referring to the nose. The narrator uses this Russian hypotext in
order to emphasize the way, in a protean world, everything is prone to transformation. It seems that, in
Doug’s and Alfie’s universe, nothing is stable. Everything undergoes deflation or permutation.
The two short stories, which both narrate quests to get back one’s identity, are divided into three
similar parts. H. Kureishi’s incipit calls attention to our memory of N. Gogol’s. Alfie, a hairdresser, and
Ivan, a barber, have their breakfast with their respective wives in big towns – London and St
Petersburg (which used to be the capital city of Russia). The title itself responds to the Russian one
by insisting on the lost object. The following passages extracted from the two short stories stress H.
Kureishi’s process of mimicry. One reads in “The Nose”:
[...] sitting down at the table, [Ivan] picked up a knife and, assuming a meaningful expression, began
to slice the bread. Having cut the loaf into two halves, he looked inside and to his astonishment saw
something white. Ivan Yakovlevich pocked it carefully with the knife and felt it with his finger. “Solid!”
he said to himself. “What could it be?” He stuck in his finger and extracted-a nose! Ivan Yakovlevich
was dumbfounded [...]. But his horror was nothing compared to the indignation which seized his
spouse.
“You beast, where did you cut off a nose?” she shouted angrily. “Scoundrel! drunkard! [...] Away with
it [...].”
At last he [...] wrapped the nose in a rag and went out into the street. [...] He wanted to [...] drop it as if
by accident and then turn off into a side street [...] Once he actually did drop it, but a policeman some
distance away pointed to it with his halberd and said: “Pick it up – you’ve dropped something there”
and Ivan was obliged to pick up the nose and hide it in his pocket [...] He decided to go to St Isaac’s
Bridge [...]. (58-59)
In “The Penis,” we read:
Alfie was having breakfast with his wife at the kitchen table. [...] He was fumbling in his inside pocket
when he found something strange. He pulled it out. [...] “It’s a penis,” she said. [...] “Let’s wrap it in
something.” [...] She was about to become hysterical [...]. A few minutes later, to his surprise, he was
walking down the street with a penis in his pocket. [...] Quickly, he pulled the wrapped penis out of his
pocket and let it fall to the ground. [...] He had scarcely gone a few more yards when a schoolgirl ran
up behind him, waving the bag and telling him he had dropped his breakfast. Thanking her, he stuffed
it back in his pocket. [...] Making sure no one was watching, he tossed the penis over the side of the
bridge and watched it fall. (206-209)
After these first two pages, the similarities go on. Doug and Kovaliov are both obsessed with women.
On their way to discover what happened to their penis/nose, they suddenly see the latter, disguised
as a movie star/state councillor going in/coming down a car. The attempt to talk fails. The penis/nose
becomes famous. Doug/Kovaliov meets Alfie/Ivan. After getting in touch with the penis/the nose,
Doug/Kovaliov finds out that to get it back is to be negotiated/impossible. They both see a doctor. In
the last part, the penis/nose is reattached after a surgical procedure.
The stylistic similarities between “The Penis” and “The Nose” are also numerous. The dialogues have
the same fragmentary role in N. Gogol’s story. Doug’s desperate questioning “where?” is put forward
in N. Gogol’s hypotext. “Kovalyov was beside himself. ‘Where is it? Where? I’ll run there at once.’” (71)
Another point of comparison between “The Penis” and “The Nose” is the abundance of exclamatory
sentences which create a frenetic rhythm. It seems worth noticing that this frequent use of exclamation
marks does not appear in the other nine short stories of H. Kureishi’s collection. Besides, N. Gogol’s
paratext is divided into parts with the signs “I” and “II.” This same division occurs in “The Penis” with
blanks. In both short stories, the first part deals with the barber/hairdresser and the second one
introduces the hero missing his nose/penis. Besides, N. Gogol shows the same sarcastic tone towards
Kovalyov as the narrator uses towards Doug. Let’s compare the moments when the characters first
see their missing parts. “The Nose” reads:
An inexplicable phenomenon took place before his very eyes: a carriage drew up to the entrance; the
doors opened; a gentleman in uniform jumped out, slightly stooping, and ran up the stairs. Imagine
the horror and at the same time the amazement of Kovalyov when he recognised that it was his own
nose! [...] He looked right and left, shouted to his driver, “Bring the carriage round,” got in and was
driven off. (62)
Despite the fact that in the Russian extract the narrator directly addresses the reader, the setting, the
mood and reactions of the characters are the same in the two texts.
Furthermore, the two narrators mock their protagonists by giving the missing body part a stronger
personality than the characters. This is conveyed in the conversations in “The Nose”:
For me to go about without my nose, you’ll admit, is unbecoming. [...] Since I’m expecting – and
besides, having many acquaintances among the ladies –
Mrs. Chekhtaryova, a state councillor’s wife, and others... Judge for yourself... I don’t know, my dear
sir [...]. After all you are my nose!”
The Nose looked at the major and slightly knitted his brows.
“You are mistaken, my dear sir, I exist in my own right. Besides, there can be no close relation
between us. Judging by the buttons on your uniform, you must be employed in the Senate or at least
in the Ministry of Justice. As for me, I am in the scholarly line.”
Having said this, the Nose turned away and went back to his prayers.
Kovalyov was utterly flabbergasted. He knew not what to do or even what to think. (63-64)
Doug is equally taken for a fool. His penis wants to divorce him. The themes of separation and
psychological crises are crucial in H. Kureishi’s collection and in its Russian hypotext.
Moreover, another striking episode is the meeting with the doctor/surgeon. The two turn out to be
mocked by the narrators who target their greedy personality:
He called Ivan and sent him for the doctor who occupied the best apartment on the first floor of the
same house. The doctor was a fine figure of a man; he had beautiful pitch-black sidewhiskers [...].
Having carried out the test, the doctor shook his head and said: “No, can’t be done. You’d better stay
like this or we might make things worse. Of course, it can be stuck on. I daresay, I could do it right
now for you, but I assure you it’ll be worse for you.”
“I like that! How am I to remain without a nose?” said Kovalyov. “It couldn’t possibly be worse than now
[...]. I am expected at parties in two houses [...]. I appeal to you,” pleaded Kovalyov, “is there no way at
all? Fix it on somehow, even if not very well, just so it stays on [...].”
“This is against my principles and my calling. It is true that I charge for my visits, but solely in order not
to offend by my refusal….” (72)
One can compare this passage to “The Penis” in which the plastic surgeon declares to Doug: “‘You
could die on the table. You might sue me. I’d have to be recompensed’” (216). The sarcasm of the
narrators is accentuated when the nose and the penis both become celebrities. In “The Nose,” one
reads: “Someone said that the Nose was in Junker’s store: and such a crowd and jam was created
outside Junker’s that the police had to intervene. (75)” Besides, the points of comparison between the
two short stories echo Turgenev who declared that “we all came out from under N.Gogol’s ‘Overcoat.’”
Beyond Lacan’s mirror
So many similarities between these short stories highlight the sole difference, that is to say the two
dissimilar endings. N. Gogol’s sentence “And thereafter Major Kovalyov was always seen in good
humour, smiling, running after absolutely all the pretty ladies” (77) stands in opposition to the
pessimistic ending of “The Penis.” Though both characters are once more seducers, Doug seems
profoundly unhappy, whereas Kovalyov is delighted. An explanation for this difference may be that,
unlike Kovalyov, Doug does not go through the mirror-stage. He remains the split subject who is not
identified with himself. On the contrary, when Kovalyov finds his nose, he goes again through the
necessary mirror-stage to integrate his personality: “Passing through the reception room, he glanced
in the mirror: the nose was there (77).”
As Jacques Lacan explained in the first of his Ecrits, the mirror stage – when a two-year-old child
recognizes himself in his reflection – symbolizes the moment when one gets an identity of his own. In
“The Penis,” Doug goes through a deep crisis when he finds out about his missing penis by looking at
himself in the mirror. Doug has thusly been thrown back to his childhood. He fails the initiatory ritual of
the mirror-stage. He has not learnt to see himself as distinct from the rest of the world. This key
moment appears in N. Gogol’s short story:
Kovalyov stretched and asked for the small mirror standing on the table. He wanted to have a look at
the pimple which had, the evening before, appeared on his nose. But to his extreme amazement he
saw that he had, in the place of his nose, a perfectly smooth surface. (61)
Thus, contrary to N. Gogol’s story, the narrator of “The Penis” concludes the traumatic experience of
dismemberment by a more profound crisis. As an entire generation of broken men wandering in a
postmodern world, Doug remains estranged from himself, lost in a distressing universe.
Despite these two different denouements, the narrators similarly display a great deal of irony and
spite towards the characters only attached to appearances. They both denounce a superficial world.
The narrator of “The Penis” targets man’s vanities with the ironical reference to Don Giovanni: “Doug
could sustain an erection all day and sing something from Don Giovanni” (210). He also alludes to N.
Gogol’s short story which is itself highly satirical. This double level deepens the impact of H. Kureishi’s
text. The pre-established frame of the hypotext of “The Nose” enables the narrator of “The Penis” to
have recourse to a greater freedom. Indeed, parody comes from constraint and the comical effects
from its flexibility. “The Nose” is famous for N. Gogol’s ironical tone towards government bureaucracy.
H. Kureishi’s narrator points out to a destabilized male world. All the characters who encounter the
penis disguised as a man are deceived. His disillusionment almost transforms Doug’s comical and
parodic quest of a penis into a tragedy. One may note here that the penis resembles the Vice in
Morality plays, that is to say, the cynical tempter. When Alfie discovers the penis in his pocket, his wife
is not annoyed: “‘What’s that?’ His wife said. She came closer. ‘It’s a penis,’ she said’” (207). Her lack
of surprise is expressed by the repetition of the verb “to say” and the absence of any exclamation
mark.
Doug seems to be the amputated double of all the characters of H. Kureishi’s collection. As an anti-
hero missing a penis, Doug is immediately characterized by the idea of a lack. He is introduced for the
first time by a comparative of inferiority (“Less than a mile away,” 209). Doug may answer Marcia’s
question in H. Kureishi’s short story “Sucking Stones”: “What sort of man had no ex-wife, no children,
no family nearby, no lawyers, no debt, no house?” (126). Thus, the narrator proposes a sarcastic
rereading of the collection. The penis’ declaration, “I want out” (214), could be the rallying cry of many
male characters in the other nine stories. Thus, the choice of this short story to stand as a conclusion
underlines the previous narrators’ irony towards the protagonists. “The Penis” closes the collection
entitled Midnight All Day with a crucial parallelism between the sentence “He had to make
conversation all day” (206) and the phrase “Doug could sustain an erection all day” (210). The
characters appear to admit that running away from annihilating family bonds is a mere excuse to
justify their sexual fantasies. The narrator ironically states that the missing penis is a synecdoche, in
which this part stands for the whole Doug – an emotionally empty protagonist.
The Scream in a chiaroscuro
Let us now point out the paraphernalia of fantastic tales used in “The Penis” by first stressing the
importance of the frightening context. The latter is accentuated by a semantic field referring, for
example, to a “butcher,” a “surgeon” and “blood” (216). Furthermore, the entrance of the eponymous
body part is delayed to create more expectation, suspense and mystery. The pronouns “it” and “that”
(206) are firstly substituted for the noun “the penis.” The narrator underlines the sense of an
everyday environment, which enables the reader to progressively believe in the story. H. Kureishi and
N. Gogol’s tales open with ordinary people living in a common setting. The first surprising element is
introduced in a rational context. This technique prevents the reader from rejecting the story when first
reading about the detached penis/nose.
One sentence, by its unlikeliness, directly touches on the ludicrous atmosphere of tales of fantasy:
“Someone had left behind a shoe, a shotgun, a pair of false eyelashes and a map of China” (211).
This enumeration precedes the vision of the penis walking around. It warns the reader before settling
the story in an uncanny atmosphere. The narrator says that what follows is not absurd since the story
is anchored in a grotesque universe. The pagan dimension, as opposed to the Christian marvellous,
is stressed at the end of the short story with the allusion to the Arabian Nights and the snake charmer
(217). The short story “The Penis” seems an adequate conclusion to a collection which bears as a
title such an oxymoron. Jean-Jacques Lecercle points out in his essay The Violence of Language that
“the trope is particularly important in fantasy, a game where contradictory extremes are held together
and sustained in impossible unity, without solution or resolution” (Lecercle 92). H. Kureishi’s writing
here allies ordinariness and a fantastic dimension. By using a personified penis, his narrator makes
the reader willingly shift into an eerie atmosphere.
Moreover, the wealth of visual details reveals the importance of the setting: “If the time and place was
right [...] he would let them peek” (211). The place mirrors the characters’ tensions. The city is
transformed according to their perception. The backcloth for the plot is turned into a caricatured city:
“[…] dropping it on the head of a Japanese tourist passing beneath Tower Bridge on a pleasure
cruiser” (213). Both Doug and Alfie perceive London as a labyrinth from which one cannot escape.
The short stories in Midnight All Day, as the majority of the author’s writings, are London tales. This is
another point of comparison with N. Gogol’s St Petersburg Tales. The deictic used in “the river” (209)
indicates that the narrator considers obvious the fact that his story is London-based and that he is
referring to the Thames.
More strikingly, the narrator introduces luminosity to better underline the shadows. The chiaroscuro,
that is to say the interplay of light and shade, is a crucial device in uncanny tales. Whereas all the
previous protagonists of the collection fled darkness, being associated with the moon and ultimately
with women, the last two main characters of the book take refuge in it. The progressive dimming of the
luminosity reflects the protagonists’ distress. As light is fading away, the short story narrates Doug’s
symbolical weakness. Moreover, the sentences which describe Alfie trying to get rid of the penis
oppose horizontal (“heading,” “walking,” “crossing” 208-209) and vertical planes (“pulled,” “ran up,”
“let it fall,” “watched it fall” 208-209). The constant oscillation between these two planes underlines the
alienation theme of H. Kureishi’s short story. Indeed, the characters strive to keep living on a
horizontal rational level but are forced to follow descending vertical lines, synonymous with downfall.
Moreover, the description of their movements contains curves and undulating lines (“waving the bag”
208, “turned a corner” 209) that trouble their vision of the future.
This visual isotropy leads to the main pictorial dimension of H. Kureishi’s short story. It evokes
German expressionism and especially anxiety paintings, such as Otto Dix’s. “The Penis” is strongly
linked to Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893). In this interpictoriality, the painting and the short story
both reflect a brutality in their use of distortion. Alfie seems as much trapped in the horror of the
fictional world as the man in the painting. The two characters (H. Kureishi’s and E. Munch’s) seen
walking on a bridge suffer from a distress, facing a world they cannot control. They both tremble with
a profound existential fear. Munch’s work and the short story embed harsh horizontal stripes in
undulating lines. For instance, H. Kureishi’s short story uses the diagonal of the bridge and the rapid
swirling motion of the landscape. This reference to Munch’s painting deepens the motif of anguish in
“The Penis.” Doug tries to hide his loneliness and his despair but the city around him mirrors his
internal chaos. He seems trapped in Lucian Freud’s painting, Interior in Paddington (1951), in which
the death of a plant reflects the anguish of a middle-aged man, wearing his raincoat as an armour.
Cuts
In her essay Psychoanalytic Criticism, Elizabeth Wright writes that “Language both reveals and
conceals the fracture. For Lacan, narrative is the attempt to catch up retrospectively on this traumatic
separation, to tell this happening again and again, to re-count it” (Wright 104). In H. Kureishi’s short
story, the narrator alludes to these theories by symbolically cutting down Doug’s penis. The latter
represents one’s animality and sexual drives. H. Kureishi’s short story thusly narrates, with wit and
irony, the return of the repressed. The penis resembles a nightmarish ghost that will ultimately be
exorcised, but only after it has been acknowledged during the confrontation in the pub (214-215). The
characters’ perplexity and anguish remind one of S. Freud’s das Unheimliche, also known as the
uncanny.
Furthermore, the fear of castration is introduced in H. Kureishi’s short story by the iteration of the
notion of cutting. The narrator adds to the physical dismemberment a psychic one which stresses the
character’s anxiety. When the narrator writes that Alfie “was a cutter – a hairdresser – and had to get
to work” (206), he also ironically points out to himself. He is the cutter of the story. These dashes lay
emphasis on the notion of castration by symbolically severing the utterance. Furthermore, the
narrator mimics the protagonists’ inability to express themselves. He cuts their thoughts into pieces
(“‘You’ve come home with a man’s penis – complete with balls and pubic hair – in your pocket,’” 207)
with an accumulation of dashes. One may underline another cut made by the narrator. The reader
expects Alfie to be the main protagonist since his name opens and concludes the first part of the short
story. Yet, Alfie suddenly disappears. The narrator plays once more with the reader’s expectations. By
erasing Alfie from the story, he contributes to creating a chaotic world no longer reliable. Alfie has
been cut out from the text.
In addition, the paratext itself highlights this notion of rupture. The very numerous dialogues break
down the pace of the narrative and visually slice the story into parts. The characters’ confusion is
pointed up by the aposiopesis. These sentences left incomplete (“‘Who knows? Listen –’” 213) stress
Doug’s uneasiness. This character usually employs scesis onomaton, that is to say sentences without
verbs. Doug’s collapse is mirrored by the fact that he utters broken sentences when he tries to
communicate his sense of loss. The short story’s punctuation suggests the feeling of fragmentation of
the psyche after Doug finds out about his missing penis. Semicolons constantly shatter the sentences
in H. Kureishi’s story. The fall of the characters is announced through the aposiopesis and the
semicolons but also through the recurrence of suspension dots – which are rare in H. Kureishi’s
collection. “A voice was commenting through the megaphone: ‘On the left we can see...and on your
right there is a particularly interesting historic monument’” (209). The reader can sense the
characters’ coming ordeal.
The confusion of the protagonists is also expressed by the shortness of the sentences. The phrases
more or less follow the same pattern, that is to say the introduction of a single comma breaking simple
sentences into two. The exploitation of a different pattern – longer sentences and two or three
commas – smashes the pace of the short story. When Alfie worries about not remembering what
happened to him on the previous night, the structure of the sentences changes with an abundance of
conjunctions. One reads: “He would examine his wallet and see how much money he had spent,
whether he had any cocaine left, or if he had collected phone numbers, business cards or taxi
receipts that might jog his memory” (207). As for the last word of the short story (“weary,” 217), it
gives a pessimistic conclusion. The narrator indicates with the final use of a semicolon that, though
Doug has found his penis, he remains disturbed by his adventure. He has had a painful epiphany:
“Doug was glad to be reunited with the most important part of himself; but, when he thought of the
numerous exertions ahead, he felt weary” (217). The semicolon brutally slices the sentence into two. It
is then followed by the conjunction “but” itself preceding a colon. This heavy construction, compared
to the narrator’s utterly simple declarative style, reflects the character’s psychological exhaustion.
Don Giovanni or a new pace
Thanks to the frenetic rhythm of the short story, the reader is prevented from questioning his
suspension of disbelief. H. Kureishi’s short story is in perpetual movement. The characters keep
rushing through London while the narrator focuses on a brisk sequence of events. This very rapid
pace is accentuated by active verbs outnumbering the verbs of being. The course of time in a frenetic
single day is very precise. We are successively told about “breakfast,” “lunchtime,” “dinner,” “night”
and “next morning.” The rhythm shifts between an acceleration and Doug’s desire to slow down. It
creates a split between a time which keeps speeding up through the uncontrollable process of ageing
and the character’s will to live more peacefully. Alfie and Doug cannot control their lives for they keep
rushing by.
The tension inherent to the genre of short stories traps the characters in a vicious circle. The
repetition of the same pattern of words [Quickly + to run] stresses their loss of reliable points of
reference: “Quickly, he pulled the wrapped penis out of his pocket and let it fall to the ground [...], a
schoolgirl ran up behind him” (208); “Quickly he made his apologies – and bolted [...]; Doug ran out
into the street, but there was no sign of it” (212). Besides, the short story is structured according to a
musical rhythm. As Don Giovanni, referred to throughout the narrative, H. Kureishi’s short story is
divided into two acts. We could divide “The Penis” as follows:
[Adagio]
Alfie was having breakfast with his wife at the kitchen table (206).
[Allegretto]
“That’s enough,” he said hurriedly (207).
[Presto]
His teeth were chattering. He didn’t want “the thing” in his pocket one more second (208).
[Prestissimo]
Doug rushed across town to see a cosmetic surgeon he knew (215).
[Adagio]
[...] when he thought of the numerous exertions ahead, he felt weary (217).
More than the reference to Don Giovanni, the idea of music in this short story is also suggested by
the intertextual antiphony between Doug and N. Gogol’s character, Kovalyov. The two characters, like
performers, respond to each other, thus creating effects of echo and contrast to the motif of anxiety.
These protagonists suffer from a loss of identity mirrored in the chaotic world they live in.
Furthermore, the narrator constantly handles fricative sounds to render the characters’ collapse. The
sonorities of the first sentence are rather harsh. A phonic effect is indeed achieved by the repetition
of the consonant [f]. One is hearing Alfie and his wife eating: “Alfie was having breakfast with his wife
at the kitchen table” (206). Acoustically, Alfie’s name is almost an onomatopoeia. Indeed, this name
comically resembles his own movement: “Alfie fled” (209). The short story concludes itself with an
accumulation of sibilant sounds. The narrator makes use of a sigmatism in order to insist on Doug’s
anxiety: “[…] when he thought of the numerous exertions ahead, he felt weary” (217). The narrator
employs fricatives ([θ], [s], et [z]) which recreate the atmosphere as the characters perceive it. For
example, he conveys Doug’s uneasiness by stressing the sounds of his penis. “His penis swung
between his legs, slapping against each thigh with a satisfying smack” (217). Even though the penis
has been reattached to Doug, one can still hear it. The personification is modified with the adjective
“satisfying” being employed to qualify a sound. The shadow of the rebellious penis threatens Doug.
The fricatives create a sibilant atmosphere reinforced by the onomatopoeia of the word “smack.”
The Hamlet syndrome
The motif of confusion is a major aspect of “The Penis.” The narrator compares men to objects and
objects to men: “A cosmetic surgeon he knew, a greedy man with a face as smooth as a plastic ball”
(215); “his penis stepped into a cab, politely letting the women go first” (211). The penis firstly
becomes a man and is then compared to a snake (217). At the beginning of the short story, Alfie’s
comment “It wasn’t human” (206) sounds ironical to the extent that it foreshadows the next pages.
Anthropomorphism – the description of the penis as a human being with emotions – introduces the
crucial theme of transformation. The lack of a clear demarcation line between the inanimate and the
animate confuses the characters. The narrator of “The Penis” thusly describes men needing to be
listened to and reassured. The personification of the penis reveals that the characters are suffering
from a destabilization of their masculinity. The penis echoes this notion when he expresses his desire
to play Hamlet. Hamlet’s questioning (“To be, or not to be: that is the question”) is an interesting
palimpsest in H. Kureishi’s short story. Indeed, Doug wonders whether he should take action against
his penis or strive to live without it. Hamlet’s famous choice deepens the motifs of the character’s
breakdown in “The Penis.” But more than that, H. Kureishi refers to the Hamlet syndrome, referring to
“overthinkers who underachieve” – to quote from the title of Adrienne Miller’s eponymous book. The
latter studies the sense of alienation of modern-day Hamlets, that is to say middle class counter-
culture men in their thirties.
In H. Kureishi’s short story, the Hamlet syndrome is underlined by the motif of uncertainty, itself
stressed by the repetition of the adverb “perhaps.” The characters’ perplexity is reinforced by the
constant quaesitio: “Don’t you know?”; “Was it good?”; “Suppose it does start to get hard?”; “Are you
a fan?”; “You mean, we won’t be physically attached ever again?” This perpetual questioning stresses
the characters’ obsession with three central notions: “What?” “Where?” and “Who?” repeated over
and over again. In addition, Doug’s speech mannerisms, for example the anaphora of the question “Is
that right?” (212), indicate the way he is dumbfounded but also the extent of his anguish. The
repetition of the same question reveals Doug’s confusion. Nonetheless, this protagonist’s traits evolve
along the short story. The growing length of his questions proves that he is on the verge of having an
epiphany. The latter is introduced on the last page through free indirect speech: “Perhaps he had
been mercifully untied from an idiot and they could go their separate ways” (217). The last short story
of the collection resembles a question. Are these men (Alfie and Doug but also all the other
characters of Midnight All Day) only driven by their sexual fantasies? This short story makes one think
about the Theatre of the Absurd insofar as Doug and Alfie cannot cope rationally with the senseless
and alien world in which they live.
Moreover, the two main characters, Alfie and Doug, are characterized differently through a particular
use of modal verbs. Alfie is defined by the idea of burden with the constricting modal forms “have to”
and “should”: “He had to get to work. Once there, as well as having to endure the noise and queues
of customers, he had to make conversation all day” (206). On the contrary, Doug is opposed to Alfie
with the negation of the restricting form “have to”: “he didn’t have to take out his prick out of his
breeches until the tenth minute” (209). The fact that Alfie lives in a world of obligations transpires in
his speech full of imperatives. Yet, both characters are trapped in a world of habits – stressed by the
repetition of the modal auxiliary verb “would.” Alfie’s constant handling of the future tense shows that
he cannot reach a carpe diem mode of life.
As for Doug, he is referred to with the auxiliary verb “can,” which demonstrates that he thinks he
controls his life. Ironically, the penis adopts the notion of Doug being able to do something, while
talking to the latter: “You could be my assistant. You could carry my script and keep the fans away”
(214). The subsequent repetition of the auxiliary verb “might” shows his sudden impotence: “Doug
considered what life might be like without his penis” (217). Doug is firstly represented with notions of
habit and control to better emphasize his fall. When he resembles Alfie with a modal form indicating an
obligation, one may understand the extent of his despair: “‘It’s got to be sewn on tonight’”(216). Doug’
s world is crumbling away. Like Alfie, the pornographic actor and his penis start using the future
tense. Doug, who first seemed to be a confident character, foreshadows his future emotional and
career downfalls when talking with his penis: “‘You’ll get sick of it’” (215).
Identity quests
Furthermore, the characters’ “uneasy feeling of alienation as a widespread human phenomenon”
(Shaw 191) is alluded to with the numerous negations. The first part of the text, dedicated to Alfie,
employs a series of negations which convey a sense of gloom. Alfie is characterized by his use of
negations in his speech. Through the story of a man who splits into two parts – himself and his penis –
, the narrator insists on the dissociation of the being. Underneath a parodic choice, this metaphorical
short story offers a reflection on the human condition. The narrator chooses textual devices (such as
numerous dashes and scesis onomaton) based upon the fragmentary which underline the end of a
coherent and unified world.
The distortion is announced through semiotic allusions. Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women is returned
into Huge Big Women (214), the penis wants to perform Hamlet in W. Shakespeare’s eponymous
play, and Mozart’s “dramma giocoso” is exploited to pornographic aims. Besides, the narrator
ironically emphasizes the loss of landmarks in a dystopia by transforming Charles Perrault’s Sleeping
Beauty: “They walked in the surgeon’s beautiful garden. Doug laid the sleeping penis in the surgeon’s
hands” (216). In such a short story, the noun “snow” on page 216 alludes to Grimm’s Snow White in a
pornographic context. The reader is even reminded of Chas Addams’ The Addams Family with the
comical reference to “the ‘thing’” (208) insofar as the living cut hand resembles the behavior of the
personified penis. In addition, the process of a brutal transformation is embodied by the theme of
aesthetic surgery: “Few of these actors would even be recognised by their parents” (216). This short
story deals with a sense of male insecurity. The characters have lost their landmarks in a post-
feminist universe:
“Without me, you’re nothing,” said Doug.
“Ha! It’s the other way round! I’ve realised the truth.”(214)
Even the protagonists’ first names are distorted. Doug and Alfie’s world is a perverted space from
which one cannot escape with dignity. All the frontiers between animate and inanimate, human and
non-human are blurred in this short story.
The identity quest is underlined by the narrator’s choice of one-dimensional characters with only one
major personality trait. One is told about a libidinous actor, a greedy surgeon and an alcoholic
hairdresser. The narrator’s irony is thusly emphasized several times. He mocks his characters by
assigning them grotesque features. As the number of women grows, the latter become less human:
“He had remade many of Doug’s colleagues, enlarging the breasts, lips and buttocks of his female
colleagues” (215). The protagonists often represent caricatures. The hysterical wife, the threatening
mother-in-law, the prostitutes, the innocent schoolgirl and the pornographic actresses are all flat
characters. The narrator depicts a world in which everybody seems to have lost his identity. Except
Doug and Alfie, the other characters do not have names. Even Alfie’s wife, who is mentioned a dozen
times, remains anonymous.
Yet almost each paragraph, if not all the sentences, begin with personal pronouns. When one studies
the first word of each paragraph in the first part, the reader is struck by the recurrence of Alfie’s name
and the personal pronouns “he.” In the second part dedicated to Doug, almost every sentence begins
with the masculine personal pronoun. Almost all the other paragraphs are opened with a reference to
a person. This focus on the question of one’s lost identity is thusly ironically underlined. The more
people Doug meets, the lonelier he feels. The repetition of the personal pronoun “I,” referring once to
Doug then to his penis, also underlines the split in Doug’s personality. When addressing his penis,
Doug employs the pronoun “we,” which proves the extent of his dissociation. Who is the real Doug: a
mere echo of the previous male characters of the collection, the intertextual double Kovaliov or a man
attached to a penis? This is what the latter claims to a wretched Doug (214).
One may also wonder if Alfie and Doug are separate entities. Indeed, their sole encounter takes place
in a deserted dark place. Their paralleled characterization is hinted at several times, especially with
the notion of time. We read: “A few minutes later, [Alfie] was walking down the street with a penis in his
pocket” (208). A few minutes later [Doug] was there” (212). Doug and Alfie echo the same anxiety and
isolation. However, the diacope in the following sentence illustrates Doug’s exhausting journey while
desperately searching for his penis whereas Alfie tries to get rid of it: “Doug tried to push through the
crowd but the women wouldn’t let him through” (212, our italics).
To conclude this paper, let us add that “The Penis” wraps up the collection of short stories Midnight
All Day with its main motif: contemporary male anxiety or, in other words, “middle-aged madness” (46).
Hanif Kureishi portrays a generation of men lost and split in a postmodern society. The motif of
castration developed throughout the narration stands as an ironic echo to a line in the eponymous
short story: “Rather a beast than a castrated angel” (171). With straightforward language, “The
Penis” aims at destabilizing the reader in order to make him sense the depth of the male characters’
uneasiness. It questions in his ironical manner the place of men at the beginning of the twenty-first
century. This paper has also probed that H. Kureishi uses postmodern techniques (such as literary
hypotexts), combines parataxis and hypotaxis intermingled with pictorial dimensions and musical
rhythms, plays with iteration, punctuation, modal auxiliary verbs, negation and tenses as various
expressions of anguish. His short story “The Penis” rests on male streams of consciousness,
polyptotons of fricative sounds, a tension between motifs of darkness and light, upward and downward
movements, and the semantic fields of oppression and frustration. It also establishes a form of
complicity between the narrator and the reader – which is almost essential for the dominant mode of
irony to be successful. All those elements are part of H. Kureishi’s specific and acclaimed touch.
The parodic use of N. Gogol’s short story inscribes “The Penis” in a postmodern perspective of
literature. The last story of H. Kureishi’s collection highlights a sense of failure by having recourse to
the hypotext of “The Nose.” “The Penis” becomes the playground for a satirical portrayal of a
generation of frustrated men. The idea of psychic dissociation acquires a prolific dimension with Alfie
(the character who first finds the detached penis) recalling N. Gogol’s protagonist named Ivan, Doug
embodying Kovaliov and the penis referring to the nose. The narrator uses this Russian hypotext in
order to emphasize the way, in a protean world, everything is prone to transformation. It seems that, in
Doug’s and Alfie’s universe, nothing is stable. Everything undergoes deflation or permutation.
The two short stories, which both narrate quests to get back one’s identity, are divided into three
similar parts. H. Kureishi’s incipit calls attention to our memory of N. Gogol’s. Alfie, a hairdresser, and
Ivan, a barber, have their breakfast with their respective wives in big towns – London and St
Petersburg (which used to be the capital city of Russia). The title itself responds to the Russian one
by insisting on the lost object. The following passages extracted from the two short stories stress H.
Kureishi’s process of mimicry. One reads in “The Nose”:
[...] sitting down at the table, [Ivan] picked up a knife and, assuming a meaningful expression, began
to slice the bread. Having cut the loaf into two halves, he looked inside and to his astonishment saw
something white. Ivan Yakovlevich pocked it carefully with the knife and felt it with his finger. “Solid!”
he said to himself. “What could it be?” He stuck in his finger and extracted-a nose! Ivan Yakovlevich
was dumbfounded [...]. But his horror was nothing compared to the indignation which seized his
spouse.
“You beast, where did you cut off a nose?” she shouted angrily. “Scoundrel! drunkard! [...] Away with
it [...].”
At last he [...] wrapped the nose in a rag and went out into the street. [...] He wanted to [...] drop it as if
by accident and then turn off into a side street [...] Once he actually did drop it, but a policeman some
distance away pointed to it with his halberd and said: “Pick it up – you’ve dropped something there”
and Ivan was obliged to pick up the nose and hide it in his pocket [...] He decided to go to St Isaac’s
Bridge [...]. (58-59)
In “The Penis,” we read:
Alfie was having breakfast with his wife at the kitchen table. [...] He was fumbling in his inside pocket
when he found something strange. He pulled it out. [...] “It’s a penis,” she said. [...] “Let’s wrap it in
something.” [...] She was about to become hysterical [...]. A few minutes later, to his surprise, he was
walking down the street with a penis in his pocket. [...] Quickly, he pulled the wrapped penis out of his
pocket and let it fall to the ground. [...] He had scarcely gone a few more yards when a schoolgirl ran
up behind him, waving the bag and telling him he had dropped his breakfast. Thanking her, he stuffed
it back in his pocket. [...] Making sure no one was watching, he tossed the penis over the side of the
bridge and watched it fall. (206-209)
After these first two pages, the similarities go on. Doug and Kovaliov are both obsessed with women.
On their way to discover what happened to their penis/nose, they suddenly see the latter, disguised
as a movie star/state councillor going in/coming down a car. The attempt to talk fails. The penis/nose
becomes famous. Doug/Kovaliov meets Alfie/Ivan. After getting in touch with the penis/the nose,
Doug/Kovaliov finds out that to get it back is to be negotiated/impossible. They both see a doctor. In
the last part, the penis/nose is reattached after a surgical procedure.
The stylistic similarities between “The Penis” and “The Nose” are also numerous. The dialogues have
the same fragmentary role in N. Gogol’s story. Doug’s desperate questioning “where?” is put forward
in N. Gogol’s hypotext. “Kovalyov was beside himself. ‘Where is it? Where? I’ll run there at once.’” (71)
Another point of comparison between “The Penis” and “The Nose” is the abundance of exclamatory
sentences which create a frenetic rhythm. It seems worth noticing that this frequent use of exclamation
marks does not appear in the other nine short stories of H. Kureishi’s collection. Besides, N. Gogol’s
paratext is divided into parts with the signs “I” and “II.” This same division occurs in “The Penis” with
blanks. In both short stories, the first part deals with the barber/hairdresser and the second one
introduces the hero missing his nose/penis. Besides, N. Gogol shows the same sarcastic tone towards
Kovalyov as the narrator uses towards Doug. Let’s compare the moments when the characters first
see their missing parts. “The Nose” reads:
An inexplicable phenomenon took place before his very eyes: a carriage drew up to the entrance; the
doors opened; a gentleman in uniform jumped out, slightly stooping, and ran up the stairs. Imagine
the horror and at the same time the amazement of Kovalyov when he recognised that it was his own
nose! [...] He looked right and left, shouted to his driver, “Bring the carriage round,” got in and was
driven off. (62)
Despite the fact that in the Russian extract the narrator directly addresses the reader, the setting, the
mood and reactions of the characters are the same in the two texts.
Furthermore, the two narrators mock their protagonists by giving the missing body part a stronger
personality than the characters. This is conveyed in the conversations in “The Nose”:
For me to go about without my nose, you’ll admit, is unbecoming. [...] Since I’m expecting – and
besides, having many acquaintances among the ladies –
Mrs. Chekhtaryova, a state councillor’s wife, and others... Judge for yourself... I don’t know, my dear
sir [...]. After all you are my nose!”
The Nose looked at the major and slightly knitted his brows.
“You are mistaken, my dear sir, I exist in my own right. Besides, there can be no close relation
between us. Judging by the buttons on your uniform, you must be employed in the Senate or at least
in the Ministry of Justice. As for me, I am in the scholarly line.”
Having said this, the Nose turned away and went back to his prayers.
Kovalyov was utterly flabbergasted. He knew not what to do or even what to think. (63-64)
Doug is equally taken for a fool. His penis wants to divorce him. The themes of separation and
psychological crises are crucial in H. Kureishi’s collection and in its Russian hypotext.
Moreover, another striking episode is the meeting with the doctor/surgeon. The two turn out to be
mocked by the narrators who target their greedy personality:
He called Ivan and sent him for the doctor who occupied the best apartment on the first floor of the
same house. The doctor was a fine figure of a man; he had beautiful pitch-black sidewhiskers [...].
Having carried out the test, the doctor shook his head and said: “No, can’t be done. You’d better stay
like this or we might make things worse. Of course, it can be stuck on. I daresay, I could do it right
now for you, but I assure you it’ll be worse for you.”
“I like that! How am I to remain without a nose?” said Kovalyov. “It couldn’t possibly be worse than now
[...]. I am expected at parties in two houses [...]. I appeal to you,” pleaded Kovalyov, “is there no way at
all? Fix it on somehow, even if not very well, just so it stays on [...].”
“This is against my principles and my calling. It is true that I charge for my visits, but solely in order not
to offend by my refusal….” (72)
One can compare this passage to “The Penis” in which the plastic surgeon declares to Doug: “‘You
could die on the table. You might sue me. I’d have to be recompensed’” (216). The sarcasm of the
narrators is accentuated when the nose and the penis both become celebrities. In “The Nose,” one
reads: “Someone said that the Nose was in Junker’s store: and such a crowd and jam was created
outside Junker’s that the police had to intervene. (75)” Besides, the points of comparison between the
two short stories echo Turgenev who declared that “we all came out from under N.Gogol’s ‘Overcoat.’”
Beyond Lacan’s mirror
So many similarities between these short stories highlight the sole difference, that is to say the two
dissimilar endings. N. Gogol’s sentence “And thereafter Major Kovalyov was always seen in good
humour, smiling, running after absolutely all the pretty ladies” (77) stands in opposition to the
pessimistic ending of “The Penis.” Though both characters are once more seducers, Doug seems
profoundly unhappy, whereas Kovalyov is delighted. An explanation for this difference may be that,
unlike Kovalyov, Doug does not go through the mirror-stage. He remains the split subject who is not
identified with himself. On the contrary, when Kovalyov finds his nose, he goes again through the
necessary mirror-stage to integrate his personality: “Passing through the reception room, he glanced
in the mirror: the nose was there (77).”
As Jacques Lacan explained in the first of his Ecrits, the mirror stage – when a two-year-old child
recognizes himself in his reflection – symbolizes the moment when one gets an identity of his own. In
“The Penis,” Doug goes through a deep crisis when he finds out about his missing penis by looking at
himself in the mirror. Doug has thusly been thrown back to his childhood. He fails the initiatory ritual of
the mirror-stage. He has not learnt to see himself as distinct from the rest of the world. This key
moment appears in N. Gogol’s short story:
Kovalyov stretched and asked for the small mirror standing on the table. He wanted to have a look at
the pimple which had, the evening before, appeared on his nose. But to his extreme amazement he
saw that he had, in the place of his nose, a perfectly smooth surface. (61)
Thus, contrary to N. Gogol’s story, the narrator of “The Penis” concludes the traumatic experience of
dismemberment by a more profound crisis. As an entire generation of broken men wandering in a
postmodern world, Doug remains estranged from himself, lost in a distressing universe.
Despite these two different denouements, the narrators similarly display a great deal of irony and
spite towards the characters only attached to appearances. They both denounce a superficial world.
The narrator of “The Penis” targets man’s vanities with the ironical reference to Don Giovanni: “Doug
could sustain an erection all day and sing something from Don Giovanni” (210). He also alludes to N.
Gogol’s short story which is itself highly satirical. This double level deepens the impact of H. Kureishi’s
text. The pre-established frame of the hypotext of “The Nose” enables the narrator of “The Penis” to
have recourse to a greater freedom. Indeed, parody comes from constraint and the comical effects
from its flexibility. “The Nose” is famous for N. Gogol’s ironical tone towards government bureaucracy.
H. Kureishi’s narrator points out to a destabilized male world. All the characters who encounter the
penis disguised as a man are deceived. His disillusionment almost transforms Doug’s comical and
parodic quest of a penis into a tragedy. One may note here that the penis resembles the Vice in
Morality plays, that is to say, the cynical tempter. When Alfie discovers the penis in his pocket, his wife
is not annoyed: “‘What’s that?’ His wife said. She came closer. ‘It’s a penis,’ she said’” (207). Her lack
of surprise is expressed by the repetition of the verb “to say” and the absence of any exclamation
mark.
Doug seems to be the amputated double of all the characters of H. Kureishi’s collection. As an anti-
hero missing a penis, Doug is immediately characterized by the idea of a lack. He is introduced for the
first time by a comparative of inferiority (“Less than a mile away,” 209). Doug may answer Marcia’s
question in H. Kureishi’s short story “Sucking Stones”: “What sort of man had no ex-wife, no children,
no family nearby, no lawyers, no debt, no house?” (126). Thus, the narrator proposes a sarcastic
rereading of the collection. The penis’ declaration, “I want out” (214), could be the rallying cry of many
male characters in the other nine stories. Thus, the choice of this short story to stand as a conclusion
underlines the previous narrators’ irony towards the protagonists. “The Penis” closes the collection
entitled Midnight All Day with a crucial parallelism between the sentence “He had to make
conversation all day” (206) and the phrase “Doug could sustain an erection all day” (210). The
characters appear to admit that running away from annihilating family bonds is a mere excuse to
justify their sexual fantasies. The narrator ironically states that the missing penis is a synecdoche, in
which this part stands for the whole Doug – an emotionally empty protagonist.
The Scream in a chiaroscuro
Let us now point out the paraphernalia of fantastic tales used in “The Penis” by first stressing the
importance of the frightening context. The latter is accentuated by a semantic field referring, for
example, to a “butcher,” a “surgeon” and “blood” (216). Furthermore, the entrance of the eponymous
body part is delayed to create more expectation, suspense and mystery. The pronouns “it” and “that”
(206) are firstly substituted for the noun “the penis.” The narrator underlines the sense of an
everyday environment, which enables the reader to progressively believe in the story. H. Kureishi and
N. Gogol’s tales open with ordinary people living in a common setting. The first surprising element is
introduced in a rational context. This technique prevents the reader from rejecting the story when first
reading about the detached penis/nose.
One sentence, by its unlikeliness, directly touches on the ludicrous atmosphere of tales of fantasy:
“Someone had left behind a shoe, a shotgun, a pair of false eyelashes and a map of China” (211).
This enumeration precedes the vision of the penis walking around. It warns the reader before settling
the story in an uncanny atmosphere. The narrator says that what follows is not absurd since the story
is anchored in a grotesque universe. The pagan dimension, as opposed to the Christian marvellous,
is stressed at the end of the short story with the allusion to the Arabian Nights and the snake charmer
(217). The short story “The Penis” seems an adequate conclusion to a collection which bears as a
title such an oxymoron. Jean-Jacques Lecercle points out in his essay The Violence of Language that
“the trope is particularly important in fantasy, a game where contradictory extremes are held together
and sustained in impossible unity, without solution or resolution” (Lecercle 92). H. Kureishi’s writing
here allies ordinariness and a fantastic dimension. By using a personified penis, his narrator makes
the reader willingly shift into an eerie atmosphere.
Moreover, the wealth of visual details reveals the importance of the setting: “If the time and place was
right [...] he would let them peek” (211). The place mirrors the characters’ tensions. The city is
transformed according to their perception. The backcloth for the plot is turned into a caricatured city:
“[…] dropping it on the head of a Japanese tourist passing beneath Tower Bridge on a pleasure
cruiser” (213). Both Doug and Alfie perceive London as a labyrinth from which one cannot escape.
The short stories in Midnight All Day, as the majority of the author’s writings, are London tales. This is
another point of comparison with N. Gogol’s St Petersburg Tales. The deictic used in “the river” (209)
indicates that the narrator considers obvious the fact that his story is London-based and that he is
referring to the Thames.
More strikingly, the narrator introduces luminosity to better underline the shadows. The chiaroscuro,
that is to say the interplay of light and shade, is a crucial device in uncanny tales. Whereas all the
previous protagonists of the collection fled darkness, being associated with the moon and ultimately
with women, the last two main characters of the book take refuge in it. The progressive dimming of the
luminosity reflects the protagonists’ distress. As light is fading away, the short story narrates Doug’s
symbolical weakness. Moreover, the sentences which describe Alfie trying to get rid of the penis
oppose horizontal (“heading,” “walking,” “crossing” 208-209) and vertical planes (“pulled,” “ran up,”
“let it fall,” “watched it fall” 208-209). The constant oscillation between these two planes underlines the
alienation theme of H. Kureishi’s short story. Indeed, the characters strive to keep living on a
horizontal rational level but are forced to follow descending vertical lines, synonymous with downfall.
Moreover, the description of their movements contains curves and undulating lines (“waving the bag”
208, “turned a corner” 209) that trouble their vision of the future.
This visual isotropy leads to the main pictorial dimension of H. Kureishi’s short story. It evokes
German expressionism and especially anxiety paintings, such as Otto Dix’s. “The Penis” is strongly
linked to Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893). In this interpictoriality, the painting and the short story
both reflect a brutality in their use of distortion. Alfie seems as much trapped in the horror of the
fictional world as the man in the painting. The two characters (H. Kureishi’s and E. Munch’s) seen
walking on a bridge suffer from a distress, facing a world they cannot control. They both tremble with
a profound existential fear. Munch’s work and the short story embed harsh horizontal stripes in
undulating lines. For instance, H. Kureishi’s short story uses the diagonal of the bridge and the rapid
swirling motion of the landscape. This reference to Munch’s painting deepens the motif of anguish in
“The Penis.” Doug tries to hide his loneliness and his despair but the city around him mirrors his
internal chaos. He seems trapped in Lucian Freud’s painting, Interior in Paddington (1951), in which
the death of a plant reflects the anguish of a middle-aged man, wearing his raincoat as an armour.
Cuts
In her essay Psychoanalytic Criticism, Elizabeth Wright writes that “Language both reveals and
conceals the fracture. For Lacan, narrative is the attempt to catch up retrospectively on this traumatic
separation, to tell this happening again and again, to re-count it” (Wright 104). In H. Kureishi’s short
story, the narrator alludes to these theories by symbolically cutting down Doug’s penis. The latter
represents one’s animality and sexual drives. H. Kureishi’s short story thusly narrates, with wit and
irony, the return of the repressed. The penis resembles a nightmarish ghost that will ultimately be
exorcised, but only after it has been acknowledged during the confrontation in the pub (214-215). The
characters’ perplexity and anguish remind one of S. Freud’s das Unheimliche, also known as the
uncanny.
Furthermore, the fear of castration is introduced in H. Kureishi’s short story by the iteration of the
notion of cutting. The narrator adds to the physical dismemberment a psychic one which stresses the
character’s anxiety. When the narrator writes that Alfie “was a cutter – a hairdresser – and had to get
to work” (206), he also ironically points out to himself. He is the cutter of the story. These dashes lay
emphasis on the notion of castration by symbolically severing the utterance. Furthermore, the
narrator mimics the protagonists’ inability to express themselves. He cuts their thoughts into pieces
(“‘You’ve come home with a man’s penis – complete with balls and pubic hair – in your pocket,’” 207)
with an accumulation of dashes. One may underline another cut made by the narrator. The reader
expects Alfie to be the main protagonist since his name opens and concludes the first part of the short
story. Yet, Alfie suddenly disappears. The narrator plays once more with the reader’s expectations. By
erasing Alfie from the story, he contributes to creating a chaotic world no longer reliable. Alfie has
been cut out from the text.
In addition, the paratext itself highlights this notion of rupture. The very numerous dialogues break
down the pace of the narrative and visually slice the story into parts. The characters’ confusion is
pointed up by the aposiopesis. These sentences left incomplete (“‘Who knows? Listen –’” 213) stress
Doug’s uneasiness. This character usually employs scesis onomaton, that is to say sentences without
verbs. Doug’s collapse is mirrored by the fact that he utters broken sentences when he tries to
communicate his sense of loss. The short story’s punctuation suggests the feeling of fragmentation of
the psyche after Doug finds out about his missing penis. Semicolons constantly shatter the sentences
in H. Kureishi’s story. The fall of the characters is announced through the aposiopesis and the
semicolons but also through the recurrence of suspension dots – which are rare in H. Kureishi’s
collection. “A voice was commenting through the megaphone: ‘On the left we can see...and on your
right there is a particularly interesting historic monument’” (209). The reader can sense the
characters’ coming ordeal.
The confusion of the protagonists is also expressed by the shortness of the sentences. The phrases
more or less follow the same pattern, that is to say the introduction of a single comma breaking simple
sentences into two. The exploitation of a different pattern – longer sentences and two or three
commas – smashes the pace of the short story. When Alfie worries about not remembering what
happened to him on the previous night, the structure of the sentences changes with an abundance of
conjunctions. One reads: “He would examine his wallet and see how much money he had spent,
whether he had any cocaine left, or if he had collected phone numbers, business cards or taxi
receipts that might jog his memory” (207). As for the last word of the short story (“weary,” 217), it
gives a pessimistic conclusion. The narrator indicates with the final use of a semicolon that, though
Doug has found his penis, he remains disturbed by his adventure. He has had a painful epiphany:
“Doug was glad to be reunited with the most important part of himself; but, when he thought of the
numerous exertions ahead, he felt weary” (217). The semicolon brutally slices the sentence into two. It
is then followed by the conjunction “but” itself preceding a colon. This heavy construction, compared
to the narrator’s utterly simple declarative style, reflects the character’s psychological exhaustion.
Don Giovanni or a new pace
Thanks to the frenetic rhythm of the short story, the reader is prevented from questioning his
suspension of disbelief. H. Kureishi’s short story is in perpetual movement. The characters keep
rushing through London while the narrator focuses on a brisk sequence of events. This very rapid
pace is accentuated by active verbs outnumbering the verbs of being. The course of time in a frenetic
single day is very precise. We are successively told about “breakfast,” “lunchtime,” “dinner,” “night”
and “next morning.” The rhythm shifts between an acceleration and Doug’s desire to slow down. It
creates a split between a time which keeps speeding up through the uncontrollable process of ageing
and the character’s will to live more peacefully. Alfie and Doug cannot control their lives for they keep
rushing by.
The tension inherent to the genre of short stories traps the characters in a vicious circle. The
repetition of the same pattern of words [Quickly + to run] stresses their loss of reliable points of
reference: “Quickly, he pulled the wrapped penis out of his pocket and let it fall to the ground [...], a
schoolgirl ran up behind him” (208); “Quickly he made his apologies – and bolted [...]; Doug ran out
into the street, but there was no sign of it” (212). Besides, the short story is structured according to a
musical rhythm. As Don Giovanni, referred to throughout the narrative, H. Kureishi’s short story is
divided into two acts. We could divide “The Penis” as follows:
[Adagio]
Alfie was having breakfast with his wife at the kitchen table (206).
[Allegretto]
“That’s enough,” he said hurriedly (207).
[Presto]
His teeth were chattering. He didn’t want “the thing” in his pocket one more second (208).
[Prestissimo]
Doug rushed across town to see a cosmetic surgeon he knew (215).
[Adagio]
[...] when he thought of the numerous exertions ahead, he felt weary (217).
More than the reference to Don Giovanni, the idea of music in this short story is also suggested by
the intertextual antiphony between Doug and N. Gogol’s character, Kovalyov. The two characters, like
performers, respond to each other, thus creating effects of echo and contrast to the motif of anxiety.
These protagonists suffer from a loss of identity mirrored in the chaotic world they live in.
Furthermore, the narrator constantly handles fricative sounds to render the characters’ collapse. The
sonorities of the first sentence are rather harsh. A phonic effect is indeed achieved by the repetition
of the consonant [f]. One is hearing Alfie and his wife eating: “Alfie was having breakfast with his wife
at the kitchen table” (206). Acoustically, Alfie’s name is almost an onomatopoeia. Indeed, this name
comically resembles his own movement: “Alfie fled” (209). The short story concludes itself with an
accumulation of sibilant sounds. The narrator makes use of a sigmatism in order to insist on Doug’s
anxiety: “[…] when he thought of the numerous exertions ahead, he felt weary” (217). The narrator
employs fricatives ([θ], [s], et [z]) which recreate the atmosphere as the characters perceive it. For
example, he conveys Doug’s uneasiness by stressing the sounds of his penis. “His penis swung
between his legs, slapping against each thigh with a satisfying smack” (217). Even though the penis
has been reattached to Doug, one can still hear it. The personification is modified with the adjective
“satisfying” being employed to qualify a sound. The shadow of the rebellious penis threatens Doug.
The fricatives create a sibilant atmosphere reinforced by the onomatopoeia of the word “smack.”
The Hamlet syndrome
The motif of confusion is a major aspect of “The Penis.” The narrator compares men to objects and
objects to men: “A cosmetic surgeon he knew, a greedy man with a face as smooth as a plastic ball”
(215); “his penis stepped into a cab, politely letting the women go first” (211). The penis firstly
becomes a man and is then compared to a snake (217). At the beginning of the short story, Alfie’s
comment “It wasn’t human” (206) sounds ironical to the extent that it foreshadows the next pages.
Anthropomorphism – the description of the penis as a human being with emotions – introduces the
crucial theme of transformation. The lack of a clear demarcation line between the inanimate and the
animate confuses the characters. The narrator of “The Penis” thusly describes men needing to be
listened to and reassured. The personification of the penis reveals that the characters are suffering
from a destabilization of their masculinity. The penis echoes this notion when he expresses his desire
to play Hamlet. Hamlet’s questioning (“To be, or not to be: that is the question”) is an interesting
palimpsest in H. Kureishi’s short story. Indeed, Doug wonders whether he should take action against
his penis or strive to live without it. Hamlet’s famous choice deepens the motifs of the character’s
breakdown in “The Penis.” But more than that, H. Kureishi refers to the Hamlet syndrome, referring to
“overthinkers who underachieve” – to quote from the title of Adrienne Miller’s eponymous book. The
latter studies the sense of alienation of modern-day Hamlets, that is to say middle class counter-
culture men in their thirties.
In H. Kureishi’s short story, the Hamlet syndrome is underlined by the motif of uncertainty, itself
stressed by the repetition of the adverb “perhaps.” The characters’ perplexity is reinforced by the
constant quaesitio: “Don’t you know?”; “Was it good?”; “Suppose it does start to get hard?”; “Are you
a fan?”; “You mean, we won’t be physically attached ever again?” This perpetual questioning stresses
the characters’ obsession with three central notions: “What?” “Where?” and “Who?” repeated over
and over again. In addition, Doug’s speech mannerisms, for example the anaphora of the question “Is
that right?” (212), indicate the way he is dumbfounded but also the extent of his anguish. The
repetition of the same question reveals Doug’s confusion. Nonetheless, this protagonist’s traits evolve
along the short story. The growing length of his questions proves that he is on the verge of having an
epiphany. The latter is introduced on the last page through free indirect speech: “Perhaps he had
been mercifully untied from an idiot and they could go their separate ways” (217). The last short story
of the collection resembles a question. Are these men (Alfie and Doug but also all the other
characters of Midnight All Day) only driven by their sexual fantasies? This short story makes one think
about the Theatre of the Absurd insofar as Doug and Alfie cannot cope rationally with the senseless
and alien world in which they live.
Moreover, the two main characters, Alfie and Doug, are characterized differently through a particular
use of modal verbs. Alfie is defined by the idea of burden with the constricting modal forms “have to”
and “should”: “He had to get to work. Once there, as well as having to endure the noise and queues
of customers, he had to make conversation all day” (206). On the contrary, Doug is opposed to Alfie
with the negation of the restricting form “have to”: “he didn’t have to take out his prick out of his
breeches until the tenth minute” (209). The fact that Alfie lives in a world of obligations transpires in
his speech full of imperatives. Yet, both characters are trapped in a world of habits – stressed by the
repetition of the modal auxiliary verb “would.” Alfie’s constant handling of the future tense shows that
he cannot reach a carpe diem mode of life.
As for Doug, he is referred to with the auxiliary verb “can,” which demonstrates that he thinks he
controls his life. Ironically, the penis adopts the notion of Doug being able to do something, while
talking to the latter: “You could be my assistant. You could carry my script and keep the fans away”
(214). The subsequent repetition of the auxiliary verb “might” shows his sudden impotence: “Doug
considered what life might be like without his penis” (217). Doug is firstly represented with notions of
habit and control to better emphasize his fall. When he resembles Alfie with a modal form indicating an
obligation, one may understand the extent of his despair: “‘It’s got to be sewn on tonight’”(216). Doug’
s world is crumbling away. Like Alfie, the pornographic actor and his penis start using the future
tense. Doug, who first seemed to be a confident character, foreshadows his future emotional and
career downfalls when talking with his penis: “‘You’ll get sick of it’” (215).
Identity quests
Furthermore, the characters’ “uneasy feeling of alienation as a widespread human phenomenon”
(Shaw 191) is alluded to with the numerous negations. The first part of the text, dedicated to Alfie,
employs a series of negations which convey a sense of gloom. Alfie is characterized by his use of
negations in his speech. Through the story of a man who splits into two parts – himself and his penis –
, the narrator insists on the dissociation of the being. Underneath a parodic choice, this metaphorical
short story offers a reflection on the human condition. The narrator chooses textual devices (such as
numerous dashes and scesis onomaton) based upon the fragmentary which underline the end of a
coherent and unified world.
The distortion is announced through semiotic allusions. Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women is returned
into Huge Big Women (214), the penis wants to perform Hamlet in W. Shakespeare’s eponymous
play, and Mozart’s “dramma giocoso” is exploited to pornographic aims. Besides, the narrator
ironically emphasizes the loss of landmarks in a dystopia by transforming Charles Perrault’s Sleeping
Beauty: “They walked in the surgeon’s beautiful garden. Doug laid the sleeping penis in the surgeon’s
hands” (216). In such a short story, the noun “snow” on page 216 alludes to Grimm’s Snow White in a
pornographic context. The reader is even reminded of Chas Addams’ The Addams Family with the
comical reference to “the ‘thing’” (208) insofar as the living cut hand resembles the behavior of the
personified penis. In addition, the process of a brutal transformation is embodied by the theme of
aesthetic surgery: “Few of these actors would even be recognised by their parents” (216). This short
story deals with a sense of male insecurity. The characters have lost their landmarks in a post-
feminist universe:
“Without me, you’re nothing,” said Doug.
“Ha! It’s the other way round! I’ve realised the truth.”(214)
Even the protagonists’ first names are distorted. Doug and Alfie’s world is a perverted space from
which one cannot escape with dignity. All the frontiers between animate and inanimate, human and
non-human are blurred in this short story.
The identity quest is underlined by the narrator’s choice of one-dimensional characters with only one
major personality trait. One is told about a libidinous actor, a greedy surgeon and an alcoholic
hairdresser. The narrator’s irony is thusly emphasized several times. He mocks his characters by
assigning them grotesque features. As the number of women grows, the latter become less human:
“He had remade many of Doug’s colleagues, enlarging the breasts, lips and buttocks of his female
colleagues” (215). The protagonists often represent caricatures. The hysterical wife, the threatening
mother-in-law, the prostitutes, the innocent schoolgirl and the pornographic actresses are all flat
characters. The narrator depicts a world in which everybody seems to have lost his identity. Except
Doug and Alfie, the other characters do not have names. Even Alfie’s wife, who is mentioned a dozen
times, remains anonymous.
Yet almost each paragraph, if not all the sentences, begin with personal pronouns. When one studies
the first word of each paragraph in the first part, the reader is struck by the recurrence of Alfie’s name
and the personal pronouns “he.” In the second part dedicated to Doug, almost every sentence begins
with the masculine personal pronoun. Almost all the other paragraphs are opened with a reference to
a person. This focus on the question of one’s lost identity is thusly ironically underlined. The more
people Doug meets, the lonelier he feels. The repetition of the personal pronoun “I,” referring once to
Doug then to his penis, also underlines the split in Doug’s personality. When addressing his penis,
Doug employs the pronoun “we,” which proves the extent of his dissociation. Who is the real Doug: a
mere echo of the previous male characters of the collection, the intertextual double Kovaliov or a man
attached to a penis? This is what the latter claims to a wretched Doug (214).
One may also wonder if Alfie and Doug are separate entities. Indeed, their sole encounter takes place
in a deserted dark place. Their paralleled characterization is hinted at several times, especially with
the notion of time. We read: “A few minutes later, [Alfie] was walking down the street with a penis in his
pocket” (208). A few minutes later [Doug] was there” (212). Doug and Alfie echo the same anxiety and
isolation. However, the diacope in the following sentence illustrates Doug’s exhausting journey while
desperately searching for his penis whereas Alfie tries to get rid of it: “Doug tried to push through the
crowd but the women wouldn’t let him through” (212, our italics).
To conclude this paper, let us add that “The Penis” wraps up the collection of short stories Midnight
All Day with its main motif: contemporary male anxiety or, in other words, “middle-aged madness” (46).
Hanif Kureishi portrays a generation of men lost and split in a postmodern society. The motif of
castration developed throughout the narration stands as an ironic echo to a line in the eponymous
short story: “Rather a beast than a castrated angel” (171). With straightforward language, “The
Penis” aims at destabilizing the reader in order to make him sense the depth of the male characters’
uneasiness. It questions in his ironical manner the place of men at the beginning of the twenty-first
century. This paper has also probed that H. Kureishi uses postmodern techniques (such as literary
hypotexts), combines parataxis and hypotaxis intermingled with pictorial dimensions and musical
rhythms, plays with iteration, punctuation, modal auxiliary verbs, negation and tenses as various
expressions of anguish. His short story “The Penis” rests on male streams of consciousness,
polyptotons of fricative sounds, a tension between motifs of darkness and light, upward and downward
movements, and the semantic fields of oppression and frustration. It also establishes a form of
complicity between the narrator and the reader – which is almost essential for the dominant mode of
irony to be successful. All those elements are part of H. Kureishi’s specific and acclaimed touch.
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