Outside Looking In

John from Baldwin's stories "The Rockpile" and "The Outing" and Jamie from "The Manchild" share a similar theme of isolation from their other family members despite coming from vastly different backgrounds, and demonstrates a thorough connection two characters who live, quite literally, worlds apart, as well as the different results such isolation can lead to. John is an illegitimate child born out of wedlock and lives with his step-father and half-brother in addition to his mother. Gabriel doesn't bother to hid his disgust for John, and demonstrates an abusive side when he threatens to "take a strap" to John after learning of Roy's injury. John's returned hatred for Gabriel, while well-deserved, serves as another isolating factor in John's life. As a result, John's environment has turned him into a demoralized and cautious child, which is further showcased by his interactions with Roy. His fear of the rock pile and of Roy's friends adds on to his isolated status. He has no real friends besides Roy in "The Rockpile", and his feelings for David in "The Outing" are shot down as David eventually ends up with Sylvia, leaving John alone once more.

Jamie from "The Manchild" represents a possible result of such isolation, demonstrating that isolation itself can have the same toll on all people regardless of background. Contrasting John's life of growing up in a poorer urban neighborhood, Jamie comes from a background of relative wealth thanks to the large land he owned, but his poor decisions resulted in isolation and changed him into a bitter man. John and Jamie both share the problem of having an antagonist who provokes them in their daily lives, as Jamie has Eric's father as the main antagonist in his life just as John has Gabriel. Eric's father constantly ridicules Jamie for losing his wife, from singing "Jamie, Jamie, pumkin-eater, had a wife and couldn't keep her!" to calling him a dreamer who wouldn't be alone if he hadn't "kept on dreaming so long". Jamie has lost everything from his wife to his land, with his only true companion being a dog, yet Eric's father continues to push him further down with degrading comments. When Eric's mother mentions Jamie could still get married and have kids, Eric's father declares he couldn't, saying "Jamie's thought about it too long" before laughing. It's clear that Jamie's in need of emotional support at the time, but that he's receiving the exact opposite from the few people who might be able to provide it. As a result, he grows so emotionally unstable that he does the unthinkable and kills Eric.

I think the correlations between John and Jamie are way too connected to be coincidental, especially given the order the stories are in. As a result, I see Jamie's horrific murder of Eric as an indicator of what could be a possible future for John, who suffers from notably similar neglect and loneliness in his life. However, the story also undertones the differences in their reactions to their situations, showing John's silent endurance of Gabriel's abuses versus Jamie's more aggressive behavior. Are their emotional reactions dependent more on the environment they were raised in, or on their personalities? What would both characters would be like if their circumstances were reversed? These three stories raise a lot of interesting questions about nature versus nurture, and I only wish Baldwin wrote more stories about these two.