The Horror of Normalcy

"It's the greatest burden I can think of, wanting to be extraordinary but being mind-numbingly, sickeningly, painfully, ordinary."

The nagging worry of not being good enough, the troubled thoughts of your future, the expectation to be greater, it’s an anxiety that I and many others commonly deal with. However, what may be even scarier than not meeting these calls to greatness, scarier than complete defeat, is getting halfway there. What’s more terrifying than failure is never leaving a spot you promised you would, doomed to repeat the normal, mundane, activities of your now boring life that will leave no mark on the world. At least, that’s what the philosophy of koinophobia states. Comfort is not synonymous with content, and in some cases, that very comfort only enhances the fear of being average. It’s terrifying to think that your life will have no excitement, no diversity, no variation in the daily tasks that become you, and become so normal that you are forgotten. The bus driver that clocks in at 8 AM, drives home to his wife at 5, eats dinner and watches the big game at 8 only to pass out at 10 won’t be remembered. This is the fear, this is the shadow following you in the night, the man chasing you down a street, the spider crawling into your bed, this normalcy is a prison that keeps you from a life of your dreams that will always be out of reach.

Stoner follows the life of William Stoner, a boy raised on a poor farm in the late 19th century propelled by his parents into attending the University of Missouri to pursue a degree in agronomy. However, upon receiving mild grades his first semester and having a revelation in his english literature survey class taught by his future mentor Archer Sloane, he decides to stay at the university to pursue literature. The rest of the novel captures Stoner’s dull life in entrancing detail. Despite the novel having a premise that comes off as quite boring, William’s writing captures Stoner’s depressing life in a manner that makes you feel the same pain the protagonist does. The life of a seemingly unsuccessful man is explained in the first page of the novel, where all suspense is stripped from the reader as William’s writes an obituary for the main character.

“An occasional student who comes upon the name may wonder idly who William Stoner was, but he seldom pursues his curiosity beyond a casual question. Stoner’s colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the old ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound which evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers.”

The novel beginning with this description establishes both the somewhat depressing tone of the story and the theme of normalcy. From the first words Stoner comes off as a personification of koinophobia, being a man that lived a life so uneventful he raises little intrigue amongst strangers and is nothing more than a reminder of death for those who knew him. When reading this blunt introduction, it’s natural to wonder what a life that culminates in with a plaque and whispers of “who’s that?” must be like. Short answer, it kind of sucks. William’s puts Stoner through the ringer, it seems like the character is always compromising, suffering, and just out of reach of something great. Picking up from his decision to pursue literature, Stoner confesses to his parents that he’s attending university and will not be coming home. While by no means unsupportive, his parents address the issue with a quiet disappointment, with his mother “facing him, but she did not see him.” After working on his family’s farm for one last summer, Stoner “realized, he and his parents were becoming strangers; and he felt his love increase by its loss.” This is one of the first notable moments where Stoner chases happiness at the cost of loss or suffering; to pursue his passion, Stoner must leave his parents turned strangers whom he will see very little of for the remainder of their lives. At the university he meets two men, David Masters and Gordon Finch, who act as his first social interaction since attending the school and are little more than acquaintances. Stoner often thinks about their relationship, stating “Though they got along well enough together, they had not become close friends; they had no confidences and seldom saw each other outside their weekly gatherings.” In a word, Stoner’s social life is bland. Despite being at the university for over a year, Stoner has only received meager grades and met two acquaintances. It is during one of their discussions where Masters calls attention to the drab existence of William Stoner, condemned to monotony, “You too are cut out for failure; not that you’d fight the world. You’d let it chew you up and spit you out, and you’d lie there wondering what was wrong. Because you’d always expect the world to be something it wasn’t...” Here, Masters focuses on Stoner’s quietness that promotes his simple life, and a hopefulness that will only lead to disappointment. People view him, although they wouldn’t say directly, as normal, forgettable, including his wife Edith. The two meet after Stoner receives his masters and starts teaching. Although Edith is reluctant to show any interest in Stoner, he believes with his romantic optimism that given enough love and affection she will return his feelings. However, she never does, as Edith was raised with extreme formality and forced to be sexually repressed. The result is a person that is emotionally damaged to an unprecedented degree, and Stoner’s optimism is never enough to change the impact of her horrific past that motives downright evil and manipulative actions.

Within a month of their marriage Stoner realizes it’s destined for failure. Their honeymoon was filled with awkward silences and sexual tension amounting to Edith turning in early. They return to Columbia earlier than they were supposed to, spending their nights married sleeping far from each other and their days barely speaking, until suddenly Edith suddenly desires a child. However, after it’s conception and much to Stoner’s dismay the desire for each other disappears.

“The hunger of their passion became a memory, and at last Stoner looked upon it as if it were a dream that had nothing to do with either of them.”

This is a pattern in their marriage, impersonal actions making this couple feel like begrudging strangers. Edith births Grace only to succumb to an unspecified illness for a year, leaving Stoner as the sole parent to his daughter, and it soon becomes clear that she is his second passion. Meanwhile, Stoner publishes his first novel, which, like the rest of his life, is not exceptional. “One reviewer called it “pedestrian: and another had called it a “competent survey”... He reread it in print, mildly surprised that it was neither better nor worse than he had thought it would be.” Soon after his father dies Edith’s father kills himself, back to back loses that fragment the already dysfunctional family. This tragedy motivates a realization in Edith that Stoner and Grace are too close for her comfort. In response, she goes on a rampage to drive a wedge between the two. After living with her mother for two months, Edith returns with a different appearance and immediately challenges the relationship between Grace and Stoner by banishing Grace from being in Stoner’s study, which he occupies whenever he is home. After some time of Edith withholding Grace from Stoner, he questions her actions, to which she threatens him to leave saying that he will never be able to. It is here where Stoner simply accepts his fate as the subject of emotional abuse from Edith for the remainder of their marriage.

Later, and perhaps the most dramatic aspect of Stoner’s life, comes to fruition when Lomax, a new head of the college, tells Stoner to accept a disabled student named Charles Walker into his class. Stoner fails Walker on a merit of ethics, believing that under the sly wordplay of the student is a bumbling fool that hasn’t done the proper work to be in the graduate program. After some intense debate, Stoner loses and Walker is accepted into the post-grad studies, which creates a rift between him and Lomax that lasts for the rest of his life. Notably, Stoner failed Walker not as an act of discrimination against disabled students as Lomax implies, but on the basis of his passion for literature not wanting to be tainted. Essentially, Stoner is unable to protect his sanctity in life despite his consistent action. During this tumultuous period, Stoner starts an affair with a younger professor named Katherine Driscoll, resulting in the happiest period of his life. However, it’s short lived when Lomax uses his status to separate the two, forcing Katherine to leave town. The two never see each other again. Stoner’s happiness and protection of a passion results in disappointment. Again, his expectations of the world only result in disappointment. After this, Stoner ages rapidly, becoming weaker in the following years. Edith only continues her emotional abuse, saying Grace isn’t “popular” enough. Throughout high school Grace gains and loses fifty pounds while Edith molds her into an image that she deems perfect. When it is time for Grace to attend college, Stoner desires her to move far away to the East coast, but Edith denies it, and at this point Grace is so broken that she simply accepts. She soon becomes pregnant and marries the father who quickly dies in war. She spends the rest of her life an alcoholic who often keeps her children with her in-laws and visits Stoner twice: once to break the news and the other on Stoner’s deathbed. After Grace moves out Stoner develops cancer and spends the rest of his life fighting to teach as long as possible. Although becoming a better teacher over time, he lost much of his notoriety due to the Katherine affair and his illness making him somewhat cloudy, again tarnishing his passion. However, his determination only grew, and when his required retirement age came, he argued for two more years. He later died clutching his first novel, reminding the reader of the only passion he was able to pursue at least somewhat successfully.

It’s clear that Stoner lived a sad life. Any moment of happiness was met with equally strong consequences; his marriage was a disaster from the start, he never made it far in his teaching career, his parents died, a stable relationship with his daughter was stolen from him, and the one topic he was passionate about was defamed when Charles Walker was accepted into the graduate course. On all accounts, Stoner’s life was a cycle of disappointment. The novel depicts this both through events as well as the writing. The book is written with a quietness that makes the world of Stoner an unexciting one. Often times Stoner’s emotions are described as a mixed bag, such as the opinions of his novel where he finds it neither better or worse than he expected, it simply is what it is. He maneuvers through life with a timidness that fuels a boring lifestyle. The writing is hard to describe due to its incredible detail that would usually be fit for an exciting fantasy novel, but is rather used to give emphasis on a forgetful life. It’s poignant, depressing, and makes you feel the emotions of Stoner, which, again, may not be what the reader wants.

While tackling similar themes of koinophobia, the film It’s Such a Beautiful Day explores this normality in a more abstract away. Following stick figure Bill, the film captures Bill’s monotonous lifestyle while being narrated by the creator, Don Hertzfeldt. However, Bill is sick with an unknown illness that plagues him for much of the story, and as he deteriorates he loses touch with reality. Much like Stoner, the film begins with the definition of mundane. Bill is walking and notices someone he thinks he recognizes, but there is an awkward fluster, and instead of saying either “what’s up” or “how’s it going”, he blends the words and spouts nonsense. The narrator states they forgot about each other a day later. By opening on such a relatable and insignificant moment, the film informs the viewer of what this movie is going to be about. Usually the opening of a film has to grab the viewers attention, but It’s Such a Beautiful Day starts with a moment even the characters forget. In this way, the audience understands the mundanity of Bill’s life just from the opening seconds, and the next fifteen minutes or so of the film only continue this boring investigation. From a man in a grocery store saying “big onion” for a non existent audience to watching Mexican boxing while finishing a box of crackers, Bill’s life is uneventful taken to the extreme. That is, until he feels a bloody sore in his mouth. When he returns home he puts his keys on the counter, which reminds him of how much time he spends on menial tasks. Then the treatment stops working. Notably, the animation becomes surreal and unhinged, crescendoing until complete silence over Bill in the hospital room. Contemplating. Realizing. Understanding. His life has been, up to now, a series of nothingness and forgotten dialogue, events that makes someones day neither better nor worse, just existence. His mother comes to take care of him, but his hallucinations only become more extreme. Eventually he’s again hospitalized, but to everyone’s surprise and inconvenience, his doctor says he won’t die. Then, his mother, described as a waitress who smells like baby powder and cheese, dies. In this way, Bill’s mother is a reinforcement of Koinophobia, being a lowly waitress in a random restaurant with nothing notable to her name that dies for seemingly no reason, a fit of hysteria as the doctor puts it. Bill then suffers his own health crisis in the form of a seizure, where his doctor allows him to go home as long as someone cares for him, but he is alone.

Essentially, both Stoner and It’s Such a Beautiful Day explore the monotonies of life and the horror that lifestyle can exude, especially when the end is expected to arrive soon. Although these pieces of media revel in the depressing nature of boredom, another film that follows a seemingly normal life does the opposite, rather finding beauty in the simplicity.

Paterson follows a part time poet and professional bus driver named Paterson during one week of his life in Paterson, New Jersey. Every day is the same routine: Paterson wakes up next to his wife Laura, checks his watch, has a bowl of cheerios, commutes to the bus stop, drives around town, eats his lunch next to a waterfall, returns home, walks his dog to the local bar where he gets one beer, and goes to bed. It’s a very scheduled, some would say boring, way of life, and the filmmaking works to heighten this sense of mundanity. Shots often repeat, such as the same angle being used for Paterson’s daily bowl of cheerios, a bird’s eye view capturing him waking up every day of the week, the same framing whenever he enters and leaves his home, etc. All the while background music is withheld for specific moments, allowing the audience to hear the normalities of Paterson’s life. The random creaks of a house, car horns, water rushing, it’s all very natural. The camera is also limited with its movement, avoiding any fancy tricks that would give Paterson’s life a false sense of excitement. Often completely still, characters are shot in medium’s and wides with straight on angles for a very matter of fact style of filmmaking. The main character, Paterson, is also in line with this “matter of fact” tone. Whenever he does talk, which is somewhat rare for this gentle giant, he does so in simple sentences, sometimes responding to lines of dialogue with one word. Take for example when Paterson asks a coworker how he’s doing, to which he responds with a multitude of reasons why his life sucks, mostly due to financial instability. When asked the same question, Paterson simply replies with “I’m ok.” Not bad, not good, just ok. Just...average. Notably, he doesn’t suffer from the same economic struggles of his peers, he doesn’t go through the tribulations of a broken relationship like one of the regulars at the bar, but he isn’t exceptional. He isn’t rich, living in a luxurious house, or the owner any of the signifiers of a typically successful lifestyle. He is completely average. Ironically, his wife, Laura, is the complete opposite. She is constantly experimenting, from learning guitar to making a cheddar and broccoli quiche for dinner, she is one hundred percent exploratory. Paterson responds to this personification of excitement with a quiet enthusiasm, like when he just replies with “oh” when Laura says they’re trying quinoa for the first time. In fact, when the most, and really only, dramatic moment happens, that being Paterson’s sacred book of poems getting ripped to shreds by Laura’s dog, he responds in that same blunt tone. “I guess I left it up here on the sofa.”

However, this doesn’t mean Paterson isn’t upset. Rather, it’s in the nuances of Adam Driver’s performance where we see a contained sadness within the character. This layered performance where one finds the true feelings of Paterson in his subtleties perfectly reflects the themes of the film, as Paterson works to display the beauty found in the tiny occurrences of everyday life. For example, early in the film Laura brings up twins, and Paterson encounters three sets of twins throughout the story. On the first day Paterson notices a box of matches while eating his cheerio’s which inspires him for a poem, and Conversations on the bus act as further inspiration for. These conversations aren’t cut either, Paterson listens to the entirety of complete strangers going on’s about events that he has no relation to, but loves to hear. Then there are more random events, like Paterson stumbling upon a man rapping in a laundry mat or his bus breaking down. The film revolves around these details and coincidences, and through Paterson being inspired by them, proves that beauty lies in what many see as boring. This notion is expressed narratively as we’ve discussed, but also visually. The segments of Paterson committing to his craft are shot differently than the rest of the film, in a more abstract style. Whenever he writes, ethereal instrumentals play over super impositions of Paterson writing and his subject matter. When he writes the poem about the matches, it becomes an expression of his love for Laura, meaning images of his girlfriend fade in and out along with waves crashing on the shore. It all makes for some genuinely beautiful imagery, and whenever he finishes the filmmaking returns to normal. Through this presentation and Driver’s quiet performance, it is clear that poetry means everything to Paterson, and the beauty that is Paterson’s poems are only made possible because of his simple lifestyle. This leads to the main takeaway from the film that life is beautiful because of the details, not from any extraordinary feats, accomplishments, material goods, or any other typical signifier of a successful or fulfilling life. It is only through Paterson pursuing his passion and acknowledging the details that life becomes stunning and fulfilling.

While Paterson was seemingly aware of this notion for the majority of the film, our friend Bill only learns this lesson when faced with an expiration date on his life. We pick up with Bill returning home from the hospital. Due to his illness, he has trouble remembering things, and as a result repeats the same actions over and over. Going on at least five walks around the block and a dozen back to back grocery trips, Bill is trapped in not just a routine life, but a horrifically repetitive one. Bill almost immediately returns to the hospital, where the doctor says that he doesn’t have much time to live. Then he sits in silence. Suffering. Lost in the sentence that defines the rest of his existence.

Then he goes for a walk, the same one he’s done who knows how many times, and notices something. It’s actually a pretty nice day. The animation not only switches to being colored, but is also layered with super imposed footage of reality. Eventually, the realism takes over, and as triumphant music plays, an explosion of thoughts ignite in Bill’s head. He stands in crowded streets, touches the saturated bricks, and kneels on the floor a foot away from his bath mat because he never realized how beautiful it was. He looks at the paper towel absorbing water, the stunning grain of his cabinets, and as the movie states, “it’s as though he’s been sleepwalking for god knows how long, and something has violently shaken him awake.” Bill views life in a new way, that “he’s never really appreciated these things, all this detail he’s never noticed. He is alive.” From here the animation only becomes more surreal. Bill’s semi realist world is covered in a dreamy haze, he stands in the colorful voids of his dreams, with the peak of this style being on full display when he visits his real father, a man he’s only met once but was too young to remember, and says something beautiful.

This new perspective on life ties the themes of Paterson together with It’s Such a Beautiful Day. Now, Bill recognizes the beauty of life, which is brilliantly displayed through the dynamic animation. Bill has awoken from the dream like trance of complacent boredom into a world of attention, detail, acknowledgment. If Paterson is a lesson in gratefulness, It’s Such a Beautiful Day is the story a man learning that lesson. Although it takes his upcoming death to motivate this realization, meaning one could argue that death is what give life its value, I would have to disagree, as it is the tiny details that Paterson would write poems about that become alluring to Bill. It may not be a direct correlation as it is in Paterson, but there is certainly a tie here between the daily minutia of life and the way one values that life. Again, this is so effective because Bill’s day to day routine is so boring, and what I think makes this film so strong is the fact that Bill always noticed these details. Remember the opening of the film, the moment where a movie has to grasp the viewers attention like its life depends on it, depicts the awkward situation we’ve all encountered but forget moments later. It’s nothing, but it’s nothing that the film chooses to focus on. It tells the viewer that Bill is attentive, he lives and breathes the tiny parts of a daily routine, but it isn’t until later in the film when he realizes that it is those moments that he always neglected, the crumbs of crackers stuck in his carpet after watching a really long boxing match, the sound of his ex-girlfriends voice, the way the stars flicker in the sky that he never bothered to pay attention to, it is these details that make life worth living. When realizing this, he wants to scream to the citizens around him “isn’t everything amazing?”, but they’re too caught up in their daily pursuits, their endeavors to make their life a fulfilling one. However, much like Paterson, Bill now understands that life isn’t made fulfilling or successful because of a lack of normality, but the emphasis of it. Look at the dirt beneath your feet, the way your key scratches into a lock, the sounds of shoes on gravel, look at life, look at the normal, and yours can also be beautiful.

What does this new understanding mean in relation to Stoner’s life that we previously described as the quintessential experience of suffering from mundanity? In his article on Stoner, Julian Barnes writes “Good things do happen in Stoner's life, but they all end badly. He relishes teaching students, but his career is stymied by a malevolent head of department; he falls in love and marries, but knows within a month that the relationship is a failure; he adores his daughter, but she is turned against him; he is given sudden new life by an affair, but finds love vulnerable to outside interference, just as the academy is vulnerable to the world. Aged 42, he reflects that ‘he could see nothing before him that he wished to enjoy and little behind him that he cared to remember.” Much like Bill before his epiphany, Stoner’s life is an extended nothingness. However, this perspective on Stoner’s experience stands in stark contrast to another that views his life as a happy one, one held by the author John Williams. "I think he's a real hero. A lot of people who have read the novel think that Stoner had such a sad and bad life. I think he had a very good life. He had a better life than most people do, certainly. He was doing what he wanted to do, he had some feeling for what he was doing, he had some sense of the importance of the job he was doing … The important thing in the novel to me is Stoner's sense of a job … a job in the good and honorable sense of the word. His job gave him a particular kind of identity and made him what he was.” This quote focuses on the concept of work, and that Stoner lived a happy life because he “had some feeling for what he was doing.” But isn’t that a sad way to look at living? Your satisfaction of your entire being chalked up to “he had Some feeling for what he was doing”? However, I think this is more of an issue with the words chosen by Williams rather than a flaw in the thematic argument of the story. See, Stoner didn’t just have some feeling for what he was doing, he was passionate about his work. When he first studied literature he was shook to his core, so much so he was literally speechless when presented with an analysis of Shakespeare. From there, he committed his entire life to novels as if they were a god. He spent the rest of his time on earth teaching at the university despite all of the challenges it brought. He took pride in being a qualified teacher by the end of his career, and it is in the end where we see the true William Stoner.

During the final chapters of the novel Stoner is faced with two ticking clocks, one counting down to his mandatory retirement age, and one to his death. He faces them in the same way. “In the Spring of 1954 he was 63 years old; and he suddenly realized he had at the most four years of teaching left to him. He tried to see beyond that time; he could not see, and had no wish to do so.” Without teaching, learning, novels, his life is nothing, so he does everything he can to fight it. He requests a two year extension upon realizing that it’s his passion that gives his life meaning, and despite getting it, in classic Stoner fashion it is undermined by a tragedy. Stoner develops cancer and quickly deteriorates. Even walking down the corridors of his beloved institution become exhausting to him, but he doesn’t stop. He pushes his surgery back to keep teaching despite the pain, and tragically it gets the better of him. In the final pages of the novel he thinks about how his life must appear as a failure, evaluating how few people will remember him, but then he sees his novels. He brushes his hands along the spines, feeling the weight of their words through the cover, and eventually reaches his own. “He let his fingers riffle through the pages and felt a tingling, as if those pages were alive. The tingling came through his fingers and coursed through his flesh and bone; he was minutely aware of it, and he waited until it contained him, until the old excitement that was like terror fixed him where he lay...The fingers loosened, and the book they had held moved slowly and then swiftly across the still body and fell into the silence of the room.” Here, we see a description of Stoner’s passion. Novels were an electric shock to him, something he couldn’t live without, and excitement so strong that it was “like terror.” This is why he pursued it for his entire life despite the countless setbacks, and it’s why he holds his novel as the last action of his life. These moments, in the eyes of the author, are what makes Stoner’s life a happy one despite the characters own acknowledgment of the failure his existence must look like. Stoner’s life was fulfilling because he followed his passion, which adds another goal for the to do list to have a satisfying life: follow what you love.

With the combination of Stoner, Paterson, and It’s Such a Beautiful Day, the feeling of koinophobia that these works initially seem to motivate is actually subsided upon closer inspection. It isn’t a normal or average life that we should be afraid of, it’s looking at our lives as if they are average. The value of life is held in the details of it and the passions we have. No life is boring, a failure, or mundane if you are satisfied, and the only way to achieve that is to not only welcome the everyday minutia of life, but to explore it. Appreciate it. Be grateful for it. We cannot live life in fear of being average because in our attempts to avoid that fate, we only end up writing it for ourselves. Embrace the average, and life an extraordinary life.