The Body Artist
Lauren uses her conversations with Mr. Tuttle, the man she finds inhabiting her home, to come to terms with the newly-established distance from her husband. In the first place, Lauren holds frequent dialogues with Mr. Tuttle, who, for all the reader knows, is a figment of her imagination, and these dialogues help Lauren reduce that distance between herself and her deceased husband. Lauren’s dialogues with Mr. Tuttle are incoherent. In that way, they remind the reader of those Lauren had with Rey, before his death. For example, when Lauren asks Mr. Tuttle, “tell me something”, he responds: “I know how much…I know how much this house. Alone by the sea” (DeLillo, 48). The dialogue described earlier in this essay, where Rey is asking about his keys and Lauren is telling him about cream she purchased, is only slightly less incongruent. This type of dialogue, along with Lauren’s desire to tell both Rey and Mr. Tuttle to “shut up”, at one time, links Rey to Mr. Tuttle, and thus, creates a link between Lauren and Rey, beyond the grave. In this scenario, distance is greatly reduced through communication.
This sentence, “I know how much…I know how much this house. Alone by the sea” is lacking in grammatical structure, but to Lauren, it makes sense: “the house, the sea-planet outside it, and how the word alone referred to her and to the house and how the word sea reinforced the idea of solitude” is perfectly logical to the bereaved widow (48). Lauren uses the metaphor inspired by Mr. Tuttle to examine and define her own thoughts and feelings. It also helps her cope, and redefine the world- and her identity- in the wake of her loss. The last paragraph of the novel confirms this point. DeLillo writes that “[Lauren walked into the room [of the house]…She threw the window open. She didn’t know why she did this. Then she knew. She wanted to feel the sea tang on her face and the flow of time in her body, to tell her who she was” (124). Lauren’s communication with Mr. Tuttle, then, is essential to Lauren’s redefinition of herself, after her eternal distancing from Rey.
Tristan and Isolde
Once, by means of the love potion, Tristan and Isolde fall in love, distance between them becomes irrelevant. As Isolde exclaimed, “our hearts and souls have been engrossed with each other too long too closely and too intimately, ever to know what forgetting could be between them. Whether you are near or far, there shall be no life in my heart nor any living thing, save Tristan” (Gottfried, 239). Through this exclamation, Isolde’s love for Tristan, which he returns, is established. The gap between two souls is closed, as they merge into a single being. At this stage, Tristan and Isolde are not only physically in close proximity; they are in the same sphere emotionally, as manifested through Isolde’s metaphorical vocabulary. The couple’s new relationship to distance is outlined, as is the evolution of the narrative structure.
When Tristan and Isolde are forced to part ways, Tristan flees to Germany. Through introspection-oriented thoughts, guided by Gottfried, he attempts to make peace with the finality of the situation. He does so by establishing his new relationship to distance, where, once again, he represents a separate entity from Isolde. Tristan meets the other Isolde, Isolde of the White hands, who reminds him of the first Isolde, the love of his life. Yet he fears this young woman, asserting that, “he desired love that way far away and endured great anguish for one whom he neither heard nor saw, whilst refraining from one that was near and often before his eyes. He never ceased to desire Isolde of Ireland…and he fled her of the white hands…He desired yet did not desire Isolde and Isolde” (252). Tristan’s dilemma, then, is communicated to us through the paradox of his desire for both Isoldes. Through this paradox the role of distance between the two lovers, seen from Tristan’s perspective, is communicated to the reader.
Unlike The Body Artist’s Lauren, for whom we see the hope of successfully overcoming the issue of distance, with regards to her relationship with her husband, Tristan’s longing is irreconcilable with reality, despite his attempts at understanding his predicament.
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