32 pages • 1 hour read
Paul BowlesA Distant Episode
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1947A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Irony
Content Warning: The story and this guide discuss extreme violence, captivity, and enslavement. The guide also references imperialism.
Irony is a literary device involving a gap between what one would expect and what is actually the case. There are several instances of irony in the story, many of which highlight the sense of chaos and unpredictability that underlie the horror in the story while highlighting the themes of “Primitiveness,” “Civilization,” and Psychology and Orientalism and Western Naivete in the Face of Colonialism. The core irony is the fact that the professor loses his tongue, the very organ from which his profession’s name derives. Without the ability to communicate, the professor loses his rationality, and yet this too is ironic, as the professor’s efforts to communicate have gone astray long before the tongue-cutting; if (as the professor seems to believe) language, rationality, and Western “civilization” go hand in hand, the implication is that the professor’s colonialist foray into Algeria was irrational from the start.
Another key irony occurs when the professor reminds himself that the Algerians are not “primitives.” Although he is correct, had he had a more prejudicial view of the Algerian people, he might have avoided the terrible fate that befell him. This appears to uphold an Orientalist viewpoint—i.e., that the colonized subject is “really” as dangerous and unpredictable as colonialist rhetoric presumes. However, other moments of irony run counter to this interpretation. The story culminates in an instance of dramatic irony in which a French soldier watches as the professor runs off into the desert and, rather than rescuing him, shoots at him, believing the professor to be a “holy maniac.” The episode is ironic on multiple levels: The professor is neither the native Algerian nor the “maniac” the soldier assumes, while the soldier himself proves to be both violent and irrational. The inability of this representative of Western colonialism to recognize himself in the professor suggests the West’s inability to recognize the hollowness of its claims to rationality, civilization, and progress.
Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is a literary technique in which an author hints at something that will occur later in the narrative. The two most prominent incidents of foreshadowing in the story occur with respect to the horrible fate that will befall the professor. When considered in retrospect, these incidents both add to the sense of fatalism in the story.
The bus driver’s words to the professor take on an ominous and ironical double-meaning when viewed in light of the events that befall the professor: “‘Keep on going south,’ he said. ‘You’ll find some languages you never heard of before.’” (Paragraph 6). The professor does indeed keep on going south (into the desert), but he does so unwillingly. He also does encounter a new language he has not heard before in the language of the Reguibat, who are described as speaking in “guttural voices he could not understand” (Paragraph 61). Additionally, the notion of languages that the professor has never heard before metaphorically includes the language of violence.
The second element of foreshadowing occurs as the professor pauses outside the Reguibat encampment. Here, the cliff he is standing on serves as a physical representation of the fate that awaits the professor. Just as there is a sheer drop in the physical space before him, the ground will come out from underneath him metaphorically as well. The qaouaji’s words—French for “You only have to go down”—further underscore the danger and foreshadow the professor’s psychological “descent.” Despite speaking French, however, the professor characteristically fails to grasp the qaouaji’s meaning.
Mood
In literature, “mood” is the feeling a work seeks to convey to readers. In the first half of the story, Paul Bowles works to create an atmosphere of menace, tension, and dread. There are many elements that contribute to this effect. Bowles specifically highlights unpleasant sights and smells, including repeated mentions of offensive odors like “human excrement” and “rotting meat” and horrifying images like the three-legged dog encountered by the professor. Bowles’s word choice also contributes to the emotion. The story mentions explicitly the “sinister” nature of the walk that the professor goes on with the qaouaji and also highlights the professor’s “fear” and “uneasy” laugh. Indeed, the first section is replete with near-synonyms for the word “afraid.”
In the second half of the story, when the nature of the horror changes, the tone (the story’s attitude toward its subject) shifts, becoming very matter-of-fact. It is almost clinical in its description of the brutal violence that is inflicted upon the professor. Furthermore, his captivity is described at an emotional remove that does not acknowledge the horror of his experience. This tone contributes to the fatalistic and chaotic feeling of the story. No sympathy is expressed by the narrative voice, highlighting the brutality of the professor’s experience.
