The Beast in the Jungle

The first half of The Beast in the Jungle establishes the relationship between John Marcher and May Bartram and introduces the titular “Beast” that structures their interactions even in its absence. Although James uses a third-person narrator, the story is tightly focalized through Marcher’s perspective. His interior monologue dominates the novella and is punctuated only by dialogue between Marcher and May. The complexity—indeed, the difficulty—of James’s syntax ensures that Marcher’s inner monologue cannot function as a transparent representation of his interior state or true identity; rather, it highlights the ambiguity of Marcher’s self-fashioning. The relative opacity of James’s language creates the space where the Beast circulates as a symbol that resists being attached to a single meaning. The Beast’s “identity” is marked by its ambiguity; so, too, does Marcher avoid becoming a fully coherent figure.

The instability of Marcher’s character makes him a self-consciously unreliable narrator of his own life, a situation that May Bartram's presence throws into relief. When he first glimpses her at Weatherend House, Marcher is aware of her familiarity, but that awareness does not rise to the level of a fully recalled memory. May gently reminds him of the details of their first meeting, revealing Marcher’s self-absorption and lack of attentiveness to details outside his own psyche. This interaction foreshadows deeper aspects of Marcher and May’s relationship. It establishes the pattern of Marcher’s inability to truly see and appreciate May and the moments they share, introducing the theme of The Tragic Irony of Unfulfilled Potential. Marcher is so fixated on the advent of the Beast—a figure he himself has created—that he misses the opportunity to establish concrete connections with other people.

Indeed, it is easier for Marcher to imagine a romantic backstory for himself and May than to recall the mundane details of the actual encounter:

There weren’t, apparently, all counted, more than a dozen little old things that had succeeded in coming to pass between them; trivialities of youth, simplicities of freshness, stupidities of ignorance, small possible germs, but too deeply buried—too deeply (didn’t it seem?) to sprout after so many years. Marcher could only feel he ought to have rendered her some service—saved her from a capsized boat in the bay or at least recovered her dressing-bag, filched from her cab in the streets of Naples by a lazzarone with a stiletto (7-8).

Marcher’s meandering thought process, as rendered in James’s prose, mirrors the process of burying “small possible germs” too deeply in the ground for them to grow into anything substantial. The images of a capsized boat, a missing bag, and a “lazzarone with a stiletto” are so vivid as to obscure the fact that they are inventions; implicitly, May herself becomes associated with the “stupidly meagre” past of what had actually happened. In other words, she cannot be the Beast or its vector, since meeting her was just one event among others. Even before the events of the novella unfold, Marcher has been immobilized by the Beast, wasting a significant portion of his life in the shadow of an anticipated future. Still, Marcher does not present himself entirely as an egoist; he quickly accepts May’s version of events, assimilating it to his broader understanding of his life’s trajectory. May’s correction highlights her role as a grounding force in Marcher’s life, offering clarity against his tendency toward abstraction and self-absorption.

At a later moment in the conversation, May inquires whether Marcher’s foreboding might be related to the process of falling in love, noting that many people experience it as a danger or even a catastrophe. Her suggestion challenges Marcher to reconsider the extent to which the awaited “cataclysm” reflects a destiny that distinguishes him from other people. Marcher dismisses this possibility, convinced that he has already experienced love and found it “agreeable, delightful, miserable” (15) but not “strange” or uniquely significant. He does not have a satisfactory response to May’s straightforward declaration, “then it hasn’t been love” (15), leaving the question unresolved. This dialogue serves as a moment of foreshadowing in the novella, as Marcher’s failure to allow himself to love May becomes one of the tragic ironies of his life. Marcher’s intense preoccupation with his unique fate inhibits the actions that would have allowed him to realize that fate.

Marcher’s sense of his own uniqueness remains ambivalent. As much as he wants to appear to himself—and to May—to have been selected for a particularly brilliant doom, he also remains invested in his own appearance of conventionality. On May’s birthday, Marcher reflects on how their arrangement helps him blend in with other men. Despite his sense of being hunted by the Beast—a figure of speech that implies an external, even exotic, pursuer—Marcher uses his arrangement with May to conform in society. May also recognizes this dynamic, referring to herself as his “dull woman.” May’s self-effacing description has ironic overtones, as she appears far from dull. Still, because of the intense focus on Marcher’s mental journey, May’s inner life appears only intermittently and incompletely.

Nonetheless, Marcher perceives himself as selfless, citing minor gestures like accompanying May to the opera. Because their relationship is rooted in Marcher’s obsessive avoidance of the so-called Beast, marriage is out of the question. Here, James reveals another of his central themes: How Existential Dread Shapes Personal Identity. Marriage, to Marcher’s mind, is a “form,” and, as such, cannot possibly inform his personal identity or give his life meaning. Unmoored from more “traditional” sources of meaning, Marcher is left with his own anxiety as the driving force in his self-fashioning. As he remarks to himself, men do not invite ladies to join them on a “tiger-hunt.” Marcher overlooks the fact that May’s choice to stand by him signifies that she has essentially invited herself on the journey; thus, his obsession with his own existential dread obscures May’s identity.

Finally, the first three chapters establish the theme of the Psychological Impact of Anticipation. Marcher emerges as a figure of ambiguity and incompletion, someone whose true purpose remains to be revealed and whose destiny lies elsewhere than in the present place and time. The Beast does not stalk him on the moors of England or the streets of London, but in some exotic “Jungle” more typically associated with colonial India. Investing too much in anticipation renders Marcher incapable of taking decisive action or, more to the point, of taking responsibility for his actions and how they affect May. He is, after all, only passing the time until his so-called real life begins. Chapter 3, however, marks a turning point in Marcher’s anticipatory psychology. As time passes and the Beast remains elusive, he begins to worry that the Beast—that is, the defining event of his life—will not arrive or that he will fail to notice that it has. Insignificance now becomes the object of his fear. May, who has long since devoted herself to his “case,” becomes a new object of fascination for Marcher, who comes to believe that she may possess heightened insight into his situation. When she is diagnosed with a blood disease, Marcher must reckon with the possibility of losing her and, with her, the secret to his own life. The acknowledgment is shadowed by existential dread, as he fears losing May might be the awaited event. Marcher is extremely disappointed in the idea that May’s death could be his ultimate fate; it would make him as ordinary as every other man.