Diary of an Oxygen Thief

The narrator uses physical pain to symbolize emotional trauma. When he speaks of the pain he feels after breaking up with Pen, he conflates having a broken heart with corporeal pain: “I hadn’t expected physical pain. A burning sensation in my chest as if a large smoldering boulder had somehow lodged there overnight […] shooting pains running down along the back of my arms” (21). This analogy is rather trite; many authors before have conflated physical and emotional pain, hence the idea of having a broken heart: that is, a physical affliction brought on by a psychological or emotional state.

However, the narrator does not often dwell on how depressed he is after the end of his relationships with Pen and Aisling. Rather, he embodies the analogy, as it were. He begins to feel physical pains in the place of his emotional disturbances. He briefly references contemplating suicide at one point, but this is one of the few opportunities in which the narrator discusses his state of mind. Interestingly enough, for a narcissist, he rarely discusses his emotions. He freely discusses his thoughts, but in a way to make himself appear objected and unemotional. He freely discusses the physical pain he feels in order to not discuss his feelings. In this way, he seems to truly believe in the physical manifestation of pain, as though emotions are not part of his character. This projection enables the narrator to transcend the trite conflation between physical and emotional pain, as his lack of ability to speak about his feelings demonstrates his emotional immaturity. 

The narrator repeatedly talks about people’s eyes, often using them as metonyms for their person as a whole. At the beginning of the novel, the narrator watches the eyes of the women he hurts because he believes he can see their love for him reflected in their eyes:“I’d wait until they were totally in love with me. Till the big saucer eyes were looking at me. I loved the shock on their faces. Then the glaze as they tried to hide how much I was hurting them” (1). The author uses the eyes of the women he hurts in order to understand their emotions. He prefers the instant when “All the pretense and rules dissolved away. There was just the two of us and the pain” (3). The narrator refrains from using the cliché aphorism that the eyes are a window to the soul, but that is essentially what he believes: that he can seea person’s emotions via their eyes. Perhaps this is due to the general disconnect he feels towards other people; as such, the narrator must use their eyes to understand what they are feeling. However, the narrator also uses eyes as a mirror to reflect himself. In this way, eyes symbolize both the subject that is doing the viewing and the object being viewed, serving as a link between the narrator and these women.

Although the narrator enjoys the reflection of love and pain in the eyes of his victims, he also believes that eyes indicate less-desirable qualities, such as stupidity. When he thinks of the conversations he has with Midwesterners, he remembers: “If you said you were Irish but from London, it was as if you had performed a method of fellatio so bizarre that their eyes would glaze over” (49). Here, the narrator uses eyes to demonstrates the stupidity of Midwesterners, whose eyes become glazed over, potentially in bovine fashion. As opposed to the glaze of pain he desires from women he hurts, the narrator is annoyed by the inane glaze over Midwestern eyes. However, in both incidents, his emphasis on eyes belies his sadism and misanthropy: he uses eyes to convey just how much he hates other people and wishes them pain. 

Mirrors repeatedly emerge inthe novel, both in the physical and in the metaphorical sense. Although mirrors can—and do—distort reality, as they offer reflections in place of actuality, the narrator appears to have a distorted perception of self; as such, sometimes it seems as though the only point during which he is able to see clearly is via mirrors. For example, it is only when the narrator looks into the mirror at the Cat and Mouse Bar that he realizes what Aisling is doing to him, and how much she despises him. In this way, mirrors show the narrator for who he truly is, reflecting a reality absent from his distorted self-perception.

However, the narrator also uses mirrors—much like eyes—in order to connect to other characters. In fact, the only time he views other people as similar to himself is within the context of mirrors. When he breaks up with Pen, he says, “you might as well argue with a mirror as argue with each other. After all, aren’t we all really the same person” (17). The only time he is able to empathize with other people is when he is talking about them as reflections of himself. He uses the mirror to symbolize this drive to connect with other people, which he cannot do otherwise, due to his crippling narcissism. Conceptualizing another person as a mirror of himself then allows him to understand—albeit incredibly limitedly—another person, even if he does only understand them in relation to himself. Mirrors symbolize the limited extent to which the narrator can connect with other people, offering a lone reflection of a man destined to be unhappy. 

The narrator both uses and is used by alcohol throughout the novel. Alcohol, especially whiskey and Guinness, allow the narrator to feel a lack of responsibility for his actions. He uses it as a coping mechanism for his lack of emotional well-being as well as to avoid any feelings of guilt associated with his treatment of other people. However, alcohol also prevents the narrator from taking control of his life, as it becomes a crutch that he needs to survive, eventually overwhelming all other aspects of his life: “One night I was drinking whiskey, and even as it was going down my throat, I was thinking, ‘I want a drink.’ Tricky one” (25). As an alcoholic, the narrator is not in control of his life. Although this affords him the ability to evade responsibility for his actions, it also prevents him from moving forward, causing him to stagnate. In this way, alcohol both serves as a temptation and a poison for the narrator, as it negatively affects his psychological wellbeing. 

The narrator repeatedly equates blades with the physical pain with which he terrorizes his female victims. He associates breaking women’s hearts with cutting them open: “An expert heartbreaker knows the effect of each incision. The blade slips in barely noticed, the pain and the apology delivered at the same time” (8). The narrator uses the analogy of the blade in order to convey the incisive potential for his remarks and behavior. However, the blade itself is often also associated with the penis, as blades are seen as phallic in nature. The narrator conflates blades—in this case, a dagger—with sexual intercourse: “The fear and paranoia I’d had to endure that day fueled each pelvic thrust that followed. A dagger widening an existing wound” (33). In this way, the narrator’s penis becomes the blade by which he can emotionally traumatize his victims. This is the ultimate sexually-sadistic act, in which the sexual organ becomes the very thing that inflicts pain. The narrator uses the symbol of the blade both as a stand-in for his penis and as a tool to cut down the psyches of his female victims, thereby conflating sex with pain.