51 pages • 1 hour read
AnonymousDiary of an Oxygen Thief
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Karma
Throughout the narrative, the narrator reassures his audience that everything that he has done, every bad act he has committed, has been paid in full. He says, “But don’t worry, I got my comeuppance. That’s why I’m telling you this. Justice was done. Balance has been restored. The same thing happened to me” (2). Although this would insinuate that he believes what happened to him is just, he also talks about how what happened to him is worse than anything he did. However, he does acknowledge the existence of balance that has resulted in his karmic retribution; namely, that he hurt others and so he got hurt himself.
Similarly, the narrator actually cites the reasoning for his behavior on a balance he attempted to restore after feeling so much emotional pain. In giving the audience a reason for his misogyny, he explains:“I see now that I was in pain and wanted others to feel it, too” (4). The belief in karmic retribution also indicates a balance; if the narrator feels as though he is in pain—even if he will not admit it to himself—he wants to see others in pain as well, creating a universal pain. However, the narrator uses this in order to escape responsibility for his actions. In fact, he refuses to apologize for his treatment of women, with the exception of Pen. In this way, the audience realizes that the narrator is attempting to escape responsibility through this belief in karmic retribution and balance.
The narrator creates karma as a force of nature, a kind of law unto itself:“Maybe there is a law after all. Of nature. Like gravity. An unwritten axiom that governs our emotional dealings. What you do comes back to you with twice the force—fuck it, three times the force. We are not punished for our sins, we are punished by them” (25). This last sentence is repeated later in the novel (50), as though he believes this to be an inescapable truth. However, it is important to again note that even within the context of admitting his sins, the narrator truly believes that he got the worse end of the deal, that his sins came back to him with “three times the force.” The audience is skeptical of this because Aisling's actions do not necessarily seem that traumatizing in comparison to some of the narrator’s, such as when he (unsuccessfully) tried to get a woman to commit suicide by being terrible towards her. In this way, the narrator’s obsession with karma also seems like a fairly shallow and continuously egocentric view of reality. Even though the narrator wholeheartedly believes in karma, the audience does not necessarily consider this to be accurate, as one would think that the narrator should suffer much more after almost a decade of purposefully torturing women.
Tragedy
Perhaps even more than karma, the narrator believes in the tragedy that is his life. He repeatedly recreates his life like scenes from a movie, with himself as the epic protagonist of a tragic—possibly French—film. However, part of the narrator’s seeming obsession with tragedy—whether it be his own or by his own making—stems from the narrator’s artistic aspirations. It is important to remember that although he is an advertising executive, he also works in the creative department. In theory, if his parents were well-off, like Aisling’s, he too would have become an artist. In this way, he is drawn to the beauty of tragedy, the artistry that comes from emotional trauma. Such belief is evident when he considers the women he has wronged: “The deeper in they were, the more beautiful they looked when the moment came. And I lived for the moment” (3). The narrator mostly seems bored with his life, overwhelmed by his own apathy. Even though the women who he seduces are beautiful, it is not enough; he wants the beauty of pain, which he feels reflects his own pain: “In New York, everyone just looked hurt. It seemed more honest. Maybe I just identified with them” (64). He wants honesty and believes that tragedy is honesty. He does not believe that someone can be happy and honest or happy and beautiful, but rather conflates ideals of truth, beauty, and tragedy in a kind of Nietzscheanversion of Platonic beauty ideals.
Responsibility
Throughout the novel, the narrator refuses to take responsibility for his actions. He uses a variety of coping mechanisms, including projection, to avoid admitting any kind of guilt or culpability. Frequently, he projects his own inadequacies and immorality onto the audience, suggesting his readers are culpable, even if he is not:“And if this never gets published, it’s your fault, too, because it means that this kind of story was deemed uninteresting to you. You bastards” (91).
Because the narrator is an egomaniacal narcissist, it is impossible for him to believe that anything is his fault; therefore, he decides that anything bad that may befall him is not actually a result of his own actions but rather a result of the terrible decisions of other people. He renders himself the martyr, thereby evading responsibility for his actions. In the case of getting his book published, he believes that failure in that realm is not the fault of his writing, but rather the fault of his readers. That is, it is not that his narrative is entirely self-involved and/or poorly written, but rather that his readers are not intelligent or empathetic enough to be interested in his writing. In this way, the narrator is able to always believe that any so-called karmic retribution for his past sins is also him being victimized, which in turn justifies his victimization of other people. In essence, he allows himself to be a terrible person because he projects responsibility upon other people. This kind of mental gymnastics is fairly exhausting and leaves his readership with little ability to empathize with or feel sympathy for the martyred narrator.
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