The Narrator Is a Self-Sabotaging Asshole Who Would Throw a Torch Into a Pile of Buildings, and When They Are Consumed, Sit Among the Ruins and Lament the Fall (The Measure of Love isn’t Loss)

‘You’re bored,’ (Winterson 27)

Dear Reader,

Fuck The Narrator.

To live a life of only the most extreme highs and the worst lows is to live a life of incredible heartbreak and sorrow. The Narrator shows that they clearly don’t understand this from the get-go when they ask, “Why is the measure of love loss?” (Winterson 9). The Narrator presupposes that the measure of love is loss. The Narrator scales sheer cliff faces just to jump off of them into the sea and, exhausted from the climb, they don’t have the strength to save themselves from the treacherous waters that they threw themself into! They wait, on the verge of drowning, tossed by the malignant waves, for a hand to scoop them up, take them home, then as soon as they feel better, they go and pull the same shit all over again bitching the whole time about how the measure of love is loss.

“We agreed that…holidays, not homecoming..” (Winterson 27)

This is the one point in the book where The Narrator might have ended up truly happy. Not the shallow exhilaration of an adrenaline junkie but true, lasting, and reliable happiness. The Narrator can’t settle for that though, The Narrator conflates stability with boredom because The Narrator thinks that the measure of love is loss. The Narrator describes this feeling as “a teetotaller caught
glancing at the bottle” (Winterson 27). The Narrator falls off the wagon, and takes a swig of the strong stuff, the top-shelf liquor, not that The Narrator cares about the vintage. The Narrator just needs to feel the burn in their throat. Then when they wake up hungover, working a job waiting tables in Yorkshire, they bitch and moan some more about “What is the point of movement…breathe the dead.” (Winterson 107-108). 

I may have soliloquized a bit much, let me try again.

The Narrator is a warning. I don’t think that we’re supposed to either trust or like The Narrator. I think that Winterson wants us to question everything that The Narrator says. More specifically we’re not supposed to believe that the measure of love is loss. At least, I don’t believe that Winterson believes it. Need more proof?

“See? Even here in this private place my syntax has fallen prey to the deceit.” (Winterson 15)

We are faced with a reliably unreliable narrator, reliable in that we know that they cannot be relied upon. The changes in structure, most notably on page 14, where the piece changes into a screenplay, and page 113 where the piece changes into a medical journal, reinforce this point. We can’t even trust in prose.

I know very little about queer love, less than I know about queer sex anyways, but I know enough to know that love can’t be measured by loss. I have a partner of more than seven months now. Is the love that I feel for them any less when I squeeze them tightly in my arms? Can my love not be measured because I haven’t yet lost? Of course not dear reader for that would be an idiotic notion. Cause you’d never have love, only lost love.

Love is fucking awesome and emotional stability also rocks. If you measure love in terms of loss you’ll wind up with neither.

Yours Forever,

Carmine “Red” Zingiber

3 thoughts on “The Narrator Is a Self-Sabotaging Asshole Who Would Throw a Torch Into a Pile of Buildings, and When They Are Consumed, Sit Among the Ruins and Lament the Fall (The Measure of Love isn’t Loss)”

  1. I think this is a very intriguing perspective, purporting that Winterson wants the audience to heed the narrator as a kind of warning. I think we often try to look for the humanity in other people, as I certainly found myself doing throughout this novel. It’s hard, though, with the plethora of poor choices the narrator makes. They seem like someone Winterson wouldn’t want you to connect with. Why, then, include such a gut-wrenching statement, and have it reoccur? To me, it emphasizes the narrator’s humanity more than most things in this novel. My instinct when you said that the narrator doesn’t even try to get out of this cycle of love and loss, was to wonder if there’s a deeper reason for that than carelessness. Where did this notion come from, and why do they sabotage or end all their relationships before they have a fighting chance? Should we perhaps sympathize with them more because of this self-sabotage?

  2. I find the last sentence of your post interesting. It suggests that Louise and Narrator were never really in love because the Narrator couldn’t possibly understand what love is. Perhaps, a better way to say this is that they destroy their relationships before they can ever truly experience love. This leaves me with two questions. First, How, then, do we define the emotional connection between Louise and Narrator? Secondly, Do we have the right to tell someone they are not actually in love? That their relationship doesn’t fit our mold, and thus cannot contain this deep emotional connection.

  3. I definitely agree with certain parts of this assessment. The narrator obviously has a self-sabotaging streak going, one which they have done nothing to curb. Even after they lose Louise, they continue to go about their life in the same way as before instead of changing their behavior. Rather than explore the possibility of a relationship with the person in their new life who actually wants them, they decide to look for the one person who doesn’t want them anymore. This goes back to your point about the narrator thinking that the measure of love is loss. They believe that they can only find love in a relationship that they have lost, which almost leaves them with nothing. If they could just be content with what they have, they would likely end up much happier.

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