Short Fiction · Chapter
Loss of Breath explained
The narrator, after a heated argument with his wife, discovers he has literally lost his breath.
What happens
The narrator, after a heated argument with his wife, discovers he has literally lost his breath. He conceals his condition, attempts to find his lost breath, and later finds himself in a public vault, where he interacts with another corpse who also suffers from a superfluity of breath. The story is a darkly comic exploration of mortality, identity, and philosophical absurdity.
Themes in this chapter
Death and Mortality
The narrator's literal loss of breath and his subsequent entombment in a public vault explore the boundaries between life and death, and the absurdity of mortality.
Madness and Psychological Decay
The narrator's irrational behavior, his soliloquy among the coffins, and the surreal conversation with Mr. Windenough highlight a descent into psychological instability.
Isolation and Alienation
The narrator's condition isolates him from his wife and society, and his confinement in the vault underscores his alienation from the living world.
Characters to notice
- Unknown Narrator
The protagonist who loses his breath after a quarrel with his wife, later finds himself in a vault, and engages in a bizarre conversation with another corpse.
- Mr. Windenough
A character who appears in the vault, also suffering from a breath-related affliction, and engages the narrator in a one-sided conversation.
Key passages
“The most notorious ill-fortune must in the end yield to the untiring courage of philosophy—as the most stubborn city to the ceaseless vigilance of an enemy.”
Persistent philosophical resolve can overcome even the worst misfortune, just as a besieged city eventually falls to a relentless enemy.
Opening epigraph setting the tone for the narrator's philosophical approach to his bizarre predicament.
“I had lost my breath.”
I discovered I could no longer breathe at all.
The central absurdist premise of the story, where the narrator literally loses the ability to breathe.
“Death's a good fellow and keeps open house”
Death is a welcoming host who offers hospitality to all.
A line from Marston's Malcontent that the narrator ironically rejects while trapped in a vault.