A Ship of Fools: Psychology and Body Language of the Characters in Knife in the Water

Erik Carlson
Jan. 14
MFA Filmmaking Group B
Maureen Tabor Psychology and Film 
4/22/15

A Ship of Fools: Psychology and Body Language of the Characters in Knife in the Water

In Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water, an older Polish couple pick up a young hitchhiker on their way to an overnight sailing trip and eventually allow the teen to come with them onboard. However, as the trip progresses, things steadily become heated and tense, resulting in a confrontation that turns all three character's lives upside down. This is due to the character's psychological backgrounds, which can be detected through their actions, dialogue, and body language. In this paper, I will analyze these three characters' actions and behaviors to determine their psychology issues using the theories of Erik Erikson and Sigmund Freud, as well as the method of body language.

In the beginning of the film, the husband begins very much in control and in motion, taking over the wheel of the car when he finds his wife's driving unsatisfactory, inviting the hitchhiker both in the car and on the boat without asking his wife, and continuingly advising the hitchhiker about how things should be run. However, by the end of the film, he is left conflicted in a situation that he doesn't know the answer to: does he turn himself into the police for drowning the hitchhiker, which the wife says he didn't, or does he believe his wife's account that she cheated on him with the hitchhiker and suffer the humiliation that he has lost control over her? On a visual level, this can be seen in contrast with his rapidly driving the car along the country road in the beginning and the car in a standstill at the end at both a literal and figurative crossroads, but on a psychological level, the man is stuck in certain stages laid forth by Erikson and Freud.

In Erikson's case, the husband is stuck in the Care: generativity vs. stagnation stage: At first it seems like he's offering to help the wife and the hitchhiker in their tasks of driving and learning how to sail in a father figure type of role, but he is really taking control of each situation to how he sees fit: he doesn't care much for his wife's driving, pointing out her flaws until she finally pulls over and lets him drive. When they meet the hitchhiker, the husband also assumes that the wife would have pulled over to help the hitchhiker instead of keep moving, and invites the teen along without his wife's permission. In terms of the hitchhiker, it becomes clear that the husband only brought him with in the car and on the boat was to take the hitchhiker away from his preferred method of travel, land, and taunt and humiliate him in the husband's domain, the water, as a show of his primal dominance.

Speaking of primal dominance, the husband is also shown to be stuck in Freud's oral stage: constantly having something in his mouth, such as a cigarette, or food or drink, especially when he's upset, such as right after they almost run over the hitchhiker with the car or when the hitchhiker is messing around and drops the soup. The husband is also very oral in how he treats the hitchhiker and later his wife, taking cruel pleasure and laughing in seeing the teen fumble with driving the boat, and selfishly abandoning the wife on the boat while he swims to shore to contact the police. Traits of his cruel and selfish behavior can be seen in body language throughout the film, such as his frequent blinking at the beginning when he doesn't like his wife's driving, his narrowed eyes and clenched jaw whenever the hitchhiker or his wife make him angry, and his open mouth smile, lifted eyebrows and narrowed eyes as he is laughing at the hitchhiker being pushed onto the sail. It is this clashing with the hitchhiker that eventually leads to the husband's downfall where he is back to rapid blinking, lowered eyebrows, and rubbing his face in discomfort while talking about the hitchhiker back in the car.

The hitchhiker himself is also an interesting character in terms of being stuck in certain stages of Erikson's and Freud's theories. In the case of Erikson, the hitchhiker is stuck in the Learning Identity vs. Identity Diffusion stage, to the point that he isn't even given a proper name. Both in the beginning and ending of the film, he starts out traveling on the road on his own, only getting occasional financial support from his father. When he is invited to come along on the older couple's sailing trip, he constantly tries to prove himself physically by helping run the boat and doing other tasks. 
He also tries to emulate the husband, wanting to be like him and develop a similar identity to him, despite the husband's constant berating, even to the point of seducing and bedding the wife, but ultimately fails in this search for identity and is left on his own again, this time without his special knife.

Speaking of the knife, this brings us to the Freudian stage that the hitchhiker is stuck in, which is the Phallic stage. The hitchhiker's knife is his only sense of identity and is constantly brought up in the film. Despite never actually using it as a weapon, the hitchhiker constantly has the knife on display, helping to cut food, throwing the knife at a wall below deck, and playing a game of pinfinger, stabbing the empty spaces between his fingers in rapid succession. This display earns the ire of the husband, as this is the only masculine display he has not conquered. However, this leads to him getting his revenge on the hitchhiker by first causing the hitchhiker to cut himself with the knife and later steals the knife, angering the teen, and throws the knife overboard, causing the hitchhiker to lose his "phallic symbol", resorting to fighting with his fists and badly losing by being knocked overboard. 

Without his sense of identity, the hitchhiker is further humiliated by the wife when she takes charge in having sex with him and looking after him after he falls overboard, and wanders back on land, full of inferiority. This sense of inferiority can seen in the hitchhiker's body language throughout the film such as his eyes looking downward and his eyebrows lowered whenever he's made a mistake like dropping the soup, and his moving further away from the couple and cradling his arm when he is doing so. After his encounter with the wife, he can't even look the wife in the face as she has become more masculine than he has.

Out of the three characters though, the wife has to be the most interesting in terms of the psychological stages she is stuck in because she starts out as an almost passive secondary character in the film but fully comes into her own at the end, outmanning and humiliating both male characters. In terms of Erikson, the wife starts out stuck in the Intimacy vs., Isolation stage very much letting the husband taking control and emulating some of his actions and abilities, such as being a very capable driver of the car and the boat, taking charge to fix something when the boat is damaged during the night and smoking and eating whenever she is upset, only speaking out when the men are doing something particularly stupid like the hitchhiker throwing the oar in the water or the husband berating the hitchhiker for his inexperience. Its not until the husband knocks the hitchhiker overboard, does the woman break away and become her own person, berating the husband for his actions and being a coward, and further breaking away from him by sleeping with the hitchhiker and toying with the husband on whether the hitchhiker is still alive or not. She also uses this new sense of freedom to take care of the hitchhiker when he's returned on board and warns him that emulating the husband isn't a good idea.

This sense of holding back and release can also be shown in the Freudian stage the wife is stuck in, which is the Anal Stage. The wife starts out as an anal retentive kind of person, being very quiet most of the time, only speaking up when something is going badly but taking interest in the hitchhiker, even learning more about him.. As the tension between the men build, we wonder how the wife is going to react, and the tension is finally released and she becomes expulsive when she yells at the husband for potentially killing the hitchhiker, and later slaps the hitchhiker for hiding. Finally, she defies the husband by letting her passion for the hitchhiker take over and she takes control, berating the hitchhiker for acting like the husband, but taking care of him and secretly letting him off before reaching shore, the husband's downfall in her hands. This transformation can be seen in her body language throughout the film where she starts out with lowered eyebrows and gazing eyes when the husband is criticizing her driving, to narrowing eyes and a clenched jaw when berating the husband and finally raised eyebrows in confidence and glancing eyes when seeing how stuck in a bad position the husband is at the end of the film.

In this paper, I have covered the psychological and physical behaviors of the three characters in Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water using the theories of Erikson and Freud. The characters range in different psychological behavior from the husband who is self absorbed and selfish, to the hitchhiker, who is looking for an identity, and finally the wife, who starts out held back and becomes her own person. Despite this film having come out in the 60s, I can see why this is considered a classic in that its themes and psychological behaviors are as true today as they were then. It is its own unique thriller, a thriller of the mind. 

The Primal Mirror: The Victorians and "The Outsiders" of The Sign of Four

Erik Carlson
Lit. Empire.
008:167:001 
Mangum 
4/27/11

The Primal Mirror: The Victorians and “The Outsiders” in The Sign of Four 
“‘They are a fierce, morose, and intractable people, though capable of forming
most devoted friendships when their confidence has once been gained’” (Conan Doyle 109).
 Such is the description of the “savage natives” of the Andaman Islands in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four, of which Tonga, a murdering accomplice that is a major point to the mystery of the story and the important themes that lie underneath, originates from. The Sign of Four was written at an important time in the 1800s, when the British Empire ruled from London to as far as India, and Australia through the method of imperialism. In the course of obtaining its power, however, the Empire encountered the indigenous natives of these foreign areas, and fearing their “savagery”, tried to convert them to the Empire’s social/religious standards and beliefs, make them servants or force power over them, study them using brutal scientific methods, show them off in sideshows, and try to eradicate them and their savagery all together.

The Victorians, mainly composed of upper-class males, thought of these natives and certain other occupants of the Empire as lower life forms; that they were nothing like them and viewed them in a stereotypical one-dimensional manner. This type of thinking kept the Victorians in their comfort zone and allowed them to maintain their balance of power. Arthur Conan Doyle thought otherwise as he takes note of this in The Sign of Four by examining the Empire’s use of imperialism, and seeming to hint that through the Empire’s brutal methods of power, the English subjects are as similar underneath as the indigenous natives and that the indigenous beings may have more humanity and

intelligence than the Empire realizes but doesn’t wish to acknowledge for fear of them. Conan Doyle explores these shaky relationships between the Victorians and different kinds of “outsiders” in The Sign of Four by putting two main characters into a conflicting relationship with one of the characters representing the Victorians and the other representing a group of “outsiders”. The relationships that I will be looking at in this paper are Tonga and Jonathan Small, Dr. Watson and Mary Morstan, and Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes.

Starting with Tonga and Jonathan Small, their relationship is quite an unusual one because when they first appear in the story, both are considered “outsiders”; Tonga as a native and Small as an ex-convict. However, Small’s past is eventually explained and he has more in common with the Victorians than he first appears to. Small is also portrayed in a more humanistic way when his story comes out.
In describing Tonga, in terms of his outward appearance and behavior, everything is obvious. On the surface he’s vicious, he kills with poisonous darts, he chatters in an unknown language, the size and shape of his body are frighteningly unusual; he is the Victorians’ worst fears come to life. Beneath the surface, on the other hand, is a different story. Despite his savage outward appearance, Tonga actually shows a trait that most subjects of the Empire strived for: loyalty. After Jonathan Small saves Tonga’s life, the native never leaves his side, to the point that Small admits that, “‘when I found that he was devoted to me and would do anything to serve me, I saw my chance for escape...he was staunch and true, was little Tonga. No man had ever had a more faithful mate’” (Conan Doyle 152). Tonga receives this first taste of humanity from Small, who nurses him back to health, and Tonga becomes heavily dedicated to Small and his quest from then on. 

The strength of this dedication becomes amazing throughout Small’s journey as Tonga is put through quite a bit of abuse ranging from Small cursing him and thinking of him like a snake to traveling with Small to London and surviving in a humiliating way: “ “‘We earned a living at this time by my exhibiting poor Tonga at fairs and other such places as the black cannibal. He would eat raw meat and dance his war-dance: so we always had a hatful of pennies after a day’s work’” (Conan Doyle 154). These acts actually mirror the acts of European traders bringing slaves or natives back to England to be studied and shown off at “freak shows” committed only a century ago, such as with Sarah Baartman, the Hottentot Venus. Despite all these horrible things happening to Tonga, he is never portrayed in a positive light from the Empire point of view, as John McBratney states: “When the narrative shifts to Holmes and Watson’s point of view, we find no sympathy for Tonga...When they finally see him...they perceive only the hideousness and savagery that the gazetteer sketch has led them to expect” (155). McBratney states that Holmes and Watson have been influenced, as well as a great majority of other British subjects, by grossly inaccurate descriptions of the Andaman Islands and other locations foreign to them by popular news media and the inaccurate anthropological science of that time. Arthur Conan Doyle himself had seen the article and most likely questioned it and supported it at the same time in the story, although within a hidden context as Tonga is still portrayed in a negative light.

Despite his initial ill treatment of Tonga, Jonathan Small is the only one who shows sympathy for Tonga as he admires his loyalty and has been through a long horrible journey himself. Compared to Tonga, Small is the next level up on the properness to savagery scale in that he starts out as a British soldier but is traumatically transformed and devolved into a vengeful criminal. Small seems to have an underlying obsession with loyalty that comes with repeated failure in trying to obtain it, oddly enough all of which are caused by a primal force or factor.

Due to his lack of knowledge of India and through sheer bad luck Small loses his chance at Victorian greatness and loyalty to his Queen and country and is forced to change his loyalties in a life or death decision. The introduction of Major Sholto and Colonol Morstan to Small’s story gives him another chance to regain his Victorian greatness and quench his thirst for loyalty as Major Sholto rightly states: “‘You see, Morstan’ said he, ‘Small is a man of his word. He does not flinch from his friends. I think we may very well trust him” (Conan Doyle 150). Unfortunately, this is not to be as Small allows his thirst for loyalty and greatness to blind him to the point that the Empire in a representable sense through Sholto, betrays Small and metaphorically spits in his face for his efforts, leaving only the Sign of Four and Tonga for Small to rely on.

Small and Tonga’s relationship is ironic in a sense because after they meet, the two seem to switch personalities with Tonga striving to be loyal to his partner and Small becoming savage-like both in living conditions and in behavior with his angry thirst for revenge and demoted role as a criminal. Conan Doyle hints that it is Small’s desire to be loyal and brave, just like the British ideal, that has lead to all this in the first place and Kirby Farrell adds to this by stating: ‘“...Small’s career exposes the potential destructiveness of heroic motives. More specifically, his theft of the treasure...caricatures two cherished forms of Victorian heroism, imperialism and the ambitious clerk’s rise in

the world. For Victorian readers, Small presumably functioned as a scapegoat whose punishment justified ‘legitimate’ imperialism and ‘respectable’ new money” (35). Conan Doyle may have made Small a common Englishman to help his readers relate more to the character of Small.
Being viewed as the two lowest life forms on the Victorian scale, Small and Tonga have formed a relationship to survive despite Small’s previous bad luck involving the native rebels of the Indian “Mutiny” and in forming the relationship, Small has metaphorically “become” one of the natives. Patrick Brantlinger notes that, “Victorian accounts of the “Mutiny” display extreme forms of...the racial pattern of blaming the victim expressed in terms of...good and evil, innocence and guilt,, justice and injustice...civilization and barbarianism...”(200). Small lives on the same island with Tonga and lives as he lives, but an odd thing to note is that Conan Doyle does not describe this living in a horrifying or brutal manner as it is the time where Small and Tonga bond and learn each other’s languages and customs, and despite Small’s intent, that style of living helps progress his situation, helps him move forward and get back to England. Conan Doyle seems to almost legitimize the idea of living among the natives as equals and learning from and teaching them to be good ideas, along with sympathizing with why Small has done what’s he done, but Small’s greed at the fort and Tonga committing murder discourage this.

Another “outsider” relationship that is explored but is ultimately discouraged is the relationship between the male Victorians, the dominant leaders, and the female Victorians, the suppressed followers. Representing the male Victorians is the narrator, Dr. Watson, and representing the female Victorians, Mary Morstan. Dr. Watson is presented as the standard ideal Victorian every man. He’s a doctor, a bachelor, and a war veteran, the latter of which immediately gains sympathy in the beginning of the story: “‘No, indeed,” I answered brusquely. My constitution has not got over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra strain upon it’” (Conan Doyle 50). Watson can also be thought of as a gentleman due to how he treats Mary throughout the story.

Mary Morstan, as a female “outsider”, is quite an interesting character within the themes of the story because of the two different sides to her and how close she comes to removing her “outsider” status and gaining power. When Mary is first introduced, just her appearance alone shows the two sides of her. “She was a blonde young lady...dressed in the most perfect taste. There was a plainness...about her costume...the dress was a somber beige, untrimmed and unbraided, and she wore a small turban of the same dull hue relieved only by a suspicion of white feather in the side” (Conan Doyle 57). Mary Morstan seems to be a character from two different worlds and she’s split between the Victorian city life, as represented by the dress, and the foreign lifestyle as influenced by her time with her father when he was in the army. The suppressive Victorian lifestyle has taken over since she has been in England most of her life but the foreign “outsider” lifestyle, which involves the Agra treasure slowly starts to take over and gives her power.

Mary already starts to show power in the beginning of the story when she tries to suppress from sobbing while telling the story of her father’s disappearance, and brings certain objects to Holmes’ attention just in case they come to importance later on, truly showing her emotional and intellectual strength so much so that even Holmes admits that, “‘You are certainly a model client. You have the correct intuition” (Conan Doyle 60).

Watson takes an admirable note of Mary’s emotional strength later on: “She must have been more than woman if she did not feel some uneasiness at the strange enterprise upon which we were embarking, yet her self-control was perfect...”(Conan Doyle 63).
As Watson and Mary interact with each other throughout the story, the Victorian and “outsider” sides begin to struggle with each other. While falling in love with Mary, Watson feels threatened by the power that the treasure will give to her and he fears this power will take her away from him: “Was it fair, was it honorable, that a half-pay surgeon should take such advantage of an intimacy which chance had brought about? Might she not look upon me as a mere vulgar fortune-seeker? ...This Agra treasure intervened like an impassable barrier between us” (Conan Doyle 91). It is for this reason that Watson keeps silent on the matter. This is ironic because while Watson is acting like a gentleman, he is actually going against the Victorian standard by trying to help Mary gain power.

It is through acting like a gentleman also, by keeping Mary informed of the case, that Watson may also have discouraged Mary from accepting the power of the treasure. Frank Lawrence indicates that “In recounting...the murder of Bartholomew Sholto, Watson will unconsciously subvert Mary Morstan’s conception of herself...she unwittingly submits to the implication of his account, fearful of the significance of the Agra treasure (59). The burden that came to the male owners of the treasure scares Mary and allows the suppressed Victorian side of her personality to take over and she marries Watson at the end of the novel, in a conventional happy ending for the two characters. Despite the possibility of a new life promised by the Agra treasure, this does not stop Mary from having a mutual and equally mutable attraction to Watson: “Miss Morstan and I stood together and her hand was in mine...it seemed the most natural thing in the world that I should go out to her so, and...there was in her also the instinct to turn to me for comfort and protection” (79).  Repeated moments of description like this one in the story can lead the reader to assume that Mary Morstan would have married Watson even if she had gotten the treasure, providing a nice balance between the Victorian and “Outsider” elements of her personality, but sadly, this does not come to pass.

It is quite appropriate that Watson, as the standard male Victorian, is the narrator because not only does that allow Conan Doyle to explore a compare-and-contrast relationship with Watson and a female “Outsider”, Mary Morstan, but also with another “Outsider”, the great Sherlock Holmes himself. Sherlock Holmes is considered an “Outsider” because he lives a bohemian lifestyle: he travels all over in his cases, he dons disguises, and he uses cocaine. However, Holmes also lives a respectable Victorian lifestyle as well so he is an “Outsider” on the inside. The trait that notably makes Holmes an “Outsider”, however, is his thirst for intelligence and his use of deduction.

Like Mary, Holmes’ Victorian and “Outsider” qualities are mixed together, but in his case, he is loyal to knowledge and deduction and to some degree, Watson who is loyal to him in return. Holmes seems quite obsessed with the theory of deduction and using it in his work. In doing so, he focuses on the intellectual details instead of the emotional, so much so that Watson admits, “‘You really are an automaton-a calculating machine,” I cried. “There is something positively inhuman in you at times” (Conan Doyle 61). This description of Holmes adds to the theory that Holmes is really the next step up on the Victorian “evolutionary scale”, which is that of a machine or robot, calculating without emotion.

While essentially emotionless in personality, Holmes actually has a fear or hatred of the Victorian ideal standard as it is more emotional and primal filled than with intelligence and a waste of Holmes’ talents, He complains, “‘See how the yellow fog swirls...across the dun colored houses. What could be more...prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers...when one has no field on which to exert them? Crime is commonplace...no qualities save those which are commonplace have any place upon earth” (Conan Doyle 56). Holmes has become addicted to the thrill of intelligence and when cases are sparse, the only way to maintain this intelligence is through cocaine, which Holmes eventually becomes addicted to as well. Christopher Keep and Don Randall state that “...in its capacity to burn out the debased passions of animal savagery and indolence, Holmes represents work as a form of excess that allows him to accede to his ‘own proper atmosphere’...the detective is and is not himself when the substance of his addiction is coursing through his veins” (211). Holmes is human, just like the rest of the characters, and while trying to aim for one hundred percent loyalty to intelligence, Holmes’s disgust of the Victorian standard mirrors the disgust the Victorians had of the “savage” natives.

Holmes is not completely selfish in his thirst for knowledge, however, as he seems to encourage others around him to exercise their intelligence as well, such as Watson and Officer Athelney Jones. An example being when Holmes and Watson are investigating Bartholomew Sholto’s murder: “‘You will not apply my precept,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?’” (Conan Doyle 84). Despite Watson and Jones being intelligent men in their own right, they are not as

detailed in thinking as Holmes is because Holmes is a man ahead of his time and Watson and Jones are too much in the present, but Holmes’ methods are appealing to them. Holmes also respects an intelligent mind, such as that of Mary Morstan, who he has come to respect through the story for her help in the case and can only sigh exasperatedly when she too falls into the mediocre mold Holmes was afraid of earlier, by marrying, leading Holmes back to the cocaine. The cocaine addiction and Holmes’ anti-social personality further discourage the thought of Holmes’ intelligence positively progressing the Victorians forward.

In exploring the relationships he had created in the story, Arthur Conan Doyle, like Holmes, was ahead of his time in terms of thinking about Victorian society. In all three scenarios, Tonga and Small, Watson and Mary Morstan, and Holmes and Watson, Conan Doyle hints at the possibility that a positive and prosperous relationship can be forged between the Victorian, and the different “Outsiders” of the Empire. To avoid alienating his readers, Conan Doyle changed the outcome of each relationship to end positively in the standard Victorian view of things: the evil “savage” is defeated, the criminal is brought to justice, and the hero gets the girl and overcomes all obstacles, including being outsmarted. Despite this setback, Conan Doyle has formatted the story in such a way that the relationships are equally positive and negative, so that the reader is not forced into an opinion, but is left to think and produce one on their own.

Works Cited Page

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   1914. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
   
2. Farrell, Kirby. “Heroism, Culture, and Dread in The Sign of Four”. Studies in the Novel, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 32-51, 1984 Spring. University of Northern Texas.

3. Keep, Christopher and Randall, Don. Addiction, Empire, and Narrative in Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Sign of the Four". NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction. Vol. 32, No. 2 (Spring, 1999), pp. 207-221. Duke University Press. 
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5. John McBratney (2005). “Racial and Criminal Types: Indian Ethnography and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four”. Victorian Literature and Culture, 33, pp
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