Loneliness and Isolation

The short story explores the psychological and social impacts of loneliness and isolation via the narrator’s relationship with Scranton. The narrator is a solitary individual who immediately covets Scranton’s way of life when he meets him at the Copacabana Beach café. He fails to perceive Scranton’s manner, dress, and circumstances as evidence of his social invisibility, and rather envies his detachment. Unlike the narrator, Scranton is “left alone for most of his time” and seems to make “a comfortable living being photographed by the tourists in the more expensive Copacabana restaurants” (1108). The narrator admires his “almost willful isolation,” not just in this foreign city, but in the world at large” (1109). He wishes that he could live in a similar manner, because he wants to evade responsibility for his relationships with others. Therefore, when he integrates himself into Scranton’s life, he...