“Stoner” by John Williams: Protagonist’s symptom of depersonalization is probably indicative of multiple personality

This novel is the story of William Stoner, an English professor, who is mostly unappreciated (1, 2).

Depersonalization

Since Stoner does not have symptoms of any of the other conditions in which depersonalization might be seen, his depersonalization is probably indicative of multiple personality.

What is depersonalization? “In many cases, it is the host personality who is observing another personality perform some action” (3, p. 77).

“He listened to his words fall as if from the mouth of another…” (4, p. 23).

“Sometimes, as he spoke to his students, it was as if he stood outside himself and observed a stranger speaking…” (4, p. 27).

“After a while it seemed to Stoner that he had gone outside himself, and it was as if he heard a voice [coming from his own mouth] going on and on, impersonal and deadly” (4, p. 160).

“…at will, he seemed able to remove his consciousness from the body that contained it, and he observed himself as if he were an oddly familiar stranger doing the oddly familiar things that he had to do. It was a dissociation [depersonalization and multiple personality are classified as Dissociative Disorders] that he had never felt before; he knew that he ought to be troubled by it, but he was numb, and he could not convince himself that it mattered. He was forty-two years old, and he could see nothing before him that he wished to enjoy and little behind him that he cared to remember” (4, p. 181).

However, as evident from the previous quotes, it was not something new, but something he had occasionally experienced for many years. All that was new, was that he had learned to do it “at will.”

While Dying

At the end of the novel, when Stoner is dying of bowel cancer, he has other subjective experiences suggestive of multiple personality. These experiences might have been otherwise explained, as drug-related or as spiritual experiences, if he had not had the depersonalization symptoms described above, for most of his life.

“…he sometimes found himself speaking words whose source he did not understand” (4, p. 270), which were probably words of other personalities.

“Dim presences gathered at the edge of his consciousness; he could not see them, but he knew they were there…” (4, p. 277). This might have been meant by the author as a near-death, spiritual experience, but in the context of Stoner’s lifelong experiences quoted above, he was probably becoming aware of the presence of alternate personalities.

Comment

There is also a case to be made that Stoner’s wife, Edith, has multiple personality, but I can’t make that case concisely enough to hold the interest of readers who have not read the novel.

And since Stoner’s probable multiple personality, per se, is not necessary to either the plot or character development, and does not appear to have been intended by the author, it is what I call “gratuitous multiple personality,” and is in the novel only as a reflection of the writer’s own psychology.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoner_(novel)

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edward_Williams

3. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.

4. John Williams. Stoner [1965]. New York, New York Review Books, 2003.