“Enduring Love” by Ian McEwan (post 6): Character addresses “invisible presence,” an alternate personality, unless otherwise explained

Three times—once each, in the novel’s first, middle, and last third—when the narrating protagonist and the man who has a fixation on him are in conversation, the latter seems to address an “invisible presence”:

“I was beginning to see the pattern of a tic he suffered when he spoke. He caught your eye, then turned his head to speak as though addressing a presence at his side, or an invisible creature perched on his shoulder. ‘Don’t deny us,’ he said to it now. ‘Don’t deny what we have. And please don’t play this game with me. I know you find it a difficult idea, and you’ll resist it, but we’ve come together for a purpose’ ” (1, pp. 69-70).

“There was something he wanted to tell me. First he glanced at the presence over his shoulder” (1, p. 138).

“He glanced away to his right, to the invisible presence on his shoulder, before meeting my eye” (1, p. 227).

Amazingly, the invisible presence is never explained in the novel. Certainly, calling it a “tic” is no explanation. And the invisible presence is not even mentioned in the novel’s appendix, which is a fictitious psychiatric journal article that purportedly discusses the case of this novel in psychiatric detail.

Either McEwan didn’t understand that addressing an invisible presence is likely addressing an alternate personality (unless otherwise explained, e.g., by a drug withdrawal delirium), or he did understand it, but didn’t want to go there.

In conclusion, both the protagonist (see previous posts) and his antagonist have symptoms suggestive of multiple personality, but no female characters do. Perhaps McEwan thinks that men are more complex.

1. Ian McEwan. Enduring Love. New York, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1997.