Distorted Mirrors: The Notion of the Doppelganger in Katherine Anne Porter’s “Noon Wine”
by A. E. Franzen

John Shade and Charles Kinbote…
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde…
Farmer Thompson and Homer T. Hatch…

Contemporary fiction is full of famous Doppelgangers: two characters who seem to mirror aspects each other’s personality, yet simultaneously reflect each other’s antithesis. In his discussion of classic Hollywood cinema motifs, John Song notes that “the Doppelganger is often figured as a twin, shadow, or mirror-image of the protagonist,” and that the prominent literary form of the Doppelganger is psychomachia, “or the struggle between virtue and vice within an individual.” Indeed, whenever two Doppelgangers meet face to face, an internal (or external) battle is inevitably waged between the warring psychological factions. Song goes on to analyze this violent phenomenon:

In recent examples influenced by Freudianism, the Doppelganger represents hidden or repressed aspects of the protagonist's personality. In Freudian terms, the arrival of the double represents the "return of the repressed." The protagonist must acknowledge what the double represents, and at the same time struggle against it. Characteristically, a Doppelganger story climaxes with a confrontation of the two, usually a fight to the death. The death of the Doppelganger represents the successful repression of the dangerous impulses, but the struggle leaves the protagonist sadder and wiser about humanity and about himself or herself.

In Katherine Anne Porter’s “Noon Wine,” the somewhat lazy, prideful Farmer Thompson meets his alter-ego in the form of the sinister, scheming bounty hunter, Homer T. Hatch. After a prolonged verbal exchange that increasingly exacerbates Thompson and bruises his swollen ego (particularly Hatch’s disapproval of Thompson’s choice of tobacco), a catalyst arrives in the form of the hardworking Swedish farm assistant/escaped mental hospital patient, Mr. Olaf Eric Helton. In a moment of wild, manic hysteria, Thompson “sees” Hatch drive a blade into Helton’s belly. He attacks the perceived murderer with an axe, slaying his foe with a single blow to the head. Yet when Thompson’s wife rushes to the bloody scene, Helton has already fled the scene—and is later discovered without a scratch on his body. Obviously, Hatch hadn’t cut him.

This bizarre series of events seems to suggest that Thompson’s hallucination (and subsequent actions) are motivated by something more complex than the simple impulse to defend his long-time farm hand. Thompson’s rage is seemingly motivated by an unspoken fury towards Hatch—a sense of anger and distrust that is activated from the moment the two men meet at the gate of his Texas dairy farm.

In Hatch, Thompson sees his own foolishness, backwards logic, ineffectiveness, and physical indolence reflected back at him—yet amplified and distorted to an alarming effect. Thompson, whose sole concern in life is that things “look right,” cannot tolerate the existence of such a hideous reminder of his own shortcomings. There is no option: Hatch cannot exist in the same universe as Thompson. Thus, Helton’s arrival is merely the trigger, the external catalyst that initiates the inevitable duel between Thompson and Hatch—a fight that is neither heroic nor identity-affirming, but merely leaves Thompson an empty, broken man.

Like the climactic duel with his alter-ego, Thompson’s suicide is equally inevitable…in killing Hatch, he has become what he always despised: a failure, a creep, a man who has lost the respect of everyone in his tiny world. In Porter’s vision, Thompson is not the tragic Greek hero who falls from his lofty status to the depths of shame, but merely a pathetic little man who is cursed not by Fate, but by his own failings; pursued not by the Furies of Greek lore, but by the fury in his own weak heart.



Bibliography:

"Doppelgangers and doubles in Hitchcock's movies." Song, John. The Catholic University of America: Washington D.C. 5 Sep 2006: <faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/h...ngers.html>

Porter, Katherine Anne. "Noon Wine." Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: San Diego. 1985.