White

Character Analysis

Depressed Yet Enigmatic

The very first thing we know about White (no real name given) is that dude wants to kill himself. We also know that the day the play is set on is also his birthday, which he's tried to celebrate with a botched suicide attempt. Okay, the botched part is thanks to Black, and as White makes abundantly clear, definitely not something he appreciates.

As a character, the outer details about White's life are murkier and more difficult to discern than in Black's case. He's a professor, he reads a lot of books (about a hundred a year), he didn't go to the deathbed of his government lawyer father, he doesn't want to see his mother in the afterlife, and he has one friend (not a close friend) at his job. All the other professors "loathe" him and he loathes them. White is such a hater when it comes to people, and clearly prefers to hangout with his head than his heart.

The most important thing we know about White, though, is that he's convinced himself, intellectually, that there's no point in living: Death is better because it minimizes pain. We also know that he's a "culture junkie," but his faith in culture has been undercut by human brutality. Events like the Holocaust have made him see art and literature as devoid of sustaining values and truths.

White's led a profoundly lonely life, by all appearances. Despite having been in group therapy with other depressed people, he's never felt any kinship with them. The Professor (as Black calls him) despises humanity, and says he sees his own sickening image reflected in the people around him, whom he often curses under his breath. We meant it when we said the guy's a hater.

He's an atheist, yes, but more importantly, he's a nihilist: He believes that nothingness, a.k.a. total and absolute death, is preferable to any kind of life. So much so, in fact, that White says he could only find a point in a religion that prepared you for real annihilation. Happiness is an illusion, in his view, and he only wants to end his own—primarily mental—suffering. He says:

"The truth is that the forms I see have been slowly emptied out. They no longer have any content. A train, a wall, a world. Or a man. A thing dangling in senseless articulation in a howling void. No meaning to its life. Its words." (139)

Everything is empty, in other words, so White would just like to officially become nothing himself, too.

Where's the Justice?

White wants perfect justice. He can't understand why Christ would try to save people as warped and depraved as the people who exist on earth:

"And [Jesus is] interested in coming here to this cesspool and salvaging what everybody knows is unsalvageable. Why would he do that? You said he didn't have a lot of free time. Why would he come here? What would be the difference to him between a building that was morally and spiritually vacant and one that was just plain empty?" (77)

Since it's impossible to have perfect justice on earth (Shakespeare wrote, "In the course of Justice, none of us should see salvation"), it seems to be feeding into his reasons for killing himself. He sees Black's vision of mercy and loving your brother just as a way of sloshing around in a "communal misery," where everyone feels everyone else's pain. It's not really a key to happiness or a way out.

Death's B.F.F.

White really—and we do mean really—wants to die. He talks about death with genuine enthusiasm, and pretty much all other subjects provoke him to announce that he needs to bounce. And he gets really riled up when advocating death:

"You cant be one of the dead because what has no existence can have no community. No community. My heart warms just thinking about it. Silence. Blackness. Aloneness. Peace. And all of it only a heartbeat away." (136)

See? He's practically swooning. Additionally, White gets very poetic when paying tribute to death:

"I know what is out there and who is out there. I rush to nuzzle his bony cheek. No doubt he'll be surprised to find himself so cherished. And as I cling to his neck I will whisper in that dry and ancient ear: Here I am. Here I am. Now open the door." (141)

After saying this, White walks out of the apartment, headed toward what might very well be his death—barring some last second change of heart or Black's reappearance at the train station. He leaves Black behind to re-commit to his faith.

So, is White just a stubborn dude who keeps using his intellect to get around all the obvious reasons for sticking it out and living? Or is he truly a "professor of darkness, the night in day's clothing," who exists at a spiritual pole entirely opposite from his sparring partner, Black? Or is he both of those things—or something else? You decide.