Pincher Martin

Notions of identity and personality are once again at the forefront in these chapters. Martin asserts his personality as a survival technique, concluding that in his current circumstance, talking aloud to himself is not a sign of insanity but of identity.

Critically, these chapters also begin to offer glimpses into that identity—at least what it was before the U-boat attack. Although the details of his life’s events are vague, given the author’s stream-of-consciousness technique, the narrative implies that he engaged in questionable sexual behaviors and attitudes.

Martin’s memories of sexual rapaciousness and naked wrath arrive when he ponders his new eating rituals on the rock. This reflects the extent to which he equates various appetites and centers them as part of his identity. In addition to repeatedly comparing the small rocks that line the shore to teeth, he likens the appetites necessary for survival—like the need for food and water—to those for as sex and violence, which is significant because subsequent chapters reveal Martin’s sexual violence.

In fact, Martin views his survival on the rock as an extension of these appetites for conquest. For example, he characterizes his tendency to name various parts of the rock as “taming” it. He even talks to the rock as if addressing an inferior. To endure, Martin must view both his survival and his identity on the rock in adversarial terms.

All of this supports one of the book’s central themes: toxic materialism as the root of an endurance and survival impulse as strong as Martin’s. He draws on no spiritual or emotional strength to carry on, as many protagonists of survival narratives do. Instead, what fuels him are anger, appetite, and an open defiance toward more metaphysical concerns. He is the sum of his material desires for sex, food, and subjugating others, seemingly the only way he knows to assert his identity. Although Martin’s survival on the rock turns out to be fantasy, the author conveys the extent to which self-preservation can be a toxic act, thus subverting the familiar and comforting tropes of the survival genre.

Martin’s material appetites find representation in the lobster. According to British Naval traditions, a common nickname for sailors with the last name Martin was “Pincher.” Although the exact roots of this tradition are unknown, for Martin the nickname is fitting, given his tendency to grab whatever he wants in the moment with no regard for hurting others. As such, when Martin calls a hallucinated lobster a “[f]ilthy sea-beast” (98), he’s expressing profound self-loathing. This becomes clearer in subsequent chapters when Mary, as Martin forces himself on her, calls him “filthy, beastly...” (136).

Finally, the narrative gestures vaguely at the roots of Martin’s toxic behavior. In Chapter 9, the stream of Martin’s thoughts and memories move too quickly for the reader to form a coherent picture of his childhood. Still, the images suggest a religious mother and a childhood trauma that took place in a cellar. Too few details exist to do more than speculate on the cellar trauma and whether it even relates to his mother. Nevertheless, this lack of detail may be a result of the author’s close focus on Martin’s psyche: Perhaps the trauma’s specifics are too terrible for Martin to visualize, so all that remains is the blind terror that ultimately consumes him in the novel’s final third.