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Popular Culture Review
is in no great hurry to get back to his hermitage; and, indeed, as he trudges up the
road, his arrival home is delayed even further when he stops unexpectedly and
looks warily around. At first, this is something of a mystery; but it quickly be
comes evident that the old fellow is planning on taking a private nip from his jug
and carrying on just a bit. We should not be surprised, then, if he is strangely selfconscious, because he has probably been thinking for some time about taking that
drink-though, judging by his behavior, he has already had a good many other
drinks farther back down the road. In any case, we may assume that the old man is
concerned that someone might have seen him take those early drinks and take
another before that; and therefore he would most certainly be concerned that some
one might be watching him now as well. Perhaps this kind of thinking might seem
rather odd and paranoid; but, since he is already quite bibulous and since, as we are
soon to discover, he does indeed have a drinking problem, we should not be sur
prised that the old fellow would not want anyone to measure his intake — that is
simply a very natural part of the alcoholic mind set.
We might also note that when Eben pauses, he is neither in the village nor
home. He is between places both metaphorically and literally; so that, in a sense,
he is absolutely nowhere, as if suspended in a kind of limbo between life and death
as well as between society and the hermitage. This is suggested obliquely in Eben’s
ascent to his lonely hermitage away from the village, as if he were seeking some
kind of balance between heaven above and mortal life below. In living above the
town, then, old Eben has figuratively stationed himself above all earthly affairs,
both egotistically and physically; and his painful upward trek to his mountain hut
suggests a literal determination to distance himself from humanity in a concerted
withdrawal from society and the companionship of Tillbury Town where he had
gone to fill his jug.15
And so, Eben begins to talk to himself and proposes a drink to himself and
reminisces about himself to himself and insists on another drink to himself. While
there is a certain humor underlying all his self-talk, one also wonders if perhaps
the old man drinks literally to his addiction and his dual Jekyll and Hyde nature.
Except for the other duality implicit in the reflected light of the harvest moon,
suggesting perhaps his own harvest of years, he appears caught, both literally and
figuratively, in darkness and in confusion. This is particularly evident in his long
hike down the road to fill a jug that will likely be nearly exhausted from drink after
drink before he gets home. Like Sisyphus and his infamous stone, the old man
pushes up the mountain, drinking as he goes, only to very likely find that he must
eventually return down the mountain to fill his jug, only to have to return back up
the mountain, drinking as he goes, only to have to return again.
Old Eben begins his speech, quoting a romantic poem, singing a maudlin
song, and toasting himself as he goes along. To get just the right perspective on