Being There

“Plants were like people; they needed care to live, to survive their diseases, and to die peacefully. Yet plants were different from people. No plant is able to think about itself or able to know itself; there is no mirror in which a plant can recognize its face; no plant can do anything intentionally: it cannot help growing, and its growth has no meaning, since a plant cannot reason or dream.”

In the beginning of the novella, the narrator conveys Chance’s understanding of people through his only frame of reference, the garden. Chance is plantlike in his lack of ambition and reasoning; the passage invites the reader to question the nature of consciousness and being as Chance progresses along his journey.

“Chance went inside and turned on the TV. The set created its own light, its own color, its own time. It did not follow the law of gravity that forever bent all plants downward. Everything on TV was tangled and mixed and yet smoothed out; night and day, big and small, tough and brittle, soft and rough […].”

Kosiński portrays television as the opposite of the garden. It does not obey natural laws, making its own rules that defy time and space. If the garden represents natural law, television represents manmade law. Chance is caught between natural law and manmade law, the two opposing forces that struggle for control in the novella.

“Catching sight of his reflection in the large hall mirror, Chance saw the image of himself as a small boy and then the image of the Old Man sitting in a huge chair. His hair was gray, his hands wrinkled and shriveled. The Old Man breathed heavily and had to pause frequently between words.”

Chance uses the mirror like a television screen that shows him images of his past self rather than reflecting him in the present. His memories alternate like channels changing on TV, without emotion or connection to one another.