Nella Larsen's short story Passing tells the fascinating story of two mixed-race women, Irene and Clare, from radically different situations that shape contrasting perspectives on the notion to “pass” as one. race on another, as Irene is content to be her black self while Clare grew up as a white woman. This crescendo narrative intensifies exponentially until its explosive but abrupt finale in which Clare falls from a window to her death and Irene suffers a nervous breakdown. The story shifts radically from realism to a bizarre hyperreality imbued with subjectivity and impressionism. The ending is intentionally stylized to be vague, and many different interpretations may exist. Many readers will have different ideas about who murdered Clare, or whether she was "murdered" to begin with, and these varying interpretations impose different messages about the relationships between the characters and what their motives represent. Larsen projects the sensation to convey to the reader how fractured and fragmented this finale is, which shows readers how fragmented one feels when crossing different races. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay One possible interpretation is that Irene pushed Clare out of the window to her death. This seems to be the most widely held belief, and it is difficult to understand why, once the protagonist's shock has passed, a seemingly sane and reasonable person would commit such a tragic murder. Irene was apparently the last person to touch Clare shortly before she fell out of the window. The scene leading up to Clare's downfall is described as follows: "Clare stood at the window, as calm as if everyone were not looking at her with curiosity and wondering as if the whole structure of her life was not in fragments before her. She seemed unaware of the danger or indifferent. There was even a slight smile on her full red lips and in her bright eyes. It was this smile that exasperated Irene. She ran across the room, her terror tinged with ferocity, and put her hand on Clare's bare arm. (Larsen 209) It is a rather sinister scene that Larsen paints. Irene's frantic rush across the room toward Clare after a declaration that she was "crazy" imposes a disposition of wickedness or at least an unfortunate circumstance. This passage feels at home with a noir novel describing how the murder attacks its victim, with Irene lashing out at Clare in an apparent fit of rage. However, there is one detail that stands out among the others, the fact that Irene “laid” her hand on Clare. “Ugly” is a passive verb and, rather than adding to a murder scene, appears to be a calming act. This would suggest that Irene could not have harmed Clare in any way, but before assuming this, we must consider the following events. After Clare's death, the narrative becomes broken and confusing. Irene keeps reassuring herself that everything is fine. Irene, physically weak and dizzy, mutters violently: “It was an accident, a terrible accident. » This confidence is the sign of the Kübler-Ross model, also known as the five stages of grief. These are stages that we go through after a major trauma. The first stage, denial, is described as the individual believing that their perception of the event is "somehow wrong and clinging to a false and preferable reality" (Santrock). The reader knows Irene as a generally good person, and so this "preferable reality", if the reader chooses to believe that Irene killed Clare, is that Clarerather confused alone without Irene's help. Not to mention that earlier, before this whole sequence, Irene imagines Clare dying before stopping herself, saying that it was despicable “to wish that” (187). With that in mind, it would make sense that by saying she "laid" her hand on Clare, she was actually doing something more drastic, like "forced." The significance of this interpretation is this: that understanding this lens and viewing the short story through it transforms the entire work into something closer to a tragic romance. Throughout the novella, a tension exists between Irene and Clair that suggests frustrated infatuation. Even in Irene's final remarks to Clair, she wonders about her "sweet white face, her shining hair, her disturbing scarlet mouth, her dreamy eyes, her caressing smile, all her torturous beauty" which tore Irene apart (210). . One of the main factors in Irene's frustration with Clare is her belief that she is stealing her husband, Brian. However, from this perspective, it would be more accurate to say that Brian was stealing Clare from Irene. Irene does not seem to particularly like Brian on many occasions, often arguing with him and lamenting his habit of looking at other women. Irene, finding Clare could have sparked a new desire, a break with her husband to pursue this new desire. Irene throughout the latter part of Passing becomes troubled whenever Clare is present, even though she seems cool and serene in every other instance of the novel. Irene's constant frustrations with Clare could not be due to contempt for her, but to a desire for her to be a better person in her eyes, as if she wanted to idolize her. Irene is unable to properly express her feelings for Clare, perhaps because these feelings are so foreign to society and Irene's life. Reading the story not only with the framework that Irene killed Clare, but also with the lens that Irene loved Clare, turns the whole story around and turns it into a tragic romance of unsung love, and Clare's death , ignoring Irene's feelings, shows how such romance could not be prescribed to their time and place. Coincidentally, the novel titled Passing could very well “pass” a queer novel as a racial novel. Because of this context and interpretation, the idea that Irene killed Clare is significant and radically changes the perception of the novel. However, this does not mean that there are other interpretations that are not worth considering. Another possible interpretation is that Clare committed suicide. In Larsen's time, there was a trope called the "tragic mulatto" which is an extension of what we would call the character of the "Other". The “Other” is a figure who does not belong to a society or a world. The story consists of the entry into conflict of the “Other” with the world and the inability to assimilate into the world is the impetus for the conflict for the character in the story. As "the Other" has no place in its world, the typical ending is a tragic death that causes survivors to rethink their place in life. Examples of "Others" in literature include the monster in Frankenstein, John in Brave New World, and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. The Tragic Mulatto is not much different. According to David Pilgrim in his essay The Tragic Mulatto Myth, the Tragic Mulatto is a mixed-race individual, usually female, who is depressed or even suicidal due to their inability to exist between two radically different worlds, usually a "white world" vs. black world… fitting into neither, accepted by neither” (Pilgrim). The two main characters in Passing are mixed-race women, but Irene, the protagonist, is not inin no case a “tragic mulatto”. Although she is mixed race, she is comfortable in her place and being and fully identifies and connects with her black world. Clare, for her part, although apparently happy in her white world, still suffers from a loss of identity. The murder of his black self could be a metaphorical suicide. However, with an interpretation of the ending that Clare deliberately falls out of the window, this makes her status as a tragic mulatto literal. Clare killed her black self to preserve her white self, but when she realizes that social life is coming to an end due to the revelations leading up to the finale, she sees no choice but to kill her white self. By doing this, metaphorically speaking, she loses all sense of identity and is no longer a human being. This suicide is therefore literal, ending his life once and for all. This interpretation functions as a means of fleshing out Clare's character into a fully self-tragic character and making the short story Passing a defining tragic mulatto work. Finally, another perspective is that Clare's husband, John Bellew, pushed her out of the window. Bellew, from his introduction, is established as a radically racist man. It's not a stretch to assume that he would kill Clare after concluding that she was black. When Clare rhetorically asks Bellew what he would do if he found out she was black, he confidently rejects the idea, reminding her that there are "no niggers in [his] family." It never was and never will be. " (Larsen, 69) Bellew's realization of Clare's identity adds context to this exchange with him, and putting the pieces of the puzzle together would serve as a complete mind-break. For all these years, he had assured himself he was right, that such a revelation was too out of place. In such a moment, all this time spent intimately with Clare becomes for him works of devious seduction in a forbidden world. to still love Clare since would require revisiting an unconditional stance that he held his entire life, that he applied so strictly every second of every day. As the quote above says, Bellew s. was convinced that there would never be any black people in his family The only way to make this true since he unknowingly married a black woman would be if she died. This adds credibility to the idea that. Bellew pushes her out the window Bellew, a proud man, probably wouldn't stoop to doing that. committing murder with his own hands, and instead placing Clare in a deadly situation would, according to mental gymnastics, free him from blame. Think of someone who would say, “It wasn’t me that broke his arm, it was the ground!” » after pushing someone to the ground. Even though Bellew didn't push her out of the window, his actions still led to Clare's disappearance. Her violent outburst at the party upon realizing that Clare was indeed part black is what causes Clare to run to the window. No matter who pushed her out the window, even Clare herself, Bellew is to some extent responsible. Clare's disappearance can therefore be framed as a hate crime, and the fact that Bellew was the one who directly caused her death adds to this perspective. The ending of Passing is significant because of how it fits into the narrative of racial transmission and identity while translating into another medium its effect on an individual. For many, being successful can lead them to develop a fragmented identity and perspective. The idea exists for some mixed-race or cultured people that they do not fit well into a single image, like a puzzle made up of different brands. While Passing's fragmented narrative isliterally due to the frenzied state of the protagonist, this deconstruction of the reality of the story conveys to the reader the feeling of a rupture of identity. These individuals will constantly question and re-examine their memories and events, trying to integrate them from different perspectives into a larger, more coherent whole. The lack of closure could be a projection of the feeling of emptiness created by devoting one's entire life to pursuing the seemingly unachievable task of finding oneself, a task that is amplified the more fragmented a person becomes. Overcoming is a story full of conflict, both within the self and within the self versus the outside, as the individuals who experience it are forced into situations where they must either give up their identity, take on a false one, or pay the price of being an “Other” outside their world. Although the end result of the end is concrete, the path to get there can be seen in various ways. No method is "correct" and each possibility says a lot about the motives controlling the characters and how they performed in Larsen's contemporary world. Irene killing Clare transforms the novel into a tragic queer romance well ahead of its time, Clare killing herself depicts her as the archetypal tragic mulatto, and John killing Claire fuels the racial tension that exists in America and the rejection of "l 'other' inside. . Each of these interpretations says a lot about identity, and the way the finale is so divided conveys that feeling to those who may never have experienced such issues and illuminates the tragedy of race relations in the era of Larsen. Analysis of “Passing” by Nella Larsen Racial and social problems have always stemmed from races pitted against each other, with one being superior to the other and having economic advantages over the other. However, these same problems can be more self-inflicted and manifest internally where the damage caused can be more catastrophic. Nella Larsen's "Passing" tells the tale of the reconnection of two cherished companions whose lives take different paths. Through these characters, Larsen weaves a wake-up call about the consequences of pursuing a double life and the damage associated with disguised bigotry. Through Clair and Irene, Larsen conveys to his audience the results of his desire to live as a bicultural individual in the mid-20th century. Claire addresses the role model known as the tragic mulatto, while conveying disaster to everyone she experiences. Irene addresses readers who are thinking about disguised prejudices; catalyzed by the reappearance of Claire in his life. Larsen compares the two characters to show the inevitability of social directives. Clare strives to distance herself from the social barriers imposed on black people and she succeeds, but not without consequences. Through diction, tone, and imagery, Larsen conveys to readers that "passing" may seem spectacular, nevertheless, the sacrifice one makes to do so is not without ramifications for themselves and those who are dear to them. The character of Clare is the perfect representation of a tragic mulatto, who is a character who can be mistaken for white, does this, is recognized by white society and marries a white man, but inevitably her status as biracial leads to disaster . Clare's life follows this pattern of behavior. Her quality conveys disaster to everything she experiences due to her selfish choice to continue a real existence where she is not exposed to the mistreatment of black people, but where she can still be part of the black social community. A bicultural presence is unimaginable. It doesn't just convey devastation.