Popular Culture Review Vol. 3, No. 2, August 1992 | Page 15

The Limits of Narcissism

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chin and his thick white hair combed straight back and his English
suit, and his heavy watch chain across the belly of his vest" (446-47),
Sherman also comes to realize that all of those things are merely
superficial, that his father's influence in legal matters, whatever
that influence might have been, is now past, primarily because of the
older man's age. As noted earlier, Lasch writes about the narcissist's
fear of aging, the loss of his ability to manipulate the world based
upon the projection of the right image. We saw, too, Sherman's
distorted sense of his own youthfulness as compared to his wife's
inexorable aging. Now, however, he himself is forced to confront the
terror of time, as it were, which his vanity is incapable of allaying,
and that confrontation brings with it some awful truths. Having
regarded himself as a young man until this point in his life, Sherman
comes to the realization that his father's "mythical and infinitely
important role" as Protector against "all the chaotic and catastrophic
possibilities of life" (450) is at an end. That realization, which most
people reach long before the age of thirty-eight, leads to maturation,
in itself representing the killing of an old self. Likewise, just as he
gets little practical help from his father, so he gets little emotional
support from his wife, another blow to his callow ego. Although she
offers to help if she can, she says that she cannot give him love and
tenderness because, unlike Sherman, "I'm not that good an actress"
(454). Ironically, someone who is a very good actress—Maria Ruskin—
is indirectly responsible for undermining Sherman's relationships
with the very people who have helped to form his conscience, who
have given Sherman a moral anchor even as he plays out his
narcissistic roles earlier in the book.
Indeed, Wolfe's manipulation of roles, Sherman's and those
of the people who influence him, leads inexorably to the
protagonist's attitudinal changes toward self and society at the end
of Bonfire. When Sherman rejects conscience and accepts Maria's selfserving rationalization about the incident in the Bronx, when he
rejects his wife as a source of love, guidance, and protection and
substitutes for these Maria's gratification of his lust, materialism,
and easy moral choices, Sherman effectively assigns to her the roles
formerly played by trusted family members. In turn, Maria, herself
the consummate narcissist, then unintentionally (though also
unfeelingly) redefines Sherman's own role in the world—from
narcissistic materialist to hunted criminal, from self-possessed