proxies

Exit Wounds, Jimmy Corrigan, and Ghost World’s main characters all shared a peculiar quality: they all used each other as sexual or emotional proxies.  Koby and Numi were only brought together by the search for Gabriel.  Koby both envies and resents the glimpses of sweetness of his father that he hears about from Numi, and Numi only ropes Koby into her search for Gabriel because she wants to prove that he didn’t leave, and that he died instead.  In fact, they’re only brought together because of Gabriel, and it doesn’t matter that we never actually meet him; all that matters is that this charismatic man has affected the lives of so many people in such a way that some of them seem driven to craziness when they feel his absence.

In fact, the tension surrounding the idea of Gabriel comes to a head when Numi says to Koby, “Like father, like son,” during sex.  Yes, it’s an extremely strange comment, and it’s no surprise that Koby reacts so angrily.  The comparison of father and son here is what drives Koby and Numi apart, but in Jimmy Corrigan, the death of Jimmy’s dad is what drives apart Jimmy and his ‘adopted’ sister Amy.  Jimmy wants to be normal like Amy, and to have a relationship built upon years of familiarity and love with his father like Amy does.  Amy, on the other hand, is obviously different because of her race, and would love to be a blood relative of the Corrigans.  The irony, of course, is that Amy actually is related to the Corrigans, and Jimmy doesn’t realize how similar his lonely life is to that of his grandfather (or at least his childhood).

Lastly, although Enid and Rebecca are very close friends, they also hurt each other through their comments to each other, or by ignoring the other’s wishes.  Being teenage girls, one of the stressors in their friendship is their relative attractiveness to the opposite sex, each frequently telling the other that the other is much hotter.  Because of this, perhaps the most literal way they hurt each other is through the character of Josh, who Enid goes to have sex with after feeling betrayed by Rebecca, but it’s Rebecca who ends up in a relationship with Josh; Clowes shows this in a way that led me to believe that Rebecca was the one who betrayed Enid.  It also seems like this was one of the forces that drew them apart in the end; Rebecca is shown getting off work and leaving to hang out with Josh, not Enid.  And at the end, Rebecca and Josh are shown sitting together in the diner, with Enid sadly but admirably looking on.  This situation is somewhat different from the others because Josh serves as a proxy for both characters to try to hurt each other, not to get closer to each other.  Still, I’m left thinking that all these proxy relationships serve to contrast the main characters with each other, and perhaps make them foils for one another.