Yellow analysis and interpretation
A short story by Peter Carty

In a contrast to nature mankind has always seemed small. Nature with its dark rivers, gigantic mountains, forests filled with danger and endless oceans. Nature can swallow you in one breath if you let it and can through your life make you scared and make you feel not noticeable and hopeless. Suicide is normally caused by problems like these that a person cannot seem to overcome and either way it’s a desperate act. In the novel Yellow written in 1999 by Peter Carty, a man named Jon is sent to Egypt to write an article about scuba diving. An Italian man named Berto is to teach him on a team containing Jon and another student, Brian. Through the considerations and reflections of this protagonist, Jon, the reader gains information about his fears, problems and inner conflicts, which end up causing his suicide. In this analysis of the story I will focus on characterization of the protagonist, Jon, narrative technique, language, the significance of the setting, symbols and at the ending and at last I will elaborate on themes, draw perspectives to other texts and finally make a conclusion. Through the analysis I’ll focus, among other things, on the question: can nature be tamed, owned and transferred into something that is subject to mankind?

The story starts out with no introduction, in other words: in medias res. The reader is thrown directly into the story and that emphasizes that nothing is given to the reader, who is to explore himself and form his own understanding of the story. By the first line: “Welcome to Egypt! Welcome to Egypt!” (p. 1, ll. 1) the reader indirectly gets information about the place and in the next line the protagonist is presented. The story takes place in Egypt at the diving school, in the sea and at the hotel room. Besides that the desert is also involved.
Even though the story starts with in medias res, this presentation of place and protagonist still makes the story easy to cope with, because the author isn’t up to make the reader confused – his intention is only to make it up to the reader to interpret the story. As early as in the first two lines, the reader gets the impression that the protagonist isn’t interested in the country that welcomes him with open arms. He would rather like to drink his duty-free at his hotel room and he locks his door against the porters. He seems deeply uninterested in the new culture and that continues on in the rest of the text.

The plot is spread over less than a week – from Jon’s arrive to Egypt until he chooses to commit suicide in the sea during a diving practice. The story is written chronological with no flashbacks. Only through Jon’s reflections and thoughts, the reader gets insight into Jon’s life in London. Through the story there’re a few examples of hints about the ending, for example:
"He poured more gin, but no matter how much he swallowed it was never enough." (p. 2, ll. 56)
“Enough for what?” the reader could ask himself. We already know that water is involved in the story and by writing the sentence mentioned above, the author has given a hint about the ending, where Jon’s drowning – the answer to the question above may thereby be: enough to get rid of all his problems including loneliness and that life doesn’t seem worth living - enough to die.

Jon, the protagonist, is an overweight, pushing forty second-string writer on a London listings magazine. By that the reader can assume that Jon is from the middle-class and therefore not rich, but still lives a comfortable life. Still he doesn’t seem used to spend his time at hard work:
”Only another couple of hours to go, and he’d have a nice full glass in one hand and the TV remote in the other” (p. 2, ll. 24-25).
Jon seems rather shy and not very social because in the moment he arrives to Egypt to learn how to scuba dive, he’s running away from the Egyptian porters to lock himself in his room and drink his duty-free. This repeats a few times, for example:
”Jon slunk off back to the hotel, avoiding Berto’s and Brian’s gaze, sliding into the duty-free shop for another bottle of gin before locking himself in his room” (p. 3, ll. 48-49).
As you can see, there’re a few things indicating that Jon has a problem with alcohol. He’s escaping to his room to drink and drinking seems the only thing he has in common with the other student, Brian:
”Jon rapidly established that beyond a certain familiarity with various alcoholic beverages the amount he had in common with Brian was nil, all conversational overtures led nowhere” (p. 2, ll. 16-18).
Therefore he remains in solitude.
It also appears that Jon is easily distracted and quickly turns his mind to alcohol – even when it’s very important to listen at the instructions at the diving school, Jon starts wondering if there’s any duty-free left in his room. Jon also remains passive, when he walks at the promenade and stays impervious to the beautiful sea next to him. When Jon envies Brian’s calm, methodical way to assemble and clamber into the gear, it appears that calmness and ability to structure aren’t qualities that Jon possesses. The story also tells that Jon is inactive and hates any kinds of sports – yet, he’s sent to Egypt, because the editor told him to and no one else wanted to. This tells that Jon isn’t able to object and also that his is in the bottom of the firm – that emphasizes that Jon’s life isn’t very important to anyone – this also seems clear, when Jon’s girlfriend and their relationship is described:
”Mind you, the way things were going that was probably a plus. The silences between them had multiplied then lengthened into an empty continuum.” (p. 3, ll. 54-55).
At the beginning Jon seems very stereotypical by being an inactive and a bit drunk middle-class worker, but through the story the reader gets to know more about his weaknesses, for example the fact, that he’s afraid of water. When Berto talks about diving Jon listens with horror and when Berto asks him, if he’s afraid of water, he answers: ”And above the water.” (p. 3, ll. 46).
This answer emphasizes Jon’s general nervousness in life and his fear of dying. There’re a few examples of his fear, where Jon often believes that he will die, for example:
”He exploded upwards. The frothing ceiling was a long way away and he wasn’t going to make it” (p. 4, ll. 97-98).

Jon starts wondering with grief, if he’ll get swallowed up by the sea and turn into an insignificant smudge no one will miss. This emphasizes his fear of dead and still his insecurity about himself and his desperation about getting other people to notice him and see him as something else than a coward. Because that’s what he believes he is, and what an inner voice keeps telling him – that he’s yellow. This word and its function in the text will be analyzed in depth further on.

The story is told with an omniscient 3rd person narrator, but limited omniscient to Jon, who’s the only character, which thoughts, reflections and considerations the reader gets an insight into. The reader only gets to know about Brian and Bertos characteristics through what the mind of Jon’s tell him. This makes the narrator less reliable, because the ready only gains information through a subjective point of view: through Jon. If the narrator is a 3rd person omniscient narrator not limited it would be way more reliable, because then the story is told through an objective point of view and when it isn’t, the narrator would draw the reader’s attention to it by saying for example: “Alex seemed strange, she thought”. In Yellow every description is told like an objective statement, for example:
“Jon’s instructor was an Italian called Berto who wore wrap-around sunglasses which remained motionless when he spoke. He has a high-pitched yipping laugh. “ (p. 1, ll. 8-9)

This is what Jon thinks about his instructor, but the way of seeing a person is always different from person to person – Jon’s description is therefore his opinion but doesn’t actually tell anything about Berto seen from an objective point of view. As mentioned that makes the narrator less reliable and as a reader you shouldn’t take what Jon says for granted. His descriptions are only telling something about how he perceives the world and that makes the narrative technique in this story very special considering other stories, which often make use of 3rd person omniscient narrator or 1st person omniscient limited narrator.

The language in the story is also unusual, because of the contrast between the elaborating and elegant descriptions with no lack of details and the very “down-to-earth” language and swearwords that Jon’s using. Two examples are:
Elaborating, very mild language: “The silences between them had multiplied, then lengthened into an empty continuum” (p. 2, ll. 54-55) and “He reported to the dicing school, a new construction of glass, marble and concrete. It contained a deep training pool with an elaborate tiled frieze of a scuba fiver on its bottom.” (p. 1, ll. 6-7)
Down-to-earth language and cursing: “What the fuck was he getting himself into this time?” (p. 1, ll. 13)
The author has probably chosen this kind of both complex and simple writing to maintain the curiosity of the reader and maybe to make to the reader wonder: “Why write that? Why is that important?” considering the elaborating, very detailed sentences. This way of writing is also very picturesque – especially the imagery creates pictures in the readers mind, for example: “Yellow as the desert sand” (p. 3, ll. 108)
On the other hand the authors may have chosen Jon’s cursing to emphasize Jon’s inner anxiety, anger and insecurity, and the contrast between the poetic, elaborating language and Jon’s cursing brings dynamics to the language and makes the story even more interesting to read.
Through whole the story there’s also a sort of “drinking”-metaphor. Jon’s life is a mess with a boring job, a girlfriend who’s leaving very soon and no family or friends with any importance. Through the story Jon anticipates that he’ll drown and in figurative sense this could be author’s way of telling, that Jon’s sinking deeper and deeper into his problems. That Jon drowns in the ocean could be a metaphor for him drowning in his own problems – he’s the only one bringing limitations to his life and the only one who’s ruining it for him. By his depressed, negative and impervious mood, he chooses his own misery and ends up dying from it.

In addition to the imagery the author also uses symbolism and contrasts in this story. At first there’s the title Yellow which is related to the word “coward”. Jon feels like a coward through the whole story and it can be discussed if he actually is or just ends up being a coward by killing himself. The internal conflict with his inner voices and his fear of water, which Jon’s struggling with is projected into his physical fight with the water. Hence his fight with the water symbolizes his internal conflict, which contains if he’s a coward or not. The conflict is solved when he dies from drowning, gets rid of the voices and surrender to nature.
Next you see a contrast between Egypt and London. Egypt is where Jon is and London is where he belongs – two different places with different cultures. Afterwards there’s a contrast between the desert and the ocean. Jon’s connected to the desert by the sentences: “Yellow as the desert sand” (p. 3, ll. 108) and
“Jon looked up from the blue water, past the buildings on the shoreline to the Desert Mountains. It wasn’t a bad sight, a good vista for his last day on earth” (p. 3, ll. 110-112)
There’s the obvious contrast between desert and ocean: the fact that one of them is very dry and the other is very wet, and because Jon’s afraid of water he of course prefers the desert. Besides that there’s the contrast in their symbolism:
With their wide open vistas without vegetation the desert symbolizes impersonal struggle and the harsh realities of survival. In spite of this the ocean symbolizes power, strength, hope, truth and life, because all life was ocean-born. The ocean is also known for being unpredictable and sometimes beautifully calm. It symbolizes purity and cleansing as well and besides that it’s also a place where you can leave your sadness and bad memories. Accordingly you can say that none of them belong with the other.
That leads me to say, that Jon (with his connection to the desert by being yellow as the desert sand) is a contrast to the ocean and thereby nature. From the ocean life raised, but from the barren desert nothing beautiful grows – the desert is huge, empty and barren in contrast to the lively, fertile and mystic ocean. That makes me say that in this story the ocean represents true nature while Jon represents mankind by being so afraid of not being able to conquer nature: “You could lose yourself in that, swallowed up and gone forever, a speck vanishing in the blue without sound or ripple. Buddhists talked of opening yourself up to emptiness – well, here it was next to him, but he didn’t want to commune with it, he wanted to keep it as far away as possible.” (p. 3, ll. 83-86)

In the beginning of the story Jon is horrified with the thought of dying and being commune with nature, but slowly he develops and reconciles with the thought: everybody is going to die at some point. Then he gets the idea, that if he just knew that he was going to die, he could relax and let go of his fear: ”At least if he knew he was going to drown he could resign himself, removing some of this stress, this tearing anxiety. After all, everyone died in the end. What different did it make when you went?” (p. 5, ll. 116-118).
Then a thought, which makes suicide easier, appears: that he has really nothing to lose. That shows here:
”The magazine would let him go soon. His writing would dwindle, disappear down to a dot and vanish, his girlfriend would have left long before and he’d cast off from the last of his friends and relatives”. (p.5, 119-121).
When he looks down at the reef, the ocean is a reflection of his mood, which is an overwhelming feeling of loneliness and emptiness. He understands that in the ocean fishes and divers has been absorbed into the emptiness for millions of years and finally he gets a feeling that death has been waiting for him: ”It had been here waiting while he slept, sodden, in his hotel room” (p. 5, ll. 126-127).
At last he decides to overcome his fear and get rid of the idea of himself being yellow. He gets angry and thinks that his suicide will show the world that he isn’t yellow. His dead is described with anger, and that leaves the reader with a sad mood and a bit desperate; why kill yourself and run away from all your problems, when that’s the only thing making you a coward? After all his calmness is also described and that emphasize that he finally has been communed with nature and accepted nature’s ability to rule mankind.

As a final addition to the symbolism in the story, I can say that “being yellow” isn’t only a way to say “being a coward”; the color yellow is for mourning in Egypt and actors of the Middle Ages wore yellow to signify the dead. That’s why it’s not a coincidence that the story takes place in Egypt. With that in mind it’s clear from the start, that this story contains the theme dead.

Apart from dead, other themes in the story are: meaning of life, the feeling of emptiness, the feeling of being not important to anyone, courage and fear, limitations to life and most importantly: suicide and nature vs. mankind.
Jon ends up committing suicide to show the surrounding world that he isn’t yellow, but maybe his suicide is actually what makes him a coward. Because running away from your problems doesn’t solve them and not solving your problems doesn’t make you a hero. Jon’s anxiety considering water, his fear of being a coward and his disgust to nature ends up making him commit suicide. He’s too afraid that nature (the water) will win, that he ends up letting it win by dying. Still he has accepted the fact that nature and dead will win at last, and therefore water and the unknown ocean doesn’t scares him anymore, it actually calms him down. This tells that nature is sublime, just like in the movie “Into the Wild” where a man’s hunting communion with nature and ends up succeeding by dying – this time not on purpose. Again this communion happens, when the protagonist’s accepting his problems in life, but in contrast to “Yellow”, “Into the Wild” describes dead as a positive, poetic thing, while death, communion with and surrender to nature in “Yellow” is described as something that saves you from your problems and in a bit negative mood. Another contrast is the intentions the two protagonists have – in “Into the Wild” the protagonist wants to be communed with nature, because he’s convinced that nature has something more beautiful to offer than the modern world. In “Yellow” the protagonist is all selfish and he only wants to be communed with nature to get rid of his problems and because he has given up hope about conquer nature. There can also be drawn perspectives to the poem “The Tables Turned” by William Wordsworth, because of the thing both “Yellow”, “Into the Wild” and this poem have in common: the elements of romantism, which express themselves by the focus on nature vs. mankind. In “The Tables Turned” William Wordsworth wants mankind to quit the books and get rid of all toil and trouble. With imperatives he describes nature as something we have forgotten to notice and with the sentences: “Let Nature be your Teacher” (ll. 16)
And “(...) bring with you a heart that watches and receives” (ll. 32), he lets the reader know that nature as a contrast to the modern world has to be discovered and that only nature can teach you about life. This is exactly what Jon is so afraid of – he is subject to the modern world, its media and its abundance of alcohol, but what nature wants is to commune with him and make him pervious to the beauty it contains. This doesn’t seem to succeed, because his only intention with dying is to show the surrounding world that he’s not a coward. Still the beauty of nature is clearly expressed by the way it frees him from his senseless life and his feeling of being a coward. Nature is dangerous but at the same time it can free you from a life you never wanted to live.

To sum up this short story is about Jon, a drunken middle-class writer who is sent to Egypt to write an article about scuba diving. Through a 3rd person omniscient limited narrator the reader gains information about how Jon perceives the world and through a language use filled with contrasts, imagery and symbolism the author maintains the curiosity of the reader. Jon goes through a development – at first he’s scared of water and feels an urge to conquer nature. Because of his both internal and external conflicts with inner voices and a girlfriend who is leaving soon, he decides to surrender to nature by committing suicide. With symbols of the word and the color Yellow the reader gains hints about the ending and the plot and the theme “nature vs. mankind” can be put in perspectives with the literary period “the romantic era” and by that with a film like “Into the Wild” and a poem like “The Tables Turned.” The fact that he ends up committing suicide because of his idea of himself being a coward, is very paradoxical, because the definition of a coward is a person, who’s running away from his problems and is afraid of everything. At the same time mankind has always wanted to control nature, but by his suicide and his surrender to nature Jon accepts what the rest of mankind can’t accept:
That nature is sublime and can never be tamed. Mankind will always be subject to nature even how hard they try to control and tame it. Nature will always win at last.

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[ 1 ]. Symbolism of the desert found on: www.ghostwords.com
[ 2 ]. Symbolism of the ocean found on: www.symbolism.wikia.com