Being There

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1970

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-5

Chapters 6-7

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

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Themes

Television and Appearance Versus Reality

The tension in Being There springs from the difference between how things and people appear and the reality beneath the surface. Chance’s entire personality consists of his love of gardening and television. People fail to recognize his limitations because he can mimic proper social behavior and looks similar to those around him—he is white and wealthy. He looks like a member of the elite, despite obvious clues that he is not.

Kosiński uses Chance to satirize the ruling class. Their desire to elevate Chance to celebrity status and accept him as one of their own creates the comedic situations and misunderstandings in the narrative. They choose not to look below the surface; like Chance, they prefer the curated images of television to the complexities of real people. The difference between Chance and the other characters is that Chance lacks the ability to connect with people beyond a surface level, while the others choose not to. They interact with each other on the same shallow level with which they interact with Chance, using political and economic jargon to replace meaningful interaction.

Privately, there is more authenticity than in the public realm. Rand and EE genuinely care for each other and for Chance. Their misunderstandings with Chance stem from a desire to connect with rather than to commodify him. Despite their sincerity, they fail, like the others, to look beneath Chance’s exterior. One wonders if, had they known the whole story, they would have been as charitable toward him. Kosiński’s implication is that given their love of status and appearances, they would not accept Chance on his own terms.

Television mediates social interactions, the novella’s overarching metaphor. Chance has internalized the act of watching television as the pinnacle of intimacy and connection. In the narrative’s world, television creates truth because society is obsessed with the marketable image. Politics and the economy are presented as simulacra, amalgamations of words and images that represent truth. For instance, in the novella the economy is doing badly. Rand and the President interpret Chance’s remarks to suggest that the economy is recovering. The President repeats those remarks on TV, Chance repeats them in his television interview, the papers repeat them, and soon it becomes an accepted fact that the economy is recovering without anything having actually changed.

Early in the novella, Chance notes the dual nature of identity: “He knew that a man’s name had an important connection with his life. That was why people on TV always had two names—their own, outside of TV, and the one they adopted each time they performed” (16). Chance is aware that actors have a life and identity “outside of TV” and that their appearance on TV is a performance. When EE christens him “Chauncey Gardiner,” Chance implicitly understands that as his “TV” name and performs appropriately. It is natural to adopt a more curated or professional persona for public interactions, but Kosiński takes this concept to the extreme, signifying that in a world dominated by television, appearance becomes reality, and reality itself is meaningless.

Polish Literary Context and the Naïve Protagonist

Kosiński was a Polish author who, despite residing in the United States and writing only in English, set most of his novels in Poland. In an article, Barbara J. Tepa discusses the Polish literary models for the novella (Tepa, Barbara J. “Jerzy Kosiński’s Polish Contexts: A Study of Being There.” 1977. The Polish Review 22, no. 2.). These models feature protagonists who, like Chance, are naïve to the workings of the world and find themselves accidentally thrust into events beyond their capabilities.

The earliest model Tepa cites is the titular character from the 1880 story “Michałko” by Bolesław Prus. Michałko is “strong, hardworking, and […] naïve” (53). He saves a man from being crushed by a falling wall at a construction site. Instead of receiving the onlookers’ praise, he disappears into the crowd, unaware of the concept of heroism. In Jozef Wittlin’s 1935 novel The Salt of the Earth, a man named Piotr Niewiadomsky (which translates to “Peter Unknown”) is drafted into military service during World War I. Piotr, who is from a village in the mountains, has no education or political beliefs and cannot understand the concept of war and why he is being made to shoot at people who are just like him and have done him no harm (54).

The strongest literary model Tepa describes is Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz’s 1932 novel The Career of Nicodemus Dyzmy. Nicodemus is a small-town postal clerk who goes to Warsaw looking for work. He stumbles upon a reception at the prime minister’s palace, where he delights the crowd of distinguished guests. They assume he is an important and powerful man because he stands up to a feared dignitary. A wealthy old man takes him in and, and assuming Nicodemus has many government contacts, enlists him in some “shady dealings” (56). Like Chance, Nicodemus skyrockets to fame and becomes a candidate for political office. The key difference between the characters is that “Chance is oblivious to seeking fame, while Dyzma is a deliberate and conscious opportunist” (56).

In Polish literature, the naïve hero is used to satirize society’s flaws. Thrusting a character into society who is ignorant of social norms and lacks the ability to assimilate reveals those norms as morally corrupt. These heroes emerge as unintentional philosophers, their simple statements expressing more truth than those of the sophisticated people around them. Chance unmistakably falls into this category. Kosiński draws upon his Polish models to frame his critique of American society.

The Phenomenology of Documentation Versus Lived Experience

Chance lacks documentation of his identity. The Old Man’s lawyers make a circular argument: They try to verify Chance’s existence through documented evidence, while Chance tries to affirm his existence by describing his lived experience in the household. The lawyers do not take his word as sufficient evidence of his legal residence in the house. They cannot even determine who he is, let alone whether or not he belongs there.

Chance’s lack of documented identity takes on philosophical connotations. A school of thought called phenomenology states that consciousness and experience are the basis for all meaning, rather than “being” or meaning having an essence beyond lived experience. Chance bases his identity on his actions as a gardener. He does not have the capacity for abstract thought; meaning for him is grounded only in that which he has directly experienced.

Chance’s experience also comes from television. He has secondhand experience of the world outside the garden. He has not experienced it directly and can only mimic it, rather than internalize it organically. For Chance, gardening has meaning, but television does not. Television is entertaining and useful; it creates a model of behavior that Chance can emulate. However, it does not create meaning for him, as he can never directly experience the events that it portrays.

Like papers providing proof of identity, television is a form of documentation. Kosiński argues that a society more concerned with documented evidence than experienced truth risks becoming detached from real meaning. In the novella’s satirical world, Chance’s television-derived faux-experience becomes a positive attribute while his lived experience as a gardener—which is more meaningful to him—is completely dismissed.