This article was prompted by the reading of Carolyn Handa's analysis of Conrad Aiken's "Impulse" in Studies In Short Fiction [see excerpt above]. As I see it, Miss Handa interprets this story in a manner diametrically opposed to the spirit and the form of its conception. She describes "Impulse" as a "tale of a man defeated by exposing his inherently criminal nature"; civilized and uncivilized elements in the story are juxtaposed and Michael Lowes, the protagonist is criminally arraigned as uncivilized. Michael's act of stealing is, according to Miss Handa, illustrative of "man's anti-social tendencies" and that it is Aiken's purpose in this story to show mankind as "criminal ex-post facto". The structure is described in terms of an inverted "V" in which Michael, after a faint upward swing of illusion, falls to ignominy and defeat. I find that Miss Handa's discussion of rather peripheral symbolism such as the inverted "V", the bridge game and the act of shaving lead us into an analysis which moves away from the central concerns of the story; these concerns in fact call upon the reader to make an almost total identification with Michael Lowes, a character whom Miss Handa would make the villain of the piece. I will illustrate Aiken's "calculated artistry" in terms of point of view, characterization and biblical allusion, all of which serve in "Impulse" to exonerate rather than condemn the protagonist.

The point of view in "Impulse" makes a very clear call for sympathy with Michael Lowes. The technique of third person limited omniscience allows the events of the story to be seen almost entirely through the prism of Michael's thought—with surprisingly little ironic intrusion, explicit or implied, on the part of the omniscient narrator. No moral condemnation of any kind is made by the narrator. The reader's insight into Michael's mind reveals a bored little man in a lonely and hideously alien world who seeks cheap palliatives for his condition. Michael himself is seen to evince a considerable degree of self-knowledge as to the realities of his situation…. His repeated choice … of words like "little" and "real" suggests that he understands his motives [for stealing] quite clearly. In fine, point of view, whether in the reporting of thought process or in the exercise of the narrator's privilege of comment, consistently refuses to apportion any criticism to Michael's behaviour.

A vital complement to the psychological realism embodied in the third person (central) limited omniscient point of view is the use of peripheral characterization to underscore questions of theme. Such characterization in "Impulse" delineates a world in which self-knowing neer-do-wells such as Michael Lowes are decidedly preferable to any of the time-serving or establishment figures who betray and outlaw him. Without exception, there is no character in the story who is in any sense "reliable," who would suggest in terms of the fictional world created, a valid criticism of Michael. (p. 108)

But the most persuasive signposting of all … is found in the central, expanding allusion in the story to the myth of Eden…. This pattern of allusion is first made evident in the course of the card game which precedes the theft. The conversation during the game and Michael's thoughts are punctuated throughout with a connotatively precise group of words: "impulse," "temptation," "stealing," "caught, by God," "opening … eyes wide," "Christ," "hell," "yield," "fascinating," "thrills."… Likewise there are four references in the conversation of the card players to woman's temptation of man. Michael's theft of a "snakeskin box," "a delicious object" which contains a "gold razor" is a clear reference to the theft of Eve …, and his attempts to escape from the detective recall those of Adam and Eve as they hid amongst the trees of Eden. The pre-lapsarian world of Michael appears to have the beauty and the blessing of God: "The lights on the snow were very beautiful. The Park Street Church was ringing, with its queer, soft quarterbells, the half-hour."… His exit in the custody of the detective, after the theft, is described in very different terms. What we have here is a parody of the exit from Eden: "… he was firmly conducted through a back door into a dark alley at the rear of the store. It had stopped snowing. A cold wind was blowing. But the world which looked so beautiful fifteen minutes before, had now lost its charm. They walked together down the alley in six inches of powdery snow, the detective holding Michael's arm with affectionate firmness."… Michael's direct appeals to God and the God-like lieutenant at the police station "writing slowly in a book" serve to expand the allusion further. (p. 109)

The quiet close of this story of maturation takes the form of an epiphany in which Michael Lowes realizes clearly that his past life, which had been composed of "trivial and infinitely charming little episodes,"… had come to an end. Michael will or will not change but he is now a wiser man. But the central theme of this story is concerned with the frightening tedium of the human condition which can be relieved only by an occasional act of "impulse" made for "kicks"—as that Americanism puts it. Often the richness of allusion allows a literary work to make a comment on the source of the borrowing. Aiken says, perhaps, that God overacted in dooming the inhabitants of Eden to expulsion, just as society overacts in this story by betraying Lowes for a very ordinary piece of human behaviour. Aiken implies that the reader should not commit the same act of betrayal for Lowes is a mirror of our own being. "What would be more human," asks Michael as he begins to see himself as a "Columbus of the moral world."… Impulse is a momentary circumvention of the stabilizing Ego, a hubristic refusal to accept the dictates of "a cockeyed world" … of boredom and routine, the disciplines of life's Eden. Lowes "remembers his mother always saying, 'Michael, you must learn to be orderly.'" The First Sin was and still is the Sin of all mankind; the extended biblical allusion of this story and the clear functional thrust of point of view and characterization persuade us that indeed "impulse" is a "universal human inclination." (p. 110)