During occasions of this kind of action, not only will character be at stake, mutual fatefulness will prevail in this regard. Each person will be at least incidentally concerned with establishing evidence of strong character, and conditions will be such as to allow this only at the expense of the character of the other participants. The very field that the one uses to express character may be the other’s character expression. And at times the primary properties at play may themselves be openly made a convenience, pointedly serving merely as an occasion for doing battle by and for character. A character contest results; a special kind of moral game.
These engagements occur, of course, in games and sports where opponents are balanced and marginal effort is required to win. But character contests are also found under conditions less obviously designed for contesting, subjecting us all to a stream of little losses and gains. Every day in many ways we can try to score points, and every day in many ways we can be shot down. (Perhaps a slight residue remains from each of these trials, so that the moment one individual approaches another, his manner and face may betray the consequences that have been usual for him, and subtly set the interaction off on a course that develops and terminates as it always seems to do for him.) Bargaining, threatening, promising—whether in commerce, diplomacy, warfare, card games, or personal relations-allow a contestant to pit his capacity for dissembling intentions and resources against the other’s capacity to rile or cajole the secretive into readability. Whenever individuals ask for or give excuses, proffer or receive compliments, slight another or are slighted, a contest of self-control can result. Similarly, the tacit little flirtations occurring between friends and between strangers produce a contest of unavailability—if usually nothing more than this. And when banter occurs or “remarks” are exchanged, someone will have out-poised another. The territories of the self have boundaries that cannot be literally patrolled. Instead, border disputes are sought out and indulged in (often with glee) as a means of establishing where one’s boundaries are. And these disputes are character contests.
If the significance of character contests is to be appre-ciated, however, we must turn from games and skirmishes to constitutive features of social life. We must examine the investment an individual is obliged to make in legitimate expectations that happen to be his own, especially informal ones, and the means available in society for establishing authority, invidious position, dominance, and rank. In the interplay of righteousness and ranking, a code is to be found that cuts to the center of the self and is worth attempting to formulate ideally.
When two persons are mutually present, the conduct of each can be read for the conception it expresses concerning himself and the other. Co-present behavior thus becomes mutual treatment. But mutual treatment itself tends to become socially legitimated, so that every act, whether substantive or ceremonial, becomes the obligation of the actor and the expectation of the other. Each of the two participants is transformed into a field in which the other necessarily practices good or bad conduct. Moreover, each will not only desire to receive his due, but find that he is obliged to exact it, obliged to police the interaction to make sure that justice is done him.
When a contest occurs over whose treatment of the other is to prevail, each individual is engaged in providing evidence to establish a definition of himself at the expense of what can remain for the other. And this dispute will embarrass not only the desire for a satisfactory place in the definitions that prevail, but also the right to be given such a place and the duty to insist thereon. A “matter of principle” is involved, that is, a rule whose sanctity derives not only from the actual conduct that is guided by it, but also from its symbolic implication as one of a whole set of rules, the system itself being in jeopardy.125 Insisting on a desirable place is thus covered and strengthened by insisting on one’s rightful place, and this is further hardened by the obligation to do so, lest the whole pattern of rules deteriorate. Honor can thus be engaged, namely, that aspect of personal make-up that causes the individual duti-fully to enjoin a character contest when his rights have been violated—a course he must follow in the very degree that its likely costs appear to be high.126
The game typically starts with one player offending against a moral rule, the particular application of which the other player is pledged to maintain personally, usually because he or those he identifies with are the targets of the offense. This is the “provocation.” In the case of minor infractions, the offender is likely to offer an immediate apology, which restores both the rule and the honor of the offended; the offended need only convey acceptance to abort the whole game—in fact, he may apologize himself at the same time, or accept apology before it is offered, demonstrating again the great concern of persons to stay out of this kind of action. (An important structural issue here is that it is easier to proffer an excuse and apology in one’s capacity as guardian of the other’s rights, when this is self-initiated, than it is to accept an affront in one’s capacity as protector of one’s own sanctity.) A similar termination of the game occurs when the offended conveys a mild challenge (enough to show he is not without honor), drawing the offender’s attention to what has happened, which is followed by a sequence of apology and acceptance. “Satisfaction” is asked for and given, and little character is generated, although each party can once again affirm that he is a properly socialized person with proper piety regarding the rules of the game. Even, however, where the offense is uncommon and deep, serious consequences can be avoided. The offended person can openly express his feeling that the offender is not the sort of person whose acts need be taken seriously;127 the offender, on being challenged, can back down with wit, so that while one part of him becomes defamed, it is another part of him that is doing the defaming—and doing it so well as to undercut the challenger’s claim of having self-restorative work to do.
Since a challenge can be communicated and declined with the slightest of cues, one finds here a general mechanism of interpersonal social control. An individual who has moved slightly out of line is reminded of the direction he is taking and its consequences before any serious damage has been done. The same mechanism seems to be employed in the establishment of a pecking order regarding various kinds of rights.
If the contest is to begin in earnest, the challenge conveyed by the offended must be serious, and the other player must pointedly decline to give satisfaction. When both of these responses are present they together transform retrospectively the meaning of the initial offense, reconstituting it into the beginning of what is sometimes called a “run-in.” This is always a two-party affair, unlike an “incident,” which may centrally involve only one person. Moral combat results, with properties of character brought into play as something to be lost and gained.128 Run-ins involve the victim himself in all the phases of the sanctioning process. In this court, the plaintiff must act as judge and executioner. As is characteristic of action in general, the unaided individual is here the efficacious unit of organization.
It should be apparent that the meaning of these various moves derives in part from the orientation the player brings to them and the readings he retrospectively makes of them.129 Therefore there will be leeway in defining the situation, and a certain degree of mutual consent will be required before a full-fledged run-in can occur.
In today’s world, when a run-in does happen, a character contest is likely to follow immediately, if indeed it is to occur. In myth and ritual, however, the parties often withdraw to meet again at a designated place, voluntarily keeping an appointment with fate, of both the corporeal and the characterological kind. In either case, bystanders are necessary and always must carefully refrain from interfering. (This ensures that the contest will be reputed as “fair,” a valid scene for the play of character.)
When the run-in has occurred and the contest begun, the characterological implications of the play can unfold in different ways, and not necessarily with “zero-sum” restrictions.
One party can suffer a clear-cu
t defeat on the basis of properties of character: he proves to have been bluffing all along and is not really prepared to carry out his threatened deed; or he loses his nerve, turns tail and runs, leaving his opponent in the comfortable position of not having to demonstrate how seriously he was prepared to carry through with the contest; or he collapses as an opponent, abases himself and pleads for mercy, destroying his own status as a person of character on the tacit assumption that he will then be unworthy as an opponent and no longer qualify as a target of attack.
Both parties can emerge with honor and good character affirmed—an outcome carefully achieved, apparently, in most formal duels of honor, a considerable achievement since injury was also usually avoided.
And presumably both parties can lose, just as one party may lose while the other gains little. Thus, that ideal character contest, the “chicken run,” may end with both vehicles swerving, neither vehicle swerving, or one swerving so early as to bring great dishonor to its driver but no particular credit to the opponent.130
Obviously, the characterological outcome of the contest is quite independent of what might be seen as the “mani-fest” result of the fray. An overmatched player can gamely give everything he has to his hopeless situation and then go down bravely, or proudly, or insolently, or gracefully, or with an ironic smile on his Hps.131 A criminal suspect can keep his cool in the face of elaborate techniques employed by teams of police interrogators, and later receive a guilty sentence from the judge without flinching. Further, a well-matched player can grimly suffer while his opponent stoops to dishonorable but decisive techniques, in which case a duel is lost but character is won. Similarly, an individual who pits himself against a weak opponent may acquire the character of a bully through the very act of winning the match. And a bully who ties is lost indeed, as this news story from Fresno, California illustrates:
A barmaid and a bandit played a game of “chicken” with loaded pistols early yesterday and, although no shots were fired, the barmaid won.
The action took place at The Bit, a proletarian beer and wine oasis on the southern fringe of town, where lovely Joan O’Higgins was on duty behind the bar.
Suddenly a towering bandit walked into the estab-lishment, ordered a beer, flashed a small pistol and commanded Miss O’Higgins to clean out the cash register.
The barmaid placed $11 on the bar, an amount that failed to satisfy the bandit, whose height was estimated at six feet five.
“Give me the rest,” he demanded.
Barmaid O’Higgins reached into a drawer for the main money bag and the .22 caliber pistol beneath it.
She pointed the gun at the man and asked:
“Now, what do you want to do?”
The bandit, realizing that he had met his match in The Bit, blinked at the sight of the gun and left, leaving his beer and the $11 behind.132
Just as a move is subject to interpretation, so a char-acterological outcome may be differently read by different participants. In negotiations between nations, for example, no unambiguous criteria may emerge for agreeing as to who won and who lost.133 Scoring in some cases may be so flexible that each side can maintain its own view of the final outcome. Thus, some fights between rival street gangs end with both teams feeling that they won.134 This sort of conceit is facilitated by a variable intermix of concern for the physical or manifest outcome, allowing one team to stress score in primary attributes, the other in properties of character.
The cowboy of slap-leather duel is especially instructive in pointing out the cooperativeness and regard for rules that are required on the part of all participants if the game is to be successful in generating and jeopardizing character, that is, bringing character into play. Both parties must take the game seriously; both, as suggested, must make themselves available, voluntarily giving themselves up to the game. During the combat that results, the hero, should he find himself with an easy advantage, must disdainfully give it up, restricting himself to a means of having it out that will leave the villain with no way of dodging the expressions of character that result. And the hero, upon winning a challenge or a duel, can at that very moment turn his back on his opponent, knowing that superiority once established will not be immediately re-challenged, and that in any case constant care is not dignified.135
Given these suggestions about the dynamics of the char-acter game, let us go on to consider briefly some of the implications.
He who would avoid fateful events must avoid run-ins or wriggle safely out of ones that have not been avoided—whether he be the offender or offended. Almost everyone does such wriggling, although the Kaiser’s officers are said to have barely done so. Even Casanova who, according to his own account, was a formidable swordsman and gentleman of much character, admits to such avoidance, commenting on such during an occasion when honor had just forced him into a duel with a stranger:
We had a pleasant supper and talked cheerfully together without a word being said about the duel, with the exception that an English lady said, I forget in what connection, that a man of honour should never risk sitting down to dinner at a hotel unless he felt inclined, if necessary, to fight. The remark was very true at the time, when one had to draw a sword for an idle word and expose oneself to the consequences of a duel or else be pointed at, even by the ladies, with the finger of scorn.136
Another implication follows from the first. It has to do with “contest contests.” The individual’s tendency to avoid occasions when character is in jeopardy exposes him to being forced by someone else into a contest over whether or not there will be a contest. The aggressor, knowing that his victim is likely to seek almost any means to avoid a show-down, can force him to face up to a display of this weakness before witnesses, while the aggressor displays his own bravery.
The aggressor in a contest contest can begin either by committing an offense that the other can scarcely overlook, or by responding to a minor or even microscopic offense in a way that draws the near-innocent offender into a fray.137 If the victim still declines to join battle, the aggressor may goad him with increasingly unpalatable acts, in an apparent effort either to find his ignition point or to demonstrate that he doesn’t have one. We speak here of “baiting,” “ranking,” “sounding,” or “getting a rise”; when the aggressor is a subordinate, we speak of “inso-lence.” It should be repeated that although this sort of aggression may not be common, at least in middle-class daily life, nonetheless, all face-to-face contacts between individuals are ordered by a multitude of anticipated signs of mutual respect, which ordering can easily be transformed by an aggressor into a perilous field of fateful interpersonal action. For example, everywhere the individual goes he implants a tacit demand that the others present will respectfully keep their eyes, their voices, and their bodies away from the circle immediately around him. Everywhere these territorial courtesies are sustained automatically and unthinkingly; yet everywhere they provide ample means at hand by which an aggressor (through the pointed, unhurried failure to accord these considerations) can test the individual’s honor. Similarly, strangers in public places are bound together by certain minimal obligations of mutual aid, establishing the right, for example, to ask the time or directions, or even to request a cigarette or small coin. In granting such a plea, the individual may find that his entire package of cigarettes is calmly taken or all the change in his hand while his eye is held by the aggressor so that the affront is anchored in mutually recognized mutual awareness. Pushcart operators in slum streets may find a piece of fruit being taken in the same insolent manner.138
The mutual accommodation that orders human traffic can thus be seen to render vulnerable those who take it for granted. I would like to cite at length a novelistic illustration provided by William Sansom. The scene is a London drinking “club.” The hero, and narrator, who plays the piano at the club, is suddenly addressed:
“As a voice above me says: ‘Ain’t you gonna play s’more fellah?’
It is a young man I have never seen before, a
boy almost too young to be in a bar. His head sags like a pale knob of bone on a neck too thin to hold it. He wears exaggerated clothes, and a special sort of hair-dress like a hedgehog’s. He bunches his shoulders up to make them bigger. His eyes are dull as dead fish-scales. He grits his mouth thin as if he wants to be sick.
Tn a moment,’ I tell him. His tone has been really insolent, but one dismisses a lot as youth.
‘Not too long then, fellah/ he says, still fixing me with his fishy dead eyes.
Behind him then, I started to see a kind of twin-but he was only another youth in the same cut of clothes. And then I saw that there were six or seven others standing at the bar or lounging legs stretched out from the tables. I caught Belle’s [the proprietress] eye and she gave me a hopeless shrug across the room—as if this sudden phenomenon was beyond her.
‘My,’ I said to Marie, ignoring the young man, who still stood there, looking down at me, ‘we’ve got company tonight.’
‘You have’ said the boy sadly, ‘you certainly have, and he walked away, at a conscious stiff-legged strolling pace, to the bar. There he said something to the others, and they all looked my way and shook their heads—again, sadly, as if I were in a very bad way indeed. . . .
We watched them for a moment. Every glance and gesture was carefully aggressive. They stuck out their legs so that Andrew carrying a tray of drinks had to circle round to save tripping—and watched him silently as he did so. One leaned over and took a tray of chips off someone else’s table—unsmiling, pointedly unapologetic. Another at the bar began flipping olive stones at the bottles. Belle told him to stop. He apologized with an exaggerated bow and flipped another stone straight away.
Tor God’s sake play something/ said Belle.
I got up. It had been a mistake to talk about them so openly. They knew they were being discussed, and now, as I went to the piano, saw that their orders had been obeyed. You could almost feel them spreading themselves. So I began to play the dimity notes of Humoresque to put them back a little.
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