Egocentrism and sexual relations in the Chaneysville incident The enormous and varied expanse of the Pennsylvania Turnpike branches between Philadelphia, the site of John's most advanced assimilation, and the his homeland, where in the darkness of Jack Crawley's cabin he is closest to his identity as a black man. Likewise, although he learns the ways of his race as a boy, he is the last branch of a family timeline that continues to thin out ethnically, a branch with an impossibly distant origin buried in obscurity. But the movement that takes John away from The Hill, away from Jack's cabin and his own identity, is no more the source of his tormented ambivalence than the family history that generated him. As the warring influences implicate him, so does the lingering love of Judith, a white woman of Southern ancestry on whom the reconciliation of his identity conflict rests. However, John rejects her for most of the novel and retreats further into the isolation of his obsession. John's attitude towards Judith highlights his ambivalence and, at times, seems disconcerting. However, the conflicting egos of men and women and the awkwardness of their attempted union are not foreign to literature or life in general, and are repeated in a narcissistic archetype. During his maddening search for the truth, John attacks influences that push him further and further away from himself, abandoning the alterations of time to understand his identity, which extends far beyond his birth. His energies and emotions are literally self-directed, internalized in a cold narcissism, which is inevitably doomed. The fragmentation of his identity is irreducible and similar to the self-directed libido that proves fatal both to Narcissus and to... means of paper ......h as is rationally possible. Although the ending of the novel is ambiguous and disturbing, it seems that John has completely abandoned his narcissism, effectively sacrificing a part of his primal identity, but achieving the more important goal of self-preservation, while burning away clues no longer needed. . Although ambiguous, the hypothesis that Giovanni is about to kill himself is illogical. Without a doubt he suffers a suicide of a different nature, killing his Narcissus and continuing to live with a rested conscience, directing his energy towards the future. Work cited and consulted Bradley, David. The Chaneysville Incident (1981) Rpt. New York: HR, Perennial Library Edition, 1990. Pavlic, Edward. "Syndetic Redemption: Above-Subterranean Emergence in David Bradley's The Chaneysville Incident." African American Review (Summer 1996), 30(2):166-167, 169, 181n10.