John O’Hara derived the title of his first novel from W. Somerset Maugham’s 1933 play Sheppey, which features Death glibly describing the fate of a man who had tried to elude her:

“I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

O’Hara chose the title based on his conviction that Maugham’s Samarra legend perfectly communicated the inevitability of his own protagonist’s demise (Bruccoli, 99). But while the damned man in Maugham’s work attempts to flee Death, O’Hara’s main character, Julian English, races recklessly toward it.

Julian’s perennial overindulgence, selfishness, and immaturity culminate in his own self-destruction three days after the Christmas Eve country club party at which he throws a drink in the face of Harry Reilly, the owner of Julian’s Cadillac agency and a man to whom Julian owes $20,000. The lengths to which Julian goes to poison his social existence before he finally poisons himself (with carbon monoxide) reinforce the novel’s reliance on naturalistic determinism with respect to the inevitability of Julian’s death.

But it also reflects O’Hara’s concerns about social conditions in America in the Great Depression, as it is Julian’s fear of ostracism—combined with his underlying desire to revolt against his community of socialites—that ultimately leads to his loss of control, and thus to the loss of his life.

Appointment in Samarra takes place in Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, a town O’Hara based on his own hometown of Pottsville. O’Hara’s disdain for Pottsville is well known, and we might assume that his decision to coat Gibbsville in snow is meant to convey the town’s icy nature.

The harsh weather certainly reinforces the notion that the book’s characters appear frozen in their existences, and there is a fitting irony in O’Hara’s choice to juxtapose the Christmas season—typically a time of year that engenders warmth between human beings—and the frigid air of a northeastern winter, which manifests itself both literally and in the town’s collective snobbery.

Indeed, Gibbsvillians, and in particular the residents of Lantenengo Street, are by and large a despicable lot. Beneath the town’s thin veneer of social respectability resides a gang of racketeers, such as Ed Charney, whose profound influence in Gibbsville the novel’s narrator makes clear early on:

The worst could happen to you [if you didn’t agree with Ed] was you would get held by a couple of the boys while a couple of others kicked you till they got tired kicking you, and then they would put a couple of slugs in you and that was that. (18)

Bootlegging constitutes Ed Charney’s principal interest in Gibbsville, and it is the townspeople’s dependence on him to provide the necessary alcoholic complements to their numerous social engagements at the Lantenengo Country Club that put them in his debt; this forms the basis of their social hypocrisy.

The Gibbsville elite turn a blind eye to the criminality permeating their town on the grounds that it enables societal standards to remain unencumbered.

The tension that exists between the townspeople’s investment in upholding social graces and Ed Charney’s clandestine business ventures lies at the heart of Julian English’s unfortunate decision to toss his highball into the face of Harry Reilly on Christmas Eve, 1930.

Clearly, Reilly is no angel. As the narrator explains, “the sheer force of the money everyone knew [Reilly] had” (12) had brought him a good deal of influence in Gibbsville. Julian both desires and disdains this influence, because of the pressures of putting on airs, and of knowing that, in the depression, his Cadillac agency (and thus his livelihood) would disappear were it not for Ed Charney, with whom he does a good business selling getaway cars (Bier, 139).

But what Julian fails to see is that, as the agency’s part owner, Reilly, too, is beholden to the mob. While Reilly may be a wealthy socialite, the novel does not suggest that his financial dealings put him in league with the likes of Ed Charney.

Julian, on the other hand, is in fact very well acquainted with Charney, and he typically benefits from Charney’s charity when others in Gibbsville remain at his mercy. Thus, Julian’s weakness lies in his inability to recognize his own hypocrisy, and therefore he remains torn between his desire to acquire greater social power and respectability, and his desire to rebel against Lantenengo Street in its entirety.

Julian locates in Harry Reilly the center of his frustration, for if he were more like Reilly (Julian thinks, but will not admit), he would have power and not simply covet it. Throwing his drink in Reilly’s face constitutes a monumental error in judgment, especially considering that Reilly had recently lent Julian $20,000 ($10,000 of which Julian simply squandered).

But Julian’s foolishness does not surpass recoverability. That Julian overreads the severity of his situation, however, plays into the naturalistic determinism that ultimately sends him into a tailspin.

It is perhaps Julian’s sense of his own failure to disentangle himself from the egocentrism of his social wants that propels him toward suicide—that, and the fact that hereditary factors have already sealed his fate.

Julian’s grandfather George English had, like himself, gotten into trouble over money, and also like Julian, his grandfather had committed suicide. Considering that Julian’s father, William Dilworth English, amounts to little more than “a dismal if avid surgeon,” it seems clear that “all told, a family incompetence” exists among the Englishes (Bier, 141).

The naturalism at work in O’Hara’s novel is such that the circumstances that Julian’s misdirected act sets in motion conform to the terms of his destiny. Within the logic of O’Hara’s tale, Julian is meant to die by his own hand, and as a result of his own incompetence.

But as an indictment of the American moneyed class, Julian’s death does more than simply fulfill the expectations of O’Hara’s naturalism. Appointment in Samarra depicts post–World War America as a land destined for tragedy, as the novel’s sordid array of self-serving socialites and racketeers ensure the production of more men like Julian English.

Analysis of John O’Hara’s Graven Image

Sources
Bier, Jesse. “O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra: His First and Only Real Novel.” In Critical Essays on John O’Hara, edited by Philip B. Eppard, 137–144. New York: G. K. Hall, 1994.
Bruccoli, Matthew J. The O’Hara Concern: A Biography of John O’Hara. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995.
O’Hara, John. Appointment in Samarra. 1934. Introduction by John Updike. New York: Vintage, 2003.

Categories: Literature, Novel Analysis

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