Portnoy's Complaint

Alex’s descriptions of his relationship with The Monkey say more about his obsessive self-loathing than they do about her character. The novel is structured so that everything is seen from Alex’s perspective. He is an unreliable narrator in the sense that he is so obsessed with his own guilt and shame that he wishes to present himself in the best possible way. However, his own character prevents him from achieving this, and—through the novel’s subtext—he reveals his own flaws while criticizing others. Alex tries to win the silent Dr. Spielvogel’s support by telling him about The Monkey. His descriptions of The Monkey, however, reveal Alex to be a judgmental and pretentious hypocrite. He loves feeling like an intellectual and wants to be considered one, but he lacks the emotional intelligence needed to maintain a relationship, as shown by his constant dismissal of The Monkey’s intelligence. Alex has spent his life trying to measure up to his parents’ view of him as a young genius, and now he cannot empathize with The Monkey’s similar struggle to be considered intelligent. Likewise, he obsesses over her confession that—in a moment of confusion—she once accepted money for sex. Alex cannot stop thinking about this interaction, even though he later hires a sex worker. His hypocrisy allows him to dismiss others for behavior that mimics his own, while his arrogance makes him incapable of recognizing his own hypocrisy.

The Monkey and Alex take a trip to Vermont, allowing Alex to visit a place other than New York or New Jersey and engage with a new identity at the same time. The trip is taken with the expressed purpose of satisfying his sexual desires. However, he feels guilty about taking a vacation for such a self-serving purpose, so he books the room under a different name. Alex chooses to adopt the identity of Arnold Mandel, a former schoolmate who he considered to be particularly lewd. While at the hotel, Alex and The Monkey joke about being Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Mandel. In adopting this particular identity, Alex subconsciously considers himself to be acting in a depraved and sexualized manner, as though he is imitating the behavior of the same Arnold Mandel he complained about earlier. Alex does not particularly like or respect Mandel. On his vacation, however, he alleviates his guilt and shame surrounding sex by taking on the identity of someone who he associates with teenage sexuality and depravity.

A recurring motif throughout the novel is how Alex nicknames his lovers. These nicknames allow Alex to dehumanize his romantic partners. They do not have names or identities; instead, they are turned into commodified brand names, almost like he is selecting women from a supermarket shelf. The Pilgrim, The Monkey, and others are rarely referred to by their first names in Alex’s monologues. He does not want to remember their names because doing so establishes them as real people in his mind. Instead, they become products. They are non-Jewish women who he brings into his life to deal with his own anxieties regarding his ethnic identity. He searches for resolutions to his problems through these women without ever finding a satisfying solution. Alex is unable to realize that until he begins to engage with women as real people rather than commodified, fetishized objects of sexual desire, he will not resolve his anxieties.