Self-Awareness Limited

What struck me the most from the weird world of Sunset Limited is that no character seems capable of self-examination. Both characters are very adept at examining one another, even beginning to predict what the other's reaction will be to each of their propositions by the end of the piece. Yet for all their insight into the modus operandi and inner-machinations of the other man, each struggles to step outside of themselves and gain a complete view of what they actually are.

White is only able to examine himself as a function of the world around him. While this is a worthwhile effort to some extent, it sets White too far apart from the world outside and sets up a glass wall between White and the huddled masses who he watches from the air-conditioned room of his own feelings of superiority. This superiority extends even to White's feelings of suffering as he feels he is more justified in his desire for suicide than others who have taken the same route. .

Black, alternatively, only seems capable of seeing himself as a function of God or religion. While he is more capable of self-examination, he is more capable of being shaken out of what he sees himself to be. The identity that he clings to is not necessarily his own and is instead some form of “Reformed Black” that he disassociates from his criminal past. Even when Black tells the story of maiming the man in prison, he appears to take on an entirely different personality before coming back out of it afterward.

As an example of their lack of self-awareness, neither Black nor White even seem to know enough about themselves to know what they would do in any given hypothetical situation. Black knows only what God would want him to do and White knows only what he would be capable of doing and can name all of the decisions that he “might” make, but never states the one that he would choose to make.

White is tortured by the fact that he must go on living. Because of this, he surrounds himself with scholars and college students – those still not disillusioned with life – who make him more miserable about his own life.

Black chooses his own personal hell by living among others who refuse to actually live rather than squandering their lives. Because of this, he buries himself firmly in squalor and decay within his dying apartment complex filled with junkies and low-lives who he is determined to help in some way.

This doesn't make either man less of a person or less in any way than the other man. It just makes them both men, incapable of breaking the illusion by looking in the 9x magnification mirror that seems to be filled with unsightly blemishes.