Robert Olen Butler's story "The Titanic Victim Speaks Through the Waterbed" is narrated by the ghost of a victim who died on the Titanic, whose spirit continues to haunt the waters where he dwelt. Heading from the ocean, to a cup of tea, and now to his current residence, a waterbed, the narrator describes his struggle through corporeal life. His fight for something real, something physical. Throughout the story, Butler uses the narrator's actions and emotions to portray the need for human interaction and a meaningful life. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Physical and emotional contact with others has always been an integral part of cognitive and emotional development. Our brains are cognitively wired to appreciate and desire human interaction. We long for it and without it we feel incomplete. This sort of “emptiness” is expressed repeatedly by the narrator throughout Butler's story, both in his physical and spiritual states. Not only does he make it clear that he has never had any deep human interaction beyond saying "hello" and "goodbye", but he also expresses great pain and regret over this fact, unable to move on from his afterlife due to the exorbitant amount of pain. To represent the narrator's lack of physical contact in his previous life, Butler uses both metaphors and personality traits. By using cigarette smoke to indicate some sort of barrier, Butler also gives us a hint of the narrator's utter disdain for the human body. He even goes so far as to observe: “The body has never been a very interesting thing to me. Except maybe to attract the heavy coil of smoke from my cigar. It takes body to smoke a good cigar” (4). This comment alone shows clear carelessness caused by years of a seemingly solitary lifestyle. Before leaving to investigate the reason for the ship's abrupt stop, the narrator states that he is reluctant to leave their company, although he has “said no more than two words to any of them, other than 'Good evening'” (4) . His antisocial and indifferent attitude speaks of a simple and independent man. However, we are quickly told that his indifference is not what it seems. When the narrator encounters a lone woman on the stairs, we see that her rejection of human interaction stems more from inexperience than carelessness. As the woman talks about their immediate fate, he feels a strong, unrecognizable need to comfort her, going so far as to wonder, “Is this a whirlwind through what was once my mind? A stirring of the water I'm held in? I tremble and suddenly I see it clearly: my desire to comfort her came from a stronger impulse than strictly duty would require” (7). From the outside it seems like he is simply overwhelmed by her and wants to be closer and closer to her during their final moments. However, if you look beneath the surface, a much deeper meaning can be revealed. Allan Weiss helps show this meaning in his essay “Cycles Within Cycles: Mini-Cycles in Robert Olen Butler's Fiction” when he writes: “[The narrator] swims both literally and figuratively into his past, and as the story progresses he still sees once how he missed out on so many opportunities for love and connection” (73). As he feels his final moments counting down, his reflection on his life proves insufficient, and his physical character actively seeks to fulfill that desire before his time on earth ends, while his spiritual characterreflects on many failed attempts. Upon first meeting this woman, his feelings begin to become even stronger. Now begin to describe in detail the feeling of being “empty.” With the phrase: “It was then that I knew for sure that he was right. I knew the ship would sink and I would die” (10), it is evident that he lost all hope not only in his physical being, but also in his spiritual life. Numb and dissatisfied, he can't stop thinking about the woman, wondering if she's okay, praying for her to live. After finding himself unable to relax in her room, the narrator sets out to find her once again. He emphasizes his concern to find her, the need for something familiar and physical. With each unfamiliar face, he becomes more and more stressed, especially when he realizes that he didn't even know his name. Reflecting on this, he comments, “That realization should have freed me from my search, but I have actually now become quite intense in finding it” (11). His desire for human interaction drags him out of his comfort zone and into the cold night in search of her, leaving him with thoughts and emotions he is completely unfamiliar with. As the night progresses and his death seems more and more imminent, the narrator strives to find emotional and physical contact in every way possible. An example of this is shown when he explains his wish that she only shared with him the understanding of their immediate danger. Keeping this information just between the two of them would provide some sort of intimacy, enough to keep him going in his final hours. Another example is seen when she gets up to fix his tie before getting into the lifeboat. “I braced myself for his touch,” he explains, describing himself as “breathless” (Butler 12). He longed for his touch, he longed for any act of closeness, yet he never initiated any kind of affection towards her. Some would say this is due to nervousness, but I argue that it has a deeper influence on his knowledge of relationships. The narrator simply didn't know how to behave on that level with another human being. He is not so much ignorant, but naive and innocent. Sheltered, barricaded from his smoke and himself for so long that being alone is all he has learned to know. Recognizing that “you must have understood what it means to live in a body,” you may even feel intimidated by your supposed ability and experience with human contact and relationships. And while he longs for that same experience, those few moments he shared with her were not enough to change the value of a life of confinement. Once the woman boards the lifeboat and is no longer within the narrator's reach, her feelings of being “empty” and “already dead” become more abundant and frequent. Even before death, she repeatedly talks about being dead.” I stood in front of her and my arms were dead, my hands could not move. My hands and arms were already dead, it seemed, they had already sunk into the depths of the sea, because they did not move” (Butler 12 years old). afterward, his spiritual body continues to feel this death and desolation, recognizing to this day what his physical being has lost and what his spiritual being can never have. Staring at the couple lying above him in the waterbed, he describes his sudden revelation. “Now I know what brought me to silent pain all my bodiless life. And now I know what it was that I interrupted with my cry… They knew to raise their hands and touch each other” (Butler 13). Losing his one and last chance to feel something, anything with another, it's as if a revelation has hit him. With this final statement, combined with the. 2013.