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Sean E Simons
Intro Critical Reading
11 November 2010
Relationships in “Midair”
Relationships play a pivotal role in Frank Conroy’s, “Midair,” each
relationship contributing to the idea and feeling of loneliness. Conroy's
manipulation of the preconceived notions readers may have about relationships
allows the story to progress in an original and thought provoking way. While on
the surface, Sean's relationship with his children seems to mimic his relationship
with his father, the two relationships develop in entirely different ways—though
they draw the same conclusion. Sean’s relationships reveal his detachment from
others, and his desire to remedy this detachment by creating relationships.
Conroy displays this desire through the relationships of Sean and his father,
Sean and his first wife, and the relationship of Sean and Judy. Just as Sean
desires a concrete relationship, an absolute feeling of belonging and
companionship, he loses interest and desire for maintaining the feeling of
companionship. Conroy’s message focuses on the need for and development of
relationships, which Sean is unfortunately unsuccessful at.
The relationship between Sean and his father serves as more than an
introduction to Sean’s life. It is the basis of his mentality towards and
relationships. Though Sean’s father is just that—his father—there is no
connection beyond the word, no meaning, and no feeling from Sean towards him.
When Mary refers to their father as ‘daddy’, “Sean is uneasy with her use of the
word ‘Daddy.’ [As] it is not part of their domestic vocabulary” (133). This
response to the way Mary refers to their father shows how Sean is weary of
Sean E Simons
Intro Critical Reading
11 November 2010
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sudden emotional attachment. Making their father, ‘daddy’, is not just a change in
terminology, it represents a connection that Sean appears to not be aware of,
and not be in want of. It is suggested, though, that Sean feels some sort of
attachment to his father when “he finds his father’s belt and hangs on with both
fists,” as his father holds him to his side while the doctors fill the room (138).
Though Sean grabs the loops out of fear of falling—to the street, to the cracks in
the sidewalk—it is a connection he makes willingly, rather than flailing or
screaming, he simply grabs his father in a natural way that suggests he feels
connected, and more importantly, safe.
When Sean begins to search for a wife, “convinced that if he doesn’t find
someone before he [graduated from college], he [would] have missed his chance
for all time” (139). His desire to marry stemmed from necessity, rather than
actual emotion. Sean does not possess any emotion or connection to others
unless it is out of necessity. His pursuit of marriage is out of fear, as “the idea of
living alone terrifies him, although he is not aware that it terrifies him” (139).
Sean’s lack of awareness of his own emotions reveals another aspect of his
relationships, that they are not emotional—perhaps that they only serve to satisfy
his self-serving desires. If Sean marries out of necessity, why not love out of
necessity? His marriage with his first wife is a reflection of his past, though
Conroy writes that, “[Sean] lives as if he does not have a past,” and foreshadows
any and all of his future relationships (139). Even the way they are married
suggests a nonchalant attitude towards relationships and love in general. As
Sean E Simons
Intro Critical Reading
11 November 2010
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Sean approaches marriage, life, and relationships with an attitude of
carelessness, he maintains the same state of mind he possessed as a child, as
the child who had no ‘daddy’, just a father. His boyish state of mind reflects an
incomplete childhood, as though he has yet to mature due to his lacking of a real
dad, of a parental presence. Though his mother is mentioned, the readers do not
encounter her other than hearing of her, contributing to the broken childhood,
and the undeveloped man. It is his marriage that holds him in boyhood and
seclusion, the couple “[living] together in good will, oddly sealed off from one
another, and from the world” (139).
This seclusion from the world is more than just a physical seclusion; it is a
complete separation of Sean from everything outside of himself. It is important to
distinguish the difference between being an introvert and being unaware of the
outside world—and Sean is of the latter. He is not unsocial, or blind to the
importance of having relationships, he is only unable to maintain them. Sean is
aware that he needs to change, that his relationships have been unfruitful, and
though Sean is “frightened of the outside,” he is aware that going outside is the
only way “strength can be found, [and] in some vague, inchoate way, he knows
he needs strength” (140). How Sean will gain strength is unknown, but his
realization that he needs strength is a step towards realizing the importance of
relationships and emotions—feeling in general. The relationship between Sean
and Judy reflects his search for strength, and his achievement of an emotional
connection. Though his meeting of Judy prompted lust more than anything else,
Sean E Simons
Intro Critical Reading
11 November 2010
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Conroy reveals to us that even though Judy “eventually [disappears] into medical
school,” she never disappeared “from his memory” (140). The bond that ensued
from his initial lust for her was one of emotion. Sean felt for her, desired her
beyond lust.
When Sean is approaching Judy’s house, her room, Conroy expresses
that Sean did “not question the urge,” to enter Judy’s room, “he has to go in”
(140). The urge to be in the same space that Judy usually occupied portrays a
connected, bonded, and emotional Sean. His desire reaches a point that he
pursues every possible entrance to her room, eventually choosing to climb the
roof and follow a scene from his past that he cannot remember. This link to his
past further enforces the idea of connection, of belonging to something Sean is
unaware he desires. Furthermore, Sean is becoming a reflection of his father—
fueled by different motives. Just as Sean’s father was a victim of insanity, Sean is
a victim of alcohol. His appearance at Judy’s apartment stems from his getting
“drunk at a jazz club” (140). Conroy seems to be suggesting that Sean and his
father cannot understand the importance and necessity of relationships unless
they are under the influence of something they have no control over. Arguably,
Sean has control over whether or not he will become intoxicated, but his actions
after his inebriation are more revealing and spontaneous than they would
normally be—making his realization and pursuit of a relationship either a
spontaneous drunken endeavor, or more likely, a subconscious desire
permeating through his drunkenness. Suddenly Sean is not the dispossessed
Sean E Simons
Intro Critical Reading
11 November 2010
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man he has been seen as—he is a lonely man, desperate for a connection
beyond what he has known.
Sean’s relationships have all resulted in the same feeling, an urge for
more. With his father, Sean realized the importance of a word; identifying this
man as his ‘daddy’ was more than Sean was capable of. Though he does not
remember his encounter with his father until the end of Conroy’s story, it imparts
an everlasting scar of emotional damage. Sean’s revelation that he must look
outside of the home he has made with his first wife is the first signifier that he is
beginning to become more aware of himself, of his emotions, and his
singularity—his loneliness. With Judy, Sean seems to escape the loneliness he is
feeling, only to have it return after she departs for medical school. His
development seems to reach an end, his emotional maturity stunted by his own
pursuit of it! Though Sean marries again, Conroy reveals nothing about the
marriage other than the fact that it occurred, they seem to be happy, and at the
very least Sean and his second wife are complacent. This is not the end for
Sean, though it seems to be. Conroy makes strong connections between Sean
and his children, Phillip and John, products of his first marriage.
Most important is the way Phillip and John refer to Sean, calling him
Daddy, not ‘father’. They are the most consistent relationships Sean has in his
life, and he shows strong emotional attachment to both of them—more so than to
any other relationship he has already had. Furthermore, Phillip and John are not
children that Sean desired, as Judy, “privately, without telling him…decides to
Sean E Simons
Intro Critical Reading
11 November 2010
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have children” (140). Whether Conroy is implying that Sean can only love what is
forced on him, not what he desires, is not apparent. However, the relationship
between Sean and his children is still the most consistent, and most emotionally
tied of all of Sean’s relationships. Here is where Conroy manipulates the
preconceived notions most readers have of relationships—by creating a bond
that should seem natural, more apparent than any other. But by making it
between a man who has been built up as desperate, alone, unconnected, and
unapproachable, Conroy creates a dichotomy—the loving, charismatic Sean, and
the desperate, unable-to-maintain-a-relationship Sean. Perhaps Sean’s love and
bond with his children is what will make them successful in their relationship
ventures, as Sean’s father’s absence made him unsuccessful in his. When Sean
realizes his marriage is ending, and cries in his car, Phillip’s talk with him shows
how strong the connection between Daddy and Son is. As Phillip asks why Sean
was crying, Sean realizes “he has never felt as close to another human being as
he [did] at that moment” (145). Whether the bond is due to their relation, flesh
and blood, or to the effort Sean has made in being present and available to his
children (though the effort is small, it is more than his father could have done).
Sean’s bond with his children continues through his life—he is always
present, and active as a father. While Conroy supplies no detail for Sean’s
second marriage, the numerous references to Phillip and John make it apparent
that they are much more vital and important to Sean than anything else. Even the
appearance of his children stirs deep emotions within him. When on the elevator
Sean E Simons
Intro Critical Reading
11 November 2010
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“a young man of Phillip’s age, size, and general appearance” is present, Sean
“finds within himself a pressure of love for the young man so great, it is all he can
do to remain silent” (148-49). The action that occurs in the elevator is not as
important as the sudden emotion Sean feels towards the young man, the
spontaneous, instant, and deep love he has for his own child is so strong that it
applies to the mere idea of his child’s presence. While his first marriage
prompted his need to search outside of the home and house, for strength, his
children have inspired a love and admiration of those in the world that exist
outside of his own relationships. Suddenly Sean is not alone, not frightened of
emotion, his sons have opened him to receiving all emotions in the world—from
all people.
Conroy’s subtle use of emotional connection creates an unbending,
emotionless man—who would not be expected to feel or find meaning in
relationships, though he seeks them readily and eagerly. The mirror lifestyles
Sean and his father possess lead readers to believe that Sean is doomed to his
loneliness and lack of emotion, just as Judy “never believed in romantic love”;
Sean seems to be on the track to not believing in any form of love (139). Yet his
children save him, emotionally, they inspire admiration and love and emotion
inside of Sean—they are his truest relationship. It is through them that he comes
to live in the world happily, seemingly soberly, and suddenly also capable of
remembering the day his father came to see him, remembering the astonishment
he felt—over everything else. Though Conroy never says, it is safe to assume it
Sean E Simons
Intro Critical Reading
11 November 2010
is the astonishment of human emotion, Sean being in awe of how one could feel
for another without actually knowing them. He is in a relationship with the world
now, aware, open, and receptive to everything.
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