The Balloon by Donald Barthelme
"The Balloon" by Donald Barthelme is a short story that presents a large, inexplicable balloon that suddenly appears in New York City, covering a significant portion of Manhattan. The balloon, inflated by the narrator during the night, serves as a perplexing presence that elicits a wide range of reactions from the city's inhabitants. While some individuals celebrate the balloon, finding joy and creativity in its existence, others—particularly authorities—respond with suspicion and frustration, attempting to remove it but ultimately failing. The balloon's purpose remains ambiguous, leading people to reflect on their own perspectives and emotions.
As a metaphor, the balloon represents the complexities of human connections and feelings, especially in the context of the narrator's relationship with a partner who has been away. The narrative reveals that the balloon symbolizes the narrator's unease and emotional turmoil in the absence of their romantic partner. Ultimately, when the partner returns, the need for the balloon dissipates, suggesting that personal experiences and relationships shape our interpretations of seemingly random events. Through its multifaceted reception and the interplay of individual responses, "The Balloon" invites readers to contemplate the nature of meaning and connection in everyday life.
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The Balloon by Donald Barthelme
First published: 1966
Type of plot: Metafiction
Time of work: 1966
Locale: New York City
Principal Character:
The unnamed narrator
The Story
A seemingly purposeless balloon suddenly appears in New York City. The balloon, which was inflated by the narrator one night while people were sleeping, covers almost the entire southern half of Manhattan—from Fourteenth Street in Greenwich Village to the southern edge of Central Park, near the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue, covering twenty-five blocks on either side of Fifth Avenue. The narrator first refers to the appearance of the balloon as a situation but then qualifies this idea because, by the narrator's definition, situations imply sets of circumstances that lead to some resolution. This balloon, however, is merely a "concrete particular" passively hanging there.
The balloon provokes a series of reactions from various people in the city, including a flood of original ideas and milestones in the history of inflation. Impressions about the balloon run the gamut of responses from the banal to the creative. The balloon's meaning is disturbingly elusive, and this lack of purpose, of cause, of a fixed reason for the balloon, creates in the authorities a lack of trust, frustration, even hostility. Experts conduct secret tests to determine ways of removing or destroying the balloon, but because the narrator has cleverly hidden his pumps, they decide that nothing can be done.
In contrast to the suspicions of the authorities, the general public responds warmly to the balloon. Children enjoy bouncing on it, and others begin to locate themselves in relation to it. Opinions vary, but even people who are ambivalent toward the balloon experience an "admixture of pleasurable cognition." The balloon affords them a unique opportunity for contemplation, even though the balloon's meaning can never be known absolutely.
Each person's response to the balloon becomes a reflection of his or her general outlook on life. One man thinks the balloon is inferior to the sky, but the narrator concludes that the balloon is actually an improvement on the dark, ugly January weather. Another person considers the balloon to be an unanticipated reward, as if just being in its presence was a gratifying and positive experience. No matter the response, the balloon provides the citizens a reprieve from the ordinary grind of their lives; its shifting forms and malleability are pleasing, especially to those whose lives are rigidly patterned.
Having reviewed the public's and the public officials' reactions, the narrator reveals the reason for having inflated the balloon. The narrator has been romantically involved with a person who has been visiting Norway, and the balloon was the narrator's way of disclosing the unease felt at the partner's absence. When the narrator's partner returns, the narrator decides that the balloon is no longer needed. The balloon is dismantled, awaiting another time that they again feel angry with each other.
Bibliography
Barthelme, Helen Moore. Donald Barthelme: The Genesis of a Cool Sound. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001.
Gordon, Lois. Donald Barthelme. Boston: Twayne, 1981.
Hudgens, Michael Thomas. Donald Barthelme: Postmodernist American Writer. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001.
Klinkowitz, Jerome. Donald Barthelme: An Exhibition. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991.
McCaffery, Larry. The Metafictional Muse: The Works of Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, and William H. Gass. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982.
Molesworth, Charles. Donald Barthelme's Fiction: The Ironist Saved from Drowning. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1982.
Olsen, Lance, ed. Review of Contemporary Fiction 11 (Summer, 1991).
Patteson, Richard F., ed. Critical Essays on Donald Barthelme. New York: G. K. Hall, 1992.
Roe, Barbara L. Donald Barthelme: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1992.
Stengel, Wayne B. The Shape of Art in the Short Stories of Donald Barthelme. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.
Trachtenberg, Stanley. Understanding Donald Barthelme. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990.
Waxman, Robert. "Apollo and Dionysus: Donald Barthelme's Dance of Life." Studies in Short Fiction 33 (Spring, 1996): 229-243.