Embarrassment

Embarrassment is Paul Slazinger’s one-word account of the human condition, and the novel grounds that maxim in Rabo Karabekian’s acute self-consciousness about his body. The word names not an abstract social awkwardness but a condition made visible in the scene where Rabo chooses not to swim rather than expose himself to a stranger.

The maxim and its speaker

Paul says that the human condition can be summed up in one word: “Embarrassment.” The breadth of the claim is comic, but its placement gives it emotional weight: it arrives as Rabo recounts meeting Circe Berman, when his own embarrassment is already shaping what he does.

The beach encounter

Rabo sees Circe sitting fully dressed on the sand and staring out to sea, a posture he associates with Paul. She has wandered across the boundary onto Rabo’s private beach without knowing it was private; she does not know who he is and dislikes modern art. Rabo’s concern is not principally that a stranger has entered his beach. He is embarrassed by his physique and by the prospect of removing his eye patch before swimming. Beneath it, he says, his damaged eye is a mess “not unlike a scrambled egg.”

Embarrassment as bodily experience

Rather than swim, Rabo elects to sunbathe at a distance. He does eventually come close enough to greet Circe, but the sequence matters: embarrassment first determines his withdrawal, then permits only a small approach. The grand maxim is thus anchored to a concrete choice and to the vulnerability of being seen up close. Rabo’s damaged eye and his shame about his appearance are specific features of his experience, not merely a generalized discomfort; the episode shows how the surrounding social gaze can make an ordinary act—taking off an eye patch to swim—feel exposing.