Pincher Martin

“I won’t die. I can’t die. Not me.”

Martin’s will to survive is rooted primarily in egotism. The few details the author shares about Martin’s life imply that what drives him is a sense of entitlement and superiority. Martin believes that he, not Nathaniel, deserves Mary; that he deserves the best roles on the stage; that the war is something best fought by others; and finally, as he implies to the hallucinated vision of Nathaniel late in the novel, that he deserves to survive the U-boat attack more than his shipmates.

“His mind inside the dark skull made swimming movements long after the body lay motionless in the water.” 

Given the narrative’s metaphysical nature and the ways in which the brain copes with trauma, this quote initially reads as depicting a man who draws on stores of psychological will to survive even if his limbs are too weak and cold to follow the brain’s instructions. However, in the context of the novel’s conclusion, the quote stands out as the earliest—and arguably the most obvious—clue that Martin has been dead since the U-boat attack. Additionally, in introducing the notion of the brain and body as separate entities, the quote explains in a practical sense how Martin, though his body is dead, could inhabit an imagined world for what he perceives as many days.