Character Analysis of Josh Michaels in "The Lifeguard"

Introduction: The Lifeguard as First-Person Narrator

The most notable thing about Mary Morris's short story "The Lifeguard" is the way it makes an adolescent and largely undefined character a powerful first-person narrator. This is especially extraordinary in a tale with only one scene of truly wrenching external action. The rest of the narrative is mostly a series of observations seen through the watchful but mostly bored eyes of the lifeguard. Morris creates a sense of drama and progression by structuring the short tale along a series of contrasts: first, in terms of the lifeguard's place in life against the older inhabitants he watches; then, regarding the lifeguard's relative youth and mobility versus the other characters' age and stasis; and finally, between the main character's unfulfilled youthful sexual desires and the other characters' unfulfilled adult desires for different and better lives.

Morris, by making the main character's body the focus of the narrative early on, creates an immediate physical juxtaposition between the lifeguard and the summer people he watches over. From the beginning, as the tale is set in summer and by bodies of water where human bodies are the main focus of the eye, the physical appearance and lives of the characters hold sway. Josh Michaels, the lifeguard, stands in contrast to all of the other characters — but particularly the older ones, most of whom are long past their physical and sexual prime.

Physical Juxtaposition and the Summer Setting

The first extended physical character portrait is not of the main character but of someone he frequently observes over the course of his daily seaside duties. However, by recording the lifeguard's observations of another person's life and body, the ideas that are important to "The Lifeguard" become immediately clear. Ric Spencer comes on weekends with his wife Sally, a woman whose "bikini wearing days" are over because of a hasty marriage and the arrival of little Becky Spencer. The Spencers illustrate what the narrating lifeguard is attempting to avoid — old age, responsibility, and physical decrepitude (425).

Early on, it becomes clear that the lifeguard is attractive and single, while most of the contrasting older couples are no longer attractive. Josh seems to live in a state of endless possibility and desirability, while Ric and his wife are stuck with what fate has dealt them — responsibility and a child. At first, Josh appears to glory in this and find a certain sense of superiority in his abilities and summer lifestyle, even as his eye is turned by an older woman caught in a marriage and a respectable life.

Youth, Envy, and the Limits of Freedom

Critical to his somewhat shaken sense of superiority is Josh's youth, which makes him a figure of projection and longing for the other characters. Mr. Lovenheim initially confirms the character's sense of foolish, youthful superiority when he says, "you've got all this" — meaning the beach, girls, and the future ahead of Josh, as opposed to a career selling odds and ends in the cold of New England (427). The irony of Mr. Lovenheim's statement, however, is that Lovenheim possesses the one thing Josh desires and the one thing the attractive and free lifeguard cannot have: the presence and the body of Mrs. Lovenheim.

"I loved my body that summer," says the character, confirming Mr. Lovenheim's suspicion that girls and the world are a young, attractive male lifeguard's oyster (427). But even though girls flock to him, Josh cannot have what he really desires — Mrs. Lovenheim. He can only watch her from afar, as he watches the sea. This means that as much as both Josh and the individuals around him prize youth, attractiveness, and freedom, the lifeguard still harbors a lingering sense that these apparent glories are not everything. The presence of men stuck in unfulfilling relationships also underlines the fact that even when enjoyed to the utmost, being a young and unattached lifeguard cannot last forever, and middle age is always knocking at the door.

Conclusion: Youth Without Fulfillment

At the conclusion of "The Lifeguard," it becomes clear that despite the external perceptions of the other men and women, Josh Michaels does not have it all — he cannot have the woman he desires because she is older than him. Youth does not bring happiness, but age does not bring perfect happiness either. Even though he reflects at the end of the tale that he is now as old as Mrs. Lovenheim was that summer, he never saw her again after the day he saved Becky. Although his watchfulness and unforeseen reserves of responsibility may have saved a life, all the watching in the world, and all the youth and carefree idleness in the world, could not bring the lifeguard any closer to what he truly wanted that summer.