What You Know About Dons Life

Don Draper (Jon Hamm) has been running from his past through the final half dozen seasons ofMad Men. At to the lowest degree, he's tried his best – amidst flashbacks and his brother's return. To me every bit a psychoanalyst, at that place's no doubt he's a traumatized man. A man using various methods, mostly affairs, and alcohol, to convince himself it's possible to forget what's happened to him, even who he really is. His steady and deplorable decline shows united states of america he is wrong. The lines he quotes from Dante's Inferno at the beginning of Season 6 reference the very type of hell he lives in and where he finds himself at the end:  "I went off-target from the straight road, and woke upwards to find myself alone in a dark wood."

Flashbacks & Running from a Traumatic Past

We meet Don at Midge'southward (Rosemarie DeWitt) house in Greenwich Hamlet but to notice subsequently that he'due south married – fugitive the reality of his life. We learn why over many episodes of unexpected encounters and flashbacks into his troubled history. An old ground forces buddy on a train into the urban center recognizes him equally "Dick Whitman"; our first indication Don isn't who we recollect he is.  His past starts to haunt him when his brother, Adam (Jay Paulson), wants to re-enter his life.

Flashbacks are a key indicator of trauma and Don starts having them; the first back to the solar day Adam was born. Memories and feelings are what he tries to erase as if his childhood could disappear. It can't. Here is Adam, the younger blood brother he loved just had to abandon past pretending to be dead – his merely escape from a desolate life.

With Adam's render, Don, one time over again, tries to brand his past become abroad, telling Adam to forget him. Adam isn't then capable of forgetting. He's lonely, has no one, and simply wants to exist a office of Don'south life. When Don rejects him, Adam hangs himself – for a moment bringing Don face to face with his shame.

Shame & A Stolen Identity in Mad Men

Shame is a terrible thing. Don begins running faster and harder than before. But, his past is delivered in a box when Adam kills himself. His memories won't go out him solitary. He'southward once once again in the trenches; terrified. And, nosotros run into how during a different war than the one he's fighting inside himself, the existent Don Draper dies and Dick Whitman decides to accept over his identity.

Early in the series, we find Don Draper age 36, smoking 2 packs a solar day and drinking v glasses of hard liquor – on the run with substances and women.  Reading Frank O'Hara's "Meditations In An Emergency", Don writes a message on the title page and puts information technology in the mail to someone we after understand is Anna Draper, the only person who really knows him.

Equally he enters Anna Draper's house, we hear "In The Hall of the Mountain King", from Peer Gynt, played by 1 of her piano students. The words to this song are the story of Don'southward dilemma. Living a lie tin drive a man mad:

Far abroad

In a land caught betwixt

Time and space

Where the books of life lay

We fright

This castle of stone

The mountain king roams

All solitary in here

But he'due south non the only one

Lost inside

Forever hidden from the sun

Madness reigns

In the Hall of the Mountain King

Oh yeah

Likewise Many Losses & Guilt

More flashbacks accept united states to Anna finding Don's theft of her husband'south identity. She accepts him and understands, more than than anyone volition or ever has. She listens.  He tells her his guilt nearly his blood brother, knowing his demand to lie is the cause. It tears him apart. Only it takes 4 more Seasons for him to brainstorm to turn this effectually. When Anna dies in Season 4, Episode 7, "The Suitcase", he weeps with his head in Peggy's lap. Don has too much grief, former and new, but feeling his sadness with Peggy is short-lived.

Don begins to crack. Betty's divorced him and he'south lonely. He'southward coming to piece of work drunk and ruining concern opportunities. For a brief moment, we encounter what Don thinks he deserves. A prostitute slaps him repeatedly in the face, telling him this is what he wants. Aye, Don Draper believes he deserves to exist punished. He doesn't deserve love. And, when he falls in love with Megan, he destroys that, too – escaping from his fear and shame into another matter – more blatant than the others, with a neighbor and friend'southward married woman, Sylvia Rosen.

What Don Draper'south Cheating Is Really Well-nigh

Is Don'south cheating what information technology appears? Just an insensitive draconian man, caring only for his own hedonistic pleasures? Or tin can we understand his diplomacy in an entirely different mode? Don may alive the "double standard" of many men of that era  – but his cheating is not, essentially, near his arrogance or chauvinism as a man.  He needs to control women. Considering he couldn't command the loss of his mother or his stepmother's hatred. In all his sexual conquests, Don'south trying to prove what a young, hippie tarot reader says well: "Your question is, 'Does someone love me?"  Don doesn't believe anyone does.

Don makes women want him. He creates the desire, the one in control. Sylvia Rosen is a skilful example. He locks her in a hotel room and tells her: "You are only here for my pleasure". Information technology looks like he'due south decision-making Sylvia, but he's really decision-making his fear of needing anyone who might leave. Call up his attempt at a clever ad campaign for Hawaii? A homo's clothes in mid-air, with no human inhabiting them? That'due south Don: the human who isn't there. Similar he needs nothing and no one.

Old Hurt & Fearfulness of Love

That's non the true story, though. He'due south hungry and deprived. But, allowing love? That's way also risky. He's sure, without a dubiety, that he isn't actually wanted. When Sylvia leaves him, early rejections are angry, especially his stepmother yelling: "You're trash". She never wanted him – the kid of her husband's prostitute who died in childbirth. The manner he coldly pushes everyone abroad? That'south what was washed to him.

Don's compulsive adulterous comes from injure. Simply, information technology certainly doesn't solve bug. It creates more. The most shameful and worst moment of his life is when Emerge catches him in the act with Sylvia and he must face the furnishings his cheating has on his daughter. This is the first of his real downfall – but maybe his redemption as well.

First to Face His Past

As Season half-dozen ends, Don Draper has pretty much striking bottom and he begins to face his by. Not only that. He's honest about information technology. A meeting with the firm's Hershey's chocolate business relationship might not be the best venue to carry his soul. Then once again, maybe it is. Hershey'due south chocolate was the only sweetness thing in Don Draper's childhood.  Yet, information technology came with a serious price.  Chocolate was the prize given him by one of the whores, for stealing from her "John's."

Is it too late to discover sweetness in his current life? Not keeping secrets any longer is a beginning. He's most destroyed all his relationships. But, equally Joni Mitchell's 1967 vocal "Both Sides Now" plays in the groundwork, Don Draper opens a door he'southward kept closed. He shows his children the whorehouse where he really grew up – the place that made honey impossible.

Terror can't be navigated alone. But how can Don trust anyone with the sad, lonely, beaten down kid he was, still living inside him? A child kept walled off and fed on pittances of booze and un-committed sexual activity – a poor just safer substitute for love. It will take an unlikely leap of hope for Don to give those cocky-protections up and allow people in to help and love him.

Is Change Possible for Don Draper?

I wish I thought it probable, but I know the challenges.  Yet, perhaps, living a prevarication is worse than fear of love. With Sally's devastation and distrust, Don knows for a fact how his seemingly necessary lies accept pushed every unmarried person abroad, fifty-fifty his ain children. He has to confront, at present, how much his nighttime aloneness is of his own doing.

Can Don learn that the past wasn't his fault? Face what he'southward washed in the present? Forgive himself enough to allow himself to love? We see in the finale of Season 6, "In Care Of", how he tries, in spite of his very strong tendency to run the other direction, to exist honest near a by that has caused him such shame. Is there hope for Don?  Can he turn his life around? Perchance. Only Season 7 volition evidence the states whether the fruits of his honesty can override his fears and shame.

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Source: https://charactersonthecouch.com/don-drapers-shame-the-toll-of-living-a-lie/

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