In the “Go Down, Matthew” chapter of Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, Dr. Matthew O'Connor, speaking with a former priest at the Café de la Mairie du Vie after a long and exhausting consolation session of a complaining Nora Flood, he tells himself and the ex-priest to the ducks in Golden Gate Park. In drunken exasperation, he continues to complain: “…Everyone with their damned kindness has been feeding the ducks all year to their ruin because when the time comes to go south they are all a bitter dismay, being too fat and heavy to get up out of the water as they struggle and struggle all over the park in autumn, crying and tearing their hair because their nature is weighed down by bread and their migration stopped by crumbs” . Although the doctor does not appear to be taken seriously by the bar-goers who watch and await this drunken speech, through this passage readers gain further insight into his attitude both towards life and the nature of his very being, encapsulating a theme that Barnes is working on. affirm: an idea of ​​tragic permanence due to who you are and how it is bestowed upon you, if not accepted, becoming the source of your own death. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The ducks, symbolically representing the Doctor's plight, are caught in a struggle to reach their true nature. Instead of migrating, as he claims, they have been permanently tied to the park, where what they have been given – food, a necessity – serves as a bond. Having become unnaturally plumper than they should be, they are no longer able to fly as their instinct tells them to, thanks to the interference of those who believe they are doing good. The Doctor, with a similar nature, is aware of and haunted by his state of permanence and questions God about what is true and permanent in him, as seen in an earlier passage of "Come Down, Matthew" - the male body that has been given to him given, or the true female identity she knows she is. He finds himself in a continuous state of desire to be the opposite of what he is created to be throughout the novel, observed for example through his constant cross-dressing. The conclusion of the chapter brings with it the conclusion of the Doctor, who, frustrated with himself and with the difficulties of others, shouts that he has "lived his life for nothing, and has told it for nothing", reaching a tragic conclusion. an end in which there will be “nothing but wrath and weeping,” further cementing his persistence in the kind of life he does not wish to lead. This intertwining of permanence is further observed in the case of Baron Felice, born Jewish, a person of lowered status in current society, but personifying the aristocracy. Similar to the ducks in Golden Gate Park, Felix is ​​trapped in the permanence of who he is, due to a factor beyond his control: his birth. However, in his case, Felix is ​​concerned not only with erasing the permanence of his family history, but also with establishing a new permanence of the kind of person he wishes to be and the kind of family he wishes to create, as seen in his desire to create a lasting lineage through Robin Vote and his discussion with the Doctor regarding "history versus legend." The irony within this lesson for Felix of "history versus legend" lies in the doctor's own preaching. While the Doctor preaches about becoming legend, his colleagues know little of the end to come - his surrender to the permanence of his own being - essentially, surrendering to "history". Felix's ending, much like the Doctor's, brings about yet another confirmation of the permanence of.