Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Talking to Strangers, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Default to Truth
Limitations of Transparency
Coupling Theory and Context
Self vs. Stranger
Summary
Analysis
1. Chapter Eight opens with a transcript from the trial of Brock Turner. The prosecutor asks a Stanford University graduate student, Peter Jonsson, to recall the events of January 18, 2015. That night, Jonsson and his friend, fellow graduate student Carl-Fredrik Arndt, observed a man atop a woman outside a fraternity house. When Jonsson realized that the woman was unconscious, he angrily called out for the man to stop. The man tried to flee the scene, but Jonsson and Arndt tackled him before he could escape. The man was Brock Turner, who later claimed to have met the young woman at a party, drunk and danced with her, and gone outside to lay down. The woman, known in legal proceedings as Emily Doe, was found partially undressed. When she awoke in the hospital a few hours later, she was shocked to hear that she might have been sexually assaulted.
The Brock Turner sexual assault case presents a new type of stranger encounter. Gladwell emphasizes a few details about the case that give us insight into the angle from which he will approach this stranger encounter. First, he describes how Turner and Doe drank together prior to the assault. Then, he specifies that Jonsson believed Doe was unconscious during the assault. Finally, Gladwell mentions the fact that Doe was surprised to hear that she had been sexually assaulted, suggesting that she had potentially blacked out prior to Turner sexually assaulting her. These details suggest that Gladwell’s aim is to draw the reader’s attention toward the role alcohol intoxication played in this extreme example of a stranger encounter gone awry.
Themes
2. The situation between Turner and Doe isn’t unique. Many college-aged people meet at parties and choose to go home together. Sometimes, things end badly. One in five American college students report being victims of sexual assault. Gladwell laments the complexity of these types of cases, noting the difficult nature of discerning whether one or both parties consented or objected to sexual activity.
Gladwell establishes a link between college sexual assault and miscommunication. He argues that the issue of proving whether the involved parties communicated consent makes sexual assault cases particularly difficult to assess from a legal and ethical standpoint. As Gladwell has suggested in previous chapters, strangers are harder to read than we tend to think they are.
Themes
Gladwell believes the transparency assumption adds yet another layer of complexity to sexual assault cases. He references a Washington Post poll that asked 1,000 college students to identify which actions imply a desire to engage in more sexual activity. “Takes off their own clothes” generated results of 47 percent Yes to 49 percent No. “Nods in agreement” generated results of 54 percent Yes to 40 percent No. In contrast, “engages in foreplay” elicited results of 22 percent Yes to 74 percent No. On this final question, there is a sharp divide between men’s and women’s responses, with considerably more men than women agreeing that foreplay is an invitation for additional sexual activity. Consent would be simple if college students agreed on what it meant, but these variable responses show that people have vastly different ideas about what constitutes consent and what does not. Additionally, Gladwell argues, alcohol exacerbates people’s abilities to register consent.
The survey questions Gladwell quotes here all involve the act of making an assumption about somebody’s intentions based on their behavior. College students’ split responses to these questions reveal how heavily the myth of transparency plays into attitudes toward consent. Students who agreed that these behaviors indicate consent are operating under the assumption that a person’s actions accurately connect with their inner thoughts and motivations. In other words, their logic is based on an assumption that people are transparent. The assumption of transparency becomes an even bigger problem when alcohol is involved, since alcohol intoxication can affect the behavior and cognitive function of all parties involved in a sexual encounter.
Themes
3. In his trial, Brock Turner admitted to consuming approximately five Rolling Rock beers and an unspecified amount of Fireball Whiskey before attending the fraternity party. He continued to drink after he arrived. Emily Doe’s friends also testified that they drank alcohol prior to and during the party. Doe attests to drinking several shots of whiskey before leaving her house. Upon arriving at the party, she and her friends drank from an unopened bottle of vodka they found in the basement. In trial, she testified to being “pretty much empty-minded” and “not articulating much” due to her level of intoxication.
Gladwell offers descriptive details of the copious amounts of alcohol Turner and Doe consumed the night of the assault. He does this to emphasize the prominent role alcohol played in their encounter, and the degree to which it explicitly compromised their ability to communicate effectively. For instance, Doe recalls feeling “pretty much empty-minded” and “not articulating much,” indicating the high degree to which alcohol consumption hindered her ability to communicate logically and verbally.
Themes
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Doe and Turner met around midnight and started dancing. They chatted, started kissing, and walked outside after Doe agreed to go back to Turner’s dorm room. Once outside, Turner alleges, he and Doe slipped and fell to the ground. They laughed about it, though, and resumed kissing. Turner alleges that he received Doe’s permission to “finger” her and that she said she liked it. According to legal scholar Lori Shaw, under California law, a person must be intoxicated enough to be physically incapable of exercising reasonable judgment in order to be deemed incapable of giving consent. This differs from simply having too much to drink. The question thus becomes: was Doe initially a willing sexual participant and then passed out afterward, or had she been physically incapacitated from the start?
Gladwell describes the events of the night leading up to the assault to emphasize the communication Doe and Turner engaged in at the start of their stranger encounter. Initially, they appeared to be on the same page from a communication standpoint, with Turner allegedly receiving affirmative consent from Doe to engage in sexual activity. For Gladwell, and for the court, the critical question becomes at which point Doe’s physical incapacitation caused this communication to break down. If Doe was too intoxicated from the start, the issue becomes whether the alleged consent she gave earlier in their encounter could be considered consent at all, since California law states that a physically incapacitated person is incapable of giving consent.
Themes
Ultimately, the jury ruled against Turner because they found his story unbelievable. It didn’t make sense to them that Turner would flee when the graduate students confronted him if he was truly innocent. A photograph of Doe lying on the ground, clothes half off, near a dumpster, further convinced the jury of Turner’s guilt. He was charged with three felony counts of assault and a prison sentence of six months. While the “who” and “what” of the Turner case are clear, Gladwell ruminates on the “why.” Why did an allegedly innocent encounter at a party go so wrong? Gladwell’s proposed answer has to do with a “lack of transparency,” which “makes the encounter between a man and a woman at a party a problematic event.”
Gladwell believes that a “lack of transparency” led Brock Turner to misinterpret Emily Doe’s body language and initiate a sexual encounter to which she was potentially unable to consent. By fixating on transparency, Gladwell seems to suggest that blaming Turner’s behavior on sexism or misogyny sidesteps the real underlying issue, which is that we’re simultaneously bad at communicating with strangers and unaware of how bad we are. When we fail to recognize how we misunderstand others, we stand the chance of harming them, which “makes the encounter between a man and a woman at a party a problematic event.”
Themes
4. In the mid-1950s, a Yale University anthropology graduate student named Dwight Heath traveled to Bolivia with his wife, Anna, and their baby to conduct field work for his dissertation about the Camba people. The Heaths immersed themselves in the Cambas’ culture. Every Saturday, the Heaths would attend drinking parties with “heavily ritualized” structures. Attendees would sit in a circle, people would play music, and a bottle of rum would be passed around the circle until people became too tired or intoxicated and passed out. Anna recalls one occasion where Dwight had been so intoxicated, apparently, that he had wrapped his arm around a searing hot lantern and failed to notice that he was burning his arm. Upon returning to New Haven, the Heaths analyzed the liquor they’d been drinking and discovered that it was 180 proof laboratory alcohol, a potent substance not fit for human consumption.
Gladwell includes this anecdote about the Heaths’ research on the Camba people to challenge the notion that alcohol necessarily encourages violent or coercive behavior. Aided by excessively, dangerously strong laboratory alcohol, the Camba drank to acute intoxication each weekend. Yet, the Heaths report no unrest among the party attendees. The reason for this has to do with context. The Camba drink in a “heavily ritualized” context. They’re not drinking in unpredictable settings that place them in the complicated position of having to make sense of unfamiliar people. We can speculate, then, that the absence of violence is directly linked to the absence of the unknown and the unpredictable.
Themes
One would think that drinking alcohol of this strength every weekend would lead to increased violence and sexual aggression among the Camba, yet the Heaths observed none of this. Nor did they observe any alcoholism among the Camba. Dwight Heath published his findings in the Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol. Subsequent studies confirmed Heath’s findings: while alcohol sometimes resulted in increased violence, no definite link between alcohol and increased violence could be established. Studies conducted in other cultures garnered similar results. Ultimately, the Heaths’ work in Bolivia inspired a rethinking of our understanding of intoxication. It suggested that alcohol was less “an agent of disinhibition” than “an agent of myopia.”
Heath’s research proposes an explicit relationship between alcohol and context that hadn’t existed before. When intoxicated people become violent, it’s not a consequence of the alcohol itself, but of the context in which the intoxication occurred. Surrounded by close friends and in a controlled, predictable environment, the Camba saw no increase in violence as they grew more intoxicated. “Myopia” is a clinical term for nearsightedness. Describing alcohol as “an agent of myopia” reaffirms that it doesn’t make people violent; rather, it changes how they see and interpret their surroundings.
Themes
5. Psychologists Claude Steele and Robert Josephs were the first scientists to propose the “myopia theory," which dictates that alcohol heightens the drinker’s concern for immediate considerations and inhibits their concern for long-term issues. The myopia theory explains why alcohol has such varied effects dependent on one’s immediate surroundings. If a sad person drinks alone in a bar, they’ll feel sadder and more alone. However, if a sad person drinks while surrounded by friends at a football game, the atmosphere may boost their mood. In short, alcohol “crowds out everything except the most immediate experiences.” This differs from the older disinhibition theory of alcohol, which suggested that drunkenness robbed a person of all inhibition. States Gladwell, “Alcohol isn’t an agent of revelation. It is an agent of transformation.”
Myopia theory suggests that alcohol intoxication causes the drinker to lose sight of distant surroundings and distant consequences. The drinker then redirects their attention toward immediate concerns, i.e., their immediate surroundings, and the immediate consequences of their actions. When people become intoxicated, they redirect their behaviors and values to match the atmosphere and expectations of their immediate surroundings. To suggest that alcohol intoxication simply disinhibits the drinker oversimplifies the problem at hand and ignores the vital role that time, place, and other variables play in how the drinker responds to intoxication.
Themes
6. Gladwell shifts focus to the case of a 25-year-old software designer named Brian Bree. In 2006, Bree and a woman known in court as “M” drank heavily all evening before returning to M’s apartment to have sex. Bree believed the sex was consensual, but M alleged that it was not. The case was brought to trial, and Bree was convicted of rape and sentenced to five years in jail, although the case was ultimately dismissed on appeal. In court, Bree testified to engaging in sexual contact that he assumed was consensual, though he never asked for M’s consent, figuring he could “infer” what she wanted based on her actions or lack of verbal refusal.
Bree alleges that he“infer[ed]” that M had consented to a sexual encounter because she failed to reject his advances verbally or physically. Bree’s logic rests on the myth of transparency, which is problematic under normal circumstances. By his own admission, he felt that he could “infer” M’s feelings based on behavior. Myopia theory, however, would suggest that their situation becomes even more complicated once alcohol enters the picture. Understanding strangers is complicated enough, but Bree was attempting to navigate this challenge while under the distorting influence of alcohol.
Themes
In contrast, M’s testimony described an unwanted sexual encounter. She reportedly called her best friend in tears at 5:00 that morning. Meanwhile, Bree remained so unaware of M’s “inner state” that he invited her out for lunch a few hours later as though nothing was awry. After serving several months of his sentence, the court dismissed Bree’s case, claiming that it was impossible to gauge whether or not consent had occurred and that neither party had behaved unlawfully in consuming excess amounts of alcohol. Gladwell laments the chaotic and unfamiliar atmosphere of today’s college-aged drinkers, who often “do[] so in the hypersexualized chaos of fraternity parties and bars.”
Bree’s decision to invite M to lunch only a few hours after the alleged sexual assault took place suggests his genuine lack of awareness that their sexual encounter had not been consensual. Gladwell wants us to see how Bree’s actions were mistaken, not malicious. He made the same error a lot of people make when interacting with strangers: we overestimate our ability to make sense of them. Finally, Gladwell’s closing remark about “the hypersexualized chao[tic]” atmosphere in which many college-aged students drink implies a relationship between alcohol myopia and college sexual assault, likely a nod that Gladwell will address this link later on in the chapter.
Themes
7. Gladwell breaks down what happens to our brains when we get drunk. The brain tissue absorbs alcohol, beginning in the frontal lobes, “dampen[ing]” cognitive function. It triggers the reward center of the brain, makes us feel euphoric, and inhibits our responsiveness to danger. When alcohol reaches the cerebellum, we become uncoordinated. “These are the predictable effects of getting drunk,” explains Gladwell. Blacking out occurs when a person’s blood-alcohol level reaches 0.15 and the hippocampus begins to shut down, thus inhibiting the brain’s ability to form new memories. In a true blackout state, a person won’t remember anything that happened while they were intoxicated.
Throughout the book, Gladwell has criticized oversimplified explanations for why stranger interactions go awry, suggesting that such explanations focus on superficial elements of the interaction while failing to identify the root cause of the problem. Gladwell adopts this critical approach once more, analyzing alcohol’s influence on stranger encounters by explaining alcohol’s biological effects on cognitive function. One key characteristic of alcohol intoxication is that it comes with “predictable effects,” such as blacking out when one’s blood-alcohol level exceeds 0.15. This is important, since negative experiences with alcohol intoxication often happen when the intoxicated person is in an unfamiliar, unpredictable atmosphere.
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The kind of drinking that leads to blackouts was virtually unheard of among college students in the 1940s and 1950s. Today, binge drinking is far more prevalent, and the consumption gap between men and women drinkers has narrowed. This latter trend puts women, in particular, at a greater risk of experiencing blackouts, since women metabolize alcohol differently than men.
Heavy drinking on college campuses takes place in an environment of heightened unfamiliarity. Students are surrounded by unfamiliar ideas, unfamiliar people, and unfamiliar situations. Many of them might be unfamiliar with drinking. As Gladwell has previously established in his discussion of alcohol myopia, alcohol intoxication that occurs in an unfamiliar setting puts intoxicated people at greater risk of experiencing conflict and violence.
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Gladwell states that blackouts put women “in a position of vulnerability.” Talking to strangers at parties “is not an error-free exercise in the best of times,” and alcohol only increases the chance for errors to arise. When a person blacks out, they “cede[] control of the situation.” In an article for Slate, critic Emily Yaffe stresses that while it is always the perpetrator and never the victim who is responsible for sexual assault, it does young women a disservice when society fails to stress the dangers of becoming intoxicated to the point that one “lose[s] the ability to be responsible for [one]self.” Furthermore, Gladwell argues, it’s difficult for the stranger an intoxicated woman is talking to to discern the woman’s level of drunkenness. He also argues that strangers are less aware of the nuances of an intoxicated person’s body language than the intoxicated person might think.
As the situations Gladwell has explored in previous chapters make abundantly clear, talking to strangers “is not an error-free exercise in the best of times.” When we add alcohol to the equation, we lose sight of long-term consequences and, thus, “cede[] control of the situation.” Gladwell includes Emily Yaffe’s point about needing to stress to young women the importance of avoiding becoming so intoxicated that one “lose[s] the ability to be responsible for [one]self” to strike a balance between assigning due blame for sexual assault to the perpetrator and warning women of the predictable effects of acute alcohol intoxication. Always, it is the perpetrator and the perpetrator alone who is responsible for committing sexual assault. However, Gladwell also suggests that it’s counterproductive to disregard 1) the element of misunderstanding that can play a role in sexual assault that occurs between strangers, and 2) the degree to which alcohol intoxication increases the chances that we will misunderstand—and be misunderstood by—a stranger.
Themes
Emily Yaffe’s advice to women comes with a corresponding advice to men. Yaffe argues that men need to be cautioned that excess drinking can “drastically increase the chances that [they] will commit a sexual crime." In the Washington Post study referenced earlier in chapter, students were asked to identify the measures they believed would be most effective in preventing sexual assault. The most common answers were “harsher punishment for aggressors, self-defense training for victims, and teaching men to respect women more.” Yet only 33 percent felt that drinking less would be effective, and only 15 percent identified stricter alcohol rules on campus as a way to reduce sexual assault.
Some people criticize victims of assault cases where alcohol was involved, arguing that the victim bears some responsibility for their assault because they put themselves in a vulnerable position by drinking too much. Yaffe refrains from victim-blaming while also advocating for better alcohol awareness by suggesting that women and men need to be aware of the consequences of acute alcohol intoxication. Ultimately, consent is an act of communication that requires the cooperation and mutual understanding of the person giving or not giving consent, and the person acknowledging that consent or lack thereof. When we introduce alcohol into the equation, we run the risk of miscommunicating and potentially initiating a horrific crime.
Themes
8. Gladwell returns to the night of Emily Doe’s sexual assault. He emphasizes that she was blacked out, which is what reliably happens when a person drinks as much alcohol as Doe drank that night. Later, she has no memory of meeting Turner, nor anything that happened afterward. She testifies that she would never leave the party with another man, since she had a boyfriend. However, Gladwell claims, “it wasn’t the real Emily Doe who met Brock Turner,” but a blacked-out, compromised Doe.
Gladwell returns to the Brock Turner sexual assault case. This time around, he places a heavier emphasis on alcohol’s role in the incident. Gladwell’s argument that “it wasn’t the real Emily Doe who met Brock Turner” establishes a connection between personal agency and identity. Our “real” self is the person we choose to be. This self is the combined effort of our values, beliefs, and actions, all of which are the product of our unique perspectives and experiences. When we drink to excess, alcohol myopia causes us to lose perspective, and, subsequently, we lose our “real” self.
Themes
While Turner claims to have remembered every stage of the night, this version of events was the one he prepared for trial. When he was first questioned by police, Turner alleged to remember much less and denied having run away from Doe after the graduate students confronted him. He also alleges to have “kind of blacked out.”
Gladwell implies that Turner likely has a less reliable memory of the night of the assault than the rehearsed version of events he delivered at his trial would suggest. His admission to having “kind of blacked out” suggests that he, like Doe, was considerably intoxicated.
Themes
At the end of Turner’s trial, Emily Doe read aloud a letter addressed to Turner, detailing the emotional trauma she endures in the aftermath of her assault. While Doe lists alcohol as a contributing factor to the assault, she ultimately states that “Alcohol was not the one who stripped [her], fingered [her], [and] had [her] head dragging against the ground.”
Doe’s statement criticizes the defense’s efforts to excuse Turner’s actions on the grounds of alcohol intoxication. Alcohol might have complicated their stranger encounter by making it more difficult to understand each other. However, it was Turner, ultimately who committed the act of sexual assault.
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Doe delivered a “scathing” response to Turner’s statement, in which he called for the implementation of an alcohol education program on campus. Doe argued that society should “show men how to respect women, not how to drink less.” Gladwell disagrees with this point, however, arguing that society should teach men to respect women and teach them to drink less. To Gladwell, the two lessons are connected. Alcohol radically complicated Turner’s already complicated feat of deciding what a stranger wanted from him.
Gladwell implies that thinking of sexual assault as a consequence of systemic misogyny or sexism and disregarding the role alcohol often plays in sexual assaults oversimplifies the issue. For Gladwell, Turner’s assault on Doe is an unfortunate consequence of misunderstanding. Under regular circumstances, our overconfidence in our ability to understand strangers leads us to misjudge them. When we add alcohol to this overconfidence, we drastically increase our likelihood of misunderstanding others and being misunderstood ourselves.
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