This Side of Paradise: Book 1, Chapter 4: Narcissus Off Duty Summary & Analysis

In January of Amory’s senior year, a large number of the junior class decides to resign from their clubs, encouraged by Burne Holiday, in order to reform the social system. Burne comes to try to convince Tom to resign from his clubs, and he stays to talk with Tom and Amory. Amory finds Burne intense, earnest and compelling. Amory is drawn to Burne, and they become close friends. Amory learns that Burne is a socialist and a pacifist, and that he is interested in literature. Lying awake at night, Amory remembers a couple of pranks that Burne had orchestrated. Amory is impressed by his simultaneous seriousness and humor.

Burne increasingly retreats from the Princeton social scene. He spends time reading, writing, and attending graduate classes and is often seen walking across campus deep in thought. Amory is overcome with joy seeing him lost in thought. Amory admits to Tom that Burne is the first person whom Amory believes to be smarter than himself. Tom explains that people think Burne is odd, and Amory tells Tom that he has become conventional. Amory notices that it is the most intellectual men who have the most disdain for Burne. Burne confronts Jesse over an editorial in The Princetonian that Jesse wrote, in which Jesse inadvertently insults Jesus. 

Amory begins to enjoy college again and feels youthful and energetic. Alec tells Amory that he is getting a reputation for being eccentric, like Burne, because Amory brings strange characters to dinner at Cottage Club. Alec agrees to accept Amory in private as long as he is the same Amory as before. Amory brings Burne to visit Monsignor Darcy, and they get along well. Afterwards, Darcy, in a letter, asks Amory to visit a poor, widowed cousin of Amory’s in Philadelphia, Clara Page, as a favor.

When Amory visits Clara, she is not the image of poverty that he expected. Amory is enamored with her and falls in love with her. He repeatedly visits her on weekends through the spring. Clara understands Amory and tells him that while he is vain, he is truly humble at heart. Amory tells Clara that he loves her and wants to marry her. Clara tells him that she has never been in love and will never marry again. Amory admits that although Clara is the only woman he has ever known and will ever know, he can understand why she would prefer another man.

The war finally reaches the United States, and Princeton men begin to join in the army. Amory goes to Washington  to enlist, while Burne refuses because he is a pacifist. A week later, Burne sells all his possessions and leaves on a bicycle for his home in Pennsylvania. Amory becomes angry at the previous generation, whom he believes encouraged German aggression. During a lecture on Victorian poetry, Amory composes a poem blaming the war on the Victorians, which he hands to his professor. On their last night on campus, Tom and Amory feel the presence of ghosts, whom they think are the youth of generations past. Tom and Amory say a tearful goodbye.