Who Is Dr. Elton's Misinformed Reality?

Most would not consider their reality to be brittle until faced with a conundrum like that of Dr. Cedric Elton. A world-famous psychologist with a beautiful secretary, Dr. Elton is going through his day when he is introduced to a man named Gerald Bocek. The four police officers that brought Jerry to Cedric’s office are heavily armed due to Jerry killing six people, including a police officer. Jerry articulates that he, in fact, killed six blue-scaled Venusian lizards that were attempting to board his spaceship. What makes this encounter strange is when Cedric attempts to tell Jerry of his misinformed reality. Jerry says that Cedric is wrong; his name is actually Gar Castle and he only believes that he is Dr. Cedric Elton because he has not
When Jerry says some piece of information that Gar was not aware of, Gar’s dream world slips to fit the new information. For example, Jerry disturbs “Dr. Elton’s” reality when he correctly says the name of Gar’s receptionist, Helena. When “Dr. Elton” is alone with Helena, an answer appears as to why Jerry would know. Helena says, “all he had to do was read it on my desk here,” (Phillips 6) as she indicates that she has a brass nameplate on her desk. As she says this, Gar sees the nameplate appear on her desk and he remembers that he always buys his receptionists nameplates. His perception improvises and makes up for information that it can not explain. This same phenomenon occurs a second time when Gar questions the manner in which Jerry was brought to him; he never received a call about Jerry’s arrival. Once he realizes this fact, he calls an imaginary D.A. that assures him that bringing Jerry right to his office was the best way to go about it. Dave, the D.A., explains, “I thought it would be less of an imposition on you,”(Phillips 5). When Gar’s rational thinking overtakes his imagination, he realizes that this is actually ridiculous. Why would the police risk a highly dangerous criminal traveling through the streets? It doesn’t make sense, rightly so, because Gar’s misinterpreted reality is desperately trying to make sense of the world around
The ending may be upsetting, however, it gives some insights into pitfalls of “Dr. Elton’s” truth. Everything that Jerry mentioned is the scenery, including the singed gear lockers, the dead Venusian lizards, and the rope that tied Jerry up. There are some elements of the space world that Jerry does not describe previously, that Gar understands. For instance, the airlock controls are familiar to Gar as Jerry turns on the airlock pump. A second observation of the final paragraph is that Jerry’s death is extremely gruesome. A typical psychiatrist is assumed to be a mentally stable individual. How would a psychiatrist's imagination come up with such a violent death? The only explanation is that it is not his imagination; Jerry’s death is happening before Gar’s