Dealing With Your Divorce

The film, Secret Window follows Author Mort Rainey whose life is in a downward spiral and he exhibits signs of having Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID. The majority of the film takes place in a small rural town where Mort Rainey is currently living since he is in the process of getting divorced and his wife is staying at their home. The main plot of the film is another author shows up and begin harassing Mort and killing people he knows.

The other Author turns out to be Mort’s disassociated identity at the end of the movie and he kills his wife and her boyfriend. During the majority of the film the viewer gets to see Mort Rainey in his regular state and not the identity he has when he commits the murders that occur. However, in his regular state of mind Mort Rainey does have some undesirable personality traits. As the movie progresses we start to see those traits become more pronounced as the severity of his Dissociative Identity Disorder becomes more severe.

Mort Rainey comes across as an artistic individual who is self-absorbed, disagreeable and aggressive at times. The possible reasoning for Mort Rainey to behave this way is because he is a big-name author and he believes himself to be more important than others. This could lead him to come across as arrogant and self-absorbed. There are several scenes in the film where he displays this behavior. Mort Rainey has a divorce that has been ongoing for over a year and he now not only has to deal with his divorce but there is another author that claims Mort Rainey stole his story and begins to violently harass him.

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This other author turns out to be Mort Rainey’s other identity, but he still believes he has interactions with him that become more violent and raise the level of Mort Rainey’s aggression and makes him more disagreeable.

In the film the viewer is able to see Mort’s reactions to several different situations that show how he interprets things based on his personality. One instance is when Mort approaches the local sheriff about the other author threatening him and killing his dog. The sheriff doesn’t seem very concerned by the threat and the makes Mort visibly upset because he believes the sheriff isn’t taking it seriously. Mort then proceeds to hire a private investigator because he believes the sheriff is incompetent. While most people would simply let the sheriff take care of the issue Mort sees himself as better than the locals from the small town he is living in and that arrogance is what leads him to hire the private investigator.

Mort’s previous relationship with his wife and the consequent divorce plays a big role in his personality. Not only did the breakup of their relationship lead Mort to become more aggressive, reclusive, jealous and less agreeable, it also leads to the creation of his other identity which personified these personality traits to the extreme. While Mort doesn’t directly take his anger out of his wife until the end of the film, her fiancé, Ted receives the brunt of Mort’s jealousy and aggression. When Mort and his wife are going over the itemized list from their house fire at the lawyers’ office Ted is also present which greatly irritates Mort. Mort then accuses Ted of “rubber necking” when he is trying to look at the list which then causes an argument resulting in Ted leaving the room. There is also an example of the severity of the jealousy possessed by Mort at the beginning of the film where he shows up at a motel with a gun to confront and possibly kill his wife and Ted.

The best personality theory to use to interpret the character of Mort Rainey is The Big Five Theory. This is because Mort Rainey is a complex character and the Big Five Theory is composed of five, “…broad traits…” which allow an in-depth interpretation of Mort Rainey. One of the concepts from the big five is the level of an individual’s agreeableness which Mort Rainey is at the low end of the scale. According to the text individuals that are agreeable get along with others and avoid conflict using this definition it can be concluded that Mort Rainey is not an agreeable person but is in fact a disagreeable individual which the text characterized as an individual who displays aggression and is part of frequent social conflict. The definition of a disagreeable individual clearly represents Mort Rainey because the almost the entire film is filled with social conflicts for Mort.

Mort Rainey displays a very low level of agreeableness throughout the film with almost every other character he comes into contact with. Mort Rainey’s disagreeableness is very evident in the beginning of the film when he interacts with his house keeper, Mrs. Garvey. Mrs. Garvey takes a manuscript out of the trash and puts it back on the table for Mort which irritates him despite her doing it out of kindness. Mrs. Garvey then offers to make Mort lunch which he refuses and then she tells him he is a, “good man” in an effort to offer him emotional support. Instead of being thankful to Mrs. Garvey Mort speaks to himself but to her saying, “It’s my personal business, Mrs. Garvey. Thank you very much.” and, “Her sticky, weird fingers on my privacy.” This interaction illustrates that Mort Is on the low end of the scale for agreeableness and it correlates with his aggression he shows later in the film. The viewer can also see the low level of agreeableness in the earlier part of the conversation with Mrs. Garvey is evident in Mort’s tone of voice despite her not hearing it.