Geo. is one of those acutely self-conscious persons whom we have all at some time met. So concerned with the way he appears to others, he fails to observe that others are unconcerned with him; forever preoccupied with the restricted activities of his own mind, he can approach nothing else with any real enterprise, including his teller duties at the Bank. He can, in fact, become involved in nothing outside of himself. He has, in the popular jargon of today, no "bag." This collection of sketches about him has been entitled The Empty Bag, a name also chosen with the final story in mind. Here we find him at "The End" still unwilling to revolt against his life of quiet desperation. As we follow him through his activities, we become caught up in the minutiae of everyday life, in the small, normally forgotten occurrences. But with Geo's. uncanny knack of bungling, these occurrences become experiences of haunting recurrence. If he were injury prone in the physical, rather than in the psychological sense, as he is, we would expect to find him hospitalized a good part of the time. Though realizing his tragic quality, now and again, we are primarily moved by his more comic failings. It is in these moments that we recognize ourselves and come to realize that there is, perhaps, more than a little bit of Geo. in each of us.
