Mad About the Man, Part 2

I recently wrote a post about Don Draper, the character from Mad Men.  And one of the comments on that post posed the question of whether or not Don's search is for the truth or something else.  Now that the latest season of Mad Men is over, I'm ready to address that question.

In my opinion, Don's search is not about the truth.  I think he's trying to find a way to like or accept the version of himself that he's created.  All because he wants so much to be anyone but his real self, Dick Whitman.  And there's the irony in Don's search.  He wants to distance himself so much from Dick Whitman when his only peace will come in accepting that self and its role or part in who he is in life.  And Don is willing to go to great lengths to distance himself from Dick Whitman.

Think about the lucrative account he asked Pete to ditch because of the DoD background check that came with it.  Had the background check continued Don would have been found out and exposed to the whole world.  Worse in his mind though, he would have had to go back to living his life as Dick Whitman.  Don feared that outcome so much that he put the finances of the agency in jeopardy by forcing the account out of the agency.  An account that would have off-set the loss of Lucky Strike, kept the agency afloat and allowed several employees to keep their jobs.

And then there's Dr. Fay, one of three characters on the show who know who Don really is and what he's done.  When Dr. Fay found out Don's secret it was different for him in two ways:  1) he told her about it and 2) she accepted it and supported him.  And in accepting Don and his secret, she accepted him as Dick Whitman, something no one else in Don's carefully created world had ever done before.  This scared the daylights out of Don and sent him into the arms of his sweet, but naive secretary Megan, whom he now plans to marry.

Perhaps Dr. Fay would have fared better had she stumbled on Don's secret and reacted like Don's ex-wife Betty or account exec Pete.  Both rejected Don initially when they found out his secret and Pete even tried to profit from it.  For Don, that rejection was natural and almost a rejection of Dick Whitman too.  Ironically, both Betty and Pete have now kept and supported Don in his secret and that seems to hold more weight with him than Dr. Fay's acceptance of it.

So now Don is getting re-married and trying to further the "myth" of Don Draper rather than deal with the reality of himself, ie Dick Whitman.  He's looking for a self that's there all along, if only he would accept it.  It's all an invention of his own mind and the greatest piece of creative he ever sold the world.