MBTI Type: ISFJ

Dominant Introverted Sensing—a strong emphasis on memories holding personal significance, meticulous, and detailed: Charlie is methodical in his work, and he patiently explains what he means to his online students, going through and marking their papers, teaching them about grammar, and using examples from the past to inspire them to be better writers. He has a particular affinity for nuance, and it delights him when his daughter writes a Japanese poem that at first glance looks flippant, but has the demanded amount of words and stanzas required for poetry. He values his own experiences and former life, and he seeks to comfort himself with it near the end of his life, as he recalls all the sensory sensations of being on the beach, of touching his lover, of seeing his daughter as a child. Charlie refuses to move on from how he sees Ellie, and continues to believe she is a sweet little girl, rather than to admit to the painful reality that she’s a monster, full of hatred and anger, who likes to hurt other people. He just sees the beautiful child who gave him so much joy in his marriage to her mother. At the end of his life, he asks her to read one of her childhood essays, in which he first saw “hope and beauty” in her, and it’s unclear whether her emotional breakdown is happening or a figment of his imagination. He reads that essay over and over and over, comforting himself with it.

Auxiliary Extroverted Feeling—ease of emotional expression and shaping their actions around how their decisions affect others: Charlie wants to be accepted by other people and to be considerate of their feelings. He feels apologetic and full of shame when he lets them down or has to disappoint them, but doesn’t care at all about himself compared to others’ needs. Ellie is going to inherit a great deal of money from him, if he deprives himself of medical assistance… so he would rather die from a heart attack because of his obesity than spend the thousands of dollars he has saved up from being a teacher and deprive her of those funds. When his wife comes to confront him about this, Charlie calms her down and tearfully reaffirms he is doing this for their daughter. He hopes it will make her into a better person. Charlie is excellent with his online students, in gently telling them how to improve their work. He wants to be “real” with them and turns on his camera, to show them how obese he is, before he breaks the laptop. Charlie cares too much about what others think about him; the horror and disgust on the pizza guy’s face when he sees him causes him to binge-eat.

Tertiary Introverted Thinking—desires to understand how systems and people work so they can better communicate or figure out how a hack that works: Charlie’s logic isn’t bad, it’s misguided; he is thinking so much about how to take care of Ellie he doesn’t realize he could take better care of her, if he took care of himself, and stayed around to be a positive influence on her for many years. He enjoys analyzing things for their own sake, including the poems and essays and stories his class sends him. Charlie is smart enough to realize Ellie has written a 5-stanza Japanese poem, even if it contains a bunch of insults. He can detach from the cruel things she says about him (why doesn’t he just die and leave her some money already?) to understand where she is coming from and the pain that drives her.

Inferior Extroverted Intuition—curious about the future and in distinct possibilities, but skeptical of “unrealistic” ideas and allows others to lead the way there: Charlie is idealistic to a fault. Rather than face the reality of his daughter’s behavior, he re-frames and re-imagines it into a positive story he tells himself and others, about how buried deep down, Ellie tries to be a good person and does well by others. He loves to read and interpret stories and essays and to look for the deeper meaning in them, but is not a writer. Charlie sucks at seeing the bigger picture of how his behavior is negatively affecting his life. He is clinging to a fantasy about the future that he wants to change everything for Ellie.

Enneagram: 9w1

Enneagram 9—desires freedom from others’ influences, by going along with them and being tolerant, until it matters not to: Charlie is more selfish than he realizes, since he is withholding of himself from his wife and daughter’s lives in any meaningful way, choosing to save up his money for when he’s dead rather than to engage with them. By doing this, he is making his nurse’s life harder. Charlie has taken self-forgetting (for his daughter, whom he feels guilty about abandoning) to an unhealthy extreme. He assumes everything he is doing, even if it’s self-harming, is for “the greater good.” Charlie refuses medical care that could save his life so he can give his daughter a hundred thousand dollars when he dies. Charlie is incapable of seeing the truth about her, because he can’t bear to think badly of anyone he loves; he puts a positive spin on every one of her selfish, mean-spirited, unhealthy Enneagram 8 actions, and refuses to process anything his wife tells him that contradicts it. When his daughter records the confession of a young man, then tracks down his family and sends it to them, Charlie insists she was trying to help him reconcile with his family, rather than think she might have evil motivations; it disturbs him too much to think anything other than positive thoughts about her. Charlie dies, pleading with her to be the person he wants her to be. He became obese because of self-hatred; he could not prevent his lover from feeling guilt and shame about their relationship and from killing himself with anorexia.

1 wing brings in a gut-driven sense of being right and a desire to help others improve themselves: Charlie believes firmly, from a gut place, he is doing the right thing by everyone, even if they don’t appreciate or like it. He refuses medical care so he can leave his daughter money, and does not capitulate even when it upsets his nurse to discover he has been suffering for no reason for months. He urges others to become better people, to act with diligence and a sense of duty and a moral obligation to others. It troubles him that those in his writing class are so unoriginal, careless, and disinterested in coming up with something “good” and/or reaching for perfection. Charlie angrily confronts a missionary who passes judgment on his lifestyle by forcing him to confront the truth. He tells off his daughter when she pushes him too far, but then turns it around and tries to inspire her to be better.