Mr Tall is a man beset with incurable ennui. Able to take neither his own life nor a leap of faith with any intellectual honesty, he has no option but to face the absurdity of existence without the slightest hope of any relief. Hargreaves cleverly captures the various aspects of this predicament by giving his character inordinately long legs. At their very least they form a most effective metaphor for his fundamental discomfort with the world.
This is demonstrated particularly well when Mr Tall is bent awkwardly into his bed at night, irreconcilably at odds with what is simultaneously the essential condition of his being. These legs allow him insights, however, denied the common man or woman. They afford him a view above and beyond the rooftops of the town that might otherwise have bound his horizon and buried him in comforting falsehoods.
Even in this latter respect they remain a dubious gift. And when his torment finally drives him to the cliff edge, they deny him the option of drastic action. It is now that we see Hargreaves the master at work, reaping the rewards of his choice of metaphor. For what is Mr Tall to do there? He is a man who can step off a cliff just as a doorstep, whose tread on the seabed is but a paddle by the shore. It is not as if he can hurl himself to his death or drown himself. It is equally hard for him to leap ecstatically into the void, beyond the bounds of reason - the abyss somewhat loses any promise or threat when one’s feet rest with ease at its base. There is no escape for Mr Tall. He is condemned to the ridiculous.
Failed by reason, faith and death, Mr Tall sits on the cliff edge staring out to sea. He is visited by a procession of those who live the absurd life, with no higher moral purpose to curb them. Mr Tickle, Mr Nosey, and Mr Greedy arrive in turn – a fool, a voyeur and a glutton. They each present to Mr Tall a life without apology, embodying in their different ways the maxim that what is important in the face of the absurd is not the best living but the most living. Hargreaves would normally punish such excess, but here he knows this is futile – it would bring about no change, no remorse.
The words of these visitors do the trick, though the resolution they bring feels a little too easily won given the weight of the quandary Mr Tall has been grappling. He sees his lack of hope was liberation all along, freedom from the need for a purpose. He strides home briskly, revitalised, any imperative to find or create meaning decisively cast in his wake. But his jollity seems a simplistic response - has he found just another evasion?