the mute man as a booth people confess into
now that he's totally mute and inert and passive all of a sudden everybody seems to view him as a sympathetic ear, or not even a sympathetic real ear, more like a wooden carving or statue of an ear. An empty confessional booth.
Context
Gately, silenced, discovers he has become more popular than ever as someone to talk at — precisely because he can't talk back. Stripped of any ability to respond, he's demoted from listener to receptacle: not an ear but a carving of one, an empty confessional booth into which visitor after visitor pours the wreckage they'd never share with a man who could answer. He has become, in his own body, exactly the figurant the wraith describes — present, addressed, and utterly unable to participate. [sweep · shared-ground addiction-recovery]