And finally as the walls were definitely completely closing around van Gogh, leaving him totally isolated and displaced from society, van Gogh started to have very intense arguments with Gauguin. The first incident to which this led was in the night of December 10th, when van Gogh threw a full glass of absinthe at Gauguin’s head (Pickvance 203). But this was not yet the culmination. After a short calm period, in the evening of December 23th the main incident happened. Van Gogh attacked Gauguin with an open shaving razor, obviously with an intension to kill him. As he did not succeed, he went back to his room and cut off his left ear. So, even though we see how big an impact the progressing solitude and claustrophobia had on van Gogh, it is still not clear why he tried to kill Gauguin and why he mutilated his ear. The one thing that all the interpretations of this incident agree with is that van Gogh was mad by this moment. But why didn’t this happen earlier, why didn’t he cut off his ear after the first incident on the 10th of December?
There was another circumstance that finally knocked van Gogh down. Definitely, any respect that van Gogh had for Gauguin, and more importantly, whatever excited he once was about working together with Gaugin, was long gone. But yet, even after this, he still wasn’t completely alone, although it might seem such from the paintings of the chairs. There still was one person who almost blindly supported him in every sense possible. It was his brother, Theo. He was the one who supported him both morally and financially throughout his whole career (Ryan 9). But, in December of 1888, Theo got engaged. Martin Bailey states in the article Drama At Arles: New Light on van Gogh’ Self- Mutilation that “”Van Gogh may well have received news about his brother’s engagement on 23 December - the very day of the self-mutilation in Arles” (Bailey 33-4). So, finding out this fact was the ultimate impact that definitely knocked van Gogh down. With Theo getting married, van Gogh would very likely lose his only support - the one that came from his brother. In the same article, Martin Bailey also says how “It must have passed through his mind that he [Vincent] would lose his support” (Bailey 33), once Theo started his own family. At this point, Vincent has finally become an absolute loner, since he was about to lose the only person that he could still find support in.