Unshakably Resilient :The Resistance-Reverence Nexus
Let’s Bee/have : Dare 2 Distinguish
An exquisite and
utterly provocative commentary on some of the issues regarding language, public
discourse, the public-private scale demarcating individual and communal aspects
of human beings, and the meaning and the role of norms and conventions in culture
can be found in Ian McEwan’s novel The
Children Act (2014). While McEwan’s oeuvre, in a very broad sense, may be
perceived in the light of the wordsworthian tradition, as articulated in the
Preface to the second edition of William Wordsworth’s and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads (1800),
even the most loyal readership mobilize their suspicion apparatus to question
the narrative technique and seek justification in the message delivered within
the how-what nexus.
The manner in
which the storyline raises awareness of the formal aspects of the narration is
to a high extent an invitation to enter a quietly rebellious conversation with that
what is happening in this seemingly hyper-conventional, at times puzzlingly
pacifying, story. That Ian McEwan’s style is certainly anchored in the capacity
to juggle, combine, and put in a challenging dialogue soothing wording heavily
relying on traditional prose with nuggets
of dissident thought spiking the lulling flow with a tiny dosage of darker
shades woven in the narrative tissue is more than obvious. That it features
incredible potential to galvanize a critical approach to the themes of
relevance is what makes that signature part of the communication currency highlighting
crucial aspects of the exchange within the community of human beings worthy of the
challenge.
And yet, what
seems to be specific about the way this signature technique is deployed in the
novel in question is the degree to which it saturates the narrative. The
literary convention weaves the narrative yarns solidly to the point where one
wonders whether such a device becomes part of the message that addresses the
issue of great importance. It is related to the question of the norm, abiding by
it, questioning it, subverting it—in the service of communication between and
among selfless, yet re-individualized, fellow humans. Namely, in an ultimate
sense, it is the question of the way gentleness toward, respect, and care for
another human being can be integrated into the social vocabulary conditioned
and shaped by conventions and norms. Simultaneously, it looks at the ways
cultural realities display an excess in insisting on formalities, thereby
signaling certain deviations in the domain of the politeness-humaneness
relationship.
The character of
Fiona Maye, London’s High Court judge, epitomizes the burden of “being
civilized.” To say that she is dedicated to her profession is neither an
understatement nor an overstatement. It is an ill-articulated issue. Her
“professionalism” hinders her functioning on the private plane. In the world
where brazen survivalist impositions might blind one to the deviations of the
patterns that can make human life much more humane, much needed resistance
instigates suspension of belief, thus enabling thinking in the key that
subverts threats of coercion, threats to the mutually conditioning relationship
between discourse and cultural realities.
Fiona is
confronted with her husband’s love affair with a much younger woman. He cannot
resist the call to reanimate the passion fueling the whole being. She cannot
accept being abandoned, betrayed. Having had him leave the apartment and the
lock on the apartment’s door changed,
she undergoes an ordeal of self-doubt, social anxiety—interestingly, primarily
considering the ways to avoid being pitied—and resurfacing through the case in
which she “saves” a boy from a detrimental influence of his and his parents’
religious creed. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in transfusion. According
to their doctrine, to allow somebody else’s blood in one’s body is sinful. The
boy was going to turn eighteen in three months. Regardless, Fiona decides to
make a legally questionable decision in order to enable the law to ensure the
boy’s treatment. She declares transfusion legally justifiable. Adam Henry is
not just cured, but he is also relieved of the clutches of the staggeringly
restricting religious circle that he knew.
The judge
experiences an extraordinarily rejuvenating jolt through the communication with
Adam, through poetic and musical exchange, and a light encounter with his body
at the moment when their cheeks briefly touch, when a soft, unpretentious,
unimposing, and nonpromiscuous kiss marks their separation. Despite the allure
of those lyrical moments, she refrains from challenging either herself or Adam
beyond the limits of the social norm. Meanwhile, she resumes her matrimonial
everyday with her husband Jack in an enchanting insipidness of the gated
community in which they live.
Here arises the
crux of the narrative. It is not her embracing social norms that adds up to the
troubling dynamics of the character of Fiona. Rather, it is the way in which
politeness and formalities assume a radical dimension that renders them
questionable, to say the very least. The extremism in which manners are used as
a defensive tool--sheer survivalist means--indicate not only its alleged
capacity to ensure inviolability, but McEwan makes it clear how deceptive that
defense may be. More precisely, the rigidity of “politeness” turns out to be a
somewhat distorted version of the kindness that nourishing, protective control
normally generates. In its radical version, it is a corruption of the meaning
typically ascribed to the word. Instead of shielding, it isolates. Instead of
protecting, it desensitizes. By supposedly preventing vulnerability, it,
actually, inhibits openness to another human being. It constricts engagement in
human communication. It is the distance that exceeds the vibrant threshold.
Under the disguise of safety, it hinders bonding. It is maintained by virtue of
anxiety, sense of threat, being endangered by other humans. It spurs the
mentality of rivalry and hostility. It encourages a sterile socioscape—barren
coldness in the midst of global warming. It is not polite.
How McEwan’s
narrative technique conveys the message of that conundrum is a matter of
peculiar, sophisticated sensitivity to literary subtleties and moral issues.
There is a parallel between the unfolding of Fiona’s bleakly impregnable world
that provides the enchantment of aloofness at the expense of everything else on
the one hand and, on the other, the storyline that progresses steadily, and yet,
so “politely” that it provokes suspicion. Until the clue is provided within an
unlikely conversation between the couple at the restaurant. Upon Fiona’s return
to London, having spent a fortnight on a business trip, they go out for dinner.
Jack shares insights he was exposed to in a geology lecture:
A hundred million years into the future,
when much of the oceans had sunk into the earth’s mantle and there wasn’t
enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to sustain plants and the surface of
the world was lifeless rocky desert, what evidence would a visiting
extraterrestrial geologist find of our civilization? A few feet below the
ground a thick line in the rock would mark us off from all that had gone
before. Condensed into that six-inch sooty layer would be our cities, vehicles,
roads, bridges, weapons. (The Children
Act 184)
Jack is
particularly keen on deciphering the instances within the lecture that mark the
point he allegedly ascribes to the lecturer’s observations concerning “the
beginning of a mass extinction in which life’s variety had started to narrow”
(184). He is insistent on detailing that
minute layer that testifies to our civilization:
Also, all sorts of chemical compounds
not found in the previous geological record. Concrete and brick would weather
down as easily as limestone. Our finest steel would become a crumbling ferrous
stain. A more detailed microscopic examination might reveal a preponderance of
pollen from the monotonous grasslands we had made to feed a giant population of
livestock. (184)
Jack’s tirade
unsettles his wife. She goes to the ladies’ room to regain her composure,
“where she stood in front of the mirror, eyes closed, comb in hand in case
someone came in, and drew a few slow deep breaths” (185). The scene reflects
the manner in which their relationship is being re-established: ”The thaw was
neither quick nor linear. At first it was a relief, not to be self-consciously
avoiding each other around the flat, not to be coldly competing in politeness
in that stifling way they had” (185).
Only with the
introduction of different sound do the harsh edges of their worlds soften.
Atypically reduced preparations for the annual concert find Fiona strangely at
ease. The time she and her co-performer, Mark Berner, were supposed to spend
practicing was taken up by his extended confession about a particular case,
apparently constituting his swan song, as long as the world of law is
concerned. His tenor was stubbornly submerged in that lengthy analysis of legal
sanctions applied to some of the participants in the case of a youth violence
drenched clash. Fiona is anxious to lower her fingers on the keys. And, yet
Mark shares on. Eventually, without either asking for a permission or waiting
for an approval, the piano spills notes into the cold of London night having
been touched by the hands of the pianist. Mark’s tenor joins her somewhat
inspired, somewhat dutiful play.
One night in
December, when London was zoning through a hazy corridor connecting the
dissipating day and the onset of the evening, Fiona busied herself after work
with the preparations for the performance she was going to give in a couple of
hours. Not only does her utmost elegant attire color the evening with the shade
of solemn exultation, but the room filled with Jack’s presence exudes a magical
composite of warmth and smell rising from the fireplace in a silent
conversation with a seductive coating leaking from their rarely used stereo. It
is Keith Jarrett. Facing You drifts
across the room. Sound that melts even the most frozen of thoughts. The wizardry
of playing the written notes enriched with the sound created in the interstices
of the record on the sheet.
Why does the
complexity of jazz inspire nostalgic invocation of the rudimentary patterns of
the blues and the beauty of their seemingly predictable combinations? Why is
such nostalgic musical thinking evocative of even less demanding paradigms,
blatantly sweet easiness of the three chord axiom? How does the sound snake seamlessly
through that meandering borderless empire of genres within which each,
paradoxically, remains intact, sustains integrity? One would like to know.
Why does the
sound reanimate the memories of the early days of their relationship when
passion occupied each cell of their bodies, each instant of their existence? It
was the time when Jack exposed her to the magic of jazz and when alongside her
discovery of the likes of Thelonious Monk, Fiona finds out what it means to be
entirely immersed in an ecstatic buzz. The powerful sensation that perhaps never
leaves one.
The quandary may
acquire a somewhat clearer form once filtered and sifted through the lens of
Terry Eagleton’s idiom, especially the instance looking at the nature of jazz
jamming and the role of communication within the band:
[T]o a large extent each member is free to express
herself as she likes. But she does so with a receptive sensitivity to the
self-expressive performances of the other musicians. The complex harmony they
fashion comes not from playing from a collective score, but from the free
musical expression of each member acting as the basis for the free expression
of the others. As each player grows more musically eloquent, the others draw
inspiration from this and are spurred to greater heights. There is no conflict
here between freedom and the ‘good of the whole’, yet the image is the reverse
of totalitarian. Though each performer contributes to ‘the greater good of the
whole’, she does so not by some grim-lipped self-sacrifice but simply by
expressing herself. There is self-realization, but only through the loss of
self in the music as a whole. (The
Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction 100)
So, is the
parallel between the two discoveries an accurate trope depicting Fiona’s
experience? Jack’s memories bear witness to her confined perception and
consternated approach to the riches playfulness offers:
He played her Thelonious Monk’s “Round
Midnight” and bought her the sheet music. It wasn’t difficult to play. But her
version, smooth and unaccented, sounded like an unremarkable piece by Debussy.
That was fine, Jack told her. The great jazz masters adored and learned from
him. She listened again, she persisted, she played what was in front of her,
but she could not play jazz. No pulse, no instinct for syncopation, no freedom,
no fingers numbly obedient to the time signature and notes as written. That was
why she was studying law, she told her lover. Respect for rules. (200)
Fiona becomes susceptible to the enchantment
of that winter eve filled with music, flame-and-ember backdrop, Jack treating
her with champagne, cheese, olives, kiss, and touch. They had to refrain from
proceeding with indulging in the exhilaration with the re-enliven bodies. Fiona
was to perform in a couple of hours.
Their playing
was met by multiple--slightly unconventional for a classical music gig—standing
ovations. As she walks from the stage, she meets a woman who tells her
something, after which she walks home through the rain. Her hair is still wet
when Jack comes home. Half concerned with helping her dry herself, half
inquiring about the reason why she left, Jack is attentive. Unexpectedly, the
boy who became a hero of her career and penetrated her emotional world in an
utterly peculiar way, re-enters it.
Only now, he is
dead. That’s the information the woman relayed. That’s the information she now
shares with Jack. She shamelessly admits kissing him. Somewhat less assertively,
she acknowledges that she never responded to his letters. She neglected the
symbolic that might have been there. But only might. Was he determined to
relapse, so to speak? Was he outlining his intent to go back to his family,
religion, to embrace it, and (mis)use it as an excuse to refuse treatment once
leukemia plagues his body again?
Those might be
some of the thoughts occupying Fiona’s and Jack’s communication channel. As the
story is sagging into the nocturnal sphere saturating the words being
exchanged, the theme of the death of the boy morphs with the metaphoric realm,
as the two are examining each other’s face, lying next to one another, and
their marriage resumes by virtue of the soft rhythm of falling darkness.
Thus, once again
one wonders where within Ian McEwan’s novel the equivalents of the
descriptions of the sediment-record can
be found. Is it being too polite? Where is the voice that speaks in the key of
the sound rebellion reinstating the currency in the communication channel: homo homini homo est?
Is Ian McEwan
being overprotective? If so, is such an attitude patronizing? Could it be a
commentary on the nanny state McEwan bears witness to? May it be related to the
awareness of the society that is acquiring characteristics of overregulated
anomie?
If the narrative
parallels, reflects, and incorporates aspects of the worrisome thematic, one
can’t but wonder if it is a high cost compromise? Does it sacrifice (or,
scapegoat, for that matter) the adventure provided by an edgier, subversive,
defiant vernacular? Perhaps. One would be misled to believe. Were it not for
the components of the novel tangential to the plot, discreetly embroidering the narrative tapestry, anchoring
the belief in the potential of rebellion through subtonic hi-fi solidarity of
selfless, yet re-individualized, fellow humans. The components of the novel
where darkness closes in, where reigns rain sovereign. Anchoring the potential
of the remix.
