Wednesday, December 1, 2010

The prologue

I know what you are but what am I?
The prologue is only thirteen pages long in my edition. And yet there is an immense amount packed into it. Most of which I will not be able to touch on.

It is preceded by a table of contents and an author's note. Both are telling. A table of contents is an antiquated thing to have here; it's a deliberate throwback to the Victorian novel. The author's note seems to be the usual one to tell us that this story is fictional as are all the characters and any resemblance et cetera. But we don't get legal boiler plate here but rather this clever bit of wording:

I am not I: thou art not he or she:
they are not they
EW

And the bug I want to put into your ear is this: does he mean more by this than merely to deny any connection with real life? That is, does he perhaps mean that in some more general sense, "I am not I"?

In any case, there is trap here worth avoiding. Right from the beginning, most people have read this novel as disguised autobiography. And because Charles Ryder, like many fictional narrators but unlike most people who write non-fiction memoirs, does not exalt himself, readers have found the idea of the story very captivating.

And there is a problem with that because Charles Ryder is not necessarily a good guide to the events of his own life and their significance to himself. He isn't a liar the way we shall soon see that Sebastian and his mother are liars. But he is peculiarly blind to their lies and he is peculiarly blind to a lot of other stuff. Waugh has made him this way intentionally.

And it is so tempting to ignore that. Ryder, after all, is a snob and social climber and so is Waugh. Ryder has a keen appreciation for the absurd and so does Waugh. Why not read Ryder as a fictionalized Waugh?

That is certainly what many of the critics have done. They have then turned around and used Ryder as a stick to beat Waugh with. The carefully planted evidence to show Ryder's moral weakness and lack of awareness became the evidence to show Waugh had the same faults.

I suspect that didn't bother Waugh much. What bothered him was that people missed the art. They missed all the effort he went to create a fictional narrator to tell this story and thereby make a point about that fictional narrator. The only people who loved the book at first were like the sort of people who show up at Cavendish, Prince Edward Island every year and want to know: "Is this is where Anne really lived?" "Is this really the school she went to?" "Is this really the hotel where she recited?"

Life magazine, for example, wanted to do a piece wherein they would take pictures of all the real people the characters of Brideshead were based on and the real locations where the story took place. They sent Waugh a letter and asked him if he would kindly supply the relevant names so they could get to work.

I reckon that is Charles's job maybe
 So let's do Waugh a favour and let's read  the fictional story he took such trouble to craft for us. The first character to appear in that story is Charles Ryder and like any other character in a novel, there is something wrong with him. And we will learn what that is here in this prologue.

That may not seem significant but consider the expectations set up by reading this one way or another. Suppose I decide to tell you my life story from university days forward? I have a purpose in telling you that story. It could be positive: "I used to be a callow, beardless youth and I'm telling you this story to show how much I've matured." It could also be negative: "I had an openness, an innocence, in those days that I've lost and I wish I could regain." Either way, I am in control of the story and I'm telling you the story to serve some purpose of my own.

Charles Ryder is not in control of his story. Evelyn Waugh is in control and he has a different purpose. Charles Ryder is going to tell us what is wrong with his world and the answer to that question, for him, is going to be "Mr. Hooper is what is wrong with the world."

But he is wrong about that. Someone told me once that a British Newspaper asked leading British intellectuals to answer the question, "What is wrong with the world today?" As the story was told to me, I have no idea if it's true because I've always been too lazy to look it up, GK Chesterton answered the question as follows: "I am."

And that is what we should be looking for here. The thing that is wrong with Charles Ryder's world is Charles Ryder. We need to be on the look out for evidence of what is missing in him. Evidence that, at least as he starts to tell the story, may not be so obvious to him.

And let me bluntly state that the thing that is missing in Charles is not religion. He does not need to become a Christian because he already is one. We might miss that because part of the story ahead of us will be the efforts made by some to convert him but he is already converted and Mr. Hooper himself lets us know that in one telling line:
'... I've just had a snoop around. Very ornate, I'd call it. And a queer thing, there's a sort of R.C. Church attached. I looked in and a kind of service was going on—just a padre and one old man. I felt very awkward. More in your line than mine.'
There is an intentional vagueness in that line. We don't know what kind of Christian Charles is. He might actually be a Catholic but he might also be an Anglican or a protestant. Hooper merely says that it is more in Charles' line, he doesn't say that it is exactly in Charles' line.

If we knew what sort of Christian Charles is, we might be able to figure out what sort of Christian he should be. That would be an answer to the question of what is wrong with Charles Ryder. And here, we get a bit of a hint from the text. In the middle of his description of everything wrong with his world, Charles tells us first that something (he doesn't specify what) is wrong with him and he also lets us in on something that is right, or at least potentially right about him.

Here is what is wrong. His men are disheartened and disenchanted with the army just like he is.
And I, who by every precept should have put heart into them—how could I help them who could so little help myself?
And that tantalizing hint is all we get.

What is right about him? Eliot Girl and I were recently talking about this book, it's a favourite for both of us, and we realized that we had independently realized the same thing. That is that, far from being a mere example of absurdity to laugh at, the relationship between Charles Ryder and Mr. Hooper is actually the second most important relationship in the story. Mr. Hooper is the second character to appear in the story and he is very important to it.

To get a notion why, consider this question from Luke:
Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said,
"what must I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is
written in the law? What do you read there?" He answered, "You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your
neighbor as yourself." And he said to him, "You have given the
right answer; do this, and you will live.
But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my
neighbor?"
After this follows the parable of the Good Samaritan. Hooper is Charles' neighbour and it is Charles' job to love Hooper. And therein lies the challenge for Hooper is not very lovable. Hooper enters our story in a very unlikeable guy indeed. Ryder has just told us of the insane asylum near the camp and how the other troops have an affinity for the inmates thereof. And Hooper?
... but Hooper, my newest-joined platoon-commander, grudged them their life of privilege; 'Hitler would have put them in a gas chamber,' he said; 'I reckon we can learn a thing or two from him.'
Surely Ryder isn't supposed to love this man. He believes all the wrong things and represents, for Charles, everything that is wrong with the world. And yet Hooper is exactly the one whom Ryder has to love. He is his neighbour.

The first post in the Brideshead series is here.

The next post is here.

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