if you haven't read this book, and you are one of those people who don't like to have the ending of a book spoiled, you might want to stop reading. because here be spoilers!
i need to write about the end of this novel first. i am teaching this book in my class this fall semester, and one of the questions i intend to ask them to think about is: how can this novel be viewed as a farewell to the past century and a welcome to the new century? in other words, how can we see this novel doing in a literary sense what Clive's symphony is attempting to do in a musical sense? i know, this question does not make sense to you if you haven't read the book. sorry about that! but onwards. in clive and vernon, mcewan has given us to complex characters, but both seem to be drawn to a "higher" authority or ideal. for clive, it's art and music, in the sense of both of those being what we consider the "fine arts". for vernon, it's political ideology and the kind of people who should hold political office and what kinds of aims they should try to achieve while in office. both men pursue these ideals at a high cost--clive fails to help a woman in need who we eventually learn narrowly escapes a rapist, but only days later that same rapist attacks another victim; while vernon makes the decision to publish pictures of a cabinet minister dressed in drag without taking into consideration the personal costs to said cabinet minister or his family in doing so, and at the same time his choice demonstrates that it is not the minister or his politics that we have to fear, but men like vernon who show their very intolerance and narrow thinking in the choices they make in regard to exposing the "sins" of others. so at the end of the novel, mcewan makes the authorial choice to have clive and vernon take each other's lives. the fulfillment of an euthanasia pact between the men. there's an interesting line in the novel before this happens: "This was the comic nature of their fate; a first-class stamp would have served both men well. On the other hand, perhaps no other outcomes were available to them, and this was the nature of their tragedy." (161) here i am then, at the end of the novel, wondering what to make of the ending as well as this glance toward the comic and tragic aspects of the fates of clive and vernon. and i'm also wondering what mcewan might be saying about the state of literature (british literature?) at the end of the 20th century and what awaits british literature and the novel in the 21st century. is it something akin to the characteristics of Frank Dibben, Vernon's successor at the newspaper that he is forced to resign from in disgrace? Dibben, a man who is wily, who knows how to 'play the game' in order to get what he wants and is willing to do what he has to do to get it, a man who is able to gain his boss' trust and then betray that trust easily, casually, and without regret? are clive and vernon stand-ins for the "old guard" who must inevitably die because they are not capable of surviving all that awaits them in the new century? or is it because of their ideology that they must die before the new century begins? must we break ties with their ways of thinking and doing before the end of the century so that we can step into the new century unencumbered by outdated ways of thinking and seeing? is the story of clive's and vernon's lives ultimately a comedy? or is it a tragedy?
another thing that pops up frequently in the last two parts of the novel is the idea of a cancer eating away at the body (either the physical body or the body politic) and how that cancer must be stopped before it completely destroys the body. this once again makes me return to clive and vernon--are they the cancers? or have they been destroyed by a cancer that they didn't understand and didn't know how to fight?
and also, what am i to make of the fact that garmony and lane end up with a kind of "happily ever after"? i say a "kind" because no one, i think, would read it as a true happily ever after, and yet in the end george lane gets what he wants--two of his late wife's lovers are dead, while a third is politically disgraced. and though garmony doesn't lose everything (he seems to still have his family and public opinion is in his favor in terms of his right to enjoy his sexual proclivities which harm none), he is no longer in a position to have the one thing we can theorize he wanted most--the position of british prime minister. again, are these kind of people who are equipped to handle life in the 21st century?
i'm really looking forward to reading what my students think about this novel and how they respond to it. i can totally understand why it won the booker prize. it's tightly written and i had a hard time putting it down (i actually read it in two sittings). the characters are complex and the prose is fluid and beautiful and yet simple in its elegance. and the emotional investment that i had in the novel as a reader is one it seems i haven't had in a very long time. and it deals with weighty issues: euthanasia, privacy issues, politics, the value of the arts and the role of newspapers in particular as well as the news media in general and the power they are able to wield in the 21st century, and there's also the portrayal of women. mcewan's treatment of women in this novel is...what word should i use here? it's fraught with difficulty. on the one hand we have molly, who is portrayed as a temptress and often alluded to as an Eve figure; then on the other hand we have rose garmony, who is the woman behind the man but also a successful pediatric surgeon who stands firmly by her husband's side and willingly participates in the attempt to keep her husband's political image from being completely damaged. and so they are stereotypical in nature, stock characters who do what the story needs for them to do in order to move forward, but i can't help wondering if their depiction in the story is meant to be taken at face value.
in the final analysis, i would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a really good read.
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