For want of a nail...

• For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
• For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
• For want of a horse the rider was lost.
• For want of a rider the battle was lost.
• For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
• And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Our Girl in Chicago (I like spelling out OGIC on occasion) has really eloquently laid out the complexities of this ambitious novel. Asking readers to identify with a “bad” person is not a new tactic. We willingly do it in Lolita, as OGIC notes. Still, it tests our ethics.

In one of several subplots, the narrator and war criminal meditates on the apparent madness of a local resistance hero. Did he really turn bad? Was his turn connected to ergotism (a madness caused by eating grain infected by the fungus ergot, I learned)? Was that ergotism linked to Emile’s own actions as a local official?

Of all the things that he is responsible for, this one is more of a stretch than many others. After all, he enthusiastically orders the deportment of dozens, hundreds, of Jews. Still, he meditates on his own complicity (and guilt) here. As in the old nursery rhyme “For want of a nail,” perhaps for want of good flour, the resistance leader was lost. While Emile doesn’t mourn this, we are meant to see the link and to think about the reach of Emile's guild.

Part of the diabolical nature of this meditation on complicity, however, is that it works the other way, too. Emile’s skill in wondering if he’s responsible for Paul’s madness is partly egotism. And his self-justification works in the same way. Over and over again, he wonders how things might have changed if he had not been teased by Paul’s wife, Arianne, in the schoolyard. The cruelty he suffers in boyhood is another kind of nail, digging at him, spurring him on, offering him an excuse.

All of this has got me thinking about the ethics of fiction. How far are you willing to follow a narrator? What makes an exercise in sympathy for the devil into art? What keeps it a mere exercise? Do you have a favorite anti-hero or one so evil he (or she) made you turn away?

Comments

[mai wen]

It's interesting that you said that "Asking readers to identify with a “bad” person is not a new tactic. We willingly do it in Lolita, as OGIC notes" because I did Not willing identify with Humbert Humbert and actually, while the writing was striking and moving, was so disgusted by Humbert I barely could finish the novel. The only thing that kept me going was to find out what happened to Dolores. I found his justification for his actions (saying that Dolores made the first move, she seduced him, etc.) was completely disturbing as it's a fact that no matter what a child does, no adult has a right to violate her/him. Also, to say that he didn't seduce her would be a lie, he seduced and manipulated her into trusting him and thinking he was a friend, and then keeping her with him. I cannot deny the beauty of the written word of the book, but I could Not identify with Humbert, the worse kind of anti-hero. I could much easier identify with a murderer as I think child sexual abuse is possibly one of the worse crimes in the world.

[Dan Wickett]

Nice job Anne. An interesting question of how far one will follow the narrator. Obviously Mai Wen has determined that a sexual predator is beyond (or nearly so) her scope of willingness.

It will be interesting to see where others will mention as their stopping points. I've not met a narrator who I wasn't willing to follow due to his/her ethics or morality. I think those issues just open up lines of thought for me - make me ponder and even justify my own beliefs.

[Rachael S.]

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