critical companion chapter 4 - themes

Chapter 4: themes

a.      Empty church

b.      Generations

c.       Vacancy

d.      The Dante chart

The empty church

The Casual Vacancy explores a village that is deciding what to do about the poor in their midst.  The role of the church could be central in such a decision, but in fact the church plays no role at all. 

The town is portrayed as a community amid three hills.  At the crest of one of these hills, there are ruins of an ancient abbey.  The abbey once dominated the town, but is now a tame and picturesque ruin in the distance.  The town retains references to its history, but little living reality.

The empty Church theme is key to understanding Howard.  When Howard tells his business partner, Maureen Lowe, about Barry’s death, she crosses herself.  He finds her gesture picturesque, like lipstick: “Maureen’s brightly lipsticked mouth hung slackly as she crossed herself. Her Catholicism always added a picturesque touch to such moments.”  (31)  The sign of the cross does not cause him to think about death and resurrection and such matters; rather, he and Maureen talk about the Fairbrother family’s loss, “and then, at last, they reached the real point of departure, beside which all else was aimless meandering.”  This “point of departure” is not the cross; the point of departure in Howard’s mind is the first explicit mention of the “casual vacancy,” the opening on the parish council.

Howard’s deli is on the town Square, across from a pub that is named for priests who served at the church in ages past, the Black Canon.  (A two-N “cannon” is a weapon; a one-N “canon” is a priest.)  “The Square was revealed in jerky increments as the blinds went up: picturesque and well kept, due in large part to the co-ordinated efforts of those proprietors whose properties faced onto it. Window boxes, hanging baskets and flower tubs were dotted about, planted in mutually agreed colors each year. The Black Canon (one of the oldest pubs in England) faced Mollison and Lowe across the Square” (32).

There is a war memorial in the Square, a stone cross.  Howard sees it as a detail of a picturesque scene: “He was here to drink it all in — the glossy black benches, the red and purple flowers, the sunlight gilding the top of the stone cross — and Barry Fairbrother was gone” (32).  He does not regret Barry’s death; it means that he has won his battle for the heart of the town.  Even the cross does not prod Howard to think of more substantial matters.

This substitution of the merely picturesque for the deeper realities of Christianity or eternity may be the real “casual vacancy” of the book.  This is deliberate on Rowling’s part, and recurs in the next scene when we see the world through Howard’s eyes, in the extended flashback, “Olden Days.”  Howard contrasts the squalor of the Fields with the “moral radiance” of Pagford, and believes that the external appearance does in fact reflect people’s souls: “ … Howard was forced to draw the conclusion that they were choosing, of their own free will, to live the way they lived, and that the estate’s air of slightly threatening degradation was nothing more than a physical manifestation of ignorance and indolence.”  On the other hand, in his mind, there was Pagford, which “shone with a kind of moral radiance in Howard’s mind, as though the collective soul of the community was made manifest in its cobbled streets, its hills, its picturesque houses. To Howard, his birthplace was much more than a collection of old buildings, and a fast-flowing, tree-fringed river, the majestic silhouette of the abbey above or the hanging baskets in the Square. For him, the town was an ideal, a way of being; a micro-civilization that stood firmly against a national decline” (52).

Rowling may be subtle in her use of Christian allusions, but she is not vague.  When Howard takes his place in church for the funeral, his actions are unmistakable rejections or violations of the teaching of Jesus Christ.  Jesus talked about who sits where in a place of worship quite frequently, not because it is important in itself so much as because it is revealing.  He said, forcefully, that his followers should not take places of honor for themselves (see, for example Matthew 23:6-7).  And he said, also forcefully, that they should not favor the rich over the poor in a gathering (see, for example, Luke 16:19).  When Howard does these things, he identifies himself as the kind of person that Jesus criticized most fiercely.

There is a tiny detail at Barry’s funeral which suggests that Rowling has an awareness of church that she does not explore explicitly.  The image of St. Michael is “on the epistle side” (131).  That means the right side, but it is an archaic way to say it.  Traditional Anglican churches and pre-Vatican Catholic churches used the terms “epistle side” and “Gospel side,” referring to where the lectionary was placed during different parts of a service.  It is an obscure term now, and using it is suggestive.  In the first Potter book, Professor Dumbledore recognizes Professor McGonagle, although she has a cat’s body for the time.  She is ruffled, and wants to know why her disguise failed.  He says he never saw a cat sit so stiffly.  Using the term “epistle side” is a little like that; the cat is too stiff.  What else does Rowling know?

The novel includes a list of people who work in helping professions – two doctors, a social worker, a guidance counselor.  There is a vicar who officiates at the funerals at the beginning and end of the story, but he is almost a nonentity.  He reads the words of service: “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die…” But Parminder, listening, notices his delivery, not the content: “The vicar did not sound as if he were thinking about the sense of the words issuing from his mouth, but only about his own delivery, which was singsong and rhythmic” (135).

Parminder’s perspective is key in the novel.  She prays.  When she first hears that Barry has died, she is devastated, and her grief overwhelms her.  She talks briefly to her husband; she tries to reach Tessa, but misses her.  She realizes that Howard and Maureen, who told her that Barry was dead, are actually pleased about it.  As she tries to come to grips with his death, there are two details in her home that reveal her.  “She stared at the grave, sweet visage of Guru Nanak pinned to the cork board,” a picture that she liked although her husband did not.  In the end of her struggle, she “jumped up again, strode back into the sitting room and took down, from the top shelf, one volume of the Sainchis, her brand-new holy book. Opening it at random, she read, with no surprise, but rather a sense of looking at her own devastated face in a mirror: O mind, the world is a deep, dark pit. On every side, Death casts forward his net” (36).

The night before Barry’s funeral, she remembers how much he made her laugh, and feels a terrible weight on her chest because he is gone.  But it is answered in her heart with wisdom the tries to make her own: “did not the Guru Granth Sahib exhort friends and relatives of the dead not to show grief, but to celebrate their loved one’s reunion with God? In an effort to keep traitorous tears at bay, Parminder silently intoned the nighttime prayer, the kirtan sohila” (121).

At Barry’s funeral, what is going on in the minds of the people present is generally inappropriate, and it is good they all keep their mouths shut.  Howard is bowing to the rich, Shirley is sneering at clothes, Gavin trying to create a psychic wall against sentimentality: there’s a lot of nonsense unfolding.  But nothing that Parminder is thinking needs to be hidden away.  She is recalling her father’s death and burial, and her feelings at the time.  Looking at Barry’s children, she “experienced a rush of tenderness, and an awful ache, and a confused desire to hold them and to tell them that she knew, she knew, she understood” (135).

Tessa is a good woman, but her spirituality might be summarized in a sarcastic remark from the principal.  “The headmistress had made a slightly sarcastic remark about these [posters on Tessa’s wall] the last time she had visited the guidance room. ‘And if all else fails, they call ChildLine, I see,’ she had said, pointing to the most prominent poster” (36).

She hears Barry’s voice still clear in her mind, speaking about Krystal: “Bless her heart.”  But left to herself, Tessa is defenseless and inarticulate against devastation: “Krystal gnawed at her nails, and Tessa could not summon the energy to break the silence that solidified around them” (p. 40).

Simon’s perspective does include explicit details about his religious views.  He believes in the stars; he is superstitious.  “Simon had always known that there were other, better ways; that a life of ease and plenty dangled over his head like a great bulging piñata, which he might smash open if only he had a stick big enough, and the knowledge of when to strike” (43).  He believed that the knowledge of when to strike was sometimes slipped to him mysteriously: “Supernatural tip-offs had accounted for several apparently quixotic decisions in Simon’s past.”  So he gambled with the mortgage money, and invested weeks of wages in a shady deal with a crook who then disappeared with the family’s money.  But in his mind, this history of calamities was offset by “strokes of luck, dodges that worked, hunches that paid off, and Simon gave great weight to these when totaling his score; they were the reason that he kept faith with his stars.”  He decides to run for a seat on the parish council because he has one of these tingles: he heard a false rumor that Barry was taking bribes, and sets out to collect those imaginary bribes for himself (43).

Simon is an uncouth and degraded caricature of Howard.  Or, to put it another way, Howard is the same as Simon, but is usually hidden behind a veneer of gentility.  In place of a church, Simon has superstition.  In place of a church, Howard has genteel traditions.    Both are untainted by any authoritative teaching emanating from the abbey on the hill or anything or anyone related to it.

One plausible interpretation of the novel would make the church the key “vacancy.”  Its absence dooms the Fields, and leaves the people in the Fields without effective support.

The Generational Divide

One aspect of the novel is an exploration of the generational divide.  The novel is about families, not isolated individuals, and there is tension in each of the families.  Four adolescents in the novel struggle with parents, and invoke the spirit of Barry Fairbrother in their fights.

Andrew Price has an abusive dad, who beats his wife and his kids.  Andrew vows that if Simon ever hits mom again, he will fight him.  Fortunately, in the next fight, Simon beats the two boys, but not Ruth.  Later, though, he beats her – and both boys.  Simon can’t take on his dad in a fistfight, yet.

Rowling touched the issue of child abuse obliquely in the Potter series.  She does not offer a solution, but does have at last one clear position: Harry Potter and Andrew Price survive it, somehow.  They get beaten up, but manage to keep the physical assaults from crushing their spirits.  They maintain a sense of self worth.  That’s not to say that an abused child can’t or shouldn’t call the police or get help somewhere; she doesn’t address that.

Andrew fights back as well as he can, and does in fact land a solid punch, getting his father fired.  He writes the first of the four messages posted on the parish council website, signed by the “Ghost of Barry Fairbrother.”

Ghost post #1

“Aspiring Parish Councillor Simon Price hopes to stand on a platform of cutting wasteful council spending. Mr. Price is certainly no stranger to keeping down costs, and should be able to give the council the benefit of his many useful contacts. He saves money at home by furnishing it with stolen goods — most recently a PC — and he is the go-to man for any cut-price printing jobs that may need doing for cash, once senior management has gone home, at the Harcourt-Walsh Printworks” (199-200).

Andrew does not go after his father openly, because he can’t.  But he does report crimes that do get his father in deep trouble.  And when he hits back, he hides behind an adult, which is fine when his father beats him.  Or you could say he is invoking the spirit – the ghost – of Barry, giving credit when he tells the truth.

One of the odd details about Andrew is that he comes out okay.  At the end of the story, his dad has lost his job and the family is moving.  Andrew is not losing much; he and his best friend, Fats, are already drifting apart.  The girl he admires is also leaving Pagford, and says she will keep in touch.  Maybe she will; maybe she won’t; for sure, he hopes for more from her than is likely to be realistic.  But he looks forward to life, with hope.  He couldn’t defend his face, but he did defend his psyche.  He may be battered, but he is still pretty healthy.

Sukhvinder also has trouble with her parents.  They do not abuse her physically, but Parminder is chronically exasperated with her under-achieving daughter.  Her dad defends her from criticism, but has insultingly low expectations of her.  Tessa, visiting the Jawandas, has noticed how they slight Sukhvinder – without malice, but still painfully.  There was a wall with family photos, and Tessa “had sat here often, and had counted how many appearances each child made: Jaswant, eighteen; Rajpal, nineteen; and Sukhvinder, nine. There was only one photograph on the wall celebrating Sukhvinder’s individual achievements: the picture of the Winterdown rowing team on the day that they had beaten St. Anne’s” (242-3).

Sukhvinder internalizes the insults, and becomes a cutter, secretly slicing her arms with a razor.  But on one occasion, she does strike back at her mother.  She took the same computer course that Andrew took, and she too can hack into an unprotected website.  She does not know who put the first Ghost post on the parish council website, but she puts up the second.

Ghost post #2

“Parminder Jawanda, who pretends to be so keen on looking after the poor and needy of the area, has always had a secret motive. Until I died, she was in love with me, which she could barely hide whenever she laid eyes on me, and she would vote however I told her to, whenever there was a council meeting. Now that I am gone, she will be useless as a councillor, because she has lost her brain” (272 and 274).

Like Andrew, she hides.  Like Andrew, she invokes the spirit of Barry, who understood and defended the needy, including teenagers.  Like Andrew, she speaks with insight.

Fats is an adopted child, and deals with more than a normal share of adolescent uncertainty about his identity.  He is an awkward young man, who defends himself effectively with biting sarcasm.  But when his dad criticizes him for smoking marijuana and sexual activity with Krystal, he too strikes back from hiding.

Ghost post #3

“Fantasies of a Deputy Headmaster.  One of the men hoping to represent the community at Parish Council level is Colin Wall, Deputy Headmaster at Winterdown Comprehensive School. Voters might be interested to know that Wall, a strict disciplinarian, has a very unusual fantasy life. Mr. Wall is so frightened that a pupil might accuse him of inappropriate sexual behavior that he has often needed time off work to calm himself down again. Whether Mr. Wall has actually fondled a first year, the Ghost can only guess. The fervor of his feverish fantasies suggests that, even if he hasn’t, he would like to” (293-294).

Colin is mentally ill, and does have severe anxiety attacks about his fantasies.  The attack triggers a serious episode of depression.  Tessa figures out promptly who wrote the post, and is shocked that Fats would be so cruel, but she does not see how to explain to Colin that Fats did it, because she is working hard to keep them from attacking each other.

The first three Ghost posts are all attacks on Howard’s opponents – Parminder who is already on the council and has always supported Barry, and the two candidates who challenge Howard’s intended heir, Miles.  Each Ghost post creates a flurry of emotional responses – charges and counter-charges, speculation about alliances – throughout Pagford.

The fourth Ghost post is from Samantha, the middle-aged adolescent.  The first attack on Miles – an anonymous letter to the Chair of the Parish Council – was full of typos, praising Barry Fairbrother and saying that Miles was “unfit to fill his sheos” (151).  Howard mentions the letter to Miles; so near the end of the story, when Miles and Samantha are fighting, she refers to the letter about shoes, and he recognizes it.  But after the election, she also writes a Ghost post, striking out at her father-in-law, from hiding.

Ghost post #4

“Howard Mollison, First Citizen of Pagford, and long-standing resident Maureen Lowe have been more than business partners for many years. It is common knowledge that Maureen holds regular tastings of Howard’s finest salami. The only person who appears not to be in on the secret is Shirley, Howard’s wife” (351).

Samantha’s attack almost gets Howard killed.  Shirley, whose mother was a source of some unexplained shame for her family, cannot bear to think people might sneer behind her back.  She asks Howard about the post, gets an unclear answer, and decides to kill him.

All four Ghost posts are attacks on parents – Andrew’s father, Sukhvinder’s mother, Fats’s adoptive father, and Samantha’s father-in-law.  Barry Fairbrother was a good father figure.  All of the angry Ghost posts are about parents who failed in some way.

One oddity about them all is that they are distractions from real charges.  Simon is a thief, but the real problem is that he is a violent and envious man, and abusive.  Parminder may or may not have been in love in a way that distracted her from proper goals, but her real problem was that she failed to control her anger, and that she failed to love her own daughter.  Colin did suffer from anxiety, wondering whether he was a crypto-pedophile; but he was unable to carry on Barry’s work because he did not get along with adolescents very well.  Howard’s problem ambition, not sexual infidelity.  If he was unfaithful, it was breaking faith with his constituents, not Shirley, that made him an evil character.

There are a couple of adolescents we hear from who do not post their complaints on the Parish Council website.  Gaia is very angry at her mother, Kay, for dragging her out of London to a pig ford in the misty west.  But she advocates for herself directly and loudly – and in the end, effectively.

Krystal, far more than the others, needed Barry.  She does not know who her father is; she is not sure whether he died in her bathroom when she was six, or whether he is still alive but distant.  Or maybe Obbo – who knows? 

Barry filled that vacancy.  He did criticize her once, and she accepted the criticism and said she was sorry, promptly and from her heart (125).

Krystal was the first to cry out in pain when she heard about Barry’s death – and she was punished for it.  Krystal was the first to ask about his funeral, but doesn’t go to it.  This is one of the most poignant “casual vacancies” in the novel: she never explains why she didn’t go, and the reader is left alone to (a) notice that she wasn’t there, and (b) figure out why.  It’s not subtle: she wasn’t welcome there, and there wasn’t room for her in the church.  A girl from the rowing team asked her to contribute to the cost of the flower arrangement, and Krystal said she would, but didn’t; the girl left Krystal’s name off the card, instead of understanding that she didn’t have any money.  Krystal’s music is the best detail of the non-traditional funeral, but she did not hear it. 

At the end of the story, all six of these rebellious adolescents are doing okay.  Andrew is bruised again, but he sees a hopeful future elsewhere (385).  Sukhvinder has emerged from her cocoon, and is highly and widely and deeply respected (390-391).  Fats is through with nihilism, and is learning courage from his odd father (389).  Samantha has been shocked into adulthood, has made peace with her husband, and is curious about persistent religious stirrings in her heart that push her toward parish involvement (388).  Gaia has made peace with Kay, and they are probably on their way back to London; in any case, they are talking (392). 

Krystal is dead, but her eulogy is extraordinarily moving, even if the audience is small.

The adults in these confrontations come out in places that seem just.  Simon loses his job, and has to uproot.  Howard and Shirley are locked in an inarticulate hell; he can’t speak and she won’t speak, and the unresolved issues between them include treachery and murder.  Parminder’s career is uncertain, but what she cares about is falling into place; she is proud of her daughter, and she is finally praying before she acts instead of the reverse.  Colin has become a good and loving father – still stumbling, but in an endearing way.  Kay has re-established sanity in the relationship she values most.

Terri is a helpless mess, but her family has drawn around her.

How Many Vacancies?

In The Casual Vacancy, there are numerous vacancies.

Rowling has a history, and so her first novel for adults can be noteworthy for the absence of Harry Potter.  There is no magic, no witches or wizards or wands.

The simplest vacancy is the seat on the parish council.  Filling it requires a little more effort than Howard expected: Miles takes Barry’s seat, but then Parminder and Howard leave the council.  Colin will probably take Parminder’s seat, and Samantha will probably take Howard’s.  But Samantha may vote against Howard’s position on the clinic.

The most obvious vacancy is Barry’s death.  His family and friends, especially Colin and Parminder, are devastated.  Watching how people respond to his death is revealing.  Howard is quietly triumphant, and Shirley is exultant.  But there are more subtle responses, such as Gavin’s self-centered near-inability to reflect.

Barry had a role in the community, and filling that role will be hard, perhaps impossible.  Even Gavin was struck by the “comparatively small gap that he [Gavin] was sure he would leave behind in his community, should he die” (223).  Barry was in some ways the conscience of the community.  Without him, the Fields will be abandoned to the tender mercies of the city, and the addiction clinic may close.  “Filling his shoes” may not refer so much to the council seat, or even personal friendships, as to this role as the town’s conscience.

The vacancy is devastating for Krystal and her family.  Without Barry, rumors that the clinic will close swirl, and Terri loses hope.  Krystal cannot figure out how to protect her brother, and concocts a wild scheme, which goes awry and ends in tragedy.

When Kay visits Krystal’s home, she notices the filth and dirty diapers and discarded condom and Terri’s drugs, but also notices the things that aren’t there: “no books, no pictures, no photographs, no television” (57).  The absence of Harry Potter matters: Potter provided magic, but also imagination and hope.

In many communities, a church offers some kind of voice of conscience.  But from the first page scene in the novel, the church in Pagford is absent or vacant.  The abbey on the hill is a ruin, and no one visits there or speculates for the briefest moment about why anyone might have built it in the first place.  The vicar says some interesting things, but seems not to pay attention to his own words; he seems focused on the rhythm, not the meaning.  The only person who prays is an outsider, Parminder, whose religious views are scorned, not sought out.

The word “conscience” appears only once in the book.  Kay’s conscience troubled her when she spoke disrespectfully about Gaia’s boyfriend in London (320).

Many writers explore hypocrisy and blindness, or “things denied, things untold, things hidden and disguised” (235).  But Rowling goes a little farther than most.  She explores vacancies in the hearts of her characters.  Howard seems like a reasonable person on the surface.  But when you watch Simon’s brutality, and compare Simon to Howard, it becomes clear that Howard’s values and goals are like Simon’s.  Simon is blind; he overlooks everyone.  Howard is similarly blind; he overlooks people in need.  His heart is partially vacant.  But the good characters also have vacancies.  The teenagers lack maturity; that may come with time.  But Colin lacks courage, and Parminder lacks patience and tenderness.  Tessa and Kay are good and generous people, but they lack time.

Gavin and Vikram offer an interesting contrast.  Vikram could fill Barry’s shoes without much adjustment, except that he lacks a voice.  Gavin also is voiceless.  But Vikram does communicate with great effectiveness through the skill of his hands, while Gavin fails to communicate anything at all.

The novel is written with enough texture that it is possible to ask who is missing at an event, and why.  Krystal’s absence at Barry’s funeral is never explained explicitly, but the explanation is nonetheless clear: she knew she wasn’t welcome.  She faced social pressures all the time.  But still, it was hard for her to visit her Nana Cath in the hospital, facing her own family.  At the funeral, the only people that might sit with her were from the rowing team, and they were so clueless that they didn’t even know that she had no way to pay her share for the flower arrangement.

At the climax of the novel, five people are tested: Robbie is abandoned, and they could help.  Will they?  First, there’s Krystal herself, who would not endanger Robbie on purpose.  She is taking a gamble, embarking on a desperate effort to line up a safe home for him.  She lacks proper guidance and support, and she fails.  Fats is strong-willed, but cannot stand up to Krystal.  Shirley sees Robbie running scared, but she lost in her own little hell, and lacks the habit of compassion.  Samantha sees him, but doesn’t focus, because she is distracted.  Gavin sees him, with his eyes; but the gap between his eyes and his brain function is quite sizable.  Robbie tumbled through a hole in the hedge.  But first, he fell through five other gaps.

The final words of the novel are poignant.  Terri’s family scoops her up in her wild grief, finally focusing on her properly.  The town, which has gossiped about her for years, also gets it right, and chooses an appropriate vacancy: “The congregation averted its eyes.”

Rowling and Dante: Hell is a Vacancy

Suppose you dissect the characters in Rowling’s novel according to Dante’s schema.  Dante’s description of hell has nine rings, moving in order of gravity from highest to lowest.  The rings are Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery.  Some of them are not applicable in a post-Christian novel.  Limbo, to begin: that’s for the people who led good and even holy lives, but were not baptized.  It is not a place of punishment, but there are good things that they won’t get.  Specifically, they will not see God face to face.  In a novel set in a post-Christian society, that is not a pressing concern.  Perhaps it should be, but it isn’t.  Limbo is not a part of this story.

But consider the rest.

Limbo	n/a: nearly all, or none at all
Lust	Samantha, Andrew
Gluttony	Terri
Greed	no clear assignment here, but Aubrey Fawley fits
Anger	Parminder
Heresy	Fats
Violence	Oddo
Fraud	Simon
Treachery	Howard and Shirley

Lust: Samantha is distracted by lust.  That’s an old-fashioned way to put it; today, we might say she is immature, refusing to act her age.  Anyway, she is middle-aged, but behaves like a teenager.  She thinks a lot about skin and breasts and sex.  What that means for the Fields and for Krystal is that she is not paying attention.

Gluttony: Terri is a wreck.  She doesn’t protect her kids because she is an addict.  Halfway through the book, we learn something about her background, and if we have the guts to take the step, we can extend to her the same consideration we give Krystal.

Greed: The Fawleys are not as bad as Howard and Shirley, but they are part of the same team.  They will ruin people’s lives from a distance, and not even notice, let alone take responsibility for what they have done.

Anger: Parminder does mean to pick up the fight where Barry left off.  But she can’t, largely because she can’t control her temper.

Heresy: Heresy is not a major concern in a post-Christian society.  But the category fits Fats anyway.  He does not help Krystal, because he is exploring a set of destructive ideas.  He gets clear of those ideas in the end, but while damage is happening, he is making things worse – because he testing nihilism and existentialism and being cool.

Fraud: Simon is not in the fight over the Fields.  But his name comes from his intent to run for Barry’s seat on the council in order to seize the opportunity to make money through corrupt practices.  His plan is to take bribes as a parish councilor – to sell the power of the parish.  Selling the power of the Church is called “simony.”  He is not opposed to the Fields, as far as we know, or opposed to the addiction clinic, as far as we know.  He wants bribes, not responsibility.  If he is elected to the council, the council is still divided 8-7; Simon’s vote is for sale.  The opponents of the Fields seem to be wealthier; if there is a sale, Aubrey and Howard will buy Simon before Parminder and Tessa do.

Treachery: The Mollisons are the horror show.  Shirley is a traitor: she decides to kill her husband, and takes steps to get it done.  His heart attack saves him.  Howard is also a traitor: the people in the Fields are his constituents, and he betrays them, pushing them off to Yarvil.  He had never sworn allegiance to the Fields, but he did hold an office in which he was supposed to serve Pagford – which included the Fields, whether he liked it or not.

In Dante’s scheme, the sins of weakness are relatively less damaging than the deeper sins.  In Rowling’s story, Samantha is shocked awake by the death of Robbie, and is ready to grow up.  If/when she does become an adult, she is thinking that the addiction clinic might be a good thing.  She is putting addictions (sex, alcohol) behind, and wonders about drugs.  Her conversion to being an ally in the fight for the Fields is an adjustment, not a revolution.  Lust damages, but not deeply.

By contrast, the traitors end the story in a deep hell – and, fiction be told, in a rather satisfying hell.  Shirley does not know whether Howard, the idol of most of her life, saw her moving to stab him.  She is trapped, spending her time as the apparently loyal spouse – looking at his face and wondering what he knows.  And Howard reached the pinnacle of his life – running the council, defeating his opponents, bringing in an heir to take his place, getting rid of the Fields, expanding his business, celebrating his birthday – and then the next day, he was a helpless, voiceless victim on the brink of death.  Dante would approve.

Going back over the sins between the two extremes, Terri’s gluttony seems about right.  She does not intend to harm her kids; she does terrible damage, but the damage begins with herself.  She is a victim more than a perpetrator.  Dante would approve.

Greed: if the book were written to explore Dante’s schema carefully, greed might be handled a little more openly explored.  It’s not a major factor in the story.  The Fawley family, which profited from selling the land to build the Fields, and now wants to extract further advantage from the voters in the Fields, is background in the story, not much more.

Parminder’s anger is a sin of weakness.  She is definitely on Barry’s side, but her anger damages her friends as well as her enemies.  It carries its own punishment: she smashes where she wants to build.  Dante would approve.

The intellectualized meanderings of Fats damage him, and are devastating for Krystal.  He used her, and defended it, because it seemed authentic at the time.  But his mind does not go dead; he is young and learning, and his explorations started honestly, and end honestly.  He admits he did damage, and begins taking steps to atone.  He accepts that people consider him a coward.  He isn’t that; the problem is elsewhere.  But he has enough inner courage to face the charge without whining.  Conrad would approve.

It is the fraud that Simon intended that got me thinking about Dante in the first place.  Why does the Price family have such a collection of Biblical names: Simon, Ruth, Andrew, and Paul?  When I realized that the name could be linked to Simon Magus, not Simon Peter, I stopped trying to figure out where Andrew and Paul got their names (probably from Ruth), and started trying to put simony in context.

But having drawn the chart and assigned characters, I am not satisfied.  I do not think that Rowling’s story is built on Dante.  Rather, I think that Rowling is adept at creating characters – she created about 400 in the Potter series – and she uses them to explore her view of life.  I had a sense that she was doing something Dante-esque, and I still think that. But I don’t think she is imitating him; rather, I think she is doing her own work, and it is similar to his.  Dante wrote a story about hell.  Rowling wrote a story about what is going on inside people when they can’t/won’t/don’t help a neighbor in distress. Those concerns are not the same, but they are similar.  Her story and her characters reminded me of Dante’s, not because she was thinking about Dante but because she was thinking about humanity, with a question similar to his, and an eye similar to his.