Chapter 6: literary devices
a. Allusions
b. Cussing, Insults, and Prayer
A Wealth of Allusions
Rowling’s use of allusions is rich, adding a dimension to her story. It is in the nature of allusions that it can take awhile for readers to notice them. Some of the allusions are Biblical, some refer to fairy stories, many refer to movies. The allusions to the Harry Potter series need scrutiny different from other allusions, since they might best be understood as deriving, not from Potter, but from a third source – Rowling’s imagination.
Biblical allusions
Biblical allusions abound. The Price family has four names, all Biblical, including the interesting reference to Simon – Simon Magus, not Simon Peter. The plot turns on a fight over the Fields, and specifically over attitudes toward Krystal; it is plausible that both the “Fields” and Krystal’s name are meant to bring to mind Matthew 13:44-46, the images of the field where a treasure is buried, and the pearl of great price. Indeed, it is possible that the whole story refers to a theme in Matthew 13: ears that hear but do not understand, eyes that look but do not see.
The story begins and ends with funerals in a church, St. Michael and All Saints. The church has a stained glass image of St. Michael, that is used to get inside the minds of four characters. When Howard comes to Barry’s funeral, he takes a seat (or two – he’s a man of large parts) “level with St. Michael.” At first reading, that means simply that he sat down in a pew halfway down the aisle; but it is plausible that we also glimpse Howard’s estimation of himself – on a level with St. Michael. Parminder has trouble with the church: after years in Pagford, she still finds some things alien, including the “white-faced warrior saint staring down at her” (p. 135). It is worth noting that there are only two characters in the story who do anything that suggests a life of prayer – Parminder and Tessa. It is these two who notice the image, and react to it. Tessa’s reaction, during Krystal’s funeral, is not similar to Parminder’s concern about latent racism. Rather, her reaction is an echo of idea from many places in the Bible, including Matthew 13: “it would have been a relief if St. Michael had stepped down from his glowing window and enacted judgment on them all” (p. 393).
Sukhvinder also reacts to the stained glass image (p. 133), but we do not see her praying. Her actions, like Barry’s, might suggest a life of prayer, but Rowling does not say that in any way. With Sukhvinder, as with her father, we watch what she does, and draw only tentative conclusions about what is inside her that produced that.
In the history of Pagford, there seems to be an echo of the Garden of Eden in Genesis. The Mollisons recall the era of “Sweetlove,” but after it came the “Fawley” trouble.
Allusions to Shakespeare
There are references to Shakespeare. Rowling’s use of the image of a needle is similar to Friar Lawrence’s meditation on medicine and poison. The needles in the story include Terri’s poison, but also Tessa’s medicine. Andrew needs an EpiPen, because of his dangerous allergic reaction to peanuts; but Shirley plans to use the EpiPen to murder her husband. When Krystal uses her mother’s drug paraphernalia to kill herself, some of the people around her assume she is just another addict, that her poison got out of control by accident. But in Krystal’s mind, the heroin overdose is the only medicine that will let her stay with her little brother.
If the needle does take the reader’s mind into the story of Romeo and Juliet, in which Friar Lawrence had a complex attitude toward his herbs, is it going too far to compare Krystal to Juliet? Krystal chooses death with the same admirable passion that drove Juliet. Their passion is adolescent, uninformed, and unwise – but still admirable.
Allusions to fairy tales
There are allusions to fairy stories. Sukhvinder is an unlikely Cinderella. Her siblings are attractive and protective, not nasty to her, but she is neglected. Does her name, which Gaia shortens to “Sooks,” suggested soot, or cinders?
The novel does clearly make reference to the idea of a fairy godmother. There is, first, Barry Fairbrother’s name. He seems to be Harry Potter, reworked a little. Harry becomes Barry; Potter becomes Brother. He is Krystal’s fairy godfather, or – maybe better – her fairy godbrother.
Barry Fairbrother is truly helpful to his community, not like the fraudulent Fawleys, who seemed at first to be good. “Old Pagford believed that the advent of Aubrey Fawley meant the return of a charmed era. He would be a fairy godfather to the town, like his ancestors before him” (p. 46). Unhappily, the early reports of the Fawleys were not accurate: “But then, so local legend told, came the sudden darkness that attends the appearance of the wicked fairy. Even as Pagford was rejoicing that Sweetlove House had fallen into such safe hands, Yarvil was busily constructing a swath of council houses to its south.” (pp. 46-47).
There is another fairy mentioned in the book. When Krystal knocked out Lexie’s teeth, Howard “tried to soothe her with a promise of triple prizes from the tooth fairy” (p. 53), but she was not easily consoled.
The fourth and last reference to a fairy involves Krystal’s dreams. Krystal’s mother had four children; two were taken away and placed in foster care or adopted. Krystal and Robbie stayed with Terri, although social workers kept worrying and kept checking. Krystal knew that she had a sister or half-sister somewhere in the world, and knew her name: “All her life, she had been in love with the idea of Anne-Marie, who had been taken away before Krystal was born; spirited into another dimension, like a fairy-tale character, … beautiful and mysterious” (p. 169).
Aubrey Fawley was more of an evil fairy than a fairy godfather for Old Pagford. Howard tried to be a minor fairy, but failed. Krystal dreamed of a fairy-tale sister, but never met her. But Barry – he was a real fairbrother.
Allusions to movies and TV shows
There are allusions to movies and TV shows. The most obvious is the connection to Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s not just the names of the towns – Bedford Falls in Capra’s movie and Pagford in Rowling’s novel. Capra’s movie has two bankers – George Bailey, the underdog, with a local “Building and Loan, versus Henry F. Potter, a slumlord with a much larger bank – battling over the future of a small town. Rowling’s story pits a local banker manager, Harry Fairbrother, against Howard Mollison, a shopkeeper – backed by Aubrey Fawley, a much more powerful international banker whose family is responsible for creating the Fields. Both rich bankers are careless of their poor neighbors; both local bankers are inspiring leaders. Capra’s slum is place of poverty, violence and loose sex – like the Fields. Capra’s curse of Pottersville is averted by an angel, Clarence Odbody, who jumps into the river and seems to be in danger of drowning so that George’s generosity will rise to the surface. Similarly, in Rowling’s novel, Sukhvinder’s leap into the river bring out the generosity in many good people of Pagford, although she does not save Robbie.
The setting may draw on Jan Karon’s novels and show about Mitford. The reference to the right side of the church as the “epistle side” may be a friendly nod to Mitford. Or maybe not: the “Mitford” that Rowling admired was Jessica Mitford, a leftist author in a prominent aristocratic family that split between Fascists and Communists in the tumult of the 1930s and 1940s.
The Fairbrother family names may bring Ballykissangel to mind. Niamh and Siobhan, the names of the Fairbrother twins, are also the names of characters in Ballykissangel.
The abbey, Pargetter Abbey, seems to be named after Edith Pargeter, who wrote a delightful series of murder mysteries set in and around the abbey in Shrewsbury in the 13th century. Pargeter wrote under a pseudonym, Ellis Peters; her real name is not well known.
In the novel, Parminder Jawanda is a physician. In the real world, Parminder is the name of a beautiful British actress of Indian descent who played a physician in an American TV series, ER.
In the novel, Fats teases Sukhvinder about the hair on her lip; he sends her messages about cross-gender complications. In the real world, Sukhvinder is a man’s name. The haunting music in Slum Dog Millionaire is sung by Sukhwinder Singh, from Amritsar. Amritsar also shows up in the novel: the Golden Temple, a Sikh treasure, is there, and when Parminder’s license to practice medicine is suspended, Vikram suggests that they visit Amritsar. She refuses immediately, then wonders why she rejected his kindness so impulsively.
In the novel, Vikram is a heart surgeon and kind husband. In the real world, Vikram is an Indian film actor, with numerous accomplishments in film, especially in Tamil language films. He is also a philanthropist who has been especially generous to children who have undergone heart surgery.
Books and music
Fats is working his way through adolescent rebellion and self-definition. En route, he picks up a quotation for his Facebook page from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo (1888): “I do not want believers, I think I am too malicious to believe in myself…” (63).
Parminder, the only person in the story with an active and articulate prayer life, quotes Guru Nanak (35). He is not a fictional character; he was in fact the founder of the religion of Sikhism. Parminder’s book mentioned in the novel, Sainchis, is not available from Amazon, but the quotes from it (36) are ancient Sikh texts.
The song that Krystal made the rowing team’s unofficial theme song, the closing song at Barry’s funeral and Krystal’s, is Rihanna’s “Umbrella.” It opens referring to a “good girl gone bad, ” a theme found in every kind of literature, from highest to lowest, everywhere. The lyrics repeat, “You can stand under my umbrella.” This is not the most exalted or sophisticated or exciting offer of love ever, but it is sweet.
Allusions to Harry Potter
Rowling said that The Casual Vacancy was a new story, separate from the Potter series. A story without magic wands and without wizards, in which Harry Potter dies on page 8, is different from the Potter series. And yet, the main character remains the same, and there are other echoes.
One echo is simple and fun. The Fairbrother family is a large family, by Pagford standards, and Barry’s hair is ginger. In these small ways, the Fairbrother household sounds like the large, red-headed Weasley family.
One echo has to do with image that Rowling uses for conversation. It may not be a reference to the Potter series so much as another use of a fascinating image that Rowling uses for conversation.
Most important, though, the deep trust in the strength and love that you can find in the hearts of simple people. This trust is visible in the Inklings – in C. S. Lewis’s Narnia, and in J. R. R. Tolkien’s hobbits. In the Potter series, Harry Potter is raised in among Muggles so that he will be free of vanity, and he is the champion of simple people against violent racists. Barry, the simple banker from the Fields, is a great hero; his shoes are filled by a Sikh Cinderella.
Shirley’s beads
The novel proceeds with over a dozen different points of view. This is not simply an omniscient narrator; there is one of those too; rather, we see the world through the eyes of one character after another. In most vignettes, there is a single third-person point of view, with perhaps some interpolations from the omniscient narrator. The omniscient narrator is reliable, but the third-person limited narrations are not. For example, when Shirley (the lace-doily murderess/traitoress) says that she and Howard have the same attitude toward the death of Barry Fairbrother, that he is as delighted as she is, that might be true – but don’t believe it just because Shirley said it. In these passages, Rowling was working to capture the mind of the speaker, not just the world around the speaker.
Consider the paragraph about Shirley’s internal response: “None of the delight frothing and fizzing inside Shirley had been apparent while Howard had been in the room. They had merely exchanged the comments proper to sudden death before he had taken himself off to the shower. Naturally Shirley had known, as they slid stock words and phrases back and forth between them like beads on an abacus, that Howard must be as brimful of ecstasy as she was; but to express these feelings out loud, when the news of the death was still fresh in the air, would have been tantamount to dancing naked and shrieking obscenities, and Howard and Shirley were clothed, always, in an invisible layer of decorum that they never laid aside.” (p. 16-17)
First, note that Shirley might as well be “dancing naked and shrieking obscenities.” Her deep and completely disgusting evil is not excused or made less because it is hidden. In fact, her “invisible layer of decorum” is another disgusting evil. To have a temptation, and to fight it off, and to defeat it, silently and out of sight – that’s a good and noble thing. The layer of decorum hides the fight – the struggle and the victory. But Shirley is not fighting evil in her heart; she embraces it, delights in it – and hides it behind good manners. She is a hypocrite.
But it is the image of the beads that fascinates me, that makes me so digress. Shirley describes conversation as an exchange in which two speakers slide beads back and forth on a wire or a string. That’s a provocative image for dialogue. Gavin also thinks of communication as beads strung together, although his beads are not stock phrases, but rather omissions or vacancies. Gavin’s attempts at communication are a fascinating exercise in a book that explores vacancies. Gavin is totally self-centered, and refuses to love. He believes that he is communicating his lack of love and commitment to Kay, when he omits decent acts: “he strung them together in his mind and checked them off like beads on a rosary. He had never said ‘love.’ He had never talked about marriage. He had never asked her to move to Pagford.” (p. 22)
The image of beads on a string also appears in the Potter series, when Harry Potter is dueling with Lord Voldemort, in the graveyard at the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and again at the very end of the whole series, when Harry kills Voldemort. In the duels, their wands form an arc of light between them, with beads of light sliding back and forth depending on who is in charge.
What are these wands? For that matter, what’s a wizard?
A wizard is someone who does wiz-dom. Is that wisdom, or is it a caricature of wisdom – like astrology next to astronomy? Wisdom is hard to define; it’s an odd word. It’s an appropriately odd word for a remarkable reality. Wise: adjective; wise man, noun; wisdom, abstract noun – what’s the associated verb? How do you “do” wisdom?
You can “have” wisdom, you can “speak” wisdom, you can “hear” wisdom, you can “recognize” wisdom, you can “embrace” it or “reject” it, you can “long” for it. How do you “do” it? There’s no verb. Wisdom gives rise to action; it is powerful, the greatest power. But you don’t “do” it. Wisdom “is.” Wisdom “causes.” But still, you don’t “do” it. Wisdom is at the still point in a turning world.
Wizards do things. Principally, they are wise, and they teach. But they also do magic, with wands. But what is this wand? Wands aren’t real; they are symbols for words of power. When wizards (in Harry Potter’s world) take action, it involves both words and wands. There are some spells that some accomplished wizards can cast without vocalizing, but that’s a specialized trick, not the norm. And in any case, it seems to involve sub-vocalization (I think – I never did it).
Wands are the objective correlative for words of power. Words can be empty noise, but they can sometimes be creative, can be powerful enough to cause changes in the world. When words change things, it feels like magic.
Back in the novel: Barry was something of a wizard, in the sense that his words changed people. It wasn’t magic, although it was hard to explain. He reached Krystal and changed her: how? Part of his power was that he was also from the Fields and had credibility. Part of his power was that he really did understand her and care about her. Part was that he had ideas about what she could do that was startlingly significant (sports, join a rowing team). It was because he laughed, and because kids trusted him with their silly foolish music. He got Krystal out onto the river of life, making her way successfully on the river. On the Orr River (the river of life demands wisdom facing either-or choices), he helped her to make good choices. He was a man of integrity, who meant what he said: he wanted to help Krystal, and he spoke, and he acted – and his feelings and thoughts and words and actions were all aligned. Is all that wisdom? Love? Sanctity? Wizardry?
Communication is always magic. The concept of taking thoughts and emotions inside one person and transmitting them to another person is bizarre. It’s clearly impossible, except that we do it all the time. When you scrutinize the way we move thoughts and feelings from here to there, it gets weirder and weirder; having a bone box with a muscle flapping inside (a skull and teeth with a tongue inside), blowing air over the top of the muscle to make the air vibrate (speaking), so that the hearer can use a little drum to pick up the vibrations (ear-drum), to transform them into tiny electric pulses to the brain, which transforms specific noises into specific meanings – that’s all totally implausible, obviously impossible, simple nonsense – or pure and effective magic. And when you start rubbing dye on chewed and flattened bark (writing on paper) in order to communicate thoughts and feelings across time and space, so that I can embrace the ideas of Socrates and the emotions of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – well, that’s some deep magic indeed. I’m not even going to mention the internet and all the data stored in “the cloud.”
The beads of communication that Shirley (and Howard??) passed back and forth were empty. They were trivial, and/or unreliable, and/or evil. Mostly empty. Another vacancy.
Cussing, Insults, and Prayer
Rowling’s use of cuss words and prayer offer interesting revelations about her characters.
Cussing generally comes in three categories: fornication, defecation, and blasphemy. Some insults have a similar offensive quality. But prayer, obviously, is at the opposite end of several spectra: it is good thing instead of an offensive thing, and it carries meaning instead of meaninglessness. Nonetheless, they overlap, especially in a novel about hypocrisy and other vacancies.
References to “God”
Howard cusses first, and it is noteworthy. He says “Good God” four times in just a few minutes, and the narrator calls attention to it: “‘Good God,’ said Howard for the third time” (p. 10). Is he praying a little, or just cussing? There is no hint in anything he says or does that he is praying. In his fourth iteration, there is a strong suggestion that it is just empty noise: “Good God. Just goes to show you, doesn’t it? Just goes to show” (p. 10). But what does it “show”? Despite Howard’s repetition, it shows nothing him at all, as far as we can tell. Neither his wisdom-like words nor his prayer-like noises carry any meaning.
By contrast, Tessa and Parminder also refer to God, with meaning. When Parminder refers to God, she means it, sometimes praying and sometimes thinking, but never just making noise. A phrase that recurs to her repeatedly: “The light of God shines from every soul.” She struggles to remember it, and to live by it, and she is deeply ashamed of herself when she sees that she has forgotten it. At the end of the story, when Sukhvinder asks for help organizing a funeral, Parminder recalls the teaching before she responds, and agrees to help, to her husband’s surprise. There are some instances in which it is unclear whether she is praying. When she sees the scars and bloody lines on her daughter’s arms, she grabs her and says, “My God, my God, what have you done to yourself?” Is that prayer, or an expression of frustration and anger? Vikram, watching, shouts at Parminder, to get her to focus and to act fast, which suggests that he didn’t see it as prayer (p. 373).
Tessa’s references to God are sometimes prayer, sometimes expressions of exasperation, and sometimes ambiguous. When she is looking for her son after Robbie drowns, she prays: “Please God, let me find Stuart, she prayed. Let me find Stuart, please, God.” (p. 371). When she wants to shout at Stu that “you are not God” (p. 74), she means it. But it is ambiguous when she thinks, “Oh, God, why didn’t I think to call Parminder?” (p. 85). It could be prayer, could be cussing. With her, references to God are usually ambiguous.
Shirley doesn’t cuss, but there is a remark worth noting, revealing her thought. “Shirley took a particular pleasure in hearing all about Gavin’s inferiorities and insecurities, because these threw into delicious contrast the achievements and self-assertion of the twin gods of her life, Howard and Miles” (p. 80).
Kay’s references to God are similar to Tessa’s. She remarks that if the addiction clinic is closed, “God knows” what will happen to the Weedon family (p. 255).
Samantha refers to God repeatedly, and always carelessly – until the final chapter.
Fats thinks about gods a little. His imagination “had once been caught by a strange little module in their philosophy and religion class, in which primitive gods had been discussed in all their arbitrary wrath and violence” (p. 144). He is not bound by conventional manners: when a Fields girl challenges him, asking if his mum knows he’s out, he responds calmly, “She’s waiting outside in the car; she says I can have a quick shag before we go home for tea” (p. 202). But his search for authenticity seems to include a sense that words should carry meaning, and he doesn’t refer to God when he’s cussing.
References to “Christ”
When Howard, the dad, heard about Barry’s death, he repeated “Good God,” with no apparent sense of the meaning of the words. His son Miles responds to the news of Barry’s death echoing his father closely. However, the son’s blasphemy refers to the Son of God – to “Christ,” not “God.” Miles says: “Christ, it puts everything in perspective, though, doesn’t it, eh?” (p. 12).
Samantha also uses the word “Christ” as a meaningless expletive, frequently.
Miles’s sister Pat refers to Christ. Her use is not respectful, but is not cussing. She expresses anger that Miles is treated as if he is “the Christ Child … the Messiah.”
Tessa refers once to Christ, in a way that is similar to her use of the word “God.” She is exasperated, and might pray, but probably she is cussing. When Colin is wrestling with severe anxiety and loses track of reality, she tries to coax him back to sanity, asking him to re-consider things he is saying. She wants him to stop it – “for God’s sake,” and later “for Christ’s sake.”
References to “Jesus”
After Howard responds to the news of Barry’s death abusing God’s name, and Miles invokes “Christ” with no serious intent to communicate; Gavin is the third to respond. He responds to the news by referring to “Jesus Christ” four times. There is no ambiguity whatsoever about his words; he is clearly cussing, not praying. The four invocations of Jesus are mixed with obscenity, including one “fuck” and one “fucking.” He repeats his profanity twice more later in the book, once responding to a Ghost post. Gaia also cusses a lot, and she uses the name of Jesus once. She says it tenderly, as an expression of concern when she sees Sukhvinder’s forearms, so that it could be prayer if there were any hint elsewhere that she prays. The only other person who refers to Jesus is Sukhvinder, who is respectful, referring to a specific belief about Jesus, although she does not necessarily share that belief. “Sukhvinder had not had the courage to point out that Jesus had died and then come back to life” (p. 246).
Uses of “shit” and “crap”
Simon and Terri use the word most. Simon rarely speaks without some angry filth. Terri can’t speak without some reference to degradation.
Gavin, Krystal, Andrew, Samantha, and Gaia all cuss using the word “shit.”
Kay says “shit,” but does not just cuss, using words meaninglessly. When sees dog shit, she calls it dog shit, accurately, not as an imprecise expression of disgust. She recalls the shit on Robbie’s bottom – a literal use. And she uses the word quoting Gaia: when Gaia says her day was “shit,” Kay asks why it was shit.
Krystal’s little brother Robbie uses the word, but uses it accurately, referring to defecation: “‘Wantashit,’ said Robbie, and he scurried toward the door” (p. 58).
Fats uses the word to communicate a negative judgment, not referring specifically to defecation. However, his use of words is not just lazy and careless. For example: “Yes, Simon was a shit, but he was undoubtedly an authentic shit” (p. 201).
Simon, Samantha and Andrew use the word “crap,” not in a literal sense.
Uses of “fuck”
The word “fuck” is used over 200 times in the novel, but not by everyone. No one in the Fairbrother family says “fuck.” In the Mollison family, Samantha and Pat use it when they are drunk. Kay and Gaia do not use the word, but Gavin does. Everybody in the Weedon family, including Nana Cath, uses the word, including all extended family, and indeed all friends in the Fields. In the Wall family, only Fats uses it (with some gesture of precision). In the Price family, Simon and Andrew use it, but Ruth does not. No one in the Jawanda family uses it.
In the novel, “fuck” is generally not used to refer to sexual activity. Krystal uses the word a great deal, meaning “very.” To talk about sexual activity, all the adolescents, including Fats, Krystal, Gaia and middle-aged Samantha, use the word “shag” instead. Fats is the only one who uses the word to refer to sexual activity (p. 66, 147).
Gavin and Kay are living together, but they don’t discuss their shagging. They don’t talk much about anything; Gavin tries deliberately to communicate by non-speech and inaction.
Samantha often fantasizes about sexual activity. When we hear her fantasizing about a rock star, the verb she uses is specific: “riding” (p. 317). At the end of the story, when Samantha starts to grow up, she and Miles have a reconciliation, and the verb switches: they “made love” (p. 387).
Bitch and “Paki bitch”
The word “bitch” is used by Simon, Andrew, Gaia, Terri, Krystal, Ashlee (a minor character, a Fields resident, criticizing Krystal), and Samantha. There’s not much noteworthy about its use, except with an ethnic slur added. The only phrase that the narrator clearly expects the reader to notice and feel, the only phrase that touches a nerve, is “Paki bitch.”
The Weedons are the only people who use the word “Paki.” Nana Cath calls Parminder a “Paki cow” and a “Paki bitch.” Terri picks it up, and decides to stay away from “the Paki bitch.” Krystal also uses the phrase once, calling Sukhvinder a “Paki bitch”: “Krystal thought she was being funny. She used ‘fucking’ interchangeably with ‘very,’ and seemed to see no difference between them. Now she said ‘Paki’ as she would have said ‘dozy’ or ‘dim’” (p. 125). Barry is enraged, for the only time. After the furor and after Barry shifts his attention away, Krystal apologizes, clearly sincere, saying she is “s’ry.” “It came out as a mangled monosyllable, and Sukhvinder thought it tactful not to acknowledge it. Nevertheless, it cleaned her out. It restored her dignity” (p. 125).
It is an oddly tender scene. Krystal is being silly, and says something hurtful. Barry is unendingly patient, but when he thinks one of his protégés is getting hurt, and he responds with fiery anger. Sukhvinder is weak and vulnerable, but ready to forgive, ready to sing the music of her friend after the hurtful mistake. All three come out of the scene looking good.
There is a second racial slur similar to “Paki.” Howard refers to Parminder as “Bends-Your-Ear,” and Miles repeats the joke. The insult manages to be offensive on the basis of gender and ethnicity and religion. It is a reference to Benazir Bhutto: a beautiful woman, Harvard graduate, and the first woman to become Prime Minister of Pakistan. “Bends-Your-Ear” mocks her name, Benazir. It also touches a gender stereotype – the talkative female. The slur is as ignorant as “Paki,” confusing Pakistan with India, and blurring the differences between Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs.
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