Good reading for Lent

I have finished a rough draft of a critical companion for The Casual Vacancy.  It is rough indeed, but I think it will help anyone who is interested in understanding Rowling's novel.  I'm posting it, despite its imperfections, because her book is set in Lent, and makes good Lent reading.

The Stolen Watch

I admire Rowling’s writing.  Perhaps I can explain why if I trace a thought process.

In the final vignette of the book, the funeral for Krystal and Robbie, there is a ragged detail.  Tessa is weeping, wondering what more she could have done for Krystal, looking at the image of St. Michael, and thinking eternal thoughts.  Then there is a break in the flow: she sees that one of the Fields urchins is wearing her watch.  Why does Rowling break into the funeral scene to gnaw on a watch?  It’s annoying.

Come to think of it, the watch intruded repeatedly.  Tessa took it off in her office (36), realized much later in the day that it was gone (85), because Krystal had stolen it (86), and she put it in a cheap plastic jewelry box (also stolen, from Nikki) (89), a box in which she kept her pitiful treasures like the rollups (hand-rolled cigarettes) that Fats gave her (262), where Fats saw it and considered making a scene but then opted to resent Cubby instead (305), but then Terri stole it from Krystal (327) and sold it to Obbo (328), except that Obbo paid her in drugs, including the drugs that Krystal used to kill herself (379), and now the watch is on some kid’s wrist in the church (393).

The watch is stupid, or significant.

So, pondering the watch suspiciously, I note that the funeral includes a reminder that Krystal was not a saint.  She did not just sleep around; she also stole stuff. 

Andrew’s thoughts on the day of the funeral put that in context, perhaps.  Andrew retrieves a long-submerged memory.  When he was much younger, his doctor found he had a dangerous peanut allergy, and notified his teachers at St. Michael’s.  They stored an EpiPen there for him, and explained the problem to his classmates.  Fats tested the allergy: he gave Andrew a peanut wrapped in a marshmallow.  When Andrew stopped breathing, Krystal recognized the problem and got help, saving his life.  Krystal would have gotten recognition for it, but she knocked out Lexie’s teeth the next day.  What people – especially Howard – remembered was the assault, which Lexie probably deserved, knocking out teeth that were already loose.  People – including Andrew – forgot that she was a hero.

She stole the watch.  That’s bad and she’s not a saint (insight #1).  Juxtaposed in the chapter: keep it in context (insight #2). 

Still pondering the watch suspiciously, I note that she kept it in a box of pitiful treasures.  In the Potter series, there was an orphan with a box of silly stolen treasures – Tom Riddle.  The Horcrux madness began with that box.  Rowling pays attention to the treasures in a child’s life, and consider them important, revealing.  So what are Krystal’s treasures?  Not much there: everything of value in that house gets sold for crack.  What else was there?  Her treasures include the box itself (stolen), rollups from Fats, the stolen watch, the medal from beating St. Anne’s rowing on their river, and a red plastic heart with Robbie’s photo.  That’s worth recalling at her funeral.  (Insight #3)

Still pondering the watch: they are used to keep track of time.  Barry and Mary Fairbrother were happily married, but she was upset about his use of time.  The first conflict that comes to light in the book is expressed in terms of time.  It’s not just that he is struggling against a deadline with the newspaper.  Much more importantly, “he had come to realize, after nearly two decades together, how often he disappointed her in the big things. It was never intentional. They simply had very different notions of what ought to take up most space in life” (6).  It says “space,” but means “time.”  Mary felt that Krystal was taking time from Barry that did not belong to her. (Insight #4)

I note that Tessa used it to keep track of time.  The watch shows up in the story when Tessa is in her office at 10:30 in the morning.  She has an appointment with Krystal at 10:40.  Krystal burst in the door and slammed it shut 10:51.  This is a problem with people in helping professions.  Tessa really did care about Krystal, truly and deeply.  And Krystal trusts her.  When Krystal is raped, and when Robbie is abused, Krystal does plan to get help from Tessa.  But is has to be scheduled right; she has to follow a procedure.  The procedure that Krystal plans is not in the counseling department handbook: she plans to shag Fats, get pregnant, and ask the baby’s grandmother for help.  Those details are not in the school manual, but the underlying idea – that you have to follow a procedure to get help from a counselor -- is based on school policy.  Is it okay for Krystal to take Tessa’s time, or is it some kind of crime like theft? (Insight #5)

Last meander on time: There is a school of thought that speaks of the different “languages of love.”  People express love or perceive love in five different ways: praise, service, gift, time, and touch.  (1) Praise, words of encouragement: you can give out an endless supply.  But no one praised Krystal except Barry Fairbrother, and the newspaper article that he arranged – and, in the end, Sukhvinder’s eulogy.  The medal that she won rowing was a great treasure; she got it because of him.  (2) Service, actions that help: A variety of people offered services to the Weedons, including Kay, but their services were not perceived to be love, and indeed may not have been motivated by love.  (3) Gifts: Fats gives Krystal a few rollups (hand-rolled cigarette), and she treasures them, not because she likes them – it is explicit that she does not like them (262) – but because they are gifts.  (4) For Krystal, touch was not a good language of love: her mother was a prostitute sometimes, and Krystal was raped.  When she and Fats touched, he was using her, and she was using him.  (5) Time, especially “quality” time, is a precious commodity; and it is a limited commodity, unlike praise.  Barry gave Krystal his time.   (#6)

When Rowling kept track of the chain of custody of that silly watch, did she really intend all that symbolism?  Not all, for sure – but some, for sure.

conclusion (draft)

Final Word: Why Not?

When I read this novel the first time, I was working to defend immigrants.  In Maryland, the state legislature had passed a very limited version of the Dream Act.  Anti-immigration forces, mostly white conservative Christians, petitioned the law to referendum.  For a while, it seemed that Maryland might vote against hospitality.  I thought I saw a way to help, and spent five months working on it.  My task was specific and narrow: I went after voters whose religious views were in conflict with their political views – people who were serious about following an all-embracing God of Love, but were nonetheless planning to vote against welcoming strangers.  I wrote a couple of short books about it.  In the end, Maryland voters embraced the Dream Act decisively, but the fight continued on a national level.

From my perspective, the effort to understand and explain The Casual Vacancy is my third book on immigration.  Rowling’s book is not about immigration; rather, my understanding of her book is connected to my understanding of immigration.  But she makes a connection, in a throwaway line, describing the problem of the Fields as seen by the traditionalists: “there was a great ongoing scramble across the boundary line … much as Mexicans streamed into Texas” (p. 48).  The question that Rowling explores, it seems to me, is the same question that all activists wrestle with: why don’t people act effectively to help their neighbors?  Some people do step forward; the Barry Fairbrothers of the world are not rare.  And yet, they are scarce enough that the death of one person may leave a vacancy that will not be filled.

Why don’t other people act? 

Rowling does not tell activists how to galvanize a community.  What she does, which I found extraordinarily useful and challenging, is to bring a novelist’s eye to the diagnostic process.  She does not offer a solution, but does describe the problem with a clear and honest eye.

In her novel, Howard is the jovial enemy.  He knows about the Fields, and knows about the Weedon family, and knows about Krystal.  But he has chosen to live in a small world that he controls, and the Fields with its weeds is not welcome in his world.  He is not interested in gems that might be buried there.

I found it fascinating that Shirley was so much worse than Howard.  Howard chose Pagford, and tried to keep it quaint and small – an understandable if deplorable choice.  But Shirley chose Howard, and deified him.  He worked steadily for years to control his little world; her world was smaller, and she did not try to control it.  He betrayed some constituents, knowing their names, but wanting them to go elsewhere.  She betrayed him, and planned to murder him, because he shattered her world when he was unfaithful.  To apply the lesson: I know how to argue with Howard, although I have very little expectation of success.  I can argue against choosing a small world.  But I have no idea how to argue with Shirley.  What does one say against blind and bitter loyalty?

Howard’s second disciple, his son Miles, grew up in a small world, in a hothouse.  He is a weak person.  But he might change if he is pushed into a larger world.  If he does take responsibility for someone in need, who knows how deep the change might be?

The enemies of hospitality are interesting, but so are the ineffective allies.

Colin Wall steps forward promptly to carry on Barry’s work.  But he cannot do it, despite his good intentions.  When he first appears in the novel, he is choking on his words, struggling to announce Barry’s death to high school students in Yarvil.  Krystal reacts with appropriate horror, but Colin misunderstands her yelp, and shouts at her.  From the very first minute, he displays a lack of understanding of the people whom Barry served.  He can’t connect with Krystal, no matter how much he wants to help.  His neurosis is in the way – as the Ghost points out.

Parminder is a loyal ally.  She too is loyal to Barry, and her motives are mixed, as the Ghost points out.  Like Colin, she lacks the common touch.  She is tight with her prescription pad, and makes enemies, including – unfortunately – the most sensible person in the Weedon family.  She can’t control her temper, which has some benefits: her denunciation of Howard’s colossal waste of precious resources is heart-warming.  But it has a downside: she destroys her credibility.  When Barry loses his temper with Krystal, Krystal accepts the correction sweetly – partly because she is sweet underneath all the grime, but largely because Barry deserves and wins her confidence.  Parminder, by contrast, does not touch the hearts of her audience.  She does pray, sincerely, and she raises a great daughter.  But she can’t move people.

Kay can’t help, paradoxically, because her profession is to help.  She does understand Krystal, and does win her trust.  But at the critical moment, Kay does not move fast, because she is no longer assigned to that case.  She is also distracted by her daughter, but the real issue is that her compassion is channeled through a bureaucracy.  She has the right job, and it is a good job for her – but the fact that it is a job blocks access to her heart briefly, at exactly the wrong moment.

Tessa’s problem is similar to Kay’s.  Krystal trusts her, and in fact is planning to get her help.  But Krystal knows the established channels, and plans to get help from Tessa by pushing buttons. 

Vikram is a fascinating character.  He has brains, compassion, and credibility.  But he is not going to take Barry’s place because he doesn’t speak up.  To understand Vikram, you watch his work, and it is admirable.  But to fill Barry’s shoes, one must speak up, and Vikram doesn’t.  That’s not a criticism; it’s just a fact.

The novel explores people’s minds within the context of their families.  Sukhvinder, one of Barry’s rowers, is a great success.  Barry built a team with his own kids, plus some other solid middle class teens.  But he sweeps in two outsiders – Krystal and Sukhvinder – and he protects them both.  Sukhvinder has her mother’s face, and her mother’s awareness of spiritual life, and her father’s quiet ways.  That is, we understand her, like her father, mostly by what she does – cutting herself, jumping off the bridge, visiting the Fields alone.  Interestingly, her heroism on the bridge is like her father’s decisiveness.  But deciding to organize the funeral, and then making it happen – she learned that from Barry, not her parents.

Barry’s strengths are on several levels.  He knows the Fields personally; no other adult in the fight does.  Howard sees only grime and crime, although Fats (of all people!) visits there in search of authenticity and sees “the gentility of Pagford, with net curtains and ornaments on the windowsills” (p. 65).  Sukhvinder makes her way there, protected by Krystal’s extended family because she tried to save Robbie.  These teens will be able to speak about the Fields with personal knowledge in the future – but only Barry can do so now.  He is also active on a community level: he collects supporters and makes arguments.  He is creative and pro-active: he seeks out the press, gets articles written, even writes some himself, despite his discomfort writing.  Barry acted directly, with simple and personal contacts.  Specifically, he recruited Krystal for his rowing team, coached her to excel, and got recognition for her.  Above all, he acts with transparent love.  This drive in his heart is so deep and pervasive that his wife experiences it as competition.  Barry does love Mary, but spends most of their anniversary working for Krystal.

Still, the novel is not prescriptive, explaining what an activist can and should do.  It’s descriptive, exploring the vacancy.  Who can fill Barry’s shoes? 

That penultimate question jumps outside the context of the novel.  Can you fill his shoes?

Tightly Constructed Art

What is Simon doing in this book?

Simon Price does not serve any obvious purpose in the book.  That’s okay in a novel; a novel is a plastic form, and can absorb a great deal of irrelevancy.  Still, I wondered: does Simon serve any purpose at all in the story as a whole?

The story is about the council: Simon seems to be a distraction.  The story is about Krystal; Simon has no contact with her, or even any apparent awareness of her.  Does he have a role?

I would argue that Simon plays an extraordinarily important role in the novel.  He is a foil for Howard, clarifying the vacancy in Howard.

Simon is openly brutal.  He beats his wife and his children.  He has no discernible moral code.  He wants to get on the council because he believes that it provides opportunities for bribery.

Howard is not openly brutal like Simon, but does want to avoid taking any responsibility for the Fields.  When Oddo rapes Krystal in the Fields, there is no one around to do anything about it.  Oddo is not working for Howard; Howard is not responsible for the rape.  But Howard is partially responsible for the welfare of the people within the boundaries of the parish, and that includes the Fields.  If anyone should have become aware of the growing dangers in the Fields, and should have started thinking about steps the parish could take to protect innocent residents, it would be the parish council, headed by Howard.

Howard does not beat his children like Simon.  But Shirley has abused them, praising Miles ad nauseam and insulting Pat.  Miles is an emotional cripple, an adult who craves parental approval.  Pat is alienated, feeling unwelcome in her parents’ home.  Howard has overlooked the damage to his children. 

Howard has a code of behavior, but not a discernible moral code.  He does know what is proper and politic, but does not know what is moral.  His long-time neighbor and colleague, a political opponent perhaps but a neighbor, is dead.  His reaction? Well, it has its advantages; when can we meet for dinner?  At church, where the Lord said carefully and forcefully that you should not give preference to the rich over the poor, he pushes people aside to make room for his belly, and then saves seats for the rich.  But mostly, he is simply devoid of any sense that the poor are God’s children, and that morality demands care for them.

Howard is not on the council to take bribes like Simon, but he is on the council to be important.  He pays attention to constituents, but only the ones who don’t need protection.  His use of the council for his own benefit is not crude like Simon’s plans, but it is far deeper and more thorough.

Simon is in the book to clarify Howard.  There is nothing that Simon does that is worse than what Howard does.  But Howard is a hypocrite, and hypocrisy covers a multitude of improprieties.

To pound that point home, consider Pat again.  Her role in the book is like Simon’s; her existence is similarly a little puzzling.  She shows up in an expensive car, brings some wine for the party, fights with Mom, smokes outside with the teenagers a little, and then leaves.  What was that all about?  If she exists, it’s good she came to the 65^th birthday party, but why did Rowling invent her?  What is she doing in this story?

Shirley treats her daughter worse than Simon treats his son.  Simon beats his wife and Andrew, but they know that his violence has nothing to do with them.  By contrast, Shirley looks at Pat, considers Pat, thinks about how to address Pat’s lover – and decides to pretend she doesn’t exist.  Shirley deliberately and consistently depersonalizes Melly, and insults her daughter.  Shirley does not argue with her and agree to disagree; she dodges the topic genteelly, and turns her daughter into a pariah.  Simon insults Andrew, and calls him Pizza Face, but it isn’t really an attack on Andrew; rather, it’s rage in search of a target, and Andrew is handy.  What Simon does is destructive, and Andrew hates him; but Andrew is growing up fairly healthy and hopeful despite his dad.  But Shirley focuses on Melly, and considers her an unperson; she focuses on Pat, and considers her behavior unspeakable.  Shirley does not try and fail; she considers, and chooses annihilating silence.  Pat can survive, if she flees.  Simon’s attack looks worse than Shirley’s silence, because he spills blood.  But Simon is out of control, responding to impulses that have nothing to do with Andrew, while Shirley is focusing on Pat’s life and Pat’s decisions and Pat’s lover – and choosing annihilation.

It is Shirley who depersonalizes her daughter, not Howard; but Howard is complicit.  And – here’s the point – what Howard & Shirley do to Krystal and everyone in the Fields is the same thing that they had already done to their own daughter.  Dealing with their daughter could have, and should have, taught them to be empathetic, or at least tolerant.  But they didn’t learn the lesson dealing with Pat, and cannot apply the lesson to the people in the Fields. 

Howard does not seem to notice that he has turned his back on people in need.  If his conscience does not prod him, if he is simply blind, is he responsible for his destructive betrayal?  The answer is: look at the way he and Shirley dealt with Pat.  Shirley chose blindness.  Howard went along.  Then what Howard learned in the home, he applied in the town, and the people of the Fields pay the price.  So, yes, it is fair to hold him responsible for the vacancy of his heart.  He chose the destruction of his heart.

At first glance, Simon and Pat seem like sideshows in a sprawling novel, colorful but irrelevant, doodles on the edge of the canvas.  But this is a mistake; they are not sideshows.  The novel is as tightly constructed as any short story.  Simon is a foil, deepening our understanding of Howard.  Pat sharpens our understanding of Howard and Shirley, and makes the contrast with Simon much clearer.

Shirley's beads: a digression

It is perhaps wrong to allow myself to digress when the main job is not largely done, when little if any systematic analysis is visible yet.  But I want to scrutinize and muse about a detail in the mind of Shirley, the lace-doily murderess/traitoress.

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 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.

Still digressing …

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.

Rowling and Dante: Hell is a Vacancy

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Characters Created by Cavity

Characters Created by Cavity

There are seven key techniques for creating a character in fiction, and indeed for recognizing and describing people in real life.  They include:

1.       the narrator’s description of a character, which is the fastest but in many ways the weakest technique;

2.       another character’s description of the one we are scrutinizing;

3.       details about the character’s circumstances, such as setting or clothes

4.       what the character says (key technique, in fiction and in life)

5.       what the character does (slowest technique, but generally the most reliable source of insight into the real character, getting past deception and misunderstanding

6.       what the character thinks (other techniques try to get at this, because it is generally considered to be the real identity of a character; generally unavailable in real life)

7.       use of foils, contrast with other characters – a powerful technique, but obvious impossible by itself, and must be used in conjunction with other techniques.

One of the oddities, and great strengths, of Rowling’s new book is that she sets out to describe characters – including casual vacancies.  What isn’t there that you expect, or want, or think should be there?  In discussions of morality, the idea of looking carefully at omissions is common; a formal examination of conscience is likely to include scrutiny of “thoughts, words, deeds, and omissions.”  Some moralists would consider the key to any evil to be something missing.  Her idea is related to the “banality of evil.”  But it is not common in literature.  In my limited experience, what Rowling has done is new.

The book describes a village that is badly damaged by the death of a prominent citizen.  He was the conscience of the community, or something like that.  Specifying what is missing in the damaged town is tough.  Is it Christianity?  The town lies under the ruin of an abbey; the local vicar says the right words but does not communicate them with any conviction.  Is it social conscience?  Barry did prod the parish council to care for the needy, and no one else is able to fulfill that role effectively. 

But another set of questions raised by Rowling’s approach involves the creation of characters.  The vacancies in the book may be different for each character: proud Howard simply lacks the ability to see small people, hateful Shirley shuts people out deliberately, lusty Samantha is distracted by skin but can learn to see deeper, etc.  To understand the book, the reader must think about the vacancy in the village as a whole.  But to understand each character, the reader has to take note of all the standard techniques for creating characters – but also ask, what is the vacancy in this person’s life?

I could well be wrong; my knowledge is limited.  Perhaps many other authors have explored the lacunae in life – have focused on the vacancies.  Of course many have done so to some extent.  But I think that Rowling is pioneering a new facet of fiction.

My own perspective is that of a social activist and organizer.  For much of my life, I have been aware of the problem that Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., described in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”  The obstacle to justice that he fought was not just the open racism of Bull O’Connor and other dog-bodies.  Much more important was the carelessness and passivity of fellow Christians.  Rowling has her eye on the same problem – a novelist’s eye, reporting and describing, not denouncing and fighting – but the same problem.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Elie Wiesel said, “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”  How can that be?  What is offensive about neutrality?  Rowling, it seems to me, explores this question, with her own angle, looking at a variety of people who do not or cannot or will not lift a finger to help people in need.  She pokes and prods and describes what she calls a vacancy.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote about the problem of stirring the embers of humanity back to life.  He said that Russians lived with lies for decades, and could not recognize the truth.  They lived with murderous evil for decades, and could not figure out how to do good.  What then?  His job, Solzhenitsyn said, was to hold out beauty, and let it work in people’s souls.  When people began to respond to beauty, their innate love of truth and goodness would also stir from the ashes.  This, it seems to, is an aspect of what Rowling did for years with her children’s fantasies, and now has done again in her new novel.

The critics who consider the novel to be mediocre should swallow their pride and re-read the book, watching for something new, watching for the vacancies – like a probing tongue hunting for a cavity.

I admit I am somewhat ignorant.  It is possible that many other writers have done what she did, and have done it better, and that the literary critics who have read more than I did understand what she was doing and still were not impressed.  But I have not seen any hint of their firm grasp of what she has done.