The Charioteer readthrough: Chapter 6
So I've brought this post forward a little bit. We seemed done with the last chapter, I am impatient, and I've decided that it's best for me not to get distracted by exciting Charioteer discussion first thing on Monday mornings. Anyway, on with the party...
So we've finally arrived at the neverending party. Campness, bitchiness and coded words in abundance... and that's just Laurie. As we discover, it was Laurie's flight from a similar party in Oxford that torpedoed his incipient relationship with Charles, so it is impressive that his desire to see Ralph again is strong enough to make him stay.
(Possibly gratuitous note: in The Charioteer, our rent boys are canon! Laurie Odell getting mistaken for a rent boy is one of the great blackly comic turns in the novel, and I'm sure a lot of readers would have missed it.)
It's interesting the way everyone at the party has apparently been waiting on tenterhooks to discover whether Laurie is actually queer, only to have him unconsciously reveal himself during the course of his reunion with Ralph:
There had been so much to say, Laurie had scarcely noticed till now the special phrases casually accepted, the basic assumption on which all their words had made sense. What after all could Lanyon have supposed, finding him here? Well, he thought, Sandy should be satisfied. The hairpin had been dropped.
So much to discuss... Ralph's appearance, Alec's role, Bim striking a blow against stereotypes, Sandy's dramatic gesture... etcetera etcetera. Take your pick and go.
The story of the rescue of Dunkirk gets told again at least three times: by Alec at second hand, by Ralph at the party, and by Ralph again when he and Laurie are in private. This brings the tally to at least five, counting Reg's version and Laurie's own version. It's very postmodern, isn't it, all these different visions? Add to that all the gossip about "The Odell" that's going around in Bridstow queer circles, and all the confusion about where it originated.
When I first read the novel, Ralph seemed to me in this chapter still very much the heroic character that he was to Laurie as a schoolboy. Re-reading it now I see all the tragic touches that have crept in. (And indeed Renault has primed the reader to look beneath the surface with her remark in chapter two about how "it comes as unwanted, dismaying news that the gods feel pain.")
Ralph's ship has been sunk, of course, and he's lost half of his hand as well as another chance at active service. We're told that he had only commanded the ship for five and a half months, which seems a significant number because it means that he missed the award of his RNPS badge by only a fortnight. And then there's the story of his dead sublieutenant, which I've never seen properly discussed, and seems like a significant chapter in the Ralph saga. For all that Ralph claims "it wasn't a romantic story," I don't believe him at all. (And note that "I grew the beard round about then.")
Query: is Ralph, in fact, an alcoholic, or going that way?
At the end of the chapter, of course, Laurie returns to the hospital and Andrew. Here we have another example of a character being more observant than Laurie expects, for Andrew has remembered the name on the flyleaf of the Phaedrus and connected it with the officer who called the hospital. He's onto you, Laurie!
And what an interesting ending...
Laurie saw again the endless interlocking chain of the world's sorrow, and Andrew's face, no longer secure in the secret orchard, but locked and moving with the chain.
This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/520693.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
So we've finally arrived at the neverending party. Campness, bitchiness and coded words in abundance... and that's just Laurie. As we discover, it was Laurie's flight from a similar party in Oxford that torpedoed his incipient relationship with Charles, so it is impressive that his desire to see Ralph again is strong enough to make him stay.
(Possibly gratuitous note: in The Charioteer, our rent boys are canon! Laurie Odell getting mistaken for a rent boy is one of the great blackly comic turns in the novel, and I'm sure a lot of readers would have missed it.)
It's interesting the way everyone at the party has apparently been waiting on tenterhooks to discover whether Laurie is actually queer, only to have him unconsciously reveal himself during the course of his reunion with Ralph:
There had been so much to say, Laurie had scarcely noticed till now the special phrases casually accepted, the basic assumption on which all their words had made sense. What after all could Lanyon have supposed, finding him here? Well, he thought, Sandy should be satisfied. The hairpin had been dropped.
So much to discuss... Ralph's appearance, Alec's role, Bim striking a blow against stereotypes, Sandy's dramatic gesture... etcetera etcetera. Take your pick and go.
The story of the rescue of Dunkirk gets told again at least three times: by Alec at second hand, by Ralph at the party, and by Ralph again when he and Laurie are in private. This brings the tally to at least five, counting Reg's version and Laurie's own version. It's very postmodern, isn't it, all these different visions? Add to that all the gossip about "The Odell" that's going around in Bridstow queer circles, and all the confusion about where it originated.
When I first read the novel, Ralph seemed to me in this chapter still very much the heroic character that he was to Laurie as a schoolboy. Re-reading it now I see all the tragic touches that have crept in. (And indeed Renault has primed the reader to look beneath the surface with her remark in chapter two about how "it comes as unwanted, dismaying news that the gods feel pain.")
Ralph's ship has been sunk, of course, and he's lost half of his hand as well as another chance at active service. We're told that he had only commanded the ship for five and a half months, which seems a significant number because it means that he missed the award of his RNPS badge by only a fortnight. And then there's the story of his dead sublieutenant, which I've never seen properly discussed, and seems like a significant chapter in the Ralph saga. For all that Ralph claims "it wasn't a romantic story," I don't believe him at all. (And note that "I grew the beard round about then.")
Query: is Ralph, in fact, an alcoholic, or going that way?
At the end of the chapter, of course, Laurie returns to the hospital and Andrew. Here we have another example of a character being more observant than Laurie expects, for Andrew has remembered the name on the flyleaf of the Phaedrus and connected it with the officer who called the hospital. He's onto you, Laurie!
And what an interesting ending...
Laurie saw again the endless interlocking chain of the world's sorrow, and Andrew's face, no longer secure in the secret orchard, but locked and moving with the chain.
This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/520693.html. Please comment there using OpenID.