With the introduction of Martin Decoud, the novel brings forward a character whose consciousness seems necessary for JC to get at the true action of the novel. No one else could look on, and participate, to anything like the same degree. We’re still primarily external to Nostromo himself, but via Decoud we can inhabit the Capataz’s company more readily. But what interests me about Decoud is that he furnishes commentary that begins to get at what’s at stake, potentially, in this tale of Nostromo:
“I am not a sentimentalist, I cannot endow my personal desires with a shining robe of silk and jewels. Life is not for me a moral romance derived from the tradition of a pretty fairy tale.” And this judgment on Gould: “that other sentimentalist, who attached a strangely idealistic meaning to concrete facts.” In this, of course, there is a critique of Gould’s tendency to see the mine as an object of fate, but also a sense that the very investure of symbolic meaning into facts—like silver or landscape or place of origin—that JC’s narrator indulges in comes into question by one of the characters. This gives Decoud, a journalist, a grasp of the realities of the book, and of its themes, that we haven’t yet fully encountered. “It seemed to him that every conviction, as soon as it became effective, turned into that form of dementia the gods send upon those they wish to destroy.”
So, with Decoud we have an adventure on ship with Nostromo. We see Nostromo's character more clearly in the handling of Hirsch, the Jewish stowaway. Along with the anti-semitism that seems simply to go without saying, JC makes Hirsch unlikeable as a character; he’s simply a liability. Nostromo declares: “it would have been no cruelty to take away from him his wretched life.” No one would seem to disagree. Hirsch is the thorn in the foot, an irritant to be removed.
And yet he is not killed, and so lives on to create more problems for Nostromo. What’s not clear yet is if this decision to spare Hirsch—which Nostromo blames on Decoud’s compassion—will constitute a failure on Nostromo’s part. We owe our view of the Capataz’s character to Decoud: “Here was a man . . . that seemed as though he would have preferred to die rather than deface the perfect form of his egoism.” A sentiment supported by Nostromo’s statement that “silver is an incorruptible metal that can be trusted to keep its value for ever”—making a definite parallel between himself and the silver, and presenting himself as a sentimentalist in Decoud’s terms, endowing his “personal desires with a shining robe of silk and jewels” or silver. Nostromo’s “perfect form of egoism” would require a “pretty fairy tale” to do him justice, to give him a fame that lives on and keeps its value forever. This is the tension Part Two ends with: what will be the fate of the silver, what will be the fate of Nostromo’s reputation in this matter, what will the narrator (and Decoud) make of the tale?
Pardon a late response to this! I liked the post very much, particularly the notion of "the very investure of symbolic meaning into fact". Thinking back now, this could in part explain some of the ironic resonances between the narrative and the narrator: that is, the silver itself forcing a morality play upon the characters as they become rather more self-aware and perhaps even a bit stilted, too. If we were looking for a concrete case in point, it might grant some cover to JC when he lets fly with some of those grand aphoristic moments or just about any self-aware turn Nostromo indulges in prior to the shipwreck. I'd argue again for a character falling into narrative but now I wonder if it's less haphazard than I first thought (i.e. via the silver, which I will *not* call a MacGuffin of course.) Any thoughts on Decoud's early exit then, so to speak? Did you feel as I did, Donald, that this precise grasp you caught so well would have ground the project to a standstill otherwise? (If I wanted to be cute, I'd suggest competition between JC and Decoud on some level ....)
ReplyDeleteI think there is competition between JC and Decoud in the sense that Decoud brings an awareness to the tale that doesn't sit well with where the story is going; simply put: he threatens to be the hero/narrator of a different tale. The fact that the narrator spends no time with him on the island except in a brief depiction of his death indicates the degree to which the possibilities for any further speech from Decoud is foreclosed by where the novel is going.
ReplyDeleteDecoud becomes simply a device of Book Two, and as such is a character that I doubt JC had any problem creating--and thus dispensing with.