The second criterion for classifying political groups mentioned at
the beginning of this chapter was that of overt political behavior.
The political novel describes the behavior of the group to which
its characters belong, that group which, while seeking office or
discharging it, conforms to a set of rules both written and unwritten.
From one point of view, these seem almost like the rules for playing a
game. From another point of view, they are the principles which must
be followed if what passes for success is to be achieved. And these
maxims are not merely empty phrases, for in the novel the politicians
who flaunt them fail. An oversimplified summary of their content would
be: follow party discipline regardless of any other considerations; use
any means likely to be effective to gain an advantage over an opponent;
follow political courses which are expedient rather than exemplary. One
of the most succinct statements of this attitude is made by Senator
Ratcliffe in Adams’s _Democracy_:
If Washington were President now, he would have to learn our ways
or lose his next election. Only fools and theorists imagine that
our society can be handled with gloves or long poles.... If virtue
won’t answer our purposes, we must use vice, or our opponents will
put us out of office....
=Office Holders: Rules and Skills=
Trollope’s novels constitute an excellent primer for the politician.
Phineas Finn’s political eclipses are caused primarily by his
persistent habit of voting in accordance with his conscience rather
than the Liberal Party line. Edward Wilcher in _To Be a Pilgrim_
takes what he believes will be a vacation from politics after losing
his seat in a close election. When he is ready to return, he finds
that his party will not have him. His brother Tom reflects, “Perhaps
they were always doubtful of him. They may have felt that he wasn’t
single-minded enough. They didn’t like his writing, especially things
like essays and criticism. Just as the Tories never liked Balfour’s
writing philosophy.” When Phineas Finn’s friend the Duke of Omnium
becomes Prime Minister, he permits himself the same luxury of being
impolitic. The death of the Marquis of Mount Fidgett gives him a
chance to award the Order of the Garter, normally given as a party
spoil rather than a tribute to merit. When Omnium bestows it upon the
good, fuddled, philanthropist Lord Earlybird, he nearly deals the
deathstroke to his weakening coalition. Mr. Daubeny, on the other hand,
is a consummate artist at the game of politics. Needing a vote of
confidence to remain in office, he conjures up a seemingly foolproof
and completely hypocritical measure for the test. As the head of the
Tories, he introduces a bill for the disendowment of the Established
Church. He assumes that the Liberals will be forced to vote for it
as legislation they might themselves have proposed. But the Liberals
play the expedient game, too, with the result that the Tories support
what they are against to remain in office while the Liberals oppose
what they are for in order to turn the Tories out. In other novels the
conservatives also appear just as adept at rough and tumble politics
as their opponents. Lord Lostwithiel hires Tom Hannaway to bribe Hamer
Shawcross, who is standing for Parliament against Lord Lostwithiel’s
son. When the attempt fails, Tom defames Hamer by asserting that he has
done nothing for his mother even though he has had remarkable success.
Hamer’s counterstroke is to take the night train to Manchester, pluck
his mother from the happy home she shares with another widow, and
exhibit her at a rally the next day to refute the charge. The whole
atmosphere of English politics seems permeated by vigilance against
quick marches. The wife of a cabinet minister, Nina Nimmo remembers the
constant intrigues of groups within that small circle. Quite as wary
are the rank and file of the House:
Everything they do is meant to have some effect beyond itself.
Indeed many ... had got so plotty that everything that happened
somewhere was “significant” of some “development.” If you only
asked them to take an ice, they looked at you knowingly as if to
ask themselves what you were “starting” and why.
The technique of buying off an opponent is more common in the American
political novel than in the English. But the attempt to purchase Jack
London’s Ernest Everhard is more subtle than that practiced on Hamer
Shawcross. Everhard is offered a job as United States Commissioner
of Labor. Even though this fee is more respectable than that offered
Shawcross, Everhard rejects the offer in order to retain his freedom
of action. The ways in which a political opponent can be embarrassed
are legion. When Paul L. Ford’s Peter Stirling is called out with his
militia regiment to protect six hundred strikebreakers, he is ordered
to Grand Central Station, the spot where it is most likely that the
militia commander will be forced to order his men to fire upon the
strikers. Nick Galt in _The Voice of the People_ makes the Duke of
Omnium’s error when he persists in making political appointments on
merit. He earns the name of “The Man with the Conscience” but he loses
important political support.
“Straws in the wind” may be a journalistic cliché, but the political
novel is littered with them. Like Nina Nimmo’s hyper-suspicious
acquaintances, they are another index of the complex behavior patterns
of highly political groups. The ability to sense the meaning behind
occurrences which often seem slight in themselves is another talent
of the acute politician. When Jethro Bass, in _Coniston_, learns that
the postmastership of the small town of Brampton is to go to another’s
protégé, he realizes that this is the first skirmish in a coming battle
for control of the state. His riposte is to take his candidate to
Washington. An old soldier, he gains President Grant’s sympathies and
the job. The invocation of a dusty city ordinance which pushes James L.
Ford’s Hot Corn Ike and his iron kettle off the corner traditionally
marks the invasion of Mike Grogan’s ward by reform elements. Willie
Stark in _All the King’s Men_ rightly interprets the attempt to indict
his state auditor as the first barrage in an attack against him by
resurgent opponents. In _The Charterhouse of Parma_ the seemingly
imminent execution of Fabrizio del Dongo makes Parma’s incumbent regime
totter. The Archbishop is one of the very few acute enough to realize
that “honour forbade the Conte to remain Prime Minister in a country
where they were going to cut off the head, and without consulting him,
of a young man who was under his protection.”
=The Mechanics of Control=
The mechanics by which power is attained and kept require mastery
for successful execution and close observation for understanding.
Proficiency in applying these techniques is as much the hallmark of the
professional political class as are the basic attitudes of the upper,
middle, and lower economic and social classes. If possible, an opponent
is thrown off stride before the race begins. Jerome Garwood in _The
13th District_ feels that his renomination to Congress is assured. But
he is hurriedly called home to find that control has been wrested from
his chief supporter by an opponent who has called an early district
committee meeting after taking the precaution of securing enough proxy
votes to establish his supremacy. In _Number One_ Dos Passos had noted
the importance of seating convention delegations nine years before
the celebrated controversies at the Republican national convention
of 1952. In this novel Chuck Crawford defeats a rival in seating his
delegation to the Democratic convention partly through the offices
of friends who have influence in the White House. Often the law is
scrutinized for advantages lying buried within it. Hank Martin in _A
Lion Is in the Streets_ is swept into office on a tide of votes cast
under his “God-blessed Grandpappy Law.” Passed at the state’s 1898
disenfranchising convention, the statute set up educational or property
qualifications for voters but made them inapplicable to descendants
of men who had voted before 1868. Obtaining photostats of the list of
these men, he parcels them out as ancestors to his illiterate followers
who would otherwise be unable to vote. Counter-measures against
a dangerous opponent include the old dodge of conquering through
division. When in _All the King’s Men_ the Harrison city forces want
to split the rural “cocklebur vote” of MacMurfee, they see to it that
Willie Stark enters the gubernatorial primary election. Of course, if
one has sufficient magnetism, he can charm and beguile an opponent out
of his path. In _The Grand Design_ hopeful candidate Walker Watson
returns from dinner at the White House immensely pleased that the
President wants him to “take care of his health.” This solicitude
takes the form of advice for a rest on a ranch in Montana before the
convention, “and particularly no speeches.”
The mechanics of political success must of course be applied beyond
this highly technical behind-the-scenes area. President Roosevelt tells
Lanny Budd that he is moving toward alignment with the Allies as fast
as public opinion will allow him to go. In a less admirable concern
for the same force, Governor Fuller of Massachusetts had denied a last
appeal by Sacco and Vanzetti, according to Sinclair, because he wanted
the job for which Coolidge did not choose to run. A refinement and
elaboration of this technique is used by Senator O’Brien in _Stranger
Come Home_ when he tries to time his committee’s most sensational
charges to coincide with press time for late newspaper editions.
The organization of political machines is also refined into a science,
particularly by people like Hank Martin in _A Lion Is in the Streets_,
who splits his domain into territories and keeps elaborate files,
one on promising opposition men who are to be destroyed politically.
Methods designed to insure conformity include devices such as the
safe deposit boxes of Ben Erik in _The City of Anger_ which contain
documentary evidence of the purchase of key city officials. Nor is
the psychology of interpersonal relationships forgotten. Jethro Bass
in _Coniston_ always remains silent at the beginning of an interview
in order to force the other to speak first at a possible tactical
disadvantage. Even the protocol of visits is analyzed in _The Plum
Tree_ by Harvey Sayler, who believes
there is no more important branch of the art of successful dealing
with men than the etiquette of who shall call upon whom. Many a man
has in the very hour of triumph ruined his cause with a blunder
there--by going to see some one whom he should have compelled to
come to him, or by compelling some one to come to him when he
should have made the concession of going.
=International Communism=
Any discussion of group political behavior would be incomplete without
mentioning international Communism. Since Stalin’s ascendancy over
his domestic opponents in the late 1920s, the Communist movement
has increasingly become an instrument of Russian national policy
rather than a worldwide movement receiving help from the Soviets.
Concomitantly, Communism and Communists in England, the United States,
Germany, France, Greece, and China have much in common. An indication
of the way in which this force cuts across national lines is the fact
that nearly a quarter of all the novels in this study deal in varying
degrees with Communism. Even though the behavior of this group is
theoretically based upon reinterpreted Marxism, it contains definite
patterns which relate to Party discipline, strategy, and tactics which
seem organizational rather than ideological. One of the primary ones
is the prohibition of original political thought outside the limits
laid down in the Kremlin. Deviationism is a cardinal sin which destroys
Nicolas Rubashov and endangers Rocco de Donatis. In a pious attempt to
avoid such error, Dr. Jane Sparling in _The Grand Design_ immediately
consults Elmer Weeks, head of the American Communist Party, to discover
the proper attitude when Hitler invades Russia. Another pattern is the
interpretation--and use--of every action not in terms of its immediate
significance, but of its place in the overall plan. The strikes of
miners, apple-pickers, or pecan-shellers are not local disputes
between management and labor but battles in the class struggle to be
used to educate the masses and provide useful martyrs. But all the
while, the pretense that Communism is an international movement must
be maintained. In _Adventures of a Young Man_ this view is purveyed to
West Virginia miners:
Less Minot got up and said that the American Miners was affiliated
with organizations all over the country that was working to
overthrow the rotten capitalistic system that kept the working
class down to starvation wages with guns and grafting officers
of the law, and that if that was being a red, he was glad to
be called a red, and as for the Rooshians, he didn’t know much
about them, but so far as he could hear tell the working class
had overthrown its capitalistic oppressors over there under the
leadership of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party and was running
the country in their own interests and was ready to help the
workers in other countries to do the same.
In _Darkness at Noon_ this diversion of Communism from the goal of
international revolution to the service of the Russian state is clothed
in a theory meant to make it both logical and necessary: when world
revolution did not follow the Russian Revolution, it was resolved that
the primary task was to preserve “the Bastion” in order to protect
gains already made and to maintain a base for later advances. Therefore
in each country where its activities are revealed, the Communist Party
is found to act primarily in the interests of the Soviet Union.
The use of racial minority groups has not been neglected by the
Communists. Several recent American novels have touched upon this
subject. The most vivid and powerful is Ralph Ellison’s _The Invisible
Man_ (1947). The book’s nameless protagonist flees the South dogged
by discrimination and bad luck. He is drawn into The Brotherhood
(a euphemism for the Communist Party) and rises rapidly to become
“Spokesman” for the Harlem district. Despite appreciable gains he has
made in membership, the young Negro leader is shifted downtown. A
bloody riot makes it clear to him that the change in the Party line is
deliberate. He finally understands the full meaning of his ideological
tutor’s words, “your members will have to be sacrificed.” His break
with the Party is basically the same as Glenn Spotswood’s. But here the
emotional involvement and subsequent disillusionment are much greater.
Farrell makes the same point in _Yet Other Waters_ through the speech
of a Socialist Negro labor leader directed at Communists who have come
to disrupt a meeting. In a long passage completely italicized for
emphasis he says, “You are trying to manipulate and betray my people.
You are no friend of the black man or the white man. You are the cancer
of the working class. You are the architects of defeat.”
War, no less than domestic conflict, is seen as an opportunity to
extend Communism which transcends the immediate national issues. The
Spanish Civil War was both a skirmish and a testing ground in which the
full extent of Russian intervention was concealed to prevent direct
reprisals. In _The Grand Design_ Jed Farrington tells Georgia Washburn:
“In the short term war we’re allied to the Squire in the White House
and his big business friends but in the long-term war they are our
most dangerous enemies.” The subjugation of satellite party interests
to Soviet interests is made clear in _The Crack in the Column_ by
Moscow-trained Zachariades, who arrives to deliver his post-mortem on
the unsuccessful EAM uprisings: “Our friends want no more premature,
independent revolutions. They have Italy and Palestine to think of.”
Even the details of authorized revolutions are foreseen and attended
to. Leaders like Zachariades and Kyo Gisors in _Man’s Fate_ are made to
order. Hemingway’s Robert Jordan reflects about the Moscow-trained,
bogus peasant leader of the Loyalists, Valentin Gomez: “You had to have
these peasant leaders quickly in this sort of war.... You couldn’t
wait for the real Peasant Leader to arrive and he might have too many
peasant characteristics when he did. So you had to manufacture one.”
These novels illustrate Communism’s diversity of character and tactics
and the rigid discipline it imposes upon its followers under pain of
expulsion or death.
=Analysis of Mass Phenomena=
Interest in mass political phenomena is sometimes expressed by these
authors not only through action, but in direct analysis and examination
as well. Steinbeck’s _In Dubious Battle_ opposes two theorists: McLoed,
who thinks this particular strike is a good one because it will give
him a chance to “work out some ideas,” and Doc Burton, who serves as
the strikers’ doctor to observe contagion in the social body. Sounding
more like a social psychologist than a physician, he says
Group-men are always getting some kind of infection. This seems to
be a bad one. I want to see, Mac. I want to watch these group-men,
for they seem to me to be a new individual, not at all like single
men. A man in a group isn’t himself at all, he’s a cell in an
organism that isn’t like him any more than the cells in your body
are like you.
Like Mac, Jim Nolan is a psychologist of mass violence. He even offers
to reopen his wound so that his blood will provide a stimulus for the
group to attack the strikebreakers. When the strikers are about to
mob one strike leader who has bloodied another, he diverts them from
this assault to the one he desires. There are other instances in which
a specific theory of the effects of violence is used for political
purposes. Just as Dostoyevsky’s Pyotr Verhovensky has his circle kill
Shatov to cement them together, so Hemingway’s Pablo had made his
townsmen communal executioners of the Fascists: “To save bullets,”
explains Pilar, “and so that each man should have his share in the
responsibility.” The basic attitudes behind mass political phenomena
are analyzed by some of Koestler’s major characters. Both Jules
Commanche and Julien Dellatre discuss the ills of France and Western
man in general. Their conclusions are very similar to Rubashov’s
critique of Communist policy. Finally Koestler himself sums up this
consistent point of view when he explains the cause of Hydie’s constant
and unsuccessful search in _The Age of Longing_: “the place of God had
become vacant, and there was a draft blowing through the world as in an
empty flat before the new tenants have arrived.”
chapter six
The Novelist as Analyst of Individual Political Behavior
Repulsed by his party in his attempt to return to politics after
the first World War, Edward Wilcher, in _To Be a Pilgrim_, turns to
writing. He tells his brother:
No one has written a real political novel--giving the real feel of
politics. The French try to be funny or clever, and the English
are too moral and abstract. You don’t get the sense of real
politics, of people feeling the way: of moles digging frantically
about to dodge some unknown noise overhead; of worms all diving
down simultaneously because of some change in the weather; or
rising up gaily again because some scientific gardener has spread
the right poison mixture; you don’t get the sense of limitation
and confusion, of walking on a slack wire over an unseen gulf by
a succession of lightning flashes. Then the ambitious side is
always done so badly. Plenty of men in politics have no political
ambition; they want to defend something, to get some reform--it’s
as simple as that. But even then they are simple people, too, and
it is the simple men who complicate the situation. Yes, a real
political novel would be worth doing. I should like to do for
politics what Tolstoy has done for war--show what a muddle and
confusion it is, and that it must always be a muddle and confusion
where good men are wasted and destroyed simply by luck as by a
chance bullet.
Perhaps Edward’s insight into this aspect of politics has been
sharpened by the fact that, despite his immediate denial, he has been
hit by just such a bullet himself. But the impact must have been so
great that it sent him into a state of shock which made him unable to
see that the novel had done just what he said it hadn’t. The muddle and
confusion are there, and so are the men who rise above it as well as
those who are sucked under and lost.
=Motivation=
It is hard to draw the line between individual and group political
behavior. A man may be a mirror or conductor of political forces as
well as a discrete individual. His motivation is perhaps the most
individual aspect of his political experience. Most of the leading
characters in these political novels are strongly motivated. In only
a few cases, such as that of Willis Markham in _Revelry_, does the
individual drift into politics. The ones who, in Wilcher’s words,
“want to defend something, to get some reform,” are very common. The
“something” that Robert Jordan wants to defend is liberty in Spain, so
that “there should be no more danger and so that the country should be
a good place to live in.” Lanny Budd feels exaltation that in his role
of Presidential Agent he is helping to defend democracy. The reform
that brings Millard Carroll to Washington is expressed in the aims of
the New Deal, and a similar response on a more emotional level is made
by Glenn Spotswood. Passing the shacks of the Mexican workers they have
tried to help, he exclaims, “By God, Jed, we’ve got to do something to
stop this kind of thing.”
A powerful motivating force which operates on a less conscious level
derives from a man’s being a bastard. Hamer Shawcross in _Fame Is
the Spur_, like Hyacinth Robinson in _The Princess Casamassima_, is
illegitimate. Both men are raised by people who try to give them the
emotional security of which their birth deprives them, but their
attempts to change the society into which they were born seem in part
due to the feeling that they are among its second-class citizens.
Razumov in _Under Western Eyes_ has been raised, as far as the reader
knows, without any family life at all. Yet he is motivated in exactly
the opposite direction from Shawcross and Robinson. His assumption of
a counter-revolutionary role is a direct result of his feeling that
his nation and its existing social fabric are all he has. He tells the
well-born revolutionary Haldin:
I have no domestic tradition. I have nothing to think against.
My tradition is historical. What have I to look back to but that
national past from which you gentlemen want to wrench away your
future?... You come from your province, but all this land is
mine--or I have nothing.
Generations later, another Russian reacts the same way under the new
regime. Feyda Nikitin in _The Age of Longing_ has been orphaned by
childbirth and a counter-revolutionary firing squad. The last message
from his father’s eyes was one of “unshakable faith in the Great
Change, and of a childlike belief in the marvels and happiness which it
would bring.” This was enough to start Feyda on a career whose apex is
the listing of Frenchmen to be liquidated after Russian conquest.
The character of Feyda serves to bridge the gap between men like
Shawcross, Robinson, and Razumov and those who are motivated by a
similar but much more powerful force--spiritual bastardy. One of these
is the most demoniac of all Dostoyevsky’s possessed, Pyotr Verhovensky.
He publicly ridicules his father: “the man’s only seen me twice in
his life and then by accident.” It would be easy to make a case
basing Pyotr’s anarchistic politics upon a partial transference of
his resentment of parental rejection from old Stepan, his father, to
Russia, his fatherland. Tony Maggiore, the hero-villain of _Caesar’s
Angel_, is called “the terrible child--the child who had never known
childhood.” Canon Borda’s analysis of Fabrizio del Dongo’s violent
behavior is also based upon childhood experiences: “He is a younger
son who feels himself wronged because he is not the eldest.” There
are also characters like Joe Yerkes in _The Grand Design_ who set
out to change a society in which they feel at a social and economic
disadvantage. The houseboy and then protégé of a professor, Yerkes is
eventually led, chiefly by his feelings of inferiority and insecurity,
to join the Communist Party and to work at organizing auto workers.
These activities are a means, though never acknowledged, through
which he can try to change the existing society into one in which he
will enjoy a higher status and more prestige. In _The Secret Agent_
the Professor’s failure in a series of jobs had turned him into a
revolutionary determined to destroy the society which had rejected him.
Jim Nolan had fought “the system” as a lone, dispirited antagonist.
The example of cell-mates had finally channeled this antagonism into
Communism, because “the hopelessness wasn’t in them.... There was
conviction that sooner or later they would win their way out of the
system they hated.” Some few individuals, like Disraeli’s exemplary
young men, enter politics out of a sense of _noblesse oblige_. But
more enter from a feeling of protest. Don Paolo’s reflections in
_Bread and Wine_ emphasize the emotional nature of this motivation in
revolutionaries:
He had once asked many militant members of his party what had led
them to Marxism, and nearly all of them had confessed that their
original impulse, as in his case, had been moral condemnation
of existing society. He had read the biographies of many
revolutionaries, and he had never yet discovered anyone who had
become a revolutionary out of scientific conviction or economic
calculation.
The pangs of unrequited love are partially responsible for Peter
Stirling’s dedication to success in politics in _The Honorable Peter
Stirling_, just as Frances Motherwell’s rejection by Vic Herres, in
_The Troubled Air_, causes her to denounce the Communist movement to
which he is devoted. Other motivating forces are just as conventional.
Such dissimilar characters as Fabrizio del Dongo in _The Charterhouse
of Parma_ and Jethro Bass in _Coniston_ are influenced by the career of
Napoleon. The will to power as a basic drive is more clearly put by Old
Gisors in _Man’s Fate_: “every man dreams of being god.” Mary McCarthy
in _The Oasis_ (1949) labels Will Taub’s motivation as basically this
when she says that “dreams of power and mastery, far more than its
fraternal aspect, were what had attracted him to communism....” In
some cases, like those of Silone’s heroes, the motivation is quite
complex. Don Nicola, in _A Handful of Blackberries_, says that Rocco
de Donatis “was the object of the clearest call from God that I have
ever witnessed.” Yet he had become a Communist and left the Church like
Pietro Spina in _Bread and Wine_ “because of the profound disgust with
which he reacted to the abyss which he perceived between its practical
actions and the words it preached.” Even Spina’s name--literally
“rock-thorn”--is symbolic of the conflict between these forces within
him. The carpenter, merchant, clergyman, or teacher may drift into
his vocation through family pressure or pursuit of the line of least
resistance. Almost always the politician enters his because of a
powerful driving force which is just as likely to be subconscious as
conscious.
=Moral Problems and Changing Values=
Another characteristic of the politician in the novel is the often-met
change in values. Basic to this process may be the frequency with which
he encounters moral problems. Some may be like Senator Ratcliffe in
_Democracy_, whose “weakness ... lay in his blind ignorance of morals.”
But usually a choice must be made between that which is right and
that which is profitable. Sometimes it is as clear-cut as whether or
not DeForest’s John Vane should participate in the Great Subfluvial
Tunnel Road (a satire on the Crédit Mobilier) which is to run under the
Mississippi and unite Lake Superior and the Gulf of Mexico. Often the
politician must decide if he will check his conscience in the cloakroom
while he votes on a small issue in order to keep his party in power to
attain larger ends. Trollope’s heroes usually make the difficult but
morally right decision, but few applaud them. When Phineas Finn votes
for the Irish Reform Bill, Lord Tulla declares, “Very dirty conduct I
think it was.... After being put in for the borough twice, almost free
of expense, it was very dirty.”
A symptom of changing values is the rejection of the constituency for
the capitol. Even the Duke of Omnium begins to abandon the idea of
retirement because “the poison of place and power and dignity had got
into his blood.” The career of Bradley Talcott in _A Spoil of Office_
is a classic example. He thinks of throwing up his political life until
his renomination is threatened. Then he finds that his office is the
breath of life in his nostrils. Jerome Garwood’s comment on returning
to Washington from campaigning in _The 13th District_ is that “it’s
worth all a fellow has to go through out in that beastly mud hole to
be back here where one can really live.” This pattern is bound up, of
course, with the problem of conformity. In order to retain the prize,
the politician must pay its price. Hamer Shawcross puts the best
possible interpretation upon his own behavior when Pen Muff asks him
why more can’t be done for the Welsh miners. He replies that they will
do as much as they can without running the risk of being turned out of
office:
I admit ... that it’s a matter of getting the most out of the
second best. If all things were working for the best--why, there’d
be no need of politics at all, Pen. I suppose the very word means
not what we want but what is expedient.
The ultimate change in values, of course, is the sellout such as that
of which Shawcross and Nimmo are accused. There are cases too in which
the change takes the form not of deterioration but regeneration. Most
of these are found in vintage American novels, however, in which the
love of a good woman does the trick. Harvey Sayler, Jethro Bass, and
Willis Markham all reject the spoils of unsavory careers and don
penitential garments under this influence. The European treatment
is much more subtle. In his cell, Rubashov finds that his interior
monologues are really dialogues, “that there was a thoroughly tangible
component in this first person singular, which had remained silent
through all these years and now had started to speak.”
=The Successful Politician=
The individual who emerges most clearly from these novels is the
successful politician. One can even draw a complete profile of his
characteristics. And this composite illuminates not only the primary
subject, but also his counterpart. In the interplay between them one
sees the essence of that critical phenomenon, the leader-follower
relationship. In _The Prime Minister_ Trollope ponders these subjects:
If one were asked in these days what gift should a Prime Minister
ask first from the fairies, one would name the power of attracting
personal friends. Eloquence, if it be too easy, may become almost
a curse. Patriotism is suspected, and sometimes sinks almost to
pedantry. A Jove-born intellect is hardly wanted, and clashes with
the inferiorities. Industry is exacting. Honesty is unpractical.
Truth is easily offended. Dignity will not bend. But the man who
can be all things to all men, who has ever a kind word to speak,
a pleasant joke to crack, who can forgive all sins, who is ever
prepared for friend or foe but never very bitter to the latter, who
forgets not men’s names, and is always ready with little words,--he
is the man who will be supported at a crisis.... It is for him that
men will struggle, and talk, and if needs be, fight, as though the
very existence of the country depended on his political security.
The Duchess of Omnium’s discourse upon the tasks Omnium is unwilling to
perform is much more an indictment of politics in its worst sense than
this comparatively restrained analysis of Trollope’s. In much the same
vein Meredith’s Stukely Culbrett declares that Nevil Beauchamp has “too
strong a dose of fool’s honesty to succeed....” Hamer Shawcross’s own
distillate of thirty years of political experience is a bitter brew.
Dissimulation is the chief element in the formula for success. The
politician must be an adept psychologist appealing not to reason and
intellect but to “panic, passion, and prejudice.” Shawcross cynically
adds that if these factors are not present at the critical moment, the
politician must know how to create them. The lesson one learns from
Chester Nimmo’s career is that the successful office holder must be as
agile as a gymnast, as flexible as a contortionist, and as vigilant as
a radar screen. In certain instances, the politician owes success to
what he does not do rather than to what he does. The ultimate in the
ossification of faculties whose exercise may be dangerous is reached by
the Communists. General Golz reveals his formula for survival to Robert
Jordan: “I never think at all. Why should I? I am General Sovietique. I
never think. Do not try to trap me into thinking.”
Peter Stirling’s list of requirements for political success is quite
different. Although he mentions physical superiority and dishonesty,
his lecture sounds like a naïve version of the Boy Scout oath.
He mentions bosses, but his account of the way he influences his
constituents suggests Socratic dialogues in Athenian meadows rather
than politics in a tenement district of downtown Manhattan. The
physical characteristics which he mentions briefly are noted by other
authors, however. Nick Burr is a Virginia Lincoln in appearance, while
Senator Ratcliffe in _Democracy_, and Senator Planefield in _Through
One Administration_, represent the portly and impressive type. Dan
Lurcock’s acquisition of Willis Markham is based upon precisely these
qualities: “Let him get that magnificent head into the legislature,
where it would be on view, and there was nothing he might not do
with it.” This case appears to exaggerate the value of physical
impressiveness, but it illustrates the very real advantage which it
confers upon its possessor.
The leader-follower relationship can depend in part upon just such
physical factors. Bill Dominick, who rules three congressional
districts in _The Plum Tree_, cows many of his supporters with his
huge, ex-prizefighter’s body. Jack London’s Ernest Everhard represents
this type with the dross transmuted to gold, for he is “a superman, a
blond beast such as Nietzsche has described.” Hank Martin combines this
physical vitality with an oratorical “kindlin’ power” which inspires
his supporters. But his appeal is also basic in another way. His theme
“Divide the Riches” has an attraction for impoverished back country
people which is probably more compelling than personal magnetism. The
power of Michael J. Grogan in _Hot Corn Ike_ has a completely economic
basis. From city departments and corporations he obtains the green
labor tickets which entitle their bearers to jobs. For each ticket
Grogan receives a vote. In _All the King’s Men_, Willie Stark’s concern
for his people’s welfare is also expressed in direct action, but he
explores psychological depths in his constituents unplumbed by other
politicians. He jeers at them as “suckers,” “red-necks,” and “hicks,”
then allies himself with them as one victimized by the same city
politicians. Losing his job because of these city bosses, he had become
“symbolically the spokesman for the tongue-tied population of honest
men.” His oratory is violent and emotional, full of questions which
bring thunderous crowd responses like those of a question-and-answer
sermon in a revival meeting. And he buttresses this primitive
relationship with tangibles: an overloaded state payroll, new highways,
and a magnificent free hospital. But Willie Stark’s appeal is not
limited to the unlearned. The intelligent but neurotic Jack Burden
works for Willie even while he allows his critical faculties full play.
Anne Stanton, a governor’s daughter, becomes Willie’s mistress. Both
of these people see in Willie strength where they are weak. To Jack he
is a man who lives in and for the present; to Anne he is an embodiment
of strength, a man who knows precisely what he wants and is willing
to pay the price to get it. Another practitioner of psychology is
Councilor Mikulin in _Under Western Eyes_. He enlists Razumov in his
service through his faculty for sensing each man’s vulnerability. “It
did not matter to him what it was--vanity, despair, love, hate, greed,
intelligent pride, or stupid conceit--it was all one to him as long as
the man could be made to serve.”
=Political Pathology: Deviates, Martyrs, and Authoritarians=
This topic leads directly to a very curious set of political phenomena.
It can be described as political pathology. The line between sanity
and madness is just as hazy here as it is in other areas. But one can
usually distinguish between one man who is intelligently dedicated to
a goal and another who is a fanatic. Dostoyevsky intended that all his
revolutionaries should represent very dangerous forms of madness. It
is obvious that Kirillov, who believes he can become God by killing
himself, is insane. The drunken brute Lebyadkin, like the vicious
Pyotr, idolizes Stavrogin as a god, while Stavrogin himself is a
complete masochist. Erkel is described as a fanatic who can serve a
cause only through one person seen as the expression of it. Shatov
recognizes their abnormality. He tells the narrator that they would be
lost if Russia were suddenly transformed: “They’d have no one to hate
then, no one to curse, nothing to find fault with. There’s nothing in
it but an immense animal hatred for Russia which has eaten into their
organism.” Even more lethal a fanatic is the terrorist Ch’en Ta Erh
in _Man’s Fate_. He nerves himself for his first act of violence in
the novel by driving a dagger point into his arm. Later, in a state of
exaltation, he stabs a fragment of glass into his thigh to express to
his companions the intensity he feels as he proposes that they should
throw themselves with their bombs beneath Chiang Kai-shek’s car. Ch’en
develops an almost mystical attraction toward death which he finally
satisfies by shooting himself when the attempt on Chiang’s life fails.
His opposite number is Konig, chief of Chiang’s police. Once tortured
by the Communists, he declares “My dignity is to kill them.... I live
... only when I’m killing them.” Several of Conrad’s characters,
notably Nikita the assassin in _Under Western Eyes_ and the Professor
in _The Secret Agent_, are quite as ready to kill for political
reasons. Warren’s Willie Stark has a fanatical bodyguard in Sugar-Boy,
a stuttering gnome of a man who combines absolute devotion to Stark
with the satisfaction he gets from driving a high-powered car and using
a .38 Special revolver.
But the fanatic need not engage in violence. He appears to channel his
drives into actions appropriate to the political framework within which
he operates. In _The Troubled Air_ Communist Vic Herres calculatedly
ruins his old friend Clement Archer. “Because he’s a fanatic,”
explains Vic’s wife Nancy, “because he would sacrifice me and Johnny
and young Clem and himself and anybody else if he was told it was
for the cause....” The political novel also contains examples of the
Communist who carries his fanaticism intact with him in his journey
from the extreme Left to the far Right. Elsie McCabe and Frederick
Newman knowingly perjure themselves before Senator O’Brien’s committee
in _Stranger Come Home_. And it is clear that they have made their
allegations against Whitehead with the same disregard for truth which
they found useful in their years as Party members. Another of the same
species as Dostoyevsky’s Erkel and Warren’s Sugar-Boy is Spring’s Jimmy
Newboult. “Knighted” by Shawcross with the Peterloo sabre, he precedes
him into each rally carrying it aloft. But with his scruples and acute
moral sense, Jimmy represents a mid-point between the deadly Ch’en and
Marion Crawford’s sugar-and-spice fanatic. Crawford explains noble John
Harrington’s lack of zeal in proposing to pining Josephine Thorn in _An
American Politician_:
He was a man, she said, who loved an unattainable, fanatic idea
in the first place, and who dearly loved himself as well for his
own fanaticism’s sake. He was a man in whom the heart was crushed,
even annihilated, by his intellect, which he valued far too
highly, and by his vanity, which he dignified into a philosophy of
self-sacrifice.
In _Bread and Wine_ Luigi Murica tells Pietro Spina, “I decided that
politics was grotesque--nothing but an artificial struggle between
rival degenerates.” His comment may be taken literally as well as
figuratively, for political and sexual pathology are combined in the
cases of the deviates in these novels. There are enough to fill a
textbook of abnormal psychology. The most common is the homosexual
who often seeks to achieve through political association the sense
of acceptance by his fellows which he feels is denied him by his
maladjustment. Such a one is Marcello Clerici in _The Conformist_.
Moravia’s detailed treatment virtually gives a case history following
a familiar pattern. Marcello’s feeling of abnormality is deepened by
a childhood traumatic experience in which he barely escapes assault
by a middle-aged man. Marcello marries, but he remains a latent
homosexual throughout his life, feeling a frightening desire to submit
when he is accosted by an old man in a situation very like the first
one. He hopes to achieve conformity through marriage and membership
in the Fascist Party. After paving the way for the political murder
of a former teacher, he reflects that the success of the regime is
needful to him psychologically. “Only in that way,” he thinks, “could
what was normally considered an ordinary crime become, instead, a
positive step in a necessary direction.” This maladjustment is found
on many levels, from that of Communist General Ares in _The Crack in
the Column_ to post-adolescent Winthrop Strang in _The Grand Design_.
The son of a famous author now deceased, Strang petulantly complains
that he is not receiving enough attention from his dominating mother,
a well-known newspaper columnist. In what appears to be an attempt to
obtain this affection from other sources, he has thrown himself into
Communist Party work and an affair with young Mervyn Packett, another
Party member who writes for the Negro press. Lee Sarason, who succeeds
Buzz Windrip as American dictator in _It Can’t Happen Here_, surrounds
himself with strong young members of the Minute Men: “He was either
angry with his young friends, and then he whipped them, or he was in a
paroxysm of apology to them, and caressed their wounds.” The parallel
between Sarason and Nazi Ernst Röhm is completed when he is shot late
at night by another American Nazi, Colonel Dewey Haik. Several brusque
and mannish women appear in these novels. Lannie Madison in _Barbary
Shore_ is a lesbian who has denied herself everything, including love,
to work for the Communist Party. Having broken with it, she is now a
completely disorganized personality.
One of the most complex deviates is Dostoyevsky’s Nikolay Stavrogin.
Although he is capable of heterosexual relationships, he is a pervert
who has corrupted a small child and caused her suicide. A sadist,
he is also an admitted masochist. In marrying the feeble-minded
Marya Lebyadkin he had carried out his idea of “somehow crippling my
life in the most repulsive manner possible.” In the long-suppressed
chapter of the novel which contains his confession to Bishop Tihon,
Stavrogin hears the Bishop tell him: “You are possessed by a desire
for martyrdom....” But the “terrible undisguised need of punishment”
is emotionally complicated because this compulsion is a “need of the
cross in a man who doesn’t believe in the cross--” Stavrogin plays an
essentially passive political role since he allows himself to be used
by Pyotr. His case represents, however, a combining of abnormalities
usually found singly.
One aspect of Stavrogin’s character also appears in men who do not
deviate from the norm. Nick Burr in _The Voice of the People_ looks
like Lincoln in his towering stature and his “good, strong kind of
ugliness.” He prepares himself for his martyrdom by opposing powerful
forces in his state, and finally meets it by attempting to halt a
lynching. To some, this self-sacrifice carries an almost religious
ecstasy. In Moravia’s _The Fancy Dress Party_ Saverio has been ordered
to assassinate the dictator of the South American country of Bolivar.
He thinks that he now knows what the early Christians must have felt,
“the sweet, deep pleasure of sacrificing themselves for the greater
good of humanity....” Shaw’s Clement Archer and Shirer’s Raymond
Whitehead do not enter into their ordeals with the intention of
becoming martyrs. When they are deprived of their primary sources of
livelihood, however, this is precisely what they become. In most of the
novels there is an awareness of the political value of martyrs, and the
Communists, particularly, excel in their manufacture.
If frequency of occurrence were used to determine whether or not a
phenomenon is abnormal, perhaps the dictator would have to be classed
as normal. Within political systems embodying the principles of
representative government, however, he represents a disease just as
surely as a group of cells which suddenly start overwhelming their
neighbors. The novel displays not only fictitious tyrants, but real
ones as well, from Caesar in Wilder’s _The Ides of March_ (1948) to
Koestler’s thinly disguised Stalin in _Darkness at Noon_. The authors
usually describe how they act and what made them that way. Since _The
Ides of March_ uses the diaries and letters of several Roman citizens,
the reader learns precisely what Caesar’s contemporaries thought of him
and what Caesar thought of himself. In the accounts of his enemies, he
is a profligate and pervert, a destroyer of liberty. His own writings
reveal him as a man who is cold and self-centered but devoted to Rome
and possessed of amazingly catholic and intelligent interests. Trying
to free his countrymen from superstition, mythology, and barbarism, he
rationalizes his dictatorship on the basis that the people will not
assume the duties of self-government. He writes:
But there is no liberty save in responsibility. That I cannot rob
them of because they have not got it.... The Romans have become
skilled in the subtle resources for avoiding the commitment and
the price of political freedom. They have become parasites upon
that freedom which I gladly exercise--my willingness to arrive at a
decision and sustain it--and which I am willing to share with every
man who will assume its burden.
Like Caesar, most authoritarian rulers appear to believe that they
are working in the best interests of their people. Most often this
is a rationalization of an enormous drive to personal power, but
whatever its source it is almost always a component of the totalitarian
mentality. Some absolutists, like Stendhal’s Ernesto IV of Parma, make
no pretense of extraordinary concern for their subjects. But the modern
pattern is for the Duce, Führer, or Father of the People to associate
himself with the masses, at least verbally. This is as true of state
dictators such as Chuck Crawford, Hank Martin, and Willie Stark as it
is of General Arango in _The Fancy Dress Party_. The three Americans
also have in common their origins as members of the lower or lower
middle class of southern whites. Each starts with a seemingly genuine
desire to better the lot of his group. Their careers provide a study
of the same infection which attacks the Duke of Omnium, “the poison of
place and power and dignity.” And this transition from crusader to sick
man gives insight into the process by which dictators are made.
=Men Behind the Scenes=
Another political type which is not quite pathological yet which
occupies a position somewhat outside the main stream of normal
political activity is that of the silent man, the one who often wields
great power but remains nearly concealed from the public. He is found
most often in American politics. Major Rann, boss of the Virginia
Senate and opponent of Nick Burr in Ellen Glasgow’s _The Voice of
the People_, “had never made a speech in his life, but ... he was
continually speaking through the mouths of others.” Jethro Bass in
_Coniston_ is another silent man, figuratively and literally. This type
carried to the extreme is Dan Lurcock in _Revelry_, President-maker,
interstate lobbyist, and national salesman of patronage. A European
variant of this type is represented by Karl Yundt in _The Secret
Agent_. Described as “no man of action,” his function is to goad others
into action. This catalytic role is performed by anti-fascist Professor
Quadri in _The Conformist_. His specialty is proselytizing the young.
Cold and detached, he often channels his converts into actions he knows
will be fatal, “desperate actions that could be justified only as part
of an extremely long-term plan and that, indeed, necessarily involved a
cruel indifference to the value of human life.”
=The Disillusioned=
In _The Age of Longing_ ex-Marxist poet Julien Dellatre asks Hydie
Anderson:
Do you remember ‘The Possessed’? They were an enviable crowd of
maniacs. We are the dispossessed--the dispossessed of faith; the
physically or spiritually homeless. A burning fanatic is dangerous;
a burnt-out fanatic is abject.
With these words he speaks for a constantly growing number of former
political enthusiasts who have discovered that they had carried
not a torch but a club. One is tempted to call this era the Age
of Disillusionment. But this would in a sense be an error, for
disillusionment is as old as politics. It is always present; only the
number of cases varies. The literary list is a long one--Phineas Finn,
the Duke of Omnium, Dick Remington, Hilary Vane, Harvey Sayler, Glenn
Spotswood, and scores of others. Even the opportunist Shawcross is not
immune. Near the end of his career he asks himself if statesmen are
not actually “the true pests and cancers of human society.” He thinks
that if he could have one wish granted, it would be that politicians
would leave all the people alone for fifty years. “We might then have a
better world,” he reflects. “We couldn’t have a worse one.”
The modern literature of disillusionment introduces a variation on this
old theme. The discontent is localized to one ideology--Communism.
Mary McCarthy states one of its basic causes in _The Oasis_ when she
says that Will Taub’s “disillusionment with the Movement had sprung
largely from its concentration on narrowly nationalistic aims and its
abandonment of an insurgent ideology.” In its original use, the term
“literature of disillusionment” referred primarily to the body of work
of a group of writers who had turned away from Communism. But for the
purposes of this study it is just as fruitful to focus on the creations
rather than their authors. The best of these novels is unquestionably
Koestler’s _Darkness at Noon_. It is outstanding not only as a
psychological portrait in depth, but also as an interpretation of an
important phenomenon. Rubashov is at once an individual and a mirror of
forces at work in modern international politics. His journey has taken
him from exalted participation in revolution, through consolidation of
its gains, to a final questioning of the worth of the whole agonizing
process. But his life has been bound up so completely with the cause
that even his final renunciation is tinged with haunting doubt. Lying
in his cell, one of the last survivors of the old guard, he is unable
to repress it:
The horror which No. 1 emanated, above all consisted in the
possibility that he was in the right, and that all those whom he
had killed had to admit, even with the bullet in the back of their
necks, that he conceivably might be in the right.
Rubashov’s disillusionment springs from the fact that the light has
gone out of the revolutionary movement, that what was to become a new
paradise has become an old hell. The dictatorship of the proletariat
has evolved into the tyranny of No. 1; the new man has grown into a
Neanderthaler. Instead of a promised land, Rubashov has returned from
his foreign assignments to find a country where factory workers are
shot as saboteurs for negligence caused by fatigue. His conclusion that
the regime’s error was caused by abandonment of ethical standards is
central to the _bouleversement_ he undergoes. But even despite this
basic departure from Communist thought, it is important to recognize
that he is still a Marxist. He even elaborates the old dialectic in
prison with his “theory of the relative maturity of the masses.” His
participation in his mock trial emphasizes the ambivalence he feels.
One passage explains this behavior and that of some of the men to whom
Koestler dedicated the novel:
The best of them kept silent to do a last service to the Party,
by letting themselves be sacrificed as scapegoats--and, besides,
even the best had each an Arlova on his conscience. They were too
deeply entangled in their own past, caught in the web they had spun
themselves, according to the laws of their own twisted ethics and
twisted logic; they were all guilty, although not of those deeds
of which they accused themselves. There was no way back for them.
Their exit from the stage happened strictly according to the rules
of their strange game. The public expected no swan-song of them.
They had to act according to the textbook, and their part was the
howling of wolves in the night....
Where there is freedom of choice, the disillusioned one follows one
of three courses: needing an outlet for the forces which originally
took him to the Party, he engages in leftist, non-Stalinist activity;
ricocheting violently in the opposite direction, he aligns himself
with the extreme Right; or exhausted, he sinks into a melancholy,
nostalgia-tinged apathy. Rocco de Donatis throws himself into the
struggle of the peasants for land. Frederick Wellman and Elsie McCabe
lie with virtuosity in the service of Senator O’Brien. Lannie Madison
retreats into neurosis. The causes of the disenchantment vary. Glenn
Spotswood makes his break because he is interested in men as men rather
than as pawns in a game. Rocco’s point of departure is the discovery of
Siberian labor camps. Both of them, however, suffer somewhat the same
aftereffects. There is a feeling of loss, the sensation that a platform
has been knocked out from under them.
This particular reaction is best portrayed through the creative
artists who appear in these novels. Julien Dellatre is one of three
ex-Communists who call themselves the Three Ravens Nevermore. A
scarred veteran of the Spanish Civil War, he refers to his poems,
“Ode to the Cheka,” “Elegy on the Death of a Tractor,” and “The Rape
of Surplus Value” as “past asininities.” His renunciation of the
Movement is complete, yet his tragedy lies in the fact that he has
found nothing to replace it. He has concluded that “Europe is going
to the dogs,” that the reason is a turning away from God, a “loss of
cosmic consciousness.” Feeling that a new religion is necessary to save
twentieth-century man, he lacks a conviction which would permit him
to take the final step into faith. The great passion of his life is
behind him. In his own comment he has summed himself up: “a burnt-out
fanatic is abject.” Another man of letters in the same novel is Leo
Leontiev, “Hero of Culture and Joy of the People,” who has come from
Russia to France to address an international peace rally. The death of
his wife frees him to renounce the regime and find political asylum in
France. Psychologically ready to take this step, “he felt as if a whole
drugstore of poison were working at [his synapses]--the accumulated
toxins of thirty years.” He has become a Hero of Culture by following
the Party line in literature rather than his artistic conscience.
Free at last, he feels that he must write something truly fine, a
vindication of himself that will also be worthy of his wife, whose
death he suspects may have been suicide or murder. But he is unable
even to write the projected _I Was a Hero of Culture_ for the American
publisher who has given him a substantial advance. For him, as for
Dellatre, the light had flickered out, and it could not be rekindled.
Some artists, like novelist Bernard Carr and poet Lester Owens in
_Yet Other Waters_ manage to rebound, to continue to work creatively.
But still they bear psychological scar tissue. Even in the process
of preparing to leave the Movement, Bernard Carr suggests from the
floor that the Writers Congress be concluded with the singing of “The
Internationale.” And he is moved as he sings. An allied phenomenon is
that of the individual who is inwardly in conflict with the Party but
remains with it through a fear of these consequences. When Bernard
tells frustrated poet Sam Leventhal that he should leave the Party,
Sam turns pale. “Bernie, the Party is my life,” he replies. “It would
be spiritual death for me outside the Party.” An even more revealing
answer is made by British physicist Lord Edwards. When Leontiev asks
him why he stays, Edwards replies: “I told you there is nothing else.
You will soon find that out yourself. Besides--once you’ve invested
all your capital in a firm, you don’t withdraw it--not at our age, not
after thirty years.”
=The Role of Woman=
When women engage in political activity in these novels they are
usually cast in one of four roles: man’s guide, the reformer, the
dedicated Communist, or the patriot. In the years before suffrage was
extended to women, one of the few opportunities afforded them for
engaging in political activity was to influence or guide a man who was
politically active. Emily Harkness performs this function for Jerome
Garwood in _The 13th District_. At the beginning of his career he is
her intellectual protégé as she channels his reading and thinking.
His rejection of this relationship is coupled with his political
degeneration and ruin. In _Hot Corn Ike_ Molly McMurdo counsels Mike
Grogan with acuteness and insight. Since she is a procuress, she
supplies very little moral guidance, but her analyses of the factors
at work in the district are penetrating if not intellectual. Peter
Ivanovitch, leader of the Geneva revolutionary circle in _Under Western
Eyes_, preaches the cult of woman as well as revolution. He had been
aided by a woman in making his legendary escape across Siberia. The
devotion he felt toward her is also bestowed upon Madame de S----,
who contributes not only inspiration but also her chateau to Peter’s
activities. Fancying herself another Madame de Staël, this “Egeria of
the ‘Russian Mazzini’” appears more like a witch than a prophetess.
Possessed of a garishly painted, mask-like face whose outstanding
features are extraordinarily brilliant eyes and obviously false teeth,
she contributes to one conversation by screaming that they must
“spiritualize the discontent.”
The intellectual guide of man par excellence is Ida Wilbur in _A Spoil
of Office_. She remains stolid Bradley Talcott’s ideal and teacher even
after he has attained the House of Representatives. But she is also
an active field worker for the farmers. A pamphleteer and lecturer,
she represents the woman reformer who enters into direct action rather
than stand once removed from activity. Mrs. Ward’s Marcella acts for
herself, but to a lesser degree than DeForest’s Squire Nancy Appleyard
and Spring’s three feminists--Lizzie Lightowler, Anne Shawcross,
and Pen Muff. Lawyer Nancy Appleyard is a ridiculous figure with
her trousers and pistols, but in her feminist agitation she is a
precursor of the others. These women are distinguished by conviction,
perseverance, and willingness to engage in violent action under pain of
brutality and imprisonment to attain their goals.
In strong contrast to Madame de S---- in _Under Western Eyes_ is Sophia
Antonovna, an influential veteran revolutionary. A striking woman with
her gray-white hair and bright red blouse, she is “the true spirit
of destructive revolution.” Shawcross’s daughter-in-law Alice is a
direct descendant of Sophia Antonovna. Shortly after her return from
Moscow, a letter is published addressed by Zinoviev to the Communists
of Britain urging uprisings in the Army and Navy. Implying that Ramsay
MacDonald had been pushed into treaties with Russia by Communist
pressure, it helps cause the fall of his government. Noting the time of
Alice’s visit and the intensity of her devotion to Communism, Shawcross
suspects that she had helped Zinoviev to plan and write the letter.
Dos Passos’ militant women Communists such as Jane Sparling throw
themselves into Party activities almost more zealously than the men.
One of the women in _Yet Other Waters_ might be listed under political
pathology as well as here. She is Alice Robertson, a nymphomaniac and
frustrated novelist whose regard for her current lover does not prevent
her from reporting on him to the Party.
There is no Joan of Arc in these political novels, but in Hemingway’s
book one hears about the fiery La Pasionaria, and in _The Age of
Longing_ and _Nostromo_ the actions of two women evoke mention of the
name of Charlotte Corday. In Conrad’s novel Antonia Avellanos is as
fierce a patriot as her father Don José, who had nearly died in inhuman
captivity by dictator Guzmán Bento. Her fierce anger against General
Montero, a modern Bento, is one of the forces which brings cynical
dilettante Don Martin Decoud to throw himself into the struggle which
leads to his death. She suggests Charlotte Corday to him, as does
Hydie Anderson indirectly to Jules Commanche when she asks that Feyda
Nikitin be expelled from France. But Hydie’s patriotism does not have
the fire of Antonia’s. She has come to recognize Feyda’s brutality and
immorality, but the immediate cause of her action is his humiliation of
her which breaks off their affair. This gesture is the first positive
one she has made. Up to this point she has seemed about to apply for
membership in the Ravens Nevermore. Her disillusionment, like theirs,
has come from rejection of a strong and disciplined system which
answered all her questions and assuaged all her doubts. Her break with
the Roman Catholic Church has left her quite as adrift as Dellatre or
his companions. And when her gesture fails, she feels herself slipping
back into the old despondency, the craving for sureness, for a set of
positive values.
Although treated in lesser detail than the men (except for Hydie),
these women offer the reader the same opportunity for intimate
acquaintance with people who can become more real than those one meets
on the street or in the office. Their reality and complexity vary with
the skill of their creators, but one is able to follow their actions
and thoughts more closely than those of individuals in “real life.”
chapter seven
Some Conclusions
In some areas of this study only the main outlines have been sketched
in. Good books have probably been omitted, particularly in European
literatures. Some mediocre ones, especially American novels, have
been included. This was done to give some idea of the development of
this form in the United States, but with the fervent hope that a gain
in historical continuity would not produce too great a loss through
exclusion of more quality. But if a few major points have emerged, this
study has fulfilled its purpose.
The press has always been acknowledged as a major factor in influencing
political opinion. A close look at the phenomenal success of _Uncle
Tom’s Cabin_ reveals that the right novel appearing at the critical
time can exercise wide and lasting influence. With his freedom to
place a quarter of a million words between two covers, the novelist
can present more information and achieve more reader involvement than
any newspaper using columns of factual accounts, brilliant editorials,
and four-color Sunday supplements. The novelist can vie with Gibbon
and Macaulay if he chooses, ranging freely from century to century,
turning from Caesar to modern man, or from Machiavelli to a politician
of the twenty-sixth century. Just as the writer treats the rise and
decline of empires, so he portrays the flowering and withering of
movement. Evoking the past, the novelist can people it with living
beings and bring to life its tensions, its climaxes, its meanings.
One can gain some understanding of the factors which make men like
one another despite national and cultural factors which differentiate
them. Silone’s peasants, like Garland’s farmers, crave enough to keep
them sheltered and fed, to give them the feeling that they can work in
peace with a feeling of security. One senses differences, however, in
political hierarchies. The Prime Ministers of Disraeli and Trollope are
masters, but the Presidents of Adams and Ford are badgered servants.
There are insights into the small niceties, the little peculiarities
that distinguish varying political usages. The American politician’s
life is exposed to glaring publicity, but the Englishman is spared
unless he is brought to court. In _To Be a Pilgrim_ Tom Wilcher notes
that “Gladstone’s missing finger appeared in all caricatures,” but “the
newspapers never referred to the continuous drunkenness of Mr. A., a
cabinet minister, or to even more scandalous liaisons than Edward’s.”
The novelist is able to hold his subject close or at a distance, and
to examine it from any point of the compass. He can slice through the
body politic and peel back its layers, stopping to scrutinize the one
that interests him. He can follow the early struggles that preceded
the English Labourites’ rise to power or trace the collateral decline
of the Liberals. Even in his treatment of individuals, he can provide
a sense of continuity with men of antiquity by presenting modern
Caesars. They may dress differently, talk differently, and get their
death wounds with bullets rather than daggers. But they are members
of the same tradition, followers of the same principles of political
action. Nor is the new man neglected. In a sense, Rubashov, with
his gnawing conflicts, is as much a new type as is Gletkin with his
mentality which precludes conflict. And, of course, one gets much more
than history. Tourgée interlards the Reconstruction story in _Bricks
Without Straw_ with analyses of causative factors. In a long passage
he elaborates his theory that “the town-meeting--the township system
or its equivalent--in the North and South, constituted a difference
not less vital and important than that of slavery itself.” Generally
the European novelist places more stress upon theory than does the
American, but in each literature close examination of causes is hardly
ever excluded by concentration upon effects.
The political novel has a well demonstrated vitality as a literary
form. The indications are that it will continue to grow. At the same
time it will probably display a continuity in the phenomena and ideas
it treats. The political novel will continue to chronicle movements.
Just as Dostoyevsky and Conrad dealt with Communism’s origins and
Koestler and Silone with its schisms and apostates, so other authors
will follow its eventual destiny. The minutiae of political experience
will provide material just as much as the major facets. One example is
the “whitewash,” the investigation which begins with grim determination
and implacable intent only to end with confusing or ineffectual
conclusions. Such investigations are directed toward election frauds
in _Phineas Redux_, the Great Subfluvial Tunnel Road in _Honest John
Vane_, and oil lease scandals in _Revelry_. It is also likely that the
political novel will treat a wider variety of subjects. Some of the
attention which corruption has received, particularly in the American
novel, may well be directed toward other aspects of the political
process which have so far been explored little or not at all. The love
story or love interest will continue to parallel the political story.
But there will probably be more novels in which the relationship will
be symptomatic of the same drives or needs operative in the political
sphere. This is the sort of treatment given the relationship between
Hydie and Feyda in _The Age of Longing_. If one interprets the word
“love” loosely, this approach may be seen in the description of Nikolay
and Marya in _The Possessed_. The latter novel and _The Conformist_
will be followed by more novels in which the author concentrates upon
intensive psychological studies of individuals representative of
particular political mentalities or groups.
The novel set in the future will probably retain the vitality displayed
by such books from the time of Edward Bellamy’s _Looking Backward_
(1888) to Orwell’s _1984_. It is in this area that science fiction
may make a contribution to the political novel. Jules Verne’s novels
were science fiction, but in the society in which he wrote, his work
was likely to remain fiction for some time. Modern technology makes it
possible for the best science fiction to achieve a greater relevance,
to present what may shortly be fact. The world of the future in modern
novels tends more often to be a hell than a utopia. And the space
ships, robots, and other electronic devices emphasize the godless,
mechanistic aspect of modern society which writers like Orwell and
Koestler see in it. The better writers of science fiction use this
technique. Ray Bradbury’s _Fahrenheit 451_ (1953), perhaps the best of
these novels, portrays a post-atomic war America two decades hence in
which technology has been used to kill freedom and make its subjects
love their bondage. Guy Montag’s revolt against his role in this
society may not be completely believable, but Bradbury’s three-wall
television sets and book-burning fire brigades bring home the horror of
a possible totalitarian society of the future with an impact matched
only by Orwell’s telescreens and Ministry of Love.
The future should bring more political novels than the past because
this age is so permeated with politics. The Napoleonic era and the
late nineteenth century may have been just as political in their
ways as this one, but with modern mass communication media, more
people are now involved in and aware of politics than ever before.
And, of course, politics has become more complex, more in need of
interpretation than ever before. Only a relatively small number of
Disraeli’s and Trollope’s novels concentrate on politics. By contrast,
most of the output of Koestler and Silone lies within this field. Each
good novelist, no matter what his age, finds the particular subject
matter which allows his talents freest range. But his material is life,
unless, like James Branch Cabell and others, he creates a reflection of
life in a special land of his own which never was in time or space. But
as life grows more political the novelist must inevitably reflect this
fact, even if only casually.
All this means that the reader who wants to learn about political
phenomena from the novel will have a greater mass of material to work
with than ever. Overall quality will be at least as good as it has been
and probably better as proportionately more good novelists work in this
genre. All of the fictional histories, analyses, and interpretations
will require the same reader value-judgments as ever. Prejudice
will still intrude; partisanship will still distort. But these same
judgments are necessary, in a measure, when the reader picks up the
book of a historian or a political scientist. And the novelist may
use all of the tools in their workrooms while he adds to them his own
resources--imagination, dramatic form, and the freedom and scope given
him by the versatile art of fiction.