In Chabon's The Final Solution, the idea of centering the book around a protagonist who is in fact mute alludes to the themes written in The Things They Carried. The fact that Linus is not able to communicate through words gives the reader no choice but to entirely shift their instinctual perspectives or approaches and pay attention to different aspects of his character and context than they otherwise would were he given a voice. In The Things They Carried, objects are given meaning that they technically do not have such as Dobbin's pantyhose and Cross's photo of Martha. Neither of these objects should serve as sources of hope or security, and yet they both manifest in a way entirely differently from what you would assume. In the same way, Linus's being a mute would seem to undeniably negatively affect his power as a character, but it does not hinder his ability to communicate in alternative, more obscure ways that are different from what is considered "normal" but undoubtedly still effective. In this way Linus does not simply represent the general impersonation of what a "mute" would be like; he transcends this boundary in the same way that the pantyhose and the picture transcend theres.
I really thought you make a very nice parallel to The Final Solution and The Things They carried. You highlight the idea of limitations we have as readers. Authors deliberately try to keep us unaware of the entire truth and that enables us to fill the gaps with our own imagination. We tend to exaggerate the meaning behind mundane thing, but that is the beauty of reading fiction, the ability as a reader to create a story within a story.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kylie too. I also think we can further compare Bruno's numeric codes with the Books of Bokonon and Bokononism in Cat's Cradles. Both are obscure and borderline meaningless, but to recall the lament of the old man at the end of The Final Solution, it is sometimes difficult to refuse to believe that such meaninglessness is possible, and that there is a deeper meaning once we've connected all the dots. But like Cat's Cradles, perhaps Bruno's numeric codes also signify the meaningfulness of meaninglessness itself.
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