Jackie Bennett
Eng 570
March 12, 2009

“None of it had ever happened”

Malcolm and Alice are present when Katherine learns that she will not be prosecuted for her association with Nick and his money-laundering flower shop. When Katherine announces, “They know I didn’t do anything wrong,” Alice realizes “that was how it was always going to be from now on” (390). From this moment, Katherine will pretend the affair with Nick never happened, creating a kind of alternate history. It is similar to her attempt to shape peoples’ memories of the day Malcolm briefly left home by stomping on Tim’s snake in the driveway. That day she preferred to be seen as a cruel bully rather than as a pitiful deserted wife and tried to create a public scene that would overshadow her private humiliation. In the current situation, she wants to erase her ties with Nick and the stain on her reputation, both moral and potentially criminal, so she will deny that the relationship ever existed. Why does Katherine need to control what people think of her? Even more, why must she construct an alternate reality that she will force others to accept? If Katherine sticks to her version of events, her pretense, long enough will she come to believe it is true? Will others?

Joe Roberts
Marxism and Mislead Miners?
On page 399 Tim reflects to himself, “Lenin said something along these lines—class consciousness falls away in the liberations of violence and the revolutionary spirit prevails.” Tim has transformed from a predominately Freudian character (in my view) into now a predominately Marxist character (ditto). Marxist theory deals with social change and the reexamination of inequalities that the capitalist system creates. I think that it’s appropriate that Hensher include Marxism in this section especially against the backdrop of Thatcher’s free market and entrepreneurialism toting regime. Though Tim comes off as pretentious much of the time, and maybe not so credible, how seriously are we to take his claims about “false consciousness” on page 331 during his argument with Malcolm? Why does Malcolm get angry during these arguments—is it because Tim’s arguments actually hold a bit of credence? Have the miners liberated themselves from the set ideology force-fed them in England at this time, or do we see them as misguided? Do we think that their actions are justified?

Extra pages to consider: 395, “…a battle over the substance of the country, the nature of the land…”; 384 “The landscape was torn away in slag heaps and pylons…”- byproduct of capitalism?; 404 “Every steelworks, every five years’ time, nothing except buildings”- another byproduct?

Kyle Gray
Stephan Flores
British Fiction

The People United

On pages 399-400 Tim gives a battle cry, “The People United…” and then is joined by Arthur in saying, “will never be defeated.” This is at the end of the physical confrontation between the police and the striking miners. Tim is struck during the fight by something hard and begins to bleed. On 400 it says, “he was on the cutting edge of history and had the innocent blood on his turn-ups to prove it.” This is a more obvious representation of the Authority of the time in Britain being criticized. Do the references to Lenin make us see Tim as a Marxist? This device is used throughout the book, the memory device the doctors use is another example of it. When this question is asked the common response is Margaret Thatcher even though John Major has been in office for some time. Is this an attempt to show that things in the new government of the time are in a decline? A broader question is, what is this book getting at? When will we get a better idea of what it is Knopf is getting at?