ABSTRACT
The exact nature of the barren face of the good can be only partially inferred, given Iris Murdoch’s stringent interpretation of it, and it is known primarily by its unreachable distance from the all too flawed characters. Miles is one of Murdoch’s most dislikable, damnable characters; nothing in his actions does him credit, although in the past he had at least managed to love his Indian wife, Parvati, and his sister, Gwen. Through Bradley Pearson in The Black Prince, Murdoch will later allow the artist to take slow, unwilling steps towards his proper moral and spiritual identification, but in Bruno’s Dream something very different is going on. As Bruno lies on his death-bed, images of an entire lifetime crowd his memory, and through a subtle reportage of that memory, in conjunction with the experiences and acute feelings of the present, Murdoch projects a complete thanatopsis.
