ABSTRACT
At the level of the individual, John Flory and Gordon Comstock demonstrate the pitfalls of a perspective that is too narrow, too focused on one’s own interests to the exclusion of the concerns and points of view of others. On a more systemic and portentous level, Napoleon highlights the impact of the same basic failing but with the crucial difference that Napoleon holds enough power to insist that others see the world exactly as he does. As a result of this lack of a broader perspective-a lack of a sensibility that I have been calling “doubled”—these characters are incapable of behaving decently towards others. Instead of a doubled perspective, each is exposed to the reader, through judgments implied by the narrator, as being guilty of duplicity-saying one thing while meaning another-in order to forward his own selfish agenda. Dr. Veraswami, Rosemary Waterlow, and Boxer are all instrumental in revealing the protagonists’ duplicities, and represent by contrast the positive contribution that decency can make within a political or social field. That each of these three decent characters is oppressed in some way (Veraswami by race, Elizabeth by gender, Boxer by his limited intelligence) suggests further that this potential to contribute positively to
one’s surroundings is not beyond the average, or even the disempowered, individual.
