The short story « Under the Radar » deals with the conflict arising between a husband, Steven and his wife, Marjorie. It deals specifically with the consequences of Marjorie announcing out of the blue to Steven as they drive to George Nicholson’s house that she has had an affair with their host. As is often the case in A Multitude of Sins, the crux of the matter is left unresolved and buried in a deep silence, individuals often seem driven by motives that remain imperceptible and out of grasp, while their attempts at creating a satisfying level of understanding with the other sex often fail miserably.
This passage can be seen as the core of the couple’s crisis, the defining moment in the short story from which all the rest ensues. The scene seems to last an indefinite amount of time, delving into Steven’s inner turmoil and providing a glimpse into Marjorie’s viewpoint as well. It is composed of five paragraphs. In the first one, there us a subtle shift from a third person descriptive sentence to the descriptions of Steven’s thoughts which define the ideal image he has constructed of himself. The second paragraph translates Steven’s anxieties and mostly contradicts what he said before. The third paragraph is Steven’s realization that his wife is waiting for his answer which he gives in the fourth paragraph when, painfully surfacing again to awareness of his surroundings, he utters two ‘random’ words. The last paragraph transcribes Marjorie’s reaction and gives a short insight into her thoughts. One last concise sentence abruptly reintroduces a sense of time in the narrative.
The reader witnesses Steven’s disproportionate efforts to deal with his wife’s adultery, and his drifts towards sheer violence and incomprehension. He is gradually forced to try and reconsider his connections with others as well as his perception of the world. A sense of uncertainty prevails as to the causes of his reaction ; the same sort of carefully crafted elusiveness actually pervades the short story from start to finish.
Firstly, I will focus on the sense of mystery that seems to pervade the extract. In a second part, I will concentrate on the shattering of Steven’s sense of identity as illustrated by his loss of words. My last part centers on the question of the redemptive power of language.
According to Raymond Carver, « What creates tension in a piece of fiction is partly the way the concrete words are linked together to make up the visible action of the story. But it’s also the things that are left out, that are implied, the landscape just under the smooth (but sometimes broken and unsettled) surface of things. » He adds « a little menace is fine to have in a story. (…) it’s good for the circulation. »
In « Under the Radar », the narrator uses silence both as a revealing and a structuring force and as a way to create indecision. Free indirect speech is the main feature of the narration where a third person narrator speaks a sort of dual voice mimicking the characters’ turns of phrase. It creates a certain degree of uncertainty since it is no longer possible in most cases to define whether the narrator emits satirical judgment on the characters’ thoughts or whether the utterance belongs to the view of the character.
The narrative voice is independent but sometimes fuses with the character’s thoughts, adopting their point of view while maintaining a sort of ironic distance or uncertainty as to their real motive. For example « She had made a little steeple of her fingertips, as if she’s been concentrating very hard » foreshadows Marjorie’s gesture of protection once she had been hit in the nose by Steven « making a little tent of her hand to cover her nose » p. 148.
This method introduces a sense of menace, of mystery, of anticipation, the narrative approach creates the sensation of being able to break into the character’s silence, into the undercurrent of their behavior. Ford seems to provide a glimpse in those instant that characterize his other character’s silence as in « Calling » for example : »a silent moment occurs, and your eyes meet in a way that could signal a deep human understanding you’d never ever have to speak about (…) but then the far, far away awareness dawns, and you know you’re nothing to him » (p.36). Yet, access to the thoughts of the characters serves only to emphasize their being lost in a maze of possibilities that they interpret as certainties.
The truths they utter are balanced on a purely semantic level by the use of such indefinites expressions as « for some reason » « something’ ‘any word (…) something he’s heard on the TV », « from some unknown source ».
The network of signifiers related to darkness, dampness, inscrutability seems to introduce also a sense of mystery, verging on the uncanny, in.a world that is otherwise described in a realistic vein.
The sentence « the noises of spring floating in and out of the open window » reintroduces symbolic patterns of light and obscurity and of uncharted territories endowed with a sense of permanence which contrast with the transiency of the couple’s feelings. The ‘noises of spring’ which invade the couple’s space refer back to the definition of the setting as a transitional area where everything concurs to the idea of an unstable situation., literally an in-between state. They stopped their car at twilights in between the Shinipsit Reservoir with its « invisible water surface » and the dark bushes with a « ground damp and caked » just before the turn on Apple Orchard Lane.
These noises have been defined specifically as the « Peepers (…) calling out from the watery lows ». Peepers are nocturnal frogs that emit a loud mating call and are most often heard but not seen, the source of the sound is hard to pinpoint. Only the multitude of their cries fill Steven and Marjorie’s silence at the beginning of the passage, as if this sound itself were a rhythm hammering away at the door of the character’s consciousness, trying to communicate some obscure meaning.
A sense of the uncanny results from the contrast between the outer landscape and the inside of the car, as well as the outer appearance of calmness and Steven’s anxieties: »la solitude, (le) silence et (…) l’obscurité ce sont là effectivement les circonstances auxquelles s’attache chez la plupart des humains une angoisse infantile qui ne s’éteint jamais tout à fait .»
As we will see, Steven’s inability to confront the reality of Marjorie’s adultery relation with George Nicholson, and the resulting inability to speak, do provoke the fear of an irreparable regression to a childlike state.
The first paragraph of the passage retraces Steven’s immediate reaction, his efforts to « organize this information properly before going on ». Yet he realizes instantly that he finds himself unable to react in a proper way and that such information is far beyond intellectual rationalization. The only conclusion he can draw is the down to earth statement that : « a loss for words, he realized, meant that nothing that comes to mind seems very interesting to say as a next thing to what has just been said. » Then, he evokes what he believes constitutes his main qualities based on the fragile assumption that having been a hockey player and having followed a class on Ulysses have provided him with a solid understanding of the world and possibly of human relations as well. If he knew Joyce he surely would not fail to compare what he is going through to some sort of epiphanic moment. Yet it is certainly not a revelation that he is undergoing, he fails to retain any meaning from his experience.
The second paragraph shows the failure of his attempt at rationalizing his feelings. In fact, his obsession with control and interpretation result in an internal conflict which he cannot resolve, a complete transformation of his narcissistic view of himself as well as of his position regarding the external world. He may feel for an instant that he is in touch with something essential which eludes him. Yet, he refuses that feeling, falling prey to his impulses and feeling more and more detached from reality : « something (work fatigue, shock, disappointment over what Marjorie had admitted) was at that moment causing him (…) to slide away from the present, and in fact to begin to lose his mind and go crazy ».
He is at a loss for words because he cannot pinpoint the reasons of his sudden feeling of anxiety and is losing all means to communicate. « Si quelqu’un avoue de l’angoisse, il faut montrer le néant de ses raisons. Il imagine l’issue de ses tourments : s’il n’avait plus d’argent, une femme,, une autre vie… la niaiserie de l’angoisse est infinie. Pourtant l’angoisse était sa chance : il fut choisi dans la mesure de ses pressentiments. Mais quel gâchis s’il s’élude : il souffre autant et s’humilie, il devient bête, faux, superficiel. » (Georges Bataille)
On the margins of civilization, closer to the uncertain, darker border of the human psyche, Steven is subject to an unveiling of his instincts which he dares not confront, a sort of regression to a childlike state « he would have to be looked after by his mother’s family », or even worse to an animal-like condition, to a mere pretense of humanity « he was in jeopardy of beginning to gibber like a chimp ».
This allusion brings to mind again the idea that the setting might unconsciously bring back fears to the surface, like the sound of peepers, (which could be interpreted as some primeval force lurking under the inscrutable surface of things). In fact, the idea that extraneous information registered unconsciously by Steven’s mind are brought back to consciousness is supported by the solution he finds to his muteness. He relies on the surface meaning of a word, on the very act of uttering words regardless of their accuracy to the situation in order to keep his composure, in order not to be be overwhelmed by anxiety. « the word—phrase, really—that he uttered was ‘ground clutter.’ Something he’s heard on the `TV weather report ».
When Marjorie confesses her affair to Steven he experiences a sense of fragility, of paralysis, of complete annihilation, of an irrevocable loss of control, of being on an abrupt slope that leads him into the depth of human psyche, towards. The obscure, the hidden fears, the repressed, the unsaid, epitomized by the expression « fugue like state »: a disturbed state of consciousness in which the person affected seems to perform acts in full awareness but upon recovery cannot recollect the acts performed.
The almost metafictional quality of Steven’s reflexions on language, is his last refuge when insanity menaces. He is faced with the choice of deceiving himself about being in control or being sucked into chaos, obscurity, violence, perhaps madness. Yet, it underlines a lack of communication, a void which is at the core of the violent consequences that ensue as he hits his wife in a gesture that is close to an « acting out » (the process of expressing unconscious emotional conflicts or feelings via actions rather than words. The person is not consciously aware of the meaning or etiology of such acts). The affirmative power of language is lost—there is no explicit link between what is said and any logical conscious control on words—the unconscious takes over and brings forth a revelation Steven is unable to grasp. The repressed finds an outlet in violence, an animal-like satisfaction of an impulse which reminds of the way the drivers drive over the raccoon, for fun. A perverse satisfaction that allows him to get rid of the remaining anxiety of not knowing how to react and what words to say.
Marjorie on the other hand although she is also silent at the beginning of the passage, has initiated the talk about her adultery relationship with their guest, and is composed throughout the short story. Her behavior might personify a certain belief in a redemptive power of words. She remains calm and logical, almost restrained. Yet Marjorie’s candidness has an indefinite degree of concealing about it. She seems an adept of creating mystery, she seems even to be in a sort of intimate level of comprehension with the setting as the freshness and spring-like quality of her description suggests, « she was wearing a tiny green cocktail dress and green satin shoes (…) she had two tiny matching green bows in her hair. She smelled sweet. »
While in Steven’s case, uttering ‘ground clutter’ is close to a Freudian slip since he is at a loss for word because he cannot say what he wants to do to her, i.e. hit her, instead he pronounces a word that does not seem to be related to the current situation. The truthfulness of Marjorie’s declaration might be questioned, she falters twice when pronouncing George Nicholson’s name. She seems to want to convince herself as much as she wants to convince Steven that her affair did not matter.
Instead of being unburdened, the characters are faced with a sense of menace and imminent disaster that results from their inability to communicate. This gradual unveiling of the character’s motives announces both Steven’s violent reaction and the final reversal of situation when Marjorie sends her husband out to rescue the raccoon another car drove over and possibly runs over him.
If meaning in spoken words between the characters is mostly absent, the metafictional qualities of the passage are rich. The passage’s metafictional dimension could be the real redemptive power of words, according to Ford’s notion that « if loneliness is the disease, the story is the cure ». For example, the title which unlike other stories contains a key element of interpretations instead of pointing out a more general aspect or theme (« to infuse power and mystery into the otherwise linear track the story may be taking (…) (to crack) the façade of the story (…) bringing new and unexpected material into the story »). It provides a possibility of interpretation to the reader for the story on an extradiegetic level. The words Steven utters, « ground clutter » can thus be associated with the idea that he had encountered some obstacle, some unexpected distortion of his perception of reality. Steven’s sense of depersonalization, his sense of an imminent menace (jeopardy, madness) and of complete regression into a « cool padded semi-darkness » could be understood in retrospect as a return of some repressed trauma, as if he had arranged to reenact some sort of Oedipal crisis. Similarly the retractable headlight of the car going on and off are almost like the beam of a radar that has been rendered, out of control, no longer measuring any logical form of landscape.
Hervé Botheron