Lanark: A Life in Four Books: Analysis of Major Characters
"Lanark: A Life in Four Books" is a novel that intricately explores its major characters, each of whom embodies the themes of existential struggle and the search for meaning in a bleak urban landscape. The protagonist, Lanark, navigates a dismal city called Unthank, grappling with memory loss and a disturbing physical transformation that symbolizes his emotional turmoil. Throughout his journey, he encounters Rima, a complex character whose relationship with Lanark highlights themes of devotion and despair as she ultimately seeks fulfillment outside of him.
Duncan Thaw, Lanark's alter ego, serves as a neurotic art student wrestling with personal demons and societal expectations, which culminate in a tragic sense of isolation. The morally ambiguous Sludden manipulates those around him to rise in political power, embodying the darker aspects of ambition and hypocrisy. Meanwhile, Professor Ozenfant, a research scientist, reflects a more insidious form of moral corruption through his quest for influence. Other characters, such as Marjory Laidlaw and Duncan Thaw, Sr., further enrich the narrative, illustrating the challenges of personal relationships and familial obligations.
Together, these characters weave a tapestry of human experience that critiques societal norms and delves into the individual's quest for identity within an oppressive environment. The novel invites readers to consider the complexities of life and the shadows that accompany the search for purpose.
Lanark: A Life in Four Books: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Alasdair Gray
First published: 1981
Genre: Novel
Locale: Glasgow and imaginary worlds
Plot: Metafiction
Time: The mid-twentieth century to an indeterminate time in the future
Lanark, the protagonist. Nondescript in his physical appearance, he is remarkable for his emotional reserve. His manner suggests at once mystery and transparent personality. At the novel's opening, he finds himself in a railroad car, without memory of his past. Drifting through the almost continually dark and damp streets of a half-wasted city called Unthank, he learns how to acquire funds through a public welfare agency that, despite its procedural formality, seems to dispense monies arbitrarily. Determined to witness each day's brief moment of sunlight on the horizon, he often sits alone in the rain on the small balcony of a club called The Elite. Lanark eventually is drawn into one of the club's cliques, the one formed around Sludden. At Sludden's suggestion, he attempts to provide a purposeful center to his existence by becoming a writer. Disturbed by a scaly patch of skin on his arm, which increases in size as he scratches it, he discovers that the woman he has been pursuing, Rima, bears this affliction over much of her body. After he makes love to her unsatisfactorily, she pushes him out of her apartment. Shortly afterward, he wakes to find that his entire arm has become dragonlike. After being sucked down a tunnel, he wakes, cured of his affliction, in an underground utopia of bright artificial lights called the Institute. There, he becomes a doctor in much the same illogical way as he earlier became a writer. Later, he meets Rima again and cures her, and they escape back to Unthank. Rima leaves Lanark for Sludden, who has become a sort of managing director of the city. Against his instincts, Lanark accepts the post of provost and travels to an international conference at which the fate of Unthank will be decided. With his moods swinging between fatigued bewilderment and inflated self-importance, he allows several beautiful young women to get him drunk, is arrested for urinating off a bridge, and misses most of the conference. Recognizing that his political naïveté has served Sludden's Machiavellian schemes, he returns to Unthank in disgrace, witnesses the eventual destruction of the city by fire and flood, and, without protest, accepts the announcement of his impending execution.
Duncan Thaw, Lanark's alter ego, a neurotic art student in Glasgow. Born into a lower-middle-class family shortly before the outbreak of World War II, he escapes the German bombing of Glasgow with his mother and his sister, Ruth. Eventually, they join his father, who is working as the personnel director of a munitions plant. From an early age, Duncan is subject to attacks of asthma and outbreaks of eczema. As he matures, he recognizes that his physical ailments have become a neurotic defense mechanism against his dismal environs and his own unnaturally constrained personality. Pressured by his parents to do well in school, he excels in art and in English but barely gets by in mathematics. He seems destined for a secure but dull career as a librarian when, by fortuitous circumstance, he is offered a fellowship to the Art School. There, he antagonizes several instructors with his self-assured willfulness, but, because of his obvious talent and his friendship with the registrar, he is granted unusual privileges, such as being permitted to pursue his own projects in a loft near the school instead of attending regular classes. Haunted by his unrequited infatuation for Kate Caldwell, a girl he knew in secondary school, he pursues a relationship with Marjory Laidlaw, a fellow student at the Art School. Tortured by her alternating friendliness and clear avoidance of physical intimacy with him, he intends to break off with her decisively but ends up doing so very lamely. Unable to complete an overly large, overly ambitious painting of the canal system between Glasgow and the surrounding countryside, he becomes delusional and, in a nightmarish sequence out of the writings of Fyodor Dostoevski, imagines murdering Marjory. All Duncan's expectations of great success eventually are wrecked as his eccentricities and careless remarks detract from his work. Ultimately, Duncan travels north, intending to visit his father, who has retired to the countryside. When he peeks through the window of his father's residence, however, he cannot bear to disturb his father's apparent contentment. Duncan ends up on a desolate seashore, where he strips off his clothes and walks into the water.
Rima, Lanark's companion and the mother of his child. Hardened by the purposeless nature of her existence in Unthank, she is saved from a fatally complete transformation into a dragon by Lanark's insistent devotion, which, in effect, gives her a reason for living. She soon grows tired of his strict adherence to his principles, however, and leaves him, explaining that he simply does not need her enough. Ironically, she chooses to live with Sludden.
Sludden, a lascivious schemer who charms others in such a way that they accept the inevitability of his using them. Politically as astute as he is unprincipled, he transforms himself from a coffeehouse radical to a self-aggrandizing figure in the establishment. He understands his hypocrisy only to the extent of being able to profit from it politically. In the end, he sacrifices Unthank to his personal ambitions. His serene domesticity with Rima and Alexander (Lanark's son) is clearly a trite posture.
Professor Ozenfant, a research scientist at the Institute who eventually becomes its director and a powerful international figure. His hypocrisy is more polished and, for that reason, more dangerous than Sludden's. His love of music and his smooth managerial style are simply the ironic mani-festations of a completely amoral self-assurance about the realization of his ambitions for power.
Duncan Thaw, Sr., Duncan's father. Although he succeeds financially during the war, he lacks the educational qualifications for anything but menial work after the war. Devoted to his wife, he exhausts himself caring for her during her long and, eventually, fatal illness. Despite Duncan Sr.'s seemingly perverse inability to focus himself, he sacrifices his own comfort to his son's ambitions as an artist. Finally, however, he recognizes that Duncan Jr. is taking advantage of his good-heartedness and retires to the countryside to find some peace from family responsibilities.
Marjory Laidlaw, the daughter of a college professor. She is attracted to Duncan Thaw more out of a compassionate interest in the emotional sensitivity and turmoil that underlie his talent than out of any passionate interest in him, romantically or sexually. She contrives to bring others along on their dates and avoids situations in which she will be clearly alone with him. Naïvely good-hearted, she apparently does not recognize the degree to which her limited but genuine interest tortures him.