The Singapore Grip: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Singapore Grip: Analysis of Major Characters" delves into the rich tapestry of characters in J.G. Farrell's novel, set against the backdrop of colonial Singapore during World War II. Central to the narrative is Walter Blackett, an ambitious co-owner of a British firm, characterized by his exploitative nature and contempt for local cultures. His son, Monty, embodies a similar insensitivity, viewing the native population through a lens of privilege and hedonism. Walter's daughter, Joan, is portrayed as a coldly calculating femme fatale, who manipulates those around her for personal gain, particularly in her pursuit of Matthew Webb, the idealistic heir of a deceased business partner. Matthew, in contrast, grapples with moral dilemmas and racial injustices, serving as the novel's moral compass amid the prevailing opportunism.
Vera Chiang, a Eurasian social activist, adds depth to the narrative, challenging colonial attitudes through her relationship with Matthew. Other characters, such as Major Brendan Archer and François Dupigny, provide critical commentary on the colonial experience, contrasting their liberal ideals with the prevailing racism and self-interest of the British. The character Cheong represents the perspective of the oppressed, highlighting the complex dynamics of power, exploitation, and humanity within the colonial framework. This analysis not only explores individual character flaws but also the broader implications of colonialism and its impact on personal relationships.
The Singapore Grip: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: J. G. Farrell
First published: 1978
Genre: Novel
Locale: Singapore
Plot: Historical
Time: 1938–1942, 1976
Walter Blackett, the protagonist, the ambitious co-owner and acting director of the Singapore firm of Blackett and Webb. Walter is a commanding figure, with pale blue eyes and white hair and mustache; his large head looms over a compact body and short legs. An entrepreneur convinced of his own worth, for years Walter has greedily exploited the native economy to advance company interests and has used the law and corrupt officials to undermine local competition. As the Japanese invade and Singapore falls, he remains contemptuous of Asians in general and is more concerned with his company's simple-minded allegorical Jubilee pageant and with his rivals, the Langfields, than with historical inevitability. A prototype of the uprooted British imperialist, he is held tightly by the “Singapore grip,” the dream of greater and greater financial coups, and is blind to the realities of his and the British position in Malaya. He considers collaborating with the Japanese more acceptable than forgoing his long-held tyrannical power.
Monty Blackett, Walter's spoiled and insensitive thirty-year-old son and heir apparent. With blue, bulging eyes and poor judgment, he is clearly his father's son. Amoral and mindlessly exuberant, Monty thinks of the natives only in terms of sexual encounters and amusement potential. As a second-generation colonial convinced of British superiority and native inferiority, he implements his father's plans for exploitation with self-assured aplomb, no matter how injurious to the locals.
Joan Blackett, Walter's bumptious, headstrong, and coldly calculating daughter, a femme fatale who toys with the sensitive Ehrendorf and who then tries to capture Matthew and his half of the business. A product of a Swiss finishing school, healthy and solidly built in the English manner, Joan is contemptuous of provincial Singapore. Her youthful, rebellious affairs are a trial to her parents, though her pursuit of Matthew wins their blessing. Having forced him, while weak from fever, to consent to her marriage proposal, she is affronted by his later forceful rejection of the engagement. She and her brother share an unquestioning belief in their own superiority and in their right to manipulate and exploit those around them. They are both overwhelmingly materialistic; matters of the soul and conscience are unknown to them. Joan relies on sexual allure to grip the men under her spell; she is self-serving, predatory, grasping, and ruthless, as confirmed by her attempts to escape from Singapore with her unexpectedly acquired husband, Nigel Langfield.
Matthew Webb, the conscience-ridden son and heir of Walter Blackett's deceased partner, whom Joan and Walter pursue as a marital alliance. He is stooped and shortsighted, with rounded shoulders and an unhealthy complexion. At the age of thirty-three, he is an otherworldly Oxford innocent who believed in and worked for the League of Nations and who arrives in Singapore eager to apply socialistic solutions easily and painlessly. Matthew is bothered deeply by racial abuse and by his own ineffectuality. Stricken with a tropical disease that he imagines is the “Singapore Grippe,” he finds Singapore a surreal nightmare and, throughout half the book, sees and hears life swirl around him through the veil of high fever and possible hallucination. Through Vera Chiang, he sees a Malay that many foreigners do not, and his incredulous and then horrified reaction to traditional colonial attitudes and behavior provides the moral cornerstone of the book. He is an idealist amid opportunists, a slightly comic, muddled figure made sympathetic by good intentions. Refusing to believe that the “Singapore Grip” is the sexual technique certain Singapore prostitutes use to improve trade, he asserts that it is the European stranglehold on the Orient.
Vera Chiang, Matthew's mistress and his father's protégée, an exotic Eurasian (the reputed daughter of a Russian princess and a Cantonese tea merchant). She is a social activist who fled Shanghai police oppression. Initially befriended by a thrill-seeking Joan, she becomes Joan's rival for Matthew, with her stunning Asian beauty and sexuality proving more intoxicating. Following the elder Webb's program of strenuous acrobatic nude exercise, she lives in the Webb home and nurses Matthew until forcibly removed. She is enigmatic but human, visiting and sympathizing with the aged and dying, giving English lessons, and nursing those injured by the Japanese invasion.
Major Brendan Archer, a well-meaning and kindly retired British officer, an ineffectual liberal sympathetic to the natives and appalled at their racist exploitation. Major Archer is always in the background, listening to Blackett's theories and plans, helping with civil service war preparation, sympathizing with refugees (in pidgin), caring for the castoff people and animals of his associates, and indignantly protesting tragedy, disgrace, and injustice. A cynic and an optimist, the major, like Matthew, provides an outsider's critical commentary on Singapore insiders. “What fools those men are!” he exclaims at one point, but then adds humbly, “Of course, they may know things that we don't.”
François Dupigny (frahn-SWAH dew-peen-YEE), an old friend of Major Archer from World War I days, a cynical French rationalist who is continually appalled at the inanities and rudeness of the local British and who has watched his friend become more private and eccentric in his habits. He longs for prewar days in Hanoi or Saigon but instead finds himself fleeing Japanese bombers. Dupigny debates Major Archer on the nature of humanity and concludes that self-interest negates any possibility of brotherhood and a community of races.
Captain Jim Ehrendorf, an American officer from Kansas City, longtime school chum of Matthew, and rejected suitor of Joan. Ehrendorf contradicts all the British stereotypes of Americans: He is a Rhodes scholar, soft-spoken, cultured, well-educated, well-mannered, tactful, polished, and well-informed. He is pale and handsome, with an attractive smile. He is hopelessly in love and suffers Joan's torments without complaint, throwing himself fully clothed into a pool or thrusting his hand into an open fire at her whim. He becomes introspective and quiet, then finally yields to his friend, Matthew. As the Japanese advance, he provides an American perspective on British defense and is practical and common-sensical about war in a way the British are not. He observes the confirmation of Ehrendorf's Second Law: “In human affairs things tend inevitably to go wrong. Things are slightly worse at any given moment than at any preceding moment.”
Cheong, an embittered Blackett family servant whose father and uncles had been shipped to Singapore as indentured coolies under appalling conditions and who incarnates their anger and sense of outrage. He finds the strange mixture of exploitation, general cruelty, and personal kindness of whites inscrutable. Attuned to the Chinese grapevine, he always has news before his masters and fears the worst.