Luca Cavallo
Highly Recommended
Department of English Undergraduate Awards (2nd Year)
Abstract
This essay delves into the complex exploration of guilt and redemption found in Bernard MacLaverty’s 1983 novel, Cal. The discussion of these themes is accompanied by an analysis of the author’s intertextual and biblical inspirations in the composition of his titular character. The essay recognises the evident similarities between Cal and Christ, but develops these parallels alongside religious artwork featured in the novel to confront the Catholic roots of Cal’s guilt, and his subsequent mortification. Taking a psychological approach, this essay discusses the importance of Cal’s dreams within the theme of redemption, and thus identifies one of many cases of intertextual mirroring between the protagonists of Cal and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. With further exploration of the similar paths to redemption taken by Cal and Raskolnikov, this essay discusses the isolation and insomnia Cal undergoes as a result of his guilt, as well as the self-loathing that surrounds him and his futile attempts to redeem himself. The chaotic nature between Cal’s inner monologue and his social attitude results in a split personality. This divided state ultimately prevents complete redemption.
When Cal McCluskey learns that he has aided in widowing his new librarian, Marcella, he decides that “in some way, he didn’t know how, he would have to make it up to her” (MacLaverty 16). What follows is an agonising struggle in which Cal is weighed down by his guilt, irate with self-loathing, searching for a path to redemption. Surrounded by images of sacrifice and religion, Cal becomes a Christ-like figure, bearing his cross as he approaches an inevitable crucifixion. Cal’s sense of redemption is warped, for he is certain that he deserves to suffer, leading to a mortification motif that is prevalent in the novel. Cal wonders if he could restart as a good man to Marcella, leaving the past behind them. This is one of numerous plot parallels between Cal and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which also happens to be the book Cal picks to borrow from the library, hoping to impress Marcella with a “highly intellectual” choice (81, 119). In comparing Cal to Raskolnikov, two characters overcome with guilt, the concept of a split personality emerges. Cal’s conscience, in a constant state of war, tears itself apart, and I argue that he is unable to redeem himself while in this divided state.
Catholicism heavily inspires the theme of guilt in Cal. Despite his lack of devotion to his religion, Cal “seeks… forgiveness by imitating the Catholic models and rituals he learned as a boy, fixating particularly on images and practices of redemption and atonement” (Davis 83). Such images include the crucifixion, which appears several times throughout MacLaverty’s novel. When Cal is finally apprehended “as if he expected it”, he is arrested while wearing “a dead man’s Y-fronts” (Cal 170). The Y shape is reminiscent of the cross, and as well as this, Cal is captured in his underwear, much like Christ’s near-naked state upon his own death. In his suffering, Cal begins to resemble Christ. When blackberry-picking, he pushes through a bush of brambles as if to put on Christ’s crown of thorns (114). In his essay on the character names in Cal, David Piwinski notes the significance of Cal’s surname (42). In the original publication, Cal’s name was McCrystal, not McCluskey. Piwinski recognises the ‘Christ’ in his name and argues that there was no coincidence in MacLaverty’s naming of his protagonist. From his Catholic upbringing, Cal is certain that he must suffer in order to atone for his sins and that he can “stop this barrage of bloodshed by imitating Christ and offering his own body in self-sacrificial suffering” (Davis 88).
As well as the Catholic images that inspire Cal’s Christ-like state, the artworks and religious anecdotes presented to Cal deepen his guilt. The Crucifixion by Matthias Grünewald evokes terror in Cal. The painting was included as a panel of the Isenheim Altarpiece at the Monastery of St. Anthony. At the time of the painting’s completion, the Monastery hospitalised patients with ergotism, an agonising skin disease. Evidently, Grünewald’s depiction of Jesus is inspired by said disease. In the novel, Marcella is deeply moved by the painting, and shows it to Cal. He is struck by the details of the painting: “the hands... like nailed starfish; the body… pulled to the shape of an egg-timer… the mouth open and gasping for breath” (169). The abstract similes in Cal’s reception of the painting exemplify the overwhelming effect the image has on his conscience. Cal recognises himself on the cross and “greatly anticipates having his own body become something like Grünewald’s Christ and suffering for what he has done” (Russell 120). To him, the painting is a mirror image. With this in mind, Christ’s hands are highly significant. In the position that Marcella holds up the painting, sitting naked on the floor with the painting below her breasts, it appears that Christ’s (or Cal’s) hands reach for them, his fingers stretched and agonised. Now Cal’s crucifixion is no longer a punishment for his role in the murder of Robert Morton but a damnation for his sexual pursuit of Marcella, Morton’s wife. The pain Cal suffers from his lust for Marcella is self-inflicted, and he cannot separate sex from self-mutilation (Davis 92). Cal feels the nails in his palms as he reaches for Marcella, his guilt dragging him further and further down in self-loathing. Considering that the painting, initially mentioned by Marcella, is finally revealed on the novel’s penultimate page, I conclude that the image is the final straw for Cal: his guilt catches up with him, and he doubtfully asks, “Could he ever tell her the truth?” (170).
Cal attempts to combat his guilt with mortification, which he believes will lead him towards redemption. When he attends mass at Magherafelt, he listens to Fr. Brolley’s story of Matt Talbot, who wore chains around his waist, so tight and worn so long that they couldn’t be removed from “the mortified flesh of his body” (39). Although Cal does not come to inflict self-harm, he puts himself through other means of mortification. While unemployed, Cal subjects himself to solitary confinement. J. Cameron Moore writes that “Cal’s existence is characterised by inactivity and sleeplessness” (32). Cal spends only one week working at the abattoir before applying for social welfare. Though it is understandable that he cannot stomach the slaughter, Cal makes little to no effort to acquire a new job and wanders aimlessly through unemployment. Moore continues to note that during what Cal considers “‘the longest week of his life’, [he] sits at home listening to records, stealing glances at Marcella in the library, and dreading a call from Crilly” (32). Plagued by insomnia, Cal subjects himself to torturous idleness. The mortification only worsens as the plot continues. When Cal is left homeless after his house is burned down, he seeks refuge in a cottage on Morton’s farm. There, he recalls Matt Talbot, and compares himself to a monk in a cell, “not only deprived of light and comfort but… deprived of God” (MacLaverty 92). Cal is without faith, and so he does not suffer for the love of God. However, he asks of Talbot, “What if he had suffered for another person?” Obviously, Cal thinks of Marcella. Being so near her causes his suffering, but also feeds his sexual desire. This is made clear on the night when he watches Marcella undress. Cal suffers in the cottage, hungry and filthy, as a method of mortification. But his perversion undermines this mortification, as he guiltily observes Marcella, no longer someone he ‘suffers for’, but more a subject of his sexual gratification. Cal’s shameful masturbation ruins any sort of redeeming mortification he was hoping to achieve by isolating himself in the cottage.
Cal is tortured by his own guilt, but although he badly desires forgiveness and atonement, he struggles to redeem himself. Focusing his path to redemption on his tragic, deceitful relationship with Marcella, his only other close relationship is neglected: that between him and his father, Shamie. Shamie becomes increasingly anxious as the plot unfolds, and Cal tells him almost nothing of his moral torment. Cal believes that he cannot speak to his father about his guilt, for he retains unbreakable values of ‘good and evil’, which one critic has related to Shamie’s interest in movies, stating that “Westerns [reinforce] a comforting naiveté in Shamie.” (Makowsky 39). Cal knows that Shamie feels safe with this naiveté, and he doesn’t want to “disillusion him” with the truth of his crime (MacLaverty 32). Shamie asks Cal, “You would tell me if you were in any trouble, wouldn’t you?” (88). But Cal never attempts to confess to his father, leaving him with the empty promise that he will tell him “someday”. By withholding information from his father, he only allows him to grow into a shaking, nervous wreck, worrying about the extent of the “trouble” his son is in. As well as this, Shamie’s character arc is left unresolved. He adopts Cal’s habit of idleness, partnered with incessant smoking (135). Had Cal confessed to his father, he may have lifted a weight off of both their shoulders, and Cal may have been able to repent of his crimes with his father’s support. Cal is left to solve his problems in his own head.
As I have mentioned, Cal suffers from insomnia for most of the novel. Once he begins work on the farm, however, he is no longer restless. When he and Shamie use a chainsaw to cut wood, Cal takes “comfort in the noise” of the machine, despite its raucous and violent nature (46). Once Cal can sleep, he begins to dream, and dreaming becomes an important aspect of his mentality. In one dream, a train hits a man, and jets of blood fly onto a toga-clad crowd. Marcella stands in the crowd and watches. This dream symbolises Cal’s feeling of powerlessness against the violence of ‘the Troubles’, and yet he feels responsible for Marcella’s exposure to bloodshed. The dream terrifies Cal and urges him to seek redemption. When he sees Marcella the next night, he wants “to put his arms round her, to apologise to her” (119). The dream scene is followed by the second of the novel’s two mentions of Crime and Punishment. Dreams also play a significant role in Dostoevsky’s novel. One dream in particular bears quite a few similarities to Cal’s dream. While Raskolnikov contemplates committing murder, he dreams of a childhood memory in which an old horse is flogged to death on the street by her drunken owner, Mikolka, and his friends. Both dreams include the colour red, a sign of danger and violence. In Cal’s dream, red is in the bloodstained togas, and for Raskolnikov, it is found in the dress and complexion of the “red-cheeked peasant woman… cracking nuts and just smiling to herself” (Dostoevsky 75). In both dreams, Cal and the young Raskolnikov are witnesses to extreme violence, which they cannot stop. Dreams in Crime and Punishment are “the fullest expressions of potentiality”, and this is also true for Cal when discussing guilt (Uwasomba 293). While Cal is guilty of lying to Marcella, Raskolnikov is ashamed to learn that his adult self is not so separated from Mikolka’s behaviour.
MacLaverty’s influence from Dostoevsky’s novel is distinct in the comparison between Cal and Raskolnikov’s characters. They are both tormented by feelings of guilt, and they both try to redeem themselves while avoiding true justice by turning themselves in. However, it is evident that Cal does not reach a level of redemption close to Raskolnikov. The elementary moral of Crime and Punishment is that true redemption can only be achieved through full confession and repentance. Raskolnikov’s guilt, he realises, isolates him from the rest of society, as he senses when summoned to the police station: “If this room had been filled not with policemen but with his best friends, he would not have found one human word for them, so empty had his heart suddenly become” (Dostoevsky 121-122). Cal is similar in this regard, as he feels apart from those he would otherwise be close with, such as Shamie. Cal and Raskolnikov fall in love with women directly connected to their victims, and become involved in these women’s families. In Cal’s case, however, there is a much darker detail: he endeavours to replace the man he partook in murdering, becoming a sexual partner for Marcella. Sonya was a friend of Lisaveta, one of Raskolnikov’s victims, but their relationship was not nearly as significant as that between Marcella and Robert. Although Cal’s blossoming relationship isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it “is based on deception and at least partially motivated by his desire to suffer in penance for his crime” (Moore 34). This is not the same for Raskolnikov. He becomes involved with the Marmeladov family after their father is knocked down by a carriage. His motive is not to seduce his victim’s friend. In the epilogue, Raskolnikov is imprisoned. But, throwing himself at her feet, he mends his relationship with Sonya (Dostoevsky 557). While Cal squats in the Morton cottage, he remembers Fr. Brolley’s lesson that to sin was to betray God: “You realised your sinfulness and remained outside” (MacLaverty 101). But Cal never confesses his sin, and like a barrier, it keeps him “outside” (Davis 90). Cal’s story ends quite abruptly, but considering his plethora of lies to Marcella, it is highly unlikely that she will visit him in prison as Sonya does for Raskolnikov, leaving him unredeemed to her.
Cal’s heavy guilt and underwhelming attempts to redeem himself create a dispute between his inner monologue and his social behaviour. He considers himself morally worthless, and yet he tries to keep his integrity in appearance. This, with his parallel with Raskolnikov in mind, creates a split personality in Cal while he deals with his guilt and redemption. As in Dostoevsky’s novel, the psychological drama of Cal is “expressed in terms of a conflict between opposite poles of... spirit and mind, passiveness and aggressiveness, self-sacrifice and self-assertion” (Beebe 151). Cal is a contradictory character. He desires “the one woman in the world who [is] forbidden him” (102). Cal attempts to establish a relationship under the guise of redemption, with his guilt throbbing in his head as he becomes romantically inclined towards Marcella. There are numerous images and techniques in Cal to suggest the protagonist’s duality. There is, of course, the use of interior monologue, no doubt borrowed from Dostoevsky, which “reveals the soul that is divided and a split personality... a questioning device that amounts to an easy way of bringing to the fore, the psychological state of a character” (Uwasomba 294). For Cal, much of this interior monologue is in pidgin French. Cal constantly curses himself for his actions. Splatters of ‘merde’ and ‘crotte de chien’ accompany many of Cal’s embarrassing or shameful moments. The use of French implies that a different voice scolds Cal, not his own. Another image that suggests a split personality is found on Cal’s hands. On his right hand, Cal keeps his fingernails long for picking guitar strings, while his left has short nails and callous fingertips to keep the strings pressed on the fretboard. The right hand symbolises Cal’s idleness and, therefore, his guilt. The left hand, better suited for work, symbolises Cal’s urge to act and redeem himself. When he begins work at Morton’s farm, he cuts his nails, a sign to the reader that Cal may use this opportunity to confess to Marcella and redeem himself. And yet, this is not the case. Cal continues to berate himself in French and never truly unifies his personality to accept his guilt and restore integrity.
Although Cal has the intention of redeeming himself for Marcella, his actions are all too little, too late. Though he calls the library when a bomb is planted inside it, “turning informer”, he does so anonymously, knowing it is not enough to redeem himself. It is certain that he saves the library for Marcella, but she will never know this, she will only know that Cal lied to her, and took advantage of her emotional vulnerability. Cal’s comparison to Christ is often supported by Cal himself, fuelled by self-pity about his guilt, and the difficult challenge of redemption. His likeness to Raskolnikov could also be self-imposed, as he claims to have seen two episodes of a Crime and Punishment TV adaptation. Cal allows his guilt to consume him, resulting in idle dread and insomnia. When the opportunities to act arise, Cal fails every time, for he cannot face what he has done, nor can he accept the consequences of his crimes. When arrested, he is glad that he can accept a beating, rather than give Marcella a direct and honest confession.
Works Cited
Beebe, Maurice. “The Three Motives of Raskolnikov: A Reinterpretation of Crime and Punishment.” College English, vol. 17, no. 3, 1955, pp. 151-158.
Davis, Lanta. “Redemptive Suffering in the Isenheim Altarpiece and Bernard MacLaverty’s Cal.” New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, vol. 22, no. 3, 2018, pp. 81-95.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. Penguin Books Ltd., 1974.
MacLaverty, Bernard. Cal. Jonathan Cape, 1991.
Makowsky, Reid. “Two Ways of Responding to ‘Troubles’: Bernard MacLaverty's use of the Blues and the Western in Cal.” ANQ (Lexington, Ky.), vol. 25, no. 1, 2012, pp. 37-43.
Moore, J. C. “‘Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water, Right enough’: The Rural Landscape in Bernard MacLaverty's Cal.” ANQ (Lexington, Ky.), vol. 25, no. 1, 2012, pp. 31-36.
Piwinski, David J. “Names in Bernard MacLaverty's Cal: Etymology, Onomastics, and Irony.” ANQ (Lexington, Ky.), vol. 15, no. 4, 2002, pp. 41-45.
Russell, Richard. “Bernard MacLaverty.” The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature, 2020, pp. 117-126.
Uwasomba, Chijioke. “A socio-psychological exploration of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.” Educational Research and Reviews, vol. 4, no. 4, 2009, pp. 141- 147.
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