A Romantic Ironist's Vision of Evil: Robert Cormier's After the First Death

Abstract

A ROMANTIC IRONIST'S VISION OF EVIL: ROBERT CORMIER'S AFTER THE FIRST DEATH Millicent Lenz What is the truth about Robert Cormier, the controversial writer whose artistic power is universally acknowledged, yet whose vision of the world seems schizophrenically split: "savage" in his novels, "gentle and warm" in his short stories? Cormier himself, asked how he views the world, has pointed to some of his writings as "very optimistic, warm," "positive," and has said, "I don't think The Chocolate War is representative of my work. I think someone should be judged by his total output." This seems a fair enough request; the "world view" of any writer must be evaluated by looking at his whole production. Such a comprehensive and definitive evaluation is beyond the scope of this brief paper. It may be possible, however, to resolve some of the confusions and contradictions surrounding the world view in Cormier's work by closely scrutinizing his own statements about himself as an artist: by looking closely at, first, his romantic view of the writing process, his insistence upon truthfulness to his artistic vision, and then by investigating his use of the technique of irony to achieve his most dramatic effects. His most recent novel, After the First Death, will be used as a case in point to demonstrate how his ironic technique "works." Cormier's own comments on his writing process clearly characterize him as a romantic artist. His inspiration begins always, he tells us, with an "emotion," and he proceeds to get its "impact" down on paper. The sequence of creation is invariably the same: the emotion he desires to create gives rise to character; character suggests plot. The goal is always to communicate the emotion he wants the reader to feel: "? sacrifice everything to that.'" This requirement explains his use of "'any word, any unpretty image, to communicate that emotion.'" Clarity, precision of effect, is what he aims for. This romantic approach to the creative process strongly suggests Wordsworth's "emotion recollected in tranquillity" and also conjures up recollections of Edgar Allan Poe' s concept of the genesis of a "tale": A skillful literary artist ... having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents — he then combines such, events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. Everything, Poe continues, must work towards "the one pre-established design." Cormier's pre-established design, the emotional effect, relates to his predilection for adolescent protagonists, for as he has observed, their emotional lives are more intense and vivid, '"far more exciting, more excruciating, more intriguing than mine,'" and the vivid intensity of their experiences awakens within him '"memories of my own. '" The invention of the emotion itself may be spurred by incidents so seemingly insignificant that none but the gifted novelist would give them a second thought: when his son, a freshman trying out for the football team, came home '"with two shopping bags of chocolates to sell,'" Cormier's imagination asked "'What if ...,'" evoking the sinister possibilities inherent in this everyday event, and '"a novel was born.'" Cormier is also a romantic in his view of art as a process of discovery. "'... one of the jays of sitting down at the typewriter is finding out what's going to happen.'" He sees his whole writing career as "a process of growth and learning,"- and he immensely enjoys the "dialogue" he carries on with his young readers. Cormier is moreover a writer committed to expressing his vision of life as a quest for truth. He has spoken of the need for any story or novel to be "written honestly and without regard for a specific audience" (thus his refusal to delete the ambiguous and the puzzling and the evil from his novelistic world, for to do so would be to '"write down'" to his readers). The "shocks of recognition" he wishes to elicit depend upon holding fast to his own perceptions of truth. He will not compromise for the sake of happy endings, for as he insists, As long as what I write is true and believable, why should I have to create happy endings? My...