Romanian journal of english studies
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1. Introduction
Illustrating the idea expressed by Linda Hutcheon (2002) who claims that “knowing the past becomes a question of representing, that is of constructing and interpreting, not of objective recording” (Hutcheon 2002:70), this essay shows that in Graham Swift’s Last Orders, the past is represented by the figure of Jack Dodds, a dead man perceived as a living presence whose life is associated with a book of requests, wishes and unwritten rules regarding the way the living protagonists should fulfil their obligations towards him. The characters in Graham Swift’s novel do their best to understand these requests and rules, accepting them out of a sense of duty and respect. As these rules are not written, they have to be inferred based on the suggestions in Jack’s symbolic book of life, which his family and friends remember and review. Representing the past as a book of unwritten rules to be inferred and obeyed by the living protagonists opens the past to various interpretations. We are shown that the present world just carries out and obeys the orders of the world of the past, fulfilling its wishes. The world of the present does not emphasize its novelty and principles. Its ideals and wishes are not given any importance. The narrators in Graham Swift’s novel attach the utmost importance to their duty to meet their spiritual obligations to the past, complying with its requests. The novel consists of 75 chapters whose titles are either the names of the characters, who are the narrators of the novel, or the names of the places these characters visit on their way to Margate or Dreamland (Swift 1996:273). The 75 chapters do not present a chronological story but only these characters’ perspective on their duty towards the past associated with Jack Dodds, the dead man whose wishes they have to take into account and fulfil. We are not presented any precise time when the events take place but only the living characters’ determination and energetic action to pay their last respects to Jack, the symbol of the past. The only reference to time is made by the presence of the clock in the pub where the living characters gather to discuss the latest news and aspects of their life and duty. Time is an eternal present moment. It only ROMANIAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES RJES 15 /2018
stands still. Jack’s vision on time indicates the lack of historical progress: “But it aint ever gone nowhere, has it?” (Swift 1996:9). The 75 chapters of the novel are presented concisely and with no importance attached to language accuracy. Ray, Amy, Vince, Lenny, Vic and Mandy are the narrators of this novel and have their own chapters which mainly focus on dialogues evincing their present concerns and moral obligation to do their duty to Jack whose will asks them to spread his ashes in Margate. The present is associated with these characters’ pilgrimage to three destinations in order to pay their last respects to Jack: The Naval Memorial, the Canterbury Cathedral and Margate. They admire the world from Vince’s car as if they did not have the chance to know it so far, as if the dead offered them an opportunity to understand their present world. The car drive to Margate turns into a “sightseeing tour” (Swift 1996:107), the characters discovering their world and its past in a breathtaking rush which brings back their memories, urging them to respect the past and do their duty towards it. Their dialogues, gestures and attitude create the photo of a present which is not as important to them as their past. They do not reveal their ideals, ideas and plans for the future but just bits and pieces of their remembrances concerning their past – their youth and childhood, their business and sense of duty. They do not seem to regret Jack’s death, considering it just a passage to a different spiritual condition in the
Despite his physical condition of a dead man, Jack Dodds seems to play the role of the main character whose voice is still heard as if it were real. Married to Amy, Jack is a butcher running his own shop, Dodds&Son. Family Butcher. He survives a war and has a daughter, June, whom he abandons in a hospital, never wanting to see her, and an adoptive son, Vince, who comes to secretly hate him despite the parental help he has been offered. Jack’s life is associated with a book, which is the metaphor of the world of the past and which is open to different interpretations. It is his wife Amy who makes references to Jack’s book which is nothing but his life: “the living come first, even the living who were as good as dead to him, so it’d be all one now, all the same, in his book” (Swift 1996:228). Enlarging upon this metaphor, Graham Swift’s Last Orders shows its condition of a “metafictional” novel as defined by Patricia Waugh (1984): “Metafiction pursues such questions through its formal self-exploration, drawing on the traditional metaphor of the world as book, but often recasting it in the terms of contemporary philosophical, linguistic or literary theory” (Waugh 1984:2-3). Jack’s symbolic book seems to be seriously reviewed by the living characters in Graham Swift’s novel as they appreciate its importance and do their best to comply with its requests based on their education and vision. Focusing on his story and reflecting on his past, Jack Dodds’s book of life stands for his identity as, according to Mark Currie (1998), identity “exists only as narrative” (Currie 1998:17). The next part of this essay will analyse the symbols of the past, emphasizing the idea that the different narrators’ perspectives on the past and on their duty towards it end up in their unity of vision.
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