Skip to main content

Twisted Dreamers




We live in an inverted world.  What Yeats said in his apocalyptic poem ‘The Second Coming’ is truer today than ever: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”

That’s why I picked up D B C Pierre’s 2003 Booker winning novel Vernon God Little for a second reading.  It’s the story of fifteen year-old Vernon Gregory Little who has been accused of murdering his friend Jesus.  Eventually he becomes a serial killer who has murdered sixteen of his schoolmates as well as many others in the town. One of his teachers, his psychiatric counsellor, his girlfriend and the media, all play cynical roles in making him a serial killer though he is innocent.

All of them have purely selfish motives in making Vernon the killer.  Taylor Figueroa, the girlfriend, sees her opportunity to become a media star by doing a sting operation on Vernon. She seduces him into admitting that he killed all those people for her sake, for her love. 

The novel has satirised almost everything from the ordinary people who convert tragedy into entertainment to the media that monetises the issue by live-telecasting the culprit’s life in the prison and organising reality shows as well as voting by viewers to choose the convict on the death row including Vernon to be executed first. 

The only person with some kind of morality in that inverted world is an axe murderer turned preacher.   He tells Vernon that the world is run by “intermingling needs” and those who learn to “serve that intermingling” get on successfully.  Vernon missed the boat, says the preacher, because he didn’t understand the ways of the world.  “Papa God growed us up till we could wear long pants;” the preacher counsels Vernon, “then he licensed his name to dollar bills, left some car keys on the table, and got the fuck outta town…. Don’t be looking up at no sky for help.  Look down here, at us twisted dreamers.”

That axe killer with all his foul language turns out to be far better a human being than all the moralists, teachers, counsellors, law keepers and the common folk who are all twisted dreamers in the novel.  Of course, the climax of the plot consoles us with the straight verdicts of conventional morality in which truth prevails in the end.  But truth’s victory extracts much pain from those who don’t care to learn the ways of the twisted dreamers. 

Comments

  1. Pranju chakrapaniJune 14, 2017 at 2:10 PM

    The axe killer seems to be an interesting character. Would love to give it a read.

    Of age, I am starting to realize the impact of re reading books rather than grabbing a new one all the time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 14, 2017 at 5:48 PM

      It's worth reading. Quite similar to Salinger's 'Catcher in the Rye.' It's a coming-of-age novel which shows how growing up is essentially about losing innocence and learning corruption of the soul.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...
15 comments
Read more

The music of an ageing man

Having entered the latter half of my sixties, I view each day as a bonus. People much younger become obituaries these days around me. That awareness helps me to sober down in spite of the youthful rush of blood in my indignant veins. Age hasn’t withered my indignation against injustice, fraudulence, and blatant human folly, much as I would like to withdraw from the ringside and watch the pugilism from a balcony seat with mellowed amusement. But my genes rage against my will. The one who warned me in my folly-ridden youth to be wary of my (anyone’s, for that matter) destiny-shaping character was farsighted. I failed to subdue the rages of my veins. I still fail. That’s how some people are, I console myself. So, at the crossroads of my sixties, I confess to a dismal lack of emotional maturity that should rightfully belong to my age. The problem is that the sociopolitical reality around me doesn’t help anyway to soothe my nerves. On the contrary, that reality is almost entirely re...
14 comments
Read more

Break Your Barriers

  Guest Post Break Your Barriers : 10 Strategic Career Essentials to Grow in Value by Anu Sunil  A Review by Jose D. Maliekal SDB Anu Sunil’s Break Your Barriers is a refreshing guide for anyone seeking growth in life and work. It blends career strategy, personal philosophy, and practical management insights into a resource that speaks to educators, HR professionals, and leaders across both faith-based and secular settings. Having spent nearly four decades teaching philosophy and shaping human resources in Catholic seminaries, I found the book deeply enriching. Its central message is clear: most limitations are self-imposed, and imagination is the key to breaking through them. As the author reminds us, “The only limit to your success is your imagination.” The book’s strength lies in its transdisciplinary approach. It treats careers not just as jobs but as vocations, rooted in the dignity of labour and human development. Themes such as empathy, self-mastery, ethical le...
3 comments
Read more

Mahatma Ayyankali’s Relevance Today

About a year before he left for Chicago (1893), Swami Vivekananda visited Kerala and described the state (then Travancore-Cochin-Malabar princely states) as a “lunatic asylum.” The spiritual philosopher was shocked by the brutality of the caste system that was in practice in the region. The peasant caste of Pulayas , for example, had to keep a distance of 90 feet from Brahmins and 64 feet from Nairs. The low caste people were denied most human rights. They could not access education, enter temple premises, or buy essentials from markets. They were not even considered as humans. Ayyankali (1863-1941) was a Pulaya leader who emerged to confront the situation. I just finished reading a biography of his in Malayalam and was highly impressed by the contributions of the great man who came to be known in Kerala as the Mahatma of the Dalits . What prompted me to order a copy of the biography was an article I read in a Malayalam periodical last week. The article described how Ayyankali...
14 comments
Read more