The Wall by John Lanchester
(Longlisted Booker 2019)
This synopsis contains minor spoilers.
One long metaphor, a dystopia for our times with no get out clause. While the main characters find safety at the end it is temporary, a momentary pause in a continuing struggle. This book won’t cheer you up! A well-written story and well put together although I am slightly surprised it has been longlisted for the 2019 Booker. Do not look too deep. The metaphor does not bear much analysis for it works on the level it presents, an oblique, symbolic look at our contemporary world.
Perhaps not so much a metaphor as a pastiche of that residual cultural memory of war-time Britain, so beloved of our British establishment yet a time experienced by relatively few alive today. It is a psychic memory that perversely fuels the mad fervency of our present jingoistic perception of Britain as a moated nation under siege. A recognisable Britain but one that smells of tea, trains and rations.
The story opens on the Ifracombe stretch of the Wall at some indeterminate time in the near future when catastrophic sea level rise has flooded low-lying and coastal areas of the world. The Wall is a vast infrastructure of concrete and bulk, of loneliness and boredom, dwarfing anything yet built, surrounding Britain. Guarded by Defenders against the Others who, fleeing their own unviable lands, come from the sea to climb the Wall into the security of what remains of a surviving society.
There is no longer a coastline as we know it – no beaches, no sunny coves, only the great cliff formed by the Wall that, as thoroughly as it can be, is built up to the sea’s edge. Coastal villages and towns. once next to the beach, now reside in its shadow. The Wall has replaced the tidal edge a bulwark against the rising sea and the threat from Others. The sea can only be seen from inland, from higher ground. It is a drowned world.
Britain is a nation under siege from desperate others coming from places we know little about but which cannot be endured. No-one really wants to know or cares who they are. They are simply Others and must be repelled. In their turn they are ruthless. The Defenders are a conscripted, armed force, compelled to monotonous, arduous duty guarding the Wall on its ramparts. They live a hard life, living in spare comfort with few diversions faced with an unforgiving duty cycle. The technology is not sophisticated – there are no lasers here just bullets, grenades and bayonets.
Discipline is severe and the consequences of failure grim. If Others succeed in getting over the Wall, breaching the Defenders and entering Britain then the same number of Defenders, those deemed responsible for the defensive failure, are themselves cast out to sea in an open boat with minimal provisions. Their punishment is to become, in their turn, Others. No justice, no mitigation, just a simple tit-for-tat. If twenty Others make it then twenty Defenders must be banished and if there aren’t twenty Defenders left to be banished (battles can be severed and mortal) then the numbers are made up from next-in-line officers and officials.
Banishment entails the painful removal of the embedded identity chips that every citizen carries inside them. Without it, a person becomes an Other, a nothing. It is what illicit Others aim for if they get over the Wall. to acquire a forged chip to enable a new life inside the Wall. British life is bleak and grey resembling perhaps old movies of war-time life – crowded trains, wary civilians, unhappy homes. The scenario seems clear. This is Britain today (2019) – under siege, threatened by insidious invasion and paranoid about internal conspiracies to aid the Others. It is bleak. The only options seem to be to somehow join the ‘elite’ (they fly high in the sky in planes back and forth between who knows where), to become a Breeder to make more children to join the ranks of the Defenders, or to make a living as a member of the Help class, a form of indentured labour only one step from slavery.
Spoiler alert: The protagonist and narrator of the story, Kavanagh, suffers the fate of banishment, having begun the journey towards Breeder status in his bleak ambition to lift his status . His banishment is the result of a real conspiracy-from-within led by a respected officer, himself once an Other, and which enables more Others to climb over the Wall and enter Britain. Banished to the open sea with a group of other exiles there are great dangers – pirates, and a lack of navigation – and forlorn hope – the raft colony they come upon is reminiscent of Kevin Costner’s movie Waterworld) but it is soon destroyed. Eventually the Kavanagh Breeder partner find some safety but it is inconclusive, a respite, temporary at best. They are doomed to continued exile.
Note: Walls are a fairly common literary image. Some examples are here: A Brief Review of Walls in Literature by Tom Mitchell – “Fear of invasion … is a more powerful form of control than bricks and mortar.” and more recently, Game of Thrones features a defensive Wall of ice.
Note: 12 May 2020
Well, well! This article asks: “As sea levels rise, are we ready to live behind giant walls?“