Force, Ghosts, and Monsters
We’ve talked a lot in class about Simone Weil’s offering that the infliction of force upon individuals dehumanizes them, and this idea pretty much read Epileptic from over my shoulder. It is one of the major and most tragic themes of the story that Jean-Christophe’s epilepsy was a formidable force set upon the entire family, and throughout the book, we see everyone and everything become not only dehumanized, but monstrous. Jean-Christophe is drawn as scary, deformed, dark, and monstrously large, looming black and enormous in many panels over David, Florence, and their parents. The various doctors and gurus the Bouchards enlist to help are drawn with the heads of animals, as is David’s grandfather, and the visual representation of epilepsy is of an ominous, snakelike beast unto itself. Even David, when the force of his frustration and pain over his brother’s disease gets the better of him, appears visually as monstrous when he loses control of the thoughts and feelings he tries so hard to censor.
In thinking about the dehumanization and monstrosity of the characters, I could not help but follow those thoughts to the idea (which has come up in other classes — apologies to Prof. Chee if this sounds too familiar…) that monsters in literature, film, etc., exist and are compelling to readers/viewers in that monsters represent the worst of in each of ourselves. There is something eerily exciting, fulfilling, and oddly sympathetic about a character who is able to externalize the darkest wishes of the rest of the world in which it inhabits. At the same time, the lack of adherence to social norms and expectations of what is good, correct, and safe on the part of the monster is chilling, separating, terrifying to those subjected to its existence in its fictional world, as well as to the compelled reader.
In many ways, Jean-Christophe is such a monster in David’s imagination. He is infuriating to David because he is able to fulfill all of the dark desires that David feels but can never succumb to. Jean-Christophe is able to stave off adulthood by allowing himself to become a victim of epilepsy: he does not have to become independent, he is constantly nursed and taken care of, he does not have to muffle his emotions and desires, and he does not have to let go of his love of war and monstrous dictators; something that David must do as he enters an adulthood where one is forced to be conscious of justice and the repercussions of one’s actions. When David catches himself bearing resemblance to his brother in thought or action, or when he is made powerless by anger, pain, or failure, he defines himself as a monster, and throughout the novel he expresses an impossible wish to destroy the disease that creates this monstrosity, or failing that, to destroy his monstrous self and the monster his brother has become. While he portrays himself as a monster, David also wishes to be a hero: to heal his family’s hurt, to save his brother and grandfather from the forces that are destroying them.
I was also interested in David’s ghosts as friends of his private self. In so many ways, this is a story about hauntings — the characters in Epileptic are haunted constantly by the clinging specter of a disease that refuses to be shaken off. The are haunted by their own memories and failures, and they are haunted by the histories of their family, their country, war, mythology, dictators, philosophers, cult leaders. So many times in the course of the narrative, David slips back into telling the story of a dead grandparent, a dead relationship, a dead thinker or historical figure whose shade remains prominent in his own present. Are these ghosts monsters? Heroes? A force unto themselves?
