Ignatius J. Reilly. Have you ever met anyone quite like him before in the pages of a book? I know I haven't; and I probably won't forget him anytime soon, either. He was unique, and uniquely over-the-top, but for me, he was never a cartoon. For all his weirdnesses and exaggeratedness, he never struck me as a mere invention; he rang true. Which is why, I think, I found myself relating to Ignatius no matter how much I disliked him, more so than I'd care to admit.
At one point, not too many pages from the end, Ignatius’s mother says this to him:
“You learnt everything, Ignatius, except how to be a human being.”
How absolutely true. And what kept him from learning how to be, let alone from becoming, a human being? In my opinion, what held him back was also his primary motivation: fear.
What really convinced me of this was seeing him seemingly begin (just begin, mind you) to “come alive” as he finally ventured out of the city, possibly farther than he’d ever traveled before, at the very end of the book. Afraid to venture out of the comfortable, familiar environs in which he’d spent all his life (with the lone exception of that bus trip to/taxi drive back from Baton Rouge), he only did so at the story’s end because he was essentially forced out by circumstances (his pending institutionalization). But because he took that step outside of his comfort zone, he began to benefit within the very first hours of his journey.
We have to change to grow; we have to deal with the unknown and other unpleasant realities in order to mature. But Ignatius refused to do that. And for that reason, he lived in a prison of his own making, subjecting everyone around him, most unfortunately for them, to the unpleasant results of his self-imposed incarceration.
He cried “perversion!” and “abortion!” etc., deriding people and things around him, when his truly was the aborted life. His existence was a perverted one; he resisted growing up, so he grew increasingly inward. That’s not normal. I believe he really was heading toward insanity, however much his mother may have been committing him to a state hospital for her convenience, or by the author for sheer comic effect.
In closing, let me quote the last four paragraphs of the book…
. . .
Now that Fortuna had saved him from one cycle, where would she spin him now? The new cycle would be so different from anything he had ever known.
Myrna prodded and shifted the Renault through the city traffic masterfully, weaving in and out of impossibly narrow lanes until they were clear of the last twinkling streetlight of the last swampy suburb. Then they were in darkness in the center of the salt marshes. Ignatius looked out at the highway marker that reflected their headlights. U.S. 11. The marker flew past. He rolled down the window an inch or two and breathed the salt air blowing in over the marshes from the Gulf.
As if the air were a purgative, his valve opened. He breathed again, this time more deeply. The dull headache was lifting.
He stared gratefully at the back of Myrna’s head, at the pigtail that swung innocently at his knee. Gratefully. How ironic, Ignatius thought. Taking the pigtail in one of his paws, he pressed it warmly to his wet moustache.
. . .
That, coming after what we’ve read before, is one of the sweetest endings to a story I’ve ever read. Because it’s full of possibility. And who would’ve thought Ignatius could ever really change? But that’s the very real possibility that I hear, clearly, from reading that passage. And it warms my heart, and makes me care about the big galoot.
That’s how the ending totally changed my impression of the book as a whole. For me, it puts it all into perspective. It’s almost as if Ignatius, in reaching out affectionately to Myrna (not that she’s aware of his gesture at that point, I don’t think), in seeing and appreciating someone for who they are, instead of just complaining about them or thinking of how he can use them to get what he wants, is for the very first time in the book -- and, presumably, for the first time in his life -- moving beyond the caricature of a life he’s been living, and becoming human before our eyes. Or is, at least, venturing into that (for him) uncharted territory for the very first time.
So I see the book’s ending not so much as epitaph, but as commencement. And seeing it that way gives me a much deeper appreciation for the book as a whole, and a much fonder affection for it, than I ever expected to have until I got to those very last hopeful pages.
How ‘bout you?
And also, please feel free to discuss anything else that I’ve failed to bring up this week. I know there’s a lot.
