| Original Message |
Kristen Murphy (no login)
Posted Apr 2, 2007 5:49 PM
I have to be honest- getting into Incendiary was difficult for me. I’m no stickler for grammar, but that was a high hurdle to leap over when I was reading. I completely understand that the narrator was not going to speak “posh” or as she put it, “I’m not thick or anything just don’t ask me where the commas go” (100). However, once I overcame that aspect, I found myself immersed in an interesting and quite frightening novel.
I was surprised by the recurrent theme of class struggle that I found in Incendiary. It was an interesting theme in a book that is supposed to be a letter to Osama bin Laden. The widow spends much of her time in the first half of the story describing the differences between herself and Jasper. She calls Jasper and his ilk the “sneering toffs” (12). Then there is the awkward weekend with Petra. However, England does have a different perspective regarding class, on account of its feudal system, monarchy, etc. Monty Python even touched on class issues.
I was interested in the descriptions of the heavy hand of government after the May Day attacks in Incendiary. I thought it was brilliant how Cleave introduced the “barrage balloons” but how they were named shortly after that. “Of course they weren’t called barrage balloons any more. They were called the Shield of Hope” (116). If there is something that the government has enacted to fight an “other” or a shell of something previous, it always seems to acquire a name. Ground Zero and the color coded threat levels, and the Department of Homeland Security are examples of this phenomenon.
Also, as a bit of an aside, while I was reading Incendiary, all I could think of was V for Vendetta. I was not thinking about Guy Fawkes, but about governments changing into dictatorial regimes because they instilled fear into the populace (à la 1984). For example, in Incendiary, all Muslim workers were banned from working due to a “security risk” (64) and they started to restrict civil liberties such as taking away the Japanese tourists’ cameras and imposing a curfew. I thought that this image of a Western country post-terrorist attack is important to think about. Do we just let our freedoms go after attacks? What does this mean for us in the future?
Questions:
Do you feel that the government clamped down on British civil liberties after the attacks of July 7th such as they did in Incendiary?
Is Petra’s character based on some of the cutthroat people you have met in the newspaper business?
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