What should you do when someone you care for has gone mad? In “The Wheel”, from Calendar of Love, 1967, George Mackay Brown’s first collection of short stories, the general response is to humour the main character, Robert, when he goes out looking for his dead friend, Walls, every Saturday night. At the fisherman’s pub, Old Tom the barman merely tells Robert that Walls “hasn’t been here tonight”. Captain Stevens is the only person who tries to make Robert face up to the truth. But as time goes by, even a Captain Stevens may see the wisdom of bowing to the inevitable. Otherwise he risks being as obsessive as the person he is helping. It is interesting to note that this same Captain Stevens does go mad, in “The Eye of the Hurricane”, the final story in George Mackay Brown’s second collection A Time to Keep and Other Stories, 1969.
George Mackay Brown addresses a similar theme in his short story, “Icarus”, from A Time to Keep and Other Stories. Once again, the main character, Uncle Tom, is an eccentric, a village idiot, and again the central feature is how those around him deal with his disorder, and how the main character refuses to change his ways despite an increasing burden of evidence that he ought to do so.
A reference to Greek mythology is another thing the two stories have in common. In “The Wheel” Robert is described as “the gorgon’s head” and the people in the pub freeze when he enters; here the reference is highlighted by the title, “Icarus”. Both Robert and Uncle Tom share a fate similar to that of Sisyphus (who endlessly rolls a huge stone up a hill only to see it roll back down again) inasmuch as they have been condemned to an existence where they must endlessly repeat seemingly futile actions. The title of “The Wheel” — presumably the name of the pub — underlines this theme of endless repetition without pointing directly to Robert’s crime (although we can perhaps surmise that he was guilty of drinking too much), while the title of “Icarus” is explicit in apportioning blame.
Uncle Tom is not just an ordinary “Icarus”; in the story he is described as “a presumptuous Icarus” (p.80, l.29). This is because Icarus is merely a foolhardy youth who forgets his father’s advice, while Uncle Tom is a full-grown man who ought to know better. However, before we condemn these characters cursed by the gods, it is worthwhile to consider Albert Camus’ interpretation of the fate of Sisyphus, and, by extension, of others like him: “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a human heart. One must imagine that Sisyphus is happy.” (Le Mythe de Sisyphe, 1942)
It could be argued that “Noah” would be a more apt title than “Icarus” inasmuch as the end of the world is imminent, and Uncle Tom is the only one who has been told. It would be ironic to compare Uncle Tom, the complete failure who is only interested in saving his own skin, to Noah, the mythical hero who saves both man and the animal kingdom from destruction. At any rate, there are some significant departures from the original Icarus myth: it is Daedalus, Icarus’ father, who builds Icarus’ wings — Uncle Tom makes his own wings; Daedalus is a master craftsman, and the wings he makes are in good working order — Uncle Tom’s wings are never in good working order; Icarus is a captive of King Minos on Crete — Uncle Tom is a free man; Icarus comes to grief while escaping danger due to over-confidence — Uncle Tom knows the end of the world hasn’t occurred but doesn’t want to have to admit he is wrong; Icarus has somewhere to escape to, the Greek mainland — Uncle Tom fails to state where he is hoping to land. And yet, when we consider the essential image — both Icarus and Uncle Tom crash as the result of an act of rebellion while flying on home-made wings — then the parallel is a compelling one. The common elements of trying to escape danger, overestimating one’s powers and ending up crashing on man-made wings are sufficient to persuade us that Uncle Tom is a modern-day Icarus.
Another reason why the large number of significant departures from the Icarus myth need not worry us unduly is that while the Icarus myth is a tragedy — he dies — this short story about Uncle Tom is a comedy — he breaks a leg. The moral of the Icarus myth is that we should not get carried away by success: in “Icarus” the moral is that we should not get carried away by failure — a comic moral, perhaps, but with tragic undertones, with the narrator calling man’s life on earth a “long rambling incoherent tragic comic fiction” (p.79, ll. 2-3). Thus the failure of the narrator to be faithful to the Icarus myth is in keeping with the theme of the short story: ambivalence and a sense of life as “tragic comic”. Bella supports her husband, but only under protest. Although we can only guess what the narrator really thinks of Uncle Tom, he seems, like Bella, to have mixed feelings about him. He does not think Uncle Tom is helping himself by his actions, yet he tolerates them and thus encourages the reader to do likewise.
While “The Wheel” has a third-person narrator, in “Icarus” Uncle Tom’s nephew is the first-person narrator. This suits a more light-hearted narrative style. The punch-line in “The Wheel” — “What a man for eggs!” — is hilarious because it is in such contrast to the lugubriousness of the rest of the story. In “Icarus” the humour is explicit from the outset: “There are some folks who take a great delight in prophesying the end of the world.” This is a joke in itself, that people should take “great delight” in what is, of course, the most awful scenario they can envision. More overt comedy follows soon afterwards: “We had spent a very pleasant evening round the fire, talking about shipwrecks, tinkers and storms.” (p.77, ll.11-13) Again misfortune is described as a source of great amusement. This idea is echoed near the end of the story when the narrator visits his uncle in hospital: “He was very cheerful.” (p.81, ll.1-2) Likewise, when we hear about Bella’s “riotous spate of gossip”, it starts with positive news — “what couples were getting married” — but ends with negative news — “and what boys had got summonses for running their bikes without licenses” — so that we are no longer quite so sure just how good the news in the middle was — “and what girls were having babies”. (p.77, ll.25-28)
This anomaly of being joyful about distress is only one of several ironies, viz. Madame Roberta’s Aberdeen accent, which is incompatible with her exotic name; Bella’s hypocrisy in being happy to go along with Uncle Tom’s projects until it is displayed openly to their neighbours (“It was all right when he used to sit quietly in the ben room waiting for the trump to blow.” p.80, ll.11-12); the description of Uncle Tom’s foolhardy leap from the roof as “his moment of splendid rebellion” (p.80, l.26); Uncle Tom’s politically incorrect description of the Indian as “a darkie” (p.81, l.3), repeated blithely by the narrator in the next line (“This darkie…”). Fittingly, the ending supplies the most deliberate irony of the whole story; ironically sympathising with Uncle Tom’s uncertainty about his next prediction, “whether it’ll be five past four in the morning or ten to eight at night” (p.81, ll.14-15), the narrator concludes: “Apart from that, he’s getting along as well as can be expected.” The heavy underlying irony here subverts the narrator’s dead-pan delivery, and we can only interpret this as the narrator showing us how ridiculous Uncle Tom is. Uncle Tom’s antics are described as if they were the actions of a rational man, but we know they are not.
The narrator’s ridicule of Uncle Tom never seems to get nasty, however, not least because he also directs his barbs of irony towards Bella and even himself. The most obvious instance of the latter is his hypocrisy in having Madame Roberta tell his fortune when he has told us that he doesn’t hold “with all that nonsense” (p.77, l.20). But there are also many other comic effects that help to make the ridiculing of Uncle Tom seem relatively harmless, for example the colourful bird/animal imagery throughout: “Bella clucked disapprovingly…” (p.77, l.17); “Bella herded me into the straw chair…” (p.77, ll.22-23); “The last haddock tail went flying from her scissors.” (p.77, l.30); “It had taken Bella most of the morning to get him harnessed” (p.80, l.5); and the description of the wrecked wings as “a strange discarded chrysalis” (p.79, l.27).
This imagery ties in well both with Uncle Tom’s flying project and with the centrepiece of the story, the Dounby Show, which is a celebration of the farmyard animals that are so important for the existence of a small, rural community. In the description of the Show we can find a strong sense of what Mikhail Bakhtin calls ‘the carnival life’, where the hierarchy of everyday social life is disrupted and all beings can associate with each other as equals: “Among the animals wander the laird with his deerstalker and shooting-stick, and Sam the tinker, and everyone else in between.” (p.78, ll.25-7) Here the narrator has switched to the present tense, legitimately so, as he is describing an annual event, but he also cleverly manages to depict the Show as an eternal, timeless event.
The spectacle of the Dounby Show is itself a carnival element, and in fact a carnival spirit pervades the whole story. According to Bakhtin, the most important feature of carnival is the carnival crowning and decrowning, where the village idiot is made king for a day and then robbed of his crown at the end of it. So here we have Uncle Tom standing proudly up on his roof, the king of the castle, only to land in “a wild disorder of legs and canvas and outraged fluttering hens” (p.80, ll.30-31). By comparing plain old Uncle Tom to the mythological Icarus the narrator is actually mocking Uncle Tom mercilessly, and yet, in some strange way he is also honouring him. This sublime mockery is underlined by a minor dramatic event just before Uncle Tom jumps off the roof: “A seagull lighted for a moment on the canvas tip of Uncle Tom’s right wing.” (p.80, ll.16-17) Here George Mackay Brown is asking us to picture a ridiculous and yet exalted moment of carnival life. And the contrast of the seagull — and an Uncle Tom that actually can fly — with the hens — and an Uncle Tom that cannot — is a striking one.
Mistaken identity is also a feature of Bakhtin’s notion of carnival, and just as the narrator is mistaken for a farmer by Madame Roberta, so Uncle Tom mistakenly imagines he can fly, like Bottom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We can also perhaps discern the narrator’s discreet confession to over-indulgence when he tells us he cycled to the croft “when inn and marquee closed and the last drunkard went home under the moon” (p.79, ll.21-22). Who is this “last drunkard”? The narrator himself? He admits soon afterwards that he has “the tang of ale on his palate”. (p.79, l.32)
Other carnival elements identified by Bakhtin present here include excess (the drinking at the Dounby Show), obsession (Uncle Tom’s), philosophical flights of fancy (the narrator’s musings), fantastic contrasts (the “darkie” saying “Sugar!”), and carnival opposites (Uncle Tom and Bella). There is also a carnival contrast between concrete time (Uncle Tom’s watch on the roof, and the alarm clock in the house) and imagined time (the dates when doom will fall). And, as so often in Mackay Brown’s stories, there are elements of the fairy-tale, which is also a genre saturated with carnival. Here the number three is significant. There are three main characters: the narrator, Uncle Tom and Bella. The narrator also makes three visits to Uncle Tom and Bella. First he visits them together (on the Sunday), then separately but on the same occasion (on the Wednesday), and finally separately on two different occasions. There are also the nine parishes that meet together at the Dounby Show, the three calves that the narrator’s supposed cow is to give birth to, and the three ploughmen standing on “the darkie”.
Carnival delights in ambivalence, and thus the message of “Icarus” is an ambivalent one. It shows us that there are other ways of treating a madman than bullying him or simply pretending not to notice. Tact and a sense of humour would seem to be important qualities. And we should not be afraid to compromise; otherwise we are no better than the madmen ourselves. And yet the uncompromising nature of George Mackay Brown’s heavy, tongue-in-cheek irony suggests that there is a deeper message, that we should believe in something and be willing to stand up for those beliefs.
If we were to look for a more serious message here behind all the fun and games, then it is useful to remember that George Mackay Brown has often been very critical of modern technology (e.g. in “The Wireless Set”, also in A Time to Keep and Other Stories). Therefore it is by no means far-fetched to see Uncle Tom as a symbol of modern civilisation and modern technology, and thus the whole story as an appeal to us to distrust the belief that we can save ourselves from disaster by inventing new devices. Daedalus constructs a labyrinth he later has to escape from, and he only succeeds in doing so at a great price. Likewise, we have created a society that we want to escape from, but perhaps we will not be able to do so without some similar, terrible loss.
In literature it is never wise to try to force a message down the reader’s throat; if it is too easy for the reader to put a finger on the message then the work is more propaganda than it is literature. It is a joy to read work you can feel is persuading you to a certain point of view without being able to label that point of view as anything but a call for tolerance and insight.
