The Passenger, Cormac McCarthy, author; MacLoed Andrews, Julia Whelan, narrators
Bobby Western and his sister Alicia/Alice had an illicit love for each other which condemned them both to live a life of misery. Mental illness complicated Alice’s life early on, and also complicated Bobby’s, though much later on. She was the smarter of the two, regarding math and numbers, but he was the more stable. Neither fulfilled their intellectual promise because of circumstances they created, that may or may not have been beyond their control. However, they made choices that altered the trajectory of their lives.
The Passenger is about Bobby and, of course, it includes memories and anecdotes about his sister, Alicia. I read Stella Maris first. It was probably a mistake, since it colored and complicated my comprehension of “The Passenger”. I advise readers to read “The Passenger” first, as was intended by the author. Stella Maris is about Alicia and her inability to live in the real world. She is so bright, but she understands she has an affliction that she is unable to control, nor does she seem to want to control it. She disregards her medications because she dreads their side effects. Without them, she has visions/hallucinations, which are very real to her. She is brighter than her doctors, so bright that the world disappoints her. She doesn’t desire life. She is in love with her brother.
Bobby is older than she is, and he is wiser in his own way. Her mental challenges pain him. At first, he makes decisions based on common sense and proper decorum. After he leaves school and stops studying physics, he finds a pot of gold, courtesy of his grandmother. He shares it with his sister, who was only 16. She buys a valuable violin. Bobby, who was only in his early 20’s, and Alicia had both given up their studies. Their attempt to further their education disappointed them. The educators could not satisfy their needs. Bobby becomes a race car driver, and then he becomes a deep-sea diver for a recovery company. Alicia falters and eventually goes to Stella Maris, presumably to escape from her reality and to get help.
Meanwhile, after a dive to search a submerged plane, Bobby and his partner discover something is missing from the plane and so is a passenger. That, and his father’s past, seems to haunt him, and although he seems to have no idea why, it puts him on the FBI’s list for investigation. Then he suddenly is investigated by the IRS, as well, since his lifestyle doesn’t comport with his income. He is forced to make decisions he may regret. He seemingly has no idea why these events have put him in this nefarious spotlight, but he has to escape. Both Bobby and Alicia eventually find themselves in situations in which they have no control and which greatly and negatively impact their lives. They are always running away. Their grief and loneliness haunt them without resolution.
Bobby rejected his incestuous feelings for his sister while she embraced hers. She wanted them to live together. He refused and carried a torch his entire life for his forbidden love. At one point in Bobby’s life, after Alicia is no longer present, he has a vision. He has his own hallucination of one of her “imaginary” friends that she has told him about. The kid, a result of the fertility drug thalidomide, comes to visit him too. Did the “imaginary” guests help them both to deal with their shame about their affection for each other, their guilt about their father’s work to develop the bomb, their shared dissatisfaction with the way their lives turned out. Could there have been another healthier outcome?
Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorite authors. His sentence structure is easy to follow, but his narrative demands that the reader think and not read mindlessly. There are so many philosophical questions raised that demand answers, and I don't pretend to have the answers, or to have understood every concept presented, or to have known every name raised in this book, but I enjoyed reading it as it made me really contemplate my own life and aspirations, my own decisions and their outcomes. Still, the time line moved back and forth and the characters also bounced back and forth, which made it a little harder to follow. I felt like Bobby and Alicia, who were trapped by the system, the one within their own minds and the one within the outside world with all of its bureaucracy and rules.
Have you ever been in that position? Have I ever been in that position? Yes, at times. I think we are all forced to make choices based on the world in which we live, even if it hurts us, and the company Amazon, has trapped me in a hopeless situation, regarding book reviews, without any recourse. However, that is a tale for another time. We are all in danger from the power of the government’s bureaucracy and the power of the bureaucracy of private and public companies, in our private and public lives. The book’s message to me is that we had all better start to pay more attention to our lives and our place in the world around us.
This book is so creative; it will excite every reader’s imagination. One reviewer, James Wood of the New Yorker, likened the characters to passengers traveling on life’s journey, which is pertinent to the very title of the book. It seemed to me to be a very astute observation.