i just wanted to pass along praise for Solitaire. i loved the cover, and while it’s true that you can’t judge a book by its cover, your words ended up in my hands and in my head because of the art. amen for that.
i’m not a big sci-fi reader, but i was cruising through the pages, and then one line nailed me like a Mack truck. the line about wanting to be in Snow’s arms spoke so much to me about humanity and existence, and how a lover can have such influence and healing, be a haven. that line alone made it clear that i’d finish the book, and i ended up reading cover to cover that night.
being much more of a romantic than a sci-fi fan, it was the words about Snow and Jackal and the way they cared about and understood each other that were my favorites. your words were familiar and the ache for their relationship to survive is like the ache i have for my future and the possibility of love like that.
thanks for sharing your talents, and for using your talents to share emotion, compassion, intelligence, humanity, independence and togetherness, etc etc etc!
can’t wait for more,
maria
Thanks very much. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
I find it challenging to write about love. I think it depends on describing small and sometimes inherently uninteresting moments in ways that reflect the greater whole, like building a pinhole camera to watch an eclipse. It seems to me that often writers choose to focus on the Big Moments of love, but in life (at least, in mine) those are only about 10% of the package – the rest is daily, built primarily, as Jackal describes it, on the dozen hourly acts of will that bind people together. Those are the bones of love. It’s hard enough to write honestly and well about the beginning of love, or the end: but writing about persistence of love is, I think, a very particular and delicate skill. Something to keep working on, for sure. I will be a Happy Writer when I can write that well.
Having said all that, of course the Big Moments – where the foundation either holds, or not – are part of any story. Much of what interests me as a writer boils down to examining moments of choice, and even when the choice seems small it can still be a big moment. The things that drive our choices are so varied. There are a million stories there.
I wasn’t sure as I was writing Solitaire that Jackal and Snow would be together after VC. I didn’t make that decision until very shortly before I wrote the scene where Jackal finds Snow outside Shangri-La. It was hard to write about their saying goodbye (in the phone call just before Jackal goes into VC) and to think that it might be true. I’m glad it wasn’t.
The choice about whether to have Snow come to the NNA was really, at base, a fundamental decision of whether to write a book about the presence or absence of hope. I decided that it was a braver choice, as well as a happier one, to have them try to work things out. It can be hard to sustain hope. It’s a choice that has to be made over and over again – I think will plays a greater part than disposition in the choice (well, I believe that about almost every choice, but that’s my bias). I believe the courage to hope is a quintessentially human thing.
I don’t know if I’m a romantic or not. I don’t believe that romantic love conquers all – I think in many cases it just makes life damn complicated. And I don’t understand people who think that bad love is better than no love at all. I think some people don’t know how to love, and that some people love each other but are not good together. Feelings aren’t enough, no matter how intense. The persistence of love depends on doing as well as feeling. I do believe with all my heart that this kind of love (and lover) can be a haven, a fortress, a greenhouse, a grand adventure, and the best story in the world.
It took me many years to understand the difference between all those different kinds of love and ways in which people can or cannot stay together.
Will is a tricky beast. When I reread Solitaire, I thought that Jackal’s strong will is what gets her into so much trouble to begin with. In the elevator, for example. Her will (to help, to prove herself capable, to live up to her –and the world’s– ridiculously high expectations and demands) is what puts her in a position to push the button. Of course, it also allows her to endure, survive and grow.
Now, if you had put that enormous will and the wrong kind of love together (which seemed to be the case with Tiger and Jackal, who did love each other but were wrong together) it would have been a book about despair. I’m glad Snow and Jackal had hope instead.
Yes, you’re absolutely right about how will is both a strength and weakness for Jackal.
And you’re also right about the won’t-work love between Tiger and Jackal. In all the conversations I’ve had with readers about the book, you’re the first person who has ever chosen to comment on that, so thank you. Of all the web who died, Tiger is the one whose death mattered most to me. I love all my characters, but some of them burn more brightly for me than others…
I wonder if other readers feel sympathetic or loathsome toward Tiger. Or both. He was a pretty strong character in my personal reading. It took me a while to figure out what was stirring in me.
I think I spent a lot of pages wishing Ko would just lock him up or send him away so he’d stop getting Jackal all worked up. And that the whole web should just stop talking to him. I felt he was a class-A jerk for saying, “I can’t believe I’m fucking the Hope of the whole bloody world,” when they were supposed to be making love and having their vulnerable moment together. Ugh, I wanted to make his face be just as bloody as the world would after an impact with a comet. Or something.
Once he was in the elevator, I liked him again all of a sudden. I felt really sad for him and Jackal. I wanted to hug them both. And I realized it was love between them. It was powerful and they didn’t know how to handle it and they were going about it all wrong and it would destroy them. It reminded me of a boyfriend I once had. I think I felt all those things for him. I loved him but when we were together I also wanted to punch him in the face almost half of the time.
There are very few people (including characters in fiction) that I’ve felt like punching in the face. I can count them with the fingers of one hand. And Tiger is among them. It’s too bad for him and Jackal that he had to die that way.
I felt for Tiger and the pain he felt around his love for Jackal, but I didnât like the way he acted out because of it. Although Jackal hurt him, it still annoyed me that he reacted so childishly. Once he opened up to her in the elevator, my sympathies were totally with him.
It didnât bother me that the details of the cause of the accident were never spelled out â the whole Steel Breeze thing; I got it that probably it was terrorism. That was clearly not the point and didnât matter to me so much. I think that I immediately let Jackal off the hook despite the fact it was clearly indicated that she was in some way partially, accidentally responsible; I consciously ignored the obvious clues indicating her culpability. I told myself that it was Tiger who told her to push that button because he knew something about the system; she had to do it, and of course the whole thing was set up for their deaths anyway. I know sheâd been drinking, etc, but I wanted her to be guilt-free, so I willfully interpreted it that way. Guilt is such a waste. I bet Iâm not the only reader like that. And yes, it was a bit of a shock to find out later there were all of those other people/children involved as well, but I’d already made up my mind.
Just the loss of all those people she clearly loved was enough to deal with.
I think I wouldâve been pissed if Snow and Jackal werenât trying to work it out in the end; we donât know if they will make it, but at least they get a shot at it/have the courage to try. I think that one can be a romantic and not believe that love conquers all. I think Iâm probably a bit of a romantic, but I am well aware that love, no matter how good or how deeply felt, does not conquer all. Sometimes itâs that people arenât really good for each other, and /or sometimes it may be that the timing is just not right for those two lives to mesh.
Yes, Tiger felt childish and winy, too. But boys and girls in hopeless love scenarios are prone to act that way. I’m glad he got punched in the face for it. 🙂 Oh, I’m mean today, aren’t I? Wait until you read how I feel about Jackal and the button…
Hm, I guess readers are inclined to absolve the protagonists. I’m not. Getting back on their feet is a much greater accomplishment after they’ve done everything wrong, pined over terrible things, forgave themselves for unforgivable things they’ll never forget.
The minute Jackal pulled her Hope card on the control-room people, I thought, “Uh-oh, she walks into a nuclear plant that’s about to blow up thinking she can save the day with good intentions.” I kept giving her advice, “Don’t touch anything, You can talk to people. That’s what you do. You’re usually good at it. So talk. Just don’t touch anything. Keep your hands to yourself.” But she pushed that button. Even though she couldn’t read it properly!
Jackal killed so many people. The fact that she didn’t mean to doesn’t make it better. She still left hundreds of families childless or orphaned or widowed. There’s a saying in Mexico that goes something like, “Beware of the good ones, because the evil ones are easy to spot and stop.” And, “sometimes it helps more if you don’t get in the way.”
On top of things, Jackal was drunk. Would someone remove the blame from a drunk-driver just because they didn’t mean to run over and kill a group of kids who were crossing the road? Probably not in a hundred years. Even if their own child was one of the five who died. It makes us feel sorry for them, but they are still guilty. The minute they chose to drunk-drive, they ignored their limits and made themselves Disaster’s pawns.
Yes, Tiger and Jackal were young, but that doesn’t excuse vindictive behavior.
You’re right, Karina, the kind of drunken behavior that kills people is inexcusable. I didn’t interpret or don’t remember Jackal as being drunk, definitely somewhat impaired, but not that it was the key element in what she did. The way I remember it is that Tiger told her to push the button, and she did it. No one was there and someone had to do something. She did the best she could in that moment.
Maybe I wanted/want to ignore her culpability because that would be an unforgivable act in my mind. Maybe I wanted to forgive her, and that’s the way I did it; blinding myself to the facts.
I am reminded of the kinds of mistakes doctors can make. They make a decision that they think is correct at the time and someone dies. Later they realize they were so tired they made the wrong decision or forgot a key piece of information, or just plain made a guess and it was wrong. They have to function at times when they are severely sleep deprived or overworked and stressed, and they have to make the best choice they can in the moment. When they make a mistake is it forgivable?
Jennifer, the doctor analogy is very good. I guess you could look at it that way. And then Ko and society at large would be to blame for placing so much responsibility on one poor young soul. I did feel that to some degree, which allowed me to remain on Jackal’s side.
Really enjoying this, thanks. It’s the most extensive conversation I’ve ever seen on the nature of Jackal’s responsibility for the elevators.
I wanted to come as close as I could to what I think of as true accident, the confluence of personalities and events and timing and random factors that lead to mistakes, that conspire to make Jackal “Disaster’s Pawn” (nice phrase).
It’s always interested me that people will perform all kinds of reading acrobatics to absolve Jackal of responsibility (Jennifer, you are by no means alone in that!) Even most reviewers did it, people from whom I would expect a more detached reading. It’s as if there’s some kind of “rule” that protagonists can’t make stupid mistakes with irredeemable consequences…. but I think that’s exactly what Jackal did.
As for Jackal and Tiger, well,Tiger is so young, and such a boy… I’ve always thought his comment to Jackal in the middle of sex was incredibly poorly-chosen, but meant to be a completely genuine expression of you are so amazing and special and here you are with me. But you know, however people read it is valid, because in fact it’s the kind of thing that people in that situation would interpret/react to in all kinds of different ways.
Or Karina, maybe it’s that no one is to blame, not society, not any one person. Maybe sometimes that’s just how the cookie crumbles. Maybe it was just an accident.
I started to say that accidents don’t lead to mistakes, they are just accidents. I think of an accident as something that has no cause, but of course it would have an effect. But do mistakes lead to accidents? Cars collide – someone made some kind of driving error/mistake. You are walking along and a brick falls off a building and hits you; someone fucked up with construction or maintenance. Here’s a total accident. You are walking along and a tree limb falls on your head. Was your mistake walking under a tree?
That elevator scene was not really an accident in my mind; those terrorists bastards caused it; they are the ones that actually sabotaged the elevators. Not Jackal, not Tiger, not Ko. They all contributed to putting Jackal in that position, and yes it was up to her to react/perform. But in my mind she did not kill them, she just did not save them.
People die and sometimes someone did something to cause that to happen sooner than expected.
Why do you think people do not want the protagonist to be guilty? Maybe it’s because we want to believe that life is easier/prettier than it is. Maybe because we want to absolve ourselves of guilt.
Maybe that’s why I wanted to believe Jackal was innocent. I wanted to believe that I am innocent.
Ah, but this is fiction, and to paraphrase the goddess of this blog: I get to read Solitaire any way I want.. Ha! I have enough direct experience with mistakes/accidents in real life.
Oh, and I think there is plenty of guilt left over for Jackal as “Disaster’s Pawn” (yes, very nice phrase). Tons of guilt in just surviving and knowing that if she had performed better, she could have saved them. That was her only failure. In not being the best Jackal she could’ve been had she been alert and not all twisted up inside. Then maybe she could’ve saved them. But hell, she was just along for the ride, why shouldn’t she have been drunk? She wasn’t designated driver or anything. They dragged her along.
Am I protesting too much? Still trying to wiggle out of that responsibility……
🙂 No, you’re not protesting too much. I’m enjoying this conversation, and it looks like Kelley is, too. So let’s keep at it until it’s closing time and we get kicked out.
I think I have a high sense of responsibility when I’m placed in charge of other people. Which is probably why I ended up doing more production and boss work in film than I would have liked. People liked to work with me because they knew that if the client scammed us and didn’t pay, I’d write every person in the crew a check from my personal account. People knew that if things went wrong, I was comfortable with being the villain in the story. If people went around spreading nasty bits of gossip about evil Karina, I would usually let them. I was in charge, which meant I was the drip-tray.
I can blame it on my parents, if it makes me more of a likable protagonist for this story. I’m the eldest of three, and my mom always told me that my sister and brother were my responsibility. I was to set the example. If they failed, it was either because they’d been following my example or because I wasn’t keeping a good eye on them. If something bad happened in the house when I was in charge, it was my fault. She didn’t even need to ask what happened. And I knew it and came to accept it.
So, yeah… that’s how I read protagonists who are in a position of responsibility and influence. If they walk into shit they can’t handle, it’s their fault for not knowing where the turning point was. They still have my sympathy, but they aren’t absolved from owning up to the part they played in the accident.
Well, I get the impression this joint is open all night, and from the looks of the times on your post on this in the wee hours of the morning, I’m not sure I can keep up with you, Karina (grin), but I’m enjoying it too.
I’m not exactly a ducking responsibility kind of person either, but I think we’re talking about something different here than the kind of responsibility you mention.
We are talking about a life and death situation. I respectfully suggest that I don’t think one can know exactly how one will act unless/until in such a situation. I think she did step up to the plate, she just wasn’t able to save them.
So you are saying that Jackal, as The Hope, was in a position of responsibility? Influence, I grant you, but responsibility in that situation, no – I disagree. I don’t remember what the job of Hope specifically entailed, but it was mainly about hope wasn’t it? Not about being commander of the web type of thing. Although certainly she was supposed to be a role model, and even though she hadn’t even officially started the job yet, she had been enjoying privileges and responsibilities.
Are you saying that as Hope she was never supposed to drink? Or that she should not have touched anything in the control room? Stood by and watched as they all died anyway while doing nothing?
I’m not interested in letting all protaganists off the hook, but in this case I am. As I said, I think her failure was not in killing them, but in not saving them.
I can only repeat myself now. I don’t think it was irresponsible of her to drink in that situation. She was socializing, not on duty. I think her stress and her acrophobia contributed as much as the alcohol to her fuzzy brain. And even tho her brain was fuzzy, she still did what she thought was best. Do you think she pushed the wrong button because of her fuzziness or because Tiger told her the wrong button? I don’t know. Maybe Kelley will tell us.
Kelley do you think it was a mistake because she pushed the wrong button or because she pushed any button? Because she was fuzzy-headed and read the button wrong?
Ok, I admit that she pushed the wrong button. People died.
What I donât admit is that pushing that button was wrong. It was the best choice she could make given the situation in that moment. She did not walk into the situation, it was thrust upon her. (both with the elevator and as The Hope) The elevator was falling; she could push a button or not. I do think that would engender guilt in most people — including myself. I think the reason that it is forgivable is all of the reasons Iâve already said. She did not sabotage those elevators and cram the people in them.
How could she have avoided pushing the wrong button? Not been upset by what was happening in her life, not drinking, not going in that elevator with her phobia, doing nothing in the control room? Not listening to Tiger? All of those things were a mistake then. She was trying to fulfill her duty by going with them on that trip.
I think doing nothing wouldâve been unforgivable, not doing what she did. I think that the mistake of doing nothing would be worse than that of doing the best one can do. I think it took a lot of courage to push that button.
It was a mistake in the sense that is was the wrong button. But that does not mean that their deaths were her fault.
Circumstances matter. Itâs not the twinkie defense, it is common sense.
I think she should have talked to the people in the elevators and tried to call someone else for help when the tech people didn’t return. Give the ones trapped in the elevator hope in those minutes of terror, which she did fine for a while. But then she chose to ignore her limits and take a very dangerous gamble.
Tiger asked her, —Solitaire excerpt follows—
“Can you read Chinese Traditional characters?”
“Some.” Not very well, but she didn’t tell him that. If she was the web’s best hope of action right now, she wouldn’t undermine their confidence in her.
[…]
She peered at the screen: the resolution was grainy and it was hard to keep track of all the characters. If we get out of this okay, I’ll never drink again, I promise,
—end of excerpt—
She withheld valuable information about her qualifications from Tiger, who could have been more careful with his directions. Or maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference given the circumstances. But still, she chose not to express how unqualified she was. She was so intoxicated/scared/etc that she couldn’t even read the screen properly. And she was well aware of that.
I have a good example on how responsibility plays in my brain, but I’ll come back later. My honey is waiting for me with a movie and chips.
The techs had already called the service bureau – the experts. Now I’ve got my copy out. You must’ve seen Tiger’s next line, ” Maybe some is all we need.” …. She began to recite commands, pausing to describe the characters she didn’t recognize so that he could translate. —
She doesn’t pretend she can read things she can’t, she describes them to him. But the next part is where it’s gets sketchy, imo. -” the resolution was grainy and it was hard to keep track of all the characters.” —
Maybe she misread the button. She pushes the button, and it falls. We don’t really know if it was the button Tiger intended or she pushed a different one. He could’ve been wrong – he knew the background system, not the elevators.
Jackal will never know if she pushed the one Tiger intended. I’m not sure that part matters that much. She did the best she could at that moment. She gave them the best hope they had by trying to do something.
I don’t think that drinking in that situation is the same as getting in a car and driving.
Ok, you’ll come back later.
Oh, we know she pressed the wrong button because she misread it. Tiger told her to press the “Engage backup system” and she pressed the opposite one. Flip a few pages forward and you’ll read:
—Solitaire excerpt begins—
The security audio record feed had inexplicably failed in the control room and in the elevators, but the control room video clearly showed her dismissing one of the attendants, commandeering the console, and activating the “Disengage backup system” command.
—end of excerpt—
Chinese is a very difficult language to learn. Even native speakers have a hard time reading their characters. Enter a Western tourist with impaired capabilities due to stress (and whatever else) who thinks she can do a better job than the experts. She may have, but it would have been like tossing a coin, given the circumstances.
And this is how the obsessive mind of a translator works when it encounters words and story…
Now, my example on how I read responsibility is also from my film days. This happened to me once:
Our gaffer got electrocuted during production. We were lucky, and instead of him sticking to the power source and frying to death, he was thrown into the air and landed a few feet away from the sparkling outlet. I asked him if he was feeling okay. He said, “Yeah.” I listened to his heart and asked him again, asked him to really pay attention. He said, “Maybe shaky and like my heart skips and races.” But he wanted to keep working, because his rent was due the next day and he was counting on the cash he’d collect by the end of our shooting session. I’m not a physician, but I do have a sense of what an electric discharge can do to a heart. So I told him I’d pay him full hours and drove him to the hospital. The experts decided to keep him overnight just in case. It turned out that his heart had entered into a slight arrhythmia, but as the hours passed, the condition got worse and his heart went on overdrive and finally shut down. Because he was at the hospital, they just jump-started him again and he was fine.
Now, let’s assume that after he’d said he did feel shaky but wanted to keep working, someone else in the crew suggested that his heart could still fail. But the gaffer, knowing he needed the money, had begged me to keep him on the job. And I really needed my gaffer there. The director needs the gaffer there. The director of photography needs the gaffer there. So I decide to ignore the person suggesting I take him to the hospital. Hell, if the gaffer wants to work, let him work. I should support my crew. Tiger tells me to push the button and I don’t know if it’s the right button. I have my doubts, but he’s the one in the elevator, so I press it because the clock is ticking and I’m under a lot of stress. A few hours later, my gaffer dies. Was it my fault? Hm… I wouldn’t go to jail for it. The terrorist element were the badly-maintained cables that shorted on him. He chose to stay on the job. But I was the one who called the shots. I was the one who ignored that voice telling me I didn’t know enough to take responsible action. I am at least partly responsible for his death.
And all this goes on in my head whenever I’m in charge of other people. Which is part of why I don’t work in film anymore. And why, at least for the next couple of years, I’d sooner take a job flipping burgers than a position that requires me to shoulder a considerable amount of responsibility for others.
My example is not as drastic as causing elevators carrying hundreds of people to drop into certain death. But it’s a similar decision-making process. Sometimes good decisions depend not on what you know, but on being able to acknowledge what you don’t know and looking for someone who does.
I think the corporate world is highly delusional and neurotic. Leaders are expected to make complex decisions on the fly. If they really sat down and considered the ramifications of their actions, they’d probably be paralyzed. And that is assuming they have high moral standards to begin with. Performance in key positions usually depends on leaders remaining somewhat oblivious of the negative consequences of their choices. That’s why all the buffers are set in place: lawyers, liability insurance, etc. They just have to trail ahead and don’t look back.
Jackal had been raised by that crazy corporate world, yet had managed to retain the conscience that told her she’d committed an unforgivable mistake. I think I would have been dissatisfied if she had pleaded innocent. Innocent if the charge was murder, yes, but definitely guilty of manslaughter. She should have still been sentenced with the severity of Solitaire. I even think her sentence was surprisingly short considering the disastrous consequences of her choice to take action. She carried her personal hell, sure, but she should. That’s not justice. That’s just life. She was guilty on several counts of manslaughter. And 437 lives is a really high count for anyone to bear, regardless of the shade of red you want to color that blood in, it’s still all blood on her hands.
Jennifer, I think you and I deserve an A+ for our discussion. If only English courses were this stimulating.
Kelley, do you still think you could have written the elevator scene better? I’m getting a feeling that great fiction makes people keep thinking and wanting to discuss the story even after they’ve turned the last page. And the more I dig up the evidence you wrote into your scene, the more I see the answers to those questions us readers keep asking you to clarify.
Ok, well maybe, but this is about more than just the button. Even if she pushed a different button than he said (he was translating for her), everything else I said still holds true in my mind. AND, we know that she did not actually dismiss the attendants and commandeer the console, so the report of the video is suspect.
We still know that Steel Breeze orchestrated the whole thing; sabotaged the elevators, overloaded them, and killed at least one attendant. Later they even claimed they did it.
Western tourist? Well, Jackal is not Asian, but Ko is a multi-national corp, and Tiger is Chinese. I don’t think that she is ‘western’ in the sense that we are western. Although she had been there many times, she did mention feeling uncomfortable or something in Hong Kong, but they couldn’t have lived too far from there since it was a train ride away (p.86). I don’t think Chinese was as foreign to her as it is to me. I don’t think she thought she could do better than the experts, but there were no experts available…..
Not being a translator or a writer, I feel free to interpret the words for the feeling I believe is there. Sometimes I wonder how we are able to communicate at all since different words have such different connotations for various people.
Anyway, as I said, I think these details are somewhat peripheral to the point of mistake/fault/guilt that I was trying to make.
And substitute “sparkling” for “sparking”. Plus other typos. I must re-caffeinate my system.
Ok, I wrote that before I saw your second response.
That’s a good example you have there. You made an excellent decision in putting your gaffer’s health and life above the production.
Jackal’s decision was different in that she did not have the time or options that you did. She had a split second to make a choice about people she loved dearly. Tiger was not just in the elevator, he was well versed on the systems being used to run the elevators.
Also we know that those people would’ve died no matter what Jackal did. But Jackal didn’t know that.
I have a personal example as well, but it is lengthy; I’m not sure I want to get into it here, but I’ll think about it. It doesn’t really matter because my points are the same. But it would be disingenuous of me at this point not to at least mention it. The funny thing is I never thought about how similar my thing was to this particular aspect of Jackal’s situation until you responded to my comments today.
Thanks, Jennifer 🙂 I really enjoyed this.
I’m sorry to hear you had to go through something similar in your life. That’s also the beauty of great fiction, there’s a part of us that resonates with the story on the page. It offers us a haven for our vulnerabilities to be placed in the spotlight and that very action of seeing is a transformation. In the words of Samuel Johnson, “The true aim of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
Well, ditto, Karina.
I see your points, and maybe I’d agree with you if my own experience didn’t cloud my thinking. Maybe. I just think it’s a very grey area.
That’s a good quote, and certainly what both Kelley and Nicola’s writing have done for me.
Yes, human existence seems to move perpetually within that grey area.
I think I have a better analogy for the elevator incident. I am walking down the street with my best friend. We’ve been drinking all night and don’t notice when we wander into a dark alley. The next thing I know is that there’s a guy pointing a gun at my friend. Stuff happens and the guy shoots my companion in the gut and runs away. Since I live around the corner, I get my car, drag my bleeding friend onto the backseat and rush to the hospital. I’m drunk and scared and aware that the life of my dear one is hanging from every second that goes by, so I step on the gas. It happens to be Halloween and a group of kids are trick-or-treating. They cross the street right in front of me and I hit them before swerving and smashing head-on into a tree. End result: five kids are dead. My friend is dead from the combined effects of the gunshot and the car crash.
Am I to be held responsible for those deaths even if I acted out of a compelling need and will to save my best friend’s life? Let’s say that the author of this little scene tells you that my best friend would have died anyway if I’d called and waited for an ambulance. Let’s say the author also tells you that those kids had “death” stamped all over them and would have been hit by some other drunk-driver. Even if I was doing what I judged best given the situation once the gun had been fired by a third party, the fact is I made a mistake. I’d still be guilty of manslaughter on six counts.
In my mind, the fact that Jackal decided to gamble and assume such a big role in the tragedy doesn’t make her a hero and worthy of absolution. But I didn’t grow up in the US. The fact that so many other readers wanted to redeem Jackal tells me it’s a cultural thing. I believe our respective societies, experiences and upbringings have programmed us with different expectations and notions about what it means to be up to the challenge and what it means to bite off more than we can chew.
Yes, in that scenario, I would say that you would be guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
I donât think that Jackal is a hero either; I just think that what she did took courage. I think that if she had pushed the correct button, she wouldâve been hailed as a hero, if theyâd all managed to somehow escape the terrorists after that.
Weâve kinda gotten away from the original comments here with all of this. The fact is that Kelley does tell us in the story that Jackal is at fault â that she made a mistake that led to their deaths. This is clearly indicated in the book, and Jackal accepts that she is at fault. Iâve said from the beginning that the writing was clear on that, and that I did willfully choose to misinterpret. We agree on that.
Kelley has basically said that she wrote it that way so that she could explore how a person deals with everything that happened to Jackal as a result of that mistake.
I think that it is very likely that a lot of people misread the details of the event because that is how they deal with such problems â avoidance. Denial. Letâs pretend it never happened that way at all. That is probably a cultural thing â the way many people here deal with things.
Iâd like to think that is not exactly what I am doing here. I think I am SLIGHTLY disagreeing with Kelley (and you Karina) about the situation. But so what. Kelley wrote it, and she wrote it the way she wanted. I think the book is a brilliant piece of writing. It works the way she wrote it, and it still took me where she wanted to take me.
I think that taking into account the circumstances surrounding what brought Jackal to that button is a big part of how one comes to terms with the guilt after it is all over. Not that it makes the guilt non-existent. I just donât think that appropriate guilt also makes her at fault.
Having said that, Iâll have one more go at this.
Ok, say you and a friend are driving along on a well maintained, rural, two-lane highway. You are at least 45 minutes from the nearest facility/town where you last stopped for lunch and a beer. You are not legally over the limit, but you do feel a slight buzz. You are driving and suddenly you come upon an auto accident. Two vehicles are spread out on the road completely blocking it. You stop the car and know immediately that people are seriously hurt. Your friend is a psychologist with disaster training. She has just come off of an extended period of stressful, long days and is in the middle of malpractice lawsuit. She refuses to get out of the car and begs you not to get out either. You ignore her; leave her in the car to call for ambulances, and jump out to see if you can help. You have had some basic first aid training many years before.
You assess the situation. No one else has arrived on scene yet. There is one house very nearby. A fire has just begun to burn on one end of one of the cars. You run up to that car and you see that the guyâs neck and chest are ripped up. Heâs making a gurgling sound. You know he is dying. You run to the other car. The driver is unconscious, and you can see that his right leg is cut to the bone and bleeding profusely. The car is mangled, but you think you might be able to pull him out. Should you move him? Youâve always heard, never to move anyone in a situation like this. But you know help is too far away, heâll likely bleed to death first, and anyway, the whole car will probably soon go up in flames. What to do? Your best friend is an EMT, so you pull out your phone and press the speed dial. She tells you that you must pull the guy out away from the fire and apply a tourniquet.
You toss your phone aside, the first car goes up in flames, your friend in the car is screaming at you to leave, so with adrenaline pumping, you proceed to drag the guy out of the car. Just as you get him clear, his car explodes in flames. You pull your belt off and wrap it around his leg, but you notice that he seems to have stopped breathing. You examine him closer, roll him over and notice that there is a piece of metal jammed into his back. When you pulled him out of the car, you mustâve jammed it into his lung. He dies. He wouldâve died in the car if you had not pulled him out. But you did pull him out, and in doing so, you killed him. You did what a trained EMT told you to do. Maybe if you hadnât had that beer you wouldâve noticed the metal behind him before you pulled him out.
So who is guilty here? Your friend for never helping at all, for playing it safe? Or you for doing what you could even if it didnât work? More than likely you would not go to jail for that, but you could very well get sued by the family and lose.
I think it’s good that you tried to pull the guy out of the car. You’ll probably get sued by the family. And maybe you could have done a better job. My reasoning here is that if I’d been the victim, I’d much sooner die from a punctured lung than cooked alive.
I was going over all our accident/responsibility scenarios last night and realized they seem somewhat worse than pushing a button because, well, while you’re drunk-driving or whatever, there’s plenty of chances and time to reconsider what you’re doing and turn back and do the right thing. Which is why I believe that the button thing is particularly dangerous. That is why the elevator attendants were so anxious to get Jackal out of the control room.
People around buttons have to be ultra-careful. People who push buttons will avoid making small mistakes because they are aware of the possible catastrophic consequences. Us regular folk can’t seem to grasp the magnitude of “The Button”. Buttons nuke out entire cities. Buttons execute people and we don’t even have to get our clothes splattered by their blood. The big bright red buttons of our world have fail-safe mechanisms and at least three people must agree to push them at the same time.
I feel for you people in the US in the sense that, on one hand, you are expected to step up and fight for the entire world if/when the next Hitler shows up but, on the other, the media feeds the population with so much paranoia and trigger-happy power-trips that you are constantly on edge. As it is, there are too many stray bullets and innocent targets going around. I’m well aware that there are thousands and millions of individuals in the US who have managed to break free from that conditioning and are working to educate others, so know that when I say “you” I’m speaking of a generic “you”, as in the teenager who signs up for the army thinking it’ll be a blast, just like in those videogames he loves. I’m speaking of the generic “you” that produces those hero movies where the foreign country being rescued doesn’t even resemble the real one and as soon as you step out of your border everyone is a terrorist. It’s too much fear and responsibility for a lone country and its people to shoulder. And that is why I feel for that “you”. It’s not an easy position to be in.
In the end, I guess we are just human: at once beautiful and monstrous, capable of performing miracles of love and also of unleashing the torments of hell upon one another.
And yes, we’ve wandered far from the original topic. But that’s how long walks with good company and interesting conversations turn out.
🙂
Well, following your own line of reasoning then, maybe those people in the elevators were happier dying knowing that Jackal was trying to save them than thinking they were collateral damage in a terrorist plot. Ultimately though, dead is still dead.
I agree with you abut “The Button” thing, but at least one of the elevator attendants was anxious to get Jackal out because they were busy trying to kill the people in the elevator, not save them.
Why do you blame Jackal for drinking that day? She was not doing something irresponsible like driving drunk. She was at a social event with friends.
I think it’s very easy to say after the fact, knowing what the result would be, that Jackal should have done nothing – the hindsight thing. What if Kelley had instead said that Jackal let them keep her out of the control room, that she stood by and did nothing because she new her head was not clear, and then they had all died? Would you say then that she was guilty because she had been upset and had been drinking and did nothing?
Jackal would have felt guilty no matter what had happened that day unless she had been in the elevator with them.
It has been a nice walk. 🙂
I don’t blame Jackal for drinking that day. I blame her for making life-or-death decisions while impaired by a number of factors. I do believe she should have limited herself to talking. That was the best intervention she was capable of. But yeah, life makes a lot of sense when we look back on it, but we have to live forward. This we’re doing now is just allowing our minds to indulge in one of their favorite exercises of “What if?”
I agree, she would have probably felt guilty either way, but the plot would have been much different. It would have been about whether the combination of guilt and doubts about her identity and right to claim the Hope title were strong enough to push her into the slow self-destructive pattern she was already sustaining.
Through the unforgivable-mistake plot device, her society and family ended up taking away almost every privilege, comfort, security and identity Jackal had known (except perhaps her survival instinct and Snow’s love). In one go, she was forced to either confront all her demons or perish under them at once. The stakes were raised to exponential heights through the accident-mistake combo.
My biggest fear in reading the book is that Jackal would be let off the moral hook. I did not want to get to the end and find out it was all a plot to set her up, which is where I guessed 90% of other SF authors would have taken it. The whole book is so much more meaningful with the enormous weight squarely on her.
Iâm going to give my take on the whole Jackal dilemma thing. So far I think Iâve made some rather ineffective comments and danced around the whole thing, so Iâm going to sum it all up as I see it. This is really long, but at this point, wtf. Hereâs what I think:
Jackal has 4 very big issues to wrestle with while in VC:
1) the button mistake â the deaths of hundreds of people on her conscience
2) the grief at the death of her friends in the elevator
3) the grief and feelings of betrayal she felt due to Koâs actions re the whole Hope thing, blackmailing her into a guilty plea, the loss of friends and family as a result, persecution by society at large
4 the solitude itself of VC
Any of these kinds of issues could (and does) send most people into their own self-built VC.
One comes out of a self-imposed VC, (as Jackal did) only when one has found a way to handle the reasons for being in VC as well as the reality of being alone.
So, the question becomes, how does one handle issues 1-3?
Is the answer spelled out for us in SOLITAIRE? I think the hints are there, but I still would say no, not specifically, not definitively; that would be too easy. I think what Kelley reminds/tells us, is that each person has to find their way out on their own. That is a fundamental aspect of being an aware human.
As someone who has personally struggled with three kinda similar issues (maybe even the 4th to a degree), I can tell you that for me the only way out was a combination of pure acceptance, simple letting go, and the awareness of mitigating circumstances/human fallibility.
Letâs look at how Jackal dealt with it. For a while, she fights the crocodile â struggles with the madness, with what she did, what sheâs lost, etc. Then she survives that part by shedding everything and everyone. She becomes stone. I am very familiar with this technique; it was the first thing I tried too.
The stone thing doesnât work for Jackal; she realizes at some point that it also means losing herself. She begins to ask herself: Who are we when there is nothing but me â no family, no work, nothing but our own thoughts/feelings? She realizes that she has to give up the old Jackal in order to find that out, but that Jackal is already gone anyway. We have to grow, or we are not truly living.
Somehow after this, Jackal realizes she has forgiven herself. This is the key point. The how of that forgiveness is not exactly spelled out imo. She becomes the new Jackal. And this is when the hole appears in her cell, and she is brave enough to venture out.
She wanders around Ko for a long time, and eventually she revisits the elevator. She takes the fall. She realizes that the over-riding thought when most people die is simply this: Wait, Iâm not ready! Sheâs about to realize something after that when she gets woken up. What the fuck was she going to realize???
Although Jackal forgives herself while in VC, we know that isnât the end of it. She still suffers when she gets out â still deals with guilt and grief and fear; she has to learn how to live again.
Kelley are you still following this? Iâve been thinking about what you said:
âItâs as if thereâs some kind of âruleâ that protagonists canât make stupid mistakes with irredeemable consequencesâ¦. but I think thatâs exactly what Jackal did.â
You mean the consequence was irredeemable, not that Jackal is irredeemable. I think thatâs maybe where people get tripped up. They think that we are only what we do, so they canât have Jackal be accountable. But really we are not our mistakes.
This whole thing reminds me of an old Lyle Lovett lyric that Iâve never forgotten. âI realize that there are some things you say and do that you can never take back. But what would you be if you didn’t even try? You have to try.â
Clearly Jackal pushed the wrong button. Yes, she made a mistake. The question we have been batting around is basically this: Was the mistake that Jackal made morally wrong? I still say that no, it was not. I believe that if she had shouldered the entire blame for killing hundreds of people that would be an impossible burden â an impossible thing to forgive. I think that only a sociopath could forgive themselves for that. As I have said it is the knowledge — that it was the terrorists who put those people in that elevator in a certain death situation â that helps with the forgiveness. Yes, Jackal had a 50/50 chance to save them, and she failed. In that way she is responsible. It was not a criminal or immoral act IMO. I believe it is in large part the knowledge that we are not to blame because we did the best we could, and that we are merely human – with human foibles and mistakes – that allows us to truly live after an event when someone dies.
I know there is the question of the second elevator, but to me it seems fairly certain that both elevators were going down; how could the terrorist select only one at that point? They were both on the same system, they had to act quickly, and there is no reason to think they couldâve somehow only released one elevator. Jackal did not commit and act of terrorism, she did not commit an act of murder. She took a 50/50 chance to save them, and she failed.
Call it whatever you like, say Iâm in denial, or wrong or whatever. Iâve wrestled with my crocodile, and Iâve won.
So now we come back around to the original topic of this post (sorta). Could you still love someone you seriously believed was morally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people? Of even one person? I donât think that many people could. Mother Theresa maybe couldâve. I think that other people forgave Jackal too, because of the same reasons I have given â because they do not think it was an immoral act; they think it was a mistake, an accident. I think the mere fact that Jackal was still lovable is proof of what I’m saying.
I’m not sure if my opinion is at odds with yours Kelley or not. What say you?
I think Solitaire is a brilliant book. Itâs not just about Jackal, but about a lot of things â about the demons/things we all have to struggle with and forgive ourselves for. About learning to love and be loved by ourselves and others. About solitude and the human condition.
If Kelley were here with me now, Iâd ask her, âHow did you do that? I want to know exactly how the fuck you did that?â (with a smile)
This is just an awesome discussion.
I can’t come into it right now, but I will (maybe tomorrow if I can…) I’ve been doing screenwriting today and now I have to run around getting things ready for our neighbor to come to dinner tonight. But yes, I’ll be back to chat.
*claps in excitement* Look, the author is back!
Jennifer, WTF at this point is right. Yei! Let’s keep going.
I was continuing this discussion on the phone with my dad last night. Since he hasn’t read Solitaire, I filled him in on the elevator scene. When I told him how I felt about it he said, “You sound like that Buddhist monk they were interviewing on TV the other day.” So he asked me a few questions about yet one more moral/leadership/judgment example:
1000 of your people are being held hostage by a powerful enemy. They offer you a trade. They want you to send an innocent child and they’ll return the thousand adults to you safe and sound. You are the nation’s leader. What do you do? I replied: First I offer myself in exchange. Dad: No, they’re not interested. I call the population and ask for a volunteer child. There are no volunteer children. Do I have any sons or daughters that fit the enemy’s idea of innocent? No, you are childless. Well, then I grab an innocent child and do the exchange.
He was surprised by my answers. He said our society has been conditioned to be highly emotional, and that includes the notion that children are sacred and should never be sacrificed. I replied that a life is a life. And, generally speaking and assuming that the hostages aren’t criminals, a thousand lives are worth saving more than one. It’s simple math.
I can see how the reader may be inclined to absolve Jackal. We know she’s not wicked, and that she knows the terrible thing she’s done. But society doesn’t know that. The courts are not mind-readers. And the principle of justice is that we are all to be judged in fairness and similar sentences are given for similar crimes. Whether the perpetrator is a terrorist or a Hope, the fact that as a result of their involvement 437 people are dead is key. There are, of course, attenuating or aggravating circumstances.
I’m not inclined to absolve a protagonist, because I feel strongly identified with her and I am very hard on myself when I’m in charge. I believe that leadership requires the person to become extremely pragmatic and lose sentimentalism as much as possible. The end result over time is that leaders end up being monsters. I know I’d become a pragmatic monster if I were to hold such a position for long. Since I like my simple life and simple choices, I stay away from such opportunities. One day I’ll go on about what I’d do if I was President of Mexico, had a loyal army and International support. It’s not pretty, but it’s pragmatic and what needs to be done.
My sweetie is getting mad at me because she’s ready to drive us to iHop. More later.
Tricky business that — negotiating with terrorists.
So Karina, you won’t budge. How can you enjoy the rest of the book then? If what you say is true, don’t you think that Jackal should just commit suicide?
The courts in Jackal’s case were bought off by Ko. Jackal never got to the trial judgement. They settled the case with blackmail. There was no justice rendered there.
I am not talking about total absolution. I am talking about forgiveness and what is/is not forgivable or morally reprehensible.
Perfection is an impossible goal to attain.
Jennifer, that’s what my dad said he and most people thought they’d do in such a situation, that they wouldn’t negotiate with terrorist. Then the Buddhist monk explained that our morality is based on sentimentalism and therefore tends to make very cruel choices, such as letting a thousand people die because we are crippled by our delusional programming. We have a hard time looking at the naked facts once we’ve become emotionally invested.
Jackal allowed herself to be driven and blinded by the fact that her web was in mortal danger. She was acting on high emotions rather than a rational and realistic assessment of her ability to help. If she’d pressed the button after the elevators were dropping down to certain death in a last attempt to save the people, that would have been fine. No one would have blamed her for that. The fact is that she misjudged her abilities, made an error, and through her direct and careless involvement, hundreds of people died.
Also, Jackal was allowed to stay in the room as a Hope. Ren Segura would have been escorted out of the place, away from the dreadful button. She was allowed to remain as a leader and expected to act as one, not like a scared young woman whose web is about to die and makes an ignorant life-or-death decision based heavily on good intentions.
I believe that Jackal has to forgive herself for the same reason you save the thousand people by sacrificing the innocent child. You are given the chance to save a life by forgiving yourself. The right thing is to try your best to come to terms with what you’ve done, grow and learn and go on living. Or you go blow your brains. Either way, it’s fine by me.
If I did something really terrible and society was as gracious with me as they were with Jackal, I’d do my best to forgive myself. If after trying and trying I failed to reach that place of peace, I’d definitely check out. I do believe that people who go around carrying their guilt are a liability to themselves and those around them. Look at Jackal, how much she messed up and involved others in her turmoil because she couldn’t deal with the fact that her Hope status had been forged through deceit. The pragmatic monster in me believes people who can’t forgive themselves for something should be given the option to cease to exist.
As harsh as I can be with myself and protagonists (or if I were in charge of other people or on jury duty), I am pretty bland and condescending with the world at large. If you want to understand this better, watch Lars Von Trier’s Dogville. I’m Grace. How can I love someone who has committed an unforgivable act? That’s easy for me. I know at least five people who have killed other human beings as a result of unfortunate accidents, a couple of them even did so out of plain carelessness. And I love them and I do not judge them because it is not my place. Also, because (really, see Dogville) my measuring standards for the outside world seem to be broken. My wife says I’m a freak magnet because of it, that even people who have committed horrible crimes feel comfortable around me. For one, my alarm doesn’t go off early enough, so I’m not (at least initially) scared even though I should. And then, instead of judging them, my strongest impulse is to find out the details. I’m helplessly curious with people’s stories. I want to find out why and how and so on. It’s all really interesting to me and I tend to forget what it was that killed the cat.
I keep myself in check now, after being forced to become aware of that aspect of my interaction with people. Like when you flip through the newspaper and recognize the photo of that nice cab driver who had so many interesting stories to tell you ended up having coffee together the other night, then you read the news story and it turns out the police found two bodies in his trunk. Or the morning you wake up on the side of a highway and can’t remember what happened after you let that sketchy but chatty friend of a friend of a friend buy you a pineapple juice. The only clues are that your underwear is missing and your body bruised and cut. And other stuff.
So, yeah, my impossibly-high standards only apply to certain people. Otherwise, I’d be dangerously righteous. And I’m not. My friends would say I’m helplessly gracious.
I have to confess that most of my friends have that idea of me being nice and forgiving because they’ve never seen me when I’m full of wrath for the world or myself. I do get sucked into the vortex of hell every once in a while. But I always, always lock myself up and go into voluntary solitary confinement until I work things out. Even if it takes me two months and I must order groceries over the Internet. The three times I was forced by people to stay around while I was fuming didn’t end up too well. Now those people know to let me go when I say, “I can’t talk about this right now. I must go be alone. We’ll work it out when I’m in a better head-space.”
Well, Karina, we are going to have to agree to disagree on this I think.
I would never say that Jackal was treated graciously by society, but I’m not totally sure what you mean by that. You don’t think losing everything she cared about and living in what was really a pretty cruel form of solitary confinement is gracious do you? I don’t really say that society at large bears the full brunt of putting her there, but that could be argued.
I’m curious about that character you mention, but I tried to watch Dogville once — I didn’t make it more than 5 minutes. I might give another try sometime.
My reason for not sending the child would not be to save the child’s life, but because the terrorists are not likely to let everyone go free anyway. Then the theory goes that once you do that, terrorists will keep on taking hostages because it works. Send in the special forces. Anyway, more details would be required for a decision….
I’m glad to hear that you are keeping yourself in check with those dangerous types. It doesn’t sound good for your health. It’s good that you know how to set some boundaries when you need to take care of yourself.
Jennifer, yes, agreed. And many thanks for this exchange. It was stimulating and interesting to walk along together and have the chance to follow your ideas about these issues. I’m looking forward to the next time we sit at the virtual table. ¡Salud!
Thank you Karina for sticking with. I found it stimulating as well. ¡Salud!
And here I am, a week later, trying to catch up 🙂
This was such a great discussion, and there’s no way I can respond to it all. So whatever I say here will doubtless be scattered and perhaps feel a bit random. C’est la vie.
Please do not look to me for the “right” answers to any of this. I wrote the elevator scene the way I did because that’s the way it happened. And no, I wouldn’t rewrite it now, I don’t think. It is what is is.
Both of you make points that I understand and empathize with. But I think part of the difficulty of conversations like this is the (perhaps irresistible) tendency we have to look for ways to generalize about a specific experience. You are both looking to other stories, real or invented, to describe your response to Jackal’s situation with the accident. You are drawing parallels to your own lives and values, which is great, I think it’s part of the purpose of art to encourage such examination. But Jackal isn’t exactly like either of you. If you judge her by your own frame of reference (which is a very human thing to do), then you will assign her innocence, or guilt, or responsibility, or blame, or forgiveness, or absolution, according to your frame of reference. As I do.
And so do not look to me for resolution, because we do not have the same frames of reference. The book does not live in each of us in exactly the same way.
But submitted here for your consideration is my frame of reference. Which is — that it’s all relative. Jackal responded to the elevator situation as she did because of who she was. Of course she could have made a million different choices in a million previous moments in her life, and her path would have led her somewhere different.
We can all know in hindsight (and sometimes in the moment) that a particular choice is a life-shaper, a world-breaker, a door opening or closing. Perhaps we can say later in our lives that we woulda / coulda / shoulda done things differently. We can parse our own motivations, intentions, the things that contributed to our choices. We can identify mistakes. We can forgive ourselves or others. We can obsess or let go. We can stay hooked in or move on….
All those things are choices too. And we make those choices because of who we are.
For me, the point of the elevator scene is not whether Jackal is to blame, or exactly what would have happened if she hadn’t pushed the button at that exact moment. The point for me is that this is what happened. And although readers choose to focus on Jackal, the fact is that situation on the elevator is the result of trillions of small and large choices. All the people who chose to go up the Needle that afternoon. The Chinese Ambassador’s decision to visit that day. Jackal and Tiger’s strained relationship, which they have both been contributing to probably since adolescence, along with the rest of their web. The life histories of both elevator techs that brought them to this place. All the people in Steel Breeze who were involved.
The only thing we can do is make our choices and then respond to the outcome. And tell ourselves and others the stories of what and how and why. We make our choices and live our lives. We move through phases of denial, regret, anger, forgiveness, acceptance, whatever.
I’m sure there’s more (and probably this could all be lots more coherent), but it’s time for Nicola and I to have lunch. And I never stand between my sweetie and her food (grin).
You did a great job with the elevator scene. I didn’t even stop to think about all this stuff while I was reading the novel. My interest was in Jackal’s process of self-discovery, acceptance, forgiving, hope, survival, etc. I only went back to the elevator scene after I read on your blog that most of the queries you get from readers are centered around that accident and how harsh it seemed to punish Jackal, etc.
I like accidents in fiction because they “just happen” and move the plot along at exponential speeds. If we choose to dwell on those accidents, it’s simply us readers finding excuses to keep going back to the story over and over and over again.
Thanks for letting us in on the workings of the author’s mind.