I’ve been slow to post on It’s a Battlefield, Graham Greene’s third novel. I’ve been finished with it for about a month and am now well into his next, England Made Me. My laziness in writing about it is probably a good indication of how I felt about it. Not bad, but not great, either. The novel is conceptually interesting, but it never congeals into a successful work. Its most dramatic moments feel like rewarmed scenes from his previous novels—the love triangle recalls The Man Within, while the business-as-usual conclusion is similar to that of the far superior Orient Express.
The novel’s central character is Jim Drover, who has been imprisoned for the murder of a policeman during a riot (the policeman was going to strike Drover’s wife). However, Drover never appears in the book—not a single scene. (Interestingly, Norman Sherry’s biography implies that Greene wrote numerous prison scenes but cut them all out.) Instead the book concerns itself with all the characters who are satellites of Drover’s current situation—his brother Conrad, his wife Milly, and her sister Kay; the Assistant Commissioner of police; Conder, a reporter; Mr. Surrogate, a member of the local communist chapter (of which Drover was a member); and a few others.
So, like Orient Express, this is an ensemble novel, no one character taking control. But where that novel was so concise, so gripping, It’s a Battlefield is a muddle. It makes you wonder how Greene was able to keep things so perfectly paced and plotted in Orient Express, how he was able to keep all his characters so well-drawn, when he more or less failed in this same respect here. Perhaps it is because the very nature of Orient Express entwined with a linear progression toward a climax. The train moved forward, and characters could only enter and exit the story when the train stopped. It’s a Battlefield is much looser, more tangential. There are more characters, for one; many are given just a few pages or a single chapter, such as the policeman’s wife. But even those that are more directly tied to Drover’s fate are given a rather democratic number of pages, to the point that much of their dramatic arcs are suppressed. When the promiscuous Kay takes a date with Jules, for instance, the heart behind their engagement is deflated. The chapter is told from Jules’s perspective, an otherwise minor character whom the reader has nothing invested in.
More drama is found in the love triangle between Drover and his wife and brother, Milly and Conrad. The entire relationship reads like The Man Within version 2.0—thankfully a subplot this time around rather than an entire novel. In that book, Andrews was torn between his love for the virtuous (in his eyes) Elizabeth and his father figure, Carlyon, leader of a band of smugglers. Like Drover, Carlyon was largely offstage for most of The Man Within, as Andrews internally wrestled with whether he should love a man who represented so much that Andrews loathed about himself and his childhood—not to mention who he had already betrayed. In truth “love triangle” is not really the correct term—perhaps “allegiance triangle” would be more apt. Similarly, Conrad is drawn to Milly, who he feels is saintlike, yet is torn over his feelings for his brother, who may be sentenced to death or may be given eighteen years in prison. Conrad has always looked up to Jim, and cannot process that what Jim did was actually wrong; yet a part of Conrad wants Jim to die so that he can be with Milly forever.
Ultimately Conrad betrays his brother by consummating his relationship with Milly. But like Andrews in The Man Within, the further Conrad gets, physically, from his love, the less he feels its effects and the more his allegiance to his brother grows. The same can be said for Andrews and Elizabeth in The Man Within; when Andrews heads for the city he quickly falls into bed with another woman, and when he returns to Elizabeth but is outside her house when the smugglers arrive, cowardice overpowers love. Likewise, in Orient Express, the romance at the novel’s center disintigrates when it is forced apart by physical separation; once Carlton and Coral are separated, Carlton simply goes on with his life.
It’s a Battlefield is full of other themes as well, not least of which is socialism and Communism. This too appeared in Orient Express, in the form of Dr. Czinner. In that novel all of Greene’s thoughts on the matter were expressed directly through Czinner. With It’s a Battlefield (and his next novel, England Made Me), Greene spends more time painting an entire landscape filled with political unrest, whether in the form of actual members of the Communist party in It’s a Battlefield or in allowing the stark class divisions in that book and in England Made Me to speak for themselves. It’s interesting that Greene would come to be known as a “Catholic writer,” for in these early books religion makes scant appearance. According to Norman Sherry’s biography, Greene did join the Communist Party in Great Britain when he was twenty years old. However he paid his dues for just four weeks before lapsing. Obviously Greene had some continued sympathy, or at least fascination, for the workers, though it’s unclear to me whether he was committed in reality or if it was simply a newsworthy issue of the day.
Comments