| Chapter : | Introduction |
well beyond the individual, “creat[ing] a mood, an ethos—a group culture, almost—that is different from (and more than) the sum of the private wounds that make it up. Trauma, that is, has a social dimension” (K. Erikson 185; original italics). Marginality, therefore, can become the basis for association, for belonging to a certain community and defending it against intruders.
Colin Harper, the twelve-year-old protagonist of Pat Barker's 1988 novel, The Man Who Wasn't There, is simply trying to fit in, trying to find his place in a “man's world” while growing up without a father. What Colin discovers, as he seeks orientation in this “man's world,” is that very little of it is real; the cultural “map” that provides most subjects with a feeling of belonging, of certitude through consensus, does not satisfy him (see Fromm, Anatomy 259). Possessing a critical eye and an even more active imagination, Colin asks questions about his missing father, about masculinity and sexuality, about heroes in a time of war, and ultimately finds that it is all a cynical performance of masculinity that reveals itself as hollow, whether in everyday life, the movies, or his elaborate fantasy world. In spite of the obstacles, Colin succeeds pretty well on his voyage of self-discovery, though he is often “at war with himself” as he tries to distinguish between fantasy and reality to pin down a cultural construction like masculinity, and he recognizes that fantasy and reality are never mutually exclusive as he asks “challenging questions about what it means to be a man” (Wheeler 129). The stakes are high, according to Gerard Duveen, since the system of social representations that Colin has inherited emerges “not merely as a way of understanding a particular object, but also as a form in which the subject (individual or group) achieves a measure of definition, an identity function” (11). Colin initially tries to escape what he cannot control, coming to realize that he does not even control his own fantasy world, let alone an institutionalized social practice like masculinity (see Alasuutari 15). Finally, after his voyage of self-discovery, Colin makes peace with the illusions of a man's world, all the while refusing to answer the call of what Sharon Monteith has called “compulsory masculinity” and its obvious deficiencies and contradictions (“Pat Barker” 47).