Like Beckett and Chekhov, he knows a character need not be on stage to dominate
, her furs, her ostrich-feather fan and azalea perfume—along with her beauty, cruelty, secrets and lies: traces of Rebecca are everywhere in “”. At Manderley, her husband’s country pile, her evening dresses seem to rustle eternally in the breeze. “Her footsteps sounded in the corridors,” writes Daphne du Maurier, “her scent lingered on the stairs.” Above all she intrudes in the twisted devotion of the housekeeper, Mrs Danvers.
In fiction, as in life, absence can be a power play. The leader, don or spymaster asserts his authority over other characters, and impresses it on you, by relying on minions to do his bidding. The titular boss in “Charlie’s Angels” issues orders to his agents while his face stays out of sight. In the British sitcom “Yes, Minister” the prime minister is capricious but invisible.
The unseen are a mystery. Sometimes it is ultimately dispelled, as with the Wizard of Oz, Boo Radley in “To Kill a Mockingbird” and Harry Lime in “The Third Man”. Sometimes the mystique endures. So remote is Big Brother that readers of “1984” cannot know if he is, or ever was, a real person. In two James Bond films, 007’s arch-enemy Ernst Blofeld appears as a pair of hands stroking a cat.
Likewise in the first debate Mr Trump provided a spectral yardstick of the other candidates’ independence. Chris Christie incurred boos for saying that some of his actions were “beneath the office of president”. Vivek Ramaswamy praised Mr Trump to the heavens. Ron DeSantis tried to wriggle between condemnation and defence, a spectacle as agonising as watching him try to smile.
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