Yann Martel's latest novel, Beatrice and Virgil once again relies on animals to move the story. Life of Pi introduced the reader to living creatures where this new story is told through dead animals. Anyone who knows anything about Beatrice and Virgil prior to reading it knows that it is a Holocaust allegory; and a very clever one at that. Martel's alter-ego and main character, a writer named Henry, believes that The Holocaust should be represented in fiction, so it won't be forgotten. Fiction is a more lasting accounting of history. With that in mind, the story borrows in theme and form from Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.
A nod to Samuel Beckett
To populate Beatrice and Virgil with dead animals that drive the central theme through the imaginings and confessions of an old taxidermist is an absolutely brilliant way to represent The Holocaust. Martel uses them to great effect by writing a play within the story that features the stuffed donkey, Beatrice, and her stuffed howler monkey companion, Virgil.
Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, is represented in the context of the waiting and unknowing of those who suffered through The Holocaust. This shifts Beckett's defining work in a way that brings it new appreciation. The realism of Beckett's day was at the heart of great socialistic literature, and for Martel to recreate it via Beckett's minimalism is to say that the social content of the Modern writers is still very relevant.
The Holocaust never loses its tragic impact
Yann Martel isn't as cheeky with this novel as he was in Life of Pi. Although the humor is present, it just isn't funny. To read a novel that is set in a surrounding of dead, hunted and nearly extinct animals while a mysterious revelation is unfolding about the horrors of WWII is overwhelming. The horrible acts committed during The Holocaust are still very strong in the collective memory. The donkey and monkey are physical representations of that.
As the story unfolds in Beatrice and Virgil, the sights and smells of the systematic creation of Hitlers perfect world become as real as the taxidermy shop. Even though the story is twice removed via a play about stuffed animals, their tragic demise still brings on an unexpected flood of tears. Martel masterfully imitates Beckett's style while perfecting his own writing Even though the play's ending is predictable, it doesn't take away from the mixture of sorrow and horror the reader is left with. As the layers dissolve it is the human characters that live through one more evil act before the story ends.
Yann Martel has written another classic. Life of Pi is on many school reading lists, probably to demonstrate the proper use of allegory. It will be a shame if Beatrice and Virgil doesn't end up there, too.
Martel, Yann, Beatrice and Virgil, Spiegel & Grau, April 13, 2010, ISBN 10: 1400069262.
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