Mieville's The City And The City - Book Report/Review Example

Breach as a motif in China Mieville’s The and the number Breach as a motif in China Mieville’s The City and the City China Mieville’s novel, The City and the City talks of the existential crises that are undergone by a detective who is a part of a city, Beszel. The novel seeks to interrogate the ideas and concepts of nationalism as they exist in today’s world as in the Cold War era when many aspects of reality were based not on action and seeing but on their very opposites, inaction and ignoring. The opposite character of these activities can be seen in the binaries that are developed between the two cities that are unofficially connected to each other by the very breach that constitutes an offence for the residents of either city. Mieville invokes that breach at various points in the novel as a motif that represents the all-pervasive state of the East European states of the Soviet era. These breaches are investigated by a body that itself seems to be a motif that combines in itself the effects of all the motifs of breaches that govern the lives of the people in the novel’s fictional cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma. The journey of Tayodu Borlu, the protagonist of the novel and the detective who seeks to solve the mystery of a murder that serves to frame the story and provide it its thrust, is one that reveals many aspects of modern day life. These range from the lack of freedom that is experienced by people in nation states to the place of man in a universe that may or may not offer explanations. This universe, however, continues to punish its inhabitants for offences the causes of which they may not even know. The lack of knowledge that is shared by the people of Beszel and Ul Qoma is what unites them and gives them a common destiny. The notion of breach refers to an understanding of this unity in ignorance. In this sense, it seems as though the novel points to ignorance as the greatest weapon that is employed by the modern state to express its power and exercise its control over its people. To place them in a state of complete ignorance as to their own condition, accompanied by a fear of the breach makes Mieville’s work closer to a work like V for Vendetta rather than something like The Matrix. Like both these works, the people in the two cities suffer from the fact that their existence is a complex web of lies that is spun by an overarching network of authority. This authority is embodied by the Breach that is able to make a person vanish from the sight of other people. In the context of people who choose to overlook several aspects of life, the notion of a vanished person may refer to somebody who is merely overlooked, much in the same way that Ralph Ellison’s protagonist is, in the book, The Invisible Man. The reasons for the marginality of both are equally absurd and difficult to understand. This is one of the greatest strengths of Mieville’s novel- the fact that it is able to draw allusions to many other major works of fiction that talk of oppressive regimes. His ability to connect his subaltern perspective to other versions of it makes The City and the City a very complex work of fiction. The breach represents a lack of unity. While critiquing the authoritarian regimes that were a part of East European nation states during the Cold War Era, Mieville strikes at the very heart of the philosophy of these nations- the unity of their people in a classless society. He points to the disunity that states sought to perpetrate during this era and the effects that it had on people who had hitherto lived in communities that exchanged ideas and beliefs in a freer society. The lack of freedom that Borlu has in investigating the case owes itself to the lack of unity between the people of the two cities. This can be seen in the attitudes that are expressed initially by his counterpart in Ul Qom, who is cold and condescending towards him. There are, thus, many structures that the state creates for the purpose of perpetuating its own hegemony over the people within its geographical locales. The lack of concrete factors such as race and language that can bind people together has resulted in the state employing force as the major device in order to retain its control over people. This fear is never dissolved in the novel and the barrier between Borlu and his counterpart is partially erased only after both gain a knowledge of the nature of their existence. This occurs when they gain knowledge of the third city, Orciny. This piece of knowledge is able to create a hole in the breach between the two characters as they end up challenging their own ideas of reality and what they have been accustomed to seeing. Breaches are not always punished in the same way in the novel. This points to a selective method of punishments whereby the state refuses to grant equality to the people. A situation where the same crimes merit different treatment points to a system where the citizens are not treated or conceptualised of as equal. This again undermines communist pretension where it made claims to an egalitarian society. Mieville mocks the very idea of an equal society and terms it to be impossible in a system where every small breach leads to a punishment. This obsession with breaches causes the people of both the cities to lead a very confined life. This can be seen in the fact that people are not allowed to commit a breach even if it could help in the solution to a murder. There is a suggestion within the novel itself that the crime occurred for the purpose of hiding facts that could lead to a questioning of the very system of breaches. The murder of the students does not constitute a breach, while solving the crime does. The world that Mieville presents in his novel is one where codes of ethics are reversed and a breach is not what it seems to be. These codes are institutionalised in an establishment rightly named the Breach, which looks into crimes of this nature. What people who commit the breach are punished with is not a normal punishment. They are never seen again and they are almost made to vanish from the memory of the public. A collective memory of their existence is erased in case they commit a breach. As Gabriel Garcia Marquez propounds in his greatest work of fiction, One Hundred Years of Solitude, the final death of a person is when they vanish from the memory of their loved ones and their community. This ultimate form of punishment is meted out to offenders. The state, thus, is the controller of not only the physical actions of the people of a country but also of their mental actions. A breach is punishable by disappearance for the offender but every time a person vanishes, the community is also made to suffer. Every individual crime becomes a collective crime against the state in an inverted setup where the people exist for the state rather than the other way around. The City and the City provides us with a very valuable portrayal of a society that is entirely in the grasp of the laws that a state has set for it. The novel reminds the reader of the horror that would land on them if they were to disregard the effects of systems that increasingly loosen the hold that people collectively have over reality. Such a system would lead to grave consequences for the very nature of political dissent as a means of bringing about change in the ways in which people live their lives. In the context of changing regimes at the national level in various countries as a result of popular uprisings, China Mieville’s novel, The City and the City assumes greater importance. Dictatorships continue to be a feature of many middle-eastern and African nations. The lack of democratic ideals in many countries can be interpreted as a sign of the helplessness that the people of these countries are characterised by. In a world where such countries are left to the mercy of regimes that are self-serving and all-pervasive, democracy may not be able to survive as a viable option of governance. It is thus, important that the Mieville’s idea of dystopia is looked into and analysed. Literal, let alone metaphorical disappearances are common in many countries that have a dictatorial form of governance. Even in developed nations, conditions of poverty can be almost deterministic and large firms may exert an influence that borders on the dictatorial. Insidious means of controlling the minds of people in acts of cultural imperialism is omnipresent and not just a feature of the third world countries. This must make one give more attention to Mieville’s novel as a critic and a reader. Works Cited Mieville, China. The City and the City. New York: Pan Macmillan, 2009. Read More