The concrete island onto which Maitland, the main character of Ballard’s novel, crashes is a kind of mirror, it increasingly reflects back upon him the content of his own mind. “I am the island.” he cries at the end of the ninth chapter, confirming that the need to explore and identify this terrain is as important as the apparent need to escape from it. To escape, he will first need to master the island, but if he achieves mastery he will no longer feel any need to escape.
Maitland’s engagement with a hostile environment triggers recollections of a younger, pristine self:
“The image in his mind of a small boy playing endlessly by himself in a long
suburban garden surrounded by a high fence seemed strangely comforting”
p.22
But the practicalities of mastering the island require more than a childlike simplicity, especially when it emerges that it is not uninhabited. Maitland’s new neighbours are a circus acrobat made redundant through injury, and a prostitute seeking refuge from a broken relationship. Both Proctor the acrobat and Jane the prostitute become necessary to Maitland’s survival, yet even while he is still weak from injury and hunger he seeks to control them first by playing them off one against the other. He wins Proctor’s devotion through bribery and persuades Proctor to lead him to the secret food source - a nearby garbage dump. The security of this knowledge enables Maitland to challenge “that conspiracy of the grotesque which had kept him marooned on the island” (p.87). The conspiracy centres upon Jane’s hold over Proctor; Proctor’s realm is the island, but he is little more than an absurdly acrobatic puppet.
Maitland’s challenge involves the humiliation of Proctor in front of Jane, who does nothing to intervene, and the threat of physical force (aided albeit by his crutch) against Jane herself, backed up by use of her own guilt against her. In asserting himself over them Maitland discovers two things; his capacity for calculated violence to achieve his ends, and the satisfaction this abuse provides the abused.
Maitland employs Proctor as his mule to carry him about his new domain. Maitland continues to prepare to escape by teaching Proctor to write “Maitland help” in large letters while informing Proctor that they spell his own name. Proctor fails to write Maitland’s name correctly, but fascinated with his new skill he inscribes much of the island with jumbled up versions of it, ironically ‘naming the island’ after his new master. Proctor’s garbled writing, like his erratic gymnastics represent the last flickering of a withdrawn spirit. Part cripple, illiterate, half blind, destitute, afflicted, tormented, Proctor lives only to please and to serve. It is his final attempt to help Maitland that causes Proctor’s death. It is an act of supreme servitude, beyond even giving up his own mattress and blankets for Maitland’s ‘pavillion’ which Proctor also built in expectation of a reward and receiving only a few shattered fragments of an empty wine bottle.
Throughout Concrete Island the correlation between Maitland and the island is emphasised, at first the island is seen as possibly an extension of his vehicle, then a model of his own thoughts, and finally the “places of pain and ordeal” become confused with his own body. It is as if through suffering and struggle he is enabled to transcend the past and bequeath it to the island. If Maitland has been regressing back to his childhood, it is not the childlike state that Maitland seeks - that also must be cast aside. For, what Maitland ultimately seeks is a state of emptiness.
In his wanderings Maitland falls into a cavern, as it were the very centre, the womb of the island, the empty hub about which all else moves. The soothing qualities of the cavern are negated by the appearance of a wounded rat; nevertheless, in passing through the cave Maitland prepares to be reborn, as it were, back into humanity. If the island is representative of Maitland’s interior, then Proctor and Jane serve as devices of the sub-conscious, means by which Maitland’s frustrations can be resolved, worked through, and transcended.
In some ways the task he had set himself was meaningless because by the end of the novel Maitland feels no real need to leave the island, and this alone confirmed that he had established his domain over it. The ability to plan his escape without needing to put it into practice - to be able to dream - is itself Maitland’s ‘escape’.
David Hurley lives in Hiroshima, Japan and writes reviews for 100-Word-Book-Reviews.com.
In response to enquiries from around the world he set up Japanese-Games-Shop.com.
He also discusses Internet business success strategies on his blog.
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