NOTE: footnotes did not transfer over from Word document They all appear at the end of document--but there is no indication of where each footnote number should appear in the text.

The Creation of Henry Perowne

Although Saturday is its own fully realized story, its true depth cannot be appreciated without considering its literary forebears. The most notable are The Bible, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach.”
From the very beginning we know that Henry Perowne is to be compared to Adam. The description of his waking is like the description of life created from non-life: “It’s as if, standing there in the darkness, he’s materialized out of nothing, fully formed, unencumbered.” p. 1. The comparison is reinforced by his being naked, and placed in an Edenic garden: “And the Perownes’ own corner, a triumph of congruent proportion; the perfect square laid out by Robert Adam enclosing a perfect circle of garden—” p. 2.
Henry Perowne feels euphoric, and as he gazes out his window to the garden below, he reflects on a very full life of family and satisfying work. However, evil will soon intrude into his world. At first he does not recognize the threat. He sees something bright in the sky, and initially thinks it is a meteor. Then he “revises his perspective outwards to the scale of the solar system” pp. 12-13, and believes it to be a comet. Then “he revises the scale again, zooming inwards this time, from solar dust and ice back to the local” p. 13, and finally recognizes it as an airplane in trouble flying over his neighborhood. Because of the post-9/11 world we live in, his mind immediately considers the possibility of the plane having been overtaken by suicidal and murderous terrorists.
The changes from meteor, to comet, to a much reduced entity with wings mirrors the changing descriptions of Satan in the opening books of Paradise Lost when, after he leads a revolt of some of the angels against God, he is “Hurl’d headlong flaming from th’Ethereal Sky/With hideous ruin and combustion down” Book I, ll. 45-46. After he lands in the fiery lake of Hell, he arises with his staff and flag that “Shone like a Meteor streaming to the Wind” Book I, l. 537. When Satan, on his way to earth to provoke the Fall of Adam and Eve, confronts his incestuously begotten son, Death, he is angry, “and like a Comet burn’d” Book II, l. 708. When he finally lands in the Garden of Eden, it is as a “Cormorant” Book IV, l. 196. The “zooming” in and out of Henry Perowne’s perspective also reminds us of Galileo’s telescope in Paradise Lost. Satan’s shield is compared to the “Moon, whose Orb/Through Optic Glass the Tuscan Artist views/At Ev’ning” Book I, ll. 287-89; later, “There lands the Fiend, a spot like which perhaps/Astronomer in the Sun’s lucent Orb/Through his glaz’d Optic Tube yet never saw” Book III, ll.588-90.
Another connection between the errant airplane and Satan is made in regard to the cosmological scheme set forth in Paradise Lost. Heaven is at the top, Chaos in the middle, and Hell is at the bottom. In a little corner at the top of Chaos, God creates man’s universe. Thus, when Satan seeks Earth in order to cause the Fall of Adam and Eve, he must travel upward from Hell. That directional motion is echoed in Saturday by the noise the airplane is making:

Above the usual deep and airy roar is a straining, choking banshee sound growing in volume—both a scream and a sustained shout, an impure, dirty noise that suggests unsustainable mechanical effort beyond the capacity of hardened steel, spiraling upwards to an end point, irresponsibly rising and rising…

p. 14, emphasis added. Thus we know Evil incarnate has found Henry Perowne’s idyllic world.
But Henry Perowne’s character is not simply that of a prelapsarian Adam. He is not entirely innocent. We see hints of his own egoism and pride when he describes his medical practice: “By means of balancing and doubling, he was able to perform major surgery in one theatre, supervise a senior register in another, and perform minor procedures in a third.” p. 5. In fact, the operations he performs make him sound like Dr. Frankenstein in his laboratory. For the operation on the troubled Nigerian girl, Andrea Chapman, “She was placed in a sitting position, with her head-clamp bolted to a frame in front of her.” p. 9. That image could be from a horror movie. In regard to his then-future wife’s operation, his identification with Dr. Frankenstein is reinforced:

…the face, this particular beautiful face, was reassembled…It was left to the predatory registrar [Perowne] to put together again Rosalind’s beautiful features.

p. 46. Indeed, just before he observes the airplane, he presumes to be a god looking down on other humans:

…and with his advantage of height and in his curious mood, he not only watches them, but watches over them, supervising their progress with the remote possessiveness of a god. In the lifeless cold, they pass through the night, hot little biological engines with bipedal skills suited to any terrain, endowed with innumerable branching neural networks sunk deep in a knob of bone casing, buried fibres, warm filaments with their invisible glow of consciousness—

p. 12. This last passage reveals a man capable of self-delusion, condescension, overweening pride, and the objectification of people. In short, he could be compared to Dr. Frankenstein—or even Satan, both of whom tried to arrogate to themselves the role of God. And yet, as distasteful as Henry Perowne’s sense of superiority may be, he does help people by his medical and scientific knowledge. He is not an uncomplicated character.
Henry Perowne’s foil is, of course, Baxter. On first consideration, it seems that Henry is the “good” guy, and Baxter is the “bad” guy. Henry appears to be a reasonable man going about his everyday business, when his car accidentally collides with Baxter’s. Baxter is a petty criminal who will use violence to get what he wants. But we are given an early clue that Henry is not a blameless soul. As he goes to get his car, we learn that it is kept in a former horse stable. The car is described in terms of a horse—“the long nose and shining eyes at the stable door, chafing to be free.” p. 74. “…the machine breathes an animal warmth all its own.” Id. The significance of the imagery becomes clear when we learn the color of this “horse.” It is silver, with a cream interior. Henry is the rider of the pale horse of the Apocalypse. “…and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” Revelation 6:8. Henry is, at least in part, responsible for the hellish conditions on Earth. His attitude that the car is just “his overgenerous share of the world’s goods” Id., is precisely the attitude that cumulatively has caused the Muslim jihadists both to envy the western world, and to become funded by it. Henry knows this is true, but pushes these thoughts from his mind:

And it’s at this point he remembers the source of his vague sense of shame or embarrassment: his readiness to be persuaded that the world has been changed. How foolishly apocalyptic those apprehensions seem by daylight, when the self-evident fact of the streets and the people on them is their own justification, their own insurance. The world has not fundamentally changed. Talk of a hundred-year crisis is indulgence. There are always crises, and Islamic terrorism will settle into place, alongside recent wars, climate change, the politics of international trade, land and fresh water shortages, hunger, poverty and the rest.

p. 76. Henry’s logic implies that the problems of the world eventually resolve themselves, and that Islamic terrorism is just the latest problem. However, the other problems he lists have not been resolved—he, like most well-fed westerners, has merely learned to tune them out. He expects to tune out the Islamic terrorist problem also. He likes to follow his son’s aphoristic suggestion to “think small.” p. 35. In other words, to ignore the state of the world, and to concentrate on those things closer in. We are back to the leitmotif of the telescopic zooming in and out of perspective. Henry is happy to cut himself off from the world, just observing it “from inside his car where the air is filtered and hi-fi music” is playing. p. 76. The major protest against the upcoming war that is occurring on this Saturday is merely background noise to Henry. It means nothing to him except in terms of changed traffic patterns. Little does he recognize that the anti-war protest will, however indirectly, intrude violently into his world.
It was the blocked roads from the protest march that precipitated Henry being on a road where a car would be unexpected, and it is the protest march that has caused the road to be deserted so that he is isolated when confronted by Baxter, Nark, and Nigel. At this point I cannot resist pointing out the double pun of the name of the strip club that the three unsavory characters have just left. It is called the “Spearmint Rhino.” According to Wikipedia, that name is a euphemism for “hot and horny.” Thus, we have devils. The improbable names of “Nark” and “Nigel” together create a slant rhyme for “Archangel.” Presumably these are archangels thrown out of Heaven with Satan after his revolt. Baxter, as the ringleader, is in the position of Satan. However, he is rather a pathetic Satan, and Henry is able to see through his act of bravado to Baxter’s weakness. Baxter has the genetic condition known as Huntington’s Disease. Henry manages to diffuse the situation long enough to make his escape without significant injury. He even leaves in an unhurried manner so that his pride after this atavistic encounter remains intact. But he leaves Baxter humiliated.
Some of Baxter’s thuggish ways seem to have rubbed off on Henry. Henry takes the competition of the squash game much too seriously, and ends by losing his temper with his friend Jay Strauss. But Henry goes about his day without considering what effect his actions may have had on Baxter, although we are given threatening hints of the confrontation to come when Henry glimpses a red BMW on the road. Given Henry’s own sense of competitive pride, one would think that he might be more sensitive to that of Baxter. But Henry goes about his day, preparing for his small family reunion that evening.
Henry welcomes home his daughter, Daisy, and they argue about the forthcoming war in Iraq. Daisy did go to the protest march, and argues passionately with Henry about his seeming indifference to the entire issue. We know he is not indifferent, but feels it is simply too complicated to decide whether the war is right or wrong. Henry’s method of dealing with the issue is to retreat into feeling ambivalent about it:

For or against the war on terror, or the war in Iraq: for the termination of an odious tyrant and his crime family, for the ultimate weapons inspection, the opening of the torture prisons, locating the mass graves, the chance of liberty and prosperity, and a warning to other despots; or against the bombing of civilians, the inevitable refugees and famine, illegal international action, the wrath of Arab nations and the swelling of Al-Qaeda’s ranks….Does he think that his ambivalence—if that is what it really is—excused him from the general conformity? He’s deeper than most. His nerves, like tautened strings, vibrate obediently with each news “release.” He’s lost the habits of skepticism, he’s becoming dim with contradictory opinion, he isn’t thinking independently.

p. 185. Because he does not want to think through these issues, Henry shuts out these thoughts, and focuses on his own small world:

Upstairs, on the ground floor, he draws the curtains in the L-shaped living room, and turns on the lamps, and lights the gas in the mock-coal fires. The heavy curtains, closed by pulling a cord weighted with a fat brass knob, have a way of cleanly eliminating the square and the wintry world beyond it….The three people in the world he, Henry Perowne, most loves, and who most love him, are about to come home. So what’s wrong with him? Nothing, nothing at all. He’s fine, everything is fine.

pp. 185-86. But of course everything is not fine. The war on terrorism is not fine. Closer to home, we know he is not fine because the threat of Baxter is there. But that too, he chooses to ignore. Just prior to his musings about world troubles, when Henry was returning home, he is “trying to remember the exact phrasing of a remark Theo made earlier in the day that did not trouble him at the time. It nags him briefly now, but the half-hearted effort of recall fades…” p.179. The remark referred to was Theo’s warning about Baxter: “You humiliated him. You should watch that.” P.154.

All the disturbing thoughts were swept away when Daisy arrived home. Henry perceives a strong dichotomy between himself and Daisy—he is rationalistic and scientific, while she is romantic and poetic. This dichotomy is similar to that described in Frankenstein in regard to Dr. Frankenstein and his fiancée, Elizabeth:

I [Dr. Frankenstein] delighted in investigating the facts relative to the actual world; she busied herself in following the aerial creations of the poets. The world was to me a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.

Frankenstein, p.21 (1818 text, Oxford University Press, New York 1993). To Henry’s credit, and unlike Dr. Frankenstein, he tries to bridge their differences by reading the books she suggests. Henry feels that he and Theo are more alike, and finds it easier to share Theo’s interest in music than Daisy’s interest in poetry. However, it is interesting to note that the lyrics of Theo’s song with which Henry is so taken is clearly a poem in its own right. Although Henry has a bit of a rough relationship with his father-in-law, the anticipated family gathering is just the type of zooming in of perspective that Henry likes. Unfortunately for him and his family, Baxter is also zooming in on the Perowne family, and will invade their corner of paradise. The horrible events of that night do change Henry’s perspective. His science does not save them—poetry does.
However, it is not because poetry is better than science; it is just that the human condition requires both science and poetry. His father-in-law, John Grammaticus (his name obviously a reference to being literate) is the one that is knows to signal to Daisy to recite “Dover Beach” because he knows that its familiar rhythms will calm her, and allow her own personal poems to remain untouched by Baxter. He also prevents her sexually suggestive poems to act as an unfortunate stimulant to Baxter. It is a bonus that “Dover Beach” has the power to soothe the savage beast that is Baxter. But ultimately, it is Baxter’s own reaction to the poetry, when his higher and better self overcomes for a moment his evil impulses—when his Nark/Nigel of evil abandons him—that really saves the Perowne family. His better self allows him to hope there might be a cure for his defective genes, and for a moment he abandons his intention to destroy the happiness in the Perowne household, and to try to find a chance at life himself. The moment reminds us of the moment in Paradise Lost when Satan, just before he deceives Eve into eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, hesitates on his mission to destroy their paradise:

That space the Evil one abstracted stood
From his own evil, and for the time remain’d
Stupidly good, of enmity disarm’d,
Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge;

Book IX, ll. 463-66. But Henry knows that, like Satan, Baxter’s mood will change and he will revert back to his angry, envious, and destructive self. He must be stopped when his defenses are down. It is Henry’s scientific knowledge that allows him to divert Baxter away from his family and get him upstairs. Henry and Theo are able then to take advantage of Baxter’s unguarded moment, and seriously injure him.
There are parallels between Henry and Baxter. They both act irrationally and angrily when their pride is threatened; Henry at the squash game, Baxter after the minor car collision. In fact, Baxter could well be seen as a cruder version of Henry. For example, they both wield knives. When Baxter slashes the couch in the Perowne’s house, it is described similarly to one of Henry’s operations:

With the tip of his knife, Baxter slices open a foot-long gash in the leather sofa, just above Rosalind’s head. They stare at a wound, an ugly welt, swelling along its length as the ancient, yellowish-white stuffing oozes up like subcutaneous fat.

p. 225. But unlike Henry, Baxter does not find his pleasure in cutting, but in poetry. In their relative abilities to appreciate poetry, Henry is a cruder version of Baxter. Baxter’s natural ability to recognize great literature again reminds us of Frankenstein’s monster, whose reading included Paradise Lost Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Plutarch’s Lives. After Henry operates on him, Baxter appears like Frankenstein’s monster:

Baxter is lying on his back, arms straight at his sides, hooked up to all the systems,…The head bandage doesn’t ennoble Baxter…With his heavy stubble and dark swelling under the eyes he looks like a fighter laid out by a killer punch…

p. 270. Dr. Perowne, like Dr. Frankenstein, was happy to be operating on a brain:

…a familiar contentedness settles on Henry; it’s the pleasure of knowing precisely what he’s doing, of seeing the instruments arrayed on the trolley…

p. 258. The operation is described with exacting and loving detail. Henry intrudes into Baxter’s brain. We have to wonder if Henry’s saving of Baxter’s life is just another instance of Henry, like Dr. Frankenstein, playing God. We cannot help but wonder how much of a blow to his pride Baxter will feel when he learns who operated on him while he was completely helpless. However, Henry is also aware of the ambiguity of his good deed. He reflects to himself, “By saving his life in the operating theatre, Henry also committed Baxter to his torture.” p. 288. At the end, Henry recognizes that at least some of Baxter’s evil can be attributed the horrible happenstance that he suffers from a genetic disease that leads inevitably to decay and death. Henry compares Baxter’s genotype to his soul. In that sense, Baxter, like the Frankenstein monster, is a defectively made being. That fault is not his. Of course, also like the monster, Baxter commits evil deeds out of envy and revenge—he is not completely blameless.
But even though there are certain comparisons to be made between Henry and Dr. Frankenstein, there are significant differences. Dr. Frankenstein, near the end of his life, reflects on his fanatic devotion to his scientific inquiries:

If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind.

Frankenstein, p.37. We see throughout Saturday that Henry maintains close familial ties, and keeps his work in balance with his obligations and feelings towards his family. More important than Henry’s differences from Dr. Frankenstein, are Ian McEwan’s differences from Mary Shelley. Frankenstein is a romantic novel that is reactionary towards science. Science destroys all the early promise of Dr. Frankenstein, destroys his friends, destroys his family, and ultimately destroys the monster—the very thing it created. Scientific knowledge in Frankenstein is, like the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, knowledge that kills. The desire for knowledge is like the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Dr. Frankenstein warns:

You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.

Id., p. 17. The serpent of knowledge is not an evil in Saturday. In fact, it is one of the more noble parts of Henry. After he operates on Baxter, he begins to reflect on the events of the day. He is “feeling too many things, he’s alive to too many contradictory impulses.” p.271. However, unlike before when the contradictory nature of his feelings about the Iraq war caused him to simply push them away, Henry this time stays with his feelings, and subjects them to rational examination—the serpent of knowledge:

His thoughts have assumed a sinuous, snaking quality, driven by the same undulating power that’s making the space in the long room ripple, as well as the floor beneath his chair. Feelings have become in this respect like light itself—wavelike, as they used to say in his physics class. He needs to stay here and, in his usual manner, break them down into their components, the quanta, to find all the distal and proximal causes; only then will he know what to do, what’s right.

p.271, emphasis added. Henry must use the same rational abilities he applies to science to his feelings. Henry’s serpentine search for knowledge eventually leads him to the light. He does figure out what is right, and will try to do right by Baxter. But this focus on the relationship between Henry and Baxter is too narrow a focus. To understand the import of Saturday, we must let our vision zoom out to the larger issues of mankind—terrorism, and the war in Iraq. Like Henry, we get in trouble when we try to ignore the rest of the world, and fail to consider our responsibility for our fellow human beings. We must not simply push away troublesome feelings because we do not have a ready solution to pain and suffering. But feelings are not enough. Although we possess such a limited amount of knowledge, it is only our ability to use reason that gives us any hope of resolving the problems our world. Thus, unlike the themes of Paradise Lost and Frankenstein, knowledge of good and evil is not what destroys man, but rather what defines man.
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1. Unless otherwise indicated, page numbers refer to Anchor Books paperback edition of Ian McEwan’s Saturday (New York 2005).
2, The image of the garden as a perfect circle within a perfect square was perhaps inspired by the map drawn by Peter Apian and used to illustrate the first two editions of Paradise Lost.
3. The cormorant is a traditional symbol of greed and greedy men.
4. By parallel logic, Baxter’s red BMW appropriately evokes the second (red) horse of the Apocalypse: “…and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.” Revelation, 6:4.

One ordinary day made extraordinary by the hands of a gifted writer. ( )

Quite an enjoyable read. I was taken by the author into the mind of Henry Perowne, the central character of the story. Though slow moving in some parts, the storytelling is quite compelling, showing us glimpses of the random thoughts that constantly find their way into our minds when we least expect them to, and how much these thoughts can impact our daily lives.

Quite a thought-provoking read, I would say. ( )

McEwan is heir to Virginia Woolf when it comes to conveying the train of thought of his subjects, in this case a London neurosurgeon on his day off. Set on the eve of the American and British invasion of Iraq, the novel has an interesting quality now that a few years have passed and arguments over the justification of going to war have, like another train of thought, been replaced with argument over how best to clean up the mess and secure the peace. ( )

Beautifully crafted novel spanning one day and an unfortunate road rage incident which leads to an act of terror and violation. I did feel that the story was a bit slow to come together. ( )