46 pages • 1 hour read
The Passenger
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Chapters 9-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
The chapter begins with Alicia’s recollection of visiting her maternal grandmother, Granellen, in Tennessee. She then is visited by Miss Vivian, a hallucination that she has occasionally been visited by. In this scene, The Kid is absent. The conversation between Alicia and Miss Vivian centers on babies, birthing, and how consciousness comes to exist in an individual. The immediate reactions to the first moments outside the womb—the uncertainty and the discomfort—are a baby’s first experiences in the world. The conversation between Alicia and Miss Vivian offers a stark contrast to conversations she has with The Kid.
Bobby is having dinner at Arnaud’s, and he makes a big production of pouring his own champagne as a way of honoring his recently deceased friend, John Sheddan, who was given to such gestures. He leaves Arnaud’s and goes to the Seven Seas, where he learns from Janice that the federal agents are still looking for him and paying regular visits. He calls Debussy, and asks her to read the contents of Alicia’s letter, but to only tell him whether Alicia mentioned the whereabouts of the rare violin she purchased, and also if there is any mention of money. He does not want to know the rest of the letter’s contents. Debussy meets Bobby at the Absinthe House and reads the letter. She begins crying and feeling sympathy for Bobby; however, she meets his request and reveals only what he asked her to reveal. Bobby and Debussy talk about Alicia’s expertise in rare violins, and how she was a renowned expert regarding Cremona violins. Debussy expresses her love for Bobby and they part ways.
Chapter 10 Summary
The beginning of this chapter omits the Alicia narrative that has been the pattern so far in the novel. Instead, the narrative immediately starts with Bobby, who is now in Ibiza, a Mediterranean island south of Spain. He lives in an old millhouse, still focused on evading those who continue to pursue him. The narrator discusses Bobby’s father, and again mentions that he is partially responsible for the development of the atomic bomb. Bobby does not even know where his father is buried other than somewhere in Mexico. To while away time, Bobby writes a letter to his sister in which he details his daily life on the island, but he leaves out his feelings. Bobby spends time at a bodega, where he converses with a man named João. João speaks of his recently deceased friend, Pau, who was shot during a massacre and presumed dead during the Spanish Civil War. João’s commentary offers another perspective of life’s meaning.
Bobby recalls his last discussion with John Sheddan, which took place in an empty theater. The narrative then shifts to Bobby at the bodega, where João gives him a letter that arrived from Akron, Ohio. Bobby refuses the letter, telling João he doesn’t know anybody in America anymore. One evening, he notices a smallish figure walking on the beach. Bobby discovers that it is an older woman on her way to visit her daughter. The image of the woman causes Bobby to envision his father, likewise cloaked and walking in the dark. As the novel comes to its end, Bobby is sitting in his room above the windmill, writing in his notebook, considering the terrible power that his father helped create. Bobby imagines that when he dies, he will once more see Alicia, and that gives him comfort.
Chapters 9-10 Analysis
In these two chapters, McCarthy further explores the nature of reality and the possible sources of human suffering. What is our inherent state when we are born? Do humans enter the world already equipped with a degree of suffering that’s just ready to burst forth? Or do our surroundings impose on us myriad causes of suffering?
Miss Vivian’s discourse in Chapter 9 revolves around the nature of human suffering, especially whether that suffering is affected or caused by an indifferent universe. When Miss Vivian first appears, she mentions that she is sad because of the crying babies. Alicia does not know precisely what she is talking about. When Alicia finally asks why the babies are crying, Miss Vivian says, “We don’t know, do we? We just know that it’s unanimous” (349). Miss Vivian’s sadness over the crying babies demonstrates obvious sympathy on a superficial level; however, Miss Vivian is not speaking superficially. Instead, she seems to be expressing a more collective measure of sympathy because she believes that this is the nature of human lives; the babies are all of us. This is suggested in the unanimity of the crying babies. The crying—the suffering—is universal.
Miss Vivian ponders whether a baby cries while inside the womb. She says, “You cant help but think that they bring their despair into the world with them. Still I cant imagine that they cry in the womb. Even though they might want to” (350). The baby knows no other form of existence and has nothing but the womb by which to orient itself. Once it is born, it’s overwhelmed by the stimuli of the new world that surrounds it. The safety of the womb is replaced by imminent threats all around. Miss Vivian seems to contradict herself here. She suggests despair is inherent in the baby, yet she also says it is hard to imagine that a baby would cry inside the womb. Miss Vivian goes on to imply that all humans yearn to return to the womb as a means of escaping the suffering of our lives. In this she seems to say humans do not bring despair with them into the world; instead, an indifferent universe imposes upon humans the conditions from which despair emerges.
In Chapter 10, Bobby recalls his final conversation with his friend John Sheddan, which took place in an empty theater. Before launching into one of his monologues, John says to Bobby, “a theater can never be dark” and points out the “ghost light” that always remains on inside every theater. This significant image recalls the Cartesian Theater, a term coined by philosopher Daniel Dennet that usually explains Descartes’s concept of dualism. Descartes believed that the mind was separate from the body and did not exist in the same material plane as the body, and that the mind was operated by some separate, internal mechanism. In basic terms, this was an attempt to describe what human consciousness is and how it operates in the world. One way to interpret John’s comments about the ghost light is that if the body is the theater, the ghost light is the mind. John says the ghost light is always on, which suggests a link between corporeal human existence and the eternity of the universe. Human consciousness can be seen as the light that continues even though our bodies, as material objects, do not. Also significant is that John purposely seeks out the theater for the same reason: that it can never be dark. He finds comfort in that eternal light, which contrasts with the return to womb-like darkness that Miss Vivian suggests in the previous chapter.
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By Cormac McCarthy
