To Be Decent
In a judicious essay in today’s Klassekampen, Carline Tromp reflects on Iris Murdoch’s novel Under the Net, which she inherited, apparently together with Murdoch’s complete oeuvre, from her mother. With regard to the protagonist she writes: ‘One feels like crying out: Everything isn’t about you – pull yourself together! Jake is as inconsistent as a snowflake, as brittle as a biscuit. Other people are extras, antagonists, at best little helpers. The reasons why Jake has turned out this way are complex. The war is just ten years back, one can only speculate. But Murdoch’s point, the way I read her, is that this is of no importance. No circumstance absolves you from the responsibility to make an effort to become a decent human being.’ This is well observed. I am less convinced when Tromp notes that Murdoch provides the help one needs ‘to find out alone what is right’ after having ‘thrown off God as a moral compass’. I hope that, one fine day, she will read and comment on Murdoch’s The Bell.
