“All the Judges are Dead or Gone.”
(Post #23; Gigue pp. 917-End)
Readers, this week we conclude our time with The Kindly Ones. What a strange, wild ending Littell leaves us with! I have a lot of questions, and I hope that you will chime in and share your ideas and questions on our Substack.
My first question is a general one: were the last fifty pages a satisfying ending to this novel? For me, there are a number of things that were just too preposterous. The reappearance of the two detectives, Clemens and Weser, still on the hunt for Max even in the very final hours prior to the capitulation of the Germans. And what about Max showing up at the zoo just in time to shoot and kill Clemens? Or the prospect that Mandelbrod and Leland are going to escape Berlin unscathed and go to work for the Soviets? These are ways for Littell to resolve different threads of his story expediently, but I think they threaten to compromise the fact based, heavily researched previous nine hundred pages of the novel.
The episode where Max bites Hitler’s nose seems something altogether different than the “wrapping up” coincidences that bring the novel to a close. What is Littell doing here? It seems more than just a dream, especially with Max talking about how historians don’t seem to know about this incident. Is this simply Littell’s attempt at humor? Does it add or detract from the story? Max observes that the little man’s nose is not Aryan and then decides to sink his teeth into it! I’m puzzled about why this is here.
I’m also puzzled by an exchange between Clemens and Max, where in response to Max’s statement that Clemens and Weser don’t have the right to judge him, Clemens replies that they will take that right, given the circumstances. Max responds: “Then, even if you are right, you’re no better than I.” Is Max referring to his mother here, that he unjustly granted himself the right to judge (and kill) her when it wasn’t in his place?
The final scene in the novel is set at the zoo, where the animals are dead or are suffering. This carries a lot of symbolism: the suffering of innocents; National Socialists are no better than animals, bereft of a moral code; humans are no better and often worse than animals.
Also symbolic, of course, is Max’s murder of Thomas on the novel’s final page. This murder of his best friend seems instinctual on Max’s part rather than premeditated. On some of our videos my guests and I discuss Thomas as a Mephistopheles character, intelligent, charming, and inherently evil. Thomas saves Max’s life a number of times, and he’s always served as a kind of protector of Max and his career. Does Max also finally recognize Thomas as the devil in the end? Or perhaps Max always regarded him as such but needed Max to protect him and help provide him with fine things? I believe Max killed Thomas because it was expedient to do so. He knew that he needed to escape Germany and using Max’s fake French citizenship papers was the most expedient way to meet this end.
I will be writing about my experience reading the novel, overall, in my next post. Please share your thoughts this week. Whether or not you are disappointed in the novel’s conclusion, there is quite a bit to discuss!
Wracking my brain, but did Thomas ever directly speak to anyone other than Max? In such a way that the other character directly responded to Thomas as if he's, you know, actually there? Just curious...
I think the scene of Max biting Hitler’s nose may have been a way for Max to be forced into the realization that National Socialism and the war were an evil hypocrisy - Hitler’s breath was fetid and his nose was not Aryan. It was all for nothing, absurd, as was Max’s reaction.
Of course Mandelbrod & Leland escape scot-free, I’m sure they lived privileged lives in Moscow. I’m glad we got a conclusion to their characters’ arcs.
At first I thought it was ridiculous that Clemens & Weser turn up at the end and just happen to find Max in all the chaos. But they are The Furies so they can find him anywhere. I hope the closing line of the novel means that they are still tormenting him, even though Clemens & Weser are dead.
Too coincidental that Thomas ONCE AGAIN turns up at the exact moment to save Max’s life - in more ways than one in this final meeting, with regard to the French papers. Which really lends credence to the earlier comment that he might be a figment of Max’s imagination. Maybe he was real but supernatural as well, like Clemens & Weser. I don’t know enough Greek mythology to know where he might correlate though.
I may have more thoughts as I sit with it, read more of the posts, and watch the video. Glad I read this but even happier to be finished. Max is so despicable, and I don’t buy his argument that we are all like him - he committed so many gratuitous murders. The piano player, the Hungarian diplomat just in the last few pages!!
Also (thoughts keep popping into my head), it never seems to occur to Max that the twins are his. I don’t know what to make of that. Surely they ARE his, right?