Since nobody else has bitten yet, I’ll go ahead and look at the final scene for the character Jean-Claude Julien. I found Julien’s role in the novel to be incredibly complex and elusive, but since we’re only asked to try and make sense of it, I’ll do the best that I can.
Rabinowitz’s Rule of Notice can be applied even further to Jean-Claude Julien; not only is his final scene significant for its finality, but each of his scenes seem to carry a heavier weight since there are so few of them. As we mentioned in class, this same phenomenon happens when we read poetry and each word seems to play a greater role in making meaning (perhaps it is fitting that Jean Claude is also a poet). Julien’s sections themselves are brief and concise, but full of meaning. Jean-Claude Julien is the character who drives Mao II’s plot—without his hostage situation, DeLillo would have no concrete plot to drive the story. The other characters would simply exist, motionless and meaningless. In a way, DeLillo’s creation of Julien holds the book–and DeLillo’s writing–hostage in its significance. The few sections where we are privileged to see from Julien’s perspective remind the reader that there is a plot here, something that at least three characters (Bill, George and Charlie) seem to be working toward, and the rest of the characters follow suit. In this way, the hostage is holding the other characters (and their actions) hostage.
Going off of this, Julien’s final appearance in the novel makes several reflections on some of the larger themes that the other characters are grappling with throughout the novel. Earlier in Mao II Bill makes the bold comparison of terrorists to novelists; with Julien we see a direct interaction between the two, and it makes us reflect on their similarities and their relationship with each other. I don’t know if it’s necessary or not to distinguish Julien as a poet and not a novelist—perhaps for the sake of my blog post, I’ll pretend that Bill compared writers to terrorists in general. In fact, it wasn’t until Julien’s final narrative that I began to really see what Bill was getting at with his comparison.
While being held hostage, Julien begins to obsess over being able to write. I use the word “obsess” intentionally, because it strikes me as a characteristic that writers and terrorists both share. Without the ability to write, Julien becomes anxious, and on page 203 he mentions that “There were thoughts he could not formulate without writing them down.” This seems similar to the relationship that “terrorists” have with the senseless acts of violence and destruction that they commit. They need it to make sense of the world, and without it, their conceptions of reality begin to break down. On page 204, it is mentioned that “Written words could tell [Julien] who he was,” much in the same way that Mao II’s terrorists use terrorism to define their existence. Everyone’s understanding of the world around them is linked to some ideology…writers, through their craft, strive to make sense of their ideology. Terrorists, too, try to test it or stretch it, and both writers and terrorists make some attempt to push their ideology onto unwitting Others. Writers tend to do it peacefully, yet subconsciously, whereas terrorists are violent and obvious in their methods. That right there may be the fine line that differentiates the two.
Besides the connection between writers and terrorists, Jean-Claude Julien’s section also had me drawing parallels between Julien and the other writer, Bill. Both seem to be obsessed with the more grotesque imagery of their bodies (the mention of vomit, fever, waste, serous fluid, is mentioned all throughout the passage). Julien echoes Bill’s suggestion that a writer’s work in inextricably bound to their bodies. Obviously, without their bodies, the writers cannot produce their work; even further, the connection that the authors feel to their writing is similar to the connection that a parent might feel for their offspring. This is not meant to be sentimental, but only to emphasize the reproductive aspects of writing, as opposed to seeing it as purely a productive act. Throughout this class, we have come to understand how writers cannot help but write themselves, their perspective, and their ideologies into their works. By writing, they are reproducing their vision, not producing an altogether original one.
Also, if I can completely turn on everything I just said…maybe I’m a little dim when it comes to really obvious-but-unspoken plot twists in novels (which Mao II seemed to be full of) but are we supposed to believe at the end that Julien was entirely made up by Bill? Or at least the Julien that we read. Bill mentions several times that he is ‘writing’ about the hostage, and then on page 215, when he’s looking at what he’s written, he asks himself “Who is the boy.” I assumed this was the same boy that Julien constantly refers to, the one who is holding him hostage. But how could Bill have known about this? Are the passages we read from Julien’s perspective actually written by Bill? Just curious to see if anyone else drew this connection.
Another piece of evidence that might prove your final point is that Julien’s final scene is right before Bill’s final scene, in which Bill dies(I’m assuming). If Julien was a creation of Bill’s then it would make sense that he would have no other scenes after Bill’s final, which he doesn’t.
A piece of evidence that might argue your final point is that the “hooded boy”, who we find out is Abu Rashid’s son, is real, and not of Bill’s creation, as we can see in the scene where Brita removes his hood and gets in a ridiculous fight with him(which is after Bill’s death). There’s no evidence that his hostage is Julien, but who else would it be?