The Inquisitory: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Inquisitory: Analysis of Major Characters" offers an intricate exploration of the key figures within a narrative set against the backdrop of a French country estate. Central to the story is the interrogator, a meticulous and indifferent investigator whose sharp focus on details drives the investigation into the mysterious disappearance of a secretary. The interrogator’s methodical approach and terse questioning highlight a professional detachment, as they command the interrogee—a deaf family retainer—who recounts his experiences and the lives entwined with his own.
The interrogee provides a rich tapestry of memories, revealing not only the dynamics of his relationships with the "gentlemen" he serves but also poignant reflections on personal loss and a desire to withdraw from the household intrigues. His narrative fluctuates between clarity and ambiguity, raising questions about truth and memory as he occasionally contradicts himself and hints at fabrications. Additionally, the broader cast of characters, including townspeople and acquaintances, contributes to the narrative’s complexity, often intersecting in ways that illuminate the social web surrounding the estate. Collectively, these characters embody themes of perception, reality, and the fluidity of storytelling, inviting readers to consider the nature of truth in both personal and collective histories.
The Inquisitory: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Robert Pinget
First published: L'Inquisitoire, 1962 (English translation, 1966)
Genre: Novel
Locale: In and near Sirancy, France
Plot: New novel
Time: c. 1960
The interrogator, a criminal investigator of indeterminate age and sex. The interrogator is patient; thorough; obsessed with the details of the possible crime to whose investigation he or she has been assigned; quick-minded, able to remember the smallest details of the affidavit being recorded by a secretary nearby; particularly attentive to information of a perverse or sexual nature; and terse in the wording of questions, possibly simply because they must be written down (the subject of the “grilling” is deaf). The interrogator is professional but indifferent to the discomfort caused by the prolonged questioning and orchestrates the pace of the narrative with two commands: “Go on” and “Cut it short.”
The interrogee, an old family retainer or general factotum. He is deaf (but not from birth) and in service to two or possibly three “gentlemen” on a French country estate. His crystal-clear account of the incidents surrounding the disappearance of the secretary to his employers, along with his detailed descriptions of the countryside, the towns, the rooms of every estate, and the personalities and foibles of the inhabitants of his world, make up the text of the novel. Sometimes loquacious, sometimes hesitant, and sometimes angry at the interrogator, but always articulate (his speeches lack punctuation except for occasional commas), he relates what he knows, or what he remembers or thinks he remembers, or what he invents to satisfy the unsatisfiable interrogator. Besides describing the complex social and personal relationships of the area with his remarkable ability to remember details, he reveals the tragic loss of his wife and son, his reluctance to involve himself with the intrigues of the household, and his growing fatigue at answering “the wrong questions” from the interrogator. Although his recollections ring true to the reader, he eventually begins to evade the questions, contradict previous testimony, and possibly admit to the invention of much of his unstructured story; its veracity is often called into question, but its essential reality constitutes the substance of the novel. Like the protagonist in so many postmodern novels, he can be seen as the author himself, struggling with the body of the text, partly invented, partly imperfectly remembered, and partly writing itself, always fictive and always true.
The people in and around Sirancy, France, whose lives are described in the weave of the narrative. Sometimes unimportant storekeepers, servants, or passersby, but at other times rich friends and secret intimates of the “gentlemen,” involved in implicitly immoral or illegal liaisons of every kind, these characters move in and out of the interrogee's statement, apparently at random or by a series of concatenative associations explainable only to himself. Many of the characters (townspeople, peasants, hired hands, sophisticated idlers, and hangers-on) come together at an all-night party at the “gentlemen's” estate just prior to the secretary's disappearance. The “gentlemen” employers themselves are never described, except by inference from the events surrounding them.