Shuttlecock: Analysis of Major Characters
"Shuttlecock: Analysis of Major Characters" delves into the complexities of relationships and personal struggles among key figures in the narrative. The protagonist, Prentis, serves as a senior clerk in a London police bureau, grappling with his own insecurities and a tumultuous familial history tied to his father, a once-noble wartime figure known as Shuttlecock. Prentis's interactions with his estranged father, who resides in a mental institution, reveal deep-seated issues of parental legacy and personal identity. Alongside him, Quinn, the bureau chief, emerges as a mysterious and authoritative figure, whose own troubled past complicates Prentis's professional journey and self-perception.
Marian, Prentis's wife, symbolizes emotional withdrawal, as she finds solace in caring for plants rather than engaging in domestic conflicts, hinting at the strain within the family. Their sons, Martin and Peter, represent contrasting responses to their father's authority; Martin exhibits rebellious courage, while Peter tends towards conformity. Together, these characters illustrate themes of obsession, familial expectations, and the struggle for personal redemption, ultimately shaping Prentis’s path toward acceptance and understanding of his past. This analysis highlights the interplay of these major characters as they navigate their interrelated issues, inviting readers to explore the intricate dynamics of family, legacy, and self-discovery.
Shuttlecock: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Graham Swift
First published: 1981
Genre: Novel
Locale: London, England
Plot: Detective and mystery
Time: c. 1980
Prentis, the narrator, a senior clerk in a London police bureau that handles information on closed and unsolved cases. In his early thirties, secretive, and self-consciously prickly—almost paranoid—with a tyrannical and sadistic streak, he also has a capacity and craving for affection that leave him hurt by his sons' lack of interest and respect and his wife's quiet withdrawal. He has been unable to live up to his own father's heroic image after reading his wartime memoirs at the age of eleven. Prentis' confused adult relationship to “Dad,” whom he visits religiously every Wednesday and Sunday at a mental home (visits that his family resents), talking to him even though he cannot talk back, is one reason for his own familial failures. His obsession with the past and his father's role in it, especially his father's daring escape from the Gestapo, ultimately dovetails with his professional suspicions about the C-9 case, missing files, and his boss, Quinn. At the opening of the novel, he is surprised to hear that he is to get Quinn's job; at the close, his promotion and his decision quietly to suppress police information that may hurt the innocent allows his rehabilitation as husband and father.
Quinn, the bureau chief, another problematic father figure with a suspect military background, unsmiling and curt. Quinn is plump and bespectacled, with none of the physical attributes of power, but his position (literally) elevates him above his clerks at work in their semibasement. An internal window allows him to spy on them unseen. His silent removal of files, assignment of projects that cannot be completed, and sudden takeovers of cases generate an aura of mystery and turn his subordinates'jobs into a guessing game. His revelation that “Dad” cracked in the hands of the Gestapo and stooped not only to betrayals but to perpetuating his im-postures in print releases Prentis from his obsessions—the files are “lost” and the past rewritten. Quinn's retirement and naming of Prentis as his successor ensure Prentis a large chair in a large office, like his father's. He finds the status he needs.
Prentis, Sr., referred to frequently as Dad and codenamed Shuttlecock, a World War II espionage agent. He is a retired partner in a successful firm of consultant engineers and now resides in an institution. He is a silent and seemingly noble figure whose apparent mental breakdown a few years ago has left him unable or unwilling to talk to his son, in whom he lost interest when, as a boy of eleven, Prentis withdrew from him. His terse, brisk memoirs of daring wartime operations in France made him something of a public figure in the late 1950's. Pages of them fill Prentis' narrative.
Marian, Prentis' wife. Slightly dull but still sexually attractive, pliant of limb and compliant by disposition, Marian withdraws from domestic battles into caring for her plants. She seems set to transfer her affection from husband to sons.
Martin, Prentis' ten-year-old son. On the verge of growing up, with a rebellious streak and considerable courage, Martin has taken to spying on Prentis from a distance as Prentis goes to and from work. When his father gets rid of the television set, resentful of both sons' addiction to “heroes” like the Bionic Man, Martin provokes a confrontation and a beating by removing Grandpa's book from the shelves.
Peter, Martin's younger brother. An instinctive conformist with a tendency to snivel, Peter submits to his father's whims and temper.