![]() Then again, readers do develop a sense of moral superiority toward Frank Cauldhame for other reasons. ![]() ![]() The Wasp Factory offers no such redemption. This is notably different from, say, Nabokov’s Lolita, which has an obvious turn that gives readers a chance to redeem the voyeurism that occupied the first half of the novel by indulging in an increasing sense of moral superiority toward Humbert Humbert in the second half. Problematically from a moral standpoint, though, the somewhat trite ending doesn’t punish readers for their voyeurism. I haven’t killed anybody for years, and I don’t intend to ever again.Ĭauldhame invokes common sense and sympathy, already beginning to show in the passage quoted above, to keep readers on his side. Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I’d disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. ![]() The narrative proceeds in such a way that these deaths are only revealed little by little, so that readers begin to feel complicit in them as voyeurs. It is not uncommon to hear two different reactions to The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks: “It’s hilarious” and “It’s horrible.” Early on, the protagonist Frank Cauldhame admits to killing three children younger than himself. ![]()
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