'The Giants' by J.M.G. LeClézio

Responding to "Fear is false evidence made real." (A quote possibly by Oscar Wilde?) at Sails Of Oblivion.

These contents are abridged from THE GIANTS by J.M.G. LeClézio (Gallimard) and a critique by J.R. Waelti-Walters, both published in the 1970's. The book still bears keen relevance to the post-millennium condition. Excerpts are supplemented with collage and images produced for this edition from Time magazines of the period. The aim is to raise awareness of the author's writing and philosophy.

“Alien words have entered my brain. I should like to be something other than an echo.”

As in all of LeClézio's work he presents the concept of the sun as a dangerous force that reinforces man's solitude and even kills, at the same time being necessary to his very life. The sun brings understanding of things that are sometimes too painful to withstand; thus we try to escape what the light forces us to see. He is a mystic, a voice truly of our time.

For him, the natural world is a mysterious, dangerous, powerful and wonderful place that man must struggle to understand, but from which he is separated by buildings, electricity, technology, cars, words, people, etc; an ever-increasing multitude of things which we must escape from before we can perceive the aspects of the world normally outside the scope of everyday reality.

The Giants offers a rudimentary hero-versus-villain plot, the first to appear clearly in LeClézio's writing. The setting is an all-encompassing shopping complex; Hyperpolis, an environment dictated totally by the theories of modern marketing. It is the first giant of the title, probably based on an actual seaside shopping centre called Cap 3000, which opened near Nice in the early 1970's. The title also refers to the shoppers, described as a sleeping giant that could awaken and overturn the whole city-state of Hyperpolis.

Alternatively, the title refers to the "Masters of Language" or the "Masters of Thought" who control Hyperpolis. These men control and sell everything, creating our desire to possess certain things by adjusting our concept of the life we should lead. This is the struggle laid out in The Giants, to avoid living a prepackaged life repeating secondhand thoughts.

The story unfolds before the mute boy Bogo who hangs out in the parking lot. He observes two girls who walk along the beach and go boating. Huge crowds enter the mall, hypnotized by its colours, sounds and forms, moving as if in a trance. The girl called Tranquility enters the mall, aware of the traps around her, fighting against the mindlessness to meet her friend at the information desk. Later her friend is driving, becoming confused by letters along the road.

They both struggle against the effects of Hyperpolis, trying to think for themselves, writing poems. They have a friend called Machines who pushes trolleys in the mall. His favourite place is the Gulf station, a haven where words retain their meaning. Bogo enters the mall listening to voices, eluding police to invade the power systems. Tranquility and Machines lay together in his room, afraid of being overheard they write notes to each other. He threatens to burn down Hyperpolis if she doesn't leave with him. He breaks a wall mirror, revealing a secret camera.

Security men try to discover who intends to destroy the complex. They question Tranquility on a lie detector. Her interrogators finally reveal their experiment, turning up the piped music heard continually in the mall. Under it she hears the chant; "Hyperpolis must be burned". Bogo uses language and thought to cause system failures in Hyperpolis. Being the most susceptible, Machines carries out his threat to burn down the mall, responding to his conditioning. Bogo watches seagulls as the two girls row out to sea and commit suicide. Interspersed through the text are comments on language and thought control, advertising material and quotations from various sources - mostly ancient.

The Giants is multi-level writing that delivers three forms of understanding; through the intellect, the imagination, and the subconscious, all giving the same message: we are being controlled by mechanical and psychological means for commercial ends. Our individuality, autonomy and freedom of thought are at stake. We must react. Madness, walking, emotion, drugs, meditation - all can and do serve to break down the barriers that confine our thoughts.

LeClézio’s quotations are not fictitious. People are doing this in our world today, doing it to us. He denounces the men who are the masters of the modern world, the commercial magnates and the psychologists they employ. This is Brave New World and 1984 combined, and it has actually come into being around us despite all the warnings we’ve had. He tells us his intention in the opening pages:

I SHALL NOT INVENT NEW ACRONYMS
RATHER I SHALL TRY
TO BREAK THE OLD SEALS

He then offers Chinese symbols for birth and death, referencing eastern spiritualism, followed by a Celtic battle cry. The juxtaposition of alternatives is a technique the author uses at all levels, readers noting the instability of his subject pronouns. Narration moves from "I" to "you" to "he" with no apparent motivation, alienating the reader and forcing us to share the alienation of the characters.

It is in the manner of a fairy tale, a conventional victory of good over evil (we must fight against evils that undermine our humanity), and beneath this a far more realistic description of the dangers and violence of existence (we are conditioned into the decisions we make). It is like a horror comic strip that dissolves into the Kafkaesque nightmare of total, brutal domination, in which the helpless hero and heroine are at the mercy of an all-powerful master.

This is black humour, the author using modern techniques to wage his war on modern society. The scenes are easily transferable to the medium of comics because they are so visual. The principal scenes; Bogo on the beach, the Gulf station, Machines' bedroom, Tranquility's interrogation and Machines' act of arson are etched in our minds with great precision.

LeClézio teaches us the language of our enemy, showing us how the meaning of words can be undermined, warning us against subliminal attack. He includes a bibliography for readers who wish to learn more on the subject, and for those who have not understood he practices his own conditioning - a counter message runs through the novel; the names of the enemy are listed, with pages of bad typing, phonetic language distorted by typography, repitition, computer printouts and programming lingo.

The whole text is enclosed within pages of advertising copy, slogans, ciphers, logos, etc; giving an overall impression of the infiltration of an alien tongue. A narrator explains how electricity helps the Masters' achieve their aims as it holds the world of men in thrall; lighting the neon signs, running the lie detectors and computers, finally powering the electric chair. The symbol for this power is a lightning sign, recalling Hitler's dreaded SS - who wore a lightning bolt insignia.

Man is captive because his world is imprisoned in a vast web of cables that separate the earth from the sky. The giants bring the danger, for electricity can get inside everyone; it watches all the time, it can betray man to man, and it can kill. But it can also be overcome. Tranquility tears the lie detector from her body to end her torment, as Bogo tries to destroy the power by transmitting his own sounds.

Liberation means freedom from this power that enables certain men to manipulate others. It is the silent, faceless enemy and master of the men in grey suits who watch and give orders against which The Giants is a battle cry. The book also suggests there may be an escape on the other side of fear. The idea of liberty is coupled with doubt; as the author makes us aware of the practice of subliminal conditioning, the Masters reveal that it is all just an experiment.

Ultimately, Tranquility kills herself and her friend. Was she also conditioned to die? The author tells us that language is full of traps (in colours, noises, music, forms), in which case; how free of traps is his own writing? He explains our situation intellectually, illustrating it with characters and plot, while giving us an object subliminal lesson in the pages of advertising copy, where the words "Hyperpolis must be burned down" appear.

It is possible that the call-to-arms has come too late, but the narrator believes that thought does exist in all matter and can be mobilized against the enemy, the Masters of thought. They have contaminated our words and with them created more fear and anguish, a new "world sickness" for man, who finds himself an alien in a world other men have built.

LeClézio pits society against the natural world and above all the elements, with relentless observation and the gift to transpose what he has seen and experienced into words. He expresses his anguish and his quest in lyric prose that breaks the boundaries of traditional novels, creating an epic of consciousness rather than deeds. His way of writing forces us to come to grips with his situation and our own.

Language is important because it is a means to express and control thought, a way of communicating at all levels. The need to fight for human thought and language is a matter of survival. There are eyes and ears everywhere. We must regain control of our language and thought by freeing ourselves. Literature is a source of power in such a war.

"Hatred is the illusion of liberty and the Masters' language distills the word liberty. "

Other works by the author J.M.G. LeClézio:

The Interrogation (Winner of the Theophraste Renaudot prize, 1963)
The Flood
Fever
The Ecstasy of Matter
Terra Amata
The Book of Flights
War
In Iwa's Country
Mydriase
Hai
Journeys to the Other Side