Ben, in the World
Ben, in the World is a novel written by Doris Lessing, published in 2000, in which she stages a parody of the 'objectivity' of the narrator's voice. The story delves into the life of Ben Lovatt following the events of the first book dedicated to this character, The Fifth Child.
 First edition (UK) | |
| Author | Doris Lessing |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Flamingo (UK) HarperCollins (US) |
Publication date | 05 June 2000 (UK)25 July 2000 (US) |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 192 |
| ISBN | 0-00-226195-2 |
| Preceded by | The Fifth Child |
Plot
Ben, in the World takes place a number of years after the events in The Fifth Child.
In the beginning of Ben, in the World, Ben Lovatt is 18-years-old and living with an elderly lady named Mrs. Biggs. However, she cannot afford to support the both of them, and sends Ben to his estranged family to ask for his birth certificate so that he can get an unemployment benefit. By the time Ben returns (without the birth certificate), he learns that Mrs. Biggs has passed away. He goes to a couple that had looked after him before he'd met Mrs. Biggs: Rita, a prostitute he'd once had a recurring relationship with, and Johnston, her procurer.
Johnston comes up with a plan to smuggle a large amount of narcotics into France, which would give him and Rita enough money to permanently get off the streets, using Ben. The plan succeeds, and effectively allows him and Rita to cease being responsible for Ben, as they leave him in France under the temporary care of Richard, one of Johnston's men, in an expensive hotel, with a cut from the smuggling deal.
Soon after Richard leaves Ben in the hotel, Ben meets Alex, a film producer who decides to make a film about Ben, set in Rio de Janeiro. He takes Ben to Brazil and introduces Ben to Teresa, an actress who is Alex's girlfriend when he stays in Rio. Teresa grows attached to Ben, and introduces him to Inez (her friend, and a scientist) after Alex abandoned the idea he had of the movie, and Ben himself. This leads to Ben meeting Alfredo, a man who claims to have seen people like Ben before, but doesn't explain where or when.
The book climaxes with the scientific institute Inez works for kidnapping Ben to experiment on, Teresa saving him with the help of Alfredo, and a trek into the mountains of Brazil to see the people who are 'like Ben'.
As it turns out, those people are only rock paintings. Ben is the only person of his species still alive- he is a step backwards in evolution. The crushing despair Ben feels leads him to throw himself off the edge of a cliff, killing him instantly. This is where the novel ends.
Characters
- Ben Lovatt. The fifth child of Harriet and David Lovatt, born different.
- The Lovatts. Ben's family. Consists of his mother Harriet, father David, and his siblings Luke, Helen, Jane, and Paul.
- Mrs. Biggs. An elderly woman who looks after Ben for a while.
- Rita. A courtesan that Ben becomes interested in.
- Johnston. The owner of a minicab company and Rita's pimp.
- Alex. A film director and producer interested in making a movie about Ben.
- Teresa. A courtesan turned actress interested in helping Ben.
- Inez. Teresa's friend, and a scientist with a keen interest in Ben.
- Alfredo. The man sent by the Scientific Institute to convince Ben to submit to testing, who eventually turns traitor and takes Ben to see 'his people'.
Reception
In his review for The New York Times, Michael Pye said the book "lets you see things as Ben sees them, as you have not seen things before. The book shares that uncanny effect with the best fiction."[1] In her analysis of Lessing's experimental comments on literary genre, Susan Watkins argues that by exaggerating the picaresque, Lessing forces her readers "to ask a series of questions about the meaning of the distinction between the animal and the human." Watson finds that Ben is "a marginal figure, critical of society but unable to find a place outside it", like a picaro hero. Lessing uses the figure of Ben "as a way to comment on a society experiencing intense social upheaval." While the traditional picaro is a semi-outsider, Ben is much more isolated. Furthermore, it is far more in doubt if he is able "to survive by his wits and turn a series of exploitative situations to his advantage (another feature of the genre)." Watkins observes that in Ben, in the World prolepsis is used to a humorous effect by which the 'objectivity' of the narrator's voice is being parodied. The device of omniscience is exaggerated so that the reader is made to see how naive it is to believe in what the narrator relates. Another effect of this is, according to Watson, that the reliability of perception is questioned and that any 'commons sense' judgments about Ben's alleged difference from others are called into doubt.[2]
By its depicting an outsider, Ben, in the World has recently been seen as comparable to Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853) by Herman Melville, to The Metamorphosis (1912) by Franz Kafka, to The Stranger (1942) by Albert Camus, to Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell, to The Bluest Eye (1970) by Toni Morrison, and to Unaccustomed Earth (2008) by Jhumpa Lahiri.[3]
References
- Pye, Michael (2000-08-06). "The Creature Walks Among Us". nytimes.com. The New York Times. Retrieved 2014-08-17.
- Susan Watkins, Doris Lessing, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2010, ISBN 978-0-7190-7481-3, pp. 128-130.
- C. Fred Alford: Politics Through Popular Fiction and Short Stories, Spring term 2014: "In one way or another, all the books and short stories in this course are all about outsiders. Some are outsiders by choice, most not. Each is an outsider in a different way."
External links
- PBS interview with Lessing