When he first talks about Nick the reader realises that Michael feels responsible for him and his welfare without actually liking him. At this point the reader assumes that Michael is doing this because of his religion. James comments “I wish I had your faith” during a discussion with him about Nick.
The way he speaks about Nick is sarcastic”The great man himself” and “One is gratified”. Although he is nervous around Nick he didn’t want to leave him “still lingered, his eyes staying about the room”
When Michael left Toby with Nick, Nick said “incompetent” this summed up how Nick thought of him”
We see Michael at his best he is helpful, positive, kind and reassuring. When he is helping Dora, when she tells him about leaving her suitcase at the pub and is clearly upset. Dora “felt a complicity” between her and Michael after them both witnessing Toby by the pool of water in the woods.
Michael has a reoccurring dream that troubled him during the night and often made him wake up.
Michael dreams that he sees nuns by the lake dragging out a body. He thought that the nuns had murdered the person. He was so overwhelmed he thought for a moment he was really awake. He had had the dream twice before. The dream was accompanied by an overwhelming sense of evil. The booming he heard could have been the bell. The dream is very sinister and could be a premonition about Catherine’s death. Having this dream at the beginning of the chapter sets an ominous tone for the rest of the chapter.
Michael wondered what the dream could mean and what it was in the depths of his mind that could make him attribute something so terrible to those innocent nuns. He thought that it wasn’t “the pressure of dark forces upon him, as of the reality within himself of some active and positive spring of evil”. So nothing was influencing his thoughts these thoughts were coming from within him. He couldn’t see this “he shook his head and knelt down at the window”
To take his mind off the dream Michael immerses himself back into the role of being a leader.
We see how Michael tries not to fancy James. “Michael did his best not to find it pleasing for the wrong reasons”. Michael had always held that “the good man is without power” for Michael priesthood and giving his services to God must mean a loss of personality, which would come about if one was a servant. Michael spends a lot of time meditating; he uses this time to think about the entire goings on at Imber as well as the people, especially himself.
He is “against voting as a general rule” but to sort business out at Imber things must be decided on by voting. Michael is “nervous of publicity” “This community could so easily be made to look absurd in the press” This is what actually happens later in the novel.
“The boat came lazily to a standstill” this is a lot like Michael, not under any guidance, uncertain about things. His role in the community is uncomfortable too. He is left like the boat, drifting between the two. The sense that the lake a barrier, is between Nick and Michael. Because of events that happened in the past something will always pose as a barrier whether it be physical like the lake or mental, just a sense of something there.
We find out that “Michael had known Nick for a long time” and that “their acquaintance was a curious one, the details of which were not known to the other members of the Imber community” Michael had been Nick’s teacher when Nick was about fourteen years old. “Michael was perfectly aware that Nick’s charms were beginning to move him in a way that was more than casual”. We realise that Nick accompanied Michael to his room on numerous occasions after classes, arguing points, asking questions and so on. Nick then appeared one night, uninvited. “Michael knew he was playing with fire”. “Yet it still seemed to him that he would escape unscathed, the whole thing was still, in appearance, innocent.
Nick often visited Michael; one such day “as he spoke he laid his hand upon Michael’s knee”. This had a great impact on Michael, even though he didn’t react to Nicks advances he knew how he felt about him. Michael and Nick met up for a week everyday after that first touch and never did more than touch and caress each other.
Michael’s faith in Nick disappeared when a week later Nick told the headmaster about the affair between himself and Michael. When Nick told the headmaster he didn’t leave a truthful picture of the nature of their relationship and what actually happened. Michael had to leave immediately, the next time Michael sees Nick is at Imber.
Michael is a varied character that is obviously troubled by his sexuality and his past relationship with Nick. He is a liked member of the community at Imber, despite him being rather shy and nervous.
