Joe-Clarissa-Jed-ENDURING LOVE. Background information about the character details about family, career

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Joe

Background information about the character – details about family, career etc

Joe is a 48-year-old man living with his girlfriend Clarissa in a small house-apartment in London. The only physical description of him is that he’s ‘a large, clumsy, balding fellow’. In chapter 1, we learn that Joe has been with Clarissa 7 years. Joe is a rationalist as he analyses human behavior by reason and dislikes religion and finding faith-based explanations. Joe and Clarissa are well off: they drink expensive wine and Joe buys Clarissa a first edition book of Keats for her birthday.  

Joe has ‘a good physics degree and a doctorate on quantum electrodynamics.’ Initially Joe wanted to be a scientist and began to develop a part for computers, this failed and having realized he was too old to be a research scientist ‘...my academic career was sunk...’ he began to write science books. Joe is ‘a journalist, a commentator, an outsider to my own profession.’ although science is still his first love. Joe is frustrated and extremely disappointed for not being the scientist he wanted to be if his idea wouldn’t of been stolen by some other researchers. Joe isn’t satisfied with his work “ I wrote a long and dull review of five books on consciousness.”

His life is mainly revolved around his work and this is why he often analysis certain events in such depth, always wanting the answers that lie behind it. For example he needs to know what is exactly wrong with Parry and researchers his condition thoroughly. Joe advocates science before everything else “Did the scientific illiterates who ran this place, and who dared call themselves educated people, really believe that literature was the greatest intellectual achievement of our civilization?”

Joe has no children since Clarissa can’t have any. Therefore, Joe doesn’t spend much time around children, but since he is a good listener and talker, he “would have made a wonderful father” according to Clarissa, even though personally he senses “an uneasiness I have to conceal when I meet a child.” (p118). Despite this, Clarissa and Joe love children and have integrated them into their lives: they have a room in their house, which is part nursery, part teenage and where children or young adults sometimes stay.

Attitudes and interests

Joe has a very scientific attitude and analyses human behaviour and uses theories to explain them.  For example, he is “impatitent to research” (p127) Parry’s condition.

He is very observant and makes detailed analysis about everything. However, he sometimes acts and thinks irrationally: “My numbness disappeared with the simple thought that what I was seeing was love, and the slow agony of its destruction. […] It was urgent that I return to London and save our love. I had no course of action in mind, but I would have been glad to get to my feet and make an excuse.” (p112)

After visiting Jean Logan, Joe goes back to the field where the balloon accident occurred. He tries to reconstruct the events, “as though walking through a police reconstruction.” (p127) This event one again shows us how meticulously Joe likes to analyze and observe everything.

As I previously mentioned, Joe is very rational and therefore tries to rationalize any irrational situation : “I made calculations. If Gadd had stayed in the basket with his grandson, and if the rest of us had hung on, and if we assumed an average weight of a hundred and sixty pounds each, then surely eight hundred pounds would have kept us close to the ground. If the first person had not let go then surely the rest of us would have stayed in place. And who was this first person? Not me. Not me.”

Joe is also very observing. He notices everything around him “Outside, the raucous traffic in St James Square, even the dispatch motorbikes, was soporific in the way that the other people’s frantic motion can be. Indoors, the murmur of water along unseen ancient pipes and, nearer, a creaking of floorboards as someone, invisible behind the magazine rack, moved a couple of paces, paused for a minute or two, and then moved again. This sound, I realized in retrospect, had been perched on the outer edges of my awareness for almost half an hour.”

We also get the impression that Joe is very brave because he jumps straight up from where he is sitting with Clarissa to run after the balloon to try to help.  “We turned to look across the field and saw the danger.  Next thing, I was running towards it”. (p.1).

Joe feels extremely guilty about the accident. (p29).  He feels that he helped to kill John Logan because he let go of the rope, but as soon as he starts to think these kind of thoughts and feel guilty, he tells himself that he was right to let go.  (p.32).  This chapter really gives us an insight into Joe’s brain and his feelings after the accident.  It focuses strongly on all the different emotions he is feeling: guilt from having let go, relief that he is able to talk about it with Clarissa and their friends and unburden himself.  Joe’s rationality comes through: “We tried to help and we failed”.  (p.33).

Joe is not entirely sure of himself. He let’s guilt catch up with him quite easily (after the balloon accident) “If it was guilt, where exactly did it begin?... The unease was on my skin and beyond”, “ guilt was to the past…” “Anxiety about, distaste for the future”.  Joe always needs to understand himself “It was my emotional condition, the mental-visceral state I had yet to understand” This will be a great problem for Joe throughout the novel, because you cannot always understand your feelings, and his will to always understand what is going on in him is impossible most times. “I began to fret. I couldn’t find the word for what I felt… It is clearly not true that without language there is no thought”, “It wasn’t fear exactly. Fear was too focused, it had an object. Dread was too strong. Fear of the future. Apprehension then. Yes, there it was, approximately. It was apprehension” “ I was afraid of my fear, because I did not know its cause”.  His guilt develops “But instead of reading myself or others I thought about John Logan and how we had killed him. I could feel the rope in my hands again as I examined the welts”.

Joe knows how to manipulate a situation in his favour:  when he sees that the Logans are reluctant to hand him the gun because they are unsure of what he is going to do with it (“the deal he had brokered might be slipping away” – p.199) he knows several things; “they wanted the money and they wanted absolution” (p.199).  He then throws them the money telling them to count it, knowing that they will pounce on it because they desperately want and need it and he will therefore get the gun.

Joe gets very scared at that thought and cannot handle it: “I had the impression of having passed out for a second or two”. (p.204).  Joe has never fired a gun before, let alone touched one and he realises that “it was just another of those inert devices you unwrap at home after shopping and wonder how difficult it’s going to be to bring it to life”.  (p. 205).  This seems rather cold because a gun is of course used for killing people.  On the whole trip back Joe is a wreck and walking up the stairs he is extremely scared: “I could hear my heart under my shirt, and the pressure of my pulse made my field of vision throb”. (p.209).  Once he is in he calms down though.  Compared to Parry (“tremor in his hands”, “sweat was beading on his forehead” – p. 210), Joe was “suddenly so tired” (p. 210).  Joe realises the ludicrousness of the situation.

After Joe has shot Parry, he and Clarissa are in a state of shock and later Joe realises that not anything can really save their relationship now: “Perhaps we really were finished”. (p. 215).

Joe at first frightened of Parry but once he ‘walked towards him slowly, he felt the anxiety dropping away’ (p61). Joe realises that Clarissa was right; Parry is a ‘harmless fellow with a strange notion’. Joe ‘speaks to him firmly, but with a little kindness too’.

Joe starts loosing trust in himself as he has doubts on Clarissa’s love towards him.

Pushes back his feelings “I shook my head and typed faster. It wasn’t guilt at all”.

Relationships with other characters

 

Jean Logan

 

Joe’s relationship with Jean Logan is pretty awkward. Jean Logan’s situation could be seen as the possible future of Joe’s own relationship with Clarissa, as their relationship is gradually weakening. Joe wants to meet Jean as he feels guilty about the accident. He wants her to understand that he is not to blame. We see that Joe is a very implicated character. He cares about people. “…should I visit Mrs Logan and tell her what happened, she deserved to know… her husband was a hero”. Why would Joe have to go? This situation had traumatized him enough, the fact that he is willing to go and see the wife of the victim proves that he is caring towards others.

 

Jed Parry

 

Joe is scared of Jed:

 

Throughout the novel, Joe is stalked by Jed triggering a frustration and scare in himself. Joe is not comfortable around Jed as he cannot explain his behavior. He is terribly afraid of Parry, and automatically thinks Parry wants to kill him : “What reason had I given him for murdering me? Did he think I had mocked his faith? Perhaps he had phoned again…”.

Join now!

 

After visiting the Logan family, Joe encounters Parry on his way home. Joe wants to avoid any contact with Parry, almost as if he was disgusted by him, as “I didn’t want to touch him.”(p129) Also, since Parry is obviously emotionally unstable and unpredictable, Joe doesn’t always know what Parry means, which makes him uneasy, unleashing paranoia in his mind, as “afterwards I considered his words carefully and began to think that perhaps I was being threatened. But then, it was easy to feel threatened, and I ended up with no clear idea at all.” (p129) Joe will keep ...

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