I Am Pilgrim

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013

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Symbols & Motifs

Boats and Sailing

Murdoch explains to the reader that he was an avid sailor in his youth, calling his affinity for boats “the one thing for which I had a natural gift. Apart from deceit, of course” (183). His rebellious choice to abandon the sport, ignoring the cost to his relationship with Bill Murdoch, is one of his lingering regrets. In this way, boats come to represent part of his better nature, a self often lost to the life of espionage.

Like Murdoch, Zakaria al-Nassouri spends time near the sea—his father is a marine zoologist in the city of Jeddah. However, the young al-Nassouri’s father is executed by the state, making the clownfish, his research study, a reminder of loss and vengeance. In descriptions of both characters, Hayes frequently uses nautical and oceanic metaphors: When the young, still unknown al-Nassouri becomes the Saracen when he leaves for Afghanistan, he watches his family “sailing quietly across the dark oceans of sleep” (95). His farewell to them for a life in Afghanistan, which is mostly desert, is a kind of abandonment of his own better self.

Murdoch has repeated visions of sailing alone after his return from a life of espionage, and part of his dread of a return to Bodrum includes his memories of a water operation there in the Theater of Death, submerged Roman gladiatorial ruins reachable only by boat and walkable only at extreme low tide. The dangers of sailing, then, encapsulate Murdoch’s own fear of mortality and the danger of his work. He also frequently describes himself as having “washed up” in particular places, suggesting he is as much flotsam or jetsam as human being (21, 54). In the first use of the phrase, he arrives with the Murdochs. In the second, he arrives at the Thai prison, which marks his own disillusionment with his work and behavior. Murdoch’s final choice to sail away from a life of secrecy, the opposite journey that al-Nassouri took, signals to the reader that he has achieved something like redemption, in a way that his foil never does.

Music, Art, and Photographs

Murdoch frequently quotes song lyrics as observations and uses music to form friendships and connections. His eye for art and photography aids him in his investigations. These motifs, then, allow Hayes to suggest that the successful spy observes more closely than others do, even art forms that might be considered frivolous or insignificant. In the novel’s opener, Murdoch tells the reader, “[T]here are places I’ll remember all my life” and dubs the unknown victim “Eleanor Rigby” because her face is missing, much like the eponymous Eleanor’s “in a jar by the door” (1, 3). Both are lyrics by the Beatles, one from a love song with melancholic elements, the other a classic ballad about isolation. Murdoch himself will prove prone to frequent contemplation of his past and of his present as an isolated figure—the song lyrics thus introduce his character. Murdoch establishes later that he and Ben Bradley bond by listening to performances by “old bluesmen” (171), and he offers life advice to the cynical Turkish musician, Ahmet Pamuk, only to find later that his words inspire the man’s first major international hit. Murdoch sings the blues to his dying friend, Mack, returning to the same part of Turkey to save his own life and end his espionage career. Music, then, is key to his self-understanding and ability to access human connection.

Murdoch’s visual intelligence and affinity for art ties him to his foster father, Bill Murdoch. In his trip to the former concentration camp at Natzweiler-Struthof, Murdoch is deeply struck by a photograph of a murdered woman with her children, and it becomes a personal touchstone for him as he ponders human suffering, loss, and family bonds. He depends on Bill’s affinity for art to remind him of the Uffizi’s restoration skills, which leads to his unorthodox choice to “develop” the mirrors and prove Dodge’s death was a murder. He further relies on Leyla Cumali’s wedding photograph to uncover her maiden name and thus her family history. Murdoch’s affinity for the visual, then, is often the hallmark of his investigative self, though Bill Murdoch’s art collection, his final bequest, offers Murdoch a kind of emotional consolation on his return to the United States. His choice to honor Bill through an art gallery underlines that in general his connections with representational art forms connect him to his humanity.

Names

As befits a work of espionage fiction, identity and names are frequent issues for Murdoch and used by Hayes to cement his knowledge of genre conventions and thematic preoccupations. Murdoch himself uses no name throughout the text, occupying a first-person point of view even for scenes where he is describing the activities of others. Murdoch makes a point of never using his real name, telling Ben Bradley only that Scott Murdoch feels as much an alias as any other, as it was given to him by his adoptive parents. He chooses a code name for his chief adversary, referring to him primarily as “the Saracen” to evoke his wandering lifestyle, his radical politics, and his Muslim identity. The code name Murdoch takes on, Pilgrim, similarly evokes a religious wanderer, a lone figure on a quest for salvation. Murdoch addresses his hacker collaborator primarily as Battleboi, accepting that his online handle is his real self. He does the same for his case officer, referring to him only rarely as Dave and primarily by his nickname of Whisperer.

Even as he obscures some names, including his own, much of Murdoch’s quest involves the search for identities, including cover names and long-hidden birth names. He goes to great lengths to find Leyla Cumali’s birth name, knowing that it may explain her mysterious link to the man he is tracking. He is forced to accept that he will never learn Ingrid Kohl’s true identity, and he refers to her as “Marilyn,” reflecting that she sometimes disguises herself as either the actress Marilyn Monroe or the alternative music artist Marilyn Manson (521). Tellingly, Cameron and her husband are also known only by first names—as if to suggest that they are archetypes more than any analogue to real people. Both ultimately exist as pawns in Ingrid’s greater game. Hayes thus uses names to explore questions of self, identity, and morality. Code names in the novel are not inherently indicators of villainy, but they do orient the reader to Hayes’s genre and its politics, including the overall world of moral ambiguity Murdoch inhabits.