I Am Pilgrim

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013

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Themes

The Nature of Heroism

Throughout the text, Murdoch ponders the nature of heroism and righteous acts, prompting questions about who deserves to be labeled a hero. Ultimately, Hayes establishes that heroism, especially in the landscape of the George W. Bush administration’s global war on terror, has many manifestations.

When Murdoch is commended by the president for killing his mentor, he notes in passing that the letter refers to him as a “hero” and then calls it “the other word he had used” (30). This desire for distance establishes that he is more haunted than celebratory, unable to look at his mentor’s death as a sign of progress. Whisperer, Murdoch’s mentor, expresses similar doubts about his own career, wondering if his sacrifice of a personal life was truly worth the costs.

Tellingly, others consider Murdoch’s chief adversary, al-Nassouri, a “hero of the Afghan war” (141), underlining that notions of valor also depend on one’s perspective. This, along with the biographical overlaps between Murdoch and al-Nassouri, invites the reader into a world of ambiguity. Hayes suggests later that the two men recognize this in one another, as Murdoch reflects that “it was only their enemies who knew what it was really like on the front line” (580). Both men, whatever their differences, are part of the same world of secrecy and struggle that few others know, which bonds them together as much as it pits them against each other.

Murdoch’s greatest certainty proves to be that harm to children is a great evil and that selflessness is laudable. Reflecting the changes that were prompted by his visit to a former concentration camp, Murdoch most obviously questions his choices when they harm children: his mentor’s daughters, the daughter of a Swiss banker he has taken hostage, and ultimately, Zakaria al-Nassouri’s young son. This latter act, which nearly ends his friendship with Bradley, sees Murdoch betray his deepest values with little hesitation. Bradley’s doubts, in contrast, may lead to the conclusion that he is the better person—though Hayes raises the implicit question of how useful a conscience is in times of true crisis.

One of Murdoch’s few moments of certainty about the nature of heroism comes when he visits Ground Zero and learns about Ben Bradley’s rescue efforts that day from a girl whose mother Bradley saved. Murdoch himself seems to make the most peace with his choices when he hears from Battleboi that his intervention has reunited him with his beloved Rachel and saved their hopes of having a family. Murdoch’s quotation of the New Testament, with reference to the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, suggests that his new opportunity for a peaceful life is a kind of redemption, a chance to be an uncomplicated person as Ben Bradley is.

Loyalty and Family

Murdoch’s greatest obsession other than crime may be his study of human nature and family relationships, a path marked by his personal traumas and losses. In the aftermath of killing his mentor and thinking of his family’s loss, he finds himself kidnapping the daughter of a Swiss banker, realizing that “love wasn’t weak, love was strong” (39), which he assures the reader has key significance to the search for al-Nassouri. At the same time, he finds he has little empathy for the man whose daughter he threatens, because he is certain his family of Swiss bankers benefited financially from the Holocaust. Murdoch remains haunted by a photograph he saw at a former concentration camp depicting a mother leading her children to the gas chamber, finding it a moving portrait of devotion to the last.

It is this respect for familial love that leads him to tell al-Nassouri that his son is “the only weapon I had” (579). Murdoch himself is forced to choose his country over his own dreams of love and family, to endanger a child rather than nurture one. Murdoch is often more concerned with his distance from others than with his essential ruthlessness, especially his failure to maintain and appreciate relationships. He castigates himself for missing his foster father’s funeral and remaining distant from him, realizing after he is gifted his art collection that he never lost Bill Murdoch’s love and should have given him the same devotion. Similarly, he refuses to tell even Ben Bradley his real name, saying, “[E]verything before Greenwich is mine, Ben—it’s not for anyone else to see” (169). Though he respects the strong bond between Bradley and Marcie, his first loyalty is to his long-deceased mother.

Murdoch frequently focuses on family as an investigative lens, but he also misses key aspects of the nature of devotion to his own detriment. He fails to account for the vengeance of the Nikolaides family when he returns to Turkey, and this nearly prevents him from completing his mission. He is almost gleeful when he informs the family patriarch that he ordered his son’s assassination—his qualms about using people’s children against them extend only to the innocent. Murdoch’s investigation into Dodge’s death leads him to assume that Ingrid and Cameron committed a crime of passion together—only later does he realize that Ingrid was driven by vengeance, her passion turned bitter and dangerous. Frequently, Murdoch finds himself drawn to loyalty as a tool he can use but misses the ways it is an offensive weapon as well.

Morality and Contingency

By its nature, the espionage novel, one of the genres to which I Am Pilgrim belongs, engages with the nature of secrecy, moral compromise, and human agency. Murdoch’s account, written sometime after the investigations he describes, emphasizes many moments that might have turned out differently or where his own errors cause problems. This has the ultimate effect of making him a more complex hero and increasing the reader’s sense of suspense and uncertainty.

Murdoch frequently underlines that even his successful operations contain elements of chance, even what one might call luck. His successful operation against money launderer Christos Nikolaides, for example, ensures the family will seek vengeance against him. Because the killers were women, “it was as if the killers were telling him that Christos was such a no account castrato he wasn’t even worth a matador” (48). This error reaches new significance when Leyla Cumali and her brother enlist the family in her operation to surveil and capture Murdoch, as this adds to the risk he faces in trying to escape. A similar fate awaits him in Turkey, when he is discovered in Cumali’s house because a power outage brings her back early from the circus, only for him to successfully kill the only officer who catches sight of him. Murdoch also reminds the reader that his successes are due as much to chance as to skill, as his relationship with Ben Bradley depends on Bradley’s wife gifting her husband an obscure forensics text. Murdoch says, “[I]f I believed in fate, I would say there was some hand guiding it all” (66).

One of the key traits Murdoch shares with his nemesis, Zakaria al-Nassouri, is a talent for obfuscation, a dependence on random chance, and a willingness to disregard ethics for the sake of their goals. Al-Nassouri escapes Syria with the smallpox vaccines he needs by a matter of seconds, leading Murdoch to remark that “fate favors the bad as well as the good” (160). Murdoch also admits that it may be difficult to tell who falls into which category, as he reflects that there were “many times I betrayed our nation’s deepest values in order to protect them” (49). His frequent doubts about his own righteousness, from his murder of his mentor to his kidnapping of al-Nassouri’s son, create a world where the reader cheers for his escape but may wonder whether his victories are truly moral.

Al-Nassouri, like Murdoch, sees himself as a defender of his faith, and even acts as a doctor in Afghanistan before killing his hostages to test his smallpox vaccine. Murdoch is ultimately saved by the memories of those who care for him: He can find a doctor to treat his wounds because of his previous attempt to save an injured colleague. His ability to sail for that assistance comes from his foster father, Bill Murdoch. In this sense, then, Hayes suggests that a life of unmitigated loneliness may be the difference between a deeply flawed hero and his adversary, and that social connections are what bolster the morally upright.