Lessons

Conrad’s story Youth is about a middle-aged man, Marlow, reflecting on his youth. Roland reflects that for the young Marlow, “the tropics, the fabled east, is ahead of him and everything, however dangerous, physically demanding or dull, is an adventure” (110). This causes Roland to reflect on his own youth. It also forms part of a broader meditation on youthful adventure and what it means to be faithful to it. Roland asks whether the promise and excitement of youth can be fulfilled or must necessarily be frustrated.

In the case of Jane, the answer is unclear. “The most thrilling episode of her life” is traveling to Munich in the aftermath of the war to write on the White Rose movement (78). Yet the real excitement of the trip is not because she has escaped England for the first time. Nor does its thrill come from the sense of independence and sexual liberation that accompanies this escape. Rather, the real excitement of the trip comes through the connection she makes with the memory of the White Rose students in Munich. As Jane says about the White Rose pamphlets, one was “written by a man, a student, still in his mid-20s, with a passion for intellectual freedom and his sure sense of a precious artistic, philosophical and religious tradition under threat of annihilation” (86).

What infects Jane is the sense of freedom and urgency encapsulated in these pages. Unlike Jane, who “had never stood up to anyone or risked herself for an idea” (89), the writer is risking everything for a higher and imperiled principle. Jane falls for this strident expression of youthful idealism and rebellion. It is this vision of youth’s ultimate and vital defiance, as much as any specific political position, that motivates Jane’s commitment to a new life of “resistance” and nonconformity. Through the pamphlets and Jane’s response, McEwan explores Writing as a Means to Reveal and Conceal Truth, a key theme of the novel.

However, Jane’s commitment does not last long. Jane meets and marries Heinrich and settles down to a life of middle-class comfort and conventionality. She is initially attracted to Heinrich because he seemed, at least to her, to represent the radicalism and fragility of the White Rose movement. As she tells herself, “how easily it could have been Heinrich led to the guillotine” (95). It is unclear whether she was deceiving herself. Perhaps, having sensed too much danger in White Rose–style nonconformity, she subconsciously imagined its association with Heinrich to justify pulling back toward marriage, a face-saving way of returning to conventional values. Alternatively, her attachment to Heinrich is an example of how free-spirited ideals become ossified. Heinrich “solidified into himself” (98), his interest in the expressionists morphing into a reason to buy a house. Through him, McEwan shows how youthful ideals, if not renewed, can quickly be subsumed into established order.

A similar dynamic is played out in Roland’s youth. Initially, Roland going to see Cornell at the age of 14 amid the Cuban Missile Crisis is an act of youthful spontaneity and rebellion. He is portrayed as seizing the moment in the face of death and, through sexual union, defying “the order and self-importance of school timetables, bikes, cars, clothes” (135). Yet in staying at Cornell’s house afterward Roland compromises the spirit that led him there and is conscripted into doing domestic chores. Resisting the urge to flee, Roland quickly finds himself raking leaves in Cornell’s garden and being told “that while she ironed his clothes he would be washing the dishes” (143).

Roland, in pursuit of sex and its recurrence, finds himself enmeshed in a distorted version of a conventional and highly restrictive relationship. His initial pursuit of freedom turns into submission to Cornell, who controls the means by which he can assert any independence outside of her.