The Day of the Jackal

“The sign was the familiar three-plus-two that made up the rhythm of the words Algérie Francaise that Parisian motorists had hooted on their car horns in previous years to express their disapproval of Gaullist policy.”

The OAS fear that their security has been compromised by their repeated failures to kill Charles de Gaulle. Though Rodin is attempting to maintain a high standard of security, their idealism hinders their effectiveness. Even in their secret code signs, they cannot help but show their true intentions. The way in which their idealism affects their security demonstrates exactly why they need to hire someone like the Jackal, so as to protect themselves from their own zealotry.

“Both Pont-de-Seine and Petit-Clamart failed because no one was prepared to risk his own life to make absolutely certain.”

The Jackal’s blunt assessment of the OAS does not endear him to Montclair or Casson. The OAS pride themselves on their commitment to their cause, but this commitment was not as strong as it might seem. None of them was willing to die for the cause, thereby leading to failure. Montclair and Casson have their pride hurt, yet Rodin approves. He agrees with the Jackal, which only serves to justify his decision to hire the English assassin. The mark of the Jackal’s professionalism is seen in his callous and dispassionate appraisal of his employer’s previous work. To him, their failures are an insult to his professionalism.

“It is one of the easiest things in the world to acquire a false British passport.”

To the men in the same business as the Jackal, obtaining a false British passport is very easy. His expertise and his competency is conveyed to the audience through the fact that he does not want to get a fake British passport. By using the name and information of a dead child, he can acquire a real passport which is issued in a fake name. The Jackal demonstrates the way in which he rises above his peers by always demonstrating extreme professionalism, highlighting the theme of The Rise of Meticulous Men.

“The Jackal had listened to the exposé of the forger with admiration, though nothing showed on his face.”

Professionalism can elicit the Jackal’s sympathy. In his meeting with the armorer, he admired Goosens’ commitment to his craft. He gets a similar feeling from the forger, even though the man will later betray him. That the Jackal does not show his admiration through his facial expression is an demonstration of his own professionalism. In this murky world of killers and lies, the slightest hint of emotion or admiration can be taken as weakness.

“This one, he felt sure, was the certainty.”

The Jackal has researched his target meticulously. Though there are many places that de Gaulle will visit, this particular spot is the ideal choice. Not only are the firing lines ideal, but the Jackal can be sure that de Gaulle will not cancel his trip. The event held in this square is in honor of de Gaulle, in a square which is named for the resistance movement which he led. Ego and pride will not allow de Gaulle to cancel his trip, making this a fitting place for him to be killed. In the Jackal’s mind, he can kill de Gaulle on the altar of his own ego.

“They had both been Catholics once.”

Kowalski is a violent man by nature, but a deep memory of religion provides him with some semblance of moral guidance. Though he has hurt and killed people, he cannot condone abortion. His moral code is skewered and hypocritical, but he treasures his memory of religion because it hearkens back to a time before he lost his innocence. In his mind, abortion would not just be killing a child, but it would be an affront to his own childhood innocence. Kowalski is a violent hypocrite, but his lack of moral clarity suggests that there is a hidden part of him which longs for a more innocent time.

“For the first time in many years his thoughts were in a turmoil, and there was no one to whom he could turn for orders how to solve the problem by violence.”

As a violent man, Kowalski has grown accustomed to taking orders. In the French Foreign Legion and the OAS, he has found a place where he does not have to interrogate the morality of his actions. He only needs to follow orders. Faced with the prospect of Sylvie’s leukemia, however, he has discovered a problem which he cannot solve by punching. Furthermore, he will need to abandon the man who issues his orders so that he can be with his daughter. Sylvie’s sickness is not only a problem because Kowalski cannot comprehend it, but because he must abandon his only moral framework in order to be with her.

“He loved airports although he could not understand how they worked.”

Kowalski has gone AWOL for the first time in his life. As he stands in the airport, he studies the planes as they take off and land. This sight imbues him with an emotion that he cannot quite understand. The planes, like Kowalski, are seemingly unmoored from gravity. They are weightless and free in a way that he covets. For the first time, Kowalski is similarly free from the gravity of his orders, only to be brought back down to earth by his guilt at having left and his fears for his daughter. The planes are an external symbol of the emotional flux which he feels within himself.

“The President, who concealed his shortsightedness on all public occasions by never wearing glasses except to read speeches.”

De Gaulle is an arrogant man, but his ego does not derive from his person but rather his status. He cannot abide the idea of looking weak because he feels that, as the leader of France, he is the living embodiment of the country itself. He has become France, so any weakness that he shows reflects as a weakness for his country. He cannot concede that he is shortsighted in public, lest the whole world think that France’s vision has begun to falter. De Gaulle’s ego is a carefully cultivated method of projecting power and status for his country, as well as his own self. De Gaulle’s unwillingness to appear weak highlights The Consequences of Hubris, as threats on his life are still made.

“The powers conferred on him in the last ninety minutes had made him, for a spell at least, the most powerful cop in Europe.”

Lebel’s mind does not stop working. Even amid the chaos and confusion of his new assignment, he is able to recognize the scope of the powers inferred on him by the government. He is the most powerful police officer in Europe at this moment. His awareness of his power and the responsible way in which he directs the powers toward his goal illustrate his competency and his modesty. Lebel knows that these powers could be abused, but he has no interest in abusing them.

“Privately, Jacqueline hated him as much as on the first day they had met.”

Jacqueline seduces Colonel Saint-Clair de Villauban with apparent ease. He is not able to realize that she absolutely loathes him. His inability to understand the motivations of his own mistress suggest that his ideas may not be as carefully considered nor as insightful as those of Lebel. Saint-Clair de Villauban is a pompous man who endangers the entire mission while blaming everyone else.

“They were all members of the same club, the club of the potentates.”

The heads of the security forces are concerned, at first, about sharing details of their investigation in such a manner that foreign politicians will learn that de Gaulle’s life has been threatened. They should not be concerned, however, as the politicians have an innate camaraderie which compels them to protect one another. They have a degree of empathy in their private lives which is unrecognizable to those who know their public profile. Just as the police officers have their Old Boys’ club, the politicians have a shared interest in one another’s survival.

“For policeman, Minister, it’s all crime.”

Lebel is a pure police investigator. He is not interested in the politics nor the publicity of the case, only in finding an answer. The potential assassination of Charles de Gaulle is, to Lebel, just another crime which needs to be solved. By treating the case like any other investigation, by employing his same careful approach, he can strip away the complications which surround the investigation and heighten his chances of success. No one else in the room is able to think of the assassination as just another crime, which is why Lebel is the ideal choice of investigator. Lebel comes to embody the full realization of The Rise of the Meticulous Man in his triumph over the Jackal.

“He had never been publicly wrong or inconveniently right, never supported an unfashionable viewpoint or proffered opinions out of line with those prevailing at the highest levels of the corps.”

Sir Jasper Quigley is an unremarkable man. He has risen to such a lofty position by being neither too noticeable nor too objectionable. In essence, he is distinctly average and basically competent, which contrasts him with the less aristocratic but more talented men who do not achieve such heights. Men like Lebel or Thomas are from the wrong social background to attain the importance (or the knighthood) of men like Quigley, which hints at the broader structural problems of institutions which exclude working class people even though they may be more competent.

“Did he understand that there were new standards now, which he could dimly recognize and did not like?”

Thomas’s first meeting with the Prime Minister of Britain prompts him to wonder whether the man has adjusted his understanding of world politics to accommodate the new circumstances. The standards have changed; new ideas have pushed aside the old policies of the past and men like Thomas and Lebel are at the vanguard of this reasonable, meticulous new era. Saint-Clair and Quigley belong to the old world. Thomas is hoping that the Prime Minister can understand this, for Lebel’s benefit as well as his own.

“He continued by giving a rough description of the most common way of getting a false passport, which was in fact the method the Jackal had used.”

Thomas shows that he is like Lebel and the Jackal. Even though he is a police officer, he knows the easiest way to procure a false passport. He explains this as though it were simply, showing how he is intellectually on the same level as the meticulous agents of rational practicality, such as Lebel and the Jackal. They are all operating from the same foundational knowledge, even if they are on different sides of the legal or political divide.

“This was what he had wanted for a long time.”

Even though the Jackal suspects that Lebel is hot on his tail, he has become too accustomed to his lavish lifestyle to give it up now. He has already exposed himself to too much legal scrutiny, so he must complete the job and earn the money which will allow him to retire with wealth. This reasoning suggests that the mysterious Jackal has known poverty in his life and that he is determined not to go back.

“The lack of sleep must be beginning to tell.”

Lebel is an unremarkable man in physical terms. He is not the strongest, nor the fastest. In spite of this, he demonstrates a great reserve of stamina. After many sleepless nights, he is still able to engage his brain and outthink the Jackal. This stamina is a reflection of his determination. He absolutely will not give up, suggesting that his remarkable physical trait is his relentlessness.

“Why should he take such elaborate precautions as to have one or more false identities?”

Saint-Clair de Villauban is a pompous man who does not know his own limitations. By this stage of the novel, the audience knows that Saint-Clair de Villauban is the source of the leak, even if he does not. This example of dramatic irony reveals his limitations as a thinker and demonstrates the unfairness of a system which elevates such an unimpressive charlatan over a man like Lebel. Saint-Clair de Villauban’s pomposity and his status are a damning indictment of the system.

“Gendarme Caillou was a methodical man.”

The brief but thorough murder investigation by Caillou suggests that there is a quiet prevalence of methodical men throughout the world. The Jackal, Lebel, Thomas, and now Caillou all subscribe to this quiet, professional competence which contrasts with the pompous, hollow action of their superiors. The novel frames these men as the vital cogs in the social machine, as the only professionals who can actually get things done in spite of—not because of—everyone else.

“He is a bit of a psychologist, our Jackal.”

Sat at the nightly meeting, surrounded by men like Saint-Clair de Villauban, Lebel cannot help but admire the Jackal in some quiet way. He would never vocally condone the Jackal’s actions, but he admires the meticulous nature of the assassination plot. The way in which he has chosen the site of the attempt, for example, is based on a psychological understanding of de Gaulle as a proud, hubristic man. Lebel suspects that he would have come to a similar conclusion, suggesting that every slight compliment to the Jackal reflects back on Lebel himself.

“General de Gaulle’s pride would forbid him staying at home, no matter what the personal danger.”

Charles de Gaulle is absent from most of the book, yet he is such a larger than life character that his psychological profile shapes the plot. His pride dictates the time and place of the climax, as understood by both the Jackal and Lebel. De Gaulle’s pride is such that his public appearance on Liberation Day can be taken for granted, which turns his immense pride into a hubristic cause of his own potential demise.

“As he himself was a foot taller, he had had to bend forward and down to give the traditional kiss of congratulation that is habitual among the French and certain other nations, but which baffles Anglo-Saxons.”

Throughout the book, the Jackal has blended almost seamlessly into French society. His cultural acclimatization has even, at points, allowed him to pose as a natural Frenchman. The meticulous planning, however, has deserted him at the last second. He misses his shot due to a moment of cultural oversight which seems irrelevant but which is now the difference between life and death. The irony of the Jackal’s intricate planning is that he is undone by the most seemingly inconsequential of oversights, which demonstrates The Consequences of Hubris.