25 pages • 50 minutes read
Jeanette WintersonThe Passion
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Desensitization Caused by War
Early on in The Passion, a little girl asks Henri if he will kill people in the war. Henri replies that he will just kill the enemy. She asks him what an enemy is. He replies, “Someone who is not on your side” (6), thus showing how war reduces people to good or evil, friend or foe. Later in The Passion, Domino warns Henri of the necessity of living only for the present. Henri toys with this idea when thinking about the uniqueness of snowflakes, wondering, “if that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we recover from the wonder of it?” (41). After 2,000 soldiers are killed on Napoleon’s whim, Henri ponders the usefulness of living only in the present as a way to ignore the atrocities that have been committed. Though he’s haunted by the deaths of his fellow soldiers, Henri tries to use this philosophy to put the tragedy out of mind. Later, Henri expands this idea of remaining in the moment to justify a soldier’s need to live without a heart: “It’s the heart that betrays us, makes us weep, makes us bury our friends when we should be marching ahead. It’s the heart that sickens us at night and makes us hate who we are” (81). Later, he maintains, “When I say I lived with heartless men, I use the word correctly,” (82) implying that the soldiers had to suppress their humanity to inflict the cruelty that Napoleon ordered they commit.
The Human Need for Passion
Passion is the greatest motivator in the book. When Henri describes his reasons for enlisting in the army, his main incentive is to be a part of the world that Napoleon promises to the French. He is riveted by Napoleon’s charisma and vision for France. As Henri writes, “He was my passion and when we go to war we feel we are not a lukewarm people any more” (107). Henri notices this same thirst for glory within his village, which sparks an intense loyalty that prompts the French to support Napoleon’s every move. Henri later reveals that he chose a soldier’s life over becoming a man of the cloth because there was no passion in the religion of his upbringing.
It is passion, which Villanelle describes as “somewhere between fear and sex,” (53) that propels Villanelle into a love affair with a married woman, and then the intensity of this passion that causes her to break off the romance and marry a man who disgusts her to escape her own infatuation. It could be argued that it is her passion for Venice, a city whose economy depends on passion, that initiates the chain of events that lead to Henri’s imprisonment. For Henri’s part, his passion for Villanelle leads him to desert the French army and cross Russia for Italy, breaking the order of his life.
The Power of Nationalism and Idolatry
The Passion outlines the delusions of nationalism and idolatry by walking the reader through the timeline of France’s obsession with Napoleon. Henri describes how France’s yearning for glory was satisfied by Napoleon’s bombastic and charismatic leadership style. As told by Henri, France is easily romanced by Napoleon’s aspirations for his country. Of his fellow villagers, Henri remembers, “We called him our emperor long before he had taken that title himself” (14), indicating a lost people desperate for a leader. In Part 1, “The Emperor,” Henry equates nationalism with religion. Henri recalls his town priest’s early support of Napoleon. The priest insists to Henri that Napoleon will call him “like God called Samuel” (14). However, Henri also foreshadows the consequences of this absolute faith in Napoleon, reflecting, “Nowadays people talk about the things he did as if they made sense” (3).
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By Jeanette Winterson
