Thursday, December 19, 2013
Apt Pupil
I liked this story because it was so moody and creepy and tense. I also found it curious in that I was at no point rooting for anyone in it! I didn't even like Todd's parents; they seemed so ignorant about their son, in that self-absorbed way some parents have.
So, as you were reading, what were you hoping would happen? Were you satisfied with the ending?
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7 comments:
I was satisfied. The story followed itself to the most likely conclusion, I thought. Both sickos met their end, but neither was arrested or some other boring thing.
And I liked imagining how Todd's parents must have reacted when they learned the truth. (Clearly I wasn't rooting for them either.) Funny that a story with no root-worthy characters could be so engrossing.
This is such a hard thing to get through. Probably the most distasteful thing he has written. Pretty much from Todd's wet dream I wanted to stop reading.
But yeah, it's a compelling relationship in a sickeningly intimate way. And look how Todd evolves from a smarmy, nosey kid to a monster. I wondered if the story was supposed to delve into how in reality anybody could fall into line with Hitler's regime ... I mean, fear and religious bigotry obviously taking precedence, but some kind of slow, psychological manipulation had to brainwash them, right? And Todd falls prey to the same thing.
I'm not really addressing your question, kc. I don't know what a satisfying ending would be because it's so depraved from the start and runs downhill from there. It made me want to wash my hands at the end. But for horror it accomplishedits goal.
I know! It was very hard to read in places. But I think it had to be to be effective as horror, as you note, c.
At first I was not satisfied with Dussander's suicide. It seemed too easy, but then I realized that the important thing had happened: He had been confronted with his true identity; he had been trapped like an animal. The spectacle of deportation and a trial probably would not have gotten to him much more deeply than what he already had endured in that hospital room. It's not like he had a conscience that could have been burdened further.
What I really liked about this novella is that it seemed to challenge the idea that Nazi Germany was an anomaly somehow, that it was just a handful of sociopaths who came together in a perfect storm and hoodwinked an innocent populace into complicity with genocide. Nazi Germany didn't make good people immoral. Immoral people — a lot of them, a TON of them — made Nazi Germany.
I wondered if Todd's parents were supposed to be stand-ins for the proud German civilians who exuded all that Aryan civic pride during the Reich and after the war swore that they had no idea what was really going on.
Oh, I love that insight into Todd's parents. They were just so damned pleased with themselves and their kid. I couldn't sympathize much with them, either.
Has anyone read "The Boys from Brazil"? I picked it up after we read "A Kiss Before Dying," but I just couldn't get into it or stomach its possibilities. At least this story is an accessible taste of the history. [Insert guilt about being unable to stomach key pieces of world history I should know more about.]
I have not read "Boys From Brazil." But that plot sounds pretty intriguing.
I've been thinking about books about the Holocaust I've read and the idea of Holocaust as "entertainment." I think King was touching on this with the vast amount of literature available on the Holocaust — and how so much of it is really just spectacle that tends to feed the depraved curiosity of people like Todd and how there's kind of a fine line between valid interest in history and human nature vs. a kind of depraved voyeurism.
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