Estar
Jackal is drawn to Estar as if to some surrogate mother or lover or other self. She is “charmed” by Estar’s flair for “performance” (286). Perhaps we thought Jackal had gotten past any identity problems in VC, and finally knew who she was but here we read: “She enjoyed the other woman’s precise flamboyance, her assurance, her gusto; Estar was so definitely herself.” Jackal remembers watching people at a workshop and “wondering how they knew what they wanted to be, and now she understood: you knew what you wanted to be when you saw someone else being it” (286). Becoming oneself, then, is not a one-time experience; it is ongoing.
Gavin Neill was a far better role model. Cast out from Ko, Jackal gravitates toward someone who reflects her new status, though, fortunately, her admiration is double-edged. When Estar tells her that “now, of course, they call me La Carnicera, she kept her eyes fixed on Jackal, and very slowly cut a slice of ham and put it into her mouth, closed her lips and chewed. Jackal didn’t know whether to be flattered or appalled” (286). Estar is both flirtatious and dangerous.
For Estar, like the briefly seen Gordineau, is the genuine article, a real mass murderer, someone who has not been able to resist the lure of insanity and violence. “[O]utrageous thoughts harm no one,” she says. “ History is not shaped by such thoughts, no matter what people say [….] Imagine if I had only thought about killing all those people, if I had not needed to make my vision real. But for me it is never enough to keep the picture in my head” (256). Estar assumes that Jackal is like her: "'You understand , of course,' Estar said, eyes half lidded like a lizard across the table” (256). But they are not alike. When they are sitting upstairs with the other Solos and the viewscreen shows a program about Steel Breeze, Estar and the others are fascinated while Jackal “didn’t enjoy it” (287).
All of us have promptings toward violence – Jackal after all was capable of breaking poor Tiger’s nose and often, like all of us, thinks hostile thoughts. When Scully is distant the day after the aftershock “she felt a thick choking dislike for him” (277). Earlier in VC Jackal is “enraged” by everything around her, her cell, “the way her food lay in her dish,” her “sheet’s refusal to stay tucked in." She finds that “her anger was so dependable, always on time, always loyal: a best friend with a loving smile and a butcher knife [italics mine] behind its back. She was tempted to wall up her anger [….] but she knew that it would only grow until it pushed down the walls”(156).
The ability to keep destructive pictures in our heads and not enact them is crucial for our freedom and the survival of order in human life. Jackal faces her anger; Estar cannot . She must express it in murderous acts. When she is thwarted, Estar turns once again to violence, willing to do great harm to mitigate her own inner hell: “I want a world,” she says, “where even my crocodile cannot follow me.[….] I want to make all my visions real and tear them down and make them all over again. I want to be all the things I see within me.“ She does not understand a fundamental idea about reality: “I try to remember that you other people are as real as me, but often I forget and then it is too easy to hurt you. And then the crocodile returns” (321).
Jackal once again is partly at fault for the trouble she and Snow find themselves in because of Estar. She has ignored Scully’s warnings about Estar, telling him that she has dealt with “weirder people [....] I know how to manage egos and paranoia and abrasive communication skills, okay. It’s what I was trained for” (288). Once again we see her momentarily over-confident as she was just before the elevator crash, thinking she has the skills to manage something that may be unmanageable. Snow also warns her that Estar is “not finished” causing harm, while Jackal disagrees: ”I think she’s different now [….] She’s always been fine with me” (313).
That she and Snow are not more damaged by the Lady Butcher is due to the timely appearance of Estar’s caretaker, Jane, though Jackal even when drugged is able to keep Estar from acting on her impulses. Her attraction to Estar shows us again that processes of self-discovery are not neat and tidy. Life is filled with crocodiles.
Scully, Crichton, and Snow
By the end of the book, Jackal has learned that almost no one is who they seem. People in the novel, as in life, are motivated by self-interest. Estar was willing to torture Snow and threatened to cut off her arm in order to learn Jackal’s secret. Even the benevolent Scully was secretly in the employ of Crichton to keep tabs on the solos. This is not enough to end their developing friendship; he is enduring alarmingly frequent aftershocks, and it is no wonder that he is willing to risk Jackal’s regard. She in turn is able to forgive him and use his guilt to further her own agenda, emerging from their discussion with a job at Solitaire, having taken Snow’s advice to create her own project. Crichton herself is not just a case officer, but an agent of Ko and a student of Gavin Neill.
Only one person is who she seems to be – the steadfast loyal Snow. Even here there has been change. We now see Snow, who earlier seemed to be taking care of Jackal, is also vulnerable, needing care herself as Estar threatens her life. Jackal has kept two secrets from the one person she should have trusted: she did not tell Snow about her false hope status, and now in the NNA she did not reveal the truth about her editing of VC. She has tried to erase Snow from her consciousness and break off the relationship though as Snow says, “I wasn’t there. You didn’t do anything to me,” wisely differentiating inner experience from action in the real world (336). The more serious problem is that as Snow says Jackal has “consistently excluded” Snow from all her choices (350). She makes another important differentiation that Jackal needs to hear: what will work in a business setting does not necessarily work in personal relationships: “Your theories about how people behave may work in meetings, but I’m not a theory and you don’t have to manage me” (350). Still Jackal’s reticence has been damaging to their relationship. They will have to get to know each other all over again, to become “different together” instead of apart. By the end of the book, they have agreed to try.
Ko
I think that Kelley does a wonderful job of subverting readers’ expectations, playing with the conventions of the “thriller” novel, where Ko would turn out to be the villain and Jackal would join Steel Breeze, which would turn out to be a heroic organization which saves the world. Ko’s desertion of Jackal at the trial seems a step in this direction. But Ko’s side of the story is clearly spelled out for us toward the end of the book: the company couldn’t risk everything they had and the employment of two million people for one single individual, nor should they. Life and corporations aren't like that.
It is both curiously satisfying and a little disturbing to learn that the entity we want to think of as the epitome of evil turns out to be there in the background of Jackal’s life all along, working through its employees in the NNA, Crichton and Scully. Neill did not forget his protégé after all. This may satisfy our need for some powerful god-figure taking care of things behind the scenes. But is this need of ours a healthy adult need? If Jackal didn’t destroy Ko in some melodramatic scenario, she should at least make it on her own, not because of Ko. Perhaps this dilemma is not satisfactorily resolved in the novel, but I think it is:
Jackal
Ko may have created Jackal’s Hope status, but it didn’t create Jackal. Her ability to edit her VC experience was her own ability, not something given to her by Gavin Neill. And it’s that ability -- as well as all her confident professional skills in negotiations -- that leads to her triumph. Here again, she may have been trained by Ko, but all the training in the world can’t make up for lack of ability to apply the skills at the right time and in the right way. Jackal ends up in a position where she can help other solos with aftershock; she and Scully will team up in the running of Solitaire. She is not back on Ko Island; she is not dominated by Ko as she was in the past. Though she retains her regard for Neill, now it is she who dictates the terms and runs her own show. Her relationship with Snow is back on track, though changed, and she has learned that life is full of choices that she isn’t ready to make but must (351).
The Future
Kelley Eskridge shows us two alternative futures, both flawed. On Ko Island, individuals live in comfortable aesthetically pleasing circumstances with professional and material needs met, but sacrificing privacy and freedom of thought. The other alternative is the NNA, the rundown and slightly seedy Nations of North America, where citizens must contend with pollution, gangs, high prices, and substandard living conditions. It is ironic that Jackal’s apartment building is named the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shangri-La Shangri-La. It was Ko Island that was the better model for paradise. Issues of privacy are not solved in the NNA either.
This appalls many of us. But the future, as they say, is now. Our privacy in the present is up for grabs; perhaps a losing battle. The technology exists and, barring nuclear holocaust or world plague, the technology for surveillance will only improve. We have a long struggle ahead of us to safeguard human rights.
Thank you, Kelley
In Solitaire Kelley Eskridge
creates an interesting but imperfect
world, filled with vividly realized, believable characters. Eliminating sexism, racism, and
homophobia still leaves us with problems
as a species -– the problems that come with power, so easy
to abuse both personally and politically (or corporately), the need for love
with its risks of loss, and the need to belong to something larger than
ourselves versus the need to be separate individuals, able to live comfortably
in our own heads.
But human beings, in the novel as in life, are resilient and creative. Jackal’s editing of her VC experience and her resourcefulness in the face of adversity turn the despair of her exile into a life of hope. We too are able through our own creative processes to give shape to our own lives and make them meaningful. This isn’t easy. It will take the rest of our lives. It is, as Solitaire shows again and again, ongoing.
Many thanks, finally, to Kelley Eskridge for sharing with us her time, her insights, and her beautiful book.