One by One is a dark
and troubling tale. As its backdrop is an epidemic disease there is a
particular resonance to reading during COVID-19 lockdown – but it
is also a tale about media manipulation which in the 5 or so decades
since its publication have also intensified making it seem to really
speak to our moment. A few spoilers follow.
As Joe and Polly
have to be physically separated to protect her from the risk of
infection while he works with victims in hospital her pain at the
lack of touch will be familiar to many in these days, but it over
laid by Joe’s emotional distancing from her. It leads to the dark
reflection “That it’s selfish to clutch at people and clutter
them like this when the truth is that we’re on our own. Everyone
dies his own death. No one else can do it for you.” Maybe no one
can do it for you, but that doesn’t mean that you must face it
alone.
Joe, a vet
volunteering in the hospital, is picked up by a newspaper that builds
a story of him as a hero until a rival paper (possibly after a tip
off by Joe’s own mother) runs story of his youthful arrest for a
homosexual encounter. In a mid-sxities context this is a scandal that
crushes him to the point of suicide – while our attitudes to
sexuality have changed the ways that people become the play things of
the media and flip from hero to scandal are very much with us.
There is no hopeful
resolution to the narrative – and the themes of the failing of
relationships and society run on and we can still find them all
around us.
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