The first thing that I noticed about Mike is that his style of speaking makes him seem rather unintelligent most of the time. He tends to say sort of stupid, extremely obvious things that don't need to be said, and, more prominently, he repeats things a huge amount. He calls Brett "a lovely piece" a total of five or six times in a stretch about a page long the first time we meet him, and keeps doing this kind of thing from then on. This repetition may be in part a result of him being drunk, which he pretty much always is in the book.
Even among this group of privileged party-goers, Mike stands out from the rest as not having a real purpose in life. He's always drunk, he no longer has a job, and he doesn't seem to have any real ambition or passions; he's just along for the ride with Brett. He also seem to be almost comically bad at everything he does; the first thing that we hear about him is that he got injured while attempting to help an old woman with her bags. This is a man who manages to go broke both gradually and suddenly at the same time. Brett also asks him to tell a bunch of stories about the war that are presumably about his incompetence; he doesn't want to tell them because they "reflect discredit" on him.
Brett's relationship with Michael is very interesting. Brett seems to be at least fond of Mike, and seem him as a good friend, but it's clear that she is at least in part marrying him for his family's money. She's not really emotionally attached to him, and has no discomfort with pursuing other men, even with Romero where Mike is there with her. Mike is aware of these relationships; Brett freely tells him all about them. He generally doesn't seem to have a problem with them; he understands the nature of the relationship and seems satisfied that he's going to be able to marry such "a lovely piece." Brett and Mike "understand each other." Cohn, however, is one man that's had an affair with Brett that he can't stand, because he's still hanging around her afterwards.
Mike is extremely hostile to Cohn, and even tries to fight him a couple times. He might have problems with Cohn because of his annoying personality and superior attitude, but I think that his main anger with Cohn is more because of what he represents. Before, he could sort of ignore the affairs that Brett had, but it's impossible to now that Cohn is physically there with them. He's thinking more about the nature of his relationship with Brett, and he's perhaps getting insecure, which is making him angry. It'll be interesting to see if Mike and Cohn eventually have a real fight over Brett, as I think that the story's leading there.
Mike seems to generally get along with the rest of the group, but there's not any special friendship there like there is between Jake and Bill. They seem to see him as a pretty cool guy, one that's fun normally but can get very annoying when too drunk. Jake, Bill, and Brett also all support his attacks on Cohn to some level. Mike, on the other hand, really wants to be fully part into the group and be one of the guys. From his checking several times to make sure they don't mind him coming on the trip to his pausing to make sure everyone's laughing during his stories, it's clear that he craves acceptance. This most evident when he's on the verge of tears while trying to get Jake to side with him about Cohn. Mike just isn't as "cool" a person as the rest of the group it seems; he's desperate to be liked and to it in but he's sort of left out.
I like your point that Mike hates Cohn so much because Cohn represents Mike's relative helplessness to keep Brett away from other men, but I think there are a few more layers to it than that. To go along with your argument about Mike wanting acceptance, he could be picking up on the other's hate of Cohn and trying to earn "cool points" by being the harshest of the whole group. I also thought that perhaps Mike just is a bit more uncouth than the rest of the group.
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DeleteAnother example of the "cool points" theory shows up in the last chapter we read. Mike takes Jake's innocuous question - "She hasn't any money with her?" - and uses it to hate on the Jews in general, since he picked up from the group that this is 'cool' and 'ironic.' And yet despite Mike's use of this trope to demonstrate his membership in the group, his form is bad, and instead the joke signals that he's trying too hard and doesn't belong.
DeleteMike's actual response reads: "I shouldn't think so. She never has any money. She gets five hundred quid a year and pays three hundred and fifty of it in interest to Jews."
"I suppose they get it at the source," said Bill.
"Quite. They're not really Jews. We just call them Jews. They're Scotsmen, I believe."
Mike's trash talk seems, even among the other anti-Jewish slurs in the novel, particularly out of place and disconnected with the conversational context. Most of the other attacks were in relation to Cohn, who isn't with the group anymore. Mike then explains, awkwardy, that they aren't 'real Jews,' they just deal with money. Mike really reminds me of that one person who goes way out of line whenever the squad is privately roasting someone, and then keeps making weird remarks pertaining to the roastee days later.
We can maybe assume that Mike is more fun when he doesn't happen to be in the middle of this emotional maelstrom. He is admirably blase about his bankruptcy, even citing it as a point of pride, and his story about giving away some other guy's medals to what seem to be a crowd of prostitutes is pretty awesome (even if, as Brett says, he didn't tell it right). There is something admirably "grown-up" about his awareness and acceptance of Brett's promiscuity--it's just that this Cohn has taken it too far, getting all romantic and standing up for Brett's honor and all. Mike seems in many ways the most easy-going person ever (seriously, who jokes around about bankruptcy while continuing to travel around Europe on other people's accounts? and he doesn't even know what medals he earned in the war--"the usual ones, I suppose"). It's partly a measure of how out-of-bounds Cohn is that he's got Mike so bent out of shape.
ReplyDeleteMike is certainly the newest addition to the group, and in some ways he does stand out. I like the point that you make of him trying to fit in by making fun of Cohn. But Mike's anger at Cohn almost definitely comes from multiple different places.
ReplyDeleteHowever I do think that you could argue that Mike is not the odd-man out, at least not by himself. There are so many ways to look at this group that singles out one person and creates a giant Venn-diagram sort of mess with some characters falling into some categories while others don't. For example, Bill can be singled out based on the fact that he is the only character that doesn't have some sort of sexual tension with Brett. I think that if there is a "core group" to all five of these characters, it is Jake and Brett, and everyone else is the add on. Those two have the deepest history and I think that they have more dependence on each other than any of the other characters can claim. It really is a story of Jake and Brett and everyone else is just a tag-along brought by one of them.
I agree that Mike presents himself especially poorly when he is drunk in comparison to the other characters, but I disagree that he seems the least motivated or purposed. He does have a life outside of socializing (his constant talk of his bankruptcy indicates this), and uses alcohol to forget or lessen his problems temporarily. Brett on the other hand seems to live solely for these immediate pleasures, and Jake to support her.
DeleteI think that he's definitely the least motivated. It seems like a lot of his bankruptcy isn't because of business mistakes, but because of borrowing a lot of money that he can't return. He says that he has a lot of creditors, and he runs into trouble once when he meets someone who he owes money to. I think that he just uses his family name to get money from people that he blows on drinks and never returns.
DeleteI thought your observation of Jake being stupid/incompetent was very insightful. He definitely seems to feel left out because he is not a writer. I agree that he dislikes Cohn for the old world that he represents, and also for the fact that he stays around. I think that there could be an element of anti-semitism, but he seems to dislike Cohn more because of the other reasons.
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