Tag: Character

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What makes him rebel?

I am working on trying to understand Adam’s motivations. By the end of the story the war on drugs has escalated into civil war.

So what makes Adam go from policeman to rebel?

What is a rebel? An initial interpretation might focus on those individuals navigating the trials of adolescence, setting themselves in opposition to the values of parental authority. This understanding falls too closely to the unfocused rebellion epitomised by Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones. “Hey. Johnny. What are you rebelling against?” To wit Johnny relies. “What’ve you got?” It’s hard to see this as anything more than petulant defiance. Brando’s rebellion is the rebellion of the outsider, and possesses a nihilism that is an anathema to Adam.

His rebellion is the rebellion of someone standing in opposition to something. He becomes a participant in an insurrection, a violent uprising against the government, he’s a rebel as defined by his opposition to a specific set of values.

What forces this change? If Christopher Vogler (in The Writer’s Journey) is to be believed he must experience death. Only by experiencing death “is he able to return to ordinary life reborn as a new being with new insights”. So what’s dying?

To understand this I think we have to go back to his upbringing. Until he was fifteen Adam was an only child. Like Christine he was the sole beneficiary of his parents resources. Then his father lost his job, and they ended up living in a bed and breakfast. Despite their impoverished circumstance his parents did their best. He could see them doing their best, and reciprocated. Their attention meant he was an articulate child, reflecting their values, and exhibiting a strong sense of what is right and wrong, an obedience to social authority, and a sense of duty. That’s why he joined the army.

He didn’t want to get into the debt associated with obtaining a university education. He didn’t want to burden his parents, or his infant sister, by demanding financial assistance. The army was the logical choice. When his parents were killed in 2007, their values motivated him to buy himself out of the army, return to the family home, and take care of Christine.

Joining the police was a sideways move, that fitted his sense of duty. So what makes him reject the values he had lived by, and take up arms against the government, against the war on drugs?

It would have to be something that kills his understanding of the world as he knew it, and forces his rebirth. No single event could cause this, it has to be a series of events that build, ultimately reversing his understanding. There is a conflict between the sense of duty he feels towards authority, and the sense of duty he feels towards his sister.

What makes him rebel?

I think he comes to see the war on drugs as unfair, and all that word implies. He comes to understand that no matter what Christine and her peers have done, they do not deserve what is being done to them, they don’t deserve the plague of insect that are killing them.

Ultimately his rebellion is an attempt to right a wrong, and save his sister.

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Christine Leigh

Christine Leigh is Adam’s younger sister. I settled on the name Christine for several reasons. The name comes from the Latin word Christianus, meaning follower of Christ.

Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word “Messiah”. The messianic etymology of the name counterpoints the negative image that defines Christine’s status in Carrion as a drug user. It can also be shortened to Chris, giving her character a certain androgyny.

Born in 1995, she was two when her brother joined the army. In the years that followed she saw him occasionally. His absence from the family home meant she actually grew up an only child, the sole beneficiary of her parents emotional, physical, and financials resources.

The constant attention, lead to a strong willed girl, sensitive to disapproval. Denied competition from a sibling, she exhibits a certain possessiveness with her time, space, and belongings. Perfectly happy to spend time alone, fiercely loyal, she prefers the company of a few close friends, to the superficial connections exhibited by her extrovert peers.

Strongly dependant on her parents for emotional support, she is devastated by their deaths in 2007. This forced separation, that under normal circumstances would have been difficult enough, is even more traumatic. The resistance normally associated with early adolescence, jams up against the push for freedom, and propensity for conflict associated with middle adolescence. That in turn jams up against the need to try more adult activities associated with late adolescence.

Adam, who shared his sisters emotional proclivities, took the full force of the turmoil. Out of his depth, he found himself unable to offer her anything but the most material support. Her grief, coupled with her unrequited emotional needs, forces a distance, that manifested itself as anger. The growing pains of adolescence, compounded by her strong will, lead to escalating conflicts with Adam. They would argue, constantly, sometime over the most trivial things.

To escape the conflicts, she would go out, spend hours hunkered down with friends, wandering the streets, or hiding in her room, anything but deal with Adam, and what he represented, her dead parents.

By the time she was fifteen she had started drinking. By the time she was sixteen she was a regular in the local clubs. By the time she was seventeen recreational drug use was a regular part of her life. With hindsight her behaviour was was direct challenge to her brothers position as a police officer.

Suspecting she was using drugs, he searched her room, found the evidence he was looking for, and confronted her. The argument that followed escalated into violence, and she stormed out. By the time she was seventeen Christine was living independently. She lived for a while with some friends, got a job working in a shop.

Late in 2011 she met Stephen Joseph. Early 2012 they were living together. Supplementing what income they had from regular jobs, they supplied the pills and powders that fuelled their weekends to close friends.

Stephen’s dealing was small scale, never out in the open, never to strangers, but it was enough to attract the attention of drug eating insects.

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Adam Leigh

Adam Leigh is a character in Carrion. His forename comes from early research. Adam is a colloquialism for MDMA or ecstasy. In the early seventies scientists researching MDMA’s use in psychotherapy nicknamed the drug “Adam”, referring to the state of “primal innocence” induced by the drug.

Adam’s surname is a derivation of the name Lee. William Lee was a pseudonym used by William S. Burroughs. I’m interested in his work, and took some inspiration from his first book Junkie. Leigh is an oblique reference to drugs.

Born in 1980, when Carrion starts Adam Leigh is in his early thirties. He’s old enough to have some understanding of the world, made some mistakes in life, have a weariness about him, but still young enough to be engaged, see the world differently.

As a younger man, unwilling to saddle himself with the debts associated with obtaining a university education, he went out to work. He’s known first-hand the damage debt can cause. In the financial collapse of the 1980’s his father was made redundant. Out of work, and unable to pay the mortgage, on the council house they had bought in Thatcher’s right to buy scheme, the bank repossessed.

As they had technically made themselves homeless, by defaulting on the mortgage, the council refused to rehouse them. They ended up living in bed and breakfast, until his father was able to get a job in a local supermarket. Adam watched the experience take its toll on his parents, and vowed never to put himself in that same position.

In his late teens, when his contemporaries were starting university, Adam joined the army. He thought whatever skills he learned in the service, would stand him in good stead when he returned to civilian life.

Early in 2002 he saw combat in Afghanistan, where he was wounded. An improvised explosive device detonated in close proximity, killed one his comrades, and left Adam with shrapnel scars across his back.

During his recovery, he met and married a local teacher Joan. Their marriage only lasted a couple of years. She was unable to deal with the rigours of life as an army wife. A tour of duty took him away for several months soon after their wedding, and when he returned, carrying the weight of post-traumatic-stress-disorder, his emotional distance pushed a wedge between them.

The final straw came when Adam transferred into the military police, and they were forced to relocate. Joan refused to follow him. They finally divorced in 2005.

Adam dedicated himself to his work, until 2007, when his parents were killed in a car crash.

Their death forced him to take guardianship of his baby sister Christine. Born in 1995, she was two years old when Adam joined up. She knew him only as an occasional visitor, and saw him more as a distant uncle than a brother.

In the months that followed Adam bought himself out of the army, moved back into the family home with Christine, and joined the Metropolitan Police. He tried to offer her stability, but the grief of loosing her parents, the tribulations of adolescents, and his dedication to his work, meant Adam found her difficult to deal with.

A growing resentment developed between them. The older she got, the more defiant she became, until finally, in the summer of 2012, she moved in with her drug dealing boyfriend.

Angry, Adam was left with an unresolved sense of guilt that he didn’t do better by her. A year later, and they’re on opposite sides of the war on drugs, no closer to resolving their differences, until drug eating insects attack Christine’s boyfriend.