ATDTDA (15): Squealing is good for you, 420-422 #1

[Paul Nightingale]

And so to Alonzo the squealer, and the inversion of values: 'naming names'
is here likely "to command a curious respect even from those who were apt to
suffer from it most" (421). Evidently, being talked about is preferable to
not being talked about. To inform on another (or others) is to offer a
narrative of sorts, to become a storyteller with no need "to create and
maintain a second or cover identity". Cf. the role of the Chums' narrator,
identified on the novel's first page, interventionist throughout and
therefore exposed as 'just another' character. The disappearance of Alonzo,
then, is the disappearance of a controlling presence that gives the
narrative meaning.

The account of Alonzo's visit to the Commandant is marked by his silence; no
squealing here as the Commandant does all the talking, "opiatedly explaining
. to the young informant, as he had dozens of times previous, everything,
everything". Repetition, then, "the tranquil Old Man with syrup-slow ease
continuing his digression ." etc (422). This lengthy paragraph has only one
sentence break, following an ellipsis at the bottom of 422. A series of
ellipses might represent Alonzo's wandering attention; he has, after all,
heard it all before. Given that it also signifies the passage of time, cf.
Chick in the tavern: "Time did not so much elapse as grow less relevant."
(412)

The Commandant's paranoid discourse, like that of Kafka's burrower, is one
that can never end, "headed for the Point at Infinity along a great slow
curve"; one might see it as the quest for a metanarrative, a version of
events that will answer all questions, "everything, everything". Cf. Merle's
dream of "a great museum, a composite of all possible museums" (57): in each
case there is a fear that something will be excluded, that a
counter-narrative will spring up without warning (raising the possibility of
a question that cannot be answered). Or consider the Academy curriculum, a
means to time management: here, "the usual Rugby Union or Lacrosse" is
juxtaposed to "nonregulation Combat-Inside-Ten-Meters", the latter a
deviation from normal activity, ie extracurricular, and therefore a kind of
counter-narrative. (And this particular activity precedes the "break from
studying" on 419.)