'A Few Short Notes On Tropical Butterflies' by John Murray
Not a crime in sight, but useful character studies.
‘My profession is a shelter and retreat,’ says an aging optomologist in Acts of Memory/Wisdom of Man’.
John Murray’s collection of 8 stories are peopled with characters who hide from the difficulties of life by immersing themselves in their obsessions. Rather than deal with the emotional disorder surrounding them, they bury their uncertainties in the clinical worlds of science, disease and categorical ordering. There is the surgeon who collects and classifies butterflies, the doctor who tries to put a dent in the chaos of cholera, and the son who tracks his runaway father down in an effort to glue his fragmented family back together.
As writers, we have much to learn about building character and a character’s world from Murray’s stories. His characters deliberately lose themselves in order, pour their energies into creating emotional buffers and cocoons into which they can retreat. These manifestations signal to the reader that the characters are inwardly out of control or unable to deal with the world around them. These glaring contradictions between the characters’ outer and inner worlds let the reader see the characters’ conflicts and issues for themselves.
As devices for communicating the inner crisis of character, Murray’s constructions are highly metaphoric. Yet they are also immediate, colourful, and quirky whilst still being universal. We all know of people who use hobbies as a retreat or meditative space. We may even have done this ourselves. Set against a crumbling outside world or failing family lives, this behavior can indicate a person’s desperate desire to run and hide.
