Maitland had his accident while going home from Helen's to his wife and kid's. He is reminiscing of his wife Catherine and his kid David, but also of his mistress Helen Fox. Robert Maitland is alone, trying to signal help for half of Concrete Island a what's going inside his mind during that time is important. Nothing in this novel can be taken at face value. It's a little more complicated than that. The comparison you'll often hear for J.G Ballard's Concrete Island is a modern living Robinson Crusoe. His fate might not have been a cruel twist of irony after all. Soon, Robert realizes he is not alone on his concrete island, though. So fast they don't even look down to notice him.
There's constantly people driving by fast to keep the flow of traffic going. He becomes trapped by a man-made superstructure where he is isolated by the breathless pace of modern living. Caught between highway lanes, Robert gets injured trying to get help and becomes prisoner of his situation. His Jaguar goes flying over the guardrail of the high-speed highway he was driving on and crashes on the titular concrete island below. It's the shortest and most difficult book in the series.Ĭoncrete Island is the story of Robert Maitland (Ballard loved naming his protagonists "Robert" for some reason), a wealthy architect that crashes his car in the opening paragraph.
Immortal British author J.G Ballard explored those almost fifty years ago in his urban disaster trilogy, which Concrete Island is a part of. Long before Facebook and iPhones invented (maybe long before you were born), the great minds of the twentieth century were anticipating the perils of modern living.
I'm sure you've heard those a thousand times. Mental health gurus (and click-bait websites) are lamenting the end of privacy of our increasingly connected world, the happiness-obsessed corporate culture encouraging us to forsake our personal lives, yadda, yadda. The idea that modern existence is making us miserable is very popular nowadays.
0 kommentar(er)
