Truth & Falsity: The Gray Abysses of Coe's The Winshaw Legacy

For a student trustful of today’s scientific prowess, the realization that science cannot prove anything came as a surprise to me in high school science class last year. Indeed, a skepticist would say that finding real truth is never possible given the chaotic nature of our world. Such a worldview is among the several interconnected themes in Jonathan Coe’s The Winshaw Legacy.

Coe uses the paradox as his primary vehicle of argumentation. The paradox is a statement or argument that seems to be prima facie self-contradictory. However, between the two self-contradictory poles lies some vestige of truth, the mutual hostage of the two opposing sides. Coe’s satire is achieved as he points out the absurdities of life at the political fringes, and the dialectic synthesis occurs in the reader’s mind as he reconciles the two sides, those being the thesis and antithesis.

The Winshaw family, representing an outrageous contemporary group of capitalist élites, is so absurd that the magnitude of its members' absurdity crushes their believability as characters. In that sense, then, the Winshaws are allegorical of larger sectors of society that possess similar, but less absurd, characteristics. For example, consider Thomas’s support of the development of the laser disk. Although it is a "palpably loss-making enterprise," (308), Thomas bankrolls its development because it produces "perfect still frames ... [which suit] his needs so admirably" (308). Certainly Adam Smith did not think of masturbation as being enlightened self-interest, though it is "the very raison d’être" of the laser disk as far as Thomas is concerned (308). His motivation represents enlightened self-interest on one hand, but on the other hand, it is so wildly absurd as to be satirical. Thomas is credible enough as a character to criticize capitalism, yet at the same time, he is unbelievable enough to be satirical at the expense of economic theory.

Through the course of his satire, Coe must strike a precious balance between 1) being so far-out in his criticism that readers are able easily to reject his themes and 2) being too close to reality and losing his satire. With regard to the Winshaws, Coe disentangles the political economy to the point that it is given the easily manageable order of a single family and made understandable to readers who lack knowledge of economic systems. Yet Coe must be careful in his use of the Winshaws as a strategic fiction not to abandon their fictional nature and make them so realistic that readers overlook his attempts at satire.

As a strategic fiction, the family provides a convenient mechanism for analysis of political and economic interaction. Readers find that each Winshaw is involved with every other in some way, just as interlocking directorates, mutual deal-making, and exclusive university alumni associations, join the international élite. As the networking grows, however, the very order that was originally sought becomes so great that it in fact becomes chaos, and we return to a world where a butterfly flapping its wings affects world weather patterns. Again the need for balance is highlighted.

How one decides how to resolve the apparent contradictions presented by the Winshaws depends on each reader’s worldviews. The point is that the truth is grounded in each individual’s perception of the world and the glasses he wears as he views it. Because the truth is lodged in each person’s mind, no truth can exist independently outside a person’s mind, just as no historical view can exist outside a person’s mind. One perceives the truth, but as one articulates it and it leaves the confines of one's mind, it becomes subject to another’s interpretation, resulting in two separate, and perhaps radically different, "truths," and begging Graham's question of "Whose truth is it, anyway?" (281). Truthfulness is not in question; instead, readers (and viewers of Graham's propaganda) must question whose version of the truth they are receiving and how someone may have manipulated that truth for his own benefit (280).

This brings us to Michael Owen, who, in his quest, takes the analysis a level further and further complicates the already paradoxical nature of truth. Of course, Michael has found "solid and demonstrable facts" too difficult to uncover, leading him to "bring [his] imagination to bear on the narrative" (90, see also 331). Michael’s contribution to the novel’s analysis of the truth comes as he is playing Clue and discovers himself guilty of murder "by a simple process of elimination" (302). How, he wonders, could he logically find that he is the murderer when he has no previous recollection of murdering someone "in the conservatory, with a candlestick" (302)?

Knowing that Michael is the link between society and the Winshaws, readers could transfer Michael’s ponderings onto themselves. After all, it is members of the larger society who purchase Hillary’s newspapers, elect Henry, eat Dorothy’s animals, and in other ways make the Winshaws rich. In this light, the Winshaws could be seen merely as opportunistically recognizing a consumer need and meeting that need. While the Winshaws are certainly a loathsome bunch, society enables them to carry on their actions by tacitly supporting their ventures, except the laser disk. By considering "a precedent for this in real life" ("this" referring to his self-implication in Clue), Michael wonders if society can implicate itself as enabling the Winshaws and their evils, even though few members of society would say that they contributed directly to, for instance, the suffering of Dorothy’s animals (302).

The answer to Michael’s question involves a return to the issue of how and where truth exists. Acquiring real truth entails the ability to recognize that one’s version of the truth may not really be the truth at all. In order for society to obtain real truth and emerge from the trappings of truth and falseness as determined by the mind of the beholder, each individual must challenge the assumptions he makes about the truth. For example, one might think that the Winshaws are just bad people, but in doing so, one blinds oneself to the notion that one is not "detached (and) disinterested" (472) and that one's choices, made as a member of society, might end-up empowering the Winshaws to be bad people.

I am not attempting to argue that the mea culpa for the Winshaws' crimes belongs to society; rather, society has continually allowed and enabled the Winshaws to act upon their unethical tendencies.

Why, then, exists the paradox of society enabling the Winshaws, despite our natural instinct to blame them for their actions? The answer lies in another area of symbolism: that of the screen versus reality and dream versus waking.

Using non-fiction sources, Coe makes very real allegations about the systems of the international arms industry, modern intensive agriculture, and British politics, among other areas of political economy. Why members of society do not realize that they are enabling these industries to do such deeds is resolved by Michael’s role. Michael explains that "all my life I'd been trying to find my way to the other side of the screen" (421). Michael finds dream and reality to be nearly indistinguishable, leaving readers to search for the true representation of reality as Michael searches for the other side of the screen. Oftentimes, reality does not emerge except in readers’ minds, returning us to the problem of whether or not the truth really exists.

Michael’s involvement with Tabitha will serve further to illustrate society’s relationship to the Winshaws. Readers are told that Tabitha is insane when Michael says that the "Celery" note was really a "light supper" order (6). Even if Tabitha is correct about the significance of the Celery note, it does not establish her sanity. Additionally, we only know that Tabitha hears "the distant murmur of [German] voices," not that she understands them (6). The fact that we never know the resolution to these issues is itself satirical of detective mysteries since many end with a genius-like unraveling of every detail. The Winshaw Legacy, by contrast, allows the final mystery of Tabitha's sanity to die with Michael and Tabitha. The importance of this final death is that even one of the "nice members of the Winshaw family" (according to Mortimer, 209) still ends up killing someone. Up to this point, readers have only accusations by Michael that the Winshaws have killed some friend or family members of his. Now a disguised Winshaw kills Michael, established earlier as the symbolic link between society and the Winshaws, in the way he dreamt. In the end, then, so long as society is dreaming with Michael, it will continue to be abused by the Winshaws, and, eventually, killed like Michael.

In short, the truth in The Winshaw Legacy exists only in readers’ minds and in their interpretation of the satirical events. Paradoxically, the truth therefore exists nowhere unless as a figment of readers’ minds. Members of society, caught in a dreamy state and unable to distinguish truth from fiction, enable the Winshaws and eventually find themselves killed by the Winshaws and all the social systems that they represent and that the people support.