The Dinner

“But my son—in the face of all the evidence—still believed in a different version of his father, a version who knew where the valves were.” 

When looking through Michel’s phone, Paul has seen a video which completely alters the way he sees his son. Just like Michel believing that his father might know anything about bike values or tire repair, Paul is having to reconsider the version of his son that he believes in. The content of the video alters his perception of his son and changes everything about the family dynamic, turning his previous conception of Michel entirely on its head and changing their lives forever. 

“When Babette is around, I always do my best to make myself bigger, taller than I really am.” 

In the presence of his sister-in-law, Paul finds himself feeling somewhat inadequate. In the above quote, he quite explicitly states that he feels that he does not measure up to the towering figures cut by Serge and Babette. Paul’s feeling of inadequacy in his brother’s presence is palpable and this extends—in a physical sense—to Serge’s wife. Whenever he is around his brother, Paul constantly attempts to measure himself and try to find worth, value, and importance in his own self. 

“It was as though the empty plate was challenging you to say something about it, to go to the open kitchen and demand an explanation.” 

In this quote, the emptiness of the plate functions as a metaphor for the unmentioned events which have gathered the dinner guests together. Whether it is Paul’s memories of what he has seen on Michel’s phone or the tear-soaked eyes Babette has tried to hide behind her glasses, there is a void at the dinner table which is demanding their attention. The longer they do not talk about this void, the more pressing and urgent the matter becomes. 

“With every fiber of his being, Serge had remained a yokel, a boorish lout: the same boorish lout who used to get sent from the table for farting.” 

Paul’s contempt for his brother appears throughout the opening chapters. It is a mixture of resentment, envy, and bitterness. Serge, popular and pretentious, clashes with Paul’s more reserved style. It brings out the worst in Paul, who feels compelled to disagree with his brother regardless of his own actual beliefs. Paul’s attitude to his brother comes to dominate the dinner conversation, dictating the content and the flow of the discussion.

“The revelation about the daughter had done me more good than I care to admit.” 

Paul’s expedition to the bathroom is complicated. While he is embarrassed by the man who urinates next to him, he leaves the bathroom having had one of his fundamental assumptions about his fellow diners dismissed. On arrival, Paul had assumed that the bearded man’s dinner companion was a worryingly young woman. The revelation that she is, in fact, the man’s daughter is a great relief to Paul. It is also an indication that Paul’s assumptions can often be wrong, leading to him thinking the worst of people. 

“I felt something cold and hard inside me—something cold and hard that had been there all evening—grow a little colder and harder.”

Though Paul delights in his brother’s failure to make his wife happy, he suddenly remembers the very serious matter which has—thus far—remained unmentioned. The issue—their sons’ involvement in an act of extreme violence—has hung over the entire dinner, coloring the diners emotions knowingly and unknowingly. But it cannot go left unmentioned much longer. Paul grows cold because he almost wishes to avoid any discussion of the matter, as though talking about it somehow makes it real. It makes the petty squabble with his brother seem trivial in comparison. 

“What he would really like to do is look at nothing at all.” 

Paul recognizes the disconnect between his brother’s private and public personas. He is able to read the signs of irritation that no one else notices. Paul is well aware that his brother would rather not be glad-handing the public and constantly smiling; he would rather be alone, looking at nothing. It is the same attitude which he believes Serge would rather apply to their sons. Serge would rather the whole matter went away unnoticed. That Serge insists on discussing the incident reveals the importance (and the potential political catastrophe) of what has occurred. 

“Even more than an eternity, it had been a turning point—a turning point as in before the war or after the war.” 

Paul cannot help but watch the video again. His morbid curiosity gets the better of him, even though he knows that the video has irrecoverably changed his relationship with his son. The clip—of Michel and Rick torturing a homeless person—disgusts him, and he wishes he could return to not knowing about his son’s true nature. As evidenced by the above quote, watching the video is a landmark moment in Paul’s life. It shows him his son’s failings and his failings as a father. The time before viewing the video seems like an eternity ago, a whole other lifetime. 

“This is what happened. These are the facts.” 

The tone of the opening of this chapter is markedly different from everything that has come before. Rather than a linear narrative taking place over the course of a meal, Paul states that he is looking at the larger picture and recollecting past events. Furthermore, his statement that “these are the facts” suggests that this statement cannot necessarily apply to the rest of his narration. The tone of the opening sounds confessional and scared, as though Paul’s typical mode of narration needs altering as he lays the facts bare. Paul wants the audience to trust him, so he reluctantly reveals what he has known the whole time. 

“One night, about two months ago, three boys were on their way home from a party.” 

Throughout this chapter, Paul refers to the people torturing a homeless woman in a formal manner. He does not use names but provides enough information to make it explicitly clear who is taking part in the events. The audience is aware that Michel and Rick kill a woman but Paul does not mention them explicitly, even going so far as to admit that there is an ongoing police investigation. This has the effect of making the audience trust Paul even more: He is willing to bring the audience into his privileged circle of information, to let them know the truth that he will not even tell the police. The lack of names in the chapter is Paul using dramatic irony to build the audience’s trust; though he and the audience both know the identity of the people involved, there is a level of narrative plausible deniability which extends throughout the chapter. 

“Because the most important thing was happening off-camera, and you had to fill in the rest for yourself.” 

This quote is both a comment on the plight of the homeless and a reflection on the narrative mode of the novel itself. Firstly, the death of the homeless person occurs off-camera in the same way that the homeless population of a country is typically out of mind and dehumanized by the wider population. Most people, while offering small sympathies and platitudes, do little to help those who exist ‘off-camera’ (which is also a contrast to Serge, whose entire life is ‘on-camera’). Secondly, there are many events in Paul’s narrative which remain unseen from his perspective and so aren’t provided to the audience. The conversation between Babette and Claire, for example, remains a mystery at this stage of the novel because Paul was not present. It occurs ‘off-camera’ and Paul (and, by extension, the audience) must fill in the rest of the missing narrative. 

“As I said before, I didn’t try to refute the arguments with which Michel tried to prove his innocence.” 

Talking about the murder of the homeless woman, Paul listens to Michel’s explanation. He allows himself to be convinced by Michel’s explanations as the truth of the matter is too terrible to grasp. Paul does not want to believe that his son is a callous murderer or that Michel might go to prison and meet with disdain throughout the country. He is desperate to believe that it was an accident, even though every facet of his being is telling him otherwise. In this moment, Paul is a passive villain, allowing himself to be convinced to turn a blind eye to a terrible crime. 

“A scar would remain somewhere, true enough, but a scar does not have to get in the way of happiness.” 

After agreeing with Michel to keep the attack a secret, it eats away at Paul. All he wants is for the news to blow over, for everyone to forget about the vicious murder and for the police to drop their pursuit. He hopes that his knowledge of his son’s true nature will heal, leaving only a scar behind. But Paul knows that he is lying to himself, he knows that this wound cannot heal. It will fester away and become rotten, destroying every relationship in his life. Paul desperately wants his life to continue as before so is more than willing to pretend that his fatal wound will be able to heal. 

“It had just happened. He wanted to know what they should do.”

In this moment, Paul’s perception of Claire changes. Previously, he had assumed that she knew nothing, that she had watched the television report of the attack at the ATM and knew nothing. But now her lack of reaction reveals that she knew all the long and was, in fact, acting a role. Claire and Paul have both had the same reaction to learning about their son’s crime; they have desperately tried to keep it quiet, even from each other. They are the same in this respect, but Paul cannot help but take offense to his wife’s withholding of information about their son, even though he has done exactly the same. 

“Even from a purely statistical standpoint, it’s impossible that all those victims were good people, whatever kind of people that may be.” 

Paul’s misguided attempt at sociological analysis lays the foundations for his later excusing of his son’s behavior. When he thinks about what Michel did, he frequently wondered whether the homeless woman might be somehow morally deviant or at fault. He desperately clutched around for an excuse which might exculpate Michel’s behavior (and, by extension, Paul’s actions as a father). The reasoning shown in the above quote provide context as to why Paul might not go straight to the police when he learns the truth about his son. 

“I wanted to keep up the appearance of normalcy."

With Claire in the hospital, Paul takes over duties around the house. He goes to great lengths to try and maintain the appearance of normalcy and says that this is for the benefit of Michel. But it is not only for the boy’s benefit. Though Paul will not admit as much himself, he is personally terrified of change. He does not want to appear not normal for fear that the situation might be spiraling out of his control. He washes, shaves, and maintains the appearance of normalcy so that he will not have to actively acknowledge the terrifying strangeness and the inexplicable nature of his situation. He works hard to maintain the “appearance of normalcy” as a coping mechanism when dealing with his wife’s ill-health. 

“And more than that one homeless person, I think we should be talking about Rick and Michel.” 

Claire’s impassioned defense of her son and her nephew makes it evident that she values their futures over the life of one homeless woman. She will not tolerate others calling the attack murder, insisting that it was an accident. She also blames the homeless woman for having been near the ATM and for having smelled disgusting. As Claire’s defense continues, it becomes clear that she has not taken an objective position on the matter. She intends to shield her son from the law and, in order to justify this to herself and others, she couches this in terms of parental love and care. She does not want to discuss murder; she wants to discuss only Rick and Michel. She centers their experiences at the exclusion of the homeless woman. 

“Tomorrow, there is going to be a press conference, where I’ll announce that I’m stepping down.”

In this one snippet of dialogue, Serge destroys the pretense that those at the dinner table have an equal say in the matter of what to do about their children’s futures. He plans to exit the election and reveal that his son was involved in the murder of the homeless person. Though Serge has said repeatedly that they need to talk about the matter together, the fact that he has already scheduled a press conference demonstrates that the evening’s dinner was not a discussion but an announcement. He has already reached the decision and does not intend to change his mind. The dinner is a mere formality; the opinions of Babette, Paul, and Claire mean nothing once Serge has already decided what to do. 

“Claire and I keep telling ourselves that Michel needs to be able to go on with his life.” 

Paul’s speech at the dinner table is one of his few contributions to the issue of what they should do about Rick and Michel. But the entire premise rests on a foundation of lies. Paul opens his speech with the observation that he and Claire have discussed the matter at length. Paul only learned that Claire had any knowledge of the matter as recently as an hour before. The idea that they “keep telling” themselves anything is fundamentally untrue; Paul is simply reacting to the situation, creating a framework which will allow him to do what he pleases regardless of the actual moral circumstances of the situation. 

“When faced with lower intelligences, the most effective strategy in my opinion is to tell a barefaced lie: with a lie, you give the pinheads a chance to retreat without losing face.” 

Paul makes it explicitly clear that he has no trouble lying. In addition to bolstering the lies he has told to other characters in the novel, it plays into the question of whether Paul is a reliable narrator. His opinion of the audience does not seem to be especially high—he frequently does not trust the audience with certain facts and pieces of information, for instance—so would have no trouble lying to the audience if he felt it was necessary. Paul’s entire version of events remains questionable due to the fact that he is a compulsive and competent liar. 

“You got used to it, like a stain on the wallpaper.” 

Paul has grown used to many things in his life. The latent violence in his personality which frequently bubbles to the surface, his hatred for his brother, and his son’s murderous tendencies, for instance. These are all stains on the wallpaper which have become just another part of Paul’s life. The frequency with which his life feels stained has led to him barely being able to recognize the difference between right and wrong any more. It is clear that violence is now just a part of Paul’s nature, so he is ready to ignore Michel’s more violent tendencies. 

“I stared at her. There may still have been admiration in my look, but it was a different type of admiration from a few minutes earlier.” 

The final chapters of the book force the audience to ask how well Paul has ever known Claire. As the events begin to spiral out of control, it becomes clear that Claire is willing to not only overlook the murder Michel committed, but to advocate for another if necessary. She gives Michel permission to murder Beau if need be, and Paul looks on his wife with a renewed admiration. Paul realizes that Claire, like him, is willing to cross any moral boundary in order to protect her family. These acts of obscene violence have actually drawn them closer as a family. 

“It would send the wrong signal if I did it.” 

Paul’s statement exudes plenty of subtext. Throughout the novel, Paul has been very specific in his observations of pronouns. He notices when he’s included or excluded when Claire mentions, for example, ‘my son’ or ‘our son.’ In this quote, Paul very specifically uses the first person singular pronoun. If Paul attacked Serge, he says, it would send the wrong signal. But the subtext tells Claire what to do: It gives her permission to attack his brother, indicating that her attack would not send an equally worrisome signal. After an evening of exchanging meaningful looks with his wife, Paul finally enters into a real conspiracy with Claire and, together, they plan a violent attack against Serge, one which remains largely in the subtext that is only available to those who know each other so well.