The Day of the Jackal

The 'Thriller' label applies across a variety of genres: sub groupings include the political thriller, detective thriller, horror thriller, suspense thriller. Examples include the works of John Buchan, Geoffery Household, Mickey Spillane, Len Deighton, Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, Alistair Maclean, Dashiel Hammett, P. D. James and Frederick Forsythe. The classic exponent of cinema thrillers is, of course, Hitchcock.

General characteristics apply to the genre, including:

(i) the generation of affect through suspense, and a thrill and entertainment value which comes from unraveling the enigma and 'working out' why and how, the cognitive pleasures. In the "Pursuit Thriller" the emphasis is placed on the elements of suspense: will the agent be caught before he can solve or prevent forms of disorder? In the "Political Thriller" emphasis is placed on the process of solving or sense-making itself, unraveling the labyrinthine complexities of the world of real politics. The Day of the Jackal combines these various pleasures: Forsyth is almost obsessional in the amount of detail which is packed into the novel, most of which is redundant, yet which enhances the air of realism. Furthermore, as readers, part of the pleasure lies in our identification with this cognitive problem-solving dimension.

(ii) A setting which is based in the city and the urban or cosmopolitan world. One feature of the genre is that it often allows the reader/viewer to have privileged access or insight into "the World", and to institutions, practices and agencies which control or seek to control that world: the reader of viewer is taken "behind the scenes". Look, for example, at p. 262 (Ch. 11, para: "Throughout the night crime chiefs of the police forces..."), or p.316, (Ch.14, para. Sir Jasper Quigley..."). The world here is the world of late Capitalist and highly advanced bureaucratic societies, which have a kind of remorseless logic all of their own, and it is one of the assumptions of reading this kind of novel that we are encouraged to see what a cynical and amoral place our world actually is.

(iii) The reliance on rational and secular forms of explanation, often coupled with an emphasis on the "logic" of rational politics and realpolitik. Agents may become aware that the rules governing this world are irrational, unjust or immoral, and that these rules may be opposed to their personal views of the reasonable, the moral and the "civilised". In this world it is a case of "kill or be killed", a mixture of techno-bureaucratic rationalism and the laws of the jungle. Notice in Day of the Jackal how this is reinforced through the reliance on the metaphors connected with anatomy, "kills", "game-plans", "strategies", etc.

(iv) a preoccupation with questions of social order, legality, justice and criminality, and the means by which social order is upheld or imposed. Thrillers such as Forsyth's rely on dealing with international threats and conspiracies, possibly reflecting and playing out some kind of neurosis about the fragility of this world order, how easily it might be overturned by an assassin, political fanatics or megalomaniacs.

(v) The central hero or 'agent'. In focusing on the point of view of this agent the Thriller is able to raise issues of heroism, masculinity, honour, rationalism and competitive individualism. The position of this central agent in relation to the institutions or political orders which he serves is often used to express wider attitudes towards Social Order, the State or the "Country" (see (iii) above).

I want now to look more closely at The Day of the Jackal and to see how the novel deals with these issues and just how representative it is as a novel.

(i) Structure and Characterisation. Note the importance of the anatomical dissection and the metaphor of the 'manhunt', with its associations of 'game' and 'trapping': the plot is essentially concerned with 'tracking' the 'other'. Characters are agents or functions within this plot, and much is made of the contrast between the two central protagonists, the Jackal and Lebel. The Jackal is professional, ruthless, young, psychopathic, rational, rakish, animal and instinctive, fair, and chameleon-like in his assumption of disguises. Lebel is also professional and methodical, but is dark, middle aged, true to himself, a bureaucrat and something of a plodder. In what other ways are the contrasts (and similarities) between the two drawn out in the novel? Begin with "the Jackal". Who is he? Is it significant that we never know who he is, and that he can assume so many disguises? Do you feel that the insights into his character are convincing? Look, for example, at p.354, (Chapter 15, para: "The bill came..."). On Lebel look at p.244, (beginning of Ch 10). Which of these two are we encouraged to identify with, and which, very crudely, do we want to win? With this, whose values do we end up being more sympathetic towards? The film raises the issue because of its use of point of view: particularly the moment when the Jackal fires at de Gaulle and misses!

(ii) Themes and issues. In additional to the general themes of the genre, certain key issues are dealt with in the book and film:

- Social Order and its moral basis: at what moral cost can or should that order be upheld? The episode where Kowalski is tortured (p 202, Ch 8) raises major questions: to what extent can the use of such brutal means justify the end of maintaining the existing social order?

- Technocratic bureaucracy versus competitive individualism. It is bureaucracy which helps track down the Jackal, who is a highly competitive individual. Thrillers frequently feature a contrast between bureaucracy and individualism, and in this work the Jackal is only able to get so far because he exploits the loopholes and the human side to bureaucracy (indeed you could argue that the real hero of the novel is bureaucracy!).

- The irrationalism of the highly rational - is the Jackal a psychopathic killer, or a thorough professional, an inhuman monster or an entrepreneur? Isn't he simply a capitalist with a gun, Joe Lampton with a rifle? One of the interesting paradoxes of the novel is that the Jackal's motives are very much in step with those of the society which he threatens, and which Lebel is employed to preserve.

(iii) Values. To what extent is the film a 'masculine romance', in its glorification of the instrumentally rational and object-using world, where women are used as objects as much as guns are used, in the service of Law and Order? Look, for example, at the novel's "use" of Jacqueline Duvais and the Countesse Colette de la Chaloniere: is this very different from the exploitation of guns, machines and other devices elsewhere in the novel? Or is this too simple and crude, because the novel is wider in its appeal to women and men?

The film also raises issues concerned with the nature of 'heroism' - chivalric, competitive, ruthless, professional? Is the Jackal a "heroic" figure, or is it Lebel who is the hero?

Finally, note the contrast of the democratic social order ('stuffy bureaucracy') with the reliance on power and violence to maintain that same democratic social order. Men like Sir Jasper Quigley and Raol de St. Clair are surely portrayed as stuffy and pompous, or inept and corrupt, whereas the novel deals with strong and ruthless individualists like Lebel and the Jackal. Does this indicate anything about the novel's portrayal of values and its final allegiances? Does it advocate a kind of Fascist anti-fascism, where Lebel has to become like the Jackal in order to capture and exorcise him?

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