64 pages • 2-hour read
What We Can Know
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
The Value of Failure
In Part 1, Chapter 18, Thomas challenges his new friend, Lars Corbel, to glean insight from the funicular system that carries them to the Bodleian. This prompts Corbel to declare, “An optimist’s charter: we see our same old mistakes coming at us again, but their weight will see us to the top” (148). Corbel’s declaration functions as a thesis for the whole novel, in which McEwan emphasizes the important role that failure plays in achieving progress. This is mirrored in Thomas’s reckoning with the crisis of the humanities, as well as Vivien’s reflections on her place in history.
Throughout the novel, Thomas references the ongoing crisis of his university’s Humanities Department, which manifests as the students’ disinterest in studying the past. In Part 1, Chapter 17, Rose and Thomas give a lecture that ends with student leader Kevin Howard declaring, “We’re tired of your anger and nostalgia. This is where we live. We’ve got more future than you and that’s what we want to talk about […] We’re not interested in the value of historical thinking” (142). What Kevin ignores or is unaware of is how important it is to know the mistakes of the past to anticipate solutions for their recurrence in the future. With this fictional context, McEwan addresses the historical moment of the novel’s publication, warning that this attitude may lead to crisis: If left unaddressed, Kevin’s declamation may result in consequences on the same level as the Inundation.
Thomas’s overwhelming desire to live in the past is a reaction to his dissatisfaction with the present in which he lives. He characterizes his own era as a time of failure but cannot convince his students to adopt an enthusiastic interest in humanistic study. Whenever he looks back at the past, all he can feel is a longing to return to a time before the failure. It is important that Thomas acknowledges the impossibility of his own desire, highlighting how his own approach parallels Kevin’s in his withdrawal from engagement and refusal to seek solutions for his own time and place. Rose tries to ground him by reminding him that the past is full of failure, too, though Thomas’s misguided nostalgia prevents him from fully accepting this.
Beyond Thomas’s laments over the failure of the present, the novel also foregrounds Vivien’s reflections on her own personal failings, specifically her failure to care for Diana as a mother and for Percy as a wife. Vivien is weighed down by the shame of her inability to prevent tragedy from occurring, preventing her from taking effective action. This shame is precisely what informs her actions at the end of the novel, driving her to act against Francis when she realizes he is trying to co-opt the memory of Percy for his own glory. Having failed to act twice in the past, she now realizes her power to reshape Francis’s legacy. She writes her memoir to speak truth, acknowledging her faults along the way. Thomas similarly makes the resolution to refocus his life around Rose, turning away from his obsession with the past in favor of engaging with the present. Both protagonists actively use the knowledge of their failures to change their fates for the better, underscoring the novel’s message about the power of action and the importance of overcoming passivity.
Dispelling the Myth of the Great Artist
Thomas’s obsession with the work of Francis Blundy signals his belief in the theory of the Great Person (or, in Francis’s case, the Great Artist). By looking to him as one of the great poets of his time, Thomas champions Francis as one of the reasons that it was better to live in the pre-Inundation era than in Thomas’s time. However, the novel pushes against Thomas’s idea by implying that Francis’s personal values and politics contradict the ideas that his fabled poem is alleged to represent. This idealization aligns with Thomas’s misguided nostalgia for Francis’s era in general, which deliberately ignores the flaws of that time. With its representation of Francis Blundy, the novel argues that one cannot separate the art from the artist, as natural human flaws make the notion of a morally and aesthetically great person unfeasible.
One of the most prominent traits that Francis demonstrates on the night of the Second Immortal Dinner is his denialist view of climate change. This trait is especially noteworthy because his beliefs are immediately disproven by the Inundation. Francis openly insults climate change activists and turns his ire on Vivien when she expresses sympathy for the protest, revealing another unsavory aspect to his character. Despite the reputation of his poem “In the Saddle,” which is beloved by adolescent girls, his treatment of Vivien signals his utter lack of respect for women. During their first visit to the Barn, Vivien registers Francis’s secret desire to control her, and when they are married, they adopt a conservative dynamic in which Francis devotes hours to his poetry while treating Vivien as a servant who manages his household. Francis’s desire to control others even extends to language. His debate with Chris over the use of the word “hopefully” exposes his pedantry and how he looks down on Chris for his lack of education.
Contrasted against the mythical figure of Thomas’s imagination, the reality of Francis’s character reframes the environmental message of the corona. His dinner guests realize this and let their attention wander during the reading. Francis may be a successful poet, but in their eyes, he is not a great man. The novel explores the irony of Francis’s real personality when juxtaposed with his artistic reputation through the dinner guests’ experience; none of them can convince the world-at-large that Francis is not as great as his reputation makes him out to be, and when faced with the pressure of public attention, they misrepresent their experience, afraid of being seen as uncultured.
Vivien’s memoir clarifies the novel’s point that the poem’s content should not take precedence over the reality of Francis’s character. While Francis took great care to perfect his craft, his amorality made him capable of committing murder, an act that directly contradicts the humanist endeavor. Through this tension in the novel’s representation of Francis, McEwan suggests that artistic relevance and talent exist independently from an artist’s personal characteristics and morality, which need to be reckoned with when considering an artist’s legacy.
Living With Hope in Times of Crisis
McEwan’s novel encourages readers to continue to hold out hope in increasingly fraught times. He positions the reader in relation to the novel’s setting: The “past” characters exist in the same time period as his contemporary readers, allowing the latter to be more critical, using their own knowledge and experience in the era, when Thomas insists that Francis and his peers lived in better times. The novel also draws attention to the fact that the challenges of Thomas’s time period are a devastating consequence of the sociopolitical moment at the time of What We Can Know’s publication. With issues such as migration, climate change, and war, it is difficult to envision a future that is free from the apocalyptic outcomes that such issues imply. However, the novel focuses on the everyday lives of its characters, highlighting the idea that even in the worst circumstances, it is possible to live with hope.
The novel explores the idea of hope for a better future through Vivien’s optimism. Vivien experiences a crisis of compassion for Percy, as her love and support weaken in the face of his increasingly intense symptoms. In one of her worst moments, Vivien stands by as Francis kills Percy. Francis later accuses Vivien of being complicit, framing her complaint emails as an expression of intent, though the truth of Vivien’s guilt is more powerfully demonstrated by her failure to intervene. Throughout her memoir, Vivien talks about being haunted by her encounter with Christopher, in which she stepped in before the strange man could endanger the young boy’s life. This event stays with her because it reveals that she is capable of action, increasing her guilt over her passive acceptance of Percy’s murder. Despite her inaction during the moment of Percy’s death, later Vivien finds herself faced with an opportunity to remove both herself and Percy from Francis’s control. Her willingness to destroy Francis’s poem, which was just another co-optation of herself and especially Percy, becomes a manifestation of hope, reinforcing a belief that she can strive toward her better nature despite her past.
Thomas also undertakes a journey toward hope for the future when he moves forward from his idealization of the past to embrace the present. When Drummond alerts him to the possible location of Francis’s lost poem, he sees the potential to resolve his scholarly quest. Thomas sees the poem as the key to his obsession: The poem’s reintroduction represents both a major career milestone and validation for his conviction that Blundy lived in better times and was wiser than Thomas’s contemporaries. Instead, Thomas uncovers Vivien’s memoir, all but confirming his worst fears that the poem will never be recovered, but with Rose’s help, he discovers the value of the manuscript. While the manuscript invalidates his obsession with the past, Thomas also emerges from the excavation with a wiser eye toward the past, the present, and the future. He relinquishes his fixation on and idealization of the past and focuses on his future with Rose. The idea that they will go on to raise a child speaks to the hope they hold for the future. The novel emphasizes the message that hope drives people to persist through their crises and carry on, focusing on the future with hope.
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