Reconciliation is at least a two way movement in The Savage and the exultant dance of ‘triumf’ after the confrontation with Hopper is followed by the Savage’s visit to the home of Blue and his sister Jess. Night has many moral shades and the moral darkness of Hopper ( why is he named this? Bug’s Life, Susan Hill’s King of castle..all villains) is dealt with before the savage ‘renews’ himself through a visit to the home of Jess – a secular…’non-rooined chapel’ where the feminine rescues the lost male from desolation and the abjection of faithlessness? In this scene we witness the Savage’s attempt at communion with a sleeping Jess through a language he has heard but cannot reproduce directly: ‘He tried to speak like Blue and Jess had in the woods that day.’ And even though he cannot replicate the actual words themselves, he does find a new , nurturing tonality, ‘sound..gentil …full of tenderness and care..’ He pays homage to this pure ‘maiden’, offering allegiance and selfless love in a magical, chivalrous way, a strange echo perhaps of Arthurian legend and fantasy. Perhaps too it is this link between the role of the savage and that of the protective ‘knight’ which appeals to readers on a very intuitive level. For even if the reader recognises or misrecognises other older stories, we respond viscerally to Blue’s hurt by Hopper( and terrible ‘wound’ via his father’s death) and desire a ‘knightly’ intervention where some ‘champion’ may rally about our emotionally depleted hero and save him and his family from lostness and lonely fury. So Blue’s writing is a form of prayer, a plea for solace and the Savage’s gift is not least the liberation of Blue from the relentless pain of being just oneself:
‘When I wrote all that I felt much better. It was great to see Hopper through the Savage’s eyes.’ A wonderful change in perceptual postion! The Savage is thus a form of healing double, Launcelot to Blue’s Arthur:
‘ I saw him face to face like a reflection, and he was just like me, only weirder and wilder and closer to some magic and some darkness and some dreams..’
Civilisation ironically here seems to have drained away certain forms of intimacy or the possibility of certain forms of intimacy. Our wounds may remain open as we lack the imaginative, spiritual resources to heal them. By contrast, the proximity of the Savage to BLue returns that which has been lost or denied. The Savage is dynamic and moves emotion, as much as events, shifting stagnancy and privileging change, in himself as well as in BLue. For the savage is Blue and Blue is Savage. The question of who is writing who is tantalisingly voiced in the final stages of the narrative where both characters meet near the ‘rooined chapel’ and ‘we listened together to the darkness and I heard Dad’s voice.’ How do you listen to darkness? Synasthesia is so apt here.Wounds are heard and acknoweldged. Clairaudience too? For the savage’s darkness has saved Blue and Blue’s darkness has ennobled the savage. Healing is thus reciprocal and I wonder whether this shift from the abject, ungoverned otherness of the savage’s situation to his new respect and care for chosen others, anticipates the eventual integration of both the Savage and Blue. It is as if with the shifting of perceptual positions, the singularity and exclusion of grief can be transformed into something ‘processing’ and ‘alleviating’ rather than fixed and catastrophic. I
I do wonder too about the role of Jess in the text. Both the Savage and Blue are particularly protective of her innocence and spontaneity, and it is her behaviour which they both adopt when sensing positive change within themselves. ‘Jess’ and that which she signfies in a fallen world where Hopper can wear death’s mask like the reaper and torment Blue with his father’s death, remains pure and beyond contamination. The Savage blesses her through tender touch, an’ earthly’ sign of something beyond the material, a gesture which empowers Blue and inspires him to declare to a cowed Hopper:’ I know about the savage in the night.’