by Jake Graham
Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel was a problematic and challenging read due to the mystery genre of the novel. St. John Mandel wrote the story in third person form and continuously changed the story’s perspective from one character to the next. To properly analyze this story accurately, I used Barthes’ hermeneutic code to decipher critical elements within the story to expand on the semic code of the text.
The cultural code of Last Night in Montreal is, when the past becomes the present, we lose the future. The main character Lilia continuously runs from her past by moving place to place frequently. Her constant movement is the result of a scarred childhood focused on her abduction (St. John Mandel, 45). The semic code of Lilia is revealed on page 9 of the text which reads, “looking out at an uncharted landscape of Brooklyn rooftops in the rain, and came to a somewhat unsettling conclusion: she’d been disappearing for so long that she didn’t know what to say” the quote reinforces the cultural code by displaying that her disappearing act has left her stationary and start to face her past. Reading the hermeneutic code of the text, I was able to draw this conclusion following the ten-part process on Professor Kopp’s Weebly article titled “Intertextuality: Readerly versus Writerly Texts”(http://howwritersread.weebly.com/intertextual-codes.html).
The thematization of Lilia is revealed in the perspective of Eli, “he might’ve seen something: a look in her eyes, a foreshadowing of doom, perhaps a train ticket in her hand or the words I’m Leaving You Forever stitched on the front of her coat” (St. John Mandel, 5). The proposal of the enigma takes place when Lilia recalls her past, “she found later that most of her childhood memories had hallucinatory quality, as a result of traveling some distance too often and changing her name so frequently that she sometimes forgot what it was, but her memories of the first year or two of travel were the least precise” (St. John Mandel, 8). Formulation of the enigma takes place on page 19 when Lilia states the various places she has lived: “Minneapolis. St. Paul. Indianapolis. Denver. Some other places in the Midwest, New Orleans, Savannah, Miami. A few cities in California. Portland.” Eli then cuts through the conversation, “you’re a traveler” on the same page. Lilia’s travels force the story to request an answer, which is what is Lilia’s past that she is eluding from her childhood. The snare in the novel is evacuating a setting before she is confronted with her past, in one moment we can see her peering over her shoulders and fearfully saying “a private detective could still look for me.”
Moments such as these not only add to the mysterious theme of the novel but also display the cultural codes that, when the past becomes the present, we lose the future. Reading the hermeneutic code of the text not only dissects the foundation of the novel but also of the semic code of Lilia. As a character, Lilia runs from her past and creates a life of her own. That life she has desperately tried to avoid ended up consuming her present lifestyle, which essentially does not allow her to progress into her future.
KKJM Reads 
I thought that this post did an excellent job of presenting the hermeneutic code to readers. Still, after reading this post, I thought that because of the way the novel uses shifting points of view, it would be interesting to look at the proairetic code within the text. For example, the plot begins with Lilia’s mother abusing her, and the resulting effect is that she is abducted by her father. Her abduction causes the detective to essentially abandon his daughter, Michaela, to follow her case, and the effect of this is that she eventually commits suicide after jumping in front of a train. Meanwhile, Lilia develops an inability to stay in one place, which is the effect of never having had a stationary lifestyle during her childhood. This causes her to abandon her boyfriend, Eli, and take off to Montreal. The effect of her disappearance is that Eli chases after her, eventually him to have a mental breakdown. I felt that the proairetic code in this text was especially interesting because there are essentially four main characters, and the actions of each character directly impacted the lives of the others. While in A Clockwork Orange when I examined the proairetic code, the cause and effect of Alex’s choices only really impacted his life, when I examined the code in this novel, I was able to see that most of the causes and effects only worked when the storylines of the other characters were included, such as is the case of Lilia’s disappearance causing Eli to go to Montreal, which had the effect of him having a mental breakdown.
LikeLike
You said “The cultural code of Last Night in Montreal is, when the past becomes the present, we lose the future.” But if we learn from our life experiences I question if this, Lilia being abducted and never living in one place, gave her life. Would Lilia be alive if she lived with her mother? I question if her moms abuse would of killed her? Her father saved her life. “A Hermeneutic Code is something that is unexplained and which creates an unanswered question, often appearing at the beginning of the story, thus creating a tension that engages the audience. Hermeneutic codes are at the root of all mysteries.” For the annotated bibliography I’d question not only why Lilia keeps leaving but also why do the people around her follow her? Why can’t they let her go? What makes Lilia this character that leaves people with this feeling of unfinished business with her. Her father having her travel, never staying in one place gave Lilia this recurring feeling that she couldn’t stay in one place for long, leaving loved ones behind and unintentionally hurting them. What is Lilia’s recurring hermeneutic code that now is present when she leaves? Why do people have this feeling that they must find answers? Lilia tells Eli in an honest answer“I don’t know if I will stay, I don’t know how to stay.” So why does it drive Eli to almost insanity when she does in fact leave?
LikeLike