The Erasers: A Narrative Rewriting of Oedipus Rex

          

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  The Erasers is a detective novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet, originally published in French as Les Gommes in 1953. The novel deals with attempts to find the assassin of a professor named Daniel Dupont who was supposed to be killed in the night before the novel's setting. The novel is set in an unnamed city, covers a full day that a government's special agent spends to find out the murderer. The novel concludes much like the world famous classical Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex by Sophocles revealing to the readers that the one searching the murderer himself turns to be the murderer. Due to its similar plot structure with dramatic irony and other similar elements, The Erasers can be taken as a rewriting and/or rereading of the classical mythical tragedy of Oedipus.

            The novel has a line from Sophocles' Oedipus Rex as an epigraph in the beginning: “Time that sees all has found you out against your will.” This line clearly gives the reader a hint that the story of Wallas, the government agent investigating the murder, has something in common with that of Oedipus. Later, as the novel progresses, it is proved that “both the form and the content of The Erasers resembles the ancient story: the protagonist swears to uncover a murder but the outcome is both guaranteed and doomed from the beginning because the protagonist is himself the murderer he seeks to detect” (Özcan 2). Both of the works show the happening of temporality as repetition is independent of will, or any determination. The protagonists in both works run away from becoming the murderer and attempt to unlock the murder mysteries, but later prove to become murderer themselves.

The city has been undergoing a murder every night for the last few days; but all of them pass as they happen. Despite some attempts (if any), the mysteries behind the murders in series go unsolved. But, for investigation of this “murder” of Daniel Dupont, the government has sent a special detective perhaps because the victim is of some social repute. But, the special detective Wallas too fails to resolve the mystery. Instead, he unknowingly happens to commit the murder that he was supposed to investigate. This storyline is exactly similar to Oedipus Rex, in which the King Oedipus commits to punish the murderer of King Laios, but by the end of the play, he recognises the fact that he killed the King without knowing him to be the King (and his father as well).

Both Oedipus and Wallas are tragic heroes who are destined to fall despite their intense efforts to avoid any problematic situation. Their efforts become futile in life throughout the works; because they are destined to commit some unavoidable hubris. Both of them commit those mistakes without knowing that they are becoming the persons they are seeking for. Much like the similar way of Oedipus, Wallas too doesn't kill the professor intentionally, but accidentally – in order to save himself from possible danger. He just happens to pull the trigger of the gun he has in his pocket: “Wallas, dazzled by the light, only distinguishes the quick movement of an arm lowering toward him the muzzle of a heavy revolver, the movement of a man firing As he throws himself to the floor, Wallas pulls the trigger” (Robbe-Grillet 108).      

But both of the heroes have got sufficient hints about the possible catastrophes in their life. For Oedipus, it was mainly the blind seer Teiresias; whereas for Wallas, it is mainly a drunk man he meets at the hotel he stays at, and partly the Commissioner, the lady from the post office and some other general people who consider Wallas as the murderer due to the similarities they have for appearance and attires. In fact, the drunken man is Teiresias for Wallas: he many times identifies Wallas as the murderer of Daniel.   Before Wallas happens to kill Daniel, the drunk has already begun to accuse him of the murder based on similar appearance as told by the servant woman of Daniel. In an episode, the drunk asks why Wallas didn't speak to him the day before. Wallas answers that he was hundred kilometers away then. But, the drunk so confidently claims and further intensifies the accusation, “Of course! Don’t good murderers always have an alibi?” (Robbe-Grillet 53). Similarly, Wallas can never escape from the post office lady who mistakes Wallas to be Andre WS. In addition to this, the doctor who has provided a refuge to Daniel, Juard, also thinks that Wallas is searching Daniel “in order to kill him” (Robbe-Grillet 93).  

Wallas's attempt to escape the drunk's accusation is similar to Oedipus's attempt to escape the prediction from the Oracle of Delphi. “Wallas’s fixation on finding the truth blinds him to the similarities between himself and the murderer. Despite the numerous forewarnings of residents, Wallas’ ignorance inevitably costs Dupont his life” (Dohman 31). Comparing it with Oedipus, it is Oedipus's fixation on escaping the Delphi oracle despite suggestions by his supposed parents Polybos and Merope from Corinth that costs life of Laois and eyesight of Oedipus. 

Teiresias in rage, in Oedipus Rex clearly tells the King Oedipus, “you are the murderer whom you seek” (Sophocles 55). In much similar way, Wallas in The Erasers overhears the echo, “Sometimes you go through hell and high water to find a murderer and the crime hasn’t even been committed. You go through hell and high water to discover it …quite far from him, whereas one need only point toward one’s own chest” (Robbe-Grillet 111). Before this, the Commissioner assisting Wallas to investigate the murder has suggested the same (Robbe-Grillet 90); but he has just ignored it as Oedipus first ignores what the blind seer says.

However persistent he is to avoid the accusation in the beginning, Wallas becomes too ready to face the consequences once he realises that he indeed killed the man.  He himself calls the Commissioner to inform the murder after he confirms that he killed the man. When the hotel manager tells him that the Police are searching Wallas, he just says, “Yes, I know, thanks” and he goes direct upstairs to his room (Robbe-Grillet 110). Though in a lesser degree, it echoes the feelings of guilt and regret Oedipus has that leads him to voluntary blindness.

In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus doesn't know that the murdered one Laois is not only the King of Thebes, but his father as well. In The Erasers too, Wallas is suggested to be the “fictitious son of Professor Dupont” (Robbe-Grillet 106). The Manager of the hotel where Wallas stays has informed the Police about presence of this suspicious character after the drunk's accusation to him. Later, he cannot certify Wallas to be the son of Dupont, nevertheless thinks so. This is rather certified by Wallas himself when he remembers his childhood journey to the city with his mother in an attempt to meet his father. Even at a point, Wallas himself interprets the murder as an arrogance of a dissatisfied son against an irresponsible father. Robbe-Grillet has clearly written, “The young man, after having vainly appealed to his rights, to filial love, to pity, and finally to blackmail, determined, as a last resort to attempt force…He is a weakling and afraid of his father…” (88).

Even these two literary works share similar settings for important incidents. Dubois has identified that the fatal crossroads of Oedipus Rex, where Oedipus encounters and kills Laios, comes in the form of the narrator's careful delineation of the detective's itinerary in The Erasers: leaving the police station, he heads for the rue de Corinth by way of the rue Berger (105). Laios was killed at the crossroad leading to three highways. Oedipus narrates the setting to Iokaste, “There were three highways / Coming together at a place I passed … I killed him / I killed them all” (Sophocles 66-67). In The Erasers, the murder is committed in Dupont's own room; but Wallas finds the similar crossroad that threatens him: “he found himself at an intersection of three roads… He remembered having already passed this place twice before” (Robbe-Grillet 98).

The plot structure of the novel begins again as it ends. The novel begins with a murder attempt at 7:30 pm Monday and ends with its succession at 7:30pm the next day. Besides that, there are many events that repeat themselves. Özcan writes that Robbe-Grillet has used repetition-as-beginning and repetition-as-difference as major elements of his plot structure (1). Oedipus Rex also involves similar kind of repetitions; one of the most vivid examples is Oedipus facing to and escaping from the prophesy from Delphi that he will kill his father and marry his mother.

The drunken man asks Wallas a riddle many times which Wallas cannot answer. He asks, “What animal is parricide in the morning, incestuous at noon, and blind at night?” (Robbe-Grillet 101). The riddle is connected to Oedipus mainly in two ways. First, for anyone, having read Oedipus, it is obvious that the answer is Oedipus: he first kills the father (“parricide”), then marries the mother (“incestuous”) and eventually blinds himself (“blind”). Dubois even claims, “The answer is, of course, Wallas himself, who once visited this city as a child, with his mother, who ends by killing Daniel Dupont, his lost father, realizing the fate of the parricide as well as completing the destiny of Dupont himself, bound to be assassinated” (106). Secondly, the riddle parodies another well known riddle (“Riddle of the Sphinx”) that was believed to be what King Oedipus successfully answered, “What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?” Robbe-Grillet perhaps has intentionally put this riddle into the story line to connect the novel to Oedipus. 

Though seemingly very minor, many critics have claimed that the eraser that Wallas seeks to find - but never succeeds - is related to Oedipus directly. Wallas claims that he had used a fine eraser once, thus seeks to find that in every stationery shop he meets on the way. He tries to remember the brand name, but cannot. “The manufacturer’s brand was printed on one side, but was too worn to be legible any more: only two of the middle letters were still clear: “di”; there must have been at least two letters before and perhaps two or three others after” (Robbe-Grillet 61). The description of the brand name perfectly matches with the word 'Oedipus'. “In addition, by the end of the novel, Wallas's feet are swollen from too much walking. Oedipus, which means "swollen foot", is echoed with its literal meaning” (Özcan, 2).

Despite these many allusions to the classical Greek tragedy, it seems that The Erasers doesn't produce any catharsis in audience as Oedipus Rex does. Catharsis is essential for something to be a tragedy according to Aristotle; but Dubois comments that this narrative of Robbe-Grillet erases, expunges and deletes the tragic quality; it admits neither pity, nor fear (108). It lacks any effect as pity and fear. But this is the one among very few elements that distance the novel from Oedipus Rex.

In this postmodern narrative of Oedipus Rex, the unnamed city has been Thebes, the professor Daniel Dupont has been King Laios. More importantly the detective Wallas is Oedipus as both of them undergo the same kind of fatal journey toward the never-wished and forbidden – but inescapable - destinations. As Dubois has commented, the novel “alluded to, mimicked, intertwined itself about, and played endlessly with Sophocles' classical tragedy Oedipus Rex. Robbe-Grillet allowed the tragedy to appear in his novel through a palimpsestic scrim” (102). 

 Works Cited

Dohman, Luke. “Mistaken Identity:  An Insight into the Characters of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s The Erasers and Vladimir Nabokov’s The Real Life of Sebastian Knight”. Nomad. 5 (2006): 30-34.

Dubois, Page. “Oedipus as Detective: Sophocles, Simenon, Robbe-Grillet”. Yale French Studies 8 (2005): 102-15.

Özcan, Işıl. “Tearing Time Apart: The Paradoxical Aesthetics of Metafictional Remembrance”. Aesthetics Bridging Cultures. International Congress of Aesthetics 2007.

Robbe-Grillet, Alain. The Erasers. Trans. Richard Howard. 1964.

Sophocles. “Oedipus Rex”. Elements of Literature. 4^th ed. Ed. Robert Scholes et al. Oxford: Oxfort UP, 1991. 44-86.